Adventure Game Studio

Hey everybody,

Acts I and II of our upcoming Very Mysterious Narrative Anthology Adventure, If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=57487.0), are finished and ready to play, and we would love to have some volunteers give them a spin!

We're looking for feedback related to:

- Bugs. Game breaking bugs, NPEs, audio glitches, soft locks, etc. I have QA'd and played through both chapters like 1,847,493 times and I'm, like, 99.9999% confident there are no such bugs, but as we all know, as soon as you give your game to somebody else, in five minutes they'll be like "so I got stuck behind a plant...", so it never hurts to check :D

- General gameplay. Are the puzzles/tasks solvable, or are they obtuse? Do you know what you're supposed to do in every moment, or do you find yourself walking around and pixel hunting, searching for a clue as to what you need to do next? This is the kind of stuff that's super hard to judge when you're the one who's designed it, so actual players' impressions would help a lot here.

The game is still missing a main menu, save system, cutscenes, intro, interludes, etc etc (and the Esc/Pause menu is just an ugly grey box with Quit, Cancel and a Volume slider xD), so basically you just get a plain chapter selection screen, with no other bells, whistles, or context.

Act I (The Silent Room) should take about 15-20 minutes to complete, and Act II (The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterbourne) around 30-40 minutes. The full game will be released for free, so offering a copy for your effort is not really an option, but your name will of course go in the credits and the AGS database, as a little "thank you" :)

If you're interested, shoot me a message and I'll send you a Wetransfer link!

I have to honestly tell that without save system, even temporary one (being able to save/reload in any given moment), testing can be pretty difficult and tedious.

When one finds a bug, the most necessary thing is to be able to go back for a short time period and repeat it to make sure it can be reproduced, and clarify conditions.
Worse, in case if game crashes tester would have to replay whole chapter again.

That's a fair point, and one which to be honest I hadn't thought about. Because we're not using any templates, I would have to create a save/load system from scratch, so my plan was to do it towards the end of development.

In any case, I'm not expecting (and would never ask!) anybody to play this 3, 4, 5 times actively seeking bugs and trying to get into every little corner, cranny and nook. When we have the full game, then a save system will certainly come in handy for more thorough testing, but right now we're mostly interested in knowing how these two acts play in general, and how they "feel" to players :)

(And if you find any actual bugs, I'll eat my shoe. There are no bugs here. Repeat with me. There are no bugs here.)

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Tue 26/05/2020 16:09:08
That's a fair point, and one which to be honest I hadn't thought about. Because we're not using any templates, I would have to create a save/load system from scratch, so my plan was to do it towards the end of development.

You could use SaveGameDialog/RestoreGameDialog called by a key pressed for example, as a temp replacement :).

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Tue 26/05/2020 16:42:04

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Tue 26/05/2020 16:09:08
That's a fair point, and one which to be honest I hadn't thought about. Because we're not using any templates, I would have to create a save/load system from scratch, so my plan was to do it towards the end of development.

You could use SaveGameDialog/RestoreGameDialog called by a key pressed for example, as a temp replacement :).

*Ohhhhh* that easy? Hahah cool!

Alright, I'll add this to the game (I'll use F3/F4) and upload another build! Thanks for the tip ;-D

I would love to test it. :)

And BTW, "default" keys are usually F5 = Save and F7 = Restore... all the way back to the first Sierra (or at least the KQ one  (laugh) ).  ;)

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Tue 26/05/2020 18:46:24
I would love to test it. :)

PM on its way! Thank you!

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Tue 26/05/2020 18:46:24
And BTW, "default" keys are usually F5 = Save and F7 = Restore... all the way back to the first Sierra (or at least the KQ one  (laugh) ).  ;)

Well, I chose F3/F4 because of course I'm a rebel and a freethinker and a breaker of chains of convention, and also the only Sierra game I've played is Phantasmagoria, so what do I even know :-D

There's something funny going on with sound config in this game, if I disable sound in winsetup, or even manually change in config file, the game keeps running with sound on, and sound options sometimes are not changed in config after closing winsetup. Looks like a bug in AGS 3.4.3. :/

I would love to test it and give me feedback! ;-D

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Wed 27/05/2020 01:33:36
There's something funny going on with sound config in this game, if I disable sound in winsetup, or even manually change in config file, the game keeps running with sound on, and sound options sometimes are not changed in config after closing winsetup. Looks like a bug in AGS 3.4.3. :/

Not a bug, a feature. What monster would choose to play a game with no sound? AGS acknowledges this, decides that you don't know what you're doing, and ignores you :-D

I would be happy to playtest it :) I got free time this weekend, so just shoot me a pm if you´re still looking for testers.

me too, if you still could use some more testers!

Of course! More eyes are always welcome :) I'll send you a link right away!

I just want to say THANKS SO MUCH everybody. We've gotten so much feedback, and so much of it super useful, plus a bunch of really encouraging compliments, which are always really nice to read, not going to lie ;-D Going from "oh god, nobody is going to like it, it's going to be such a disappointment, they're all going to think it's garbage" to "dude... it seems people actually like it???" feels like such a massive weight off our shoulders and is a huge confidence boost.

We're still waiting for some people to get in touch with their impressions, but I think I can safely say that this thread has already fulfilled its purpose and that we won't need any additional testers for now. I've been working hard these days on addressing your issues, fixing a couple of little bugs, tweaking details here and there as per some of y'all's suggestions, and even adding accents to the font in order to be able to display French words correctly :P

You guys are awesome. Thank you again so much, I'm over the moon about the fact you've liked it so much thus far, and hope that the final two acts will live up to expectations. Cheers everyone!

Oh and by the way, to everybody who has participated, we will include you under "Testers" in the credits using your forum usernames by default, unless you want us to use some other name or alias. If that's the case, please get in touch with me and let me know :)

Quoteand even adding accents to the font in order to be able to display French words correctly

:-[ :-[ :-[ :-[ (roll)

I'd be happy to help, if you still need it!

Quote from: PlayPretend on Mon 01/06/2020 22:23:41
I'd be happy to help, if you still need it!

Thanks! But like I said above, we're good. Time to move on to the next acts now! ;-D