KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

[udm]

Alienman Commissar Draco Yes I finally got the game to work properly (I think it was VSync that was causing the lockups), and it's fucking amazing bros. I like how balanced everything feels. So many ways to get through a quest. It definitely feels like a game made in Russia, but in the Space Rangers / STALKER kind of way, rather than like your usual Eastern European shovelware. Which means that gameplay-wise, quality is definitely there.

In fact, first two main quests

Spoiler

feel like they borrowed a page from Fallout 1's Great Khans vs Shady Sands plotline

 

[Atomboy]

Oh god, three pages and still going! So awesome! We're in a huge hurry making a bug fix patch right now, but I will try to reply as much as I can right now.

So here we go!

it's steam update time where is the game

We're posting 22:00 Moscow time / 21:00 Riga time, so in 1 hour 40 minutes or so!

Will it be on gog?
EDIT:Just saw your rating,thanks for the answer mate .

That rating is a lifesaver, literally had no time to type at that moment. I'm talking with a GOG representative through e-mail. Seems like she showed the game to the higher-ups. Hoping for 2019 gog release. Can't name dates!

Congratulations Atomboy!

Thank you!

Congratulations Atomboy and the whole ATOM Team!

Going to try to roll my character before I have to rush out the door. Hope everyone has a great time exploring the Russian wasteland today!

Hope so too! Thanks!

Atomboy congrats!

It has been long way, yeah?

This how ATOM RPG was look like in 2008 (just history):

Spoiler

View attachment 10192


View attachment 10193

View attachment 10194

View attachment 10195

Thanks, man! Lol, even we had a little nostalgia trip looking at it. Really hard, but rewarding. Hope you'll have best of luck with Sands!

I suppose it's asked and answered a million times, but I'm lazy... is there GOG release in horizon?

Yes, but no dates!

No possibility to name save games?
I prefer to write short description about what I was planning to do.

Might have a vote on it. Never really felt either way, so left them without naming option :D

Some early impressions...

• Intro video narration is almost unintelligible, thank god for subtitles
• The perks at character creation make little sense in terms of the + and - they give;
• No key binding? Disappointing
• No visual queue if you are stealing from a container or not
• Dialogues are very bare bones, the same options for every npc (Hows it going, hows life, anything bothering you, have work, rumors?)
• Dialogue choices you have already chosen dont grey out
• Performance is good, so are the load times
• the ingame cut scene when approaching the first village was unexpected
• Quest log is very simple, to a fault. Location tabs and more detailed descriptions would be nice

Havent entered combat yet or explored much beyond arriving in the first town.

Do you mean it was glitching for you, or the voice itself wasn't to your liking? Binding might come up soon. The dialogues are styled to almost always have the same questions that you mentioned, but the questions always lead to a unique reply, might get you a quest, etc. Same questions never mean same answers from different NPCs! Graying out is a nice idea, reminiscent of old titles. If we'll feel the community wants this, we'll do it! Like we made the chat log thing due to popular demand. But what did you mean with the Quest Log? Hypertext like in Morrowind or generally more verbose descriptions?

On your next post about tutorials: there's an in-game instruction book. Basically, everything is done through long left mouse button clicks, so not really enough material for tutorial

Its even better than 0.8 now its strange that you can't change your clothes and that one of set comes with magic STR+1 beret while other sets have no bonuses also when you develop high speech the barter becomes useless and you better of picking pickpocket or combat skills or maybe crafting instead. No big deal about it but those were separate skills in Fallouts. Anyways game is even more fun now, runs and loads fast unlike *caughs* Other Ruskiye game Codex has hard on with one exception being the briefing movie which somehow loads really slow. Congratulations for ATOM team Comrades Developers.

Clothes change will be available for all characters on the character base. Barter and Speech checks are not always interchangeable, though! And speech does not affect prices! So

No tutorials on anything... So i have to ask, how to i use skills? Figure i need to use one to fix the generator? Messed around with the UI and all the keyboard but unlike Fallout there doesnt seem to be a skill button.

Use left mouse button on object or person Comrade.

How about lockpicking?
Do I need an item to try opening locks?

edit.
Got it.

Every action is just one long left click away! That's why we don't even have a tutorial. It's basically a mouse game :D
Lockpics also available in mid game.

