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Limiting oneself to one fisherman seems to make for a better rpg in my experience. Of course, at the cost of a worse farm, I wouldn't have been able to max lv and everything without op stuff such as +1 hp per fish cought and 10 fishermen.
Thanks for the feedback and personally I do like solo rpgs vs partybased ones. The fisherman system will probably be one of the first systems to be overhauled if this is the game I choose to flesh out. I'd like it to be essentially a loadout system where you have say, 4 slots available but 9 fisherman in your roster that you've gained along the way. Each one will produce different effects, like now every time you catch a fish, it causes AOE damage to others around it, or another one that immediately crits upon hooking a fish so it's strong vs low-hp fish. That way there'll be some strategy in what you bring to the fight, like if you want to focus on fish swarms for a while.
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Two notes: In my opinion you should add a hotkey to switch on/off the auto move option. It's the ONLY option in the options menu (so far) so it seems kind of stupid to have to open the options menu to do it. Also, holding the mouse button down JUST to move is tiring but sometimes you absolutely want to be standing still. Second, I have absolutely no idea what levels do, it's not clear at all.
That's fair, I was hoping they would only have to hit it once. I was thinking about adding a deadzone so that you could stand still, that would probably solve that problem. Yup you're right about the levels, all they do is unlock new zones but I only have 3 zones right now. I think I eventually would like to have different features unlock at certain levels (aquarium button at the bottom, locked til level 7). Thanks for the feedback, your suggestions are more lower hanging fruit so I feel like I can actually tackle them in the prototype unlike the bigger requests.
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When your boat shop screen is up hostile fish shouldn't be able to attack you as the background should freeze. When you are inside the circle at any of the docks hostile fish shouldn't be allowed to enter it and kill your boat. Many of the times it was also while the boat shop screen was up and I was in the process of buying something. I first upgraded crew size to max first then upgraded boat speed to 5 as that seemed fast enough for what was needing to be done and cargo hold to max and never bothered with the hull as it wasn't really ever needed. Fish can swim through rocks and walls and other objects. Sometimes fish spawn no top of your both killing you.
Each area maybe should have a home base that you can buy and start upgrading that add boosts to stuff and allow you to buy other things like better rods equipment boats and once you finish upgrading one spot you get some type of gain boost and a new spot opens up for fishing and a new place to buy.
I think I can eventually fix the boat shop attacks by simply keeping hostile fish further away from the base. I was trying to prevent players from cheesing hostile fish by ducking in and out of the safety zone to just drain it over time. I understand your view though and can definitely understand why that's frustrating, I feel like I've had that happen in other games and just went wtf! I super appreciate the breakdown on your stat allocations because it gives me insight into playstyles which I don't have a lot of data on. I'd like to have separate biomes (which say, 5 fish each or something) that are unique zones. I hadn't put thought into having separate shops for each but I like that idea, it reminds me of actual JRPGs where each one has its own personality. Thanks so much for the thorough writeup!
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amazing game, but I would say that the leveling is too fast. it might be my perfectionist self,but i was unlocking all levels by the time i finished the small fish collections. i get that it is a prototype but the content is pretty small, and i hope to see this game fully fleshed out in the future! :)
Nah nothing to do with your tendencies, you're right. I initially had slower pacing because I wanted a long term experience, but I changed goals midway where I wanted to just test core concept so I squeezed a lot of the upgrades closer together. Great eye and I like your honesty! It helps me calibrate future content.
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is it possible for me to play around with a early version also will we compleatly restart during the next update and you need to fix the scanner
My current goals is to knock out a bunch of 5 week prototypes each exploring different incremental variants I haven't seen yet. After that I'll be checking for player responses to see which game I should flesh out. If I do end up choosing this game, it will be a complete overhaul and thus reset everyone's stats because they will be irrelevant. You guys helped show me the core idea is fun, so that gives me confidence that I can take the game to the next level.
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i think this game should have a docking featcher i have always found myself opaning the upgrade menue at the docks so maby make the docks a place you can shop and sell fish also you should get awords and as you catch mor fish you get more meddles like achivements but no reward but a shiny meddle for your hard work
I actually do like the idea of the player having a "home base" so to speak, kinda like Monster Hunter or something. I initially had that planned where you could only buy from the boat shop, only do perks at the collection shop, but ended up opting for a more shallow UI. I still like the idea though and would love to play around with it some time.
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A good game. Although needs more areas, more variety in fish and more levels of (and types of) upgrades. Just lots more please!
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I think you should add an upgrade that makes catching fish faster and make it so only one line can atach to a fish so its not op also a upgrade on line length or a net perk whould be prety cool nice game want mor perks tho
Totally, that's very much along the lines I was thinking. I wanted each fisherman to actually be unique and offer something different, that way you could have say, an AOE net that's better for swarm situations, or a stun mechanic to help with aggressive fish.
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@dev, I think boat speed should depend on distance to center. <25px = 0(stationary), 75px = fishing speed(~500%), so speed=(dist-25px)*10%, capped at max unlocked speed. This will allow to use any wanted speed, no matter the max one(so x2 boost wont be a problem). Theese values may be not the best ones, finding optimal requires testing.
