Hype Up Your Game Thread

[TMC]

Hello!
Honestly I think that's a pretty intriguing premise for a fan game. But how much does it borrow from Wandering Hamster? Bob is a man, not a hamster??

Regarding translations of games, that comes up from time to time. I was working on translations as a builtin feature of the engine. I got pretty far and still want to finish that at some point. A translation would be a big .txt file that contains translations for every piece of text in the game, which you can load while playing the original (untranslated) .rpg.

[polkakitty]

A translation would be a big .txt file that contains translations for every piece of text in the game, which you can load while playing the original (untranslated) .rpg.

This is a great idea! If this is implemented, though, I think there should be a way for scripts to check which translation, if any, is being used, because games will almost always have some kind of text that isn't part of any of the text fields that ohrrpgce-custom recognizes, because it's written by scripts, or it's in graphical form.

Maybe this could be done by creating a special string variable that contains the filename of the currently loaded translation, or is an empty string if no translation is loaded. For instance, if there's a Spanish translation for a game in a file called "spanish.txt", then scripts that write messages on text slices could check whether "spanish.txt" is loaded, and if it is, they would change the messages they write.

Or if there's a scripted cutscene that shows a backdrop with the words "10 years later", the script could check whether "spanish.txt" is loaded, and if it is, it would use a different backdrop with the words "10 años después".

[TMC]

Oh, yes, strings in scripts would be translated in the same way: they'd be exported to the original untranslated .txt too, and substitutions defined in a translation .txt. It would be up to the game author to remove any strings that shouldn't be translated before handing it to a translator, though there's the possibility to add syntax to HamsterSpeak to indicate that. E.g. "double quotes" for translated strings, 'single quotes' for non-translated ones.

There should of course also be script commands to check the active translation, as you said.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Not too many years ago, I made a game for a Christmas contest. And like the legendary regifted fruitcakes of old, The War on Christmas is getting a bit of a graphical and gameplay overhaul to bring it up to a higher level of quality - in part because I can, but also to pad out my game page on itch.io. In general, everything's a bit more colorful and given more animation than before.

I've been reaching DEEPLY into the ancient roots of the holiday season to bring out more weird creatures and yuletime goons to populate this ~2 hour long festive experience. Santa's retinue of weird companions from all around the world are joining in now, and while you might recognize a few faces, most of them will certainly leave you scratching your head!

I've also been making some mechanic changes, along with addressing a number of user complaints about it to try and improve the game's enjoyability. The biggest one has been revamping each character slightly to make the player's equipment choices have more of a meaningful impact. A certain character had no need for magic boosting equipment - but now their attacks grow in power over time the more magic they have - so throwing the most powerful weapon on them might not be as rewarding as a more balanced one. Likewise, the game's primary spellcaster might be more adept with a magic staff in his hands - but with a berserker's axe in his hands, his spells may have a chance to erupt with raw rage and deal even more damage than normal. The vast array of consumable items also now have more of an impact than ever before, along with a few new ones - such as some "magic herbs" that when used cause every enemy to suddenly poof into a source of extra experience!

We'll see how these changes all play out in a week or two - or heck, I may just aim for Advent. There's a LOT that's still left to be done, but even with all the extra content that's been added in, the game feels like it's been given a breath of fresh air.

[polkakitty]

Not too many years ago, I made a game for a Christmas contest. And like the legendary regifted fruitcakes of old, The War on Christmas is getting a bit of a graphical and gameplay overhaul to bring it up to a higher level of quality - in part because I can, but also to pad out my game page on itch.io. In general, everything's a bit more colorful and given more animation than before.

The new, bigger spriteset for Freki looks great, and I think having more choices for character builds could add a lot to the game!

I've actually been playing some of your previous game releases recently, and I had some thoughts about The War On Christmas in particular. I don't know whether any of these are changes you've already thought about making, or that people who have given you feedback have already suggested; these are just some ideas that came to mind when I played the original release of the game.

From the beginning of the game, you find presents everywhere, with a significant fraction of all the presents in the game being in the starting town (so potentially, you could pick all of them up while you're still at level 0.) But since the items you get from presents are determined by your party's level, what you really want to do is to wait until your party gains some levels before you open any of them, and that kind of bugs me, because it means that instead of finding and opening presents as you explore each area of the game, once you're at a high level, you have to search all the way through areas you've already been to, which don't have any more story scenes, new things to do, or new enemies to fight, and it screws up the game's pacing.

