Fame Feedback Thread

[TheCreator]

Hmm, so why Fame?  I can't see a link to the game's content at the moment, unless you're planning for something relating to the quests affecting player reputation.

Thanks for the post!

I wanted a short name that could be used as a backronym and "Fame" was the first thing that came into my mind. Every RPG is about gaining some fame, but most games fail to emphasize the fact. In one of the cities in Fallout 2 you could watch a monument raised to commemorate the player character from Fallout 1 and that's the only exception I can think of at the moment. Perhaps my game will become another one, but that's not my primary goal .

I was disappointed playing it that I couldn't use the mouse to move around and interact with things.  When menus and such require mouse use it seems jarring the the game doesn't support it.

Controlling the character with mouse is already implemented and will be available in the next version. I'm also thinking of actions other than simple movement that could be performed with mouse, like opening doors.

I agree on the previous comment of tooltips being too delayed.  They should be constantly visible when the mouse is over the relevant area.

That's another thing already improved, but thanks for confirming that it was a good idea .

Combat feels a bit bland I must say.  I'm bumping into things and killing them, and not paying attention to whether I hit or miss or how my health is doing.  It's just not engaging.  Perhaps I'm spoiled by ToME4's many combat abilities.  Would be nice to see more variety to attacks, like every nth turn I do a sweeping attack that hits all enemies around.  That would give a sense of momentum to battle, and keep the player a bit more keyed in to the turn by turn action.

Yes, it's a huge area for improvements. Myself I never liked combat to be complicated, but I know there are people who do like it. I'll try to find the golden mean.

In character creation it would be nice to have certain archetypes one could choose so you don't have to fiddle with the stat allocation on every restart.  Saving individual profiles would be handy too.

I once planned to have that as a testing feature, but sure, it could be made available for players too .

The widely expansed map is great, but some sort of overview map could be handy (or does this exist already?)

Yes, apart from the automap in the corner you can display the world map by pressing M. It's not polished yet and it shows the (temporary) emptiness of the world, but it does exist .

Some of the icons are a bit unclear or misleading.  The short sword and long knife should be shorter, for instance.  In general I'm not a big fan of the tiles - makes me long for crisp and clear ASCII 

That's one of several reasons why I sometimes regret the decision of using tiles. They take time to create and in the end everybody will complain about them anyway. I have been planning an ASCII mode, but that might be a lot of work at this point. All of the (sometimes quite sophisticated) user interface would need to be redesigned completely in order to fit in the ASCII world. All the windows like inventory would need to be implemented separately for the ASCII mode. But I'm not giving up yet .

And I will fix that circle thing soon .

[Ancient]

I had another go at now aptly named Fame. Again I found bugs, but merely two. Only one caused a crash.

When in trade mode you can right click on your gold. It will go to trading space. Right click again and its back in your valuables' sack. However, on the back trip it occupies lower and lower spaces in said display. Overdo it and it wants a space not in the sack triggering a crash. You might need to possess a gem for that to happen.

The cold is devastating. When you lose your last health point to the terrible cold while searching the "Waiting..." window does not disappear. You go back to main menu but it stays.

The inventory screen with fast picking up is great. I would like Fame to have eat mode activation on 'E' while in inventory. Also, do not close the window after eating finishes unless you get attacked or interrupted some other way. It is quite common for me to want eat several corpses in a row. Constantly mousing between eat and corpse is tiring. Fortunately inventory can be opened by 'I' so this is not as tiring.

The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface. It was so bad that I had to hunt for monsters to sell their corpses to have money for curing. Which led me to discover a way to make cash fast ...

There is very easy method to make tons of money quickly. No, not a bug this time. :-) You buy all vials from the alchemist and fill them with blood. Then sell them and buy more empty vials. One trip nets one slightly over one thousand gold pieces. Apparently you do not need to be a vampire to fill vials.

Your sig could use updating too.

[TheCreator]

Many thanks for the feedback!

Again I found bugs, but merely two. Only one caused a crash.

I'll take a look at both of them:).

