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Legate of Mineta

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Everything posted by Legate of Mineta

  1. Iskandar; Thanks again! In truth, our beta testing period was quite extensive, but I understand what you mean about polishing. We are overall very pleased with the launch -the number of major bugs is quite low, especially for a game of this complexity- but there is always room for improvement here. That said: in a way, the kitchen sink is what we want in this game. Our very strong desire and commitment is to really allow you to create an individual, and experience their journey through the University. I'll will instead point to your comment about the interface, and say that we need significant improvements here so that our players can more easily quickly understand what they have at their disposal.
  2. Thanks for the kind words, Emerssso (and don't ever give up on your 11 year old self's dreams!) Please report all bugs and typos on the support forum. We take them quite seriously, and will address each that we can.
  3. Medic; All of our DLC will likely be free, including that one. The only ones we would consider charging for would be DLC that contain significant amounts of art, as that is fairly expensive to produce. I did mix it up! With #17 there are as you know several Bully Students, but they make decisions on whom to bully based on their preferences and personality- and a good measure of luck. There being 84 Students in the game (including yourself), some games you will find yourself in the safe middle. But if you want to start something, you can push a few of their buttons and lower your Relationship with them...
  4. Medic; Not at all- I am always glad to hear good suggestions. Regarding your points: 3) A search function would be useful, but presents some problems. What we will try to do first is improve the reporting so that it's easier to see what the Parent Skill is. 6) Such maps exist, but they've not been produced in the quality of the unfinished map! They are all in my own hand, and pencil sketches. Undoubtedly we'll get them better produced for the sequel- in particular the city map which will grow more important as the years go along. 16) There is actually a more detailed simulation for Duels, but it's not widely used because it has some problems with the AI. Originally, Locations were much more dangerous to explore because you could encounter Monsters. This is slated to return for a DLC, but which and when? Now those are questions we cannot answer yet. 17) I would like to have more art done for the Items -or, for that matter, in general. No promises again, but as we go along we'll try to get more Items personalized. In the mean time, I hope you like...green bags.
  5. Medic; Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming! In response: 1) Character creation: I love details. I even love details which are referred to later in the game more, so you get the impression the things you choose are really important. You did this in a few cases: having campaigners as parents is giving the action to increase two war talents. Or the prodigy: couriosity with the action "study until you drop" being available. Perfect would be if the background of your parents or the other choices would trigger some events: perhaps another student has a similar or opposite background, resulting in the opportunity to raise the relation level or leading into a path of hatred. If you chose a parents background why not let them visit you and see if the character can live up to their expectations? There are some great ideas here. Some of the items raised here will be addressed in the sequel (which begins at the end of this one: during summer break.) The remainder we may try to play around with in DLC. 3) The skill overview: At first: ok but later on a nightmare. I understand the difficulty of the problem, and the list is good for checking up on the skill-levels while in an event or adventure, but there has to be done something. Perhaps keep the list at the bottom left corner but construct a new ledger (like "inventory" or "command") with the parent skills on top of the screen and the subskills below. And when pointing at a parent skill the subskills get highlighted. If the subskill list is to large to see all the highlighted ones, just click on the parent skill, lock it in and use a scrolling bar below to find the subskills. Skills are a problem for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Even a matrix such a suggest might be unwieldy- but it's an interesting idea to explore. Before we consider it, can you describe to us how you would like to use this screen? In other words, during gameplay, when would you want to see it? 4) friends + npcs: Making and keeping friendships in the game is easy. It shouldn`t be. With two weeks of training i got from being a social abdomination to a relatively fine befriender. Another 2 weeks later i had two members in my clique . I was eager to see what you could do with them now and what I could learn about their background. But there wasn`t more than a (-granted - powerful) buff and a new ability and the advantage in an adventure (or at least I just haven`t found more). I`d like to learn more about their background, their character, trade secrets , plan actions together to keep a relationship