Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
ONly reason to engage in retrofuturism is because all futures you can imagine are too dreadful to think about. If such is the case, you have a moral obligation to fight instead of making games.
Finally tried the new demo. It was disappointing and I much preferred the first one. The big sprawling level here feels like a mashup of random rooms. Plus the new interface feels off, especially with the anime girl at the bottom left corner. Finally, I'm not sure if it's just my memory being selective, but I don't recall the first demo giving me temporary blindness every time I look into a light - the "bloom" effect is really bad, coupled with everything in the background looking blurry.
I stopped after about 30 minutes because I got bored. Maybe this isn't the game for me
I'll agree with udm, i found the new demo a bit boring - all i did was walk around in a big area aimlessly, find a tram which took a while to go somewhere and then i got attacked and killed by some because reasons i guess.
Also the 'hop' 'hop' 'hop' is kinda annoying, better have it done less occasionally. Especially since there are several cases where you can't climb the steps and you have to jump even though they aren't that high.
Aside from boredom/hopping the main issue i had was with the controls: they really need work. I couldn't bind the right mouse button to jump (which is the key i use to jump for more than two decades now and, trust me, that is a LOT of muscle memory which i'm not interested at all in not using) and the gamepad controls are even worse (why are the bumpers set to zoom in/out? The game has 198348738 actions, these are the most useless to have as actions - and why is there a lean key that only goes in one direction?) with the UI being worse than Cyberpunk 2077 in terms of treating the right stick as a mouse cursor you "click" with the trigger.
Anyway, as i wrote before, i do like the aesthetic and personally i actually like the new HUD (not sure how it'll look in lower resolution screens though - make sure it is playable on something like 1280x720!) but the controls need fixing and there needs to be some reason to do whatever you are doing. Add some NPCs or something :-P.
Also the level design did turn out to be huge and empty enough to give EYE a run for it's money. And fuck making your game dark as fuck and then having the night vision mode require energy.
I've got to agree. This was the game that I wanted to be the one that blew me away. Immersive sims don't grow on trees. Unfortunately, I didn't really have fun with the demo. Big, empty spaces, and exploration felt kind of boring. The characters I spoke to gave some interesting exposition, which was probably the best part of the game. When that's the case, I feel like there's no point in continuing with the game. I'm not sure that I dare to hope for a good game. I'll keep being cautiously pessimistic for now.
Map sizes in immersive sims are a constant struggle.
You gotta keep a balance between semi-realistic environments and intentionally designed challenges to give all those systems you implemented a purpose in the game.
I believe a good way to think about immersive sim level design is a connected series of "infiltration targets" with multiple access points. As a connector, you either have a simple "hallway" or a hub area.
These connectors are necessarily the place where most of the running happens. You can think of them as the "negative space" of map design.
Too much negative space and a map feels empty. Too little and it feels cramped.
When you take a look at Ultima Underworld, for example, you realize that most levels are divided into four quarters, all of which have a relatively self-contained theme or challenge.
The map design works well because the connector between the different areas is often just a cross-shaped hallway:
It's super simple and effective. It never feels too big as you can easily access most areas really quickly through the connector/access point. On the other hand, it never feels too small cause the areas (the infiltration targets, where the actual "gameplay" happens) themself contain a lot of rooms/challenges/treasure/secrets/conversations/etc.
That hallway and its shape, as simple as it seems, is the backbone of the map design and the whole reason why people will spend a lot of time running around or not.
Personally, I try coming up with infiltration targets first. Afterward, I try connecting them in an advantageous way.
If I am not entirely mistaken (I haven't re-played it in years) the Hong Kong level in Deus Ex works in a similar fashion with the market (and some side streets) acting as a hub/connector between versalife, maggie chows apartment complex, etc.
So I've played the demo for about 4 hours before putting it down, played through the tutorial and most of the demo mission. Had some fun with it but I'm just gonna echo a lot of what's already been said. The maps are too big for their own good and that aspect reminds me much more of E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy than it does Deus Ex. Every hallway and large open connecting area is about twice or maybe three times longer than they need to be. The areas are nice to look at, much like E.Y.E., but there's just too much walking, much like E.Y.E.
