Heart of the OHR Contest 2014

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I'd just like to say, the voting for this contest had nothing to do with me not working on Legendary Heroes (or almost any game for that matter). Expecting a child is the main reason. I did mention that I wasn't too thrilled about entering the contest if my game wasn't going to be reviewed or possibly even played. It's the main reason I enter these things.

So, if you're making decisions based off me not releasing games, please do not do that. However, I do still think that every game should simply be voted on and possibly win. But if people want to enter and yet not enter, what ever I guess.
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Spoonweaver wrote:I'd just like to say, the voting for this contest had nothing to do with me not working on Legendary Heroes (or almost any game for that matter). Expecting a child is the main reason. I did mention that I wasn't too thrilled about entering the contest if my game wasn't going to be reviewed or possibly even played. It's the main reason I enter these things.
Oh, I knew that, and I don't think I ever congratulated you. Congratulations! Hope you're handling fatherhood well.

Yeah, it's for the reason you state that I thought it would be unfair not to allow Legends a chance for a vote. But based on Fnrrf's response, and based on my condition for releasing Powerstick Man XE for that brief season in 2010, I'd ultimately want to give the authors that choice. In my case, I didn't want to put my game up for vote because I had intended it to serve as the torch-lighting for the first contest. But I still wanted it recognized as part of the first Heart of the OHR.
Spoonweaver wrote:So, if you're making decisions based off me not releasing games, please do not do that. However, I do still think that every game should simply be voted on and possibly win. But if people want to enter and yet not enter, what ever I guess.
No, I made the decision because it was a valid point you had made. I can't control who makes what games when, and I don't plan on gambling the integrity of the contest on a what-if, but I will make changes that are reasonable and sensible, and your point was reasonable and sensible. But so is Fnrrf's. Ultimately, I'm trying to make general decisions based on what the majority wants. I can't please everyone, but I'll try to make this contest as accessible for authors and voters as possible.
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Post by Feenicks »

Troll Over

Time/amount played: Through to an ending

__

My feelings on this game have changed around a bunch since I last played it, but they're still firmly in 'eh' territory.

The graphics are what you'd expect from a Spoonweaver game; servicable, but really nothing special or interesting. The battle graphics just being the field graphics blown up 2x is just lazy, though.

The music is rather obnoxious; the battle music sounds more like three different songs mashed together, and the field music has the sound effect that plays when mario stops in mario 3 interspersed constantly.

I find the useless abilities that Steve and Atomisk had to be a bit confusing. Is there any reason for them to actually be there, beyond flavor? At least let me run from battles if the troll's not actually conscious to prevent me from doing so if you're going to keep it there.

The ending seemed a bit abrupt, but apparently that's just from me missing stuff that was said earlier in the game. Apparently I got the bad end? Didn't bother going for the other end, as I had no desire to grind out/go back to town and get equipment.

And I guess that's the issue I had with this thing; any reason the game gives you to progress is really easily missed, and the characters really aren't interesting enough to carry things otherwise. Why should the game (apparently) punish you for picking up the one character that's actually interesting? The game's apparently a villain game, but it feels a bit pointless if you're just going to be fighting the same random forest animals/insects I'd be doing if I was a hero in some other generic RPG.

Eh.

5/10

_______


Invasion of the Mantle Dwellers

Time/amount played: through the end of the demo, however long that actually was

___

In no uncertain terms, this is a newbie game. Things are misspelled, battles are pretty glacial, the main character doesn't really need the spell you're given, and the item crafting systems don't really seem to play that big of a part just yet.

But man, I ended up finding this to be pretty neat! I liked the main character and his whole investigative thing (even if he didn't have very many qualms about beating up the mantle dudes himself), and I liked the enemies you faced. I liked those flashing signs in the town, and even if it was a bit funkily scaled I liked what was there in the end-of-demo void.

This thing certainly needs a good deal of polish; in addition to what I mentioned at the start, you can't actually heal up in the demo, and at least one enemy type doesn't actually give experience. In spite of that, though, I still want to see where this ends up going, especially since you used Diamond enemies in the first dungeon and I want to see where the power level of enemies go from there.

6/10
Attachments
The king really wants you dead.
The king really wants you dead.
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human-shaped house
human-shaped house
rabmoghal20140011.png (17.17 KiB) Viewed 4797 times
The pictures came out as .bmp files, -1 point.
The pictures came out as .bmp files, -1 point.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Odd bug(?) I ran into in Troll Over--for some reason, the first few times I fought Fat Back he and his squid never disappeared from the map and could be fought over and over again with no apparent effect on anything. Didn't even give me a different chain of textboxes when I re-fought him afterward.

