TutOHRial

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Nathan Karr
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TutOHRial

Post by Nathan Karr »

Right now I'm at about 300 textboxes. The first 100 are reserved for "in-game" text like innkeepers, flavor NPCs, the intro, treasure chests, boss fights, etc.

One major thing I started doing around textbox 150 I think it was is taking screenshots of the editor and importing them to use as textbox backdrops so that people can get a much clearer visual illustration of what to do. So I'm taking a little time to refine the earlier lessons.

The goal is to make a very simple RPG that touches on all the basic features (textboxes, conditionals, tags, door links, importing resources, random encounters, boss battles, items), broken in exactly the right ways to walk a player through fixing it one step at a time.

Natalie is the sample main character and players will be walked through a warrior, mage, and thief as well. [s]This is absolutely not a dastardly plot to get more people exposed to Natalie and make me fan art.[/s] Natalie in particular is used to demonstrate a couple things: First, Level MP and how it differs from regular MP (she's a cleric so her powers come from an external pact instead of an internal power source). Another is logically deciding which characters can use what equipment, the example I give being Natalie not being able to wear body armor because she has wings and clothes for humans don't have big slits in the back to put wings through.

Once I've finished the first pass up through final boss and game ending, I'll send copies around to a few choice players for testing.
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This is the first textbox a player will find upon opening the game in Game.
This is the first textbox a player will find upon opening the game in Game.
TutOHRial0115.png (8.41 KiB) Viewed 2471 times
I also get to be a medieval armament nerd. Look at me, calling the mail torso armor a hauberk!
I also get to be a medieval armament nerd. Look at me, calling the mail torso armor a hauberk!
TutOHRial0055.png (1.52 KiB) Viewed 2471 times
I resisted the urge to make it one of my numerous axes of PUNishment. It's just an average axe.
I resisted the urge to make it one of my numerous axes of PUNishment. It's just an average axe.
TutOHRial0050.png (1.51 KiB) Viewed 2471 times
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Post by Nathan Karr »

My current task is to write the final lesson on making the boss and ending the game.

I'm going to have a couple minor optional tutorials (sidequests, basically) that are also available but not part of the linear "story" of the game.

I'm well over 300 textboxes in. I'm going to be sending a copy around for basic testing in the afternoon, probably.
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TutOHRial0176.png
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Post by Spoonweaver »

You're already basically done?
Dang Nate, wish I could make games that fast.
I look forward to playing.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Spoonweaver wrote:You're already basically done?
Dang Nate, wish I could make games that fast.
I look forward to playing.
Waves of inspiration, forcing myself to keep it simple (there are four weapons and four heroes period rather than a dozen heroes to build a party from and two to ten tiers each of twelve weapon types, four cleric spells and six wizard spells, three elements rather than even the usual 16)...and not having to go flip burgers for an ungrateful manager and impatient customers eight hours a night.

Also a lot of the groundwork was laid by Fnrrf's 8-bit graphics pack (even if some of these sprites are from games I've been making in the past 11 years). Choosing to pare it down, offering a less overwhelmingly comprehensive demo package, helps a lot with decision paralysis.

And speaking of doing things fast, I added 30-40 more textboxes for the Final Boss lesson before going to sleep last night instead of leaving it for the morning as I was expecting. I started this thing on Wednesday evening, I think it was? And now it's basically done. Going to make a couple of "sidequest" lessons now that the main plotline is done.

Sidequest line 1: Importing more battle backdrops, making new battle formations, putting them in formation sets.

Sidequest line 2: Copy/pasting item definitions, elemental weapons, spells taught by items.
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Screenshots of me editing the game comprise the majority of the game's file size.
Screenshots of me editing the game comprise the majority of the game's file size.
TutOHRial0160.png (3.76 KiB) Viewed 2399 times
And what inspired this was how easy I was finding it to fiddle with PS1 RPG Maker's pre-loaded assets. I wanted something that'd make a good learning tool above all else.
And what inspired this was how easy I was finding it to fiddle with PS1 RPG Maker's pre-loaded assets. I wanted something that'd make a good learning tool above all else.
RPG Maker 019.PNG (683.28 KiB) Viewed 2398 times
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Post by Nathan Karr »

I've sent the game out for the first round of testing. This includes
  • one user whose only experience with the OHR is playing No Eat,

    one who played with it briefly in 2018 and never made a game, but has played and enjoyed A Quest more recently,

    someone who played OHRodents but didn't want to touch any of my games still labeled as in demo stage in the hopes I might have a finished version some day,

    and a few OHR veterans.
Hopefully my diverse set of testers can give me useful feedback and see if TutOHRial is ready for release to the HotOHR.