The gameplay seems pretty decent, though flawed, like most immersive sims anyway so what can you really expect. I was over at the building full of commies with the commander on the top and I was on the floor between the roof and the one below with tons of commies in it, where there is one dude in the corner. So I snuck up on him, pounced at him and sabered him to death before he got an alert sound or a gunshot off, but still that somehow managed to stir up the hive of bees below and they came flooding up the stairs. It took me a few tries before I managed to kill him the exact same way and it didn't aggro the entire floor below and I'm pretty sure there was nothing different in how I approached it the time it worked compared to when it didn't. I like that the game takes inventory tetris to whole new levels but visually it messes up quite a bit where items will not conform to their squares in the grid and look like they are overlapping with other stuff.
Anyway cut to later on to what I assume is the last objective of the demo, but I didn't bother to finish it. "Go deal with the tanks bro", damn son, fuck the tanks. I had some Explosive Charges that I picked up from the last little escapade and as far as I can tell there's no way to detonate them, I'm assuming I missed picking up some Detonator Switch item when I was roaming the place where these Explosive Charges were but it was just too far to walk and climb and scour every massive room of that place with night vision and the torch to find what I was missing, if I was missing anything at all. The description on the Explosive Charges was empty and they were worth $0 to the vendor so they might just be duds or something. Anyway, so without a way to detonate the charges I have I see only a few options, try the PKM, try the AK Clone, try the grenades or try to move past the tanks and search the area for something better to use. I did search around a bit but it got to the point where the tanks would just cluster around near where I was. I managed to find an AK Drum Mag which then reverted into a normal AK mag (glitch) once it was loaded into my weapon and I quickloaded. Anyway, I tried the PKM and the recoil on that thing is far too high to be useful in literally any scenario aside from hugging a tank. It would be hard to hit the broad side of a barn with that piece of junk even while crouched and aiming down sights. I tried the grenades, they did minimal if any damage at all, I think I threw like 6 right at a tank and it didn't damage it. I tried the AK Clone with the drum mag (which was at 75 rounds out of 30 due to the glitch of it reverting to a normal mag lol) and I managed to take out one of the tanks, but there was still like at least 4 or 5 more so it just didn't seem viable. At this point I just gave up because I didn't want to hump it back to where I found the explosive charges and search for a detonator in giant dark rooms which could take an hour, and savescumming for an hour to try and use the PKM to kill the tanks didn't seem that appealing to me either. I'm sure there's something I'm missing with these tanks.
Noticed quite a few glitches and bugs:
The aforementioned AK Drum Magazine turning into a normal AK Mag upon reloading the savegame
Item duplication and having "ghost" weapons is super super easy. Stick a weapon in your action bar and then sell it to the vendor, it will remain in your action bar and then you can dupe it by dropping it and picking it back up, making it go back into your inventory. It seems like quickloading a savegame where you have a "ghost" weapon in your action bar deletes it from the action bar, but duplicated items that go back into your inventory obviously still exist.
Straight up accidentally deleting your items happens often, usually when your inventory is full and you try to pick something up or buy something, it will move something out of your inventory to fit the item in and move the other item to your hand, and if you click anywhere while it's in your hand it will delete it from the game world entirely, sometimes causing even more items to be deleted when you continue to click things in your inventory screen (in an attempt to rearrange stuff). I had three separate stacks of ammo disappear this way and I had to reload a save.
I got caught in a dialogue loop with the commie guard behind the door (the one asking for the data) leading towards the giant building with the commander on the roof. Every time his dialogue would end it would restart and I could only move an inch away each time before I got out of range.
The game has a lot of potential, I don't know how attached the developer is to having these massive gigantic fuckhuge maps when a lot of them could be condensed greatly without losing any positive gameplay experience but that's the main thing holding it back in my opinion. When I actively have to weigh up whether or not it's worth backtracking for 20 minutes to search gigantic dark rooms for another 20 minutes to find something that might not even exist (or maybe it fell off the roof in a firefight?) and I decide that I'd rather put the game down and do something else instead that tells me the maps are too large.
Somehow I feel like I'm missing the point of this game. All I see is move around a cyberpunky environment (which does look cool), and gain cyber coins by clicking on guys you see standing around. Is that the gameplay cycle or is there more I'm not seeing? If I bought and played this game, what would I remember about it 5 years later?
This, plus there are surfaces that seem to be climb-able because they're below eye level when you jump (like from the train tracks to the station's platform) but you actually can't because game logic. After Thief/Shock2/TDM/Prey/Dishonored, it just doesn't feel right to not be able to climb surfaces at higher levels. How hard is it to raise your arms to mantle anyway.
