Starstruck Vagabond

Really good work! And hilarious!! I cackled several times. Here is my feedback from just playing the tutorial. I tried to play further, but either it bugged out or I'm dumb, but I couldn't find the ship or how to get to it after you talk to Dripberg. I tried to save and reload, but got the save bug others mentioned.

*The mouse controls are buggy. I started in windowed mode, and the mouse worked fine. But once I put it to full screen, where the cursor was and where the selection was were not synced. Also, sometimes if the mouse was on screen, you couldn't also use the keyboard controls to navigate menus.

*Nitpick: the Tutorial should have you fix the outer hull break before the solar panel to keep up a sense of urgency.

*The air cycler noise is annoying. Too fast and loud. Even just in the tutorial I tried to avoid standing near one.

*Bug: warp ring didn't visually appear fully aligned when it said it was.

*The warp ring noise should be more science-y/mechanistic

*Controls: I wish you could switch between tools with mousewheel as well as keyboard, as that feels more natural than q and e. I did use q and e, but I feel like in case of emergency, mouse wheel would be faster.

*Rock explosion noise is too harsh, should be more...rewarding/less explosive

*LOVE the personality selector, that is a really really good idea and wish you luck with implementing it, that seems like a lot of work

*In general, the little bit of dialogue is really funny. Dripberg's commission gave me a good cackle.

I really like seeing you develop this and explain the theory behind it, and would certainly pay for a beta version.

A few bugs/issues to report:

During my first playthrough, the game crashed the first time I tried to warp (screenshot with error message below). The gauge on the left of the HUD was in the red zone, so I assume the game just doesn't have a response to trying to warp with a broken engine at that point in the game. The only other thing I did was manually realign the ram scoop at some point as I was messing around with the controls, so that might have something to do with it.

After resetting and playing for about an hour, I ran into another crash which occurred when I tried to place an item to the north of the power generator in my ship. My only theory is that I somehow managed to place the item inside of the generator, causing the game to crash since that isn't a valid location. Upon trying to load my save, I'm greeted with this crash:

I started a new save, played for a little while, then manually quit to desktop. Coming back later, I received the below crash when trying to load that save. So far, I have not been able to actually load a save outside of the very start of the game:

I also ran into a bug with control rebinding. I rebound the pause button from Esc to Shift so that I could pause the game without moving my hand from the default position. However, this prevents me from capitalizing letters in text fields, as pressing shift immediately exits the text entry.

I also ran into issues with the key rebinding menu. The function a key is bound to would be performed as I am trying to rebind a key, preventing the menu from functioning properly. For instance, let's say I want to rebind move left to the L key. When I press Space to select move left, instead of waiting for my next input, move left is immediately bound to Space. In other words, using the interact key to select the function I want to rebind immediately binds that function to the interact key I just pressed. This means that the only way for me to use the key rebinding menu is with the mouse. Also, when rebinding the pause function, as soon as I press the new key I want to rebind to, the menu is immediately closed since I just pressed the key which is now bound to pause. Similarly, when rebinding the move left key, the menu selection immediately moves to the left since I just pressed the left button when I rebound the key.

I'm sure others have mentioned this already, but mouse controls are utterly broken on the select save file menu. After selecting a file, the mouse cursor is still able to change files by mousing over them. Also, clicking on the confirm/go back buttons do nothing; you have to use the keyboard to select (although you can still highlight them with the mouse). There also doesn't seem to be a delete save file function.

Also, I found a strange behavior with menu mouse control when entering text. If you have one text field selected and use the mouse to select another text field, the text will be transferred from the first text field to the second. Maybe that's the intended behavior, but it was super unintuitive; I expected selecting the next text field to simply confirm my selection and move onto the next one. You also can't deselect the text field by clicking outside of it with the mouse. Unless I'm missing something, it seems like the only way to deselect a text field is using the keyboard.

This next one isn't a bug, but still an issue. The first time I went to an uninhabited planet, I didn't realize that the layout was randomized every time you go back to your ship. As I was using my oniris device, I ran low on stamina, so I decided to leave it on the surface and go back on my ship to sleep and recover my stamina. It was a bit of a nasty surprise finding that my device had disappeared when I went back down, especially since items are persistent on inhabited planets.

