Community Shadowrun: Hong Kong Codex Fundraiser is Officially Live

[mindx2]

I don't think back-to-back fundraisers will work very well. Besides, we need to learn more about Underworld first to see if it's really worth it.

So, maybe another round of negotiations with Harebrained?

Nah, it's now time for the UNDERWORLD to meet the CODEX!!!!

I personally need to hear much more specifics for the Underworld guys.

Isn't that where I come in...

 

[himmy]

What I like the most about this whole thing is that making references to a video game forum in the Shadowland BBS is actually really appropriate and makes sense.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Way to go comrades you filthy immoral scumbags!

 

[daveyd]

Great job. Just curious... when this fundraiser ends, will someone from the Codex be backing the game on Kickstarter or have arrangements been made to send the money directly to HBS via Paypal? I assume either way it will count towards their $1 million stretch goal.

 

[Jaesun]

Great job. Just curious... when this fundraiser ends, will someone from the Codex be backing the game on Kickstarter or have arrangements been made to send the money directly to HBS via Paypal? I assume either way it will count towards their $1 million stretch goal.

Yes. DU will donate directly all the money it says here we have collected to the Kickstarter. That's what we have done in the past.

 

[Diablo169]

Well done everyone.

 

[Duellist_D]

Noice

Can't wait to be able to play.

 

[VioletShadow]

Well done men!!!! Codexia doing its part to continue the INCLINE.

 

[naossano]

Should you make an official announcement about the goal being reached ?

 

[Ulminati]

Wonder if HBS thought this through though. That's an awful lot of keys we stand to collect on top of what anyone else would get if they backed at $2.5k.

Oh well. Worst-case scenario is they only send X keys and the top backers get one each.

 

[Angthoron]

Pretty sure they did. Gonna need to contact them and arrange a cash drop, though.

 

[SCO]

I'm going to fucking regret this but good enough times were had with dragonfall so i backed this. I want a fucking gog key too.

 

[Ulminati]

Pretty sure they did. Gonna need to contact them and arrange a cash drop, though.

Ask them is a briefcase with certified credsticks of ¥1000 each will be acceptable.

 

[SCO]

As a bonus harebrained schemes seems to have their act together regarding data-program separation so shadowrun returns module works in shadowrun dragonfall when dropped in, so maybe this will be the same, which means non-disgusting inventory management to that game too probably.

Now they need a stealth system / moving patrols tier.

 

[Ulminati]

I don't think you'll see that purely because of how much effort it would take to make the stealth system meaningful. They probably have a good deal of the game laid out already, and stealth would mean redoing all the encounters to add stealth options.

It's pretty obvious what they wanted for this KS was to do a few UI tweaks and hopefully a matrix overhaul. The next KS (assuming SRHK doesn't bomb commercially) will probably be to add either astral or stealth.

 

[SCO]

This is probably heresy, but i like how clean dragonfall looks in its non-combat mode. So whatever inventory management ends up there i hope they don't discard it. The easiest way would be being able to select toons in the non-combat interface to pick up stuff and always have the pc talk to people; or to send to a party member on the pickup menu (where you send to the stash etc).

Many different fake dialogs with items use the pc skills though, so it might get annoying to interact with something in non-combat and it gets a party member portrait and the text assuming pc (this already happened in dragonfall if you did it in combat mode).
Maybe they'll surprise and do two or more (specialized) texts for item interactions where 'pc-ness' applies, could be nice for secrets.

 

[SCO]

A question, is it possible in P&P shadowrun to have more than 2 drones active for a rigger?

 

[Wizfall]

A question, is it possible in P&P shadowrun to have more than 2 drones active for a rigger?

Short answer yes, not a problem at all, but over a single drone it is another kind of control mode (less efficient of course).

 

[daveyd]

As a bonus harebrained schemes seems to have their act together regarding data-program separation so shadowrun returns module works in shadowrun dragonfall when dropped in, so maybe this will be the same, which means non-disgusting inventory management to that game too probably.

Now they need a stealth system / moving patrols tier.

Technically a lot of what is needed to have stealth segments already exists in the editor. I haven't really devoted the time necessary to learn the ins and outs of the editor myself, but I recall a thread on Shadowrun.com discussing various methods where you could make stealth missions in UGC. Dragonfall even has a a few hints of what's possible; for example, IIRC in the Aztechnology run it's possible for you get to the elevator without any of the guards spotting you if you time it just right (or you can also find Knight Errant uniforms and bluff your way past them).

I mean, obviously there's still no "stealth" skill, but I'm not even sure how such a thing should be implemented. What I definitely do NOT want would be for your characters to essentially become invisible to the point where you can walk past guards in a brightly lit corridor without them noticing like you can do in a lot of CRPGs. Even in a fantasy setting, that's fucking stupid. I'm not very familiar with Shadowrun PnP but I assume stealth is more limited (at least without the aid of magic). That is, a stealthy adept can probably sneak quietly past a guard when his back is turned, but your Bionic Troll is never going to be able to just walk past security guards' line of sight, unless you have some sort of silence & invisibility spell or sci-fi cloaking device of some sort.

There's even silenced firearms and some silence oriented spells that actually do stuff in the game; although they have limited usefulness in DMS and DF.

So, as much as I want the game to have a full flegdged stealth system added to the game, I can respect that HBS doesn't want to just put in some shitty stealth skill where if you have a certain minimum number of points you're basically invisible to all non-boss enemies. If they promise a full stealth mechanic, they want to do it right. I just hope we'll see more missions like the Aztechnology run in Hong Kong, because that is one of my favorites. There's so many different ways to complete it and there's a chance for all the different archetypes to make use of their skills.

