Messages

31

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #15: Version 0.1.7.0. released

« on: March 29, 2013, 02:08:07 pm »

The item degradation is pretty tough to deal with for gun users, those kits are expensive! For my first foray into attacking rat hounds in the caves, I luckily stumbled upon another 5mm hawker, so I was okay for a while (in addition to the crossbow you get). And then I managed to scrounge up enough loot to buy *one* repair kit. Now I'm a little better off, and I have three . Those guns are good for killing about 10 rathounds, then its too degraded to be of any use. And even then you have to be very judicious and use aimed shot a lot. All of the guns you get from foes are worth like 50 credits which is useless! You have to rely on things you find in good condition. Although their sledgehammers, even if highly degraded, thankfully still sell for 800 credits.

Don't know where to buy the armor repair kits, but I luckily found one and I'm waiting till my armor degrades as much as possible before using that precious kit. Hoping I find more in junkyard.

I feel like this focus on item degradation, while making the game more challenging...well I feel like its the wrong type of challenging. I'm glad that, at least, the damage the gun deals stays the same. But unless you invest a ton of points into barter its very difficult to buy those kits. That's why I'm trying to spend a few spare points in mechanics to see if I can make them. I have to admit this is the first time I've truly felt challenged in an RPG about where to spend my points, so I think that's good! I'll have to sacrifice one turns worth of points and just jam them mostly into mechanics and see how that works.

32

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #14: Taking from the Rich

« on: March 07, 2013, 02:59:49 am »

There seems to be some impression that making it harder to sell acquired loot is synonymous with requiring a player to be forced to make careful choices with their limited inventory.

I don't think this necessarily has to be the case. The system could be designed so that there is a fast travel option, but its only activated once all enemies have been cleared out of an area, so you can't abuse it to instantly change your inventory or visit the doctor.  After a while it could repopulate with critters/thugs etc., and after they've been cleared out you can fast travel again. Just like in Fallout, among other games (Arcanum); you can't travel in dangerous areas.

Or it could be a system where encumberance reduces your weapons and evasion skills significantly, so that its only tenable to carry more items when you're no longer in any imminent danger. I don't know if there really is any positive argument for making it more difficult for people to sell loot they find, in and of itself.  Knowing that people are going to try to make as much money as they can, assuming the items aren't junk or that there are very few numbers of them, then you know that they're going to, almost universally, go back to get more loot to sell at a shop. These are reasonable expectations of any gamer.

So its incumbent on game designers to find ways to make aspects of game play which are practically a necessity as non-tedious as possible, so long as it doesn't create problems in other areas (i.e. strategic management of inventory). Not that Styg is doing anything wrong, just wanted to contribute my opinion!

33

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #13: Blood Sucking Frogs

« on: February 13, 2013, 03:26:17 am »

Crossbowski is the best name ever

34

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #12: Grenade Changes and Item Durability

« on: January 26, 2013, 10:37:40 pm »

I think the durability change is good if the point is to reduce the amount of money you can get from exploring areas, I just hope that durability for your own items doesn't decrease too rapidly like it did for Fallout: New Vegas; I feel like it detracts from the game play when you have to worry about it too much.

35

General / Re: After the Armadillo [SPOILERS]

« on: January 19, 2013, 06:53:47 pm »

I killed the old guy at depot A, after a looong time shooting him with my marauder rifle. He eventually ran out of hypos and slowly died. I managed to kill him by doing the open door - shoot- close door tactic with his dogs piled up at the front, preventing the old man from opening the door. Its kind of unfortunate though, he didn't have much of value. He should have something awesome for being the toughest person to beat one-on-one in the game, assuming you don't use my cheap tactics

36

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #11: Version 0.1.6.0. released

« on: January 19, 2013, 06:42:31 pm »

Hah. Darn, that open-shoot-close door tactic was kind of lame but it saved me so much ammo.

Oh well I guess I'll just have to funnel them

37

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #9: Importing Characters and More Crafting

« on: January 12, 2013, 04:29:37 pm »

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.