The inventory screen with fast picking up is great. I would like Fame to have eat mode activation on 'E' while in inventory. Also, do not close the window after eating finishes unless you get attacked or interrupted some other way. It is quite common for me to want eat several corpses in a row. Constantly mousing between eat and corpse is tiring. Fortunately inventory can be opened by 'I' so this is not as tiring.

Event more fortunately, this would be easy to implement. Having read your post I realized I had similar feelings about eating in Fame, but somehow I never paid much attention. This is why it is so good to have some feedback from others .

The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface.

This is quite strange, because the probability of getting cold is so low that it should occur about once a year, assuming that you have an average Vitality level (10). And normal distribution for the random numbers generator. Fame still uses std::rand and so far this has been good enough. Perhaps this is an important reason for a change .

There is very easy method to make tons of money quickly. No, not a bug this time. :-) You buy all vials from the alchemist and fill them with blood. Then sell them and buy more empty vials. One trip nets one slightly over one thousand gold pieces. Apparently you do not need to be a vampire to fill vials.

Yes, in the real world you don't need to be a vampire, either . It's enough to have a sharp item and a container. The only bad thing about this is that there's actually no economy in the game. The price should drop very quickly as you fill the market with... well, blood.

[Psiweapon]

Ok I don't have much room to talk here since I haven't tried the game... more homework to do!

But anyways, just a generic musing. As time passes I am more and more of the opinion that there should be some room left to exploits in any game - as long as they don't become a dominant / mandatory strategy.

[Ancient]

The cold strikes way too often in this version. It looks like you are guaranteed to get it no matter what you do. The only cure seems to be visiting the village priest. It limits trips to depths of dungeon. I only reached level three before falling ill and had to retreat back to surface.

This is quite strange, because the probability of getting cold is so low that it should occur about once a year, assuming that you have an average Vitality level (10). And normal distribution for the random numbers generator. Fame still uses std::rand and so far this has been good enough. Perhaps this is an important reason for a change .

I had vitality 14. Got an increase after setting it to 13 at the start. Probably it is important to note I was trying find traps skill twice on each door. This burned food fast but also passed time at an increased rate, perhaps triggering many cold checks. I was eating dozens of rats per day to keep me fed. Disarming takes even more time and food.

[TheCreator]

When in trade mode you can right click on your gold. It will go to trading space. Right click again and its back in your valuables' sack. However, on the back trip it occupies lower and lower spaces in said display. Overdo it and it wants a space not in the sack triggering a crash. You might need to possess a gem for that to happen.

You didn't need a gem. Just passing the gold back and forth caused this strange behavior and eventually led to a crash. Once again a bug in the trading system. It's a creepy piece of code, you know. I'm afraid to open it, so it rarely sees the light of day.

I had vitality 14. Got an increase after setting it to 13 at the start. Probably it is important to note I was trying find traps skill twice on each door. This burned food fast but also passed time at an increased rate, perhaps triggering many cold checks. I was eating dozens of rats per day to keep me fed. Disarming takes even more time and food.

Yes, this feature definitively could use some tweaking. It gets much better when you reach level 100 for the skill 'Traps', but it's currently nearly impossible to advance the skill to that level because it's so tedious.

But anyways, just a generic musing. As time passes I am more and more of the opinion that there should be some room left to exploits in any game - as long as they don't become a dominant / mandatory strategy.

I agree with you. Exploits, in general, are fun. They only become a problem when they are too obvious or trivial. The blood exploit discovered here by Ancient is quite easy to take advantage from, but it's not so obvious. I think I'll keep it around for some time.

[Z]

Pressing "?" for help does not work for me.

The file "manual.pdf" starts with things which are not important for a new player (like command line options).

Maybe this is just me, but it feels strange that "-" is on the right side when selecting stats.

The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.

What if I want to read a scroll when standing at the sign?

Why does the smith give a "leather cap" after he has promised a helm?

The quest window does not remind me where to find the miners camp. Also the person who gave the quest just expects it to be done.

The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.