404 textboxes. Albeit the majority of the first 100 are empty. 180~ screenshots of the engine in use to highlight those 304 tutorial textboxes.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Between a pair of red foxes, I managed to find about a dozen total errors between broken textbox links, broken conditionals, typos, and slightly unclear instructions. Considering how I wrote and linked together over 300 textboxes in the span of three days, I consider this a pretty good failure rate.

Today I made a change to the master palette. Yes, this deep into development. I only had to re-import about 12-20 screens/tilesets to get them looking even better than before. Having one less sickly pale yellow and one more shade of green will be well worth it, I'm sure.

The RGB hex codes of the colors in my palette spell out things. For example the darkest shade of green is 133700 because I can't get over the early oughties Internet culture and the medium green is 198711, my birth year and month. The light yellow is FAEFAE (for faireis) and the middle pink is EA7EA7 (EAT EAT) while the dark red is B1000D. This is a completely pointless touch I did to amuse myself and I never used a color with a funny name unless I also thought it looked nice.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Last night I also wrote a rudimentary plotscripting tutorial (read: exported scripts from A Newbie's Quest and Maces Wild and reverse-engineered them to put some basic functions like ship placement memory and characters starting out with shirts on) and showed it to a few people.

One had no experience with HamsterSpeak but was familiar with coding in general and within minutes was able to give me an improved version of my "random treasure chest" script. Just goes to show that as intimately familiar as I am with the editor itself, I'm not the ideal teacher for plotscripting.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

As I continue to wait for more feedback from my testers, I decided to go ahead with something that's been on my mind since our first big 8-bit contest: Vikings graphics are free to use, but make use of full 16 color palettes, making them unsuitable resources to use for such a contest without some re-working. My old Noodnik sprite pack was in part an attempt to remedy this, but then Fnrrf's 8-bit graphics pack showed up and blew it all out of the water. Many things have what are basically 1:1 analogs between the two because they're generic so of course assets packs will depict both largely similarly (the ogre in Vikings has a bloody sword while the one in the 8-bit pack has a huge club, but they're both huge green muscle dudes with bald heads).

I'd had an idea in my head to redraw or just palette swap Vikings sprites into some pre-set 3-color forms but after much experimentation, it's clear the former works great and the latter not really at all. Several monsters in OHRodents were straightforward re-draws of Vikings sprites and they turned out splendidly.

So one of my many ideas has been not just to do that for rodents, but for any monsters, attack animations, or heroes who don't have an easy visual analog between the two. A default 8-bit warrior with a palette of red armor and brown hair is basically Kitt; the differences are pretty minor.

So today after lunch I wound up making three of the Vikings heroes some sprites modified from the 8-bit pack; Kitt from the male warrior, Styrge from the female archer, and Frumpy from the sprites of Moses. Frumpy was the most difficult, but the most fun. I've got ideas in my head to at least do Night (possibly only in wolf form?), Olaf, and Hilda some time in the future.
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I went ahead and made a Kitt sprite anyway, only to realize after finishing that I'd put his asymmetry on backwards.
I went ahead and made a Kitt sprite anyway, only to realize after finishing that I'd put his asymmetry on backwards.
TutOHRial0228.png (4.42 KiB) Viewed 2267 times
I've never been able to read this girl's personality. And it took me ten years to realize she was a girl.
I've never been able to read this girl's personality. And it took me ten years to realize she was a girl.
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The most important Viking of Midgard; he keeps everyone alive and was the first to have a name or a personality.
The most important Viking of Midgard; he keeps everyone alive and was the first to have a name or a personality.
TutOHRial0230.png (4.44 KiB) Viewed 2267 times
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Basically, of the six or seven people I've sent test copies to, only three gave any feedback at all (and one was "I'm running on Windows 98 so I can't run Custom and Test Game mode at the same time", but still encouraging) so instead of waiting another day or two, I've just decided to release now.

If any revisions are needed, they can be hammered out for a Hrodvitnir update.

