May 2024 – Slattstudio

With 1,459 downloads, I’ve received a lot of feedback about Book 1 of Betrayed Alliance, and mostly I’m happy to say the game is fundamentally stable! But there were some intrepid folks who joined us on Discord and shared some curiosities and anomalies!

So why a patch so quickly?

The Kickstarter-funded update (v. 1.3.1) released just 3 weeks ago, so what did we find?

Just your typical spattering of game crashing scenarios, null textboxes, and priority drawing problems.

Not to mention more misspellings than a six year-old’s handmade birthday card:

So why a patch so quickly? Bottom line, I want people’s experience with the game to be as great as it can be, so the earlier the patch fixes a lot of the found issues, the better!

Important Notice about Save Files

Save games you made with version 1.3.1 will NOT work in 1.3.2. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about this, it’s just the nature of how saves work in SCI. It might load and look like it works, but in the end, the game will crash when you run into any of the changes that were made.

Other notable changes:

The 1-puzzle point tied to the dart board minigame no longer requires a game win, just challenging the sailor at all.
The circuit-board puzzle now gives feedback to the player when they place certain pieces next to each other.
“Searching” has been added to certain places where looking inside or through things is likely.
Auto-guided stairs and hills can now be reversed if triggered on accident.

Itinerary of Long-Term Fixes

There are some fixes/additions that will take some time to do and we’ll shoot for those at a later update. These are more ambitious goals that we couldn’t get out the door in just a few weeks:

Optimizing the game for era hardware
Creating a better darts minigame from the ground up
Making keyboard-only gameplay possible
Adding support for all additional sound drivers

Soundtrack News!

Also, Brandon Blume has put out the MT-32 soundtrack for Betrayed Alliance on his website. Check it out!

Betrayed Alliance: Book 1 Update Patch Announcement for 5/23

May 16, 2024Ryan J SlatteryLeave a comment

Great news! BAB1 has been downloaded 1,260 times in the last two weeks! Better yet, not a single one of them have complained about game-breaking bugs!

If you haven’t gotten it yet, get it here!

That said, I’m announcing a small patch update to BAB1 for next Thursday, May 23. I’ll tell you what we found, and also what we’re looking at for bigger patches down the road.

Fixes:

Thanks to the awesome streamers Melluvsgames2, SpaceQuestHistorian, Jimni_P, TheAnimationVoice, we got to see firsthand encounters with a few bugs, inconsistencies, and misspellings.

Perhaps the most egregious inconsistency is a “look at chest” command which tells you with absolute certainty that the chest has no lock on it, and yet when you try to open it, you get box-blocked by a “It’s locked” message. Nope, it’s not that the game has an untrustworthy narrator, it’s just that I messed up!

The quick-travel map is also slightly bugged, but not in a way that matters for gameplay. Yes, it will always take you to the right place, so no worries there, but a small bug makes it so sometimes foreground images are drawn OVER the map.

Believe it or not, I’m one of the most typo-prone prose writers in the known world. When you add to this the fact that SCI Companion (the tool I used to make the game) has no onboard spell/grammar checker, and you’ll be left with a game riddled with typos. Some of them have been uncovered and fixed – but I’m sure more are lurking in the shadows!

One other “fix” we’ve made concerns the darts minigame. Due to the difficulty of the game’s controls, we’ve made a small change – you now get the puzzle point tied to the game not for winning, but just for challenging the sailor in the first place. While winning 3 times does give you some stats boosts, it is no longer necessary to win a game of darts for puzzle points.

Bigger Things Down the Road

We also have some bigger plans for updates later, one among them is a complete overhaul of the darts minigame, which has been a common complaint about the game.

BAB1 currently supports Adlib, Soundblaster, and MT32 sound drivers, but we plan on getting it up and running with Tandy, PC Speaker, General Midi, and all other sound drivers that used to be standard for games of this type.

As we continue with Books 2 and 3, it will become more important to allow players the option to export and import their character and stats from one Book to the next, similar to the Quest for Glory series.

Show Me What You Got!

The update is coming in just a week. Tell me what you found! Are there bugs, inconsistencies, and/or misspellings that I missed? Join our Betrayed Alliance Discord and let me know!

Betrayed Alliance: Book 1 Release-week Roundup

May 9, 2024May 9, 2024Ryan J SlatteryLeave a comment

It’s been a week since Betrayed Alliance: Book 1 was released, open-source and for free. So how’s it going? Let’s find out!

Downloads:

A week into release and we’ve had just over 800 downloads! That’s a lot of people playing Betrayed Alliance, for which I am very thankful!

If you haven’t gotten your FREE download of the game yet, get it here!

Reception:

While we don’t have any proper reviews (yet!), I have had people reaching out and saying things like,

Just finished playing it. Very very fun. Took me back to the EGA days of QFG1, which is still my favorite of that series. I cannot wait to play the next chapter.

Another person mentioned on the Sierra Gaming World Facebook group:

I know someone in this group was involved with the making of Betrayed Alliance and I just want to say thank you. I started playing it yesterday and really love it so far.

If you have any feedback for us (or bugs to report), join us on the Slattstudio Discord page

Speaking of reviews, if you purchased the physical game manual, please leave a short review! It only has ONE review so far, and those are rookie numbers!

Hint Guide & Walkthrough:

Yes, just like the old days, there is a physical game manual, but this one includes a hint guide and walkthrough in addition to a short story introduction to the game, some instructions about features, and artwork.

In case the PDF hint guide and walkthrough (included with the game files) isn’t quite enough for your needs, there is a video walkthrough you can watch courtesy of Streamer and YouTube guy, Jimni P:

Support:

Love what we’re doing and want to support? You have options!

Slattstudio is on Patreon which is a truly significant help in keeping a time-intensive hobby such as this sustainable. A huge and heartfelt “Thank You!!” to the wonderful and generous people who support me there!

You can also get some really cool items like the Game Night shirt and hoodie, a Slattstudio cap, or some stickers, all of which can be found at the Slattstudio Fourth Wall Page.

Finally, the Betrayed Alliance: Book 1 Player’s Guide and Game Manual from Amazon. (This is the link for North America. For other marketplaces, you might have to search “Betrayed Alliance” on Amazon.)

What’s Next?

We’re currently collecting bugs and fixing them for a patch we anticipate putting out sometime in June. If you encounter any bugs in the game, feel free to join the discord where you will find a “Betrayed Alliance Book 1 Bugs” channel you can post them to (and we’ll get around to squashing them).

With the update to Book 1 completed, it’s time to turn our attention back to Book 2. There is a playable demo for Book 2 currently available, but lots of work to be done for the final product. The timeline for completion for Book 2 isn’t near enough to prognosticate with any reliability.

Thank you for playing, supporting, and enjoying our work!

Betrayed Alliance Book 1 – OUT NOW – FREE!

May 2, 2024Ryan J Slattery3 Comments

Are you ready to experience the first part in a trilogy of EGA adventure? Well, it’s ready for you, too! The game is free to download and play, so get it here and have fun!

When you get a chance, follow me and the two Canadian creatives that helped make this game, Karl Dupéré-Richer, and Brandon Blume. Shower them with praise, then, if there are problems, send your angry messages my way or join the discord!