This, plus there are surfaces that seem to be climb-able because they're below eye level when you jump (like from the train tracks to the station's platform) but you actually can't because game logic. After Thief/Shock2/TDM/Prey/Dishonored, it just doesn't feel right to not be able to climb surfaces at higher levels. How hard is it to raise your arms to mantle anyway.
It's in line with every game made before graphics were high def enough to mimic the concept art. A fair amount of games managed to look decent despite technological limitations. This game doesn't have the strict limitations devs from decades ago had, but sadly the artists spent too much time studying a certain "how to draw manga" book.
Plenty of games made by people with limited to no experience in game development and no artistic skill manage to not look like shit. Simple minimalistic design can save costs and be functional or even great. You can probably still scam some kid who can do 3d models into working for free to get "exposure". But sucking is the new punk it turns out.
It's in line with every game made before graphics were high def enough to mimic the concept art. A fair amount of games managed to look decent despite technological limitations.
I was joking about how these games had good looking art but the in-game 3D models weren't that great. And TBH i cherry picked heavily in Shogo's case since that was the single good looking concept art (which incidentally was made by a japanese person)... most concept art looked like this:
This game doesn't have the strict limitations devs from decades ago had, but sadly the artists spent too much time studying a certain "how to draw manga" book.
I think the game goes for a mix of retro and... less retro styled art with low-fi unfiltered textures and polygons combined with mid-2000s style rendering (normalmaps, etc - initially i was about to write "modern rendering" but normalmaps and bumpmaps are almost two decades old now, they are already retro :-P). This is a style i've seen in several newer games and it is often a hit or miss, but personally i think that in this case it works due to the mood and setting.
However i think the character's head is too weird (...and hips too but the head is worse). IMO they should look at some PS2 games for inspiration, e.g. Trapt (just random game i found on Google by searching for dark themed japanese games) where the characters are still heavily stylized but not with any weird proportions:
Normally i'd just chalk it up to them not being able to do better (which is common in indie games) but that 2D character art shows that they can.
I think the game goes for a mix of retro and... less retro styled art with low-fi unfiltered textures and polygons combined with mid-2000s style rendering
I was thinking along the same lines but less optimistically, this mix of modern lighting systems and double digit poly counts might not yield that 90s "charm" the devs are hoping for. The problem isn't that Marie doesn't look as good as Adam Jensen, it's that she doesn't look as good as JC Denton. Your Oni example above is actually spot on, because there's some common ground in visual design but the difference is plainly obvious. Konoko's probably got fewer polygons in the head mesh, but the less (albeit still) stylised diffuse map and the flat lighting produce a much more consistent result.
Something else that caught my attention in these recent posts is complaints about the scale of the levels. I haven't played the demos, but it's one of the first things that struck me when I looked at their videos - why are all the spaces so large? I hope the devs don't overdo the "retro" gimmick to the point it backfires, it'd be a shame for all the effort they're putting into the project.
Thanks for the input, my dudes. As usual, I'll try to reply to all of you (maybe except the schizoposts) in the form of wall of text below. Thank you for the time spent with the demo. We had people play 10 minutes and jump in to say they don't know how to stack crates, so feedback from those of you that spent more time with it is extra important.
I appreciate this take! We built the new level to have a lot of scope and scale because we wanted a non-linear sort of vertical slice using the movement mechanics people liked.
And lots of hidden stuff for those that allow themselves to wander
The animu stays, we asked the artist McLinskey for it, referencing OXbox Splinter Cell Double Agent's light gem, which imo turned out better than the meter in SCCT.
Finally, I'm not sure if it's just my memory being selective, but I don't recall the first demo giving me temporary blindness every time I look into a light - the "bloom" effect is really bad, coupled with everything in the background looking blurry.
I'll be adding a "bloom: off" option in the options menu, I received that complaint and I guess we sometimes delve too much into "brown and bloom" territory.
How about the tutorial level? How does that compare to the previous demo? I hope you can be swayed to give it another go when the empty rooms become less empty as we continue working on the level.
We actually intended to have an upgraded and improves version of the previous demo (Memorial Tower) level, with added props, quests, npcs and movement options, because it suffered from the "mashup of random rooms" syndrome as well. Unfortunately we realized a lot of the performance problems we had in the previous demo are caused by the level geometry being done in probuilder and we have switched to making levels in Hammer and it's getting a remake (hopefully quick). It does sound like an excuse, but it is a 'work in progress', we wish we could release demos of fully complete stuff, but steam fest crunch had us cut corners.