Until then, this is the TutOHRial.
https://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgame.php?p=138030
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Found out today that somehow Cave Maze.tilemap was overwritten with a second copy of Cave Tower.tilemap. I had to make a new cave maze from scratch; personally I think the new one is better. This will be reflected in a Hrodvitnir update; I'm not revising the current upload since nothing vital is broken.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

I've been goofing off and enjoying being 99% of the forum activity on Castle Paradox lately, and found this old gem of a thread:

http://www.castleparadox.com/ohr/viewto ... 4064#54064
Bob the Hamster wrote:When a new user downloads the OHRRPGCE and runs it for the first time, they see three files, SAMPLE.RPG, NPC_TAG.RPG and PSTUTOR.RPG, none of which is very pretty, and none of which makes much sense if you aren't reading the HOWTO at the same time.

Would anyone in the OHR community be interested in making a WELCOME.RPG that would be included with the official distribution of the OHR?

It should be:
* Short and Simple (maybe 15 to 20 minutes max from intro to final boss)
* Pretty looking and pleasant sounding
* Not plotscripted at all
And while that request eventually became the very much plotscripted Vikings of Midgard, doesn't TutOHRial seem much more in line with the original plan for Welcome.RPG? I had no idea at all about this early goings-on as 2006 was one of the years I spent effectively absent from the OHR community!

And that 15-20 minutes might be the time to play your fully edited version of TutOHRial or it might be the time it takes to follow all the included tutorials and make the game, depending on how quickly you take the OHR's menu layouts and how much time you have fun making new weapons and such.
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Post by Coryza »

Hello Nathan,

I'm a member of TutOHRial's intended audience, I played a few OHR games several years back but never actually looked into the game making side of things until I played TutOHRial. I thought I'd give you some feedback that I hope will be useful to you.

My overall impressions are that TutOHRial achieves its basic purpose, it got me to explore the OHRRPG Construction Engine and made me familiar with the basics, to the point that I could do a rudimentary game, or at least have enough confidence in the basics that instead of giving up I search more and ask for help. I do actually feel like I could make my own game after running TutOHRial, which is awesome!

That being said, there are some rough edges and facets that could use some spit-shine. I'll give you the basic rundown here of some potential areas of improvement and some positives.

1. The introduction, probably the most important bottleneck. To someone completely unfamiliar to the engine, the very start of the game can be confusing, so you might want to put a little more hand-holding in here. For example, you could add:
-The 1st time you talk to the fairy, instructions to play the game by opening "custom.exe," selecting "LOAD GAME," choosing "TutOHRial.rpg," and then selecting "Test Game."
-Make a note that you will be going back and forth between the game window and the editor window, so you probably don't want to do full-screen.
-Make it obvious in your first lesson on NPC Placement Mode that to get into the Edit Maps menu, you need to do this in the other window, not the game window. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out.
-After placing NPCs, it might be good to put the textbox here about how to have the edits from the editor show up in-game, instead of where you have that right now. The vast majority of edits get applied right after the editor leaves the screen where the changes were made, e.g. by pressing esc, so you might just want to tell the players that off the bat.
-->I think there are only 1 or 2 places I encountered where the game had to actually be restarted, so you could just include commentary before those places. The one I remember is when you change the files so when "New Game" is selected it gives the different intro text about Natalie and her mission, it would be helpful to explicitly say that after you make the changes, you probably need to start a new game.

2. You did a great job putting breaks between lessons with the opportunity to repeat them, which was definitely needed because I had to replay a few lessons and tinker around before I felt I knew what I was doing. There were a few times, though, where the break was absent or it didn't work, and the game just kept going to the next lesson, which was frustrating. These occurred at these times:
After NPC Placement lesson (1st lesson-- it'd be nice here to describe that choosing "OK" will allow you to repeat the lesson, and to choose "next lesson" to move on)
After changing an item to be usable in battle, pressing OK still continues on to the next lesson instead of giving the option to repeat it
After getting the thief, the text box prompt is there but the options are very unclear, stating to turn tag 108 on or off instead of saying OK or go on to the next lesson.
After the fairy tells you how to place and link doors, she disappears, so if you miss the instructions you are stuck because she can't tell you again.
After lesson on transitioning to the boat
Left island fairy disappears after talking to her, no chance to repeat the lesson
The final lesson

3. A couple of the lessons were a little long, which made it annoying to repeat them if I missed something partway through. The one that stands out the most to me is the one on adding the rogue to the party.

4. It was very nice the few times you added encouragement to the players in their progress, you might want to sprinkle a little more in. It might seem cheesy, but newbies like me often will like some Bob Ross-style support.