running (right now I haven`t spend time with my friends for about two months - without consequences), help each other to increase skills or to learn spells/phemes. I had hoped for a "buddy" or "best friend feature", through which you could solve some school or city events with one designated best friend, just to give you the feeling that your character is hanging out nearly constantly with the best friend. It's funny the back and forth we had on this topic during design- in a (much) earlier version of the game, there was Relationship decay and Emotions really affected Relationships in powerful ways. The overwhelming feedback we got on this was that people did not like their Relationships eroding- they either wanted to be able to deal with it immediately (not having to spend Actions to maintain the Relationship) or they wanted no decay at all. As I read over what you wrote, though, I think we can summarize in three ways: a) You would like more Adventures related to your Friends. You would like more Actions related to your Friends. c) You would like to have a 'Best Friend' designation, and have that choice be meaningful. ...this is a great area for expansion, and some are more difficult than others. As the designer, I do not want to solve any of these in a trivial way -I want them to be special and interesting- so I feel these are more likely to be dealt with in the sequel. Still, I'll ponder if there is something we can do. 5) Class overview: I`d like to know who of the students is in which class with what professor, just to know which npcs my character constantly shares time with. Good point. Maybe we can put something into an information window. 6) Map: Throughout the game I tried to imagine the academy, the grounds and the surroundings. And with so many places to discover I got confused. Perhaps a map might help. It wouldn`t have to be animated professionally, just a pencil drawing my character could have made would suffice. Just hint at the areas of the game and draw a few different signs on it for the discovered places with the explanation text popping up when clicking on it. Just something to get a better impression of the area. There will be a map in the sequel, but I do not believe we will be able to address this in the current form of the game. That said, if you would like to see the unfinished map we had originally planned to use in the game, you can see it here: http://steamrobin.deviantart.com/art/Acade...d-Map-119427901 8) Lore: While I like the little stories and poems and the atmosphere they add to the game I felt like they should be organized in a few books. Like "Poems" or "Legends" just to help keeping the lists shorter and clearer. A sound idea. 9) Events: Try triggering more events, this can be done with in a wide variety of cases: For example: If your character is the best at incantation in the class, wouldn`t your classmates be asking for help or advice? Wouldn`t the professor give you a few extra difficult tasks just to see how talented the character really is? Perhaps a professor would take a certain interest in supporting you or obstructing your path to perfection because of envy (fitting to the professor's character)? When the character scores a perfect score in the mid term exams, being the best of the class is there really nobody who cares? A professor or parents being proud of you, students being impressed, the second best feeling green with envy (especially if it`s a character being used to being the best)? I noticed that the random events were REALLY random. I mean, it was a bit strange to plan "Study until you drop - in the character`s room" three times on a saturday with exams being only a week away just to get a random event out in the woods or in the city. It just doesn`t feel right. Academy events I would understand, but not my character, who isn`t supposed to leave his room, fighting with squirrels in the forest. Perhaps you could try to link the random events to the actions you plan and the locations at which they take place. This would add a lot credibility to the day. We agree. Another forumite had an event with a Pirate ship on her first day at class! Some of these we can address by changing prerequisites, but others (such as based on your Location), will have to continue occurring in the 3 phases that you do not plan for: night, midnight or early morning- or represent small breaks you are taking from your studies. In the sequel we may try to handle this in a different way, but I personally prefer the large communal pool of Events to the smaller, more focused one. Surprise can be a good thing, depending. 