Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Prime Junta]

Same thing with anti-save-scumming measures - it would be very hard to implement them in a way that would do more good than harm.

No it wouldn't.

 

[Kasparov]

Great talk, guys.

Now that THAT is out of our system, feast your eyes on Fortress Occident's shadow tech:

"THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE THAT HAS IT ALL"
MIKK METSNIIT

Environment Artist

Introducing “Crime, Romance & Biographies of Famous People”, the bookstore that truly has it all. Open all night to show you what dynamic shadows on hand painted backgrounds look like.

 

[Howdy]

Great shadows. Smart guys. Big league!

 

[Wayward Son]

Never have I actually thought shadows looked good in a game before. Good job, guys!

 

[HoboForEternity]

looks alot better than the first page screenshoits

 

[polo]

There is a bush shadow that looks weird i think. Directly down the light post.

Having said that, it looks awsum'

 

[Lhynn]

Great talk, guys.

Now that THAT is out of our system.

This is the codex, its never out of our systems. Weve had this talk many times before. Last time i was in the opposite camp, but i finally saw the light.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Long live the quest compass.
Shitty design solutions being shoved down our throats.
(Save-scumming shitty design is exactly the same)

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

Great talk, guys.

Now that THAT is out of our system, feast your eyes on Fortress Occident's shadow tech:

"THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE THAT HAS IT ALL"
MIKK METSNIIT

Environment Artist

Introducing “Crime, Romance & Biographies of Famous People”, the bookstore that truly has it all. Open all night to show you what dynamic shadows on hand painted backgrounds look like.

Come back on earth baby, it's not like you were Dostoievski nor the last dandy on earth. Just another stupid game designer who read too much fucked-up fantasy and watched too much Tarkovski.
Git gud.

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

No truce with the Artistic Douchebags.

How old are you exactly?

 

[Jaesun]

I see our resident retard BCP is back....

 

[Prime Junta]

Shadows shmadows. Those bellbottoms tho...

 

[Marat Sar]

Okay, I'll bite. Games are generally written with the save-load feature as part of their loop, especially tactical games where RPGs delineate from. Ie -- they haven't really developed a narrative for what happens when the player fails. To load is what the designer wants you to do. Otherwise you'd get frustrated and stop playing. Thus far -- and I can not promise our little winning streak will continue! -- we have managed to write and design all situations with a plan for the player's failure. When you fail a white check you have a little conversation in your head, trying to come up with something. You might get hints, or you might lose some Endurance or Volition if it doesn't work out. Then you're looped back to the conversation or moment before, not heavily penalized. (even losing Endurance or Volition might have it's upsides). You feel like time just slowed down, you tried to figure something out but didn't. And now you say something else instead. (Like in D&D). You'll mark it down mentally -- the white check will migrate from the tip of the dialogue branch where you encountered it to the character's main questions hub so you'd find it later. If you do succeed the white check straight away, you go down a special branch of the dialogue that alters it's path and flavor, adds content etc. We the designers are fine with both outcomes, the text flows equally well (there are no broken syntaxes or logic errors in what you say or what is said to you -- or what happens in case it's physical).

When you fail a red check a precious little catastrophe takes place (sometimes, not always, our unsymmetrical design ethos dictates). You will be rewarded with content either way.

Our death system (and mental health system -- Endurance and Volition, remember?) is built with that in mind too. You can have a heart attack or "lose the will to cop" and that will be incorporated into the story. (Can't say how yet, sorry).

HOWEVER, if bad things happen -- people suffer, your friends lose faith in you, you will be mortified with embarrassment and it will follow you. Our goal is to have the negative event be the punishment, not the numbers beneath. The player can always escape the odds against them, the reader can not escape the passage they've read. When you read something in our system -- experience some event -- we want you to feel like you don't want to change it. Like you don't immediately think you should rewrite a passage in a book where someone gets hurt. But they do get hurt. The events penalize the player.

I'd like the death screen to be a non-standard ending more than a game over. But that's yet to be proven.