38

Suggestions / Re: Allowing traders to get new stock?

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:43:12 pm »

Hello,

I was just playing the alpha a bit, and I guess I noticed an issue that was a bit vexing.

Basically I have nothing to buy or spend my money on that's useful to me. When I was playing the demo, there were sniper rifles, advanced armors, and things that I could save up for. But it *seems* like (I'm not sure if the inventory gets randomly refreshed if I play longer), what the trader starts with is what he has forever. So if he has a set amount of bullets, that's all you're ever going to get, so make sure you use your bullets wisely; but after that your guns for that caliber are kind of useless unless you hope to find more bullets later.

More generally, if you don't happen to find really useful armor or weapons in your travels, then you kind of have no recourse, and I can imagine that making the game unnecessarily hard for particularly unlucky players.

I feel like there should be some kind of refreshing of their inventory after a certain amount of in-game time has passed. How much I'm not sure...and whether a waiting system should be implemented I guess is up to Stygian to decide.

Agreed on that point, even though I've been lucky enough to find what I wanted in the shops, it's a very sensible suggestion. I'd even go so far as to also suggest a system where you could still (if, say, you don't have enough money yet) put an option on a few items the vendor currently has so that you find them again when his inventory is refreshed (maybe for a fee, or by limiting the amount of options that can be put).

Also as another suggestion, it might be nice if you could allow for an easier way to reload the weapon rather than going in the inventory and manually reloading? It should be possible to just right click on the gun, or maybe double-click it, and then the character would load it with the appropriate caliber.

There is ! It's all in the help screen (interrogation point on top right corner). Basically, you just need to hold SHIFT and then the Combat Utilities bar changes to an Ammo bar where you can choose which bullets to reload your weapon with.

Aghhh I should have read that interrogative screen more closely . Thanks for pointing that out, ironically I'm now playing a pure melee + psi character, but it will be useful when the full game comes out and I go back to my technologist roots.

Also I agree very much with your suggestion. I was just thinking about it myself actually, because it would make the game fairly stressful if you saw a really great piece of armor or weapon for sale, but you knew that you didn't have any money for it and it would probably be gone by the time you did.  So it would be useful to have a fee system in place where you can "save" important items for later.

Although I found out that I can mitigate a lot of the problems so far, because the trader's inventory is randomized just before you talk to him/her. I assumed before that it was the same inventory for each game, but if you quicksave before opening their trading menu, and then quickload, you can see that their stock is randomized with each quick load, allowing you to find what you need.

That said I think it would still be useful to have some restocking in terms of ammo, and health supplies (or maybe implement a way to make ammo, just like you can make armors and weaponry). So far I have been able to get by without much trouble just by scavenging ammo from the people I've killed, and since I'm particularly judicious in my use of ammo I always end up accumulating more than I use. But at the same time it makes me much less willing to use burst mode...although perhaps this kind of decision making is intended.

Also I'm not sure whether the store system was intended to be this way, such that if you really want to get the armor you want, you  have to craft it. But I'm not sure if that's too punishing or not for non-technological characters.

I guess the more I think about it, the more there is to think about. So I'll leave it to Stygian, but at least its good to bring it up!

I'm wondering if this might be partly a difficulty issue. If traders constantly got new stock you would be able to go through hypos to your hearts content. I would say a compromise would be to have new stock every time a quest was completed, or every time a main quest point was completed. Not sure how hard this would be to implement, but I agree that the stocks of traders should change over time.

Its true it might be a conscious decision on Styg's part to force us to use our hypos and ammo sparingly and consciously. It could also apply to burst fire mechanics or using your most powerful sniper rifle in every encounter (I think its 12.7 mm).  Honestly with my play style I end up having 60 unused hypos sitting in my inventory for emergency, and piles of unused ammunition for emergencies, as I'm very careful in my engagements and try to be as efficient as possible.

