The Marionette (02 November 2009: Final round of refinement)

[Vince Twelve]

auriond, really nice looking demo here.  The art and music are both excellent and I'm looking forward to see more of the story.  I'm definitely feeling the Silent Hill influence and LimpingFish was spot on with the Cing comparison.  It's looking very nice, and I can't wait to see the final product.

I had just a few concerns, but they're things that I think can be cleared up pretty easily.  I studied and worked in useability, so some things always jump out to me about many games that might not be apparent to others that could easily be fixed and would greatly improve the user (player) experience.  So, take this as constructive criticism.

1) I agree with Rui about the text.  The issue is, if I have a look or interact cursor and I click, I expect that to look or interact, respectively.  But if there's text on the screen and I click, it's clicking through the text, not looking or interacting.  A simple change to an hourglass (or something) cursor would fix this.  I don't think that his second suggestion would jive with this kind of game.  But this is a very minor issue.

2) The foot cursor (for turning around and exiting) looks too much like the hand cursor.  So much, in fact, that I didn't know that I could turn around in the rooms because I didn't notice the cursor change.  If this changes to an arrow pointing left/right appropriately, this would be just a little more smooth, and would definitely help that situation.

3) When right-clicking to cycle through the cursor modes (which I usually do because I don't like to have to move my cursor all the way across the screen to change modes) I expect it to cycle in the same order as the cursors appear in the menu.  Having it jump around out of order is really confusing and should definitely be changed.

4) The cursors for interact and pick-up are very similar and not very well defined.  I got them confused a lot and had to cycle between them in a "whoops, not that one" fashion many times.  In fact, I'm not sure why they are separate cursors.  There's no real reason to have two separate cursors when they'll never have two separate meaningful effects on one item.  If you "Interact" with your notebook in your car it says "I have to pick it up before I can use it."  But clearly, I meant to take the thing.  If I "pick up" the lock panel on the door, it says "I can't budge it." But really, I was just interpreting it as "click the hand cursor on it to use it."  Plus, the "pick up" cursor is rarely used and results in lots of messages that kind of break the mood, like "Pick up the book case? ... Not."

Making the two even more interchangeable, you can use either interact or pick up to walk through a door...

Personally, I'd combine the two into one hand icon that interacts with things that are interactable, picks up things (with some "I think I'll take this" message) that are pick-uppable, and gives a "I should probably just leave that alone" kind of message when it can't do anything.  It would go a long ways towards stream-lining the game's interactions and making the gameplay feel less separated from the player's intentions.

5) The way the inventory works is a great idea, but as it's implemented is a little flawed.  When you open the inventory, it defaults to the arrow cursor to allow you to select an active inventory item.  This is good.  But one thing that always bothers me about this type of inventory system is that I've suddenly lost the ability to right-click to change cursor modes.  Instead, right clicking has suddenly been redefined as look at.  But in the interface framework of the rest of the game, this does not make sense.  Even if I can now potentially look at something in one click in stead of two, consistency should be protected.  Right clicking here should cycle between the eye and the arrow cursors.

Now, when I click with the eye cursor on an inventory, it brings up the larger inventory picture.  Here, I can use the eye again to examine, or the hand to look at the other side (or, I presume, do other things with other inventory items).  Still, here, right clicking should cycle between the eye and hand.  It's a little strange, conceptually, to use the eye both here and on the main inventory but have it do different things, but I'm not terribly concerned about that. 

I am concerned, however, that clicking the close button with the hand cursor, maintains the hand cursor when it switches back to the main inventory GUI.  This cursor is meaningless here, and yet, it acts the same as the arrow cursor.  When you switch between the main inventory and inventory close up GUIs, you need to constrain the cursor modes to only the proper modes: eye and arrow on inventory (or an inventory item cursor) and eye and hand on the inventory close up.

If you implement the inventory like this, I think you'll find that it's much more intuitive to use and navigate because it maintains consistency with the rest of the game.

6) There are no parts of the game in the demo where you have to use an inventory item (though it would be nice if Guiseppe would comment on the items if I try to give them to him) so it's not clear if this will be a big issue yet, but as you have it, it is not clear where the inventory item cursor's hotspot is.  When my cursor is an inventory item, it might be nice to have a little arrow in the top left corner so that I know what I'm pointing at.