Uhh, holding mouse button for context is almost game breaking for me and I remember whining about it here before 0.8, when the right mouse button was unoccupied...
You get a fucking inflammations in your tendons with this shit...

Is the right mouse button still unoccupied?

Well that's the thing! The right button was ALWAYS occupied. With camera movement. Believe me, we tried combining the functions, but it's honestly much worse than long left click. Trying to move camera... Noticing it's not moving, because you happen to click on an interactive object. It was hell on earth!

3 hours in. So far predy gud. Plenty of RP potential and combat is straightforward.

Would appreciate if already picked dialogue turned grey like someone else mentioned in the thread.

I also wonder if there's a limit to how many times I can fuck up a skill check? Right now I have only a measly 26 in lockpick, and have been pretty much repeatedly bruteforcing my way through every lock so far.

Uhh, holding mouse button for context is almost game breaking for me and I remember whining about it here before 0.8, when the right mouse button was unoccupied...
You get a fucking inflammations in your tendons with this shit...

Is the right mouse button still unoccupied?

Right mouse only rotates the map for me, so I'd say yes.

Thank you!

How grindy it is and how bad (?) are repeatable (?) random encounters? So far, these are the only negatives I see in player reviews.

Honestly, I never get the need to grind, or find repeating rando maps. Still, I'm a dev not a player. Some actually might have a different experience.

is dis game buggy af or its good to buy right now

It is a Russian indie kickstarted crpg...

okay but should I bite the forbidden fruit or wait 9 months for the bugs to be fixed?

You could wait 2 days or something. We haven't slept yet. Bugfixing is really, really fast right now. And there's not a lot of bugs.

I’m still on character creation. Really like the traits. Does anyone know how to add portraits? What this game needs most are some Trotsky photos.

You can PM me so I can write you an instruction on JSON modding after the release hype dies down a bit. Very little time currently

How are melee/unarmed characters looking?

There's a perk tree for each weapon type. No idea how viable melee is in the long run though.

I'm endgaming with melee, looks good with armor and perks. Terrible without! You have to really put everything you have into melee to make it work against heavy gunners.
Will be adding more powerful endgame melee in DLC to remedy that.

I dumped luck to 3. Would've dropped it to 2, but didn't want to be cursed.

Good work! LUCK is the best thing to dump. END may look like a dump stat but we did a little something that will make a END 1-3's life hell if he plans on using any sort of chems or meds.

 

[Atomboy]

Oh come on, no launch discount for us cheap bastards?

Bro, its 15 bucks. Thats already on "i take my wife out to burger king for anniversary" cheap bastard level.

15 american dollars is an entire year's salary in most of the world

NOT IN OUR LINE OF WORK ITS NOT! :DD

Started playing some hours ago, am making friends at the factory right now. So far, very fun and entertaining. My congratulations Atomboy, wish you good sales!
Would love being able to rebind, tho. Holding LMB for contextual menu sucks; just let me bind it to RMB, it's not like I'm using the camera control ever at all.

for people who have played more of it, what stats are dump stats?

Seems like you can safely dump luck without much worries. Low END seems to work as well if you're not getting up close. So, kinda like FO.

Beware low END... Honestly! My heart will bleed for your character!

I guess Expert dif. mode is the way to go?

It's pretty hard, though...

Played some more this morning, had a good laugh.

I always wondered if all those Russian cuck porn videos really meant that it was an actual Russian fetish... now i wonder no more. Met this girl standing guard at a gate, she was disguised as a man, after i uncovered her secret she confesses that she is married to the guard standing right next to her, after a couple of skill checks, i convinced her that she needed a good fucking... she giggles and says shes married, i then proceed to say that he wont mind, just look at him over there looking sad while i seduce his women. After walking a short distance to an abandoned gas station, i proceed to give her a proper tumble, disappointingly it didn't involve her husband watching it.

You stumbled upon a very important game theme we have going. Don't tell anyone!

Is english translation good or should I just play it in Russian?

If you're good at both, Russian is the better option most of the time. We did everything we could, and no matter what anyone says, I'm actually proud of the translation in some parts of the game! Still, a translation is a translation. No matter how good it gets.
We have several people improving it even now, though.

