Gateway

Started by Arcangelo Bonaparte, Mon 20/03/2017 15:24:08

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Arcangelo Bonaparte

I am on Aleph 4 and want to enter the Hechee Dome.
How can I do that? The mutzers do not arrive at all...
Ho do you have to wait or hide?

HandsFree

Spoiler
You have to wait at the clearing until you hear the Mutzers coming and then go behind the boulder.
[close]
Is that where you are now?

Arcangelo Bonaparte

Thank you. I thought it would be enough to wait behind the boulders instead...

The mainy problem I see with game play is all the "wait puzzles" for now.
I had to wait in the crate for quite a long time on the gateway space station.
Then the conference rooms.
Then the Blue Hell Bar for the agents and now on Aleph 4.

The original Gateway had a "Wait" function. You typed in "wait" and it made a cetrain amount of time pass.
I would suggest to add this function to the project so the time based puzzled get more clear.
Maybe a button that is connected either to the DataMan or to the other verbs on the right side.


HandsFree

Quote from: Arcangelo Bonaparte on Wed 22/03/2017 09:59:20
The mainy problem I see with game play is all the "wait puzzles" for now.
Yes, that's something I was in two minds about. I wanted to remove the whole time management aspect of the game from the remake. In the original. like you said, you had to type 'wait' very often. And if you missed something, you had to wait till the next day to see if you got another chance. But removing it completely would make the game very linear, and I liked the non-linear feel of the original.

So now time only moves after specific player actions, but to keep it somewhat non-linear you can be asked if you want to wait. This happens if you leave a room where you know something is scheduled. "Do you want to wait for xxx?" If you choose yes, the game jumps to that event. So in my view there's no actual waiting there. If you choose no, you can do other things first and come back later. This is the case in the conference rooms and Blue Hell bar.

But then there are also situations where you actually have to wait for something to happen. My idea was that players will easily fill up the time with clicking on things and reading the responses and not be aware of the waiting, it's only +/- 10 seconds usually. But I'm sorry apparently that slowed you down.
This is most prevalent in the Aleph 4 section, after that you should be fine for most of the game.
BTW, in the crate
Spoiler
the waiting time is 12 seconds. Did you really perceive that as quite a long time? I assumed the first 5 seconds or so would be used up with just realizing you are in the crate and checking for any hotspots, so the real waiting time would be 7 secs.
[close]
Maybe I should make that shorter.

Arcangelo Bonaparte

Thanks for the answer.

To give you feedback about time management:
- I passed the clearing about six times and visited aleph 4 three times as a total.
- I was about four times in the crate and clicked around. I had read the hint of the working guy that he saw someone enter a closed wall before. I exceeded the 12 second barrier ocasionally when I stood up and said: "Damn, I need a coffee..."

Most backgrounds in the game only have about two or three interesting hotspots that you can focus on so the clicking and trying can be done quite fast.
In our days many adventures get released so people unfortunately play them for 15 minutes in their lunch break and have to move fast on...
I don't think I am the only person that plays games like that.

I think the best solution still would be to build up an internal clock and a button that makes 30 minute jumps.
That would create a maximum of non linear gameplay.
The clock could even be a internal part of the game like a wrist clock or device that you put on or recieve like the data man...


HandsFree

Quote from: Arcangelo Bonaparte on Thu 23/03/2017 10:17:26
I think the best solution still would be to build up an internal clock and a button that makes 30 minute jumps.
The implications of that are huge though. It would mean time not only advances when the player completes a task (as it is now) but also when the wait button is used. Also you can miss scenes if you use it at the wrong time.
Now the timeflow is strictly controlled. For instance all actions needed to finish a mission add up to around 8 hours, so when a mission is finished it will be evening and you have a chance to visit the Blue Hell if you missed doing that earlier.
Allowing the player to randomly wait will disrupt the timeflow in a way that requires a total redesign of the game.

BTW if you left the game for coffee while in the crate, the time should have moved on after the wait. Didn't that happen?
I agree that this is probably not a game for a 15 min lunchbreak, and it is not designed to be.

You are the first to mention this, so I would like to know if anyone else had problems with this (during testing this didn't come up as an issue).

Thanks for your input. Hope the rest of the game works better for you.

Arcangelo Bonaparte

I am enjoying this game a lot.
I even downloaded the original to see the differences...
That is the reason why I try to give feedback.

Apart from the time issues I would like to mention that the Button and Control Panel design could need a slight pepup which is not much work at all...
Another thing to mention is that the game runs interestingly slow compared to other AGS games on my computer.
When I change location the music starts to stutter sliglty and it needs two seconds to enter the new room...

HandsFree

Quote from: Arcangelo Bonaparte on Fri 24/03/2017 08:57:16
Apart from the time issues I would like to mention that the Button and Control Panel design could need a slight pepup which is not much work at all...
Do you mean the graphics, or how it works? (I can't draw at all. That's why I made something using original graphics).

Quote from: Arcangelo Bonaparte on Fri 24/03/2017 08:57:16
Another thing to mention is that the game runs interestingly slow compared to other AGS games on my computer.
When I change location the music starts to stutter sliglty and it needs two seconds to enter the new room...
Hmm, that doesn't happen on my laptop.
Does anyone have an idea what could cause that?

Again, thanks for the feedback. :)

Arcangelo Bonaparte

I made a sample for a hechee metal design panel for you.
After all it is the material that the game is about.

As you see the three game controlling buttons are in line with the bottom info box.
So there is more space for the dataman, inventory and an additional compass that the legend games always had.

If you are interested I offer my free service to overwork all your guis graphically based on this theme...



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