Underrail Forum
Underrail => Development Log => Topic started by: Styg on December 18, 2012, 10:38:57 pm
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Alrighty, now that the stuff around alpha release finally settled down a bit I was able to get some real work done again.
(http://www.underrail.com/images/DevLog/CharacterImport.jpg)
I've added export/import character options so that you can restart the game with an existing character (and all their equipment) in the future updates. This ties up to what a lot of you have been asking about - the saved game compatibility between releases. Well, the saves usually won't be 100% compatible. I won't prevent you from loading your old saves, but your saved state might miss a dialog/quest flag, an object you should have picked up earlier, a new NPC that have been added to an area you already visited, etc. So in short, you can load an outdated save game and mess around with it (it shouldn't crash or anything), but if you for some reason can't progress with the quests, I won't be able to help you with that.
Next, I've added an option to autosave on transitions for those who sometimes forget to save for a long time and die 5 areas later, losing all of the progress. I don't advise you to use this feature at the moment, because saving is a bit slow right now, especially when you get later into the game and you'll be changing areas frequently. But if you want it it's there. Also, you'll now have the option of using 'rolling saves' which means that the game will retain your (one) previous quicksave and autosave instead of overwriting it.
Now some gameplay changes.
(http://www.underrail.com/images/DevLog/LockpicksAndHaxxors.PNG)
I've changed the way the lockpicks and haxxors work. Lockpicks are now spent on successful lockpicking, so they work as a resource. They have distinct power levels and icons (+0, +5, +10) and are stackable. Haxxors work similarly like they did before, but also have distinct power levels and icons and require energy (batteries) to use.
(http://www.underrail.com/images/DevLog/AcidBlobPistol.gif)
Next up is the blueprint for chemical pistols that you'll be able to use to craft guns that fire various chemicals in various forms, if you have sufficient chemistry skill that is. A chemical pistol has two major components - collector, which determines the type of substance you can load into the weapon, and dispenser, which determines the way the gun fires the substance. For now you'll only be able to create Acid Blob Pistols, but there will be more in the future. There's also "Chemical Ammo" blueprint to accompany this. If you have sufficient biology and chemistry skills you'll be able to extract acid from acid mutants and make ammo from it.
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I'm aiming for a new release somewhere around New Year. Not sure if it's going to be before or just after though, we'll see. It'll focus mainly on crafting. I'll be adding blueprints for new interesting gadgets as well as some existing stuff that you can't craft at the moment, such as health hypos.
Another major change will be adding respawn timers on creatures in certain areas. This will serve two purposes. First, if you ever find the yourself too weak to progress further with the quests, you can spend some time and hunt through the lower level areas. Now, I'm not saying this is something you'll have to do. The game won't ever require you to grind anything. However, the combat in this game tends to be a bit hard at times, so if you're not that good at it, you'll have this option. And secondly, you'll be able to return to previously visited areas to obtain crafting materials if you're missing on some of them (like you already can with the mushrooms).
That's it for now. Let me know what you think of these changes.
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Oh God... ACID GUN! I love it. I wonder if acid gun could be combined with a perk to make it hit head of the enemy... blinding it and covering in yucky, deadly stuff :D. It would be neat all right. And something like helmet would defend from that! Just a thought.
And crafting is also a lovely subject... since it makes the life so much easier. And cash grinding too.
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Oh God... ACID GUN! I love it. I wonder if acid gun could be combined with a perk to make it hit head of the enemy... blinding it and covering in yucky, deadly stuff :D. It would be neat all right. And something like helmet would defend from that! Just a thought.
Never got around to implementing blind effect, though it was in the plans. If I ever get that done, sure why not. ;)
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This is amazing! I really like how you rewamped the lockpicks/haxxors, I thought it was weird that they never broke although I used them tens of times. I'm also looking forward to the improved crafting, I spent a lot of time on thinking up the best combination of enhancements for my equipment, and now there's more coming! Like a christmas present! :)
EDIT: Now that I mentioned enhancement, are there any plans on enhancing your current equipment? Instead of crafting an all new one?
