@repulsa: Cat already said that she'll make the starting village spawn-free, so that should be covered in the next update after the current one. Which also means that yes, the update with our quests in is on Testflight. Ready to roll
The next version will have clearer directions -- npc's chat, hints, whatever I can think of to help you with the main quests and there will be more hints on what levels of what skill might be necessary to get a response. I am more and more convinced this is important, even though older expansions and I think the base game are more vague. So will work on that. Many have already been added but because of the need for Apple approval of TestFlight builds there's a delay in getting them to you. The find gem part to give to trees is already changed to giving the trees water so it's easier and I added more instructions but you won't have that file for another week because of review necessity. Nullzone, as you know I'm not just making Quest expansions but making new games with Unity,,so I very much appreciate your fresh outlook and comments on gameplay. Some things I can't change in the Quest but your comments are very helpful generally. The next version will be a lot easier to make your way through. I removed tough monsters from the spawn area. Will put up a list of changes to the newest version as soon as I go through now and cover your new comments, including increasing gold. Hang on, Repulsa, next version should be more satisfying. I can't draw a map of where the goddess is or where the villages are but can have someone give better directions.
Nullzone, If a quest giver doesn't say anything helpful, more hints should definitely be added to his/her/its dialogues. Do you mean that many don't repeat what they asked you and just say "good luck, hope you don't get eaten on the way"? Indeed, more dialogues should be like A Confused Kender's and others' who repeat what they want you to do... See if your quest list helps, and if you get stuck because of a lack of direction somewhere, tell Cat to fix it Repulsa: I had easier time playing as a Derth as those lightning strikes and fireballs don't fry them so fast. You can avoid some traps in this expansion if your Disarm skill is level 40 or higher. There are many useful items in the guild, so explore it thoroughly asap. It's very close to where you start, so you don't need to fight to get there.
Hehe, that brings back fond memories of getting completely stomped in The Quest. - or - How I learned to keep my ass in town and actually talk to everybody before running around like an idiot... It's a tough choice - IMHO, I'd rather the freedom be there. I really hate the hand-holding so many newer games resort to, but sometimes that's what people need. Good on you guys for beta-testing this one, I wish I had the time!
@Cat: oh oops: when you start a new game with the prebuilt char, the new build crashes right after the first loading bar completes, before you get into the game proper. Starting new game with custom char works fine. And if you ever need any input on your new/Unity games, just holler @DeMenchev: The fisherman's and Old Shaman's intro dialogues are a great example, and actually the one that irked me the most. Fisher: "go find the goddess." Not even a hint that Shaman might give you some clue where she can be found. Shaman: "She's somewhere up north". Well, mind giving me a bit more directions to the Three Sisters? What's with your magic GPS aka Mark spell? Apparently noone I talked to so far has any clue where that place is, which is more than a little odd and doesn't make any sense ingame. If providing an actual map isn't possible, some dialogue should do the trick: <name> rolls out a map on his desk, beckoning you closer. "Look, we are here. Follow the coastline east of the village north for a good day's walk and that should get you to place X. From there, march north and a bit west to get to Y. Be careful not to stray too far, though. We hear bad stories about giants and worse running rampant in the western lands. You know you need to head back east when you see <landmark Z>".
Not sure if this has been reported, but: On the latest build, once i start a new game and use the pregenerated character, it crashes right after the intro text. Works fine when i make my own character. I'm on an iPhone 5s.
@repulsa: What kind of Rasvim do you play? Magic, melee, ranged, mixed? I went heavy on melee with mine, with a bit of magic thrown in to make use of the Undead spells. Guess I'll start another one more focused on magic, I just like flinging spells around too much
I don't really go for ranged weapons I am a spell slinger with a very big bad sword lol I try to balance it out people say it can be hard to play as a rasvim but hey you can eat rotten food and bad water and I there have been quests I have gotten past certain areas guarded by undead BECAUSE I am undead where other races have had to go jump through a bunch of other hoops
@drelbs--wish you had time but the game will be there to play when you do. @Nullzone--I will definitely ask for comments on our next Unity game. @Nullzone and cache cat--just sent an email to Elendil letting him know about the crash and asking him if he needs you to send him anything that would help. @Repulsa and everyone--going through all the dialogues to make sure there's enough help, tips and guidance.
@Cat: I'll send crashlogs tomorrow, easier with a PC than directly from the iPad. Seems SystemConsole stopped working with iOS9, so nothing from there unfortunately. Oh yes, what was Elendil's email address again? @cachecat: just in case you need help with the crashlogs, holler if yes.
