One Of Us

[iWasAdam]

Well it's finished...
https://adamstrange.itch.io/one-of-us-7drl


Created in 7 days for the 2020 7drl
https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2020

Dare you travel the enchanted islands looking for the Golden Fleas?

If you fancy a quick trip down hex roguelike memory lane, then give it a go. And if you enjoy the trip - give me a vote in a couple of days

[Xerra]

I've had a little play this afternoon to see what you've been posting about the last few days. Initially I was pretty convinced you'd been smoking something special before creating this game but I think I got the general gist of it in the end :-)

One little bug (if you can call it that) did show up for me on first launch. I've shown that in the first screen shot. I run two monitors on my desk and , yes, you guessed it, both are different resolutions. I fired the game up from Forklift, which is the non-retina screen, as it's a bog-standard monitor, and the game just occupied the bottom left corner. Having dragged it onto the desktop and fired it from the Imac desktop itself it ran fine. I don't know if it's possible to actually check for a scenario like that, but just in case.

Second screenshot is my eventual death. I played the game cold. No looking for instructions or trying to find how to play on the itch page or anything like that. I believe i got onto around 3 different maps and also a cave where bats joined me and, if I'm correct, all  the party members are processed and it becomes a survival of the fittest/greatest number of creatures whenever your party gets up to 10 cards. I did see the rats taking a pop at spiders inbetween then but wasn't sure if they're actually killing them outside of the purge event or not. I also don't know how far I got as there doesn't seem to be any score or progress indicator.

Is it an endless rogue game, this one?

What it did remind me of a bit was Mat's game in the last compo as it's turn based and your creatures dwindle based on your events.

So, what I liked:
It's different. Every game you do is completely different. I refer back to my comment earlier about what might be influencing this, lol. I wish I had your imagination for game ideas and technical/art ability.

I'll give it some more play time to see if i can get any further into it. Can you work out how i actually died in my screenshot? I had a reaper in my party at the time but I don't think that's doing it.

[iWasAdam]

The rats eat food, in your party. When there is no food, they nibble you 1/2 hit per nibble, so if you have loads of rats - death
Or have some spiders and they will kill rats
Death will kill people but ignore animal and food

[Xerra]

So it's all about balancing the make-up of your party to last as long as possible.

Me lasting through 3 maps and a cave was probably just pure luck then, ha ha. I'll give it another shot with this information.

[Qube]

He he, cool game and super congrats for turning that quality out in 7 days - Do you have a day time job or are you just super efficient at whipping things up?

[iWasAdam]

Well strictly speaking it was about 11 days...

I work in housing meeting with regulators and tenants and stuff...  but it's not full time

[iWasAdam]

SOMETHING ODD just happened.

'One of Us' was rated 1 star - ok it's odd to get any rating, and usually ratings follow a pattern. so I looked at who had posted the rating.

New user created 5 hours before - no interaction apart from voting 'One of Us' at 1 star. there is no no trace of the user - so looks like the profile was deleted...

verrrryyyy interesting.....

[Derron]

Ask the support at itch.io ?

And meanwhile see it positive: in the GDR we had grades in school ranging from 1 to 5 - with 1 being the best (in Russia it was 5 to 1, and in later Germany 1 to 6 - just as a side note). So having received a 1 star isnt the worst which can happen


Edit: did not play it yet but wanted to give you a little suggestion for "after compo" patches:
Could you change the font to something more "serif"/medieval/pirate-esque? Your texts seem to have left place for at least 1 pixel in height, so it should be doable to have some more "suiting" texts - than this "as long as it fits in to the 4x5 cell" font. Think it could please the eyes way more then (and you gain access to another bitmap font for the next pixel game ).

bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

I reported it. Playing fair is one thing, but I felt this was a bit 'off'

But... On the flip side, itch.io are listing the submissions in popularity and 'One Of Us' is in the first 10 entries. Not sure what 'popular' means, but I'll take it as someone things I'm doing something a bit right 

https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2020/entries

[Derron]

But... On the flip side, itch.io are listing the submissions in popularity and 'One Of Us' is in the first 10 entries. Not sure what 'popular' means, but I'll take it as someone things I'm doing something a bit right 

I think the order is random - for me it was the 20th on the first load. Maybe they cache the page and once the cache gets invalid (added entry, cache invalidation time ...) it creates the page again and the order changes.

Yesterday evening I was browsing some entries and when going "back" it refreshed and the order was totally different - with some pretty crap entries on top (amongst good ones) so I doubt it is "popularity".



Edit: #147 when visiting at 13:33 (so a short while later) - and only some spots above is the "Book Hunter" (which looks nice too) and "Reignited Lands" (which was on spot #2 last visit) is now 2 below you. So I really think it is "random".
bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

you need to click 'popular' on the top line

It's just got a video - which it great as I can see how people are playing it and also where to make adjustments. Just found another video too and It looks like I've cracked the fun factor. Particularly with being able to be be 'corn'!

[Derron]

you need to click 'popular' on the top line

I need to click ... where?


If there was a visible "order by" thing I would have clicked on it - or would have thought your link would lead to the already sorted list.

I assume you were talking about "Browse Games" in the very top of the website - which automatically leads to a list sorted by "popular":
https://itch.io/games

You linked to the submissions of the jam (which would be interesting to see sorted by "popularity" too).


bye
Ron

[Derron]

Only had a quick look into the video and saw the issue I mentioned a long time ago:



check the letters "r". You are scaling stuff up and are trying to keep it "crisp". This makes certain pixels become "doubled".

Is there a way to have it "pixel perfect stretched" - so this might mean a little "border" on the left and right (maybe also bottom and top). You either make that border black (for "same visual experience") or have some decoration elements tiled over that area .... it might even be something ressembling the currently rendered game scenes (similar to that blurred repeated video when they present a "vertical aligned smartphone video" on TV). Here in this game the border could be something looking a bit like the border of an old treasure map.

Maybe you have this in the game already ... then sorry for mentioning it "again". I think some - eg me - prefer borders around the game (you will ignore them sooner or later) over strange "bold fonts" or other oddities happening by this inconsistent pixel doubling.

Edit: once you coded that into your engine you can use it for all the other pixel games as well: so it is a "one time job" which just needs (optional) adjustments for each game to suit their theming.


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

Agreed it's the scaling that doesn't help things, but it's really that big a deal in the scheme of things.
I could probably find a better way of doing things but that would have taken time off the coding for the game. I've spent loooooooong enough on technical things, much better to focus on gameplay and fun

As for the top line select thing - activate the filter: ooh it's number 4 now!!!!

[Derron]

"FILTER" is not clickable for me - maybe only for logged in users
Edit: logged in and voila - other options available



@ scaling
But I am sure you use the base engine for many stuff - so implement it once and use "forever".


@ game
Download stats already impressive?

bye
Ron