I also wound up missing the deadline for the first cargo shipment of mundanium. I didn't realized what had happened at the time, as the dialog didn't acknowledge that the shipment was late, but the boxes weren't being taken. Having a popup to notify the player of a missed shipment would have helped. You may also want to not have a time limit for the first delivery so that players have some leeway to figure out the systems.

On a related note, I wasn't sure if cycles were passing in real time, or if it only happened when I went to sleep since that's the only time there's obvious feedback for cycles passing. I'm sure I could figure it out by staring at the delivery timer for long enough, but it wasn't clear to me as I was playing for the first time. (Overall, the delivery timer UI a bit hard to gauge, since it doesn't seem to tell you the exact number of cycles remaining).

Finally, as I was writing this comment, I noticed that the game still takes input even when the window isn't focused. Even with the game minimized and my computer focused on my internet browser, I somehow managed to open up a new save file and begin the tutorial as I typed.

Anyway, I really enjoyed what I got to play of the game, especially when I got the warp drive and unlocked the multi-start-system deliveries. I especially enjoyed the item lifting/placing mechanic; moving things around in that sort of embodied way is really satisfying. I hope this issue report helps you create a more polished experience!

Had 2 files so far get the "###### ERROR in action number 1...." corruption, but I have a feel for the gameplay loop and I like it.

1. Game exploit: You can crank your ram scoop to the right for as much speed as you want. The upgrade is semi permanent, only seeming to go away once in a new star system, or when I reboot, but either way its easy to get my near insta-travel back.

2. I feel the bed should really heal stamina more. As it stands It can take 7-8 cycles to refill it from empty, and it seems excessive to have to spend a whole solid week in bed to recover from moving a few  boxes and punching a few buttons. you usually cant afford to sleep for longer than 4-5 cycles without having to do maintainence anyway. Maybe the bed heals a percentage of your bar, like 20%-33%, so you only need to spend 3-5 days in bed.

3. A better idea of how time is passing would be helpful. The bar for delivery jobs works, but it's hard to know how long a trip will take or whats going on since you are only really told about cycles passing when you sleep.

Bug report, Day 2.

I’m not sure how I did it, but when aligning the scoop, I turned it too far and realised it kept going up. So I spent a minute just rotating the scoop around and around and got my max speed up to 200 before letting it go. My coolant went instantly foul, of course.

I found the tutorial sequence and the constant repair+low stamina bar a bit tedious, but once I was delivering packages, buying things and all that, I really enjoyed it.

Then a gltich crashed my game as I was putting toxic waste in a part of my ship for an upcoming delivery. Now my last save is ruined, and an error message shows up everytime I pick it, and I dont feel like doing the tutorial again.

This is the error that pops up

___________________________________________

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object pkp_waste:

Variable Index [0] out of range [0]
at gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 (line -1)

So yeah, if theres any way to fix this or at least a "skip tutorial" function, it would be great

Love the game so far, the story is campy and fun, computer is the best character ever. So far the one gripe I have is the opening sounds were very loud and there were a lot of them. While there needs to be a sense of urgency, it was a lot of sensory overload. 

I enjoyed the start I havent had much time to fully try the hole alpha, I liked what I have played so far the sounds really add to the games feel in a satisfying way and the pixel art looks great. But i did have some negitives.

I was in the cockpit, when i was about to arrive and the first planet and the game crashed, not sure why. Another small issuse was that in full screen mode I found that the dialoge box was hurting my eyes, I think it was the text with two colours, I think this as no other text in the game was an issue.

All in all, I look forward to playing more.

This is a really fun Alpha build! I do think the tutorial can be restructured a little, it was a little overwhelming to begin with. I also wonder if it might be nice to have the Hand tool assigned to a default button, so that I don't need to switch away from a tool to, say, climb outside the ship.

