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ItsyRealm 2.2.5
Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

Please someone play it. :(

Hey all, I released ItsyRealm 2.2.5 0.2.5. This version includes a brand new tutorial that greatly improves directing the player.

Looking for feedback. Most importantly:

1. Did you get stuck anywhere?
2. At any point did you have questions you wished were answered sooner?
3. Was it fun?

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Download Win64 build here!

Thanks!

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

RmBeer2
Member #16,660
April 2017
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it's look amazing!

although I only use linux and without any emulator.

I already knew him before the game, but I see that you are constantly updating him. :D

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relpatseht
Member #5,034
September 2004
avatar

Fantastic work. I loved the art style and it seems to have reasonable depth.

I felt like everything was well explained, but a more "show" approach instead of "tell" would have been preferred.

I'm not sure why the attack hotbar isn't mapped to the keyboard. In real time combat, it's annoying to have to move the mouse up to the top of the screen constantly.

A smarter camera would be nice. Sometimes the foreground gets in the way. Being able to control the camera is nice, but when I'm just moving around, I'd like it to be smarter.

I really want to be able to walk with the keyboard. The pacing of the game is slow enough that click to move doesn't feel as nice.

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

Fantastic work. I loved the art style and it seems to have reasonable depth.

Thank you so much! :)

Quote:

I felt like everything was well explained, but a more "show" approach instead of "tell" would have been preferred.

Thank you, I also agree. I've been doing user interviews on this in real-life to try and figure out how without compromising on usability.

Quote:

I'm not sure why the attack hotbar isn't mapped to the keyboard. In real time combat, it's annoying to have to move the mouse up to the top of the screen constantly.

This is a high priority. I'm going to allow binding a custom key to the slot, and default the first 10 slots 1, 2, 3, ..., 0.

Quote:

A smarter camera would be nice. Sometimes the foreground gets in the way. Being able to control the camera is nice, but when I'm just moving around, I'd like it to be smarter.

I agree, the camera is really rudimentary at the moment. I plan on doing a 'shadow' for actors and items to help with obstructions for now

Quote:

I really want to be able to walk with the keyboard. The pacing of the game is slow enough that click to move doesn't feel as nice.

If the player moved a lot faster, would this alleviate the problem? I've gotten a lot of feedback about moving with keyboard so I plan on trialing a few ideas (faster player movement & keyboard controls, mostly, haha).

...

What do you think of the new craft window?

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It shows all possible actions that can be performed, disabling actions that cannot. Plus they're broken into categories and sorted more sensibly now (by 'complexity' based on level requirements and a few other attributes).

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
avatar

Finally got a chance to try this. I went through the tutorial, got killed by a nymph in the forest. When I was fighting the nymph, I couldn't figure out how to disengage combat, so I couldn't run away. Then I killed the giant squid after 3 tries, and was happy to be able to sell the spare cannonballs. It was hard to see where the leaks were, and rotating the camera didn't help much. Now I got into the mines, and found a small exploit: if your inventory is full, and you start crafting, you'll get free experience without using up your flakes.

I wouldn't say I was having fun, but it was intriguing. I thought the crafting was nice. I thought the text descriptions and dialog were moderately funny. The combat was kind of anemic, or at least I didn't really appreciate its depth: I just clicked on cows/chickens/skeletons and waited for the progress bar to stop. I feel like it'd be funner if you had something to do while in combat, like dodging attacks, or something along those lines. It feels like a MMO without any of the itemization that is customary in the genre.

I liked the character customization.

It's probably too early to polish things, but a few things that irked me: it was too easy to skip character customization, the 'Confirm' button should be a 'Next'.

The tutorial has the 'Next' button that just loops through the screens endlessly, it should change to 'Done' or something.

The tutorial on the ship has this exciting music while nothing's happening because you're doing a tutorial, it got really grating: I think the music should reflect the level of action on the screen. Speaking of which, I don't understand how I went from a pirate ship, to the haunted manse and then to a tower, that was pretty jarring. I didn't fully grasp how I could carry things from the dreamworld(?) into the real world.

All that said, I'm pretty impressed by the amount of content. The graphic style is great. I think it has potential.

"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow."-Ecclesiastes 1:18
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

SiegeLord said:

Finally got a chance to try this.

