KickStarter Mechajammer (formerly Copper Dreams) - cyberpunk RPG from Whalenought Studios

[agris]

The UI looks gorgeous, I hope they keep fixing the bugs.

 

[Dhaze]

Who is Barry?

I kind of lost the story after the first hour of the game

When aboard your ship and flying over the jungle colony of Calitana, you are shot down by an anti-air battery. The crew of four is composed of you, who supposedly is better than the others at any on-the-ground stuff; a woman named Pelican, the crew's intelligentia; a nameless medic who really is a cranium in a glass bell attached to a floating spine (cool-looking design, by the way); and Barry, who is so impressively forgetable.

Short note: I like my drones, and thus would like to keep them healthy. When I click on any one of them, the 'Heal' option pops up. But whatever the developers were going for, it's botched. Basically, I can't find a way to heal the drones.

I can't use Repair Kits to repair them. I tried to no avail to use a Health Kit, since they splatter blood when wounded in combat, but I suspect this is only a shared animation between all enemies no matter their mechanical or biological nature (though it would be cool if Drone Kits were actually brains or other wetware we hook to various weapons to make drones).

They themselves, on the other hand, can try to self-heal, but they are doomed to fail. I tried with my 8 drones, and they all roll Organics to heal themselves, more precisely 2d6 against targets of either 15 or 16. Can't succeed.

 

[Dhaze]

The UI looks gorgeous, I hope they keep fixing the bugs.

I see on the Steam forums that someone asked about eventual support towards the Steam Deck and controllers. Dated 25th of march, post-Refracted Update, the answer was: "Hello, as of right now this is not planned. We may have some small patches, but no new support I'm afraid."

I'll try to contact Whalenought tomorrow or the day after, to see if they are still motivated enough to fix the bugs—if not, too bad, but I wouldn't have a problem with that, obviously six or seven years spent on a project must take its toll. Provided that they want to fix the bugs, I'd be happy to help them in any way I can.

In the meantime, here are two shorts and almost self-explanatory videos demonstrating once again the many hurdles faced by anyone who want to play this game.

In the first one, almost every aspect of the game and its controls conspire to make traversal a pain. In the second one, I can't get out of an exiguous underground space (manholes might lead to such spaces, and I was looking for a secret entrance I later found), since every time I click on the only exit, I'm brought back to the same screen.

 

[Kev Inkline]

By the way, I re-skimmed through this thread, and the development cycle of this game is worse than I remembered. On page 71 there are a couple of images and a .gif. Relatively clear and precise artstyle; awesome portrait of that blonde woman with an eyepatch; ability to rotate camera; some measure of wall transparency/ghosting. Where did all that go? Almost seems like a different game.

That is utterly insane. It truly does look like a different game. They went from that which showed great potential to this blurry pixel art mess. I guess the budget was spent 'elsewhere' but damn, what could have been...

Hannah and Joe should have had a producer, someone to rein in their daydreaming. Simple as. They redid the graphics so many times the concept of 'overhaul' would need an overhaul to adequately describe the process.

 

[Tyranicon]

This thread is quickly becoming this:

 

[Saduj]

I'm obviously biased, but I don't personally see the need to rake Joe and Hannah over the coals for this. At least it wasn't a kickstarter scam, and they delivered a final product.

I agree that the game was never a scam and I really don't want to bash the developers. Hell, I bought the game knowing full well what shape it is in because I was always interested in the project and still wanted to support those behind it.

But I think whether the game is a final product is debatable. It is possible that the game cannot be completed under any circumstances. I guess we'll find out thanks to Dhaze. Even if the game is technically completable, a pretty good case can be made that the bugginess of the game is well beyond what could be considered acceptable in a final product.

 

[Dhaze]

Even if the game is technically completable, a pretty good case can be made that the bugginess of the game is well beyond what could be considered acceptable in a final product.

I'd like to quickly put things into perspective, in case someone sees what I'm posting on this thread and thinks, "Oh, that game looks like a lot of fun! Let me jump in it without thinking."

When Dark Souls 3 came out, I bought it on day one knowing full well my computer at the time had zero chance of running it properly. I had a Haswell i3 whose exact number I can't remember; a GT 640; and 4Go of shitty RAM. Way below minimum specs.
Still I played the game from start to finish, exploring it thoroughly for about 55 hours. I played with every graphic option either on low or outright disabled through some rummaging about in the game files, on a resolution of 640x360, and averaging 21-22fps, with dips to about 16fps in some places.

That, for me, was the absolute extreme and very last limit of what I consider playable in terms of performance. Safe to say that the vast majority of people would consider that outright unplayable.

Well, comfort-wise, Mechajammer is a similar experience—only the horrible quality of play is not brought about by poor pc specs but rather by the veritable deluge of bugs the player has to weather. I am constantly saving. I save before talking to anyone; before transitioning to another zone; before picking up what might be an important item; before manipulating the contents of my inventory; before interacting with a computer; before repairing my laser spear, before fabricating a drone.

And good, that I do that, because I am forced to constantly reload. Conversations freeze or fail to even start; the zone transition brings me to an erroneous place; I pick an important item up yet it does not appear in my inventory, or sometimes the item erases some of its content; I can't move anything in my inventory without running the risk of seeing its content disappear or bug out; the process of attempting to hack a computer can randomly hang, indefinitely; repairing my spear sometimes consumes not only one but in fact my entire stack of Repair Kits; same with Drone Kits.

I hope what few videos and pictures I upload manage to convey that to a degree, but I cannot sufficiently insists on how insane it all is. Multiple times now I've had my spear disappear while just walking. I'm walking, doing nothing but walking, and poof! I don't see my spear anymore, neither in my hands, nor in the interface, nor in my inventory. It's just gone.