Those are good ideas actually. I could only think of a separate throttle UI slider but didn't like it cuz that felt pretty inelegant. Yours is much better, as using distance would be akin to a thumbstick on a gamepad, where nudging it a little makes you walk slow.
You all have really impressed me with your playthroughs because I honestly didn't expect people to get that far. I have certainly learned my lesson and will be making sure there is more content in future prototypes!
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Idea is good - need more challenges, places to go. Also there is 1-2 holes in the wall, where boat can leave into uncharted waters :)
Oh jeez, I've been patching them up and it still seems like they're an issue. Thanks for the heads up! I can slap some more cement on them in whatever the next update is.
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Harbormaster: How was your day?
Me: OK I guess. Unfortunately my boat sank...
Harbormaster: Wow! What happened? Rocks? Whales? Pirates?
Me: ... um ... shrimp...but they were red ...definitely not pink...
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I leveled up my stats a lot before the bug fix, and there have been some bugs resulting from that. I believe that the bugs will be fixed when I reset, but I wanted to let you know just in case. When my fisherman attach the fish's health goes to the halfway mark and stays there. I cannot kill any of the fish. When being attacked by all of the swordfish or shrimp only one of the attacks is registered per charge. Also my stats are leveled to 400 (Crew Size), 300(Boat Speed), 200(Cargo Hold), 200(Hull). Just checked and all of my stats can still be leveled still ending at 401,302,202,206. Sorry for the long comment.
Yup I apologize for that, I think the saves are beyond repair and I'd like come up with more elegant solutions in the future for save migration. You're right that a data reset should fix all that. Thanks for the detailed report though! I can use that as a reference next time something like this happens.
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This is a message to the guy who actually sent me a Max Payne voiceover from an earlier comment. Your voice work was amazing but I couldn't tell you that because your profile was private! Hoping you see this comment here, I'll have to hit you up if I do a full Steam game w a Mad Max-like atmosphere lol
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really neat concept - I was thinking you could at radar as a perk - like start where you cant see the fish at all, or what kind are beneath you. def keep going with it though!
Good idea, that was actually something I had considered. Overall I like the idea of "learning more about the species" as you catch them. So I thought at first they wouldn't show up on the radar -> show up as blips -> actually see what species they are on the map. In the end I think the radar ended up being more minor than intended so I just simplified it.
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You should remove the walls and create a port and a shore on one side, then use the radar to find fishes in an open sea. The far you go, the bigger they are. And also it could be fun to have a shipyard to buy new ships bigger and more capable.
Totally, a larger version of this game would have an expanded map. I actually wanted different biomes that had different mechanics. Biome 2 would have the dreaded NES TMNT lightning seaweed, and Biome 3 you'd be fishing in a volcano.
Damn that seaweed! https://youtu.be/4eqX61SCI1I?t=89
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Tier 11 Crew Size and Tier 16 Hull. I'm aware now that this probably past the intended max level, but this was due to saved data before the update that carried over.
Sorry about that! Yea I rushed out an update last night because so many people were reaching the endgame and getting crazy numbers so I capped the levels. I did add in a Reset Data button in the settings but I wish I had a more elegant solution. I'm super appreciative of the people that spent a long time in the game to make it to the end including you.
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I'm currently at -6691 gold. Before the updates, I was somehow allowed to move while using the boat menu, and was attempting to upgrade my boat. It failed to update (at that moment) what I was getting, but subtracting the gold nonetheless. Once I closed and opened it again, it was upgrading, but my gold was in the negatives. Now I'm in debt.
Yup you got it, it IS a prototype! Thanks for not being too harsh on it. I really do want to put more time into it but I think there are a lot of concepts that are unexplored in the incremental game realm, and I want to answer those questions before I decide which game I want to flesh out.
Your wording sparked an idea for me. In a future version I should have the fish species from The Incredible Mr Limpet and it can roar at you to do damage or push you around. Hmmm...
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The "faster after leaving dock" seems to actually work like "faster after entering dock". Also it's really annoying when I want to upgrade my ship in the top dock and the swordfish kill me despite being in the dock. Otherwise a nice little game, please, carry on.
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Since this seems to be your first game, and it is excellent, love the concept and it seems your gonna do more with just concepts cant wait to see what you do
You just need to reel in 4 fishes to fill your cargo. Unless you mean the general area that contains the 5 different fish. If you mean that then sorry, that's all I have implemented for levels right now.
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It would be nice to have some control over the targetting system. So you can decide if all fishermen need to target the same fish or all pick another one if nearby. Also the option to turn on/off switching to another fish if it gets closer then the one that's currently targetted. It can be annoying to be chasing a fish only to have another one targetted just because it's closer.
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On the collection screen, it would be nice to see progress with each fish species at a glance (colored outline or small icon in the corner), at least for maxed out species but possibly for all levels. The money totals that appear there were not really useful to me and actually confused me as to their meanings at first. I'd also be all for a reeling mode to focus on one target instead of each fisherman targetting a different fish and all but one of them escaping because I can't follow all of them.