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Just my thoughts as far as the lockpicks go, wouldn't it make more sense that a failed attempt would break a lock pick, but a successful attempt would let you keep it. Just my thoughts. Great game, looking forward to the new year new content.
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Blinding effect would be really nice - it would certainly make melee combat a bit more viable. Also will there be option to bash enemy with the butt of the firearm?
Options to load the chemical gun with all kind of stuff are really an open field - like hallucinogenic substances, slippery stuff and simple acids... Neat! That is what I love... also maybe an option to create our own designs dependent on level of knowledge? So when I find acid gun with high Medicine I can make 'healing gun' aka hypospray dispenser?
And yeah, Hans Sanitizer has bit better idea about them breaking when test is failed. It would make people consider their options more... or just spam saves :D. But then if there is crafting recipe for them (I vaguely remember there was...) it would be much more forgiving :).
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I should probably mention that I'm in full support of the batteries for hack tools trade off, could there be an option to "unload" hack tools, meaning you can gain some batteries from them for use in a better hack tool or weapon?
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Disposable lockpicks, especially with the current system of different levels of effectiveness, is a pointless and tedious change. I don't want to manage a stack of differently abled lockpicks in my inventory and have to choose one whenever I want to pick a lock. Don't add inventory management routines that only serve as a chore. What real world analogy is there to a mechanical lockpick disappearing every time you use it? Having haxxors use batteries is fine.
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Agree with screeg here, Lockpicks as of now are working great since I dont have to micromanage them. At least give us maybe a blueprint for multiple use lockpick device (like omnitool), it could use battery as well.
Battery for haxors - thats ok.
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Acid Gun is great! Really good idea is the Diablo-esque start new game with a developed character. There are a lot of people, who love to cheat and the best game design revolves around giving players the freedom of choice, that allows cheating ingame - using developer-given tools [secret loots, secret areas, designed exploits] and tactical possibilities, like start a new game with an existing character.
Also cheating is like robbing banks in Fallout and Arcanum. Robbing a warehouse at a specific time, when there are least guards or the guards attention are drawn away by player action.
Good to see you Styg progressing with Underrail. Hope it gets Greenlighted and you make a lot of money to make your dreams & plans a reality!
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At least give us maybe a blueprint for multiple use lockpick device (like omnitool), it could use battery as well.
This is the best solution.
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Just my thoughts as far as the lockpicks go, wouldn't it make more sense that a failed attempt would break a lock pick, but a successful attempt would let you keep it. Just my thoughts.
The reason for this is not to entice save scumming.
At least give us maybe a blueprint for multiple use lockpick device (like omnitool), it could use battery as well.
The main reason for this change is to turn both lockpicks and haxxors into resources. There might be something like a "skeleton key" further down the road.
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Making resources from lockpiks is ok but when You have three types of them with different magnitude then the scenerio of using them is like this:
Lets say we found a lock to lockpick - You dont know how difficult it is to open it.
1. use weakest - > to weak
2. use stronger +5 -> to weak
3. use stronest +10 -> to weak
damn, I had to use it three times to find out that I cant open the lock. Thats a time waste and micromanagement chore - you also have to spend three quickbar fields to speed this process.
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About importing character, would it be possible to allow player to reset character level/stats/skills/perks etc. at import while maintaining the xp so we could try out various character builds?
Also would it be possible to change quickslot behaviour with stackable items in a way that we choose item in slot and when we use the slot it uses sane items in our inventory untill all of them run out instead of until the stack we put in slot runs out (so if I had say 30 grenades of same kind in inventory, I could use the quick slot 30 times)?
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About importing character, would it be possible to allow player to reset character level/stats/skills/perks etc. at import while maintaining the xp so we could try out various character builds?
No, you gots to earn it! ;)
Also would it be possible to change quickslot behaviour with stackable items in a way that we choose item in slot and when we use the slot it uses sane items in our inventory untill all of them run out instead of until the stack we put in slot runs out (so if I had say 30 grenades of same kind in inventory, I could use the quick slot 30 times)?
Actually, most quickslot items have limited stacking, so that you can bring a limited amount into the battle. I don't think that currently there are fights where you can deplete grenades or that stuff from your quick bar if they are maxed, but that's the idea anyway.