I strongly suspect that this is the main reason no one is playing this game, much less talking about it. Because people gave it a try, but forfeited after a couple of hours of seeing everything in their game spaz the fuck out.

 

[grimace]

If it's finishable, I'll do it.

Amongst my greatest fears are that, at some point, the game might simply break or stop functionning. I installed the game on a M.2 SSD, and my computer is spotless and has no trouble running anything else, but the simple act of launching the game is already touch-and-go, as mechajammer.exe devours nearly all my RAM for a solid two minutes, slowing itself and my computer before finally settling to a much more reasonable 2Go of RAM used. At times while I play the average fps briefly plummets, and the whole game stutters massively while simultaneously every in-game sounds crackles as if I was listening to some mid-90's german power noise.

Quick question for those who might know: I periodically create backups of my saves in case they get corrupted, but even that seems weird, as each save is apparently 671 .es3 files. Has anyone ever seen that high a number of files for a single save?

I'm searching my memory banks to remember talks from Joe and Hannah about the save states and save scumming. Basically, there would be no reloads. You would play thru and when you exit the application the state of the entire world would be remembered. coppermechajammerdreams was not meant to be re-loaded. Only experienced.

 

[Tyranicon]

each save is apparently 671 .es3 files. Has anyone ever seen that high a number of files for a single save?

I don't recognize .es3, what even is that? A google search revealed that it's Canon VIXIA HG21 High Resolution Exported Movie.

Wut?

I'm searching my memory banks to remember talks from Joe and Hannah about the save states and save scumming. Basically, there would be no reloads. You would play thru and when you exit the application the state of the entire world would be remembered. coppermechajammerdreams was not meant to be re-loaded. Only experienced.

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

 

[Dhaze]

I'm searching my memory banks to remember talks from Joe and Hannah about the save states and save scumming. Basically, there would be no reloads. You would play thru and when you exit the application the state of the entire world would be remembered. coppermechajammerdreams was not meant to be re-loaded. Only experienced.

No reloads? Dear lord.

A cursory search brought me to this post on their Kickstarter page : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1649838104/copper-dreams/posts/2298666/comments

Probably worth a post on the Community Page for this one to gather more thoughts, but we did design the main campaign to exclusively use "play it out", we based the map layouts and gameplay off that for its entirety. That continuity of challenge was the idea, and player's would restart if their builds go South — in this case you certainly start to lose parts of your humanity as you keep chugging along as some kind of terminator. Either death option removes a complete player-driven save-scumming option due to the player not being able to control when the game is saving, which is does frequently and when you do anything but get in combat or die.

Two things.

1) Thank god and all that is good in the world they eventually made it so that players could save at pretty much any time. In its current state, completing the game without access to an at-will save system would be like trying to complete a 10-hours long speedrun that requires numerous attempts at a succession of actions, each action being unrepeatable and having only a random 0.0000001% chance of succeeding. In one word: madness.

2) Well I'm certainly losing parts of my humanity as I play through Mechajammer, so I'll give them that.

I don't recognize .es3, what even is that? A google search revealed that it's Canon VIXIA HG21 High Resolution Exported Movie.

Wut?

Yeah, that's why I asked here, because when I first saw those .es3 files I remembered seeing that format of file on the computer of a photographer friend.

But it turns out .es3 files are also used for Unity games? https://forum.unity.com/threads/easy-save-the-complete-save-data-serialization-asset.91040/page-23

 

[grimace]

1) Thank god and all that is good in the world they eventually made it so that players could save at pretty much any time. In its current state, completing the game without access to an at-will save system would be like trying to complete a 10-hours long speedrun that requires numerous attempts at a succession of actions, each action being unrepeatable and having only a random 0.0000001% chance of succeeding. In one word: madness.

Does saving the game often and reloading occasionally result in corrupted data creating the glitches and bugs?

If the intention was for players to have the game auto saved at checkpoints and upon quest completion or the game state saved to exit the application and restored upon opening the game and resuming play . . .
can an at-will player choosing to save system not work like other games?

Is there steam cloud functionality? Are game saves saved on steam servers?

 

[Dhaze]

Does saving the game often and reloading occasionally result in corrupted data creating the glitches and bugs?

I considered the notion, but the thing is that I'm not the kind of player who has a habit of saving constantly. For any given RPG, i much prefer to roll with the punches, so I only keep three separate save files, only save when I really need to, and only reload in dire situations.

This is what I had intended to do when starting my first playthrough of Mechajammer. But I was forced to start saving and reloading all the time due to the incessant bugs and glitches.

If I can trust my gut on this, I want to say that bugs are everywhere and constant, and on top of that the necessary and frequent saving/reloading only serves to make matter worse, by confusing the game somehow.

Is there steam cloud functionality? Are game saves saved on steam servers?

No idea; I bought the game on GoG.

 

[Dhaze]

So, while the fresh coat of paint in my bathroom dries, I present the continuation of Adventures In Frustration Mechajammer, the game no one plays, nor wants to play—nor even should play, really.

First in line, a bug. Because of course it's the first thing that happens. Sigh.
In this video you'll see demonstrated a frequent one I had mentionned earlier, which entirely deletes my weapon from existence when I interact with a merchant. You can see I have my t(h)rusty laser spear equipped; then I buy then sell a couple of items to the merchant, and upon exiting the conversation interface my weapon is just gone.

Imagine playing that shit, when you can't even go a minute without the game breaking down in some way. How is this a released and patched game, and not a pre-alpha?