5. Not a major issue, but some of your personal observations or opinions (e.g. wherever you say "personally") distracted a bit from the flow of the game and felt didactic. Things like talking about the definition of chain mail and mittens or how your personal beliefs make you shy from using demons felt off-topic, and specifically the demon one seemed odd when you encouraged the players to use a devil as the final boss. This being said, I think it's great to inject personality into a game if it supports the flow, so do what you will with this one, maybe run it by some other people and see what they think, though at the end of the day it's your game & your call.

6. There were multiple instances of you making references to things in the editor that weren't exactly written in-game the way they were in the editor, or where I wasn't sure which menu you were referring to or how to do it, I can give you more specifics if you're interested.

7. I think you already know that the cave maze and cave tower files are identical.

8. After I finished the game I discovered your readme file and the Za Warudo of Plotscripting files. It might be good to reference them in the game, e.g. when you talk about not including plotscripting you could direct them to the Za Warudo of Plotscripting folder.

Alright, I hope that's not too overwhelimg! Like I said before, the game already achieves its purpose, so the rest of this is just making it shine! Now, after going through it and as I have looked at doing my own game, there are a few extra things that might be nice for you to add if you felt so inclined. Such things you may want to consider include:
-Creating/editing new color palettes. The game touches on this lightly, it would be nice to have more specific instruction and any information about color limitations.
-Creating/editing sprites in the editor.
-A feature where you could press esc or something and automatically restart a lesson.

And finally, one more thing I noticed. After you play the game to a certain point, because you actually edit the game file itself, you can't truly start a "new game" without redownloading a fresh copy. It would be nice to directly spell this out in the game, or if possible to make some other workaround for this, e.g. keeping a read-only copy of the original game.

OK that's all from me for now, good luck, and thanks for making a great TutOHRial!
Last edited by Coryza on Sun Aug 23, 2020 10:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

Coryza wrote:Hello Nathan,

I'm a member of TutOHRial's intended audience, I played a few OHR games several years back but never actually looked into the game making side of things until I played TutOHRial. I thought I'd give you some feedback that I hope will be useful to you.
Thank you, this comment is exactly the sort of thing I've been waiting for since the initial release; sorry it took me so long to respond (I wish I could say I was legitimately too busy to read it, but I've actually read it a few times over the past week before buckling down and making myself respond).
Coryza wrote:My overall impressions are that TutOHRial achieves its basic purpose, it got me to explore the OHRRPG Construction Engine and made me familiar with the basics, to the point that I could do a rudimentary game, or at least have enough confidence in the basics that instead of giving up I search more and ask for help. I do actually feel like I could make my own game after running TutOHRial, which is awesome!
It sounds like I've achieved my main goal. One week of work has given at least one person the confidence and basic instruction to make a game (and given my number of downloads compared to active community size, probably more).

Also, I am seriously looking forward to seeing whatever games you make, and would actually like to see your specific altered version of the TutOHRial itself if you're not too embarrassed to show it (I have a folder in my OHRRPGCE directory dedicated to altered versions of the file, but so far none of my testers or other players have shown me any of their results).
Coryza wrote:1. The introduction, probably the most important bottleneck. To someone completely unfamiliar to the engine, the very start of the game can be confusing, so you might want to put a little more hand-holding in here. For example, you could add:
-The 1st time you talk to the fairy, instructions to play the game by opening "custom.exe," selecting "LOAD GAME," choosing "TutOHRial.rpg," and then selecting "Test Game."
This is a good suggestion. I already revised that section multiple times from its original form to try to be as clear as possible, but it sounds like it could definitely use more.
Coryza wrote:-Make a note that you will be going back and forth between the game window and the editor window, so you probably don't want to do full-screen.
I hadn't even thought of this, thank you for pointing it out! When I update I'll remove the Fullscreen menu option from the main menu and also explicitly state that the player will be using two windows.
Coryza wrote:-Make it obvious in your first lesson on NPC Placement Mode that to get into the Edit Maps menu, you need to do this in the other window, not the game window. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out.
Oh yes, I thought it'd always be intuitive that "editor" menus would be in the editor window rather than the game window. I'll be sure to clarify this as well.
Coryza wrote:-After placing NPCs, it might be good to put the textbox here about how to have the edits from the editor show up in-game, instead of where you have that right now. The vast majority of edits get applied right after the editor leaves the screen where the changes were made, e.g. by pressing esc, so you might just want to tell the players that off the bat.
Yes, thank you, I should make that as clear as possible early on.
Coryza wrote:-->I think there are only 1 or 2 places I encountered where the game had to actually be restarted, so you could just include commentary before those places. The one I remember is when you change the files so when "New Game" is selected it gives the different intro text about Natalie and her mission, it would be helpful to explicitly say that after you make the changes, you probably need to start a new game.
I think the "new game" section of editing the game and the optional changing of appearances on the wizard/warrior from their defaults are the only places that actually need full resets, and those are right next to each other. Since the hero appearance options are mentioned shortly after the new game is first applied, I think I'll mention it there, hint at the folder full of alternate hero sprites for the wizards and warriors, and slide in a lesson about making new palettes (as you suggest later).

