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

[filpan]

You can SEE the weapon on most of them, no need to read it. A lot of dumb fucks here

Of course. You can also abandon any info and guess their health based on the previous shots. It's a quality of life feature, you fucking mongoloid. Pretending to be smarter because you disregard their importance doesn't help the game a bit.

How did you play Baldur's Gate, you fucking inbred? Did you know the exact health of an enemy, a weapon in their hand? What a fucking wuss.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

How did you play Baldur's Gate, you fucking inbred? Did you know the exact health of an enemy, a weapon in their hand? What a fucking wuss.

Look at this sad fuck. Talking as if a cluster fuck like Baldurs Gate was a pinacle of game design that should restrict what developers can or cannot do. The features Baldur's Gate had are irrelevant to the discussion. The only thing that matters is whether it would be nice to have more information while hovering the mouse on a character. It would be nice, so it should be implemented.

 

[krilcebre]

Does anyone have a clue of when they'll release patch 1.07?

 

[Atomboy]

Does anyone have a clue of when they'll release patch 1.07?

Few days or so!

I came here to announce the preparation patch released today. Here's a copypasta:

Greetings, friends! We are continuing our work on the large 1.07 balance patch that is going to be up in a few days. Meanwhile, some information on the 1.067 hotfix: - Solved bug where you could not warn circus about attack. - General Nasty's quest fixed - Roaring Forest bugs fixed (Valery's quest) - Fixed the Loner trait, it now slows down hunger. - Traders renew stock quicker, have more money. Peregon is now the Trade Capital of the Wastes. - You can now quit the Peregon map and later still have the ability to get into the BBQ lair... - Tons of typos and bad phrasing fixed in both English and Russian thanks to the TYPOS thread on Steam! Thanks guys! That is all for now. Expect 1.07.

 

[Atomboy]

Spoiler

I feel you, man.

Got to love how having an option to cheat people turns into being asked to perform an act of evil and being punished for not obliging. Because taking some time and farming up the 1000 rubles in another way is unthinkable.

I'd end up getting banned from Steam for telling these people to go kill themselves if I had to deal with such crap for a period of time. You really need a special level of patience for some lines of work.

We'd never ban you for telling someone to kill himself, man. What are we, monsters?!

 

[Okagron]

There's that dude in the Chamber of Commerce telling me to kill the whole Circus. Is there any other way to do the quest besides either rejecting the quest or killing everybody in the Circus?

Solved bug where you could not warn circus about attack.

Is this actually related to the quest i just mentioned? Because i can hold off doing the quest if i have any other way to deal with the Circus with the supposed bug fixed.

 

[Atomboy]

Yeah, we wouldn't want to have any.. spokes.. in our wheels now, would we?

Man I love this game.

Jesus Christ... I'm never delegating the translation duties to anyone ever again. I though my parts were poorly done... God damn it. She meant sticks. Do you have this saying? Poking sticks into someone's wheel? So that the spokes may break and the victim fall from his donkey cart? Right?

How is the gang rebellion supposed to go?

Was really confused too. Shishak is there - I've got his named pistol from one of the corpses. Nobody talks with you after the fight and the quest for telling about the elections results auto-completes in the journal without any xp or money reward. For some reason, you are expected to leave the map and come back later so every NPC is reset to their original position. THEN you can talk to Den and have your reward and continue the quest chain. Very unintuitive and strange design.

You actually had to leave? That's weird. I'm reporting this one.

Clocked a hundred today so I feel the urge to leave some feedback & suggestions.

Some QoL stuff:
1. Mark books that you already read. I heard you plan to add even more books so its gonna be useful.
2. At character creation screen add a red strike through when selecting opposite traits.
3. A small dice button to randomize name at character creation would be a nice little thing to have (probably not worth the manpower).
4. Add money equalize button at the trading screen.