And not a bug per se, but a problem. What you'll see is that while I'm inside a building, an enemy outside the building somehow aggroes to me, unfortunately right at the moment when I'm in a doorway, surrounded by my drones. My drones who block my way, since I have no option to tell them to move, and they don't move on their own, since the enemy, though aggroed to me, is somewhat out of sight and range. Fortunately this resolved itself by frenetically pressing the 'skip turn' button.



But no matter. Yesterday I'd found a Psionic Detector, and with all the talk about people living underground, I remembered having passed by a place where scavengers would crawl out from dozens of manholes leading to miniature sewers. I decided to go back there, and have a look around. In the following screenshot, look at the minimap in the upper-right part of the screen; it's a little bit difficult to see on a static image, but you can descry the delineation of a circle made of red dots.

That was not there before—only now that I carry the Psionic Detector. After a bit of searching about, one manhole led me down to a new place:

Yes! More progress! I feel like things are slowly coming together; and if I know my video games, that right there is one important-looking place. Kind of end-game looking, actually, as if one leading to the Deep Caverns. Is it a bunker of sorts, or some Atlantean ruins, or a mineshaft, or even all three combined? Don't know, and unfortunately the elevator computer required a code I do not yet know. Neither am I presented with an option to hack the computer, sadly, so I'll have to come back later.

After this, I think I finally discovered—mostly by chance along a bit of intuition—what the Jammer given by Pelican does, and how exactly to use it.
Driving along a street, I saw a Utility Box, and promptly plugged my Jammer into it. Then, searching around, I stumbled onto a place I hadn't seen before—and Pelican contacted me. Could this act on her part be linked to my usage of the Jammer about a minute earlier?

The Hive? A vault? Oh, in this game, where there's a vault there's a faction. So I investigated further, traversed a dark, shitty corridor (that's were one previous video comes into place, the one titled 'Frustrating, Imprecise Traversal) and indeed discovered another faction. They seemed weird and chittery, but hey, I'm already allied with blood-mad Scavengers and half-metal half-flesh Cyberfreaks, and I somehow always end up kill everyone who seems relatively normal—so what the hell, I'd like to ally myself with the insect guys.

Their boss told me he hates the Miners, as they pollute the soil; I am to kill the Miners' boss to ingratiate myself to the Hive. That's actually fine with me, since I know from my first playthrough there is a Utility Box near the Miners' base, and I have an idea needs verifying. So I went there and found... a bug.

What you'll see in the next video is the Utility Box in question—which is supposed to look like a sort of electrical pole with a box attached to it—spasming on the ground because somehow, for some ungodly reason of spaghetti-code, its sprite had been replaced with what I think is that of a human body in its death animation. Don't ask me how such a thing might happen. I'm beyond trying to understand how grind the gears of this game. Also I'll let you be the judge of the game's responsiveness; have I used the Jammer properly or not? The feedback is not fantastic, to say the least.
(don't pay attention to me circling the mouse at the bottom of the inventory at one point; that's just me only now noticing that the AC is displayed there)



So I've plugged my Jammer repeatedly into that box (giggidy), and now went towards the nearby Miners, where I intended to kill two birds with one stone. And Pelican contacted me.

Yes! In truth I think there is one Utility Box for and near each faction, and my theory was that after connecting the Jammer to a Utility Box, Pelican would contact me when first approaching said faction, but only if I had not yet made contact with them. There might be more still to it, but I think I'm on the right track.

So I killed the Miners' boss, then quickly made my way back to the Hive—where the dudes wasted not a breath before attacking me as soon as I entered their sight. What the fuck, game? Seriously? I discover the Hive, then kill the Miners' boss as asked, and now is the time to unleash the Faction-randomly-decides-to-turn-hostile bug? Fuckedy fuck of a fuckaroo. But hey, at least I've verified my theory anent the Jammer and Utility Boxes, so I've got that going on for me, which is nice.

Next I decided that, perhaps, I should go and save hairy Barry's ass.

Using the coordinates provided earlier by Pelican, I played a quick round of spin-the-Cypher to order a taxi around, and disembarked there, in a new place called Port Town:

And I'd like to bring your attention to the following screenshot of the map, on which you'll see clearly displayed yet another bug—though that one, while certainly not helping raise the game's overall quality, is rather innocuous. The long rectangle with Port Town written on it is where I currently am. And down in the bottom left corner of the map, you can see a bright green light like a stubby halo-wreathed arrow pointing down; that is the little marker supposed to indicate where exactly on the map my character is supposedly standing. That map bug happens in multiples places, all of these I think not reachable on foot, only via the taxi system of transportation.

So I explored Port Town, and the Agro-Fax guys there pack one hell of a mean punch. Not only does their incendiary ammo cause a lot of damage, but staying even for one turn in the blaze that ensues can cause the wounds to pile up insanely quickly. As in, five wounds per turn. In the end my reserve of Health Kits was reduced to almost nothing after being discovered by only two guys.

Thus with a cohort of guards patroling everywhere and search lights sweeping the place, I came to the conclusion that, evidently, sneaking was going to be key here. I opted to order my drones stay behind, as they can be a bit annoying when sneaking around.

The following group in particular proved to be a problem, and I had to lure them away with a grenade, Underrail-style.

Then, a room a bit to the side of the compound, containing loot (a helmet, best one I've found yet though the Armor Class system is pretty dumb), a key, and boxes full of ammo and grenades.

There really were a lot of guards, so I decided to play it safe and, as in real life, hit it from the back. Sneaking around, I find what seems to be a prisoner! Barry, oh Barry is that you?

Nope, just a filthy vagrant. Probably a wino, to boot.

Still, certain that Barry has to be very close now, I searched for a way inside the prisoners' pen, and found it through a building. I met this guy, kept in a cage:

Sorry, guy-who-kinda-looks-like-Justin-Long, but managing companions in this game is an awful chore. I have the key to your pen, but you'll be staying there, where you won't cause any bug (probably...)