PS Someone said we want you to roll everything? No. Approximately one in ten checks is active (red or white). The other 9 are passive and there is no notification to tell you when you've failed one, only successes appear, they're lines are seamlessly integrated into the flow of the conversation: http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2016/09/19/on-skill-checks/

I wonder whether you might know about Waltari's cop stories as well, featuring this gentleman, Inspector Palmu. They were adapted to film 1960-69, almost overlapping the maain period of your game.

Inspector Palmu sounds (and looks) cool as hell. Gotta check it out, I had no idea he wrote detective fic.

So there is some play testing going on? Do you have any plans on extending the testing to top tier prestigious forum's, who hold impeccable catholic tastes?

Of course. All in due time.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Yeah, I really wanna give this one a try. I've been waiting for a game that actually offers interesting non-combat content which is more than simply exhausting all the available dialogues options.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, I really wanna give this one a try. I've been waiting for a game that actually offers interesting non-combat content which is more than simply exhausting all the available dialogues options.

Me too. This game almost sounds like a dream, I am just afraid I will be rudely woken up when I start playing it.

 

[Prime Junta]

Thanks a bunch Marat Sar . Your answer is pretty much exactly what I was fishing for in this thread. If you can actually pull that off, you will have done something remarkable indeed.

I still think that seeding the RNG would do no harm and would steer people away from savescumming, if only out of habit.

 

[Lhynn]

HOWEVER, if bad things happen -- people suffer, your friends lose faith in you, you will be mortified with embarrassment and it will follow you. Our goal is to have the negative event be the punishment, not the numbers beneath. The player can always escape the odds against them, the reader can not escape the passage they've read. When you read something in our system -- experience some event -- we want you to feel like you don't want to change it. Like you don't immediately think you should rewrite a passage in a book where someone gets hurt. But they do get hurt. The events penalize the player.

Sure, and the best way for the player to experience it is to avoid a displaying a failure sign in front of him. Let the narrative take him were it will and if he feels he should releoad because he feels he could have done better, then thats that.
You dont even need to avoid telling him he is being tested, or how well he did, you just dont tell him if he succeeded or failed after the roll. The player will be able to figure it out if he failed or succeeded, but wont immediately think of reloading because hes caught up in the narrative, the moment isnt broken by the display of a big fail banner.

 

[Zombra]

Wow! Marat Sar is on the road to for sure!

All I expect from a good developer is thoughtfulness and intention when integrating a save system to their work. So many designs seem to be, "We'll have a quicksave button I guess." Even if I didn't know anything else about the game, this alone looks brilliant. Will be supporting No Truce for sure.

 

[CyberWhale]

Lhynn The same thing should apply to quest logs as well - there shouldn't be any Succeeded or Failed notifications, only Completed with various explanations (i.e. you saved that person or you didn't) and accompanying consequences.

 

[Kasparov]

Lhynn The same thing should apply to quest logs as well - there shouldn't be any Succeeded or Failed notifications, only Completed with various explanations (i.e. you saved that person or you didn't) and accompanying consequences.

When the quest was to save someone and they died, didn´t you fail them? Is it something you tell yourself after, when you´re nursing a whiskey at the night bar, You know, to feel better about your self and not spiral into madness and grief? You didn´t fail. "I DIDN´T fail! I simply didn´t COMPLETE the quest!"

Joking aside: when pertinent, sure, I also think that the Journal should be done that way. You complete tasks and you don´t complete them. But, like irl, there are moments when you have failed and you should not ignore that. Failures are mistakes that didn´t get amended. In NO TRUCE, you could get a chance to do that.

HOWEVER, if bad things happen -- people suffer, your friends lose faith in you, you will be mortified with embarrassment and it will follow you. Our goal is to have the negative event be the punishment, not the numbers beneath. The player can always escape the odds against them, the reader can not escape the passage they've read. When you read something in our system -- experience some event -- we want you to feel like you don't want to change it. Like you don't immediately think you should rewrite a passage in a book where someone gets hurt. But they do get hurt. The events penalize the player.

Sure, and the best way for the player to experience him is to avoid a displaying a failure sign in front of him. Let the narrative take him were it will and if he feels he should reload because he feels he could have done better, then that´s that.
You dont even need to avoid telling him he is being tested, or how well he did, you just dont tell him if he succeeded or failed after the roll. The player will be able to figure it out if he failed or succeeded, but wont immediately think of reloading because hes caught up in the narrative, the moment isnt broken by the display of a big fail banner.