7) Also, still harping on inventory here, why is the close button on the inventory close-up GUI where it is?  I think it would look a lot nicer if it were a nice button down on the bottom bar like the OK button on the main GUI.

8 ) When you click on something (not in the inventory, in a room) to get a close up, like the photo on the desk or the mannequin in the studio, you can back up by clicking on the edges of the screen where ever the foot cursor shows up, but I think that since, conceptually, backing away from looking at something up close is different from turning around this could use a different cursor, or even better, a button on the lower-right corner of the screen that says "back."  However, if you change the turning cursors to arrows (as per my #2) and leave this one a foot, that could be ok.  This is not a major issue.

9) (Thought of this one while typing the last one  ) To get a closeup of the photo on the shelf, you use the eye cursor or the interact cursor, while getting a closeup of the TV or mannequin requires the interact cursor.  Conceptually, it seems that the eye cursor should work for the TV and mannequin as well.  Once zoomed in, another click of the eye cursor would give a description.  This would also work in line with how the inventory system works: one click of the eye gives a closeup, a second gives a description.  Again, consistency makes your game play much more intuitively and will help the player be engrossed in the game without being distracted by the the interface.

OK, that's it.  I hope it didn't sound too harsh, because I didn't mean it to be.  I'm just pointing out a few little useability niggles that can hopefully be ironed out without too much trouble and will help the game feel very smooth to the player.  The game already looks and feels really great.  I think with just a few easy tweaks, it could play even better.  I really can't wait to see the final product.  Good luck!

[MashPotato]

Great demo, Auriond, it looks superb, and it gives an intriguing taste of what is to come
Vince raises some good points, but the one I'll bring up again is #4, because that is the one that bothered me a bit.  One other thing: during the introduction I clicked to speed up the dialogue, but instead skipped the entire intro by mistake.  It would be nice if clicking didn't do this, and to skip cutscenes "esc" (or something like that) was used instead.

Again, it looks like you have the makings of a great game here; good luck, and I look forward to seeing the finished product!

[GreenBoy]

Fantastic demo.
Delightfully creapy.  I have to agree with the others with the thing with two different hand cursors.  A little on the confusing side.

Spoiler

The last puzzle with the contorted marionete was crazy clever took a while to register.

[close]

[CosmoQueen]

Oh my :o The story and the screenshots are fantastical!!! (Yes that is a word!)

I'm so anxious to play this! Please hurry!

[auriond]

Thanks, all.

Vince Twelve, I am extremely honoured that you took the time to explain all of that. I read through everything you said very carefully, and I'll try to implement everything that I can, although combining the two hand icons would require an overhaul of the iconbar and cursors. But with time that can definitely be done.

So far I have gathered that the biggest issues are the hand icons and the foot icon; these will be addressed in demo #2.

I understand a little better about the text issue now, though I admit that I never saw that as a problem at all (and neither did my team, surprisingly). I don't think it would be a problem to implement the wait icon.

I'm sorry the bad interface distracted so much from the content! But well, we are newbies to game design, and all these wonderful suggestions are going to be a great help.

MashPotato: What I'll do for the cutscenes is that I'll add a little line saying "Click mouse button or press any key to skip". Hope that'll clear up the confusion!

Green Boy: Thanks, I'm glad you liked that part 

CosmoQueen: I'll hurry! Let's hope I can present the revised demo in a couple weeks' time at the most.

edit: oh and - there are two items that Giuseppe will comment on when you show them to him. I haven't coded the others, but I will probably add more things that he will comment on in the full version.

[thewalrus]

     Just downloaded the demo late last night. It looks great. I will edit this post with comments when I get a chance to play, later on today..... Congrats, on getting the demo out.....

[Nikolas]

MAte, time to give me feedback.

First of all, I back up Vince all the way to the 9 points...

Now, to clarify a little and say something else (probably). The text when I tried 3 times the game, had 3 different sizes. The first time, I tried playing the game from the ziped folder, and it was tiny. Then I extracted it and it got big, normal very nice font, but after the first video it went tiny again. Third time they were medium size, but readable.

