Tuesday, July 05, 2016

The closed beta is out

I have sent the links around (make sure to contact me if you should have received a link, but you didn't!), so now we have to wait for the bug reports, and the for the bugfixing polishing. Hopefully, I get a couple of days to rest a little, I have been pushing hard so there wouldn't be any significant delays, and I managed to finish a day earlier, for once! XD

As you can expect, I'll post again when the 1.0 version is ready for the public. Until then, keep counting the minutes. :p

34 comments:

  1. Enjoyed the ending, though unfortunately some bugfixing is required. Off the top of my head:

    1. Unable to access further scenes with any companions (it displayed a blank page after I tried to talk to them with a "Click to Continue" prompt.

    2. For the troupe scene in the theater, the only option you're given when asked if you want to do any other moves is "cancel"

    3. For the movie theater, the porn and fantasy movies are displaying the same texts, and the following prompt after you look back gives you no options apart from "cancel"

    4. Couldn't start the party after fully upgrading the house.

    5. Couldn't access the new mission via the terminal on Maltik. I'm only shown "examine" with no further options.

    6. On the final mission, I couldn't fight more than two guards. First guard defeated, second guard who comes in after defeated, but any guards encountered after that cannot be engaged in combat. Only given the option to examine the guards after the first two.

    7. In the final mission, you can break the car windows multiple times.

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    1. 8. Couldn't find the mini-quest after meeting both the police officer and doing both modeling jobs.

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    2. Are you one of the donors/testers, or did you just manage to download the game sneakily? XD XD XD

      Everytthing reported here should be fixed for the next update, with two exceptions:

      6) You should tell me how you triggered the encounters. In theory, there are only 2 guards in the first area, so they aren't supposed to show up if you already took care of them;

      8) You didn't receive the message? The mini-quest starts by receiving a message and I think the code for that is right.

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    3. Not to worry, I am a donor. XD. Security for this release is still good.

      6) I just wandered around the outside of the mansion randomly and ran into them. I beat two of them in combat outside, but afterwards I can't fight guards anymore. I tried walking through the front door the guard there can't be engaged, and I tried a couple of the other guards on the mansion exterior. Same thing.

      8) No message. I'll try again though.

      Thanks for the all the hard work.

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    4. I see now. I think I solved the issues with the guards, to know if I fixed them completely, you'll have to wait until the new beta, though.

      Damn, I figured out what was wrong with the message. You should see the warning about the message, but the message itself won't show in the list. Fixed now.

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  2. Starting fresh and keeping a good log. I shall return with bugs to haunt you. :D

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    1. This one is pretty major so I thought I'd report it right away before I continue. You can cheese the fights now that the action interface isn't dismissed between attacks. The enemy doesn't get it's turn until you hit continue, but you can just spam click attack a bunch and then win before it gets a chance to hit back (unless you didn't do enough damage) but as long as you just make sure to equip bypassing ammo and do way more damage than necessary it's not a problem.

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    2. Oh man, I see what you mean. Problem is, I can't imagine how I did it, since when the game is paused, you shouldn't be able to input anything. I can only guess it's caused by having the "auto-resolve" be a sub-menu instead of its own action, I'll try to move it elsewhere, and see if that fixes it.

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    3. Yep, that fixed it. RAGS keeps the menu action open when it has to create the sub-menu list, so when you make a parent action clickable, you can have the menu float around during pauses. I hate RAGS so much right now. -_- -_- -_-

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    4. Glad it was a simple fix. If it's not too much trouble can I ask what the song name (or just what it's from if you know) for the mystery planet the bracelet brings you to is. This is the first time I've not sold it immediately and ended up there. The music is bringing me some weird nostalgia though so I'd like to know.

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    5. yeah, I am glad too. If that wasn't the way to fix it, I was going to become violent with my PC. XD

      The song is a Metroid remix:

      http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00054

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    6. Thanks for the link. :D I'm still making my way through, trying out everything I can think of. The other bugs I've found so far have already been reported above.

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    7. Yeah, this release was terribly buggy, working on and off on the game has taken its toll. I should have a new version up by the end of the day, with additional gameplay for the final quest, and bugfixes so you can actually play the new content properly. XD

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    8. Here's a funny one I hadn't noticed before now: The movies are all free. As far as I can tell you never get the 10 credits deducted for watching any of the movies.

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    9. Damn, I was hoping nobody would notice. I found out about an hour ago. XD It will be fixed for the release, that's for sure.

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    10. This is more a feature request than anything, but why doesn't Malena get a docket under the personal (possibly supposed to be personnel) section of the holo-glasses database when you begin dating? I mean Cody Stark does, and she isn't a girlfriend Celeste is obsessing over.

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    11. I don't know if it's something wrong with the order I did things or consistent each time, but it seems if you try the "Is this the most likely suspect?" and are incorrect as the last action before ALICE interrupts you, RAGS crashes. I can provide a save file if that will help debug it.

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    12. And I finally finished. Not sure which of the ending missions I actually got, but I think it was the worst one since I didn't fight anyone. Great job MDQP!

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    13. The main reason not to, is that Malena isn't a business partner in any fashion, but solely girlfriend material (which would make keeping a file on her slightly creepy, perhaps), and the fact that Celeste doesn't know much about her for quite some time (you need to progress a fair bit in the romance to actually learn more about Malena).

      I'd have to expand on the entry multiple times, and in the end it would probably feel weird, so I opted not to do so.