(Lustyrinth has a similar system, but I don't think it becomes a problem there, because there's no area with a large number of mystery boxes that you can just pick up off the ground, and that you can only get once. You get mystery boxes from battles regularly throughout the game, so there's a lot less reason to hoard the ones you get early, or to worry that opening them will make you miss chances to get better items later.)

I think it might be better if the level of items you got from presents was determined by how many presents you'd already opened, so the first few presents would always give you weak or useless items like the ones you get when you're at level 0, and you'd gradually get better and better items as you explored the game and found more presents. Maybe the last 4 presents could be guaranteed to be the 4 items you need to trade to Kyle to get the Defender, to make sure you don't need to spend time savescumming to get different drops, or farming money to buy more presents from the second shopkeeper after he appears.

(It occurred to me that maybe the random present system was supposed to convey a message about how you should be good and wait until Christmas to open your presents. But the problem with that idea is that your characters aren't supposed to be people who play by the rules, and Santa even tells you you're on his naughty list, right at the beginning of the game!)

Before the player chooses their party, I think it should be made clearer that there are 3 characters that focus on offense (Hipster, Furry, and Nerd) and 3 characters that focus on support (Socialist, Gay, and Atheist,) and ideally, you want to have 2 characters from each of those groups.

Also, before leaving the town for the first time, it would be good to have it explained that the support characters don't actually have any move that could be considered a normal attack, but there are consumable items that you can buy dirt cheap, and they deal damage based on your character's actual Attack stat instead of doing a fixed amount of damage (which is what makes consumable attack items useless in most RPGs,) so you need to keep plenty of those in stock for your support characters to attack with.

(The reason I say these things is because, on my first try at the game, I picked Furry, Socialist, Gay, and Atheist as my party and didn't buy any of the consumable attack items, which meant I ended up with only one character who could actually attack in battles. And what was worse was, with access to all the support moves in the game, it was still pretty easy to win battles that way, but every battle took forever, with the Furry taking two turns to kill most enemies and not benefitting from the Gay's magic buff.)

I don't want it to sound like I hate the game, because it definitely has its good points. It has a lot of funny dialogue, especially when the characters react to getting presents from each other, and it has an interesting approach to the characters' movesets, with potential to set up combos with different characters' moves, which helps to keep battles engaging. There are some issues that caused me some frustration when I was first trying to figure out my way around the game, but they're exactly the kind of issues that an update like this could fix. And I think it's incredibly impressive that you made it for a contest. (Right now I'm still trying to make time to make the last few graphics assets and sound effects to finish a game that I originally intended to release for Hollyhart's Halloween contest, and it's a lot smaller than The War on Christmas....)

And since I played No More Villains recently, I wanted to ask: where the heck is Julia originally from? I know which games all 6 of the main villains in that game came from (7 counting Kezef, I guess?,) and which games all of the 6 main heroes apart from Julia came from, but I don't have any idea about her. (She also seems to be the only mismatched hero that doesn't come from the same game as one of the villains, and Cthulhu is likewise mismatched.)

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

I had an extensive reply typed up, and then my fat fingers hit back instead of submit. I blame lack of sleep for this one.

The main jist is that every problem with the game's combat eventually boils down to that consumable items needed a huge buff to make them worthwhile, and that characters who didn't use either strength or magic needed some tweeks to ensure that they did. Buck dealing power based damage with his poison attack, but having the damage over time be based on his magic stat. Freki adding her own magic stat as a growing buff onto her own attack power after each attack. Steve boosting both with his special skill.

The game's random treasures being tied to your current level was an experimental gimmick at the time, but level-based rewards have managed to sneak into a few of my other projects since then. I've made the change that if you keep getting junk presents though, you'll eventually be stuck with a "junk" item in your inventory now. It just takes up space usually, but having it effect the quality of future rewards isn't impossible to do. Fine tuning the balance of keeping a player at the start of the game from ending up with endgame rewards before the first boss is beaten though - that'll take some work for sure.

As for Julia, she was one of the first widely known female OHR protagonists well over a decade ago. She's from Shadowiii's game Pitch Black, and also shows up in OHR House Heroes - where she was more of Cthulhu's foil.

[Hedera]

in my upcoming* game ODWMYLTF, you'll be able to play as a dog

[Bob the Hamster]

Being a big ol' map nerd

[RMZ]

Do tell us how you pulled that off, as it looks exceptionally spiffy.

