I Am Prey (Update Notice)

Competitions
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Okay, continuing the theme of “My habits and behaviors come from gamedev”, here’s a quick notice of patch notes.

New version is 0.9.1. You can check what version you have downloaded (if you are not playing online) by selecting a difficulty and passing the prologue. The version number will be under the title of the game, once you begin your first turn.

The old version was 0.9. Again, you’re looking for 0.9.1 now. @mathbrush has updated everything on the SpringThing site, so this is mostly a concern if you’ve downloaded the game for local play before the patch went live.

Patch notes include:

  • Spelling corrections
  • Some grammar corrections
    • Not all grammar bugs are patched; some of them require me to program a new subsystem to display correctly; still working on that
  • Severe soft-lock bug concerning metal shelves and weapon racks in the same room
  • Severe AI paralysis bug when you use evasion methods
  • Game crash bug in a few parkour edge cases
  • Weird behavior when large objects were visible in other rooms has been fixed

And that’s about it. Still working on some lingering grammar bugs, but the remaining ones are more deeply-buried.

Hope everyone is enjoying the competition! Seeing what people have been working on has been amazing!

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Oh dear. My save file may not work…

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It won’t, no. I’m really sorry about that. :grimacing:

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Okay, so my Gen-Z side got absolutely exposed, apparently.

I forgot that some people still use printers… :eyes:

So, I made an alternative version of the map, which should be more friendly to your ink costs! With @mathbrush’s help, it’s now also on the SpringThing page, accessible via the “Print-Friendly” button.

To those of you who already printed this thing out on an inkjet printer: I am so, so sorry. :scream:

For those who wanted to print it, but were hesitant about the dark colors everywhere: You’re welcome! :laughing:

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Patch 2 is now live!

  • Fixed some weird grammar bug with objects that could be treated as both singular and plural.
  • Fixed a priority bug with SNEAK (direction) and SNEAK THRU (door).
  • Fixed a crash that apparently happens when sneaking through a non-door connector. (oops)

If you have an ongoing save file, then this might not be enough to justify downloading this version, yet. If you were playing this online, then the Borogove link has been updated, so, uh…oops. If you really want to keep using a save file from Patch 1, then you can find the link to Patch 1’s Borogove version here.

Otherwise, the version on the SpringThing site is running Patch 2.
(Huge thank-you to @mathbrush for keeping the SpringThing in top condition!)

If you still want to use Patch 1, then there’s a notable workaround for the sneaking bug. The SNEAK verb is actually just a training shorthand for a sequence of other verbs, which are done manually in other difficulty modes:

  1. LISTEN
    Halts when ominous clicking is heard.
  2. PEEK (direction)
    Halts when the antagonist is found.
  3. OPEN (door)
    If applicable.
  4. GO (direction)
  5. CLOSE (door)
    If applicable.

In non-tutorial difficulties, a lot of the gameplay focuses on the player forgetting to do one of these steps, or choosing to be expedient at the wrong time. Auto-sneak in the Prey Tutorial is meant to be a sort of study guide tool, to help the player review and remember the above steps. Therefore, auto-sneak technically isn’t necessary to win, if you choose to continue a save file in the Prey Tutorial from Patch 1.

Thanks again to everyone who is giving I Am Prey a try! It means a lot to me! :blush:

And a second thank-you to everyone who is reporting any lingering bugs that they find! Every bit of data is being copied into my notes for the post-comp version!

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Patch 3 is now live!

A few of the more stubborn grammar bugs have been fixed in this patch. Specifically: Opening a cabinet drawer, and then using the SEARCH CABINETS command apparently caused a weird implicit action case, which incorrectly reported the existence of six imaginary cabinets in the room.

Another bug was fixed, where players holding both a chair and a stool were suddenly unable to drop either of them, which required a DROP ALL command to purge them from inventory. Now, a stool will prefer the word “stool” during disambiguation, and a chair will prefer “chair”.

WEAR ALL has been adjusted to only attempt wearing things that can be worn. Because suit pieces cannot be worn outside of the airlock (for game design reasons), the WEAR ALL command will simply act as a TAKE command for suit pieces. This allows hurried players to use the WEAR ALL command to specifically take suit pieces, and ignore the other items in a room.