Atomboy Have any players complained about the game locking up at the main menu? I've been unable to get past character creation because the game always locks up halfway through. It could also be my GPU dying on me

Did you give it a 2-3 minute wait? It happens on my low end PC as well. Try pushing ESC a lot. And turn off cinematics through menu. Best way to play on an old PC.

Got a few hours in tonight. Impressed by the ostensible plethora of ways to approach situations and character/game progression in general. I'm already thinking about alternate builds and paths I'll be able to take in subsequent playthroughs. This is a very good thing. For instance:

Spoiler

Ways to deal with the village rat, ranging from murdering him outright, extorting some rubles out of him, letting him go free, letting him go free and then joining up with him later - therefor joining the bandits that are terrorizing the villagers, gaining his trust by gambling with him, etc.

All discover-able and explore-able with a range of skills and attributes. Also really like how every NPC I've met so far actually has a background and something to say.

Can't wait to play more and wish I didn't have to sleep.

Thanks!!

How does crippling work in this? I shot a bunch of half naked people in their eyes for full damage with Hunting rifles and revolvers, and it seems to only piss them off.

First, the important stuff:

Does this have a crit hit chart?
Does this have crit gibs? Do they depend on weapon and are graphic?

On gibs: You get to blind, knock down, or make enemies less accurate by hitting vitals, but it doesn't happen with each hit. There's a modifier % like "if you hit the eyes succesfully there's X% of blinding" and if you pass that check the guy screams "MY EYES!!" or just runs away, etc. Same goes with shooting heads off and other juicy stuff.

The game feels like incline,the picture that looked like me even had my name.

Any hint on how to use skills?

Long left click! And thank you

Officially my first ever. Or at least, in recent memory.

Sadly, can only have it installed and sitting prettily atm, since I don't want to break the momentum of my virgin Stalker:SoC playthrough

But will jump right into it once I wrapped that up

Thanks a lot! Hope you'll enjoy it!

 

[Lord_Potato]

Once this game is on GOG, it will be day 1 purchase for me. The first one since Witcher 3.

I just cannot stand Steam anywhere near my main and secondary gaming rigs.

 

[HoboForEternity]

hmm i am finally in front of my computer. right before closing in at work, my mom called to pick her up and get her to do some shopping and meet with my aunt. i had no choice, so i went, then just watched spiderman movie while she shop with her sister, and go home. 4 hours later, i am HEEERE!

edit: also the new spoderman movie is fun.

 

[udm]

hmm i am finally in front of my computer. right before closing in at work, my mom called to pick her up and get her to do some shopping and meet with my aunt. i had no choice, so i went, then just watched spiderman movie while she shop with her sister, and go home. 4 hours later, i am HEEERE!

edit: also the new spoderman movie is fun.

Enjoy the game, neighbour. It's the best Fallout game since Underrail

 

[Lhynn]

Once this game is on GOG, it will be day 1 purchase for me. The first one since Witcher 3.

I just cannot stand Steam anywhere near my main and secondary gaming rigs.

TFW you don't have a tertiary gaming rig for steam.

 

[Atomboy]

I have only a measly 26 in lockpick, and have been pretty much repeatedly bruteforcing my way through every lock so far.

Randomized checks.

Fallout had the rare critical failure, but it was no big deal since you could either reload or wait something like a day for it to reset (a bigger deal in Fallout pre-returned water chip than Fallout 2, certainly).

Success by constant attempts only works in a certain radius. Like, with skill of 15 you might eventually get so lucky you open a 25 skill lock, but it won't happen with a 50 skill safe.

Holy Satan, I don't recall when was the last time I spent so many hours in front of a screen.

To all codexers who, like me, were afraid about the amount of references and memeing: worry not. While there certainly is an abundance, it's nothing jarring.
Most of the time it's put in a way that's fitting to the setting; you'll get called a normie by mutated circus freaks, or discuss Shakespeare with one of them, provided your character can pass a skill check. At the very worst, it feels like a snobby way of showing off by the writers, but nothing too bad.

Lol! Thanks :D The Shakespeare part was actually to show how much of a sissy Ivan the Crane is. He is whiny and theatrical and likes Shakespeare, after all. And do they really say normie? I thought I told them to use "Natural product"!