The icons are really small, and not easily distinguished and as mentioned before, it's not clear the two hands, and the foot actually. An arrow towards the end of the rooms would probably help a lot as well.

On the positive sides of the game:

It is an amazing game!

Even though the screens are still, there is a lot of video sequencing (will you keep this up for hte whole game, ending up with 20 videos?) which more thna make up for the lack of further animation.

Graphics are great

Mood is brilliant!

Music is also very nice so tell your (borther?) musicians that he's doing a great job! piano sounds ultra cool with all that

The story is very good (I wish I could still open discussions with that guy guisepe, I think? I mean in all adventures you get a 4-5 choices in dialogues, and then it's all over, nothing to say again... A pity I couldn't just sit there with the hours and talk to him again and again), and kept me on screen for quite a long time. Took long to solve the hangman (I'm not native speaker), and never found the keys to the door from the marionette thing...

Generally a game I'm very much anticipaiting really! Keep it up!

BTW, the size? Compaired to the demo? Just wondering...

[auriond]

Thank you all - Peder too, I just saw your edit I'm very glad you liked that part so much, I really hope the rest of the game will live up to the expectations set by that part!

Nikolas: I'm not sure why you were getting the strange font sizes as it hasn't happened to any of us testing it. Anybody knows what causes this?

Icons are definitely on the to-do list as for icon sizes... I'll see about putting visible hotspots on all the icons, and making them bigger.

Yes, I'm planning to keep up the little cutscenes that break the boredom of static backgrounds. However I'm worried about the final game size... But I am so, so, so glad that you found the videos good enough to make up for the lack of animation elsewhere.

My brother's music does seem to be a saving grace for the game ^^ I'll let him know that someone who has very impressive music credentials (you) liked it a lot

The dialogue with Giuseppe was a kind of experiment. I tried to plan it so that you will end up with the same amount of information no matter what options you choose - but different options will give you a different number of points, and in the final game it will determine the ending that you get. I will probably get him to talk some more in the full game.

For the door:

Spoiler

after you solve the hangman puzzle, click the eye icon on the mannequin for a hint. You're not looking for a physical key... but there's a numberpad on the door...

[close]

The size of the final game compared to the demo... um, the demo zip was about 13MB, so the final game might be anywhere from 30-60MB (or possibly even more). I know it's very big, because of the graphics and music.


edit: I forgot to address the part about points - I just noticed that I forgot to change the total number of points that you can get. The total's not 10, it's 26. Here's a list of all the things you can do to get full points in the demo.

Spoiler

After opening cutscene
---------------------------
- Interact with car

Car interior (Total for this area: 3)
--------------------------------------------
- Pick up sketchbook - (1)
- Read sketchbook till the end (click the eye icon on the last page) - Martin will note the missing pages.(1)
- Look at envelope in your inventory, flip it over and look at it again - Martin will note the number in the corner. (1)
- Look at steering wheel - Martin will note the missing keys
- Exit car

House exterior
------------------
- Interact with front door of the house

House interior (Total for this area: 5)
----------------------------------------------
- Interact with TV
- Look at TV (click eye icon on screen in closeup) - (1)
- Look at sofa
- Pick up scrap on sofa  - (1)
- Interact with TV cabinet
- Open TV cabinet
- Look at doll in the TV cabinet - (2)
- Exit the cabinet view. Move your cursor to the right or left and turn around.
- Pick up key from the wall next to the front door -  (1)
- Turn around again and open the door directly in front of you.

