A Night At Camp Ravenwood

Started by Secret Fawful, Wed 09/03/2011 03:29:20

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miguel

Booze and relax always works for me.
Good:This demo sure has that "classic" feel and I enjoyed playing it. The music fits really well with the tone and graphics. Nice animations as well reminding me of Guybrush times. So, this is a potential good game. It has everything going for it.

Not so good: just refine the interface, remember to set walk-mode ON after an action, think twice about that inventory GUI, well just "listen" to what the players don't like and you'll be fine. Every minor quirk is easily fixed and I'm sure you know that.

Anyway, thanks for the love put into this game and for releasing the demo.
Working on a RON game!!!!!

Trapezoid

#121
My suggestions:
-Make the different walk modes a radio button or switch, separate from the verbs.
-Make the inventory accessed by a button on the GUI, maybe under the "new kid" button.
-Reset the current mode to walking/running/sneaking if you click on a non-hotspot or a right click.

I prefer having the inventory in a scrollable window on the GUI, visible at all times, but you probably don't have enough room for that in your current 32 pixel high GUI. But you could perhaps redesign the existing inventory box to fit in the lower portion of the screen, just so it doesn't obscure the whole playing field (and make it so it doesn't pause the game.) I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to have to scroll through inventory items, five or a six at a time.

I also think the keyboard controlled character option is possibly useless. Is that the source of the weird pathfinding-bouncing the character does sometimes when they reach their target? Might be worth scrapping that feature just so you can avoid that weird bouncing.

Khris

I really like the tech demo, except for the interface, which is horribly broken. It almost feels like it was deliberately designed to confuse and annoy the player. Literally every interface interaction does not what is expected but something different and made me exclaim in frustration.

Shadow1000

I'm up to the point where the guy is running around the room and ceiling. I can't interact with anything in the room or inventory items. Is this a puzzle or the end of the demo?

SHADOW

Secret Fawful

It's a puzzle.
Spoiler
Open the middle window.
[close]

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've been incredibly busy.

Shadow1000

Quote from: Secret Fawful on Mon 19/08/2013 10:18:31
It's a puzzle.
Spoiler
Open the middle window.
[close]

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've been incredibly busy.

Thank you. I finished the demo. The graphic style, music/sound, and humour were great. I don't think that the demo was enough to get an idea of the story so it's hard to comment on that. Verb Coin interface is not my preference. I'd rather fewer options (left click - interact, right click - look) than to have to select an action from a menu. The puzzles in this game were not very logical but I'm assuming that they are not indicative of the game overall.

SHADOW

Secret Fawful

Hey, just a small update.

I uh....I'm bad about doing updates. After the feedback I got on the SCUMM interface in the demo not working well due to the way I implemented it, I decided to try something a little different.



I changed it to an ICON-BASED interface, similar to one Brian Moriarty wanted to implement into the Dig. You click on an icon, the cursor changes to the icon, and then you can click on anything in the environment. Unlike, say, Sam and Max Hit the Road, there is still a description bar to tell you what you're clicking on, and this applies to the icons as well. It still needs some tweaks- the inventory still doesn't work quite right, but it's much better than it was, and much more streamlined. Also, there is a new icon- a Walkie Talkie - which serves as a New Kid icon, that will let you select a new scout- after a certain point in the story- from a list of portraits. The look of the interface is still subject to change, as I'm not happy with how the Walkie Talkie looks- and I may change how the Walkie Talkie works, but this should be the final thing, so get your howls of disappointment out of the way now, because I don't plan to go back to verbs.

Happy January!

Oh, and as far as the game itself, it's going, although I'm having trouble with puzzle design. Which is weird, because I have no shortage of creepy and weird ideas and concepts, my brain just struggles with putting them together into a solvable puzzle. So, who knows how that will go, but I'm going to keep going regardless.

Armageddon

Why not just go for something you know will work well and has been proven for the UI and controls?

Grim

That screenshot looks trippy as hell and I love it:)

I'm sure it can't be that hard to come up with a puzzle involving a blue devil bartender, a guy with an eyeball for a head and an angry chimp with a lizard's tail!;) The possibilities are endless!;)

Abisso

It's great news but... I want to sneak! I want to run! How am I supposed to do that now?!?! ;)
Welcome back to the age of the great guilds.