Thank you! :)

Quote:

I went through the tutorial, got killed by a nymph in the forest. When I was fighting the nymph, I couldn't figure out how to disengage combat, so I couldn't run away.

There's a button on the combat status HUD that lets you disengage from combat:

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I don't explain that anywhere, not sure how to. Will take some thinking.

Quote:

The combat was kind of anemic, or at least I didn't really appreciate its depth

Trash mobs don't require much complexity to fight, unfortunately. Powers can be used to help speed up combat (for example, starting with backstab if you're using melee is a solid strat). The guardians of the Ancient Driftwood, Rat King, New-Born Cthulhuian Parasites, and secret final boss fight all require strategy otherwise you're gonna die or use too much food.

Quote:

It's probably too early to polish things, but a few things that irked me: it was too easy to skip character customization, the 'Confirm' button should be a 'Next'.

I agree. I'll change that to a "Next" button.

Quote:

The tutorial has the 'Next' button that just loops through the screens endlessly, it should change to 'Done' or something.

I'm not sure I follow; can you explain a bit more? Is it the dialogue with Hans or something else?

Quote:

The tutorial on the ship has this exciting music while nothing's happening because you're doing a tutorial, it got really grating: I think the music should reflect the level of action on the screen.

I'll have the exciting music start when the dialogue begins; would that be better?

Quote:

Speaking of which, I don't understand how I went from a pirate ship, to the haunted manse and then to a tower, that was pretty jarring. I didn't fully grasp how I could carry things from the dreamworld(?) into the real world.

Spoilers for NYI mid-game content:

The dream takes place in Azathoth, a shadowy, dreamy alternate reality of the Realm. The Old Ones (gods like Yendor and Prisium) and their champions (like Cthulhu) have reality warping powers, including splitting timelines. When a timeline is split, your body is sleeping in the Realm and your alternate self is in Azathoth. When you manage to wake up (no small feat--there is only one other person who managed this, Rin the Heathen), the timelines correct themselves by converging. This is why you keep the stuff from Azathoth.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
avatar

Wonderful !
Let's hope I'll have some time to play with it !

"Code is like shit - it only smells if it is not yours"
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Mark Oates
Member #1,146
March 2001
avatar

Oh hey I can actually play this now that I have a Windows machine! :D I'll play it when I get home from work today. :)

Does it have a joystick interface? Is it just mouse/keyboard? Can I plug it in and play it on my TV while lounging on my couch?

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SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
avatar

Oh hey I can actually play this now that I have a Windows machine!

Oh yeah, this was an interesting point. This game is written in C# or something, so presumably you could get it to run via mono, but I was not successful.

I'll have the exciting music start when the dialogue begins; would that be better?

I think so.

Quote:

I don't explain that anywhere, not sure how to. Will take some thinking.

Some games will do a callout for a feature if they think you need it. E.g. if your health is too low, you could point this out.

Also, I realized I didn't talk about the tutorial. I think I liked it! I got lost a few times, asked the butler and it all worked out! The only time I got confused was why my fish turned out burned... eventually it occurred to me to try to get another one, but I was a tad confused about what I did wrong.

"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow."-Ecclesiastes 1:18
[SiegeLord's Abode][Codes]:[DAllegro5]:[RustAllegro]

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

SiegeLord said:

Oh yeah, this was an interesting point. This game is written in C# or something, so presumably you could get it to run via mono, but I was not successful.

The launcher is written in C#, which then downloads the game for the platform the launcher was built to target. The only launcher is Win64, so the only package is Win64 :p.

The game uses a custom fork of LOVE (cross platform C++/Lua game framework/engine) with additional native libs (BMASHINA for behavior trees/AI, Discworld for the GameDB, nbunny that offloads some computations for optimizations, and an analytics lib I developed called Phantom). All those libs are super portable, I just need to set up a Linux build environment, which is a TODO.

I plan to port to FreeBSD, Linux, and Win32 when I add the game to Steam. So that's 6 months away at a minimum.

Quote:

Also, I realized I didn't talk about the tutorial. I think I liked it! I got lost a few times, asked the butler and it all worked out! The only time I got confused was why my fish turned out burned... eventually it occurred to me to try to get another one, but I was a tad confused about what I did wrong.

