Tactical Breach Wizards dev log: don't make too many kinds of thing

We're about to do a beta test - maybe the last beta test?? Get on our mailing list if you're interested: www.suspiciousdevelopments.co...

[@LunarLemonade]

For a game with a linear plot, I think a "read a recap of the story so far" or "browse character profiles" feature, maybe with a glossary on top, would've been enough? Ghost Trick, which has my favorite plot in any video game, uses profiles to great effect- with characters occasionally recapping what they learned recently if it's relevant. A bit silly if you've been playing several chapters in a row, but a godsend if you're picking the game back up. Having characters recap via dialogue would've reused that system too. You can probably make the most out of a mind map if the game's plot was built and structured around it in the first place- Outer Wilds pulled it off fantastically because every map item had a very tangible presence in the world... and with three main mysteries, each with a few clues, each with a few sub-clues, it couldn't have gotten too tangled. Much to think about!

[@Purpleydragons]

I have been following this game for going on 6 years now with almost no news on it and I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to finally try it. I don't know how I never managed to find your youtube channel, but I now have a wonderful backlog of devlogs and gameplay trailers to burn through while I wait! Didn't get a chance to try it in the last beta so fingers are super crossed this time around.

[@jamiegrace8131]

hey mate i just wanna say thanks for making floating point. its been my chill game for almost a decade now, which is crazy.

[@sebastianholcroft2549]

I am super excited for the upcoming beta. There have been so many times since the last one closed that I have wanted to replay the game.

[@ChrisSutcliffe21]

I was one of the people in the last beta that worried that the game would be too short (in the most positive way of "I just want so much more of this experience). Having a clear progress shown sounds like a solution that would absolutely work for me.

[@JarrettJ]

I’ve been following this game for years, and I just signed up for the beta. Very excited!

[@oldsoul3539]

I made my RSI issues go away after realising I was causing them by resting my arms just below the wrists on the edge of my desk putting pressure on my tendons when I typed. One day I discovered my index finger was too weak to turn on a light switch which made me panic. I thought I'd have to get surgery, but first googled other solutions. At first I tried wrist stretches but eventually I realised I should try some of those ergonomic silicon gel wrist rests and luckily after using those it all cleared itself up over about a month. Definitely try them, and make sure you get some good cushy soft ones if you can. Avoid solid ones or ones covered in fabric, they look more professional but they're abbrasive on your skin.

[@Zipperheaddttl]

get yourself a ortholiner ergomech keyboard next. Made my RSI go away completely.

[@littlecurrybread]

My rsi mostly stopped when I got a desk that could go up and down and I would have it at elbow or a little under elbow level. And also strength training for the wrist, there's some exercises you can do with a dumbbell.

[@hoteckkan]

I am unbearably excited for this beta. I saw you reddit preview years ago and thought, "this dude gets me" and wish listed on steam and then I lost track of dev until a few months ago. I was so worried that the project had stalled and now I am hype! Lets go!

[@zul448]

Can't wait for the beta. Didn't get to participate in the last one and I've been looking forward to this game for a long time now so I'm pumped!

[@Zipperheaddttl]

Yo, I got myself a piantor from beekeeb, and it totally fixed all my rsi issues. Im sure most ortholiner ergomech keyboards will help a bunch. I chose the piantor because it was the cheapest.

[@DouglasBurton]

Yeah all great advice, always gotta think about how any mechanic is going to scale with the game. Ideally before you even make the feature you can already figure out all the ways it will be used, how many times you'll have to use it and how many times you'll have to do any tedious set up.

[@FiggsNeughton]

0:04 RSI = Radial Scranglia Inferzangleyon, a very bad condition sorry to hear it mate

[@hellblazerjj]

Without ever seeing it this "map mode" to summarize the story visually sounds ingenious and I desperately wish every single JRPG had that system. My biggest problem with long JRPGs is picking them up after taking a break or not being able to play for a while and subsequently losing track.

[@chrisgreen6259]

I'm super-hyped for this! Interesting thoughts on "testing". Let others do it for you! I signed up and hope I can provide valuable feedback.

[@cdranzer1540]

I was just randomly thinking "hey I wonder if Tom has made a new video lately" and I get in within half an hour Something in the aether I suppose

[@NiksSofa]

I used the signup form, but didn't receive a confirmation mail in more than an hour, how long is that supposed to take? Should I repeat the registratin?

[@peezieforestem5078]

Perhaps it's my background in software engineering, but I immediately knew that the mindmap idea will result in a lot of problems. I think anyone who has attempted to write a similar level of software would have instantly anticipated all of this. It's hard to imagine how I could've known that without my experience, but maybe that's good enough for an answer, which is whenever you decided to do this mindmap thing, you should have reached out to the developers who've done it, and talked to them about their issues, and asked them to tell you whether it's a good idea or not. For somebody who've spent a long time doing something, it's generally not that difficult to see these things in advance, and I'm sure you'll find at least somebody who's willing to talk about it for cheap, or for free. After you initial basic questioning round, you pick the feature you actually want to have, which by now you know is at least feasible, and then you contract someone who's worked in that area to do a small breakdown of the potential issues, as well as general ways to avoid/solve them. I'm sure you'll agree the time you save this way will be way worth the price of a small contract.

[@AllenBevans]

Want a game UI/UX consultant? I volunteer! It would probably be a lot better use of your time than reading generic Design listicles.

[@iwantagoodnameplease]

It might be too late for TBW, but perhaps for the next game you should design for testability? This way you're only testing the parts of the game you want to test and speeding through the bits that should not have changed / are currnetly uninteresting to you. e.g. you can script/record a game session and pin the random seed. That way the AI will always do the same thing each turn, unless you change the AI, which which case you'd run until divergence and walk through the steps manually and record new input etc. For cutscenes with camera movement, save images and do p-diffs to make sure they still look roughly the same. etc etc of course this is just a youtube comment. The practical realities of iteratively making an interactive piece of software always make it difficult to test.

[@sinisterdesign]

The problem with this solution is that getting into different game states is a crucial part of testing a tactics game. For instance: if the AI does the same thing every time, you aren't going to find bugs in the AI (or bugs that arise out of the different choices the AI might make).

[@iwantagoodnameplease]

@@sinisterdesign This kind of testing methodology wouldn't replace actual play testing. It's principle use is for regression testing and for accelerating into a complex position where you can continue manual testing from. But you can use such a scripted, non-rendered, high-speed playback to simulate _many_ different AI responses to situations by simply changing the seed for each playback, for instance. Obviously you can't play back entire games that way due to the butterfly effect, but you can specifically see: Does the AI actually take the 25% chance to use lightning this round 25% of the time?" etc When making a change to a game you need to know two things: 1. Did I unexpectedly change any existing behaviour? 2. Does the new behaviour play how I intended it to? Does this make the player have interesting choices, etc? Game devs are traditionally terrible at capturing point 1 because they don't think about such scenarios until it's too late, despite entire movements being dedicated to such a concept in the business software world. Point 2 can be done by play testing, and then capturing that play test for future regression testing. (Though there's a trade off in test churn with capturing behaviour before you've decided on it)

[@Torcher999]

If the gameplay has a degree of variability, it can generate compelling stories without needing to have one imposed from the top.