Finally, I found Barry!

But of course the game wouldn't let me talk to him through the fence. Not sure if that's a glitch, or if the purpose of that hole in the wall was only so I could see precisely where Barry was. So, one broken wall, skewered guard, and busted lock later, we eventually got to talking. Quite happy and mighty grateful, is what he was.

Cool. So he went sneaking around the research and development branch of what is possibly the second-most well-armed syndicate? Kinda ballsy, my dude.

Of course the shadow of bugs lays ever draped over me like a weighty, sinister pall; once the conversation ended I reflexively checked my inventory and saw nothing new, but then noticed there was now an item laying on the ground at my feet. My inventory was too full to receive what Barry wanted to give me, so the item was dropped on the ground. And of course, once I had made room enough for it in my bag, for the life of me I could not interact with it... Reload. Replayed the conversation with a roomier inventory, and properly received the item; only then Barry stood stuck in the doorway, and I couldn't move an inch. Reload.

In the end, here is the item he gave me:

Ok, so now I have a Jammer against psionic waves. Not sure what to do with it, but fine, that's progress nonetheless, one step closer to this hell's end.

Still, I had a bit more of that area to explore.

Four guards—and my fuck that guy in the back, with what I believe is the Mayflower Initiave logo on his shirt, has Ultrabeefcake Deluxe written all over him.

But he who went by the name of Fort Know went down without too much problem; we'll never know what he might have said. Thanks, Laser Spear!

So that's clear, definite progress. Encouraging. I might yet finish this game.

And I have to admit, it was actually fun. Lots of deadly patroling guards; vast zones of shadow peppered with little lights and periodically swept by search light: tall grasses in which to hide; a boss; a way to circumvent the boss. A quest that does not exactly boil down to 'collect seven tufts of dewleaves' or 'kill that guy'. Moreso: I dreaded having to sneak out of the place with Barry in tow, since escort mission are always such a pain. Making Barry just leave on his own? Can't believe I'm saying this, but thank you, devs.

Yeah, overall, if putting aside the misery of the bugs and glitches, I had fun this time.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I had fun this time.

And I'm having fun while reading your "Let's Play", especially for a game I never intended to play. Thanks a lot.
Still having love-hate relationship with the graphics and mood. It looks like shit but kinda have a charm?

 

[Dhaze]

I'm sincerely glad you're getting some modicum of enjoyment out of that. It's a surprising amount of work recording and uploading what little I record, or taking clear screenshots that speak for themselves; but I've had quite a bit of fun reading the Codex as a lurker, so take that as my way of giving back what I can. Once that's done, I'll take my pension, and become a shitposter like any other.

And you're absolutely right about the game looking like shit yet being charming. It doesn't have the class of some earlier artwork (https://i.imgur.com/sfPxnUT.jpg), but charm is decidedly the most appropriate word to attach to this game.

 

[Dhaze]

Since this info is hard to come by due to almost no one playing this game, before talking about what further significant progress I made towards its completion I'd like to offer a quick recap anent the events unfolding in Mechajammer.

TL;DR : things are shaping up something fierce, and can't believe I'm saying this, but the world and story is actually really, really intriguing. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that I'm genuinely and increasingly interested.

You and your crew, four people in total by the names of Medic, Barry, Pelican, and whatever your own is, all trained members of the Earth Collective (the foremost, mightily powerful, overly well-funded and -armed syndicate of all), are fleeing said Collective under guise of a mission. Unfortunately, while flying over the miserable jungle colony of Calitana your ship is gunned down by an anti-air battery.

You crash and survive—Barry is nowhere to be seen—but, before you can gather your thoughts, are greeted by some less-than-honorable folks. Ever the one quick to act, Pelican promptly unloads some welcome ammo in their faces and they flee—but they raise the bridges leading from your little corner of the map to the rest. Can't swim away: the surrounding waters are heavily contaminated, and growing extra appendages is not a tempting perspective. Barry contacts you via radio; can see the crashed ship burning, says he, but can't reach it due to the raised bridges.

So you smack a few mutated rats, smack a few bad guys and their boss, then smack your lips in self-satisfaction after you manage to lower the bridges. Barry comes back with some pizza; you and yours elect to make the former Wolfzz Bay Shipping Company's headquarters your temporary home; then a guy barges in while you sup, claiming to work for a man named Sullivan who would very much like to speak with you, should it please you so.

Now the game opens. Pelican stays behind, gathering intel; Medic plays at medic; Barry goes who knows where; and you go also, by your lonesome, to wade through the bog called Calitana.

Sullivan is located in one of the Melrose Apartments in the Black Market district, a place can only be reached via the taxi system. But said taxi system has been hijacked by smugglers, who use a Cypher modified in rotation three times per day to move about Calitana. So you meet with a mutant named Frank, who has memorised the sequence of numbers required at a certain time of the day in order to move to the Black Market.

Once disembarked there, you go and meet Sullivan who reveals he his in hiding. He, too, endeavors to flee from Calitana—but not before acquiring a Copperhead. A Copperhead, I think, is one of those things you can see slowly hovering their way through the glaucous, midden-smelling streets of Calitana. It actually looks like a huge robotic head of copper, replete with a bevy of high-tech gadgetry and sensors; they do not speak, nor do they interact with the world around them save for what might be a manner of scanning laser, but does float about them an ominous air I mislike.
Sullivan claims that Copperheads are powerful, invincible weapons (developed by the Mayflower Initiative syndicate, I think?) that will prove invaluable in the inevitable impeding conflicts. And he wants one; wants one real bad. Can't well get one off of the streets—them being invincible and all. So he'll settle for a prototype or inactive one.
He had previously hired a woman, Mara, to inquire left and right and up and down as to where one could find such a Copperhead. But Mara hasn't contacted Sullivan in a while, leaving little doubt as to her fate.