Alice's room 1 (Total for this area: 3)
---------------------------------------------
- Interact with photo on the cabinet
- Look at photo (click eye icon on it in closeup) - (1)
- Interact with the red thing behind the pink teddy bear
- Interact with book cover
- Pick up diary - (1)
- Go to diary in inventory and examine it
- Read diary (click eye icon on last page) - (1)
- Talk to Giuseppe

Giuseppe dialogue (Total for this area: 11)
----------------------------------------------------
"How do you know my name?" + "Sculpting is an art" - (3)

"I saw my car" + "Who is this "her"? - (4)

Show Giuseppe the photo - (2)
Show Giuseppe the envelope - (2)

- Move cursor to right or left of the screen and turn around

Alice's room 2 (Total for this area: 4)
-------------------------------------------------
- Interact with mannequin
- Interact with mannequin again
- Examine mannequin (click eye icon on the 'M' in the second closeup) - (1)
- Go back to the view of the bed - look at brown rectangle on the door on the right. It's a hangman puzzle which will give you the clue to the number pad that unlocks the door.
- Interact with the letters to fill in the phrase. The answer for the hangman puzzle is "The mannequin is key". - (2)
- In the main view of the bed again, examine the mannequin. Click the eye icon on it if you need to.
- You should have 25 points at this time. The answer to the number pad (grey rectangle below the brown one on the door) is 54, which is the number that the mannequin is miming. Enter it to get 1 more point and end the game!

Total: 25 points

[close]

[Vince Twelve]

I'm glad you're taking all the feedback to heart!  About combining the two hand icons into one, I know it will require a little work to fix the icon bar, but I really think that would go a long way to making the interface intuitive and comfortable.

And Mash Potato had a great point about the cutscenes.  Rather than adding a text to the bottom, I agree with her suggestion of changing it so that you can only skip it with the ESC button, or at most any keyboard button.  It's a very fast fix.  In the code:

PlayVideo (string filename, int skip, int flags)

You've probably got 3 for the skip argument.  Just change it to 1 or 2.

And I really liked the way Guiseppe's dialogue branched.  It felt natural like a real conversation and I realize that all the branches lead to the same place, but it still felt like I had some impact on the conversation.  Some adventure gamers will be thrown by this though because they're used to exhausting all conversation branches methodically to make sure they don't miss anything.  I like this better, personally.

But I agree that if I talked to him later, it would be nice if he had something more to say other than "Don't forget what I've told you."  At the least, it would be nice if he reminded me of what he told me.  Or maybe had a couple more responses so it wasn't so clear that he's just a pre-scripted character in a computer game!

Oh, also, I forgot to say how awesome the music was!

[auriond]

All right then, I'll make the change to the video skip. Should I go ahead and add the "press esc to skip" part as well?

I understand about gamers that make a habit of clicking through everything in a dialogue - I'm one of them! But in this game, I want the player to help mould Martin's personality. Although he's by nature a blunt, sarcastic person, it's up to the player to choose exactly how abrasive he can be.

I'll remember that about Giuseppe's dialogue! I hadn't thought of it, but if the dialogue has made him seem more real, I wouldn't want to break that by having him repeat the same responses afterwards.

And my brother is very encouraged by all the positive responses towards his music - so encouraged that he's inspired to revive his music site

[Maverick]

Absolutely fantastic work! :o

This is definitely at the top of my games to play list. Kind of reminds me of games like Blackstone chronicles and Scratches in terms of the eerie atmosphere.

Loved the demo!

[Blackthorne]

I really loved your demo and I look forward to the final game.

It reminds me of the old Icom adventures, "Shadowgate", "Deja Vu", and "Uninvited".... I loved those games.  Along with Tass Times in Tone Town, I think they ate up all my Apple IIgs time.


Bt

[esper]

Wow. I haven't read all the way through this thread, so I'm probably saying what everyone else has said before me, but this looks absolutely fantastic. I have this thing about not downloading demos... I don't want to ruin the game experience (I learned my lesson with BJ4), but I went to YouTube and watched the trailer. Not only does this just look brilliant, with a fantastic atmosphere, but it just looks like it's going to be plain fun. Also, I thought you'd be glad to know you've been an influence on my own game in production: I don't know how you do your graphics, but they look hand-drawn, and I've decided to forget using my mouse... it's hand-drawn and scanned-in from now on for me.

Once again, lovely, lovely game. Eagerly awaiting.

[auriond]

Kind of reminds me of games like Blackstone chronicles and Scratches in terms of the eerie atmosphere.

Thanks Maverick! I haven't heard of Scratches though... can I have a link to check it out?

It reminds me of the old Icom adventures, "Shadowgate", "Deja Vu", and "Uninvited".... I loved those games.Ã,  Along with Tass Times in Tone Town, I think they ate up all my Apple IIgs time.