I'll agree with udmi found the new demo a bit boring - all i did was walk around in a big area aimlessly, find a tram which took a while to go somewhere and then i got attacked and killed by some because reasons i guess.
Have you tried talking to the guy chilling out by the wall? He sort of kind of gives you the vague directions where you should go if you want a mission. But otherwise it's like the previous demo, wandering around and getting lost, finding cool shit. Like way more dialogue interactions than previous demo, one of the things we took to heart from that one. I'm also planning to finally add a simpler reply for NPCs, where they'd tell you to piss off without opening the whole dialog UI.
And the possible reasons for being attacked are:
Though this reminds me I need to add the character's faction in their frob.
I'll have to untangle some spaghetti to achieve that but yeah I'll add that option. What do you use for ADS in such an instance? Middle mouse click? I probably should add an option for sticky aiming.
Also, full disclosure: this demo is only intended to be played with M&Kb as we didn't have the time to test on controllers or add nice support for the inventory cursor using thumbsticks. When creating the depot for the demo on steam, I outright removed the "Partial Controller Support" from its options. But of course that's still showing up in the main steam page. I'll remove that after I finish this post. The fact you are able to use a controller to play peri at all is... respectable. Thankfully that means there will be less work implementing it that than I expected. I hope we can release a patch with full controller support in the coming months.
I feel like there's no point in continuing with the game. I'm not sure that I dare to hope for a good game. I'll keep being cautiously pessimistic for now.
Glad you liked the dialogue! As mentioned, it was important for us to finally have something meatier in that regard. And as long as you'll be willing to give it another try at some point, hope we can turn that cautious pessimism into comfortable indifference. I think I stated that before, we enjoy improving on the game based on feedback. If you have anything more to add, I'd love to read it.
So I've played the demo for about 4 hours before putting it down, played through the tutorial and most of the demo mission. Had some fun with it but I'm just gonna echo a lot of what's already been said. The maps are too big for their own good and that aspect reminds me much more of E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy than it does Deus Ex. Every hallway and large open connecting area is about twice or maybe three times longer than they need to be. The areas are nice to look at, much like E.Y.E., but there's just too much walking, much like E.Y.E.
>4 hours
Based.
The levels are made in Hammer editor and the map designer really loves his Half Life 2 beta and EYE. The size is there primarily our little Marie, with her movement aug, ledge grabbing, sabre parkour and APS projectile staircases is a bit too mobile for a smaller level, however let it be known that for the final game we plan on both these huge sprawling maps and smaller, more contained ones, strewn along the campaign. What we want to do, as mentioned above, is to keep populating levels to make them feel less empty.
The gameplay seems pretty decent, though flawed, like most immersive sims anyway so what can you really expect. I was over at the building full of commies with the commander on the top and I was on the floor between the roof and the one below with tons of commies in it, where there is one dude in the corner. So I snuck up on him, pounced at him and sabered him to death before he got an alert sound or a gunshot off, but still that somehow managed to stir up the hive of bees below and they came flooding up the stairs.
The trick is to wind up your RMB stab and shishkebab the enemy. Otherwise, if the enemy isn't dead within one second of taking damage, he will inform the others in his squad of your location. But what you describe does give me an idea: I won't have the enemy do this while he's flinching from pain, should make what you attempted possible. BUT I'll have him report your location the instant flinching is finished. It's a bit of a balancing thing for stealth, having to do headshots in order to remain undetected (those marginally easier when winding up LMB attack for the sabre - a hit to the head with the prod will knock out a dude too).
Another issue here is that the map designer assigned entire buildings' worth of enemies to one squad, making them all flood to you. "A pleb filter" he said, "I want drawn out firefights" he said.
I think he realized his mistake during that "devs play" stream, lol
The AI works best (and is most fun) when assigned to a smaller group, I'll have that changed.
I had some Explosive Charges that I picked up from the last little escapade and as far as I can tell there's no way to detonate them, I'm assuming I missed picking up some Detonator Switch
Anyway, so without a way to detonate the charges I have I see only a few options, try the PKM, try the AK Clone, try the grenades or try to move past the tanks and search the area for something better to use.
Best candidate are the explosive barrels scattered around, but gotta use those strategically. You can also jump on a tank and hack it. Best method is the antitank rifle you get out of one of the quests and RWGŁ explosive rounds, but an average player will probably have to use more than one method to be successful. I will have the map dude consider having fewer tanks and human enemies instead, that should make it more managable.
