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Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Well, hello there. I'm a newbie, and in such I have undertaken the task of completing a storygame for the upcoming Newbie Contest. For the past week, I've been slaving away at the keyboard as fast as my mush brain allows me, and I have finished the first act of my storygame, and I was hoping I could get considerable feedback.

 

The game is a fantasy-adventure genre game called Eseria. In the first chapter, you control a child whose name and gender you make choose. It is the day you've been waiting for ever since you could remember: Choosing Day. You finally are given the chance to pick a labor that you will apprentice in for the rest of your life...

NOTE:  The game heavily utilizes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript elements to improve gameplay. If there are bugs, something seems off, or something doesn't work, please let me know.

 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially if it's about how to improve the pacing of the game. Thank you in advance!

[Don't worry about the 7 word storygame length. I promise you much, much longer than that. If I'm wrong, then I'll let you play the storygame for free when it comes out.]

Link: http://chooseyourstory.com/story/eseria

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
Well now you've done it, you're going to scare off all the other newbies.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Ah, gotta sabotage the competition somehow ;)

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
Don't worry other newbies, I'll allow a second and third place too or we can make different categories or something. It'll be okay.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Pulling up your story generates a blank first page for me on both Google Chrome and Edge, dunno if it's me, or the storygame.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Hm, that's not good. Do you have javascript disabled, by any chance?

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Just checked, it's enabled. 

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Alright, I'll get down to some detective work and I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

I can only pray that it's fixed, now. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, lol.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
I read through it pretty quickly, I did spot a few typos but I'll make note of them when I go back to read more closely later and go over the pages I missed. Obviously you're going to get high points for polish, just the look of the thing is impressive, but it's also very linear. Seems to be a lot of small CoG style choices involving stats and the like with none of them affecting the overall plot much. There were a couple of places where I thought the narration slipped into a bit too 'modern' sounding language or had too obvious an acknowledgement of the game elements (referring to your highest stats and the like). But both of the friends have well defined personalities (that Nosah is a little punk! lol) and I'm enjoying the bits of lore I'm picking up here and there. The linearity is a bit disappointing, but if there's more puzzles like with the safe that'll add more interactivity, I really enjoyed that part. (The Red Book however was blank and I'm not sure if something was supposed to be there yet, since it didn't have a placeholder message like when opening the safe.) Except for the extra message on one, two of the scrolls had identical content, and I'm not sure if that is intentional either. Other issues: Instead of just adding extra buttons, it look like you overwrote the Save and Quit button. Quit doesn't matter, but there's currently no way to save unless you're using the quicksaves from the extension. Speaking of which: a lot of us use the extension primarily for dark mode. That might be something to consider accounting for with your game which currently is a blinding white. All in all though this is all super impressive and way more than I expected to get out of a newbie comp, lol. e: using Firefox in my case. Glad it's confirmed to still be the superior browser. Checked with Chrome on mobile though and there I had the same problem as Chef did.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Thank you very much for the feedback!

Yeah, I've been struggling alot with the branching of the story, but I'll do my best to begin branching in the second act. I guess I've been influenced by CoG too much without realizing it, lol. I'll be sure to fix these things, though! Also, glad that I'm not the only one who thinks Nosah's a punk. ;)

Ah, I guess I didn't thoroughly check enough to notice a missing page DARN! Do you remember which two scrolls had identical content?

I've been looking into keeping the save and quit button, but for right now, the save function sort of breaks the way I store variables, so that'll be a job for future me. But that's a good mention about the extension. I'll be sure to add in a choice for what style the window will be in.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and write, though!

I'll have to check in what the problem is with the blank screens. For some reason, it works on mine, but I'll have to do some more testing.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
The leather scroll and the scroll with markings. The leather one had the extra message written up top, but otherwise they both showed the same list of translated words.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Ah, I see, that can be confusing. So, after you view the scroll with the markings (aka translations), you'll be able to use it without having to actually go back to that exact page. So, because the leather scroll is in another laanguage, the translations will show up on that page after you discover them. It's confusing though, so I'll make sure to make it more clear!

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
Can you put it back in Sneak Peek? Brad was going to take a look and see if he could figure out the Chrome issue.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Alright, on it! Fair warning, my HTML is horrendous.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Hey, if it works, it works!

