Topic: One More Fathom [MAGS]

[WHAM]

One More Fathom

DOWNLOAD >

Treasure awaits below the waves, deep in the Graveyard Chasm. Dare you dive deep enough to find the most valuable treasures, and are you wily enough to return to surface before air runs out and it's too late?
One More Fathom is a push your luck game of diving for treasure and becoming filthy rich, and maybe, just maybe, also finding a little something more...

Maybe you'll even make a FRIEND on the way...

[FormosaFalanster]

Wow I am totally playing that! I will download it and let you know what I think.

[WHAM]

Since this is a MAGS game, keep in mind there is still plenty of time to play and to vote.
Check out February's other contestant: Pig in a Poke by Slasher!
And don't forget to vote in the MAGS thread.

--

A few people have already commented on the game page for One More Fathom, and seem to be mostly positive about the quality of such a quick little project.
Here are a few back-of-the-box blurbs I nabbed from the games database (recommend checking the full comments out there):

The gameplay looks a bit slow in the beginning but it quickly gets addictive.
And the art is cute too. A very good game!

Even though I'm not a big fan on this game genre, I enjoyed this because there are interesting events happening apart from the main treasure hunt.
The game reminds of MicroProse games from the 80s like Sid Meier's Pirates.

I really felt there (the dive, the decision on when to go up, the encounters!) and this is the best compliment I can make to a game.

[heltenjon]

One should think you had made this game to specifications about my personality, just to drive me mad! 

Ok, so I drown a lot. Then I

Spoiler: ShowHide

find a massive chest of treasure and become too heavy to go up again. And I die. Next time I dive in a storm, because I want to save up money before going to port because half of it goes in bribes. And then, when I survive the dive, my boat have lost almost every treasure stashed on board! Arrgh!!!

[WHAM]

I see you have well and truly aligned yourself with the theme this game was built around: G R E E D ! 
I tried to craft every element in the game around the idea of pushing your luck, trying to get just a little more, and then paying the price if you push just a liiiittle bit too far.

[FormosaFalanster]

I seriously love it and I loved how it progresses, how you discover more and more possibilities, the game is actually very rich, and there's kind of a story behind it! It's really a good game.

The vibe was a bit similar than old games like Carmen Sandiego.

Careful when the mermaid gives you a kiss it freezes the game maybe a glitch to fix?

[WHAM]

Careful when the mermaid gives you a kiss it freezes the game maybe a glitch to fix?

There is supposed to be about a half-second pause there, depicting the time during which she gives you some extra air. Or does it stay stuck for longer? The same kinds of pauses are sometimes used for dramatic effect when Friend is talking to you.
If you can let me know the exact line of text after which the game seems to freeze, I can go in and debug a bit further.

[WHAM]

Just released a fix version 1.0.1.1, which replaces the previous version.
This version addresses the bug FormosaFalanster pointed out above, which turned out to be a far nastier and more elusive bug than I could have imagined. The encounters with the mermaiden should now work as intended.

[WHAM]

Update 1.1.0.0 has been released (same download link as before). It contains the following fixes:

- Fixed button for returning equipped O2 bottles to ship storage.
- Fixed artefact display in ship not updating properly.
- Fixed bug that could cause too many artefacts to spawn in the game.
- Removed a dive depth requirement for story progression in a late game stage, as it was making story too difficult to progress. This should make Friend more friendly.
- Added a reset function to the in game save / quit button position to try and resolve a bug that could cause the buttons to not appear.
- Fixed a broken function that could cause tangleweeds to get shredded even if player had no tools.

[cat]

Bug reports:

Spoiler: ShowHide

I will post a more detailed review in the future, but I just got an error something like "Error no space graphic found 0/0" (or was it 0/1?). It was not an AGS or Windows message box but a nicely styled one in the font of the game.

I was diving up and apparently I clicked to stop the dive at the same moment I reached the surface.
The game got stuck, I had to quit. No more go up/down buttons were shown.

Edit:
Another bug I had: When I was too heavy to dive up, I dropped treasure. But the change was not reflected in the weight graphic. Only after diving up one screen I saw that I dropped way too much stuff.
It would also be nice to be able to drop tools. I once got 4 in a chest and didn't need them, they dragged me down.

When I reached the bottom of the chasm, the sensor would draw blue sky where I'd expect black instead.

[WHAM]

Thanks for the heads up, Cat!

The way the game is built did result in some issues if the player clicked too fast, so I built in some error handling to try and figure out what was going on and, hopefully, recover without having to quit the game and restart.

Sadly I will likely not be updating the game anymore to fix bugs, unless they seem to be utterly game-breaking and unrecoverable. The bugs I am aware of are mostly relics of the hastily built MAGS code that is barely functional to begin with and after so much time I am afraid of touching any of the code. I am considering either rebuilding the game with new art and all new code structure for improved gameplay, as One More Fathom - Deluxe, or just making an outright sequel to build on the theme and core gameplay loop.

I think the only reason you can't drop tools is the fact I didn't bother coding in a verification step for it, and one of my testers dropped theirs by accident and complained, so I stopped that from happening. If I did the game again now, I'd add an "are you sure" prompt with an added checkbox for "don't ask again".

As for the weight calculation, it is checked after each move, and at specific points in the code. There may be a case missing for dropping treasure? Few players did that, I found, out of principle. The graphic is also purposefully vague, since I don't like crowding the screen with numbers.

These are useful, though! I've added them to my list of things to keep in mind in the future, if the next game project starts to really take off.