Adding extra/changing stuff:
Since there would be an ability rework consider reworking some of them radically:
5. The XP boost end ability is just bad. No one would sacrifice valuable points to get some extra XP, make it local Intense Training and offer a single stat point and it will look much more lucrative to the player while also keeping the learning branch theme.
6. The bloodthirst melee finishing ability is pretty lame. +20 to sequence is not good enough for such a heavy investment. Make it -1 AP to all melee attacks and it will actually make melee specialists powerful.
7. There are 3 abilities that define natural explanation and can be considered mutations so think about making them a separate branch of mutagenic abilities that player can't acquire on simple level up instead requiring exposing oneself to mutagenic solutions. It works similar to how it was in Witcher 1 where each ability tree had a special mutation that you could only have if you extracted a component from the unique monster. In atom, there are 3 instances where the player can be exposed to mutagenic factors - 2 syringes and a fish mutant and there are 3 unnatural abilities in question: the ability to convert poison damage to health, the ability to regenerate health if low on HP, the ability to perfectly see in darkness.
8. Add extra interaction with an idol when possessed. Currently, you can scratch some words on it for no reason - the player will not get anything for this choice and this is a bad design because you are presenting a meaningless choice between a strictly good and a worthless (guess what the player will choose?). I suggest adding a third hidden option when the possessed player can somehow corrupt the idol and draw upon its power (or believe it) the bad way.
9. The idol can bless the player with 1 luck stat but it will do nothing for players that already reached the cap and it does not make sense (the luckiest person has it worse). The luckiest player should receive at least something. For example, make a special interaction in which 11 luck character finds a golden horseshoe at the base of an idol which gives +1 luck to anyone carrying it.
10. Add some craft recipe for an old boot. There is a neat little trope in games where a seemingly useless item can bring benefits to those who explore the game thoroughly. The bottle selling is a good example. There can be many ideas for the craft item with a boot but I will go with a natural one - stink bomb. Make the moles drop some chemical mix it with rotten mushrooms and a boot and you will have a hand made stink grenade (the mole enzyme dissolves the boot), the effects: a single tile debuff of medium strength.
11. The is this junkie guy on the factory that serves absolutely no purpose. The cook tells us a little about it. Add a simple mini quest in which you give the apomorphine vial to the junkie helping him to recover. You can then tell Den about it all for some token reward. Once the junkie recovers he can teach you some stuff (perhaps +20 to rarely encountered gambling boost). Alternatively, make it possible to sell drugs to him fa or good price until he croaks from the overdose.
12. Add some functions to the golden nut generally in situations where you want some quest/unique item. Like the key in dead city.
13. Tweak animations and sounds for situations when attacks don't penetrate the armor. If someone receives 0 damage he should not flinch nor make an "ouch" sound. Small details are importatnt.
14. Add fade to black and skip some time when sowing corn, 30 minutes or an hour.
15. On global map make the player travel at least 15% faster on roads.
16. The main menu music is not looped. It plays its track one time only and then it is dead silence. The second part of the main theme (wasteland ambient) is really atmospheric. Make it play continuously through character creation after initial opening theme ends.
17. The 11 stat names remain unchanged from 10. Consider adding a simple "Superhuman" as descriptions for 11 stat.
18. The animal hunt random encounter is extremely rare even with the perk. Without the perk, I had 2 per game. Boost a spawn chance a bit.
19. Add small buff to chance to have animal hunt encounter for dirty hunter trait.
20. It is possible to get stuck in the caves under the trembling forest which is a bad design. If you can't fight your way out, if you don't have earlier saves, if you don't have 30 throw and a rope you are stuck there forever. Make it so that there is an unguarded rope in the dungeon and you can still succeed a rope throw without 30 throw skill with a 5% random chance.
21. The mole monsters and their grubs are completely empty making the XP the only reward that you can have from them. Since they are the only enemies that exhibit this trait it makes them feel unfinished. Even more so considering the queen drops some meat. The creatures explode on death not leaving much behind but consider at least some drop from them, even 1 meat. Ideally make a new item, some sort of enzyme or chemical that the player can use in crafting.
22. The mole queen encounter is not well-thought through. You have a dungeon, you have an optional fight and you have a powerful unique creature making it a classical dragon hoard setup. The blind death guards the serum and follows this trope well but if you beat the queen you will get nothing (xp and a few meat pieces). Add a corpse and some "treasure" for example an old gas mask (the blind death section is poisonous making it useful immediately) or the Soviet army knife again.
