Indie Lurking II: A Madness

[oklabsoft]

I do believe I've taken care of it. An unplanned recursion was eating up the stack. Posted a brand new version. I can go back to breathing normally. Thanks!

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

Don't beat yourself up buddy, bugs happen. We all bought the game knowing that it was an early version!

 

[oklabsoft]

Don't beat yourself up buddy, bugs happen. We all bought the game knowing that it was an early version!

 

[oklabsoft]

Awesome, will be downloading this ASAP.

Anyone else hate themselves enough to try and get this running through WINE? Managed to get the executable to run OK, but for some reason the game always freezes. Managed to fix the typical VB6 library error, but can't seem to get around this. The error log WINE spits out is supremely unhelpful too.

Any luck running through wine with latest version?

 

[oklabsoft]

A player who has been updating us regularly is about 2/3 of the way through the quest. I have fixed everything he has reported so far. He indicated that some puzzles were very difficult so Justin has been updating some convos to provide a bit more guidance. As soon as he has completed the game we will be able to go beta.

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

Any luck running through wine with latest version?

Haven't had a chance to try yet, been busy as fuck this week. Between this game and Gleaner Heights (which is another Codex game) I'm going to be busy for the rest of my life at this rate!

EDIT: I've quickly remoted into my home machine and downloaded and ran the latest version, and it does seem to work much better. I can make characters and get into the game easily enough! Whatever was causing the menu crash is now gone.

Really looking forward to getting started with this. Might smuggle into work and run it off a pen drive...

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

Alright, started playing tonight. Got some weapons together and fought some trolls, came out on top. Spoke around with the locals in Urth and decided to set out to try and find some of the places that the jobless guy gave me, and ended up in Meridia about a half hour and a gypsy encounter later. I also picked up a task in Urth to find the bones of Venefirious, which I am told by the gardner lady lie in a tomb somewhere around Meridia.

All in all, having a good time. Like the old school nature, LOVE the graphics. Think it looks a lot better than the games it draws inspiration from. The day night cycle and the weather effects make it way more immersive. If I were you guys I would invest some money in maybe getting sound high quality sound effects. I recently got a hold of expensive earphones, so sound in games has taken on a whole new dimension for me. A really nice rain effect or generic nature sounds that are context sensitive based on your location on the map would be kick ass.

Is there going to be a manual at any point aside from the readme? I love old style RPGs, but since my time to play games is so limited these days it would be cool to be given some direction at the start of the game, like a lore primer and a breadcrumb to follow when you first spawn in. Even if this was dumped in a text file that would be good lol.

Once this releases I will evangelise it to my friends!

 

[oklabsoft]

Alright, started playing tonight. Got some weapons together and fought some trolls, came out on top. Spoke around with the locals in Urth and decided to set out to try and find some of the places that the jobless guy gave me, and ended up in Meridia about a half hour and a gypsy encounter later. I also picked up a task in Urth to find the bones of Venefirious, which I am told by the gardner lady lie in a tomb somewhere around Meridia.

All in all, having a good time. Like the old school nature, LOVE the graphics. Think it looks a lot better than the games it draws inspiration from. The day night cycle and the weather effects make it way more immersive. If I were you guys I would invest some money in maybe getting sound high quality sound effects. I recently got a hold of expensive earphones, so sound in games has taken on a whole new dimension for me. A really nice rain effect or generic nature sounds that are context sensitive based on your location on the map would be kick ass.

Is there going to be a manual at any point aside from the readme? I love old style RPGs, but since my time to play games is so limited these days it would be cool to be given some direction at the start of the game, like a lore primer and a breadcrumb to follow when you first spawn in. Even if this was dumped in a text file that would be good lol.

Once this releases I will evangelise it to my friends!

Glad you had the opportunity to check it out and appreciate the positive word. The world is large and the quest is long so I was really hoping that traveling about would be an interesting and satisfying experience. Adding more and better sounds as you have prescribed is a sure way to level this up so I will work on that. A manual is in progress (has been for some time) but has been taking back seat lately so we will have to make more time for getting that done. We are planning a nice .pdf version in addition to .txt and I am hoping that things take off enough to warrant some printed materials. I know Justin was looking into cloth map production as well. Journey onward!

 

[oklabsoft]

Trying out Twitter. Follow us 'at' oklabsoft.

