You Can Never Test Too Much!

Well, there was me thinking I just had the end movie and a major technical aspect to implement, only to be proven wrong when I decided I'd give Chapter One one last play through myself to help give me the incentive to finish it. While it did give me the incentive, it also brought several bugs to light missed by my playtesters. Several was just minor glitches that in all honesty I could have probably ignored, but the perfectionist in me had me writing them down to deal with later (and they have now been dealt with), but one was a surprising game breaker (Again, now dealt with).

One of the more mundane was an issue I was having with the henchman following the player through a transition in the same area. I have a tower with two floors, so it made sense to base them on the same level. By doing so however it seemed to make the henchman not follow the player onto the second floor. Rather strangely, I did not consider it too much of an issue as it was perfecty logical that the henchman would have no desire to go upstairs anyway, but it kept niggling at me that some conversation opportunities were being missed as the henchman was too far away to be included so alternative NPC lines were firing. Not a huge issue, but it did mean that opportunities to improve the relationship with the henchman were being missed. In the end I destroyed the transition point that the toolset had auto placed, and changed it to a floor trigger that teleports both PC and henchman on click. Only problem was, once I realised I'd got it working, I went back to the conversation file and enlarged it some more!

Not only am I glad I chose to test it again for the above reasons, but also because it brought something else to light that a playtester had raised but which I originally chose to ignore. Having tested the game myself many times, I found the combat within to be reasonable. Not too easy, but not what I'd deem as hard, except for a couple of scenes where I felt the reward justified added difficulty. Even these however could be made easier if you took note of your surroundings and used them to your advantage. Ignoring the special scenes however, I was a little surprised to have a playtester complain on the difficulty of a certain section. Rather surprisingly, on this latest run through, I too found it incredibly difficult, and could only conclude that my previous run throughs had been a lot luckier in my characters to hit rolls. Having witnessed it myself, I chose to add an item that should help significantly against the creature type that proved so difficult, although the item can only be gained on completion of a prior mission.

One thing I'm hoping players will notice is the attention to detail in the game. I've gone to great lengths to make sure nothing feels out of place. Looting a closet upstairs in a tavern won't fill your inventory with magical artefacts for example, but a bland item of clothing. Even the item mentioned above made to help combat a particular section has a logical reason for existing, AND a logical reason to be given to the player.

Another quality I'm hoping players will like is the personality of the henchman. His conversation file is by far the largest in the game (currently standing at a word count of 9153, approximately one seventh of the entire modules word count), but opportunities for conversing with him aren't exclusive to him alone. One of the nice things about developing a conversation file is that when it comes to NPC responses you can have the first NPC option of a particular line set to an alternative NPC, in this case my henchman, and if the henchman isn't there to say the line, then the file moves on to the original NPC line you have in place (as long as it is placed as the second option). You don't even have to create code to see if the alternate NPC is present! I've had great fun with this, returning to NPC conversation files I previously considered complete, and inserting extra interactions so that the henchman can take conversations in new directons. As mentioned in a previous post, when the henchman first joins he dislikes the player, and the game keeps track of his opinion, offering different responses depending on his like/dislike of the player. Including such options even in the most mundane of places, and consequently offering additional opportunities to improve or worsen the relationship has, in my opinion, made the game a much richer role play experience.