23. The mole monstres have green blood but their larvae have red. Change red larvae blood to green.
24. In fact, consider changing the blood color from all insectoid creatures to green because tropes.
25. The mole monsters are underused. Consider making them part of random encounters and spawn them in caves. Add a new encounter with a small hive chamber (the queen,5-8 mole and worm eggs). Consider adding a sub-type of that creature than can spew acid.
26. Tweak a blind death a bit. 100% life steal is just silly how does it even work? Does it just bites chunks of you and immediately converts them with 100% efficiency to regenerative matter? Tone life steal to 50% or at least 75%.
27. The golden fish says something along the lines you would not understand - make an extra option for 11 int characters in which the fish talks about its mutation.
28. Add more unique encounters, the game really should have more unique stuff. I'm not talking about crashing ufos or anything but the possibilities are endless.
A few ideas:
-A random CAR encounter for low luck character in which he crashes into another driver on the wastes (what are the chances? that's the point!). This is a good setup for 90s bandit road crash anecdotes. "Ну ты в натуре конкретно попал..."
-A random car encounter in which drunk player smashes into a tree or something. Repair skill check is then needed to fix the damage.
-A barbaric warrior seeking a challenger. Can be triggered only if the player has 100 melee and 10 STR. He has a unique two-handed oversized sword made from a flattened and sharpened rail. The fight is one on one, no guns allowed. The warrior travels with a tribe which attacks if the player starts shooting. If the player does not have a melee weapon the warrior gives his sword for the fight (he is that good/overconfident). Can be seen as an easter egg for Umbra warrior.
-A random encounter with trembling ground and huge holes in the ground, the cave leads to mole den.
After you complete the quest for the postman the kebab store gets closed without further development. Why? (Time and budget constraints, I get it). That is prime real estate spot right in front of the entrance, that a business opportunity. There is no doctors or dedicated weapon traders why not offer this place to them? They would not care for what the place is used before. Add a simple mini quest in which you sponsor (15K) a doctor clinic or a weapon shop to be built there instead. With much more agreeable prices of course.
29. Correct useless skill checks. Successful skill check that does not make any difference (what's the point?) is a bad design. There are numbers of those in the game. It can be fixed multiple ways but you already have a yellow partial success condition in the game, so changing all checks in question from green success conditions is the easiest solution.
To list a few:
- the guard at krasno - nothing will change if you succeed a speech check
- the slaver outpost (the one with the slave girl) - the successful speech check does not lead to anything and is useless
- the start of the game - successful speech check does not lead to anything and you still get knocked down. I mean come on, he even tells you that he will leave somethinging extra for you but you still end up with nothing. Make it so that he leaves you a stimpack and 2 foods on sucesfull check.
30. Rework the starting fight its bullshit! Disable cheats for bandits. I can tell they have their knockdown/disarm chances boosted. First of all I know that originally it was not supposed to be a winnable fight but people proved they can beat it still with cheese tactics (you see the pattern? if you cheese the player, he's gonna cheese the game) and you were forced to recognize this choice and rework the later game ambush with this in mind. It is time to rework it fully with diffirent approach, that the player should have a fair chance to beat them if his char is capable. 6 VS 1 is punishing enough, you don't need to railroad the player into defeat with knock up cheats.
31. Including a speech change and unjinxed fighting mechanics add some stuff to this encounter. If your hide is high enough add ability to hide from ambushers. They still get your stuff but you can hear what they talk about since you are not knocked out, they can hint about the later caravan ambush ("An AK! A few more of those and maybe we can go for the big fish!"). For 10 luck character, there should be at least one bandit fewer in this ambush.
32. The different amount of ability points you get depending on the difficulty is a bad solution. Yes, it makes the game harder but in the laziest uninspired way possible. Because it also makes the game more tedious and less fan. The fewer points you get the less there are options for the player, the less there are viable builds.
33. While reworking melee consider adding anti-kiting mechanic to the game. Some sort of opportunity strike on disengage (at 50% damage) is a start in solving the issue. The issue is that you can kite certain melee enemies and cheese powerful monsters into harmless creatures. The blind death being the prime example - if you have 10 dex and enough space you can kite it with 1 STR and low tier knife turning difficult encounter into joke. If will also improve the situation with melee builds because it will be harder for shooters to get away from your melee range.