But I guess we all agree that it would make the game more engaging, and fun, if you had something to look forward to once you accumulate all of this gear from the enemies you've killed, but don't really have anything to spend it on. I kind of expect that this is something Styg wanted to do from the beginning, but just hasn't had time to implement. I guess the real problem is how you'd implement it to prevent the abuse you're talking about, amongst other issues.

39

Discussions / Re: Do you believe in UFO?

« on: December 16, 2012, 09:18:09 pm »

Okay so first of all, this might be pedantic but I think what you're really asking in is do you believe aliens exist, and that they've visited our planet in unusual aircraft.

UFO technically just means unidentified flying object, it doesn't directly mean that its alien, just that its unidentified. Of course most of the time when you can't identify it in terms of what we know, most of the time the only remaining option would be that its some spacecraft guided by otherworldly intelligence.  But it could also be advanced military projects, or maybe some unusual weather anomaly that looks like a flying object.

My answer is: Probably yes to the former, and probably yes to the latter.

I think if life is created on Earth, then with trillions of other star systems its likely to evolve on other planets. And I think there's a good chance they've developed advanced technologies, to the point where they can travel through spacetime through an as of yet undiscovered mechanism (wormholes?) allowing (effectively) faster than light travel.  I guess I just see too much potential in scientific discovery and technological growth to imagine us as being constrained by the speed of light.  So that's my guess on that front.

And since they have these technologies, they've probably visited other planets, in order to gauge the level of advancement of other species so they know what to expect should they become truly space faring civilizations.

40

Suggestions / Allowing traders to get new stock?

« on: December 16, 2012, 02:37:39 am »

Hello,

I was just playing the alpha a bit, and I guess I noticed an issue that was a bit vexing.

Basically I have nothing to buy or spend my money on that's useful to me. When I was playing the demo, there were sniper rifles, advanced armors, and things that I could save up for. But it *seems* like (I'm not sure if the inventory gets randomly refreshed if I play longer), what the trader starts with is what he has forever. So if he has a set amount of bullets, that's all you're ever going to get, so make sure you use your bullets wisely; but after that your guns for that caliber are kind of useless unless you hope to find more bullets later.

More generally, if you don't happen to find really useful armor or weapons in your travels, then you kind of have no recourse, and I can imagine that making the game unnecessarily hard for particularly unlucky players.

I feel like there should be some kind of refreshing of their inventory after a certain amount of in-game time has passed. How much I'm not sure...and whether a waiting system should be implemented I guess is up to Stygian to decide.

Also as another suggestion, it might be nice if you could allow for an easier way to reload the weapon rather than going in the inventory and manually reloading? It should be possible to just right click on the gun, or maybe double-click it, and then the character would load it with the appropriate caliber.

Beyond that thanks for the updates! I'm going to keep playing in hopes I find a sniper rifle (and some ammo) .

41

Suggestions / Re: Stealth Rework

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:57:37 am »

Also noise should play a factor. So hopefully if silencers make it into the game, they can be used to reduce the chances of being noticed by enemy NPCs, assuming they aren't right next to the person that dies.

42

Suggestions / Death animations on critical hit? And modifying the feat system.

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:51:12 am »

Hi.

This ties into another post I made. I know this turns your game into a variant of Fallout 2...but why fix/change what isn't broken and worked amazingly? .

I feel like currently the system for dealing damage revolves around using feats to deal damage, including specific damage. So surprise stealth damage is dealt by a feat, crippling leg damage is dealt by a feat, critical hit damage is dealt by a feat...and more to come. All of these actions requiring using that feat by clicking it.

I just feel like it would be more efficient to roll all of those ideas into one.  So if you attack someone from stealth, there's automatically a higher critical hit percent chance and perhaps a multiplier to the critical hit damage (not sure whether this is feasible balance wise).  It shouldn't require you to click "stealth attack" explicitly, because it is implied when you attack someone from stealth. This could work for back stabs as well as rifles.