"If you save your game and edit the hero's sprite and palette settings afterward, the version in the saved game will remain the same; you'll need to start a new game to use the hero's new appearance. If you change the palette or sprite itself, it will update as soon as you leave the graphics editor."
Coryza wrote:2. You did a great job putting breaks between lessons with the opportunity to repeat them, which was definitely needed because I had to replay a few lessons and tinker around before I felt I knew what I was doing. There were a few times, though, where the break was absent or it didn't work, and the game just kept going to the next lesson, which was frustrating. These occurred at these times:
Most of those were intentional "training wheels off" moments but after getting feedback from an actual newbie, I think I will change all of them with only one exception.
Coryza wrote:After NPC Placement lesson (1st lesson-- it'd be nice here to describe that choosing "OK" will allow you to repeat the lesson, and to choose "next lesson" to move on)
Yes, I should make this clearer that "OK" means "repeat the lesson, I'm still working on this part". That and adding a choice to the first lesson to be more consistent with the others also makes a lot of sense; since I'll be needing to add another textbox or several to that one, I'd might as well make the structure going forward as clear and consistent as possible.
Coryza wrote:After changing an item to be usable in battle, pressing OK still continues on to the next lesson instead of giving the option to repeat it
This is definitely a broken conditional. None of my testers reported it, presumably because none of them chose to repeat lessons intentionally during testing.
Coryza wrote:After getting the thief, the text box prompt is there but the options are very unclear, stating to turn tag 108 on or off instead of saying OK or go on to the next lesson.
This was actually intentional (Tag 108 was the tag used for this tutorial box, the choice text was non-standard to demonstrate it for anyone who wanted to look that deep into the file and see how I made the lessons themselves). You're not the first to point this out (if it had been a mistake, they'd have just been completely blank spaces). It also demonstrates ("TAG 108 OFF"/"TAG 108 ON") what I say within the box itself, that I like to have the default option be to leave the game in its current state so that flipping the off-by-default tag on takes conscious effort. (This usually means putting "no" on top and "yes" on bottom in simple yes/no choices, which I see as a courtesy to prevent people from accidentally triggering a one-time event when they're not ready yet.)
Coryza wrote:After the fairy tells you how to place and link doors, she disappears, so if you miss the instructions you are stuck because she can't tell you again.
Coryza wrote:After lesson on transitioning to the boat
Coryza wrote:Left island fairy disappears after talking to her, no chance to repeat the lesson
Coryza wrote:The final lesson
These were all intentional, but given your feedback I will be changing them to be consistent with the rest of the tutorial's structure.
Coryza wrote:3. A couple of the lessons were a little long, which made it annoying to repeat them if I missed something partway through. The one that stands out the most to me is the one on adding the rogue to the party.
Yeah, this one is pretty long...it teaches importing sprites, editing heroes, shops, tags, choice boxes, and conditionals...I really liked how that one was structured, long as it was. I tend to find myself jumping around between a dozen menus during a given editing session of a game which is reflected best in this lesson.