10) Spells: Try to help me keeping track of the spells with some colours or some other help. A colour for aggressive, harmful spells another colour for buffs... It get`s kind of difficult trying to find the right spell even if you remember there is one that helps. The topic of the phemes added to a spell has already been mentioned. An interesting idea! 11) Adventures: Please tell me which choosable part of an adventure belongs to which adventure-chain. Sometimes I could easily spot the next part of an initiated adventure but sometimes it`s quite difficult because there`s only the title of the new part there. Also, a good point. We can do that easiest by adding the original Adventure's name in parentheses to the right of the current name, but maybe there's a better way. 12) Room selection: Not every room should be available for every action/ability. For example: If i want to gather some herbs I shouldn`t be able to do this in my room but being forced to do this outside. Or the problem with the room of champions (raising your attributes by 2, if I remember correctly). It doesn`t seem realistic to being able to choose this room for every adventure just to get the attribute bonus when the adventure is taking place in the city or the woods. While there is a little immersion breaking in the way that you mention, these locations are actually places you prepare from- to get inspiration or insight in your task. You then leave off to go to your adventure or other action. In the case of gathering herbs, while it is true you are off at a location doing that- the location is not memorable enough (or, perhaps, does not provide enough risk to you!) that you need specify it. I see what you mean, though. 13) Familiar: My tutor told me that it`s possible to find a new familiar (to get rid of my ghost Pamela)- I haven`t found out how yet. Especially when my character is a master of zoology and animal husbandry I would like to go out and search for a new familiar... There is no Action to do that, but you can purchase new Familiars, which then replace your Forlorn Ghost. Poor Forlorn Ghost, always unwanted. It's a fun idea, though. I think we'll add exactly that action to Zoology in the first content patch. 14) Public opinion: I often wondered what status of my character in the class or the academy would be, the public opinion. Is he seen as the hero of the class, whom everybody likes and respects or is he ignored, because he doesn`t do anything social at all - just studying and training? Or is he feared because he bullies constantly end extorts the classmembers? Why not implement a public opinion bar for each students and professors, with certain events being triggered when reaching a new degree of respect or contempt. A broad concept that definitely deserves expansion. In the sequel there will be larger social groups mad up of smaller Cliques, and several social dynamics will hinge upon them. I like the idea of events triggering at respect or contempt, though. If we plan for it now, there may be enough time to get enough writing in to make that satisfying. 15) Exploring: I sometimes got the message that my character heard about a certain location. I was really keen on finding some of these I heard of, but you just can go explore for a random location in an designated area. How about giving the player the possibility to select one of these locations he heard of and giving a boost to the chance finding this one but decreasing the chance of finding any other? It's an interesting idea. In the sequel there is already a concept of 'points of interest' which will *somewhat* address your suggestion here. I'll continue to ponder. Thanks! It was a good read, and there are a lot of interesting ideas here. @OK: There are some secret guilds you can join in the game, but we do not plan to make these kinds of organizations be strongly influential on gameplay until year 3, according to my timeline. That's the year when you become socially active in the city...or full of intrigues, perhaps.
  6. Iskandar; Welcome to the forums, and thanks for the comments! a) An interesting idea. Maybe something like: "Patience (Malice) has advanced 1 Skill Step." or something similar? I would like to provide this information too, but this is a bit of a difficult problem. One solution we've discussed is having a roll over on the Phemes. c) We are unlikely to be able to immediately address this, but it's a really good suggestion.
  7. OK; It's difficult to judge when the sequel will be released. First, we have to complete the new design document. Once that is done, we'll have the new tools built. After this phase the content needs to be created and reviewed- and finally, the game has to be tested. We expect to be able to launch the sequel in less time than it took this one, but Hawkey's estimate is probably correct: ~1-2 years. During this time we will be continually supporting this game with DLC- right up to launch, in fact.
  8. Elwin; That's an interesting suggestion! We'll consider it, definitely.
  9. Sorceress; We're considering exactly that option, although we're still in the early stages of the discussion.
  10. Arkius; Thanks for the comments! The Exam would be nice, but presently we don't have a good solution on how to do that, unfortunately. I agree that it's important knowledge to have. Gossip does already show your Friendship level- if you will notice, select yourself in the first box, and then in the second field's list you will see a number (your Relationship) with the Students. This actually works for any combination, so you can see the Relationship between Students, too. I'll need to look at how Encourage and Review are set up, though.
  11. Elwin; The answer is no. Skipping any class yields a small, but incremental chance that you will be given Detention. Having negative Relationship with your Instructors can also lead to unfavorable results if you have their Class.
  12. Hawkey; The content patch will not be available tomorrow- a UI (and possibly a code) patch will be probably released then. The content patch, along with our first DLC, is coming towards the end of September.