Similarly, instead of dedicating one feat to kneecap shot (also I feel like this should be expanded to other weapons besides smgs/pistols, I'm not sure why it needs to be restricted as it worked fine in fallout for all weapons, assuming they weren't burst only), I feel like it would be more efficient to have one targeted shot feat, which would then allow you to choose a body part.  The AP costs would increase, and the percent chance of hitting could be shown next to each body part, but upon a successful *critical* hit, you could have a number of crippling effects (including knee shot) that would eliminate the need for (otherwise) storing five or six feats in your "quick feat" tab to perform each of these critical strikes. Also if players just wanted a generic critical hit (i.e. the current aimed shot) there could be a minor check box that allows the system to default towards torso shots without having to go into the body part menu every time.

Without this it would just be cumbersome and tiring to have to select the certain shot you want, and also because that quick feat tab seems to fill up fairly quickly and we're only in the demo phase, so I'm sure later on I'll have to be very judicious in what I want to be in there.

- - - - -

Finally, it would be nice to add some more interesting death animations.  I will always miss the awesome text that accompanies critical strikes to various body parts from Fallout, but it would go a long way to making combat more exciting to have a number of death animations associated with certain kills.  It just makes the game more fun . If you can add in some text too that would be awesome (I'm sure someone would volunteer to help if its a lot of work...)!! . So for example death by burst fire would involve being knocked backwards while being riddled by gunfire, head shots might blow out a portion of their head, torso shots a piece of their torso, arm shots their arm just flies off...you get the picture.

I don't want to make this a copy of Fallout 1/2, its just that those features really did work quite well and I see no reason why they can't be used again. Other than that this game looks really great so far, I've already played it a few times which is more than I can say for most games.

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Suggestions / Re: Feature - Aim better for more APs (JA2 Style) and targeting body parts?

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:32:55 am »

Knee cap shot is definitely nice, but it seems like for now the options for dealing critical damage rely more on specific feats than on targeting crucial body parts. It would be really nice if you could knock someone unconscious, or blind them, or cripple their arms without having to rely on one of five feats.

It just seems more efficient if you have one feat that allows you to do a targeted aimed shot - but the percent chance of successfully hitting that person depends on your perception and skill with guns - or perhaps you can gain other feats that improve your accuracy in these regards. The traditional aimed shot could be accomplished just by targeting the enemy's torso.

Because as it is, its kind of just two different ways to deal critical damage with either aimed shot or snipe, except for kneecap shot (which only works for SMGs and pistols).  Keeping all those three shots in your quick options bar kind of takes up a bit of space, and I'm sure as you add more it'll take up even more space which would be inefficient and cumbersome.

44

Bugs / Inventory Glitch...and a few other things.

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:16:32 am »

Hi,

I noticed that when I had an inventory filled with items, to the point where a slider appears, if I dragged something from the *bottom* of my inventory to the top, I would basically create a copy of the item at the top, while leaving the original item at the bottom. I used this on stacks of health hypos and ammunition, and I found that I could duplicate these stacks five or six times (not sure how much longer it could have gone on for).

Additionally, as my inventory was being moved around to accommodate for these new items, some of my items (I remember special weapons I had) were lost (as if they were deleted).  I no longer have the save game, but I just wanted to inform you anyway so that you can experiment on your own to see whats going on. 

As much as it is a relief to have what seems to be a limitless inventory, just wanted to suggest that I feel there should be some limitations, just because it can become a bit unrealistic to have access to so many items without having to worry about encumbrance etc.

Oh yes, and one more thing. I know you're aware of the 12.7 mm sniper rifle requiring more action points than the player has available or can earn (looks like agility doesn't increase action points? At least not in this current build), I found that you can actually snipe in real time with that anyway, and then it puts you into combat mode. It just seems a bit contradictory that you can do it in real time, but not when you have a full bar of action points as they seem like they should be the same thing...in theory.

Well that's all. Really great game so far! You've done a fallout fan proud