Only way I could see to break it up would be to stop after adding the rogue's battle menu options and then make the next lesson start with the thief shop. I'm a little on the fence about doing this.
Coryza wrote:4. It was very nice the few times you added encouragement to the players in their progress, you might want to sprinkle a little more in. It might seem cheesy, but newbies like me often will like some Bob Ross-style support.
Oh, I am so glad this came across the right way! I was often doubting myself that maybe the cheerful encouragement might come across as condescending rather than genuinely enthusiastic and supportive.
Coryza wrote:5. Not a major issue, but some of your personal observations or opinions (e.g. wherever you say "personally") distracted a bit from the flow of the game and felt didactic. Things like talking about the definition of chain mail and mittens or how your personal beliefs make you shy from using demons felt off-topic, and specifically the demon one seemed odd when you encouraged the players to use a devil as the final boss. This being said, I think it's great to inject personality into a game if it supports the flow, so do what you will with this one, maybe run it by some other people and see what they think, though at the end of the day it's your game & your call.
The historical lessons about real-world weapons and armor was a little bit of self-deprecating humor to spice things up a little (I was about four days into development, often spending 9 or 10 hours a day working on the game) combined with a genuine desire to freely share knowledge I have on the subject (admittedly, I've only known the word coif since 2004, the word hauberk since 2007, and the word mittons with an O and the word labrys since a few months ago this year - even as a nerd in my thirties I'm still always learning new things in the subjects that interest me) and the contrast between me saying I'm generally uncomfortable including supernatural elements I genuinely believe in in a fantasy game and then encouraging the player to use a devil as the final boss was intended as an example of how "just because I say it or prefer it doesn't mean you need to do it that way", showing that my opinion and my prescription don't need to match. I suppose it could come across as a bit contradictory.
Coryza wrote:6. There were multiple instances of you making references to things in the editor that weren't exactly written in-game the way they were in the editor, or where I wasn't sure which menu you were referring to or how to do it, I can give you more specifics if you're interested.
I thought I found and fixed all these during testing, but given how little sleep I was running on at times I'm not surprised a few slipped by (especially since my only two testers to give me any detailed feedback didn't mention any such instances, just legitimate typos and broken tags).
Coryza wrote:7. I think you already know that the cave maze and cave tower files are identical.
Yes...I've replaced the Cave Maze file that was somehow a copy of Cave Tower twice with different mazes I had to make from scratch. I'm not sure how it happened, but it's definitely fixed in my still-awaiting-updates copy on my computer.
Coryza wrote:8. After I finished the game I discovered your readme file and the Za Warudo of Plotscripting files. It might be good to reference them in the game, e.g. when you talk about not including plotscripting you could direct them to the Za Warudo of Plotscripting folder.
Yeah, I added those as an afterthought. I should revise my mentions of scripting to mention that folder for further lessons.
Coryza wrote:Alright, I hope that's not too overwhelimg! Like I said before, the game already achieves its purpose, so the rest of this is just making it shine!
It was a very large post, but also very informative of how good a job I've done in achieving my goal.
Coryza wrote:Now, after going through it and as I have looked at doing my own game, there are a few extra things that might be nice for you to add if you felt so inclined. Such things you may want to consider include:
-Creating/editing new color palettes. The game touches on this lightly, it would be nice to have more specific instruction and any information about color limitations.
I believe I'll add this to the section right after telling the player how to edit the existing warrior and wizard hero definitions.
Coryza wrote:-Creating/editing sprites in the editor.
I do briefly mention this when making the final boss, but yes, a demonstration of actually making/editing sprites might be worth going over. I make about half of my sprites in the editor and about half in MSPaint.
Coryza wrote:-A feature where you could press esc or something and automatically restart a lesson.
I can't think of any way to do this without writing it as a dedicated plotscript (and even then, I wouldn't know how to do that). I have had a suggestion to replace the entire textbox chain/tag and choicebox conditional setup replaced with a menu where players can select the lessons in any order and completed lessons turning on the tag simply changes their text on the menu from gray to bright green. I decided that would be too much work, and some of these lessons rely on being in a set linear order relative to each other...instant restart of current lesson could work, but more likely if a feature to rewind text is added (as discussed in another thread), I'll implement it. So you'll be able to scroll back and forth one textbox at a time within the lesson!
Coryza wrote:And finally, one more thing I noticed. After you play the game to a certain point, because you actually edit the game file itself, you can't truly start a "new game" without redownloading a fresh copy. It would be nice to directly spell this out in the game, or if possible to make some other workaround for this, e.g. keeping a read-only copy of the original game.
This is good advice. There used to be a menu option in General Game Data called "Rename Game" that would change your current editing state into a new copy of the .RPG with a different filename - this was removed a couple years back and I kinda miss it (the new method is to copy the file and edit the file's name directly like just about any other). Had this feature still been there I'd have advised doing that...I think I can squeeze this into that first lesson along with being explicit about the multiple windows thing.
Coryza wrote:OK that's all from me for now, good luck, and thanks for making a great TutOHRial!
And thank you for giving such excellent and thorough feedback! You've done a service to future newbies!
Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!
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