  13. Elwin; 7) Yes, you are right- I thought you were referring to end-of-day processing. I'll check Inventory and Familiar- maybe there is more optimization that can be done there. Orange; That would be fantastic, actually. We can implement something like this in pure content, but it wouldn't be a true dynamic contest in that it would be handled like a Story, instead of peer-to-peer competition (and it would eliminate the skullduggery possible if the judges can be influenced...) So, I think to really do this we'll need a much larger enhancement to the code. That said, I'll see if I can't squeeze in a competition Adventure (you mention baking? Done!) in our first DLC, so we can at least get something started there.
  14. Knightav; Unfortunately, no. It is *supposed* to, however- it's on my list of additions for this week. You can glance over your Skills, though, to see what is being added/expanded, but that will be a hopefully (very) temporary solution.
  15. Knightav; The Academagia has a fairly liberal policy on attendance, but...if you do it too much, they will crack down on you. Every subsequent Class you miss gives an ever greater chance you will be put into Detention. And if you collect too many Detentions, well...things escalate from there.
  16. Knightav; It's best to avoid the attention of the Instructors if you can at all help it, but there are times when through no fault of your own you are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here are some things you can do to help prevent it: 1) Are you Attending Class? It's alright to skip Class every now and again (the University is huge, and there are many things that can prevent you making it to Class!), but if you make a habit of it, you will quickly be pegged as a troublemaker and Detention will be awarded every time you miss a Class. 2) Are you setting a preparation Location for your Actions? If you are, many Locations have a Chance of Discovery. If you are Discovered going where you aren't supposed to be, you will be given Detention. 3) Are you carrying a lot? And if you are, are you able to easily Conceal what you carry? If yes, the Instructors can award you Detention for this, too- they like Students to adhere to a strict dress code, after all. 4) Have you draw the ire of some of your Classmates? Some particularly vindictive Students have unique Abilities that allow them to get those they dislike into trouble! It might be worth it to improve some Relationships. Once you are in Detention, however, there is only one way to get out: Endure. What you need to do is impress your Instructor with sufficient knowledge of the Skills they value most, and it can be hard! Every time you attend Detention, you'll gain a boost to one of your Skills, and your Instructor then gives you a Quiz on that Skill. Do well enough, and you are free from Detention. Don't do well enough? You'll be back again next week. The Calendar auto-fills Detention for you until the end of game, but removes it once you escape it. Hope that answers your question!
  17. Duvidgadol; Noted- we'll look into it. If we can do it, we will.
  18. Duvidgadol; We would love to do something here- but since our UI does not scale, we cannot expand without simultaneously denying users with a lower resolution the full mechanics of the game. I understand precisely what you mean, though: I run the game on 1920x1080.
  19. Elwin; Thanks for the suggestion! I see where you are coming from on this one, and we'll see what we can do. Of course, from our perspective every day should not be a monotone, but rather a new set of actions with new sets of results. That said, there are times when I have a goal (I really want to get my Swimming higher) and that's all I am doing for a long period. Well, see if we can accommodate- what we would likely do is this: CTRL+1, CTRL+2, ... saves the schedule for the current Day, and ALT+1, ALT+2, .... fills it. Maybe SHIFT+1, SHIFT+2, ... displays (*probably* in an ugly way) what the current hotkey is set as. No promises, of course, but we will investigate.
  20. Hawkey; As always, thank you very much for your passion and enthusiasm about our game. You will notice that I often write: 'We'll see', or 'to be considered for the sequel', and you have made it plain that you feel this answer misses the strong need to put these features in *now*. We appreciate your desire to improve the product, its interface, and to add elements which improve the user experience. Some of these we will certainly do- as I have mentioned on this thread, we are active listeners. But some of these changes take more time, require testing, or are different implementations that we feel are better reserved for the future. We hope that you will continue to recommend us to your friends, and continue to give us your suggestions. Thanks!
  21. Bostva; Hopefully this encourages you to fit those other books into your schedule, too. ...although I prefer the interactive variety, myself. Now if only we can get, say, Professor Tolkien to submit a story to us.
