Beta-testing thread for NGUHD (This round closed)

I finished the murder mystery dimension. As of now, it is a complete story and functions as a full game.

I could use some testers to run through the complete game, with or without a walkthrough. I’m open to cutting out tedious parts or adding more flavor or more areas at this stage.

Thanks in advance! For anyone who’s played Color the Truth, it’s the same basic style but longer.

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I’m probably less available than the first time around, but if you get it to me I’ll try to take a peek!

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I could definitely try this out, it would take a long time for a response though…

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Thanks for everyone who responded! I think I have enough testers for now.

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The third area is now finished and ready for testing! This is the wax museum escape room dimension. Also, the code is now past 100K! The biggest game I’ve ever written before in Inform, Grooverland, only made it to 89K.

This area is much more puzzle-focused than the others. Being set in an escape room, it has a lot of puzzles for the sake of puzzles, with many codes, keypads, locks, riddles, etc.

I’ve also taken suggestions to add more characterization in, and had the main character react more and have more of a backstory. If the reaction is positive, I’ll retroactively add that to the haunted house dimension.

I know a lot of other things are going on right now, but that’s okay, I only need a couple of testers right now, since the first person to test an area usually finds a ton of obvious bugs.

Thanks to everyone who helped so far! I think I’m going to work on the nano-bot creature horror spell scroll dimension next.

Edit: Testers found for now!

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What about the oracular goat steampunk molecular gastronomy dimension? When’s that coming?

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In other words:

>FIZZ GOATEE

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Honestly that sounds more interesting than the ‘famous world monuments suspended in a black void shaped like a dodecahedron’ that I had planned; I could always slot it in

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I’ve been delaying re-opening this thread as long as I can, to avoid stepping on Spring Thing’s toes (the organizer is a big grouch and I didn’t want him mad at me), but I’m at the point where it’d be hard to make more progress without a few more testers. I’ve had a couple of preliminary testers who have really helped!

If you plan on publicly reviewing some (or some more) Spring Thing games, I’d rather not take away from that, so I’m mostly looking to swap testing with Parsercomp/TALP people or to get testing from people not really playing parsercomp.

If you mentioned earlier your willingness to test this section, this is my batsignal, I guess.

This section of my game is much darker than the others. It contains self-harm in many (non-permanent) ways, including self-immolation, dissolving your bones, petrifying yourself, rotting yourself, and just straight-up dying. It has spiders, body horror, heights, confined spaces, and situations that make the player doubt their own sanity. However, the overall tone is hopeful and positive.

Edit: re-closed

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That’s reassuring to know.

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Look, those bones were just holding you back – you’re better off without them!

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Yeah, and sanity is overrated anyway.

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Whew, time flies!

I’ve finished the 5th dimension. It’s the halfway point! The game is up to 160K code, 112 rooms, 971 things, 35 doors, 83 people, and 78 conversational topics.

Of those 83 people, 15 are not real people (mostly duplicates in different flashbacks), 9 are animals, and 18 are enemy robots, leaving 41 actual people.

This dimension that needs testing now is the combat dimension. It was really hard to code; I cried a bit finishing it today because it’s been kicking my butt.

It has two tracks: learning how to use weapons, and learning how to order a robot around and program it with 5 actions ahead of time, then having it replay the actions while you work with it.

Then the two tracks combine, and you command two robots and have to fight a bunch of different groups of robots that have different strengths and weaknesses.

I could really use testers here that want to kick at the tires. We’ve got stuff like commanding another person in a transparent container to do things, which has so so many ways it can go wrong. I’ve tested it personally and ran transcripts and text dumps through grammarly but I’m sure it’s got a ton of rough edges.

I’d like to say it’s about 2 hours worth of playthrough but this is very unlike anything I’ve programmed before, more like Gun Mute or A Matter of Heist Emergency or Ryan Veeder’s Little Match Girl combat. It could be my shortest area or longest area, most annoying or most fun, most difficult or most easy. That’s what I’d like to find out!

The puzzles near the end are the kind you might need to make a chart or spreadsheet for.

Edit:Thanks for those who responded! I’ll probably ask for a few more in a couple of weeks. I really appreciate everyone!

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I’ve finished the latest dimension, a nature/gardening dimension with very mild puzzles (I think???). You gather up journal pages and they give you instructions on how to do repairs around a cabin using natural ingredients and tools, and that helps you find more journal pages. I’d like to say this is the easiest of all my dimensions, but that’s what I need testers to find out. Should be about 1.5 hrs. Has some backstory for the rest of the game.

I realize ParserComp is going on, so I could see no one being free for a few weeks. But I’ll post it now so you can hit me up when you’re ready! Thanks!

After this it’ll be the animals/biomes level.

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I’d like to help since I’ve tested the rest of it, but I don’t know that I have time at the moment… will let you know if things open up.

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This one is pretty short and simple so if you don’t get to it for a few weeks it wouldn’t take too long to catch up. I appreciate it!

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I could probably do it.

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Thanks! I got another person as well so I think I’ll close it again for now.

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This isn’t a request for more beta testers but just a general update.

I recently hit 200K words! Most of my IFComp games were between 20K and 60K. I’m about 2/3 of the way done, so I think the final result will be 300K or so.

Here are some other statistics:

Lists of rooms, people and things

-146 rooms
-1214 things, including
–103 people (including 28 animals, 20 robots of which 18 are enemies, and 4 murder suspects)
–82 conversational topics (27 of which are murder mystery clues, the others are individual topics for individual people)
–11 spells
-6 and half total ‘dimensions’ out of a planned 10

Here are some portions of the map:

Summary



And the new cover art I’ve made:
image

I thought it would take 2-3 years to finish, but I’m more than halfway done with dimension 7/10 planned, and so I think I will likely be finished sometime between IFComp and Spring Thing.

Thanks to every one that’s beta tested so far! I don’t plan on releasing this during a competition, I’ll just dump it in the middle of the year.

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Why no comp?

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