The Gray Portrait - Willing to trade reviews.

casten24 · July 2013

Hello, all. Just looking to get some plays for my new quest. The info can be found here in the Foundry Spotlight wing of the Foundry forum. There are pictures ther as well. If you decide to give my quest a go, a critique would be nice, but not necessary. You can post them here or on the page with all the info. Thanks much.

irtoof75 · July 2013

Hi
I very much enjoyed your quest. Especially the 1st challenge, brilliant. Great characters and dialogues.

Feedback, very minor stuff. read through your dialogues again I noticed a few places where there were punctuation errors, a spell checker won't catch them because they aren't misspelled, the only one I can remember right now is "the painting is with(in) the walls). also renaming a few items like the cups you drink from in the house.

Suggestion, move the quest exit sparkly closer to the end chest. Thats about all I can think of.

more folks need to try this quest, that means YOU!!! go play it NOW!!!

daduty · July 2013

Your quest was pretty cool, the chessboard came out nice. The only issue I seen was your last riddle, it had the answer in it.

casten24 · July 2013

irtoof75, thank you much for those catches. With the amount of dialogue, it can often be tough to notice the small things. Everything you've mentioned should be fixed now. While I would like to move the exit closer to the chest, the problem is that it doesn't make much sense. There's no visible exit path near the chest, so it's kinda stuck where it is...

At least it's better than having go back through the entire map just to exit, right?

daduty, thank you much. And thanks for pointing that out... I've noticed it twice now myself, when making minor changes and I keep forgetting to hit that and change it. lol. Anyway, fixed and publishing... should be done within 30 minutes to an hour of this particular post.

sphecida · July 2013

I just finished your quest and enjoyed it very much! I liked all the puzzles, the funny characters and the different choices. Nivram reminded me of someone, and sure enough, they share a name

A few very minor things:

-the general says "clearning" out the basement
-there's a possessive missing an apostrophe, but I forgot to write it down (I think it was "what's" - it might have been in the dialogue about the drink, which I knew I shouldn't drink, but needs must, as they say )
-I would like more description about the secret door. You could put an some OOC inspect text on it such as "There's a loose brick in this wall. You pull it out, revealing a switch, etc."
-I know that Courage's riddle is traditional, but I can't help wishing for a female pronoun there, since the males don't wield swords
-it was odd to have the answer to Wisdom's riddle, which is why I thought it was a trick question. Maybe you haven't re-published yet.

I wish I'd chosen the more difficult jumping puzzle - I'll have to play it again!

casten24 · July 2013

Hahah, looks like you got it before the republish completely updated it, Sphecida... Looks like it takes longer than even I expected. I'll think about the OOC. As a writer, I deplore the use of OOC. If you can't show it, you're doing it wrong. So maybe I'll add some animations or some such. And I think I may change Courage's riddle to feminine pronoun's. It would heighten the humor of one of the incorrect answers. Thanks much for the catches.

d3war · July 2013

I decided to play the Prologue first, I'll be jumping in to play Chapter 1 shortly. I was super entertained by your prologue, even if XP suffers a bit from having AI allies in most of the fights. I only had a few minor comments.

1) The ground inside the walls is featureless. Not sure what budget you have left, but I'd expect bare spots on the ground, wagon tracks, or something to indicate where people walk the most even if they haven't had time to put down cobble.
2) The redshirt reference to Hawaii pushes this from "maybe just crazy people who dress funny" to "obviously from another world." I'd suggest pulling out that out and being more generic like "just about time to go on vacation (or retire, or a promotion.)
3) Weird feature that I've noticed in several quests, the Selune's Tears in the General's room are pickable. You might consider using different flowers.
4) When the general says "Did you hear that?" you might put an OOC note of what the sound is. I'm not sure if Foundry sound is still broken, or if my sound was just low, but I didn't hear anything.
5) At the end, when you're collecting troops, it would be nice if you could get the General to repeat side quests. I got 3/4, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where the 4th was.

Great quest! I forgot to tip but I'll throw in some extra when I complete Chapter 1. Oh, and my quest is NW-DA7ZWLNXG if you're interested in checking out my first effort.

d3war · July 2013

Just finished Chapter 1. That was pretty dang good. I loved it. A few minor nitpicks below.

1) Comments about the keep from my prologue review stand
2) For the jumping puzzle, I was able to shortcut the difficult path bit by jumping down from above the final platform
3) It was kind of weird that the General stayed behind there for the jumping puzzle, but was there for the first puzzle. I would have him skip all the puzzles and wait in the main room in front of the final path and join back there.
4) I didn't think to look too hard at the chess board before it was rearranged, so I messed up and didn't know which piece was which when it was reconfigured. Maybe some sort of color highlighting with matching info in the text? Maybe I just screwed up and it was tough luck.
5) I picked the more difficult path for the power spirit, but both of the enemies didn't come after me at the same time. They might need to be a bit closer together if you're going for fighting them both, or a bit farther if not. Also, both enemies had the same power set. It would have been nice to fight two different bad guys.

That's it. Like I said, incredible.

casten24 · July 2013

Thanks for the feedback, d3war. I'll be giving your quest a go shortly.

casten24 · July 2013

just a wee bump.

casten24 · July 2013

Republished. Adjusted the heights of certain buildings in preparation for details that will be "built" in the next installment of the Gray Portrait Campaign. Also, added grass to sync it up with the (newly) added grass in the prologue, and added the cobblestone pathways that were built in between the ending of the prologue and the beginning of chapter 1.