So Sullivan offers a deal: replace Mara. Bring him a Copperhead, and he'll give you a ship, of which he has no use since his departure from Calitana will go through other means.
Fortunately, Mara has left a few notes about her inquiries, as well's a letters-and-numbers wheel to decode the taxi system Cypher.

Now the game truly opens; and shifts to somewhat of a detective game, strangely enough. There are a lot of things happening in Calitana. Lots of quarrels between syndicates, and disappearances of vagrants, and weird weapon development and genes experiments. Clues about everything are sprawled absolutely everywhere, and it's left to your good care to assemble them. Either that, or you can regret evermore your having spent 20€ on this broken piece of software.

Not in organised fashion but rather a pell-mell akin to jumbled thoughts, here are the main, most important points I've uncovered so far:

1) Somewhere, there is a Mayflower Initiative base, and the anti-air battery that gunned us all neat and proper is undoubtedly there. As well, the Mayflower Initiative's research and development section is far along in their work on psionic technology. As a result, the Quinton Industries' executives are fleeing in drove before the proverbial shit might hit the fan—and this fan is already set on its maximum speed setting. I think they are now somewhere north. Also, I have acquired a key to the Mayflower Initiative's base, so that's huge.

2) The Agro-Fax syndicate is deeply invested in gene modification. Radioactive waste is involved, and they have a biolab located on Dome Six Island. There, shit has already hit fan and it's splattered indelibly all over the walls. Woe is we! when will mankind learn... Have they not watched Jurassic Park?

3a) Calitana was a mining colony. There are Atlantean catacombs webbing the whole underground, and in these catacombs, deposits of psionic matter were earlier discovered then exploited to depletion by the Mayflower Initiative. At least that's what we are led to believe, for meseems the Mayflower Initiative had found what they were looking for and feigned the exhaustion of minable ressources to start working discreetly, covertly, on something of utmost significance.

3b) For their exploitation of Calitana's underground, the Mayflower Initiative used prison laborers called the Quarrymen. Said Quarrymen, possibly, had been reduced by surgical means to a general stupider-than-stupid mental state. Their linguistic faculties devolved to the point of mere grunts, and their communications with others than themselves took the shape of colors; the Mayflower Initiative used a specialised computer to facilitate communication with them, and it is most likely that to this day, the Quarrymen are still down there, in the mines/catacombs.

4) The Faith, another syndicate, are exploiting the abject, gangrene-like physical and intellectual misery afflicting Calitana. Mandatory social commentary on religious organisations in a cyberpunk setting? Check.
How do they exploit? Not exactly sure yet, but through connivance with smugglers the Faith is luring the destitute with promises of bread and warmth and glitter and ponies; only the people thusly-lured end up never seen again. Moreso, the Faith are the proclaimers of a god whose voice, I quote verbatim, "Colors the world in His majesty."

5) I have acquired not merely a psionic detector (by the sweat of my own brow) but also a psionic jammer (thanks, Barry!), and am certain of where exactly the deposits of crude psionic matter are located; unfortunately I yet need to discover a code would permit me use of the elevator leading down below. As well, I know were exactly to find a working computer such as those used to communicate with the Quarrymen, and on top of all that I possess multiple clues that might help me with this puzzle.

Man, if only that game was bug-free, I think it could have been a moderate success instead of a tragic failure.

 

[True Ukrainian]

So that is the connection with the original title of the game. Copper Dreams. The copperhead macguffin that is your key to escaping the planet. I was actually hoping that the refracted update would make the game playable but it still looks like absolute shit.

 

[Sykar]

Man what a crying shame, I am wating for a GOOD Cyberpunk RPG for ages, basically since the Sega and SNES Shadowrun games which I enjoyed a lot. The Shadowrun games were above average to decent, Dragonfall, but otherwise? Cyberbug 2077 was a shit show. This one here is bug ridden to hell and probably unfixable.
The only game that comes close is Satelite Reign, but that one is a Syndicate like RT. Fun and all but not a RPG.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Man what a crying shame, I am wating for a GOOD Cyberpunk RPG game for ages

We will die waiting...

Spoiler

or upload our consciousness to a smart fridge

 

[Dhaze]

It's borderline unplayable for me, so yeah, I think it's safe to say that almost everyone would give up in an hour, two at most.

And they should have kept Copper Dreams for a name. Much cooler. Keep the old name, keep the interesting story I'm slowly unfolding, and make the gameplay just good, only good and no more, but bug-free, and you've got a winner. As it currently is though...

So, I'm not sure whether the Copperheads are build by the Earth Collective or by the Mayflower Initiative. I've kinda missed that information.
But I'm gonna venture a guess, and say if built by the Mayflower Initiative, the Copperheads are already loaded with psi-tech (and might be possessed of some sentience?), and the Initiative is merely waiting for the en-force arrival of the Earth Collective to truly activate the Copperheads' capabilities.
Or, if the Copperheads are built by the Earth Collective, that's why the Initiative is also developing a psi-jammer. Otherwise they're merely developing it in case someone turns their psi-tech against them.

Any way it goes, there's copper, ands heads, and mechas (kinda), and jammers. 10/10

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Since this info is hard to come by due to almost no one playing this game, before talking about what further significant progress I made towards its completion I'd like to offer a quick recap anent the events unfolding in Mechajammer.

TL;DR : things are shaping up something fierce, and can't believe I'm saying this, but the world and story is actually really, really intriguing. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that I'm genuinely and increasingly interested.