  22. Thanks again, Hawkey. To continue: 19) I like this idea. Some kind of graphic over the current day, as well as the next day, maybe? We'll see if we can implement it- no promises. 18) Interesting. We might be able to add a keyboard hotkey. 17) There were two reasons why we opted to allow you to click your choice without reading. The first is practical: as you replay the game you will meet (especially) Adventures you have done before, if you choose the same friends, etc. In these cases, for veteran players, it's nice to be able to click through. The second is feedback related: for better or for worse there are some players who just prefer to click. I encourage everyone to read events fully and make informed choices, but...ultimately, they have the freedom not to do so. 16) Amusingly, this is a debate we have had time and again- is it better to scroll, or to click? Personally, like you, I prefer scroll as it allows you to read at your own pace- but the overwhelming feedback was that people liked the segmented experience of previous/next. Go figure! Maybe an option to toggle between these in the sequel? 15) Blue is for holidays and green is for weekends- it's just a subtle reminder that you don't have any class those days, and can plan to your heart's desire! 14) It is surprisingly difficult to get the right formatting consistently. We are looking at a few technologies to better handle this, but it's a difficult problem to solve cleanly and correctly. It's likely this will be for the future.
  23. Continuing the thread: 13) It's an interesting idea. No promises, but I'll see what I can do. Maybe a soft chime is the answer? We'll see. 12) What do you think about a mouse over for the maximum? We might be able to get that in seamlessly. 11) We love our stylish thingy. It is too late to replace it, but for the sequel we might consider an alternative method to tab through what you need. It's a good criticism. 10) We won't be able to make a change now, but in the future- perhaps a roll over here might be useful, as a summary. 9) I personally like the right-click as back option myself. We'll see what we can do, as noted in #5. 8) Unfortunately, I do not think so- but we'll see. 7) I can't say we can do any more optimizations than we have done -the game is simply huge- but (and again, no promises) will see what we can do. 6) I believe this is a by product of the fields we use, and how we use them- I am not sure it can be changed. Good feedback- please give us all your thoughts. We may not always be able to act on them, but we are certainly listening.
  24. Hawkey; Great! We'll be watching this thread, then. 1) Interesting thought. We'll see what we can do when we update (see #4) 2) I am not sure how Purple crept in- that was a part of the design document originally, but we ultimately shifted to the 5 colors we use now. Good catch! 3) We actually moved the mechanics to the top due to feedback in the beta- originally, it was at the bottom. I don't believe we will be able to break up the sections more than we have- at least not in this version. As I have hinted, though, we have a new idea for the sequel's character creation- hopefully that will make things more user friendly. Lastly, about the text fields moving back to the top- that's a widely desired change; it happens elsewhere in the game, too. No promises, but we'll see what we can do. 4) The additions in the thread are actually for the new manual, to be released next week. We just wanted to help the new players as quickly as possible, and so posted it here. 5) You and I are on the same page for this one- that was in fact our original proposal for next/previous. I am not sure we will be able to make the change, at least not in Year 1- but who knows? Hope springs eternal. Thanks, and keep your insights coming.
  25. Guide to Choosing a College *Let's Play by seasoned students. Metis' Quick Overview of Basic Mechanics (FAQ) Bobbin Threadbare's Outstanding Let's Play *Let's Play by seasoned students. The Unofficial Wiki *Updated by seasoned students. ******************************************************************************** Obsolete Resources Below ******************************************************************************** The Original User Guide *User guide last updated 08-15-2010. Gamezebo's Original Walkthrough *Specially written for new or just beginning Players, outdated. Good day to all! William Harrington here, with video links to share with you all. Courtesy of LegateOfMineta on ye olde YouTubes, we have four introductory videos that will help guide players through the character creation process and the general ins and outs of the main user interface, including a brief discussion of the function of the calendar and details regarding events. Feel free to peruse at your leisure and do not hesitate to direct those who are having trouble getting acclimated to the game to these videos so that they too may enroll! To make things nice and easy, visit this playlist URL: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EF78E4004B86FB82 Otherwise here is each part on its own: Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYj1jRq5TZI Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvMwVAWChiw Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e9BpcnawLg Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGLzCs0jnNU Enjoy!
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