[polkakitty]

I've made the change that if you keep getting junk presents though, you'll eventually be stuck with a "junk" item in your inventory now. It just takes up space usually, but having it effect the quality of future rewards isn't impossible to do. Fine tuning the balance of keeping a player at the start of the game from ending up with endgame rewards before the first boss is beaten though - that'll take some work for sure.

That sounds like an interesting idea, and it might help to alleviate frustration if the RNG gives you a lot of useless presents in a row.

(Here's a game idea that just popped into my head: a parody of Katamari Damacy where you have to carry all your junky Christmas presents to a shop to exchange them, but everyone you meet on the street keeps handing you more and more ridiculous presents. Since your arms are already full, the new presents just get taped onto you, all over your body, and stacked up on each other, until eventually you just have a giant ball of clown shoes, Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies VHS tapes, half-empty bottles of Heineken, ATV tires, coupons for 25% off a plane trip to Tulsa, and ceramic sculptures of a lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be, that's rolling down the street, with your head sticking out. Anyone who wants that idea can do whatever they like with it, I'm releasing it under the Creative Commons I-DONT-KNOW-YOU license, which allows you to freely use that idea as long as you *don't* credit me for coming up with it.)

As for Julia, she was one of the first widely known female OHR protagonists well over a decade ago. She's from Shadowiii's game Pitch Black, and also shows up in OHR House Heroes - where she was more of Cthulhu's foil.

Aha, that explains how Julia can have a connection to Cthulhu. Thank you!

(meeting Kyle in the pub screenshot)

Now that's an impressive job of converting the hairstyle from Kyle's battle sprite in Timestream Saga. Not only does it work in your current art style, it even looks like something that fits into the same universe as the designs for the main characters in The War On Christmas, if that makes any sense. (If you were to make a prequel set in the 60s for some reason, I suppose you'd have to replace Hipsters and Furries with Stoners and Long-Haired Freaks Who Play That New Devil Music as people blamed for corrupting the youth, but this design for Kyle would be perfect for the role of a long-haired freak who plays that new devil music.)

(world map screenshot)

It's great to see that you're not only still developing Wandering Hamster, but still adding new features that haven't been done in the OHRRPGCE before. I can't tell you how many games I've seen developed in engines like this where a lot of care was put into the early parts of the game, but in the late game, the gameplay devolves into the same environments and enemies repeated over and over to fill time, plot threads that were obviously intended to have more natural and satisfying resolutions get wrapped up by dei ex machina or forgotten entirely, and it becomes obvious that the creator lost interest in the game they were making and rushed out an ending just so they could say it was done. I'm glad you're not letting Wandering Hamster end up with a disappointing third act that would leave me with a bad feeling about the game as a whole after I finished it.

Also, I've seen some arguments about whether it's better for world maps in RPGs to be handled the conventional way, where you might get vehicles that let you move faster and ignore obstacles and random encounters, but whenever you want to go anywhere, you always have to physically move to where that place is on the map, or the way some games like Final Fantasy 10 handle their world maps, where you get a menu of places you can instantly jump to, ignoring their ostensible positions on the map. I feel like a system like this actually gives you the best of both approaches: since you can look up where each town is at any time, you have the ease-of-use of the menu system, and you'll never need to memorize every detail of the map or wander around aimlessly because you need to finish a sidequest in Ixnekolan but you can't remember which town it was. But, because the map maintains the relative positions and the geography around each town, it still feels like each town is part of an internally consistent world, instead of a movie set where nothing extends beyond what the camera is showing you, and where if you want to go from a desert to a snowy mountaintop, you just put up different scenery instead of actually traveling to a different place.

[Bob the Hamster]

Do tell us how you pulled that off, as it looks exceptionally spiffy.