You and your crew, four people in total by the names of Medic, Barry, Pelican, and whatever your own is, all trained members of the Earth Collective (the foremost, mightily powerful, overly well-funded and -armed syndicate of all), are fleeing said Collective under guise of a mission. Unfortunately, while flying over the miserable jungle colony of Calitana your ship is gunned down by an anti-air battery.

You crash and survive—Barry is nowhere to be seen—but, before you can gather your thoughts, are greeted by some less-than-honorable folks. Ever the one quick to act, Pelican promptly unloads some welcome ammo in their faces and they flee—but they raise the bridges leading from your little corner of the map to the rest. Can't swim away: the surrounding waters are heavily contaminated, and growing extra appendages is not a tempting perspective. Barry contacts you via radio; can see the crashed ship burning, says he, but can't reach it due to the raised bridges.

So you smack a few mutated rats, smack a few bad guys and their boss, then smack your lips in self-satisfaction after you manage to lower the bridges. Barry comes back with some pizza; you and yours elect to make the former Wolfzz Bay Shipping Company's headquarters your temporary home; then a guy barges in while you sup, claiming to work for a man named Sullivan who would very much like to speak with you, should it please you so.

Now the game opens. Pelican stays behind, gathering intel; Medic plays at medic; Barry goes who knows where; and you go also, by your lonesome, to wade through the bog called Calitana.

Sullivan is located in one of the Melrose Apartments in the Black Market district, a place can only be reached via the taxi system. But said taxi system has been hijacked by smugglers, who use a Cypher modified in rotation three times per day to move about Calitana. So you meet with a mutant named Frank, who has memorised the sequence of numbers required at a certain time of the day in order to move to the Black Market.

Once disembarked there, you go and meet Sullivan who reveals he his in hiding. He, too, endeavors to flee from Calitana—but not before acquiring a Copperhead. A Copperhead, I think, is one of those things you can see slowly hovering their way through the glaucous, midden-smelling streets of Calitana. It actually looks like a huge robotic head of copper, replete with a bevy of high-tech gadgetry and sensors; they do not speak, nor do they interact with the world around them save for what might be a manner of scanning laser, but does float about them an ominous air I mislike.
Sullivan claims that Copperheads are powerful, invincible weapons (developed by the Mayflower Initiative syndicate, I think?) that will prove invaluable in the inevitable impeding conflicts. And he wants one; wants one real bad. Can't well get one off of the streets—them being invincible and all. So he'll settle for a prototype or inactive one.
He had previously hired a woman, Mara, to inquire left and right and up and down as to where one could find such a Copperhead. But Mara hasn't contacted Sullivan in a while, leaving little doubt as to her fate.

So Sullivan offers a deal: replace Mara. Bring him a Copperhead, and he'll give you a ship, of which he has no use since his departure from Calitana will go through other means.
Fortunately, Mara has left a few notes about her inquiries, as well's a letters-and-numbers wheel to decode the taxi system Cypher.

Now the game truly opens; and shifts to somewhat of a detective game, strangely enough. There are a lot of things happening in Calitana. Lots of quarrels between syndicates, and disappearances of vagrants, and weird weapon development and genes experiments. Clues about everything are sprawled absolutely everywhere, and it's left to your good care to assemble them. Either that, or you can regret evermore your having spent 20€ on this broken piece of software.

Not in organised fashion but rather a pell-mell akin to jumbled thoughts, here are the main, most important points I've uncovered so far:

1) Somewhere, there is a Mayflower Initiative base, and the anti-air battery that gunned us all neat and proper is undoubtedly there. As well, the Mayflower Initiative's research and development section is far along in their work on psionic technology. As a result, the Quinton Industries' executives are fleeing in drove before the proverbial shit might hit the fan—and this fan is already set on its maximum speed setting. I think they are now somewhere north. Also, I have acquired a key to the Mayflower Initiative's base, so that's huge.

2) The Agro-Fax syndicate is deeply invested in gene modification. Radioactive waste is involved, and they have a biolab located on Dome Six Island. There, shit has already hit fan and it's splattered indelibly all over the walls. Woe is we! when will mankind learn... Have they not watched Jurassic Park?

3a) Calitana was a mining colony. There are Atlantean catacombs webbing the whole underground, and in these catacombs, deposits of psionic matter were earlier discovered then exploited to depletion by the Mayflower Initiative. At least that's what we are led to believe, for meseems the Mayflower Initiative had found what they were looking for and feigned the exhaustion of minable ressources to start working discreetly, covertly, on something of utmost significance.

3b) For their exploitation of Calitana's underground, the Mayflower Initiative used prison laborers called the Quarrymen. Said Quarrymen, possibly, had been reduced by surgical means to a general stupider-than-stupid mental state. Their linguistic faculties devolved to the point of mere grunts, and their communications with others than themselves took the shape of colors; the Mayflower Initiative used a specialised computer to facilitate communication with them, and it is most likely that to this day, the Quarrymen are still down there, in the mines/catacombs.

4) The Faith, another syndicate, are exploiting the abject, gangrene-like physical and intellectual misery afflicting Calitana. Mandatory social commentary on religious organisations in a cyberpunk setting? Check.
How do they exploit? Not exactly sure yet, but through connivance with smugglers the Faith is luring the destitute with promises of bread and warmth and glitter and ponies; only the people thusly-lured end up never seen again. Moreso, the Faith are the proclaimers of a god whose voice, I quote verbatim, "Colors the world in His majesty."

5) I have acquired not merely a psionic detector (by the sweat of my own brow) but also a psionic jammer (thanks, Barry!), and am certain of where exactly the deposits of crude psionic matter are located; unfortunately I yet need to discover a code would permit me use of the elevator leading down below. As well, I know were exactly to find a working computer such as those used to communicate with the Quarrymen, and on top of all that I possess multiple clues that might help me with this puzzle.