Am sending a new file now to Elendil to make the crash fix to so that he can upload a file with all the new changes as well as the crash fix. He'll probably want to look at your crash reports first though. This new version will require a restart. I beefed up the hints in the new file to the extent I could without going through the entire file---because that will take me some days and wanted to get as many new fixes into the file Elendil uses to fix the crash----if you find a place that needs more hint-work, please let me know. I added a lot of hints and changed many dialogues. Will continue to go through myself to look for places that need more hints. I have one big question as you go through---it shouldn't be too easy to kill the Chieftain and clear the fouled well---but do you think the Dark Lady is necessary or should I give her something else to do? You'll see what I mean after you finally talk to the Moon Goddess. Made it easier also to talk to the tree where the Moon Goddess stays at night and beefed up a lot of the quest rewards if you do quests for the Guild members--it seemed to be more realistic than having the poor villagers part with a lot of gold when they're starving. You Guild guys and gals are all wealthy scientists and entrepreneurs and can well shell out gold. : D Here are the other new changes in the new file. New tester Zombilon and his Sennbon Needles added. He has a potion shop in the Guild. New tester Kedens added--gave him an armory in the Guild and put up signs in the Guild about who's where to help you get around. Kedens' Swift Bow added. Some new homemade and buyable potions added, including Unholy Whiskers--having some now. Fewer monsters drop Alkie Berries. Nulzon now spelled with one l on sign in guild. Eelskins and Nulzon's Astrolabe are no longer sellable. But Phredd sells Nulzon's Astrolabe and other important items ios glitches could cause you to lose. He's hidden in Cloud Castle Tower. Largra now casts Nullify, 20% and Dispel has been added to it. Lunar Bolt strengthened. Fay Melanie needs you to have 5 roses now before she gives you her amulet. Quigg the Goblin no longer gives you two human babies. Mine Coal quest description fixed--Balfour only wants 15 pieces of coal. Took out the Moon's Handmaiden in the wood--it's too difficult for players to keep the continuity of the main thread to look all over for the Moon Goddess as many pointed out--Old Shaman now gives you the list of trees and tells you the Moon can be found in the branches of the Elder Trees at the ruin. Put a lot of hints to talk to Old Shaman, including the fisherman's dialogue and in Samena the Magic shop owner's dialogue and Repulsa's dialogue. Moved the Elder Tree right next to the ruin, surrounded it with yellow bushes so it can't be missed. Just stand next to it at night with water. Added more hints to Dran Faircatch. he now gives you a list of towns and some gold. Strengthened gold given in many quests. Quest 4 changed to Find the Spirit--gives better direction about what you're supposed to do. The Housekeeper in Cloud Castle now gives you a hint the Chieftain is vulnerable to the sword Sweet Revenge given by the Witch of Canna. Repulsa gives a heavy hint who you need to talk to. You can now leave Hy-Brasil in the boat. Statues in Largra's temple now give you something. Last two tigers moved to cave to remove high level monsters from surface. You just have to deal with one now--maybe he should be moved to cave also. You can't get into the last tiger tunnel unless you have the Cure Mad Tiger potion. Chiefttain's room made bigger so he can't trap you. Tiger Cave made bigger for the same reason. Cursed items in Goblin Market are more expensive now. Homemade resist magic potion removed from one Goblin Marketeer. SkarFace's quest fixed. You now need the orchid to get the Moonbeams. Repulsa's dialogue fixed--she no longer tells you to stand on the pentagram. When your disarm is high, you can disarm some traps. Some typos fixed. Abyssal Rage spellbook text corrected. Second Repulsa's sword effects lowered to make last one more exciting. SkarFace now correctly sells his Shurikens. NPC monster added to Abyss to tie Hy-Brasil in to the Chieftain and main story. You can talk to Anastasia about the Protection Locket now. Pool by Fairy Bridge no longer gives Dewdrops over again. You get a message about the Cowslip flowers being Cowslip flowers and I put a better hint about what you need to enter Anastasia's home. Old Shaman's moving walls puzzle is now in the Abyss. We're trying to make it harder to get to Largra. Teleporter destinations switched in the Abyss for strategic reasons. Paakalito sells his Drainer now because it's too high power to leave it lying there on a shelf.
Bugs Sorry for recent inactivity, holidays and all. I have played through a good portion, and haven't found many things wrong, accept for the well enemies, which have been changed. I am about to start testing the new version, this afternoon.
Elendil found the reason for the crash-- nothing to do with the game's integrity-- just that we both forgot that if one of us makes a change to the iOS file the other of us has to use that file--it's been so long since we made a Quest expansion. A new game has already been uploaded to TestFlight for Apple's approval. @Gondel-- I think most of us had holiday obligations. You might want to wait for this new file to test your tiger as it works smoothly now. Thanks for your help!