Sound effects are great, and the ship packing mechanic - finding space for 8 crates in a tight space - is intuitive and interesting. I think it's a great central mechanic to structure the game around. The loop of pack, transport, deliver, pack is really solid.

Encountered an unfortunate game breaking bug. After my second delivery mission, when I was told I was a Preferred Delivery Choice, I was moving when the PDA popped up. My character kept moving during this scene, and when the PDA went away I was  stuck in a corner and unable to move.

Here's another few bugs for the pile:

-On the second delivery mission, with the small transport platform, I put a crate down outside of the loading zone, to the right of where the platform lands. I went up to the ship, and when I came back the crate was gone, effectively failing that mission.

-Fullscreen seems to break the mouse when using it in menus.

-(See attached image) Game froze when I lifted a box through ship geometry when trying to place it down.

I really like the game though!

So I've only been playing for about an hour now. I'm enjoying it, but there doesn't seem to be much variety in the early shipments. At one point I took 6 cabbage crates from Yub IV to Yub Prime. once I turned them in, the next mission was 6 cabbage crates from Yub Prime back to Yub IV.  Maybe there needs to be something to prevent the random cargo from being the same as your last drop. I also thought that perhaps there might need to be more types of cargo. Perhaps certain deliveries need to be split between 2 planets. Perhaps there could be live cargo that would deplete your oxygen faster than it normally would, or perhaps they would need food to be carried and fed to them on the journey. The game is still great in its early state, I plan to play more tomorrow.

Unless you plan on introducing direct threats, i.e. enemies, I'm not sure why you have health AND stamina if your stamina just drains into health anyway. Unless you plan on tweaking how each individual bar recovers (like stamina regenerates, but health needs a doctor), they're functionally the same bar split into two different colours. Especially since a lot of the health hazards I can imagine there being in SV would logically make you tired too. Poisonous atmosphere, electrical shocks, suffocating, working hard.
 All of those personally make me want a nap.

Some notes on my playthrough. I played up until I completed the first delivery that dripberg gives you.

During the tutorial I encountered a pretty nasty softlock https://i.imgur.com/xxKe6oA REPRO STEPS: start game, play tutorial until you get the message from the robot federation. After that message *make sure you keep the cockpit menu open* and continue flying to the planet. Upon arriving to the planet you should get the softlock.

When the game's window loses focus it should ignore keyboard input. When writing these notes I found that jacques would wander around the screen whenever I happened to type a 'w' 'a' 's' or 'd'. Gamemaker seems to have let you check focus with this https://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/002_reference/windows%20and%20views...

The mouse controls don't work properly on this menu https://i.imgur.com/BQ9BBiS you can't click confirm or go back

During the tutorial I initially didn't realize that my coolant was low, so my engine just kept exploding every time I repaired it. I reset and made it past that part, and eventually realized that low coolant causes the engine to overheat. This might be made more obvious, like if you try to fix then engine while low on coolant there's a flashing red "COOLANT LOW" badge on the UI.

The menus seem to always put you on the first option when you press b to back out, instead they should remember whatever option you were previously on.

By rotating my scoops clockwise over and over again I was able to get my speed way past where it's supposed to be https://i.imgur.com/RUbrOPY This let me get to my destinations almost instantly

Some of the ui seems to sort a little oddly, and it is hard to read when layered like this https://i.imgur.com/Bkk7kJ2 or this https://i.imgur.com/pR9lkFZ

The clouds on planets look a little odd. They move along with the player instead of remaining more or less stationary (ignoring wind) with respect to the world. Also they seem to additive blend with the background which makes them appear to glow a little. I haven't used GMS but it appears they use bm_add (bm_src_alpha, bm_one) instead of bm_normal (bm_src_alpha, bm_inv_src_alpha)

The panning on some of the audio is a little aggressive (e.g. the second ship leak you patch in the tutorial), I think it'd sound more natural if the audio never panned left or right more than like 70% or so.

On a more positive note the writing really is quite excellent, all the characters are fun and distinct, and much of the dialog is quite funny. I really like the alignment chart thing, which makes me wonder how much unique dialog you'll have to write. Also getting to pick your ship is really cool. The plot starts to move along once you introduce general crumbbum and the robot federation, which acts as a solid hook into the inciting incident. The game is packed with appealing little details that make it actually quite fun to perform simple actions.