Man, if only that game was bug-free, I think it could have been a moderate success instead of a tragic failure.

That's a hell of a hook. Even if it sounds a bit like Planet Alcatraz in escaping a shithole planet.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Man what a crying shame, I am wating for a GOOD Cyberpunk RPG for ages, basically since the Sega and SNES Shadowrun games which I enjoyed a lot. The Shadowrun games were above average to decent, Dragonfall, but otherwise? Cyberbug 2077 was a shit show. This one here is bug ridden to hell and probably unfixable.
The only game that comes close is Satelite Reign, but that one is a Syndicate like RT. Fun and all but not a RPG.

Cyber knights might save cyberpunk.

 

[Dhaze]

Right, so, onto the playthrough's continuation. First, a couple more bugs.

Here you have an elevator that refuses to work, forcing me to reload a save made outside the building:



Then you have yet more visual proof of how massively broken the inventories are. The items in the merchant's inventory do exist, but only their shadow is visible, and they cannot be bought or interacted with in any way.



Then something a bit different. At one point the Hivers became hostile towards me for absolutely no reason, and since it's often possible to open the inventories during dialogue, I tried to give the Hivers' boss the item he had asked for. Of course this proved entirely fruitless.



And now the real stuff. No huge leap, but to my satisfaction I connected a few loose threads.

Quite early in the game, Barry mentionned that cars bearing the red "M" logo of the Mayflower Initiative were driving certain important folks around, and that this might bring me closer to entering the Mayflower Initiative's base, allowing me to eventually disable the anti-air batteries.
Guess what I found, searching near buildings belonging to the Initiative?

I wanted to see where it would go, so I followed in my own car, and... that created a bit of a traffic jam (I did not crush a vagrant pedestrian by the way, not my style):

But the car only drove 'round and 'round the same block, again and again so I launched GTA.exe and laser-speared the driver through the windshield:

Thus now I have a key to the Mayflower Initiative's base. It's all slowly coming together.

After this, while driving around town searching for a certain something, I finally discovered by sheer luck the location of a place I had been searching for since almost the start of the game: the Old Town Apartment Tower!

It sounds stupid, but I swear it is so incredibly easy to miss due to the environment's configuration. Everything in this game looks too much the same, from the textures to the palette and even the architecture; and the camera and shitty map and overall muddled looks only serve to make it worse. It looks way better in screenshots; in motion it's a whole other story.
In fact this place is so easy to miss that despite marking it clearly on my map, I actually had to drive around a bit more and memorise a sure-fire way to get there from a nearby junkyard, otherwise I would have been unable to find it again.

But find it I did at last. See, hours and hours ago I had discovered a note telling me that in an apartment here there frequently visited a representative of the Faith, to organise some manner of shady deal. The R4ts syndicate (may they rest in peace) were onto them. So, not knowing what to expect, I inputed the dutifully-scribed number and access code into the elevator.

And in the aparment proper, I meet this woman named Sora, who tries to butter me up all greasy-like by comparing me favorably to rat-faced people or filthy scavs:

Notice the white sign on her head, the one that looks like a Stargate coordinate symbol? That is the symbol used by the Faith. But our relationship promptly sours:

Again, the "Ok" floors me every single time. I know it's a simple way for the devs of closing the dialogue, and likely there's no artful humor behind that, but I can't help and hear that "Ok" in the delightfully sarcastic tone employed by JC Denton.

So the guards are called; weapons are unsheathed; injurious words and spittlle fly all over the room while my drones buzz and click and whir. What a shame:

Holy shit yes! I actually made a little jump in my chair upon seeing that key drop! Because a long while ago, while exploring the world, I had discovered a huge, truly massive door I could not open. See, I had marked it on my map:

At that point I was truly giddy. It's so weird how this game as morphed into detective work. For their promotion of the game, instead of insisting on the systems that are barely functionnal—fighting, recruiting, driving, etc—the devs should have put a much, much bolder emphasis on this side of Mechajammer; I for one find it the most enjoyable and satisfactory part of the game, by far and large. It's not even that it's good by comparison to the rest that is awful, but it's straight up good, period.

And nearby the already pungent remains of dame Sora of the hallowed Faith, I found these poor fellows:

Yup; guys with nothing to their names, taken from the street under promise of food and shelter, but reduced to prisoners by the Faith. Now I'm not an ichthyologist, but I can tell something smells fishy.

So while caressing the laser-sharp tip of my spear I politely ask a guy in the street if I can borrow his motorbike—he says yes, and also leaves his money on the ground for some reason—then, post-haste, I race to the territory occupied by the Faith. And there's the door I remember:

'Use key'. My, what beautiful words. So I enter the temple, which houses many vagrants and practitioners, then find an item the game calls 'Letter From Sora':

When I tell you guys it's all slowly coming together!

Unfortunately, in another room I run into a guy called Agent Thorn, and I suspect he has one stuck in his paw because lion-bearded boyo here seems annoyed and, whilst pointing a slug rifle to my face, immediately proceeds to threaten me:

Jeez. I wonder how well that's gonna go for him and his retinue of goons.

Not well. Not well at all. I hope that's tiles I see on the ground and not some kind of textured carpeting, otherwise that's gonna mess with the sermons scheduling while they re-do the whole place.

In a front pocket of Agent Thorn's pants not only do my lady hands feel the flattering onset of rigor mortis, but more importantly, the ruffle of a piece of paper:

Again, mention of color. And what's that logo? Agro-Fax? I'm not sure, but I think so; those guys with Thorn wore green, and such is the official attire of Agro-Fax.