Thank you, I'll update the dialogue for Elizabeth to say "Why don't you try again?". I think that should clarify things.

Quote:

Some games will do a callout for a feature if they think you need it. E.g. if your health is too low, you could point this out.

Good idea! I'll have a UI hint pop up when you drop to half health for the first time.

Does it have a joystick interface? Is it just mouse/keyboard? Can I plug it in and play it on my TV while lounging on my couch?

Not yet. Currently, yes. Probably not*.

*: You can add a settings.cfg to %APPDATA%/ItsyRealm that follows this format:

{
  width = 1920,
  height = 1080,
  fullscreen = true
}

but the UI will probably be too small if you're above 1080p. Interface scaling and a settings screen is a TODO.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Mark Oates
Member #1,146
March 2001
avatar

K, I got to play a little bit on my laptop yesterday. I wrote a lot of notes and didn't get very far, but it's enough to write at least an initial impression post. This is mostly going to be a notes dump:

## Install

  • Haven't used Windows in a while, but the installer, with all the permission screens. I'm not sure if much can be improved there, but I'd like to be able to download the program and just run it, or have a very minimal, 1-screen install window with options. What installer are you using?

## First Open

  • I first reached over to the fullscreen window toggle to get a fullscreen experience, but it was disabled so ended up playing in windowed mode.

  • The initial impression was positive, I liked the graphic style and the presentation looked fun. (with some caveats on color and ui I can get to.)

  • I was confused by the initial title screen music. The color palette of the graphics communicates a playful upbeat game, but the music seems like Witcher or a dark RPG and I wasn't sure quite what to feel aesthetically.

  • Level loading / room changing was very disorienting and was laggy. An optimization on that with a transition effect (fade out/fade in or whatever) would be helpful on that.

  • I liked being able to customize my character, that was fun :)

  • Music on the character config screen was too intense. I would separate the character creation steps entirely from when the gameplay begins.

## UI

  • Graphics on the UI take up a lot of the space not just visually, but a lot of colors are used and it over-saturates and overpowers the rest of the screen. A counter-example might be Breath of the Wild, or iPhone's UIs which has minimal colors for icons. I would use one, maybe two colors max on each of the icons (maybe even use the same colors for each), and make the unselected icon more muted, and the selected icon more distinct.

  • I found myself wanting more space and padding in and around the UI elements in general. The whole game takes place in the world view, the dialog box being flush to the top and edges seems to feel like a gameplay "mode" change when it appears. My impression was if more margins/padding could be around the edges, it would help retain the feeling that it's a dialog that's being placed over the normal world view and not a mode change.

  • I found myself wanting to click on the dialog box itself to advance the message, rather than having to point to the continue button.

  • I don't have middle mouse button on my trackpad, and was not able to rotate the camera. Or, if I did, I missed out on that entirely. I actually enjoyed the camera constraints, but am not sure how it might be different with more camera control.

  • Some of the tabs were not clear as tabs, and it might be good to have a more clear visual separation for selected/unselected tab, and make the tabs themselves more horizontal so their use is clearer.

## Story

  • I liked how I was introduced into a "conflicting" situation, which made me feel propelled into the story, but was kinda confused how/where I was supposed to proceed. A lot of initial information was loaded into my brain up-front with all the tutorials and I would prefer to be able to jump into something simple first and get some context on what, even the basics are before learning more. After all the tutorials, I actually didn't know what to do for the first 1-2 minutes I was "free", I thought it was more like a battle mode in Final Fantasy and didn't realize I could walk around.

There was some other stuff, but that's enough for now I have to run. I'll go back tonight and will try the fullscreen and a wifi mouse/keyboard with a middle mouse button :)

I think it really has a lot of potential, like SiegeLord said. I really liked the buddy that follows you around, and was super thrilled when I found the chest and could finally put 2 and 2 together to start mining some materials.

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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

Thank you for the feedback!

I was confused by the initial title screen music. The color palette of the graphics communicates a playful upbeat game, but the music seems like Witcher or a dark RPG and I wasn't sure quite what to feel aesthetically.

I'm going to contract out music. Right now I'm using royalty free stuff. The title screen's music is the Isabelle Island area music which is slightly somber.

