Marisa: Master Book Thief v1.0 (Now with more Touhou)

[Dark Kitsune]

gmc.yoyogames.com version of this topic

Marisa: Master Book Thief
It's time for Marisa's monthly visit to the the Scarlet Devil Mansion library. But there's somewhat of a problem - Patchouli booby-trapped some of the books with bombs! Help Marisa find and avoid the lethal books and collect all the safe books before time runs out!

Important info:
-Instructions are in-game. Just navigate through the menu to "Instructions"
-I'm still working on the game, so it looks kind of bland right now. It will later have some kind of dialog and cutscenes.
-Works on Windows XP/Vista/7

Download:
Version 1.0

Screenshot:


Please leave suggestions and feedback!

[Flan27]

I'm sorry to say it, but your link doesn't work for me. 

[Desu_Cake]

^
It works if you remove the https// and the quotes.

One thing I notice is that near the bottom, when I click, it affects the box two rows above where my cursor is pointed. Not sure if it's just my crappy computer though.

[Dark Kitsune]

^
It works if you remove the https// and the quotes.

One thing I notice is that near the bottom, when I click, it affects the box two rows above where my cursor is pointed. Not sure if it's just my crappy computer though.

That's because I made a stupid mistake with the screen size settings. Fixing in the next update.

Also, the next update will have music, difficulties, some effects, and more.

[Dark Kitsune]

Updated to Version 0.2!
- Added difficulties
- Revamped graphics and menu
- Added music and sounds
- Added HUD
- Added Marisa to HUD
- Fixed game over and scoreboard issues
- Added a starting assist to hard and lunatic

[Flan27]

Hey, this is pretty cool!  I've never payed attention to the timer in regular minesweeper, so this new timer is pretty stressful!  (But in a good way)  I love your choice of music.  It's great to have Marisa there, but now I feel a distinct lack of Patchouli in the actual game.  (But it seems like you're adding her in)  Anyways, I'd say it's looking good so far.

If I had to criticize something, I'd say the menu is pretty bad.  It doesn't tell you what button you're supposed to press, and it's minesweeper anyways so everyone will assume they have to click something.  It's rather confusing!  You ought to make the menu mouse-controlled as well.

[Dark Kitsune]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm thinking of maybe making patchouli appear every once in a while and fire danmaku, and you have to dodge the danmaku with your cursor or something.

[Imosa]

Some people don't know this but Shift has an important function in minesweeper. If you have windows, try it out on the default minesweeper game, it's a little hard to explain, what it does.

[KrackoCloud]

You can also double-click or click with the mouse wheel for the same effect.

iirc, it checks if your tile has the right about of flags. If there are, then it automatically clicks every nearby square that isn't flagged. The catch is that it only checks flags, not mines, so if you have a wrong tile flagged and shift-click, the auto-clicking feature will set off the real mine.

[Imosa]

You can also double-click or click with the mouse wheel for the same effect.

iirc, it checks if your tile has the right about of flags. If there are, then it automatically clicks every nearby square that isn't flagged. The catch is that it only checks flags, not mines, so if you have a wrong tile flagged and shift-click, the auto-clicking feature will set off the real mine.

...well, it was hard for me to explain last night. Pressing shift also highlights the surrounding tiles and it may just be me but I swear just that helps me keep straight where I should be looking.

Also I'm playing right now and when I click on a tile while not enough flags are around it, it doesn't uncover any squares, so it's really just safer because it won't let you uncover tiles before you think you've found all the mines.
Just as a thematic thing, you should make the mouse move slower when holding shift... cuz its like focusing... or something.

[Zil]

Pressing the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously will also do that. In my opinion that's the fastest/easiest way. In any case that's an extremely handy feature and should definitely be included.

I also notice there's a delay between when I click and the tile actually reacting. You should try to fix that, if possible.

Ultimately what you've got going is a minesweeper clone with a Touhou skin on it, which is fine of course if that's just what you're going for. If you could implement something more creative though, I think that would be interesting. I'm not sure dodging bullets with the mouse cursor is a good idea though. Something more puzzle-like would be more appropriate I think. That's just my opinion of course.

[KrackoCloud]

How about instead of using a mouse, you control a Marisa with the arrow keys or something. It's a little slower, so you would have to ease up on the timer, but it might make danmaku and other obstacles a more viable feature.

[Dark Kitsune]

Updated from v0.2 to v1.0!
(No longer beta)
- Generally changed how the game is played
- Changed some graphics
- Added Patchouli; she does spell card attacks when a spell bomb is set off
- Added Marisa; move her with the mouse and avoid bullets
- Changed bombs to spell bombs

Notes:
I edited the instructions, but they may not be so clear. If you have any questions about the gameplay, please ask..
And I tried adding that shift+click feature, but I couldn't get it to work quite right, so I'm saving it for another update.