Additionally, I have tweaked the general-case handling for commands pertaining to “ALL”, which will allow for examining, listening, smelling, feeling, and tasting, and become more intelligent in handling opening, closing, taking, and wearing. For any other actions, ALL will only apply to objects in the player’s inventory. Hopefully this will allow more players under stress to perform quick inventory management actions more smoothly.

No crashes were fixed in this patch. However, no crashes were found between this patch and the previous one.
For this reason, you can continue to use Patch 2 without accepting the risks of known crashes.

EDIT: April 23, 2023 update: A crash was found in Patch 3, which was caused by a fix in Patch 2.

To continue playing on old patches, I’m going to post a list of online links here, for those who still wanted to retain their save files, and accept the risks of known crashes:

EDIT: Updated as of April 23, 2023 to add Patch 3 to the list. The Patch 4 update can found a few more posts down.

Thank you to everyone who has been reporting bugs, crashes, misspellings, grammar errors, and frustrating moments! The data are extremely useful, and make the game better for future players!

Also: Thank you to everyone who has been sending me cool moments they’ve had in the game, too! They never fail to put a huge smile on my face!

And—most of all—thank you to everyone who has been playing this game so far, no matter if you enjoyed it or not! It means the world to me!

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When you tracked this, it helped motivate me to push through my much less ambitious patch. So thanks for that!

It’s also interesting to see what’s in the game via these updates. It’s like a sort-of spoiler, but not really.

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You’re welcome!! :grin:

Yeah, I’m trying to be really careful about not putting spoilers in the patch notes, but so far everything is pretty much what the player figures out in the how-to-play doc, or in the first three turns of the game. :smile:

Like, there are actual spoilers in the game, but it seems none of them have been causing bugs lol.

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Okay so I’m not at my computer but apparently this silly fix has been causing some interesting crashes for people.

Patch 4 is live, but someone has found another crash that likely is caused by this, too. For what it’s worth, that fix has a lot of weird edge-cases and that’s what causing the crashes.

Patch 4 fixed a few climbing bugs that had been hiding from me (these should be absolutely 100% gone. I literally went through every piece of furniture and climbable surface with a fine-tooth comb).

I’m still going through some stuff this week, but I’m gonna try and get this fixed within the next 24 hours.

I really appreciate everyone playing the game, and doubly-appreciate your patience and bug reports! Having an awkward moment for a bit here.

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Patch 4 is live!

This didn’t age well. :joy:

I’ve crossed these out and added an update to the post.

The singular-plural fix from Patch 2 apparently added some really weird crashes which occurred while traveling, but only when these singular-plural objects were involved.

This has been fixed in Patch 4, along with a few lingering parkour bugs. I was very thorough here, and checked literally every single climbable object in the entire game.

Huge shout-out to @mathbrush for his patience and work during this. I had released Patch 4 earlier, but the crashes were still there, and just appearing different ways, so I had maybe 3 different versions of Patch 4 that I sent to him for the SpringThing site, before the crashes finally ended.

Another absolutely huge shout-out to everyone who sent in bug reports, and then excitedly jumped back into the game to find the crashes happening elsewhere. I really appreciate your patience and willingness to stick with me while I repaired Patch 4. It means more than you know.

As always, I appreciate everyone who is playing I Am Prey and sending in feedback (both positive and constructive). SpringThing has been absolutely wild so far, and also really really fun! :grin:

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Gosh, I am so happy that git exists.

My private progress for the post-comp version is on Patch 11 right now.

I just found out that Patch 5 had a severe bug left in it during map mode.

So I used git to make a map fix branch, corrected the error, and then made a Patch 6 release, without also including the instabilities of my more recent in-progress efforts. Absolutely amazing. I feel like a wizard.

Anyway, Spring Thing 2023 has kinda passed, so the downloads will be available a bit differently.

You can find the play-online version here.

I have sent the downloadable version to the IF Archive, but there are processing delays (valid), so the zip file will be available on my GitHub for the moment.

Thank you for your time, understanding, and interest! :grin:

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Printer Talk (laser/inkjet) [Split thread]