Furthermore, in a room mere paces further into the temple, I found yet another clue:

Just colors and lines, no words. Now that, I have no idea at all what it represents. None. Though I guess I'll find out eventually.

With that it seemed I had discovered all could be discovered in the temple of the Faith. But that's all right, because I knew where to go next.
Strong with the miserable experience of my first playthrough, I know that on a small island owned and ran by Agro-Fax there's a great big computer with multiple interfaces, and these have to do with voice and colors. Quarrymen, and the Faith's god, and psionic matter, and the Mayflower Initiative's psi-tech, and Atlanteans ruins or catacombs; it's all swirling in my head, and I'm trying to put two and two together despite being retardedly bad at math.

I swear on my original, five-discs edition of Baldur's Gate that if this turn out to be some kind of J.J. Abrams-esque mystery box shit were none of anything ends up making any sense whatsoever because the so-called writers couldn't be fucked to think ahead, I will become like MadMaxHellfire: prone to outburst of rage.

Still, now I need to visit that Agro-Fax island, but I can only go there via the taxi system. Only I don't know the coordinates. But Mara, the woman Sullivan had hired, had discovered that shipments of radioactive materials were being shipped to and/or from that island.
Equipped with a Radiation Detector, I criss-cross my way through Calitana for a while, when suddenly:

Yes! Notice that huge blob of yellow light on my minimap, in the upper-right corner of the screen? That's radiation emitted from inside a warehouse.

So of course I enter said warehouse, and try to go sneaky-sneaky; but fail because it's sometimes impossible to determine where lights and shadows begin or end. This is no Thief: The Dark Project. Thus I abort operation sneaky-sneaky, and launch project stabby-stabby, which leads me to this:

Cyphered coordinates for the taxi system! Fantastic. I'm progressing all over the place.

And this concludes the most important parts of my most recent progress. On top of all that, the following—mostly minor stuff—has taken place:

1) As suspected earlier, the Jammer provided by Pelican does indeed need to be plugged into a Utility Box before meeting the faction linked to said Utility Box; by doing this Pelican always offer some measure of information concerning them upon first meeting them. If you plug the Jammer having already encountered the faction, it's useless, does absolutely nothing. So far I consider what information she offers as quite useless save for flavor, so I don't think her Jammer is essential to complete the game.

2) The Arms Guild Jammer provided by Barry is outright rejected by the Utility Boxes I've tried to plug it into, those that accept Pelican's Jammer. This leads me to believe it should be used in one specific place.

3) I've allied with the Temp Agency. Not because I find them cool, contrarily to the Cyberfreaks and Scavengers, but because I had already killed the boss of the Factus East Boys and collected his key; said key being the prerequisite to forging an alliance with the Temps.

4) I've destroyed the Hivers. Due to the bug having made their faction hostile towards me, some of their guys would spawn in certain quarters of the city, making traversal even more of a pain than it already is. This also allowed me to confirm that once a faction is hostile, there is seemingly no turning back. Fucking bug.

5) In one of the Old Town apartments, I've met another faction or syndicate: the Hackers. I tried to strike an alliance, but unfortunately they asked for the key possessed by the R4ts' boss; this boss bugged out on me when I fought him long ago, and did not drop his key. Thus, no alliance. I went back to where I had killed the boss in question, hoping against hope that his key would be on the ground, but no luck. Fucking bug².

6) Lastly, next to the elevators leading up into the Old Town apartments, there is a sturdy door. For some reason some sturdy doors can be shattered by attacking them, but others can not. The devs should have called those that can't be broken something other than sturdy; perhaps, oh, I don't know, 'unbreakable door'? But really, what do I know about designing a game?
Though this particular door can be lockpicked, as proven by the following screenshot:

But a target of 50 is gargantuan. That would require a perfect roll with 4 dices in Grace as well's 4 dices +2 pips in Burglary. Given the available number of dices, that is a massive investment of stats.

Next momentous step: making my way to Agro-Fax's Dome Six Island, where you'll get to see just how wrong the wrong things can go. Hopefully with a somewhat supportable number of bugs along the way.

That's a hell of a hook.

Right? How was that not their main selling point?

 

[Tyranicon]

At the risk of being a shill, you guys can try my cyberpunk game. It looks kinda like shit, is janky, and has porn, but a few codexers reviewed it to be somewhat non-garbage.

It's labyrinthine and content rich, but still only 80% finished as I'm working on the ending.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...nk-srpg-now-available-on-early-access.130459/

 

[Dhaze]

I'm searching my memory banks to remember talks from Joe and Hannah about the save states and save scumming. Basically, there would be no reloads. You would play thru and when you exit the application the state of the entire world would be remembered. coppermechajammerdreams was not meant to be re-loaded. Only experienced.

I know I already responded to your post, but something occured to me.

As it is now, Mechajammer has an Autosave. Only it autosaved precisely once: at the very beginning of the game, a second after the introduction. And never since.
Moreso, the game has a Quicksave feature, but weirdly no Quickload. When I press the quicksave key, it simply overwrites the first save slot, and that's it.

So here's my notion: at one point relatively soon before the game's launch, the devs made a 180 on the subject of saving. Perhaps they realised their game was broken to the point of making constant save and reload necessary, or perhaps it's something else altogether; doesn't matter exactly. But since they had always planned for a game that would only autosave at certain points and upon quitting the program, they had no foundation whatsoever for a robust, manual saving system—and so they had to cobble something together real quick, and failed.

That would explain why the remnants of the Autosave and Quicksave systems are there, but not even functionnal; the absence of a Quickload; and why saving and reloading often helps in breaking the game even further. I'd be willing to bet my nuts on that.

Side note: my most recent save is now made of 1012 .es3 files. No way that's normal.