Quote:

Level loading / room changing was very disorienting and was laggy. An optimization on that with a transition effect (fade out/fade in or whatever) would be helpful on that.

Yeah I'm planning something for that. Not sure how to handle it nicely at this moment because the game is meant to be networked EVENTUALLY... I can't have the client notify the server it's done loading (people would cheat), but the level loading isn't very pretty at the moment.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

You weren't ignored. I'm a single developer making a game in the scope of F2P RuneScape era 2004, it's a point-and-click RPG and the input mechanism was a core decision early on in the development cycle. Changing it two years later would literally affect every NPC in the game as well as the player.

It's a big lift for one person.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

MikiZX
Member #17,092
June 2019

I did try your game as well though not much I can help as I did not manage to get 'into it'. Possibly just because it is not a type of game that I can enjoy (I don't recall ever playing a click to move, crafting things, text-to-read RPG) or possibly because of other things (like maybe visual clarity, lack of keyboard controls). Also, what Mark mentions about a single file to download, install and run would be a big plus in my mind. I don't know how much the statistics you collect are helping you in your game design?
I actually only got to the second maze and did not have much interest to continue as for me this kind of game just does not work - so as I said, not much of help for you - sorry about that.
How are your rooms generated - are they pre-modelled or buit at runtime?

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

You weren't ignored. I'm a single developer making a game in the scope of F2P RuneScape era 2004, it's a point-and-click RPG and the input mechanism was a core decision early on in the development cycle.
>>> You said you weren't going to change it, or your mind, and so I lost interest. :/

Changing it two years later would literally affect every NPC in the game as well as the player.
>>> Yeah, codependencies can be a pain. :/

It's a big lift for one person.
>>> No, really it's not.

I assume you have enough sense to modularize your code. Given that, it should be a simple change to add in an 8BPS pathfinding check. Not hard. For key based movement, you could cast a ray in the direction of movement.

All I sense here is "I don't want it, so no."

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

here's the code if it's so easy do it yourself

https://github.com/aaronbolyard/itsyscape/blob/master/itsyscape/ItsyScape/Peep/Cortexes/MoveToTileCortex.lua

https://github.com/aaronbolyard/itsyscape/blob/master/itsyscape/ItsyScape/Peep/Cortexes/MovementCortex.lua

my game is open source after all!

Oh, you won't, because you're just entitled. You think I should divert MY resources to solve YOUR problem as if I want YOU specifically to be a player so badly. But here's the thing, you've only been an asshole to me so I don't care. I'm not going to have you derail my thread so I'm done talking to you.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

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o m g :o

tl;dr: keyboard controls in debug mode. You can disable the debug HUD by pressing F1. Other function keys do different things (disable rendering UI, etc).

Also you can pickpocket Isabelle in debug mode. Wonder what that means. ???

edit: You need debug mode because it's buggy. For example, if you try and interact with an object that doesn't have any actions the game crashes, haha.

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

I'm working on the Sailing skill.

It lets you navigate the Five Seas. You'll need to recruit a captain and crew, buy a boat, and then you can sail around the ocean and get into all kinds of shenanigans.

I have a Github project on it with the overview of things I have to do: https://github.com/aaronbolyard/itsyscape/projects/1

Here's the port I'm working on:

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This will probably take a while but will be worth it, in my opinion. Sailing was a joke skill in RuneScape (never actually implemented), but it's really important to the story of my game. After all, how are you supposed to encounter Cthulhu if not by crashing your frigging boat into his head?

...

OK, I got more done.

Successfully load the player's boat (forgot to add a figurehead, oh well):

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And here's the Rumbridge Seafarer Guild Master, Robert:

{"name":"612321","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/5\/059a08099a6202bd6b78cdb1ac2e7d1c.png","w":1282,"h":752,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/5\/059a08099a6202bd6b78cdb1ac2e7d1c"}612321

(You'll be able to buy a ship and ship accessories from him.)

Lastly, basic things you can unlock with sailing so far:

{"name":"612322","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/3\/e3b297a9b7a06acf039464470f8c3c33.png","w":665,"h":384,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/3\/e3b297a9b7a06acf039464470f8c3c33"}612322

---
ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

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