First, praise: In spite of its early stage of development, the game as a whole is intriguing. The humor is good, I like the concept, and on a specific note, the use of a DnD-style alignment chart as your primary dialogue controller is both hilarious and very clever from a design standpoint. I was amazed at how much the ambient audio really helps sell the experience, almost to such an extent that music barely feels necessary. You’re onto something good, and your time investment has not been a mistake. Keep going.

I’ve only played as far the warp drive (an hour or two) but I’ll probably go back and try again at some point. Maybe once I’m done writing this post, even.

Short list of issues in order of perceived severity (most to least):

• Inputs still getting processed while alt-tabbed really is a major pain, had to unbind the keyboard just to take notes
• Being unable to use your hands while holding a tool feels more annoying than interesting
• You’re right, having to hold a button to confirm actions is kind of irritating, especially when I have to do it every time I want to interact with the ship’s console
• Consider a crude map (or at least a pointer to your landing pad) to keep from getting lost on planet surfaces
• Having to drop the surveying probe on the ground in order to get a reading was mildly annoying
• The text box is a little big, and the text itself is somewhat hard to read, probably due to a lack of contrast
• When boarding other ships, your boarding platform seems to create a wall outline next to the cockpit on the inside of the ship
• Be mindful of color-coding the tools, it may cause issues for color-blind people

Regarding “mixels”: Somebody else commented on the issue of varying pixel sizes in places as an aesthetic issue. Recommendation: 640x360 is a base resolution that scales by clean integer multiples to all major 16:9 screen sizes. At 2x scale, it’s 720p, at 3x, it’s 1080p, 4x = 1440p, 6x = 4k, and so on. You can even cut it in half for a resolution very similar to the old Gameboy Advance. It’s almost ideal for pixel art games, though I’m not sure how it’d look with your current graphics.

Regarding stamina: Consider the role that stamina actually plays. In Harvest Moon and others, the purpose is to limit what you can do in a day, because the day is the fixed measurement of time around which the entire game is centered. In Starstruck, I’m not certain stamina actually serves any purpose, and even if it did, I’m not sure it would enhance the experience any.

Finally, a thought on the general direction of things: The core loop feels like it wants to be about maintenance. Polishing and tightening and sealing and sorting and what have you. To that end, I’m going to make a somewhat controversial suggestion: Abandon the navigation minigame, and maybe even the pick-a-direction interface. Just choose a destination and go, and let the main loop be about mid-journey upkeep. That align-the-intakes thing feels like it’d make for a good mid-flight minigame where they slowly drift away from what’s optimal and you have to adjust them to keep your speed up. More things like that - Rather than just having things break, have your performance be gradually impacted. Less oxygen generation means slower move speed (short on breath). Dirty coolant means your engines perform worse. You know, keep it within the narrative scope of “Keeping this worthless rustbucket in working order, I swear it’s falling apart at the seams, oh fucking Christ did Xorox drop his toothbrush in the turbines again, it took me three hours to realign the blades last time”, and so on.

I eagerly await future releases. Good luck!

Glitch on the Main Menu: Mouse Controls if you leave the window, the cursor doesn't change the selection.

Although I enjoyed the game GREATLY—the primary gameplay loop is amazing, like you were focusing on—there are a few bugs and minor issues that have been bugging me.

1. It can be difficult to see ruptures you need to repair with your welder while the ship's in emergency lighting, which is a problem since usually your survival is contingent on finding these ruptures and fixing them.

2. During the pre-cryofreezing tutorial, if you're already at your console when you reach the mundanium planet, you're locked out of the controls and the game just... keeps going until your ship completely falls apart. 

3. Constantly having to switch to the bare hand tool, especially when the cleaner is the most commonly used tool and it's "opposite" of the hands on the cycle, is annoying and breaks flow.