Although I have not played any of those games (I think my ignorance is showing through very badly...) I looked them up, and they look absolutely gorgeous. I didn't even know graphics like that were possible! And yes, I see the resemblance to The Marionette... makes me want to play those games so badly now.

Wow. I haven't read all the way through this thread, so I'm probably saying what everyone else has said before me, but this looks absolutely fantastic.

That was said before people downloaded and played the demo; after that the general reaction was more moderate, but I'm a-workin' on it.

Also, I thought you'd be glad to know you've been an influence on my own game in production: I don't know how you do your graphics, but they look hand-drawn, and I've decided to forget using my mouse... it's hand-drawn and scanned-in from now on for me.

I'm very honoured to hear that, both that my graphics have influenced you and that they look hand-drawn My backgrounds are a combination of being drawn in Photoshop using a tablet, and manipulated photographs. The people are entirely drawn on Photoshop with the tablet.

[esper]

Although I have not played any of those games (I think my ignorance is showing through very badly...) I looked them up, and they look absolutely gorgeous. I didn't even know graphics like that were possible!

Are you being sarcastic, or did they remake those games and I didn't hear about it? If so, link me up, because those were some of my favorite games... But they were on Nintendo, Commodore 64, Apple IIe and Amiga, so... I can't possibly imagine them having good graphics!

[auriond]

I'm not being sarcastic in the least, and I'm referring to the screenshots of the games that I saw on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowgate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninvited_(game)
etc.

I've never used Apple and my first encounter with any PC game was King's Quest V and Willy Beamish. So I'm not of the generation that would have played games like those, and those kinds of graphics are really new to me. I really do think they are gorgeous. Maybe you don't think so because you're used to them, but for me they look like serious works of art.

[Blackthorne]

By today's standards, yeah, they're not amazing graphics... but when I played them on the IIgs... they were so atmospheric and immersive.  If you can, I reccomend you get a IIgs emulator and find those games. 

Bt

[auriond]

I'm sure I would have loved them too if I had known of them back then. I'll see if I can find both the games and the emulator - thanks, Blackthorne.

And I beg to differ - they are amazing graphics by any standards. I know no one believes me because I use Photoshop and everything, but I have a soft spot for simpler graphics, and these are simply beautiful. My respect for them is even greater because I can't create them.

[auriond]

I just had to announce this, I couldn't contain my excitement any longer!

The Marionette will feature a song by one of my favourite artistes, the guitar great Justin King. He's given his permission to use one of his songs for a cutscene later in the game. I still can't get over it!

http://www.justinking.com , go check it out!

And if you're afraid the songs on that website won't suit the mood of the game - well, those aren't the songs that will be on it.

[gypsysnail]

I'm sure I would have loved them too if I had known of them back then. I'll see if I can find both the games and the emulator - thanks, Blackthorne.

And I beg to differ - they are amazing graphics by any standards. I know no one believes me because I use Photoshop and everything, but I have a soft spot for simpler graphics, and these are simply beautiful. My respect for them is even greater because I can't create them.

Hi Auriond, I agree totally with you, those old games from the 1980's Sierra era had gorgeous graphics, I used to always feel excited about coming from from school just to play one of those games and looking at the graphics made the games more exciting. I still love them today, they not only hold great memories but also there is just something about them that still draw me to them, I cant put my finger on it but I know my eyes love them . You should have a try at playing the old Kings Quest 3 game with the old graphics, that was a beautiful game. I'd say I like Colonel's Bequest's graphics too . Now your game Marionette is just AMAZING!! I enjoyed the demo but really cant wait to play the actual game like I have mentioned in earlier posts, this game appeals to me . How are you going with drawing, have you been able to do any more lately? I am trying to work on a series of pieces that relate to the weather/environmental and global warming issues that are around at the moment. An exciting project, and working with mixed media. P.S. congrats on getting the music of your favourite artist, thats an achievement too . While I can't hear music clearly being fully deaf, my best friend has been working with me to help me hear music by touch until we get my 2nd implant and new upgrade done. Very excited!