This also!

 

[krilcebre]

There's that dude in the Chamber of Commerce telling me to kill the whole Circus. Is there any other way to do the quest besides either rejecting the quest or killing everybody in the Circus?

Solved bug where you could not warn circus about attack.

Is this actually related to the quest i just mentioned? Because i can hold off doing the quest if i have any other way to deal with the Circus with the supposed bug fixed.

Yes, but I think you'll need to have high speechcraft (not sure about this one tho). Just go and talk with the granny in the airplane, she is sitting inside. You'll find some dialog options of your liking. Prepare to talk with that dude from Chamber of Commerce again, but you better have 120+ speechcraft.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Jesus Christ... I'm never delegating the translation duties to anyone ever again. I though my parts were poorly done... God damn it. She meant sticks. Do you have this saying? Poking sticks into someone's wheel? So that the spokes may break and the victim fall from his donkey cart? Right?

the English version of this idiom is "throw a (monkey)wrench in the works." like a post-industrial version of the same kind of sabotage.

so "they believe it's their sacred duty to throw a wrench in the works whenever they have a chance, in every project, in every social initiative..."

 

[RK47]

Peregon is now the Trade Capital of the Wastes.

 

[Okagron]

Yes, but I think you'll need to have high speechcraft (not sure about this one tho). Just go and talk with the granny in the airplane, she is sitting inside. You'll find some dialog options of your liking. Prepare to talk with that dude from Chamber of Commerce again, but you better have 120+ speechcraft.

It shouldn't be a problem, with my comrade hat i have 130 speech currently.

Also, just got the quest that you can do to deal with the guys that rob you at the start of the game and killed them. Got some cool weapons from them.

 

[bataille]

Just a heads up:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+a+spoke+in+wheel
It's a completely valid expression. Pls don't scold the translator-chan!

Is it something people actually use in conversations, though? It is a mystery.

 

[Atomboy]

Just a heads up:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+a+spoke+in+wheel
It's a completely valid expression. Pls don't scold the translator-chan!

Is it something people actually use in conversations, though? It is a mystery.

What the hell... But wheels are made out of spokes... Jeez, and they say Russian idioms are hard! I'd never guess it's not a mistake!

 

[Luckmann]

Yeah, we wouldn't want to have any.. spokes.. in our wheels now, would we?

Man I love this game.

Jesus Christ... I'm never delegating the translation duties to anyone ever again. I though my parts were poorly done... God damn it. She meant sticks. Do you have this saying? Poking sticks into someone's wheel? So that the spokes may break and the victim fall from his donkey cart? Right?

Yes, at least in Sweden we have the exact same idiom, so I had no trouble understanding it, I just thought it sounded funny. I had this mental image of my enemies sneaking up and fixing my bicycle.

Please don't change these things, though. They have tremendous charm, and just imagining that everyone is just Russians speaking semi-broken English has added tremendously to my experience of the game. If anything, I personally think you should try to capitalize on that.

Edit:

Just a heads up:
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+a+spoke+in+wheel
It's a completely valid expression. Pls don't scold the translator-chan!

Is it something people actually use in conversations, though? It is a mystery.

This just makes it funnier somehow. What the hell. :D

 

[Sratopotator]

There's that dude in the Chamber of Commerce telling me to kill the whole Circus. Is there any other way to do the quest(...)?