And then just now, after finding a few more hidden chests I'd missed before, I fought him again and he and his squid's NPCs on the map vanished just as expected.

Is this the intended behavior (forcing you to fight him multiple times with no indication that this is accomplishing anything) or is something screwy here?
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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

@FnrrfYgmSchnish:
That's not intended and I've never even heard of this bug, let alone seen it myself. I can't even imagine what could be causing that.

Can you, explain more? Like you're using the included exe and everything?
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Tue Jan 20, 2015 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Ah, might be an engine-related bug--I've been using a more recent nightly rather than the included .exe files for all of the games I've played so far.

I ran into a "non-disappearing when defeated" NPC in Mantle Dwellers too, now that I think about it. Will have to check and see if the same thing happens with the included .exes... if not, I'm guessing that one of the nightly versions somehow introduced a weirdly inconsistent bug with usable-only-once NPCs or something.

EDIT: Yep, the NPC in Mantle Dwellers disappears as intended when using the .exe that one came with. I'm assuming that it's going to be the same case with Troll Over (though I don't have a save file conveniently right before the bug happened for the game so I can't test it in 10 seconds like I did with that one.)

Looks like there may be some really odd engine bug preventing one-use NPCs from vanishing in the Jan. 15th nightly version, then.
Last edited by FnrrfYgmSchnish on Tue Jan 20, 2015 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Many thanks for taking the extra step here. I was minutes away from trying to recreate this. I await any further comments you have.
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Post by TMC »

Yikes! That's definitely a release blocker. I'll try to remember to look into it when I have time.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

FnrrfYgmSchnish wrote:Looks like there may be some really odd engine bug preventing one-use NPCs from vanishing in the Jan. 15th nightly version, then.
That is rather alarming! <s>Can somebody check the date on the copy of game.exe that came with Mantle Dwellers?</s> I would like to narrow down the search for where this happened. EDIT: ugh, I just checked myself, and it is beelzebufo. So that doesn't narrow it down much.

It would also help a lot to have a save game right before an NPC battle that exhibits this bug.
Last edited by Bob the Hamster on Tue Jan 20, 2015 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

The game.exe for Mantle Dwellers is 1.66 MB, if that helps. The game.exe from the January 15th nightly (which has the bug) is 1.94 MB, so assuming the file's size has increased over time, Mantle Dwellers definitely came with an older version.

Unfortunately I don't have a save file right before the bug happens anymore (since I played the game with the included .exe yesterday and saved over my old file after getting further... whoops), but it happened to me only maybe 15 minutes of playtime in (the first battle-triggering NPC in the king's hedge-maze place didn't vanish after being defeated) so it shouldn't take long to get to that point. The only problem is whether it'll consistently happen every time, since when I was playing Troll Over I had it happen a couple times in a row and then the same NPC worked fine the next time I tried.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

I just tested the fight with Fat Back in Troll Over using the latest nightly, and he vanished correctly.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Yeah, whatever is causing the no-vanishing thing seems to be really weirdly inconsistent.

I got him to vanish without any problems when I fought him yesterday, but I fought him two or three times in a row the night before and his NPC never went away. Both times were with the January 15th nightly.

I haven't seen this problem with any NPC that doesn't trigger a battle or any NPC that isn't touch-activated yet (none of the one-time-use chests or invisible step-on NPCs refused to vanish when I was playing through Okédoké with the Jan. 15th nightly, for example), so I wonder if there might be a connection there. Then again, I also didn't have the bug come up with battle-triggering NPCs in Okédoké, either... I don't think there were any touch-activated, battle-triggering NPCs in Okédoké, though, so if it's something about that specific combination that causes problems, that would explain why I didn't notice it happening then.
Last edited by FnrrfYgmSchnish on Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Anyone out there still need extra time to vote? Willy? Fnrrf? TMC? Bueller?

If so, about how much more do you need?

If possible, I'd like to compile the scores this weekend. Let me know.
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

I should be able to get through at least enough of each game to put in a fair vote by this weekend even if I don't end up finishing the longer ones; I'll probably have another set of votes PM'ed to you later tonight (have played the rest of Mantle Dwellers now that I know the bug was likely an engine bug rather than a game bug, and also played some of Winged Realm last night.)

I would probably be able to blast through most of the remaining games tonight and get votes in by around 2 or 3 am if I absolutely had to, but I just got back into working on Alleghany Hell School so HotOHR playing/voting doesn't quite have my full attention at the moment. XD
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Post by TMC »

I happen to be moving house this week but should nonetheless have time to play a few games, so expect vote on most of them by the weekend.
Last edited by TMC on Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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