I love the fucking portraits I'm this game. At work and can't think of anything but starting the game as soon as I get home.

Thanks!!

1 Luck 1 Personality.
10 Int 10 Attention.

Seems I am rping your avg codex autist.

No! Don't do it! Most people don't talk to you with Char below 4!

Hopefully I didn't miss much!

VERY IMPORTANT ADDENDUM

I was summoned to the Codex tonight in the first place, because one of my pals told me there was someone in this thread really hating on the English translation, calling it nonsensical and showing off the various typos we've got and it looked like he was really mad about it. I swear by ATOM if you are here, I couldn't find your post. Probably because we're all really sleepy. But, still, to not look like I'm avoiding criticism on this rather painful topic, I'm gonna imagine I found your post and reply to it.

The translation has issues and it always had issues. While I would never agree that the game is mostly nonsensical (unless you're talking to a few "special" characters in game which were made to look and sound nonsensical) I would agree that it's 4 out of 5 in the best parts of the game, and 3 out of 5 in the worst parts. However, we are constantly working on it. Like I said, currently we're at this 3\4 out of 5. We've started at being 1 out of 5. Then a certain awesome editor came by and we became 2 out of 5. Then I started giving the translation more time, using dictionaries, trying to read lines out loud in order to see whether they sound right, and we became 3 out of 5. Then the editor helped us again and we became 4 out of 5, which we deemed enough for Release and enough for most players to enjoy the game and understand everything said by the characters. However, we're constantly fixing typos, making oldest (and worst) lines sound better. It's a constant process that you cannot automate. A spellchecker program might show you a word that's written wrong, but it doesn't know crap about than and then, pass and past and passed and stuff like that. But whenever we see it - we fix it, and when there's enough fixes for a tiny patch, we make that patch and we improve the game even more.

TL;DR: We know it can be better, and we will make it better. I'd be an idiot if I tried to shill ATOM as a flawless game, but I will always shill it as a game that's already pretty good, and a game that we love and care about so much - we'll never give up on it, ever, until it suits us and most players completely in all aspects.

Thank you everyone for voicing your opinions and for your well wishes! I will get back once we upload the fix and get a few hours of rest!

 

[udm]

Atomboy So I just completed that minor quest with Katya and Kovalev

Spoiler

That bit of dialogue they had where Kovalev remarked what a curious fellow the main character was and how he was always asking about every single thing nearly killed me

 

[Lilura]

awesome editor

Just so you know, a professional editor would catch everything on a single-pass. This isn't Brothers Karamazov.

Congrats on the release, though. And best of luck to you.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Making my usual smartass gal. 5 5 5 8 6 8 3.

Probaly gonna get my ass kicked a good while.

 

[Vityaz]

Atomboy
Unless I am missing something - is there any other faster way for selecting locations on the overhead world map? Like if I want to get from the Bunker to Krasnoznamenny, even when zoomed out to max it takes a while to get my screen over there, since the scrolling speed is so damn slow on the world map.

I know Fallout 1 and 2 had these "location buttons" that'd make your character automatically go there, while using the shortest path possible. Any chance for something like this in the near future?

 

[Karwelas]

Gah, I can't believe I missed this game and Kickstarter... damn, is there any other way to gain the bundles at the start of the game? (or at least to know what the contain, that is.)

 

[Alienman]

How or where do you see your chance of picking a lock, or repairing something?

 

[fantadomat]

How or where do you see your chance of picking a lock, or repairing something?

Hold left mouse button on the item and it will pop up

 

[Alienman]

Hmmm okay, must have missed that completely then. I just tried until it eventually worked

 

[Vityaz]

You know, I just realized this is like the second russian/eastern european tactical TB game where one of your companions is an bearded undercover Cuban agent named "Fidel".

The first one was in Hammer & Sickle. Coincidence? Or are slavs such big fans of Fidel teammates?

 

[Atomboy]

Holy Satan, I don't recall when was the last time I spent so many hours in front of a screen.

To all codexers who, like me, were afraid about the amount of references and memeing: worry not. While there certainly is an abundance, it's nothing jarring.
Most of the time it's put in a way that's fitting to the setting; you'll get called a normie by mutated circus freaks, or discuss Shakespeare with one of them, provided your character can pass a skill check. At the very worst, it feels like a snobby way of showing off by the writers, but nothing too bad.