So far, when play testing NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES, I haven´t been in any situations that would make me reach for the Quickload key. What Marat Sar has described here and in our developer blog, really works for me. The failing is done well enough and splitting checks into white and red checks varies the whole experience really well. Someone on another forum admonished us that we should´t use the word "failure" in the title (of that forum thread) at all - it would put off some people (like Lhynn?). Sure. Whatever. I think it´s time to reconsider the difference between failing and failing. Failing in NO TRUCE is not the end (unless, of course, you manage to end the game in the process...) and is usually followed by immediate consequences that keep your interest piqued (and your eyes on the screen and fingers away from Quickload) and often affect the game world in a way that makes your measly failed check meaningful in the long run. Look at the big picture.

 

[makiavelli747]

I haven´t been in any situations that would make me reach for the Quickload key

It's not even just about reloading after failed check, I always play till the end if a game let me, but seeing fail/success banner works like a spoiler, it gives you info about all other options and where they lead to.
Passing a hidden check always feels unique and unexpected, it's like when you discover something you didn't think was there.

 

[CyberWhale]

Failing in NO TRUCE is not the end (unless, of course, you manage to end the game in the process...) and is usually followed by immediate consequences that keep your interest piqued (and your eyes on the screen and fingers away from Quickload) and often affect the game world in a way that makes your measly failed check meaningful in the long run. Look at the big picture.

Just like it should be. We understand your intentions perfectly well and support them wholeheartedly, we just think that having a huge FAILED/RED sign near those options is superfluous. You (and us, having heard your explanations) know what to expect (failing is not the end of the world/game) but an uninformed buyer might not - and thus he will actively avoid choosing those options because of his previous experience with other RPGs. Not to mention that not having any warnings of sort would actually make the narrative/consequence more unpredictable (in a good way). makiavelli747 came to this conclusion before I've even managed to finish the post.

Either way, I would advise you to at least give as an option of disabling those checks on the start - I personally am not against quest marks/arrows/visible checks as long as the game a) gives me the option to disable them and b) is made so that in-game information is sufficient to resolve problems without them.

 

[Brancaleone]

Someone on another forum admonished us that we should´t use the word "failure" in the title (of that forum thread) at all - it would put off some people (like Lhynn?). Sure. Whatever. I think it´s time to reconsider the difference between failing and failing. Failing in NO TRUCE is not the end (unless, of course, you manage to end the game in the process...) and is usually followed by immediate consequences that keep your interest piqued (and your eyes on the screen and fingers away from Quickload) and often affect the game world in a way that makes your measly failed check meaningful in the long run. Look at the big picture.

So, is it "NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES! - a story-driven isometric role playing game about being a total failure", or "NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES! - a story-driven isometric role playing game where failing plays a more interesting role than in typical RPG's [big deal, Ed.]"?

 

[Kasparov]

Someone on another forum admonished us that we should´t use the word "failure" in the title (of that forum thread) at all - it would put off some people (like Lhynn?). Sure. Whatever. I think it´s time to reconsider the difference between failing and failing. Failing in NO TRUCE is not the end (unless, of course, you manage to end the game in the process...) and is usually followed by immediate consequences that keep your interest piqued (and your eyes on the screen and fingers away from Quickload) and often affect the game world in a way that makes your measly failed check meaningful in the long run. Look at the big picture.

So, is it "NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES! - a story-driven isometric role playing game about being a total failure", or "NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES! - a story-driven isometric role playing game where failing plays a more interesting role than in typical RPG's [big deal, Ed.]"?

The former.

As far as the "polite feature requests" go - all good ideas will always get sent by the head honchos here at Fortress Occident. If the budget allows it, some might be included, if they get greenlit by said honchos.

EDIT: I'll add my two cents to the discussion by adding that NTWtF is many things, but I really doubt it is ever going to include a complex minigame of managing your gameplay settings.

 

[CyberWhale]

You are not a head honcho?