 

[EveryoneIsAWeebButMe]

Twitter has a really active gamedev hashtag that has a massive hard-on for pixel art. Some of the screenshots of this game are very striking, especially if you grew up during the height of the early Ultima games, so you should definitely get involved with that.

How close are you to 1.0 now?

 

[oklabsoft]

Twitter has a really active gamedev hashtag that has a massive hard-on for pixel art. Some of the screenshots of this game are very striking, especially if you grew up during the height of the early Ultima games, so you should definitely get involved with that.

How close are you to 1.0 now?

Only a couple of weeks I would say. The lead yesterday about 70% through and I have been cleaning up behind (and ahead) of him. It was really in fairly good shape for EA to begin with so as soon as he is through we are going to reclassify as beta... Just until we have had a few more playthroughs and feedback. I need to work on release trailer and manual anyway and I would like release to be pristine.

 

[KA_moose]

Did you ever get your questions answered re: a Steam release?

 

[oklabsoft]

Did you ever get your questions answered re: a Steam release?

I have gotten some answers but none that give me certainty as to what to expect when I attempt to put the game on steam. Nonetheless I will probably just pay the bill and try to make it happen.

 

[Jinn]

I have gotten some answers but none that give me certainty as to what to expect when I attempt to put the game on steam. Nonetheless I will probably just pay the bill and try to make it happen.

Have you considered getting the first one on steam too, or perhaps bundling it with the release of this sequel?

 

[oklabsoft]

Have you considered getting the first one on steam too, or perhaps bundling it with the release of this sequel?

I had not... But bundling them seems like a great idea.

 

[JarlFrank]

Have you considered getting the first one on steam too, or perhaps bundling it with the release of this sequel?

I had not... But bundling them seems like a great idea.

If Steam still works the way I remember it working, an indie dev has to pay 100 bucks once to put games up on the platform, and then you can put up as many of your games as you like.
So putting up the first game too, even if you don't charge anything for it, is a no-brainer if you go for a Steam release. Makes you more visible.

 

[oklabsoft]

Oh joyous day! There is one who hath saved the realm from The Madness!

...
"So that is that. [spoiler stuff]. All is well, or is it?

I have remarked on this before, but wow, this was an epic piece of work for two guys in their spare time, and especially in only a couple of years. Lots more story and content than a lot of professional games. It's a little bit staggering. Congratulations and nice job.

If you're willing, I will ask you some questions about the parts of the game that I missed.

Thanks much for making this, and I appreciate the opportunity to be a tester. Good luck with the next project (as I'm sure there will be one)."

 

[oklabsoft]

Lurking II beta build is now available on itch...

https://oklabsoft.itch.io/lurking-ii-a-madness

 

[oklabsoft]

Have you considered getting the first one on steam too, or perhaps bundling it with the release of this sequel?

I had not... But bundling them seems like a great idea.

If Steam still works the way I remember it working, an indie dev has to pay 100 bucks once to put games up on the platform, and then you can put up as many of your games as you like.
So putting up the first game too, even if you don't charge anything for it, is a no-brainer if you go for a Steam release. Makes you more visible.

Thank you! Hoping to get a few more players from Itch through the game with feedback and then we are going to try to put it up on Steam for actual release.

 

[oklabsoft]

I have added a free demo version on L2 to itch. Save game is disabled in the demo

 

[Jack Dandy]

Rolled up my characters, smashed the fuck outta that 'Journey Onward' button, and got this:

 

[oklabsoft]

Darn. I will check it out asap. That would be the demo version I am guessing and I am pretty sure I know what happened. Will fix it as soon as I get home.

 

[oklabsoft]

Hmm. Just started up the demo and made a new party and started the game with success. Has anyone else tried the full game and/or demo and encountered this?

 

[moraes]

Hmm. Just started up the demo and made a new party and started the game with success. Has anyone else tried the full game and/or demo and encountered this?

The demo started and played fine here. The only bug I found was that the game locked up in the Settings menu, but I can't seem to reproduce it.

 

[oklabsoft]

Hmm. Just started up the demo and made a new party and started the game with success. Has anyone else tried the full game and/or demo and encountered this?

The demo started and played fine here. The only bug I found was that the game locked up in the Settings menu, but I can't seem to reproduce it.

Would you mind sharing what windows version? I am trying to rule some things out trying to fix this.