@Cat: I started proofreading - something I really dislike! - a bit today. And barf, is that unfunny on an iPad. So, question: Do you have the dialogues as textfiles? Ideally with markers for screen breaks etc. E.g. I noticed today that one of Nulzon's dialogues is too long, the text just scrolls by because it doesn't fit. Made a screenshot as I didn't have pen&paper to make notes. Didn't have time to transfer it from the iPad & my head to a post here. Even better suggestion: Get a professional, ideally one who has experience with games already, (western) fantasy RPGs a bonus. From the very low prices I know for translators, I assume that proofreaders aren't that expensive anymore either. If you consider that, keep in mind that there is a big difference between proofreading and copy-editing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing). Your writing is pretty good, I think a proofreader "plus", who also checks for inconsistencies like my Hi-Brasil below - or at least marks them when he notices them - is what you'd need. And another I can remembr right off the bat somewhat: You call Hi-Brasil (should be Hy-Briasil, yes?) alternating "fabulous" and "fabled". From context I conclude that "fabled" is the desired word. Can't recall examples who has what, though. And good to hear you two fixed the crash already! Forgot my cable at home, so I couldn't send the crashlogs today another thing off my list, hoorah Sidenote: What you need to prevent problems like the above is a version & source control system, that takes care of this stuff for you, once setup and configured. If you don't have one already and want to consider it, let me know and I can dig up some info and practical tips (we use at least SVN at work, and most likely other systems interesting for you too). Unity offers VCS integration out of the box, by the way http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AssetServer.html
And just got build 102 from Testflight. @Cat: when you say things like "this build" or "next build", could you always add the buildnumber for reference? And we all should do the same, always report a build number when you find a bug, have a suggestion, etc. Takes discipline, and I freely admit I still screw up sometimes even after 5 years of daily practice. But still, a great thing I learned from work. I also recommend to label your pre-release and Testflight builds differently: daily builds would be e.g. 101,102,103. A release candidate (one you send to Apple for putting on the Appstore) would e.g. be RC_102 (built number from main branch included ) . And one that goes to Testflight TF_105.
Hello and Report Hello! (in Japan, you can also say good morning because this comment was posted in the morning in Japan!) I'm called Skarface in cat's forum. However, please call me Shuva or Skarface... which you want to call me. NOTE: I'm now beta testing v19.2beta on iPhone5s and iOS 8.4.1. I saw some bugs when I played as the old character who is played since I started beta testing, but when I started as a new character, I don't see any bugs so far. If I find some bugs, I'll write here or tell Elendil.
@Nullzone---Ii just got the Testflight email. I'm shocked at how fast it was put up! Thanks for letting me know. I will identify the build number from now on when talking about fixes and bugs, etc. It's pretty necessary as you point out. I don't have the dialogues and other texts in textfiles--DeMenchev has been doing a pretty good job of catching typos. Can't afford to hire someone--I only get a small portion of the returns for these expansions--the income gets split up in many ways and I need every penny I make to buy assets from the Unity asset store right now. I understand the problem--it's very hard on the eyes to read from the screen. If you show me where your text goes off the screen, I'll fix it. Or give me the first few lines. Thanks. Elendil handles all the uploading of builds to Testflight. I'll pass along to him what you said about naming them more consistently. I don't think he uses version control. I will ask him about that too. Thanks for the info on Unity version control. That will be useful. The problem was really that we both forgot he makes a small change to the file to prepare it for Apple and he didn't send me the new file. I forgot too so didn't ask for it. So we've been until now, trading files with differences. That won't happen again. Hy-Brasil should be Hy-Brasil. Will look for where it's called Hi-Brasil and where it's called fabled and fabulous, thanks. @Shuva--thanks. If you find bugs write here or write me---not Elendil as he is so busy with so many things and I'm the one who has to fix them. Thanks a lot for your help. Edit- I think Elendil is pretty much stuck with the way the versions are numbered as Apple has their own rules for you to name your versions. I'll check your dialogue, Nullzone, going through the game now.
@Nullzone----I fixed your dialogues so they scroll more smoothly---broke them up into shorter sequences. And now you require the correct Astrolabe to complete your quest. I'll just go iron my hands. . . . .how did I miss that? PC testers missed it too. But I feel culpable. I added some more hints but will put up a list when it's time to upload the next Testflight. Also fixed the wall lines in the guild and added Gondel's name to the pergamen for his section.