I love the "sell item from action bar" bug, because it only happens on build. It's a sneaky fucker. After we recently fixed the "delete your items" bug, it's a priority. The dialogue loop is fixed too, applied patch to the current steam build. Itch build is behind.
As mentioned before, we'll have fuckhuge maps and smaller, more contained ones (think previous demo and tutorial). When we're done with FINALLY reverting back from HDRP and the extra content pass we'll be announcing that and asking for extra feedback if it's more fun.
Somehow I feel like I'm missing the point of this game. All I see is move around a cyberpunky environment (which does look cool), and gain cyber coins by clicking on guys you see standing around. Is that the gameplay cycle or is there more I'm not seeing?
Play the tutorial. If you still feel like you need assistance, hit me up. We've got features that we want people discovering themselves, but I do like giving hints, some stuff is mentioned in my replies above. Our philosophy was "no handholding", but we budged after the initial critique from new players when the steam demo dropped, so the tutorial is a bit more explicit now. Unless your comments are regarding the dev stream. Pretty sure snake went minmaxing and ignoring dialogues, so for those you gotta play yourself. Hope you have fun.
This, plus there are surfaces that seem to be climb-able because they're below eye level when you jump (like from the train tracks to the station's platform) but you actually can't because game logic. After Thief/Shock2/TDM/Prey/Dishonored, it just doesn't feel right to not be able to climb surfaces at higher levels. How hard is it to raise your arms to mantle anyway.
As mentioned before, if you have a screenshot of the offending staircase, post it and I'll pester the map dude to make it work as intended. If you can't reach a ledge that you think should be grabbable, use your cyber legs.
I assume you mean the train track drop.
Unless it would work in previous demo or other similar surface- then it has to be a bug and I repeat my plea to post pics so I can try fixing it. I specifically added checks so the grab ignores surfaces that are angled above ~50 degrees (can't remember the exact number) and sometimes it doesn't act as intended.
Konoko a cutie. I know it sounds like a cop-out but the our response to both the people who find Marie cute and those absolutely revolted by her is "good. that's intentional", even as we will be possibly refining her face. She is supposed to be uncanny. The game will go deeper into that in the DEEP LORE.
Yep, that is on me. I need to turn off edge detection when crouching. Otherwise, if a surface is not grabbable even with cyberlegs, despite looking like it should be (consistently with the rest of the game's surfaces) - that's a bug. I know of one extra annoying surface that does really weird things to the character controller and I still don't know why, so I expect there are a few others like that.
Again, thanks for playing, thanks for reading. Looking forward to hearing more from you, even if I take weeks to reply. Sorry if I missed anyone.
But otherwise it's like the previous demo, wandering around and getting lost, finding cool shit. Like way more dialogue interactions than previous demo, one of the things we took to heart from that one. [..] The size is there primarily our little Marie, with her movement aug, ledge grabbing, sabre parkour and APS projectile staircases is a bit too mobile for a smaller level
I didn't check out the UI side much (it was hard with the gamepad), are those augs "active" in the demo? Perhaps the issue here isn't that the demo map is big but that you enter it without having the augs it was designed for.
Coming from 90s shooters, in general i never liked ADS so unless the game really penalizes you for it i do not tend to use it (yes, this includes when playing with a gamepad :-P). But when i have to and i play with the keyboard i use V.
In general my common KBM setup for first person and (wherever possible) third person games is WASD for movement, Tab to switch UI on/off (or alternatively map on/off), Space for crouch (or stealth mode if there isn't a crouch mode - e.g. i use Space on most of Bethesda's games), LMB for File, Ctrl for Alt-File (or if there isn't Alt-Fire i use Ctrl for Melee if there is one), Alt for Melee (if there is one and there is also Alt-Fire), MMB for use/activate/frob/whatever, RMB for jump, Thumb1 (the top if you put the mouse vertically) for Flashlight (if any), Thumb2 (the bottom if you put the mouse vertically) for Reload. Depending on the game i might use other tasks for those, e.g. in some Aurora-based games (like Dragon Age) i use Thumb1 for highlighting items.
For gamepad i usually use the default controls since they tend to be more common, though depending on the game i might swap A/Y for jumping if the other two buttons have weird functions.
Sure she is (actually playing the game on my retro PC ATM), i mainly wanted to use Shogo in my example and dragged Oni in because it was the only other anime-styled retro game by western developers i could think of :-P
Now that you're further along... Is a GOG release actually planned? First time seeing this but I'll play the demo when I get home, it looks fucking awesome.