Daniel Eakins

Oh wow, I didn't know about this game and the graphics are amazing!
We all have our time machines, don't we?

Secret Fawful

Thanks, Daniel!

Quote from: Armageddon on Wed 15/01/2014 22:37:19
Why not just go for something you know will work well and has been proven for the UI and controls?

Blech. I like to experiment. Using something exactly how everyone else did just bores me. Either way, Hit the Road made icons work. I know I can too.

Quote from: Abisso on Wed 15/01/2014 23:32:42
It's great news but... I want to sneak! I want to run! How am I supposed to do that now?!?! ;)

I'm working on that. :P

...

[I completely forgot about it]

Quote from: Grim on Wed 15/01/2014 23:14:18
That screenshot looks trippy as hell and I love it:)

I'm sure it can't be that hard to come up with a puzzle involving a blue devil bartender, a guy with an eyeball for a head and an angry chimp with a lizard's tail!;) The possibilities are endless!;)

That's not even every creature or object of interest in the room.

ArgyBoi

I just found a bug. I accidently used the mouse wheel, and discovered that the %CURRENTHOTSPOT% label displays crazy things (like "open", "close", "switch to" and others) that there are not in the game :P




Secret Fawful

Whoa, thanks for pointing that out. I'll make sure that gets fixed.

When I put the demo together, I didn't have a functional middle mouse wheel.

Matti

I'm glad to know you're still working on this. I am so looking forward to it!

Tramponline

#135
Aside from some control issues that have already been sufficiently discussed & adapted, I enjoyed the tech-demo immensely - especially the second room!
Spoiler
More power to the bear! I could spend hours just conversing & listening to his banter. Very well written.
But also in general, the overall tongue-in-cheek-horror approach is hilarious.
[close]

One glitch I encountered:
Spoiler
In the boat house, you can repeatedly open the window, grab the fish with pocket knife, close window, go back, open window... and so on. This will provide you with a neverending supply of fish that would
even make Jesus blush! :tongue:
[close]

Also,
Spoiler
as mentioned before, I hate that darn harpoon - it shall burn in hell....that ****** **** ** ****! ;)
[close]

Secret Fawful

Wow, I'm glad someone liked the writing! I haven't had a lot of feedback on that, that I remember, so it's great to know that it works.

I'll give the harpoon a use in the full game. The demo is a demo-only scenario anyway. I probably said it before, but I wanted to use the demo as an experiment with doing a mostly audio cutscene, taking inspiration from old time radio, but sadly, I couldn't find great sound effects for everything I wanted to do, and I didn't know (at the time) how to do text for the sound effects either.

Spoiler
Oh, when you say The Bear, do you mean Teddy or Smoky?
[close]

Tramponline

#137
Quote from: Secret Fawful on Mon 20/01/2014 04:58:08
Spoiler
Oh, when you say The Bear, do you mean Teddy or Smoky?
[close]
I meant...
Spoiler
...that evil chucky-like 'Teddy Booger' - interesting, why did you assume I was refering to Smoky as a bear?
[close]

QuoteI'll give the harpoon a use in the full game. The demo is a demo-only scenario anyway.
Spoiler
I was totally kidding. I actually liked the teasing harpoon bit! Just in order for it to work properly (as a gag) it'd probably need a couple of varied & outrages excuses from Smoky not wanting to pick it up on each consecutive mouse click (i.e "splinter", "mommy told me not to play with sharp objects" or some such). For some reason I was expecting Smoky to finally agree on picking it up at some point, the harpoon crumbling away, and him only stating "Termites."
[close]

There's one single instance that I didn't like about the narrative/writing...
Spoiler
...and that's Smoky's scene with his dad. Purely judging on what I saw in the demo that's pushing it a little IMHO. Especially in connection with the visual representation of a fuzzy cloud framing that scene à  la "Pokemon". Having said that, obviously I don't know it's precise context in the final game. This scene could be viewed with irony, in which case you might've to push it even further, or not.
[close]


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