[TheCreator]

The file "manual.pdf" starts with things which are not important for a new player (like command line options).

Good point, I'll rearrange chapters in the manual.

Maybe this is just me, but it feels strange that "-" is on the right side when selecting stats.

It's just you . I know that for a mathematician this layout could be pretty weird, but not everyone is a mathematician. Similar problem (but slightly more serious) involves the buttons Cancel and OK. In the Linux world Cancel would be on the left, while in the Windows world it's the opposite. In addition, some Linux users (like, for example, me) would prefer the Cancel to be on the right. To satisfy everyone I would have to provide customizable button layouts... But is it worth it?

What if I want to read a scroll when standing at the sign?

A very good question that never came to my mind until now . Well, you can enter your inventory and go into reading mode using one the tiny buttons there. However, there should be some kind of choice in the main view as well, I guess.

Why does the smith give a "leather cap" after he has promised a helm?

Because I didn't know the proper English term for that . I wanted the NPC to say something more general than "leather cap". It's always good to achieve some dose of surprise when it comes to the reward, although in this case it is rather a disappointment, which is definitively not what I wanted .

The quest window does not remind me where to find the miners camp. Also the person who gave the quest just expects it to be done.

I don't think the quest log should provide any information about the quest target location. That would be a spoiler in most cases. It's not a big challenge if you know from the beginning where exactly to go. Of course, observant players are always rewarded, so that they might either remember the location from the NPC or notice that the location is quite clearly marked on the world map.

The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.

The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.

No, they don't. [That's a clever technique I used in one of my previous jobs to retrieve more information about bugs. Some people will never learn that a bug report is almost worthless (if not harmful) without details.]

[Z]

The game crashes when fighting in the dungeon.

The quest given by the sleepless lady crashes the game.

No, they don't. [That's a clever technique I used in one of my previous jobs to retrieve more information about bugs. Some people will never learn that a bug report is almost worthless (if not harmful) without details.]

OK, the sleepless lady problem seems to always happen (even on a fresh character who simply goes to her dungeon), and it gives the following error message:

Details: Location not found: yv_base
Source file: world.cpp
Function: ReadyLoc
Line: 371

For the other bug, it was like my first fight, and it crashed. Then I tried again, and it crashed again after some fights. Today I have managed to complete two levels, but then got a "Segmentation fault" (not while fighting). Hard to give any details.

Running on 64-bit Ubuntu.

[TheCreator]

It seems to me like it's an issue with a 64-bit system as none of the failures ever occured on my machine. I've also received several other mysterious crash reports I could not reproduce. Unfortunately, I don't have a 64-bit platform available for testing. Hopefully I will be able to fix the problem with some help from my friends. Anyway, thanks for the posts!

[TheCreator]

I have just released new version.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/untitled-rpg/files/

Please drop some comments if you find time.

[JollyRoger]

Doubtlessly interesting, yet a bit frustrating game.
Made few runs around town and talked to citizens.
Is it possible to activate talk menu on bumping friendly creature, but not asking "attack yes/no".
And, can you make preselected variant for this menu, like: "attack yes/NO" and activate NO, when player press any key, except y?

[TheCreator]

Is it possible to activate talk menu on bumping friendly creature, but not asking "attack yes/no".
And, can you make preselected variant for this menu, like: "attack yes/NO" and activate NO, when player press any key, except y?

Sure. I think it used to be like this in the past (i. e. any key could be pressed to select NO), but somehow this feature has "disappeared" in unknown circumstances . I will restore it. Perhaps it would be more comfortable to use mouse and/or auto-explore mode (Ctrl+arrow) in a town.
Bumping a friendly creature always causes position swapping, but most likely what you actually experienced were neutral creatures. Bumping them always means attacking. I'm going to change this behavior, but rather to swapping, like with friendly creatures. Talking by bumping is not very intuitive for me (try this in real life ! ).

[JollyRoger]

Yes, I was speaking about neutral creatures.
But, if you would "found" yes/NO feature, it wouldn't be so urgent.