4. Extremely minor quibble, but if you enter the cryostasis chamber BEFORE you complete your first mission, the text for telling you you're not authorized to use it yet isn't properly aligned.

5. Whenever you touch down on an uninhabited planet, it's generated all over again and effectively completely reset. This has a few problems. One, in the tutorial planet, you can get basically every upgrade unit you'll need for the entire game by fetching  the one that's there, bringing it back, going to your ship, letting your oxygen refill, and touching down again to repeat the cycle. Two, if you accidentally leave behind something you need for later, it'll get completely erased and the mission will be dropped. Three, the venture capitalism gadget is also lost when this happens (as an aside, it not beeping when you carry it and having to constantly set it down is extremely irritating), and since you're likely to run out of oxygen before you can find the optimal placement point you're alm ost guaranteed to waste a whole 300 credits.

6. I found an odd bug where, after I just cleaned it, the ram scoop more than doubled my normal max speed while it was completely misaligned. Don't know what's up with that.

7. If you leave behind cargo outside the loading zone on accident while going up to get more, it disappears and your mission is dropped.

Beyond those minor quibbles, my biggest complaints—and the most irritating ones—are that a. I can't find a way to refill my coolant when the tank is cracked by an impact and loses most of its content, which is irritating since without a high amount of coolant the tank is nearly constantly on the edge of being in the red, and the manual was no help in figuring out how to refill coolant either, and b. I can't find a way to save, at all.

I also encountered a few bugs that completely crashed the game.

I got this error code when I loaded a save that was in the middle of the very first post-cryosleep delivery mission aboard my ship. When I got to the destination, the game crashed and gave me this code. I think it has something to do with a variable not actually being saved? Whatever the case, this completely bricked that save and I had to start over.

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_tutorial:

global variable name 'nextobjectiveplanet' index (103274) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0 (line -1)

And I got this one in the middle of a mundane delivery mission. As far as I can tell, this just completely broke the game and it won't even open anymore.

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object pkp_waste:

Variable Index [0] out of range [0]
at gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 (line -1)

First off I just wanted to curse your name Yahtzee cause I just spent my entire evening playing this game without realizing. It was that absorbing!  I think you've got the loop down pat and I'm really looking forward to when it's full released. I only had two issues so far:

- The first issue is a glitch I had at the very start. While realigning the warp coils I was knocked into one of the air purifiers I had next to me which meant I couldn't move at all. 

- The second issue I had is that walking around ports was painfully slow. It's a perfect speed when you're plodding around the ship and uninhabited planets but it took ages to move from building to building. I don't know how but maybe have a sprint function in these areas or just increase movement speed. 

Neither of these were deal breakers though. I can easily see myself sinking dozens of hours into the final product. Keep up the good work!

Got this visual glitch whilst playing,  had 90%+ in residue, and after cleaning it, it stayed like this. I am really enjoying the game.

First impressions:

I was unable to use the mouse to select either "confirm" or "go back" on the file select screen using the mouse, and had to switch to controller.

As a personal preference, the font with the off-color border around it is really difficult for my eyes to focus on when the background isn't the right contrast. Maybe implement some font settings?

The writing is top-notch.

I don't remember if this was warned, but I just picked up a job to deliver 6 crates. So I picked them up and placed them on the cargo lift, then the 6th was next to the lift for a quick up-down-up, but the 6th had disappeared when I came back down. 

Presumably the game "forgot" about the crates that were not left out of the loading bay, but this obviously scuppered the quest. 

Also, the 2 crates of Mundane crystals from the first job just didn't get picked up when I dropped them off. Presumably the conversation with the alien about the freight office overwrote the quest?

I feel like you should be able to do 'hands' actions with whatever tool you have, unless that tool has a different interaction with that object. Just a simple flow thing.
Also, in the tutorial the little waypoint arrows always point downward, no matter where the thing they are pointing to are, which can be confusing.