...Which it does, for me, on Chrome, so I can't immediately see what might be going wrong.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Yeah, it's strange. It works on Chrome for me but not firefox. It appears the problem is that in some browsers, it's not referencing my external JavaScript file correctly. I just find it odd that the browsers that seem to work vary among users.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

So some browsers are simply not loading the external JS? I'm guessing it's because some people are viewing the site on HTTP and some HTTPS, and some browsers are more aggressive about not loading insecure content on secure pages. Try replacing http with https when referencing the JS file.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Hm, it doesn't look like that was the problem. For me, Chrome worked but Firefox didn't. When I inspected it, it turns out my firefox version was referencing an old version of my JavaScript. So after I cleared my cache, it worked. But I don't know how to translate that over to other users.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

I still recommend you use switch the protocol, because likewise FF wasn't working for me (specifically "Blocked loading mixed active content" in the console), and changing your script's URL to https was what fixed that.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Ah yes, https it is. Thanks for your help, though! Is it working on Firefox for you, now, then?

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Yep! All good over here.

Hopefully it wasn't just a "me" problem.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Awesome, again thanks so much! The funny thing is, you're actually the reason I tried to use JavaScript in the first place, lol, so it's only fitting you're the one with the solution!

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
It's working for me on mobile now, but I think Chef is still having some kind of problem. Possibly it's his excessive dumbness, but we'll see.

Although I did switch Lite mode on in browser settings right as you were making the other changes...if anyone is still having problems with Chrome, is it possible that could be a factor? Like whatever it was might just not have been fully loading before. But I was just trying things at random basically.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

I'm not sure which option I'd prefer...

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

He's getting a 503 from codepen for some reason. So it has to be something on codepen's end, right?

But it's kinda hard to search because you just get a lot of error page mockups instead.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

My "dumbness" is not excessive.  It's just the perfect amount.  Regardless of the issue on my PC, I'm still able to open it up on mobile, so don't fret.  

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

I'm glad I could be of service!

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Kudos, this is a fantastic start. The world-building is amazing, and the characters are distinct enough to be interesting. [I found it very interesting that I could play as an essentially indifferent/backseat type character, and yet end up thrusted into a leadership role.] I really like the font choice and how it just looks a bit more polished than the typical story. I'm looking forward to the next part.

I don't even mind that it doesn't have a great deal of non-stat choices towards the beginning, since it reminds me of text-based adventure games which are more about solving a mystery or puzzle than taking different paths. And once the test starts there certainly seem to be a lot of ways to solve problems. 

On the bookshelf, one of the books I opened was blank - but it wasn't clear if it was just because the page hadn't been written, or because it was supposed to have blank pages.

I didn't notice any bugs, and I use the Brave browser primarily. But I do miss the go back button, and would really like a way to save the game!

The only odd phrase that stuck out to me was the character's comment, after the floor changes, that his "boldness is lower than normal" - I wasn't sure if it was breaking the fourth wall about stats, or just an odd turn of phrase.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Thank you for taking time to play through! I'm glad to hear you liked the game, though, and I'll try to incorporate a lot of puzzles in the story, as it seems to be something people like. I'll have to polish the bookshelf, and in general that entire section, but thank you for letting me know! And I'll be sure to add a save function and try to incorporate the go back button (but as of right now, it the back button allows for some crazy stat exploits, so I'll have to work around that). And, thanks for letting me know about that. I'll do my best to make it better.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
Most people just use the back button on their browser tbh. Easier to access than the actual button on the window. This has the added benefit of reversing any variable changes so it doesn't cause issues as often as the one added by the site.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Oh, that's interesting. The unfortunate thing about that is that I'm not using the variables the site gives me. It's all locally stored in JavaScript. But that's no worry. I can implement a safecheck for exploitation.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
CoG games also don't have a back button, but everyone is aware that the only reason they do that is to more easily hide the fact that none of the choices really change anything, smh my head.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Oh dear, I understand my fault

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
But seriously it would probably be best to leave the browser back button accessible at least until the rest of the game is tested and proofread, having it just makes quickly accessing pages easier for readers trying to be thorough.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

Mine usually pops out the game into a new window, so it's never in the same browser frame and I can't use the browser go-back button. Maybe its because I use Brave, or because I'm not actually that great with computers.

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago
I've never even heard of Brave. Switch to Firefox and stop being weird. A Pixar movie is not a real browser. Is this some strange non-Windows thing?

Eseria [Readers Needed]

3 years ago

I have Windows. Brave is a browser that ad-blocks (if you want) or pays you in crypto-currency if you don't turn off ads that you can either exchange or buy your own ads with or tip the pages you frequent. I find it less annoying than most browsers. and actually less glitchy than Firefox, but it sometimes interacts with pages in odd ways. I have Firefox, too, I just rarely use it.