      The crash there might be caused by using the "go back to the list" or the "is this the most likely suspect" too often, because that essentially keeps RAGS running into a timer loop, and RAGS hate those with a passion. I'll see if I can do something to let the timer run out and then restart it without wasting the player's time (the main reason why I call the timer from inside the timer is to avoid players having to start off from the beginning every time they pick a choice).

      Did you play as his slave for a while? If so, that's the for the higher values of indoctrination, yes. If you didn't play as a slave, then you got the middle-ground route, instead.

      I am glad you liked it! :D

      I hope everyone will, once I make the public release. I am still waiting on a few testers, but it shouldn't be long before a public release, at this point. :)

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    14. Makes sense on the Malena thing. It mostly come up because of the Personal vs Personnel thing. Personal made me think these are the files of important people to Celeste instead of work relations.

      And yeah I did play as his slave for a bit. I played a little loose with my MR on Verania and got down to 0 before swinging by the Embassy on Europa 4 and buying the Meditation VR Module to bring myself back up to 3 for the end.

      Does piper have a friendship mission? I didn't seem able to trigger it with 22 points which was higher than Jane and Darenzia after completing their missions.

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    15. Well, it's just that they are her personal files, rather than files about her personal life (maybe it's just me not being a native english speaker that is causing the misunderstanding). They are informal, but they are meant to have at least some relevance to her work (hence why she doesn't have files specifically about her father and sister). At least, that's how I approached it. I am pretty lax with the rules, since as I said it's informal both from mine and Celeste's perspective, but in the end, it didn't seem to fit.

      Piper's side-quest will be in chapter 2. The main reason is that it would fit the game better if we got into her personal story after she has become a more permanent part of the crew, and also because her story will have a resolution immediately, unlike Jane and Darenzia which are still suspended, so to speak (Darenzia's father is still untouched, and so are the people who are looking for Jane). There are other, more practical reasons too:

      she is actually a skippable character, so you could not have her on board. I might actually default to her being part of the crew in chapter 2, this is one of the few decisions I have yet to take;

      She is kind of "undefined" in terms of character development, so it's easier to use a clear-cut point to determine if I want her personality to change, and what to default to if the players didn't romance her;

      the game size is starting to worry me, so every major addition is something I tend to think about a lot before going into it.

      Did you get some of her new scenes as a friend, or were you romancing her?

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    16. I wasn't romancing her (I have a soft spot for Malena so I made her my first "ending playthrough" girlfriend) and the last scene I remember was her reading "The Art of War" and bonding with Celeste over their overbearing family members. Not sure if that's new or not, but I don't remember it from before either.

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    17. Yeah, that's new. with 22 you should have gotten 2 new scenes, but not the last one (it needs 25). That's one thing I forgot to ask players, and that's if they can reach 25 at least with one character in a single playthrough, especially since they might want to romance someone as well.

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    18. To get 22 I had to give her the flower/earings/holopicture with her. However I also got the -1 for her when Jane confronted me, the minus for dating Malena, a I believe one other minus as well though I can't remember what for (It wasn't a Piper conversation as I always got either something or nothing for those). I imagine that overall it's pretty tight to reach 25 if you aren't dating her no matter what.

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    19. Oh and I gave her the Envidium Affair book for another +1

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    20. Mmmh, I might want to add a few extra gifts/events, just in case, thanks for letting me know. I want it to be hard, but not super difficult. XD

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    21. Happy to be of any small assistance I can.

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  3. mdqp used Intensify Hype!

    It's super effective!

    Seriously though, I've been following this from about 0.5(?) and I can't wait to see the complete version of one of the hands down best MC fetish games about

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  4. Any way to request invite to closed beta?

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    1. Currently no. The only people with access to the closed beta are the testers I got on board when I started the project, and the donors who wanted to get sneak peeks over the years. Right now, though, it would be silly to try and get in, since I am going to release in a week at most.

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    2. I used to test games for a living so if you want additional eyes on it don't hesitate to ask. Love the game, well written.

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    3. Glad you like the game! ^_^

      I have a few very good people on it, and there a lot more among donors who do it slightly more casually, but the numbers are enough to cover most of the issues that might pop-up in a "normal" playthrough, so I am fine. The more people I add, the more reports I need to check and reply to (I don't have a centralized system for bug reports, in such a small scale operation), so I think I am good this way.

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  5. Fucking HYYYYYYYYYYYPE.

    I just want to comment here and ask that the cheaty debug menu is up to date(haven't actually played in a while so I don't remember how I felt about it), specifically options to move values up and down. Far too many games only let you move a value one way which is kinda shitty, unless this is a RAGS limitation then never mind. The other thing is that I want to confirm there will be a solid changelog since otherwise I'll be lost. Thanks man, you rock.

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    1. There are some minor "improvements" to the debug menu, so to speak, but to be honest, I never developed it for public use, so it's always going to be rough.
      I just leave it available, since enough people seem to want it there, but it can break the game logic too easily, trying to integrate it in the game would be a waste of time, for me.

      About the values, there are no particular RAGS limitations, and I could in fact have every stat set by the player input, so any number could be chosen (unless the variable itself was created with limits, which I often do to avoid troubles with the game's logic), I just didn't do it because I developed it as I went along to quickly test the new content, so it's often hacked together. XD

      The game isn't password protected, so if you have RAGS you might even change it yourself, if you like.

      I usually give a basic changelog together with a new release. I won't list the new random events one by one, or anything like that, but I'll mention everything that is new, I believe that will be enough to give you a clue on what's new.

      Hopefully, the walkthrough will finally materialize, there have been several people working on different versions, maybe this time around someone will release a version for the 1.0 update, that might be the best way to check all the content once you finish your normal playthrough.

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