They can be a little on the nose. Take the circus for example, they have an npc there whose portrait is of the actor who plays the iron fist on netflix, making jokes about the iron fist, not funny and off putting to be honest.

You actually blew my mind with that one... The character you mention really is a reference... A reference to Nikolai Ironfist from Might and Magic VI... That's why he says he ran away with the circus as a child. The portrait was found by blindly googling phrases like "COOL GUY WITH STRONG HANDS JPEG", "DUDE WITH STRONG UPPER BODY PNG" "ROYALTY FREE IMAGE OF GUY" etc. While I know what a netflix is, I can assure you none of our team use it O___O
However, if a guy who was made in reference to an Ironfist from M&M has a portrait from something about an iron fist on netflix, this reference is no longer unfunny. It's a universe shattering meta reference.

 

[Atomboy]

Atomboy
Unless I am missing something - is there any other faster way for selecting locations on the overhead world map? Like if I want to get from the Bunker to Krasnoznamenny, even when zoomed out to max it takes a while to get my screen over there, since the scrolling speed is so damn slow on the world map.

I know Fallout 1 and 2 had these "location buttons" that'd make your character automatically go there, while using the shortest path possible. Any chance for something like this in the near future?

You should totally press M while on global, and then there will be a smaller map with green circles, and you click on the green circle and your char starts walking there.

You know, I just realized this is like the second russian/eastern european tactical TB game where one of your companions is an bearded undercover Cuban agent named "Fidel".

The first one was in Hammer & Sickle. Coincidence? Or are slavs such big fans of Fidel teammates?

That's funny! I remember playing it and I remember Fidel! Though in Atom Fidel is a reference to Miguel the Cuban from a space rpg game we tried to make long, long ago, and didn't. His bar is a reference to Miguel's bar, too! Though in the space game he had two adopted sons, Jorje and Pepito and here he only has one, and he's Russian.

edit: after thinking for a while I remembered that we made Miguel in reference to Fidel from JA... Who is a Cuban and a companion and bearded... God damn. You were completely right all this time.............

Gah, I can't believe I missed this game and Kickstarter... damn, is there any other way to gain the bundles at the start of the game? (or at least to know what the contain, that is.)

Basically special suits that look differently, one bundle also has an amulet and a knife and there's a Kickstarter one that has some more stuff. But generally speaking we chose unique graphics over unique functions when making those celebratory items, so you're not missing out on a one-shot-killing auto grenade launcher that's available from the start, or something.

awesome editor

Just so you know, a professional editor would catch everything on a single-pass. This isn't Brothers Karamazov.

Congrats on the release, though. And best of luck to you.

Well the guy was a professional, but he also helped for free in his spare time. After such an awesome launch, though, we might just be able to afford him on more than 1 hour a month! Fingers crossed! But it still won't be easy. See, our inner system doesn't show a dialogue like it does in the game. It shows a bunch of strings in no particular order, so the guy needs to constantly ask one of us about the context. And sometimes the dialogue is so old - we don't remember the context, so one of us has to go play the game to learn the context... And so on. It's actually a long process even if your guy is good.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, release trailer:

 

[Okagron]

This actually looks pretty cool, might keep an eye on this.

 

[undecaf]

Yes, but no dates!

Thanks for the response. Hopefully some dates soon enough.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Congrats on the release lah.

 

[Lhynn]

So far translation is fine to great.

I ran into a gamebreaking bug. At the factory. Where you have to interrogate the dude, if you save after they open the cell but before you start the interrogation it seems to break the save and it will load forever. Happened twice.

So far this game is amazing. The characters are alive and the quests are great. I'm amazed you managed to present the everyday life and struggle of eastern euros so realistically.

I fucking loved my first random encounter with 3 guys that think one of them is a monster.

Early impressions is that this game is amazing. I'm enjoying it immensely but still at the honey moon period.

 

[Alienman]

The game seems fine and so far I'm having fun. I really like the presentation, but I'm wondering why some stuff are in capitals, and some are not. Like:

Not even sure what "round" is supposed to be. One bullet? But what is shot round then? Shotgun round?

This also looks a bit weird to me. But then again, maybe it's just me.