[Imosa]

The pattern was pretty doable
I don't see any instructions in the game. The only instruction I got was to hit escape to leave the score board. Also, are there supposed to be other difficulties?
Some other suggestions:
* Having the entire game controlled by the mouse would cut down on the amount of movement I need to do. Have it assume the same person is playing again when it comes time to type in a name for the scorer.
* Some indication of how many bombs there are would be nice, either total bombs are unguessed bombs.
* How about just having a 3x3 square of light outlining the adjacent blocks to Marisa's current location.

Having Path shoot spells is a nice touch but doesn't add much to the game for me. When I hit a patch I feel like I might as well just restart the game. I know how to play the game, so I should never hit a mine. I only hit mines when I guess, or I don't think, neither of which seems like a good reason for me to deal with Patch. I'm not saying you did a bad job with this implementation, but you still need more. I guess, consider how you can bring the two game elements of locating mines, and dodging bullets closer together.
As a fun challenge consider generating mine fields that never require guessing in order to be solved.

[Dark Kitsune]

I don't see any instructions in the game. The only instruction I got was to hit escape to leave the score board.

Try pressing left/right in the menu.

Also, are there supposed to be other difficulties?

There are 4 difficulties, see above.

As a fun challenge consider generating mine fields that never require guessing in order to be solved.

Hard and Lunatic provide a cleared area at the start. I didn't do it for Easy and Lunatic though because it always revealed too much area.
But once you've got a good starting point, you shouldn't need to guess anymore.

[I have no name]

But once you've got a good starting point, you shouldn't need to guess anymore.

Code: [Select]

MMM
3?3
1?1
with 1 mine left says hi.

[Imosa]

@Ran Yakumo: Ok, pressing left/right wasn't made clear by those arrows on the side. Why not just have it be a vertical list of things?
What makes you think a good start will prevent guessing. What is your method for generating mine fields? Here is a game I played on Lunatic.

[I have no name]

You don't need to guess in that example.

Code: [Select]

01??      01X?
01??      01X?
13??      13X?
2M??      2MXY
2M3?      2M3Y
112?      112Y
The lower 3 spaces marked X have 2 mines, the upper 3 have 1.  Therefore the middle 2 both can not contain a mine, meaning the lowest X is a mine.  This gives 3 mines adjacent to the 3 at the bottom clearing the spaces marked Y.  Additionally the top X is guaranteed safe.

I've just gone and played it a bit myself, ran into a place where I had to guess once.

Overall thoughts...Marisa overlapping the number proved annoying, I had to move my mouse cursor to see the number.  The "GREAT" on clearing a 0 was annoying as well because it's a visual distraction, though that's a minor gripe.

How long does Patchy stick around for?  Also, while messing with Patchy, I came across this.  What happened there, there should be a mine in that spot but there isn't, is this a glitch or did it happen because I didn't flag everything :V

edit: Having to flag everything is a real nuisance since NF play is a thing.

[Flan27]

Ehh, it took me forever to figure out how to get out of the instruction page.  I ended doing ctrl-shift-esc only to find out that escape was how you were supposed to go back.  Talking about that, there's no way to go back to the main menu once you get to the difficulty select, is there?  You should include a back button there.  I must say, the menu is overall clunky and unintuitive.

I don't think Patchouli and the danmaku were implemented very well.  I went through an entire round without messing up, and I never even saw it.  To make such a fundamental change to the formula, but only as a possible penalty, is pretty silly.  I think it would be better if there were points where you had to dodge danmaku as the game goes on, instead of just when you mess up.

[Dark Kitsune]

Ehh, it took me forever to figure out how to get out of the instruction page.  I ended doing ctrl-shift-esc only to find out that escape was how you were supposed to go back.  Talking about that, there's no way to go back to the main menu once you get to the difficulty select, is there?  You should include a back button there.  I must say, the menu is overall clunky and unintuitive.

I don't think Patchouli and the danmaku were implemented very well.  I went through an entire round without messing up, and I never even saw it.  To make such a fundamental change to the formula, but only as a possible penalty, is pretty silly.  I think it would be better if there were points where you had to dodge danmaku as the game goes on, instead of just when you mess up.

Yeah, I don't work much on menus...

And I'm changing the way the game works again in the next update. If I work on it anymore.

[PhantomSong]

I think ,if possible, it'd be cool it you could make Patchy disappear after clicking at her so many times. (Like you're fighting her)

How it'd work:
Patchy would have a spell bar at the top with about 1000 LP, and each tap deals about 100. Because so far the only possible way of getting rid of Patchy that I see is getting a "Great!" just a thought.