Having played this for two hours now, there are some things I'd like to say about it. General praise will be below, but I'll start with stuff that I would think are "easy" changes. Of course, it's game dev, so nothing is "easy", but here goes: 

- The flight mini game is great, but I think the screen of that mini game should be rotated so that the ship points up and not to the right. Your physical ship points up, when you hit the scrap in the mini game the trash comes from above and the commands to move the ship are bank "right"/"left", not "up"/"down". It might seem like a minor thing, but it helps immersion on what is one of the most interactive parts of the game.

- The dialogue text is hard to read to me, especially in full screen. This is because of the border on the letters which is very prominent but has too little contrast, making it weirdly bleed. I don't think it needs the border at all as most of the text in the game doesn't have it and is easy to read, though it might need a black or other high-contrast colour instead of the current one. A lot of text has display issues, making letters having seemingly random 1 or 2 pixel thickness, no matter if it's on base width or full screen.

- Some of the menu options are inconsistent in their interaction. Some menus (like the selling menu) need you to hold the interaction button, while most other menus go for a more streamlined button press. The buying/selling menu also has the problem of not exiting when using the esc key, instead bringing up your pause menu.

These are mostly inconsistency problems, so they might be easier to fix as the code to solve those might already exist.

There is other stuff that might pose a problem, but most of those are alpha problems that are deep rooted and might not be easy to fix. I won't get too much into them, as they might or might not just need more evolution of the project.

It is important to say, that the game flows quite well at the moment. There is almost always something engaging to do, be it tetris-ing your cargo and ship space, flying from planet to planet / playing the travel mini game and fixing your ship.

In essence, this is a good prove of concept with problems that were to expect as this is a really early alpha version.

Aside from that, here is the one unreasonable request: I would've liked to be able to mod graphic files, as I think it's good practise to polish existent pixel art. If you are looking for someone who can help with that part of the dev process, I can drop you some of my pixel work or rework your stuff if you want to see if I can match your intended style.

I don't know if this is where you want bugs, Yahtz, but here goes.

So I just reached Zagu Prime and it's frozen-ish. I was in looking at the system map as I reached it and it looks like it's closed the map down to a blue vertical bar, but now it's stuck. I say ish, because as I typed this my engine just exploded and the alarm is now sounding in my ear.

I'll restart and see if I can recreate it.

EDIT: Confirmed, did it a second time. Looking at the system map as you reach the planet soft locks.

PS. Not to gush, but I'm a big fan of your work, and I think I'm going to love this game. And if bug hunting helps, then I'm gonna bug hunt the shit outa this.

So, I noticed while playing. The mouse only seems to work whenever it feels like. In addition, my character's sprite moved really slowly when I got onto a planet. It was like walking in molasses. 

I think you should put more consideration into the level of pixelation in your visuals. The character creation currently makes the character always look bad due to the size on screen, which is only made worse by the background looking so crisp. Also, the dialogue text looks like it's half as crisp as the text for who's talking, except when highlighted.

When first looking at the quest menu during the tutorial, I was momentarily confused, because it wasn't clear that I was looking at a menu. I think it was because I hadn't received any mention of how to leave a menu, so I wasn't in the right mindset. I suggest putting in a small bit of text mentioning that escape goes back, partially for that reason but also because some game quit in response to pressing escape. It's good to make it clear that your game doesn't.

When the warp rings were misaligned, I had trouble finding them, because I didn't realize there was a doorway downward from the fuel room. I think an indication on top of the walls of what sort of wall they are would help with that.

When I reached the first planet, I had the diagnostics menu up due to just exploring what was there. I'm not sure if that's why, but the menu disappeared without actually leaving the menu, resulting in the game not being responsive.

I wish GMS2 would pause while not focused. I think I made the initial warp attempt harder because of trying to type up feedback while time was still passing.

FYI, works awesome on Linux with Wine.

(The compatibility layer. But probably drinking is also OK.)

I can barely contain my excitement!

Y'all don't understand I've been counting down the days until this comes out ever since the last video. So excited!

read " Starstruck Vagabound" in my emails  and got excited

Oooooh this can fill my time until cyberpunk releases never

Something to truly get excited about. Looking forward to the finished game.

can’t wait to play this, I have been missing something like this since Objects in Space got abandoned

Been looking forward to this.