I waited for half of my current good playthrought to accept this quest. Only did so because of a walkthrough i've found online, and skimmed through.
I don't remember the exact wording, but I think (?) that the questgiver really doesn't give you a choice of how to accept the quest. I was under the impression that the quest is specifically for evil characters.
Atomboy, maybe there is an option to add an additional response? You could use a deceitful (...*Lie*) or hesitant (I'll try my best but I really don't like it) line.
[Maybe there is a good reason why it is worded like that. I still haven't done that much progress with some quest chains. Too little time.]
Thanks for a great game Atomboy and Crew

 

[Jarpie]

Yeah, we wouldn't want to have any.. spokes.. in our wheels now, would we?

Man I love this game.

Jesus Christ... I'm never delegating the translation duties to anyone ever again. I though my parts were poorly done... God damn it. She meant sticks. Do you have this saying? Poking sticks into someone's wheel? So that the spokes may break and the victim fall from his donkey cart? Right?

We have the same saying here in Finland, "throwing sticks into the wheels". Have you considered hiring professional editor who's native english speaker?

 

[Fenix]

In Russai it is still in use.

 

[Okagron]

I waited for half of my current good playthrought to accept this quest. Only did so because of a walkthrough i've found online, and skimmed through.
I don't remember the exact wording, but I think (?) that the questgiver really doesn't give you a choice of how to accept the quest. I was under the impression that the quest is specifically for evil characters

I thought it was for evil characters too, hence why i avoided picking up the quest. But apparently there's a peaceful solution, so i'm gonna do it in due time.

 

[Atomboy]

Yeah, we wouldn't want to have any.. spokes.. in our wheels now, would we?

Man I love this game.

Jesus Christ... I'm never delegating the translation duties to anyone ever again. I though my parts were poorly done... God damn it. She meant sticks. Do you have this saying? Poking sticks into someone's wheel? So that the spokes may break and the victim fall from his donkey cart? Right?

We have the same saying here in Finland, "throwing sticks into the wheels". Have you considered hiring professional editor who's native english speaker?

I only have time for like one question (not saying I won't return to get every other question posted after my last post) so I'm gonna address this one, because it's hella important. First thing we did before the Kickstarter was gather all of our money in a pot and give it to a professional translator company. You know what they did? They google-translated the game... So 10 days before the launch of our campaign, I had to run in and undo their terrible work! A lot of people know English. Here in Latvia, for example, literally everyone younger than 60 knows it. And some of them think they know it better than they actually do. And some of those retards are so full of themselves, they even offer translator or editor services for money. When in reality, I speak and write ten times better than them. So, getting a professional editor who will accept the meager amount of money we can offer is just step one. If it was all about that, we'd do it already. He also needs to be actually good. And that's the hard thing. The game is very big. Some guys started off amazing, but got fatigued after 30.000 lines. Some did a bad job to begin with. Only one guy of all that we tried was perfect. Thanks to him, there's this huge incline of quality in some dialogues in the starting areas of the game. But he has a real job, and he can't be hired, he does what he does in his spare time. We're constantly looking for a guy like him, who'd work for pay, but all we get is disappointment or prices we can't pay One day, however... One day...

 

[Jenkem]

DarkUnderlord Crispy Infinitron ATOM RPG avatars when?

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Can you have a party in this game that you directely control, or is it just 1 PC like in Fallout?

Also what's the max level?

 

[FritzedProcess]

Slaughtering that pig gave me a PTSD from childhood, where random slav brought a huge pig to a children's playground because there was a good drainage nearby, and cut that pig down while we stopped playing football, watching a pig scream in agony completely terrified. Now I have to relive that moment every time i replay a game.

Good drainage? What a waste of blood that could be used for delicious blood sausages!

 

[krilcebre]

Slaughtering that pig gave me a PTSD from childhood, where random slav brought a huge pig to a children's playground because there was a good drainage nearby, and cut that pig down while we stopped playing football, watching a pig scream in agony completely terrified. Now I have to relive that moment every time i replay a game.

Good drainage? What a waste of blood that could be used for delicious blood sausages!

I know, we always used to save blood, but some people don't like blood sausages, so they end up throwing the blood.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Its like Fallout 1. Think the lvl cap is 30 but i might be wrong on that

 

[Solfear]

Hello Atomboy, if one day you need to translate your game in French, ask me. I am a professional English to French freelance translator, specialized in video games and RPGs.