E:ToR ~ Alpha Test thread

[123outerme]

Are you guys going to need testers for the CSE version?

Insofar, the CSE port is just the base game with a compatibility layer tacked on. Escheron won't be properly ported to the CSE will full color support because that would necessitate a complete rewrite.

Whether or not @Geekboy1011 will want to submit a test release is entirely up to him.

That's understandable. Thanks for the quick response, and I look forward to the game's release

[pimathbrainiac]

I have a few cents to put in!

(don't worry; I turned noclip off after taking this )

1) There are some overworld chests that won't open here:


2) The encounter rate is a little high in general. I'm getting encounters about every 5 to 15 steps, with the distribution closer to 5 than 15.

3) The dreadnaught confuses me in the balance of scripted and random encounters. The frequency of scripted encounters, in my opinion, would dictate there be fewer, if any, random encounters. I once went from a scripted encounter, took a single step, and ran in to a random one.

4) The item limit. I use a few potions, and can only buy up to a certain number back so I can have a total number of items combined. I know it's nitpickey, but it feels arbitrary. I don't know how your item data is stored, though, so it might be necessary.

5) I get weird encounter text when I step on this skull. Debug thing, maybe?


That's all I had time to do this weekend (due to a few unforseen events). I'll get more to you soon.

[calcdude84se]

And I'm finally getting back to y'all again. Sorry about the delay; the end of the semester's been busy.
I've not tested a newer revision than 428 yet, so hopefully none of this is out of date, but I will start getting around to it after I post this.

Do you want the player to appear directly on top of the warp? Since you can enter some areas from multiple directions, I can't place the character one tile away from whatever direction they entered from. IMO, I just didn't think placing the player directly on top of the warp felt right.

I'm mainly interested in it being consistent, e.g. always in the same direction. I can see placing the player on top of the warp feeling weird.
On that note, it would be nice if exiting the airship didn't leave you on top of it, but doing so in a consistent direction is only feasible if the maps are set up right because you can land lots of places; off the top of my head I don't know if they are.

This is intentional. The arrow indicates a thought / sentence that exceeds the length of the window. When a thought / sentence is completed, any subsequent dialogs spawn new windows instead of being directed by arrows.

I hope that explanation made sense.

That makes sense. In that case, I might appreciate an indication when the entire dialog is done.
More importantly, I've been a bit annoyed when skimming through the dialogs and pressing [2ND] one too many times means reading through the entire thing again.

Do you have any thoughts on the game's aesthetics? e.g. World size, dungeon layouts, etc. Map designs are subject to change as well.

I have yet to have a strong opinion on this.
My initial opinion was that it all seemed good.  None of the levels are too small, I feel, and the largest ones are more difficult to get one's bearings in but it's not unmanageable. I like the variability.
I'll try to focus more on it in the future.

2. Treasure chest behavior is by design, though everyone else on the dev team is against me on this so... yeah. I'll fix it. On TODO list.

Alternatively, it would be cool if it opened and then closed again.

WONTFIX:
 Exit location to on top of airship autoboards airship. This behavior is critical for Asnoth and Arcanian Summit exit.

I'm actually fine with autoboarding, but it would be nice if exiting the ship onto the airship did this as well.

[123outerme]

Just a few things that I've noticed in the most recent revision, revision 220+ (as noted in the Y= information):
*It seems that running the app, then quitting with ON (which is as far as I can tell the only way to exit the app) leaves about 6000 bytes taken away from RAM, as seen here:

This means that if you run the game once, to run it again you must clear RAM. There are no items in the "Memory Management: 1. All" menu.

*Just a really small nitpicky thing, but you forgot a space in between "bytes" and "are". Also, there seem to be 3 spaces between "to" and "run". So it seems to be formatted to display correctly for monochrome screens. Like I said, a really small nitpicky thing that you probably already know about.


Aside from all those things, it looks pretty solidly built! I have yet to go through and do more grindy testing, but that's what I noticed when I was first trying it out.

[Geekboy1011]

For most of those...uhh idk i have to look at the first one. The second one is because its the same info as used on the b/w one and not formatted. It is literately the same code. So the formatting is off.

[Escheron]

1) There are some overworld chests that won't open here:

Those are generic chests found in the debug room, which is the map you initially spawn in. They're not supposed to be filled, or they'll be filled at a later time when Iambian or Geekboy1011 decides to put something in them. For the time being, they're just placeholders.

2) The encounter rate is a little high in general. I'm getting encounters about every 5 to 15 steps, with the distribution closer to 5 than 15.

We're working on balancing that. I feel the encounter rate in the Underdeep is especially too high.

3) The dreadnaught confuses me in the balance of scripted and random encounters. The frequency of scripted encounters, in my opinion, would dictate there be fewer, if any, random encounters. I once went from a scripted encounter, took a single step, and ran in to a random one.

The scripted encounters shouldn't seem confusing, since you actually have to walk up to the guards and speak to them to initiate a battle.

Regardless, the Dreadnought is a late-game dungeon, so it's naturally more of a pain in the ass to navigate.

4) The item limit. I use a few potions, and can only buy up to a certain number back so I can have a total number of items combined. I know it's nitpickey, but it feels arbitrary. I don't know how your item data is stored, though, so it might be necessary.

Intentional design choice, even though it is rather arbitrary. We're going for the look and feel of retro console RPGs, including some of the limitations they imposed on players.

To be fair though, 32 items max is pretty flexible, given the amount of content in the game.

5) I get weird encounter text when I step on this skull. Debug thing, maybe?

Intentional. It's a forced encounter tile, similar to those you'd find in the original Final Fantasy. There are a few other instances of this found in the game.

[pimathbrainiac]

3) The dreadnaught confuses me in the balance of scripted and random encounters. The frequency of scripted encounters, in my opinion, would dictate there be fewer, if any, random encounters. I once went from a scripted encounter, took a single step, and ran in to a random one.

The scripted encounters shouldn't seem confusing, since you actually have to walk up to the guards and speak to them to initiate a battle.

Regardless, the Dreadnought is a late-game dungeon, so it's naturally more of a pain in the ass to navigate.

It's not the scripted encounters that seem confusing, just the rate of random encounters in relation to the number of scripted encounters. Regardless, if that's a design choice, it is your all's choice.

[pimathbrainiac]

A little map design thing: I use the airship to get to the cave entrance and end up in the dwarves area after going through the cave. I then would have to go through the rather expansive cave to get back to the airship. I suggest a warp to the cave entrance from the dwarves town or the shipyard, unless you wish for some extra grinding

EDIT: also most of the cave-like dungeons seem a bit cramped with the paths to walk. I kept running into things when I was going through them. Iambian says this was something about getting lost, so might I suggest some sort of map that gets filled out as you discovers stuff similar to the Zelda games?

[123outerme]

Has there been a new build released for testing yet? I don't think so based on the distribution website, but I can't really tell.