Oh! Sure! Basically, I store the party position, teleport to another map, and then trigger the minimap. Then I teleport back and restore the party position

Here are the scripts for showing the map:

Code: Select all

plotscript, myrmidon shows you the ship, begin
  $0="You are Here"
  $1=""
  myrmidon shows you the map(-1, -1)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you flanat, begin
  $0="Flanat Castle"
  $1="& Flanat Village"
  myrmidon shows you the map(70, 35)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you misaland, begin
  $0="Misaland"
  $1="(Formerly Broastia)"
  myrmidon shows you the map(53, 26)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you ixnekolan, begin
  $0="Ixnekolan"
  $1="Home of the Cat Folk"
  myrmidon shows you the map(43, 12)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you kelp reef, begin
  $0="Kelp Reef"
  $1="Home of the Mer-Sheep"
  myrmidon shows you the map(27, 37)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you sandbar, begin
  $0="Remote Sandbar"
  $1=""
  myrmidon shows you the map(6, 32)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you bontgommeri, begin
  $0="Bontgommeri Desert"
  $1="Sandy & Dangerous"
  myrmidon shows you the map(36, 48)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you gondbara, begin
  $0="Gondbara Continent"
  $1="???"
  myrmidon shows you the map(29, 72)
end

plotscript, myrmidon shows you the map, show x=-1, show y=-1, begin
  suspend player
  suspend npcs
  suspend random enemies
  if (show x == -1) then(show x := ship x)
  if (show y == -1) then(show y := ship y)
  
  # Save party position
  save party position
  variable(old map, n, nx, ny, nd)
  n := npc reference(22)
  nx := npc x(n) , ny := npc y(n) , nd := npc direction(n)
  old map := current map
  
  # Show the map
  advance text box
  tweak palette(-63, -63, -63)
  update palette
  teleport to map(map:World Map, show x, show y)
  set hero direction(me, ship dir)
  center string at(0, 160, 5)
  center string at(1, 160, 189)
  string style(0, string:flat)
  string style(1, string:flat)
  string color(0, get ui color(ui:Text), get ui color(ui:highlight A))
  string color(1, get ui color(ui:Text), get ui color(ui:highlight A))
  wait(1) # strings don't appear without this wait before show mini map
  reset palette, update palette
  show mini map
  hide string(0)
  hide string(1)
  teleport to map(old map, saved hero0 x, saved hero0 y)
  
  # Restore party position
  restore party position
  n := npc reference(22)
  set npc position(n, nx, ny) , set npc direction(n, nd)

  resume player
  resume npcs
  resume random enemies
  
  # re-show the menu
  show text box(885)
end

And here is the code for saving/restoring the party position:

Code: Select all

# globals used by saving/restoring party position
global variable(80, saved hero0 x)
global variable(81, saved hero1 x)
global variable(82, saved hero2 x)
global variable(83, saved hero3 x)
global variable(84, saved hero0 y)
global variable(85, saved hero1 y)
global variable(86, saved hero2 y)
global variable(87, saved hero3 y)
global variable(88, saved hero0 d)
global variable(89, saved hero1 d)
global variable(90, saved hero2 d)
global variable(91, saved hero3 d)

# Uses globals, so you can't nest these

script, save party position, begin
  variable(i)
  for(i, 0, 3) do(
    write global(@saved hero0 x + i, hero x(i))
    write global(@saved hero0 y + i, hero y(i))
    write global(@saved hero0 d + i, hero direction(i))
  )
end

script, restore party position, begin
  variable(i)
  for(i, 0, 3) do(
    set hero position(i,
      read global(@saved hero0 x + i),
      read global(@saved hero0 y + i),
    )
    set hero direction(i, read global(@saved hero0 d + i))
  )
end

[Bob the Hamster]

...I'm glad you're not letting Wandering Hamster end up with a disappointing third act that would leave me with a bad feeling about the game as a whole after I finished it.

Thank you! I am having fun with making the new content, so I hope others will enjoy playing it.

I am also trying to keep my to-do list organized in a task tracker (Asana) so I can keep on track and work on the most important stuff next.

As for different world-map travel methods, I do think it is interesting to think about how they affect gameplay.

I am fond of the "Return" spell in the Dragon Quest series, and I think it influenced this map a little, even though I don't actually use the quick-travel aspect of it. I am going to make it so that some locations won't show up until you have heard of them or visited them

[Bob the Hamster]

It is fun to come back to an area of the game I have neglected for ages and add new stuff for when you return to it.

When you have the Ship, and re-visit old locations, I want them to feel at least a bit alive, as if time has passed and some things have changed.

[RMZ]

When is the next demo coming James?

[Bob the Hamster]

When is the next demo coming James?

I'd love to get in the habit of just uploading a fresh copy every time I work on it--

Today I used the "Upload to Itch.io" feature to update https://bob-the-hamster.itch.io/wander
and I also have a script I can run to update all the downloads at https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgc ... ng_Hamster except for the android one.

I'd love to have a way to auto-upload to the SlimeSalad gamelist, but I don't think that is possible.