 

[agris]

So, as much as I want the game to have a full flegdged stealth system added to the game, I can respect that HBS doesn't want to just put in some shitty stealth skill where if you have a certain minimum number of points you're basically invisible to all non-boss enemies. If they promise a full stealth mechanic, they want to do it right. I just hope we'll see more missions like the Aztechnology run in Hong Kong, because that is one of my favorites. There's so many different ways to complete it and there's a chance for all the different archetypes to make use of their skills.

I think, basically, this. I like how if there is a stealth option currently available, it's implemented in a roleplaying / skill-check manner, where the skill-checks involve checks associated with skills appropriate to your bluff and contextually relevant skills for the individual con you're trying to put over on someone. I would happily take an expanded version of this applied to most missions, rather than the "stealth" skill that you described and is so prevalent in cRPGs.

 

[daveyd]

So, as much as I want the game to have a full flegdged stealth system added to the game, I can respect that HBS doesn't want to just put in some shitty stealth skill where if you have a certain minimum number of points you're basically invisible to all non-boss enemies. If they promise a full stealth mechanic, they want to do it right. I just hope we'll see more missions like the Aztechnology run in Hong Kong, because that is one of my favorites. There's so many different ways to complete it and there's a chance for all the different archetypes to make use of their skills.

I think, basically, this. I like how if there is a stealth option currently available, it's implemented in a roleplaying / skill-check manner, where the skill-checks involve checks associated with skills appropriate to your bluff and contextually relevant skills for the individual con you're trying to put over on someone. I would happily take an expanded version of this applied to most missions, rather than the "stealth" skill that you described and is so prevalent in cRPGs.

Yeah, I think in CRPGs that sometimes less is more. If your adept could sneak your way past every security guard with a high enough stealth skill (or insta-kill them with a sneak attack), then that wouldn't be any fun. And what would you even need teammates for? Have it fit the situation. They could do a quickness check for those instances where they think being really dexterous would let you get the drop on someone. Adepts already have their Karma stretched pretty thin so they in particular don't need another skill (I'm hoping HBS can do something to address that actually because trying to invest in Strength + Close Combat + Unarmed / Melee Weapon +Willpower +Chi Casting + Body / Quickness / Dodge is tough.)

It's a bit like how their limited inventory system is actually more preferable to me than the overblown find random trinkets and crafting materials is every damn barrel, crate, and outhouse that you find, a la D:OS, NWN, etc. I mean, sure I'm excited about the new weapons, cyberware, etc. coming in HK. But I don't want it get to the point where I'm spending 50% of my time with the game dealing with inventory management. I think the unlimited ammo actually (where you spend AP) to reload actually works really well. Having to buy ammo and collect it of guard's corpses would just get tedious.

I actually like Dragonfall partly because of the ways in which it differs from most other RPGs; less grinding, fetch quests, trash encounters, and other filler and less time spent with inventory management. HBS games have great stories and I'd enjoy the story / setting than micromanage everything. I know this is probably sacrilege for some CRPG players, but I actually get tired of all that shit.

 

[agris]

daveyd I agree up to a point. While you are specifically talking about finding items out in the world, and I don't disagree with your desire to avoid dealing with excessive random inventory trash, I think the general armor/weapon/cyber itemization could be improved. As I've said before, the weapon itemization in general is really uninspired. At any given Ranged Weapon Skill level, there is a clearly superior version of a given weapon. I wish for this situation to be remedied by creating weapons with competing pros and cons that play against one-another and support different play styles (range/crit chance/damage/capacity/accuracy/secondary modes of fire/etc).

 

[Zetor]

I messed around with a stealth implementation for a while, and it's definitely possible to implement *something* that sort of worked like stealth.

Basically I was able to have a sorta-stealth section where the party has to get past a pack of hellhounds with two patrollers (one of them in a drone vent) and a sentry (longer range of vision). Hitting any of the non-vent hellhounds and not killing them in the same round would cause them to raise an alarm unless they were stunned/confused. Detection radius was made possible by attaching a region to the patrollers, and switching them into alert mode if anyone entered the region. The vent hellhound was a special case: it would try to run outside the vent to alert the rest of the pack unless the drone could kill it beforehand (2 turns if the drone managed to engage in a good position). To top it off, the standard SRR AI does have a sight radius, so if the runners managed to dispose of the patrollers/sentry quietly, they'd still get attacked if they got too close to the rest of the pack. Oh yeah, this is 100% in turn-based mode, because stealth mechanics + no individual party control = sad times.

There were two problems with the implementation: the main one was that implementing all this shit was really clunky and touch-and-go (attached regions don't always work as expected, especially if the unit is moving diagonally) with lots of scripting needed even for such a simple system... also very easily broken by game patches (and especially the new AI with DFDC). The second problem is more of a conceptual issue. As pointed out by a playtester, this system was completely counterintuitive to 'regular' gameplay, and it would need a lengthy explanation somewhere in the readme (lol who reads readmes) or worse yet, a tutorial...

 

[DarkUnderlord]

They don't have a PayPal option, so campaign ends sometime soon so I can flick the money over to the KickStarter before the campaign ends in 4 days:

Unfortunately, no. Paypal makes the customer service end of things super-difficult and we do not have the staff to support it. We really appreciate that you want to support the Kickstarter, though, and hope that you'll help us by spreading the word.​

Incidentally this means a currency conversion from USD into AUD to get the money out and then back into USD again to send it over to KickStarter... Which may result in less money actually being sent (conversion + fees). Unless I can figure a way around that...

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

DarkUnderlord - I'd check with them first (via Angthoron); since this is a single large donation with pre-arranged conditions that they already agreed to (with next to zero likelihood of customer service ever coming into play) I really don't think they'll be opposed to accepting it via PayPal.