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The main reason for this change is to turn both lockpicks and haxxors into resources. There might be something like a "skeleton key" further down the road.
I think it's clear why you want to change lock picks, but not to put too fine a point on it: you're wrong.
When you have a disposable resource like a healing potion, you know in advance how much healing you'll want so you can make a decision about which level of potion to use. When you pick a lock you don't know how difficult it will be. Also, there's just no reason to add one more fiddly item to keep track of, in addition to all the crafting components. The player's investment in the pick locks skill, in addition to the different qualities of lock picks, is enough variables already for one activity.
Laien spells it out even more plainly. I hope you'll rethink this.
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What if pick lock was just an action like attacking or whatever and it automatically used the weakest lockpick that would work, or if none of your lockpicks would work, it would say "not enough skill" or whatever. I don't want to try to pick each lock 3 times.
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The main reason for this change is to turn both lockpicks and haxxors into resources. There might be something like a "skeleton key" further down the road.
I think it's clear why you want to change lock picks, but not to put too fine a point on it: you're wrong.
When you have a disposable resource like a healing potion, you know in advance how much healing you'll want so you can make a decision about which level of potion to use. When you pick a lock you don't know how difficult it will be. Also, there's just no reason to add one more fiddly item to keep track of, in addition to all the crafting components. The player's investment in the pick locks skill, in addition to the different qualities of lock picks, is enough variables already for one activity.
Laien spells it out even more plainly. I hope you'll rethink this.
Disposable lockpicks, especially with the current system of different levels of effectiveness, is a pointless and tedious change. I don't want to manage a stack of differently abled lockpicks in my inventory and have to choose one whenever I want to pick a lock. Don't add inventory management routines that only serve as a chore. What real world analogy is there to a mechanical lockpick disappearing every time you use it? Having haxxors use batteries is fine.
I agree with some of this, I noticed styg said he's trying to discourage save scumming, but a lot of people will just use each tier of lockpick until the object opens then reload a save before the attempt and use the appropriate lockpick. It doesn't discourage save scumming, it just makes the entire process more tedious. I would almost argue that it would encourage people to make saves before making lockpick attempts.
Consider the example of haxxors vs lockpicks:
Haxxors, use one battery unit (or whatever power neccesary) then it fails. Whatever.
Lockpick lowest fails, lockpick medium tier fails, lockpick highest tier fails. I am now 3 lockpicks out, and at this point I would revert to a save before the attempt.
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Disposable lockpicks, especially with the current system of different levels of effectiveness, is a pointless and tedious change. I don't want to manage a stack of differently abled lockpicks in my inventory and have to choose one whenever I want to pick a lock. Don't add inventory management routines that only serve as a chore. What real world analogy is there to a mechanical lockpick disappearing every time you use it? Having haxxors use batteries is fine.
I really dislike the concept of consumable lockpicks as well, the micromanagement created by its implementation is simply too much.
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I think I'm okay with lock picks being a resource, although I would request that there be some explanation that makes sense in the Underrail world as to why they're used up after a successful pick (Deus Ex lockpicks maybe).
But the main problem is just that it can make things cumbersome based on how the quickbar works currently, because it would take up quite a few slots (6 for all levels of picks and haxxors!) if you want to speed the process, which takes away from the space that could be used for all the other skills you may want on the quickbar. Besides that if you don't have the feat that allows you to pick locks and steal faster it would become very very tedious due to the slowness of it all.
I feel the best solution is when you try to open a container or a door it shows you the level of difficulty (i.e. locked: Level 5 Electronic). That removes the guesswork of figuring out what level of lock you need to buy. While this could also be used to reduce the need of trying three different lock picks, there is also the problem of quickbar clutter. To reduce that, I would suggest that you have two general skills "pick lock" and "hack" that could be used successfully only if you have the required resource, which it would then take automatically from your inventory.
Also I think the inventory is going to get quite large with the amount of items that are being added. It would be nice if we could divide it into different packs; i.e. crafting materials, lock picks and haxxors, weapons and armor, etc.