Shadowrun Shadowrun Returns - Dead Man's Switch Original Campaign

[Multi-headed Cow]

Shadowrun is suffering.

9:50 PM - MHC: Fucking Shadowrun
9:50 PM - MHC: Jesus Christ
9:50 PM - MHC: I thought there was one instance, ONE INSTANCE in the campaign where I would have a non-combat alternate solution.
9:51 PM - MHC: Nope. Once you zone, your disguise immediately drops and your team magically appears by your side even if you didn't let them in to the building.

11:09 PM - MHC: Neat
11:09 PM - MHC: I started the mission they showed in the alpha video for Shadowrun
11:10 PM - MHC: I put my weapon away just like in the alpha video and walked up to the guard just like the alpha video
11:10 PM - MHC: And then combat started!
11:10 PM - MHC: That's not like the alpha video at all!


Spent like 15 minutes getting the game working since the "Load game" screen wouldn't show up, then I figured I'd push through the end of the campaign. Getting the game working put me in a sour mood to begin with and then actually playing reminded me why I stopped playing and stopped fucking with the editor in the first place. God fucking damn it.

Edit: Oh yeah, and that fix I thought I had before? Didn't completely do it. It later re-fucked itself. What I finally figured out to fix it FOR REALS is this:

#1: Go to Steam, settings, Cloud, and disable Cloud Steam-wide (Normally you can disable Cloud on games that use it individually but Harebrained cannot into Steam and don't let you do it because they're fucking idiots)
#2: Delete any/all saves stored locally on your computer. I deleted 90% of mine, since I had a bunch from testing my module in the editor
#3 Launch the game, start a new campaign so it makes a new save and then quit
#4 Go back into Steam settings and enable Cloud
#5 Launch the game again. If things worked out fine, Steam will pop up and say your local files and the Cloud files don't match, and you can tell it to upload your local files to the Cloud instead of downloading the ones from the Cloud
#6 You should be fixed

 

[Zetor]

You can use symlinks to store the cache files on another partition/HD, btw -- it's what I did.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Isn't 10gb a little less for os partition? I keep 50gb

 

[Burning Bridges]

Game can't save much more than your name but 10gb cache files it can.

 

[Spectacle]

The board game idea might work... But with something established. If it was some sort of magnetic stands for your Warhammer 40k junk, for example. People care about Warhammer(I think), but nobody, nobody cares about Golems:Whatever.

Plenty of board game and miniatures projects have gathered huge monies on kickstarter, that market is bigger than you think.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

The board game idea might work... But with something established. If it was some sort of magnetic stands for your Warhammer 40k junk, for example. People care about Warhammer(I think), but nobody, nobody cares about Golems:Whatever.

Plenty of board game and miniatures projects have gathered huge monies on kickstarter, that market is bigger than you think.

But this is an hybrid. Hard to know the reception it will have among miniature/tabletop enthusiasts.

 

[Name]

Cooldown so great, tweaking around Shotguns Kneecap needed!

 

[Elthosian]

New Kickstarter update:

Things are moving quickly here so we thought we’d quickly update you on what’s going on.

Beyond working on bug fixes, translations, Linux, and finishing the tablet versions of the game, the engineering team has been investigating improvements to our save game functionality. We are aware that there are a number of people who would like the ability to save in the middle of scenes. However, we also know that adding this feature would involve major changes to the core infrastructure of the game. It’s still too early to say whether this is going to be possible, but we wanted to let you know that we’re actively investigating it and will let you know more in the coming weeks.

We've heard a lot of questions from you wondering what to expect from Berlin. Well, our original plan called for a modest-sized campaign that we could ship by the end of October. However, after listening to your forum discussions and feedback, it became clear that you would like to see something bigger (and so would we). So, we've decided to spend more time on Berlin to create an experience closer to the size of Dead Man’s Switch. A story of that scope will take longer, so we’re targeting January for its release. While we're still in the early stages of development and many things could change, we’d like to share what we’re planning so far. For example - we know that we want our next story to feel more like the player is part of a shadowrunning crew and contain more corporate intrigue.

Here are the key ideas driving Berlin pre-production right now:

• A more flexible main story arc - choose which runs to complete first, and which factions to complete objectives for
• More depth to the NPC runner characters
• New weapons, outfits, portraits, music, and enemies - including more magical creatures
• Improved Physical Adept gameplay - along with additions for some of the other existing archetypes
• A European city with a very different look, “vibe”, and cast of characters
• A story that highlights the compelling themes of the Shadowrun: Germany sourcebook

In addition, for the GMs out there, all of the environments and characters that we add in Berlin will also be available in the Shadowrun Returns Editor for anyone who has the Berlin campaign installed.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/posts/571966?ref=activity

Berlin sounds pretty cool, but they better implement that save-system as soon as possible, damnit, it's also worrying that there is not a single mention of the problems with the conversation editor, they really need to organize the whole thing from what I have read.

 

[Roguey]

So, we've decided to spend more time on Berlin to create an experience closer to the size of Dead Man’s Switch.

So was Berlin going to be something like five-six hours? That would have been wonderful.

 

[Brother None]

New Kickstarter update:

That's good stuff. Sounds like they're taking exactly the right approach.

I actually did expect Berlin to be something like half of Dead Man's Switch. Putting the profits from sales back into it to expand it is a great move.

 

[almondblight]

It also (hopefully) means that they've been selling enough copies to breathe.

 

[Excidium]

We've heard a lot of questions from you wondering what to expect from Berlin. Well, our original plan called for a modest-sized campaign that we could ship by the end of October. However, after listening to your forum discussions and feedback, it became clear that you would like to see something bigger (and so would we).

Nice.

So, we've decided to spend more time on Berlin to create an experience closer to the size of Dead Man’s Switch.

wat

 

[DeepOcean]

As if Dead Man Switch was a big campaign to begin with. Anyway, it will be more assets to the editor.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Bigger than every Call of Duty ever released.

 

[DeepOcean]

Bigger than every Call of Duty ever released.

CoD has 4 hours usually because is a barebones railshooter, disguised as a FPS for kwans with fantasy about being supersoldiers, if it was more than 4 hours, people would fall dead of boredom. Shadowrun returns is a RPG that has around 8 hours. I'm not the guy that think that the amount of hours is more important than quality but Dead Man left me unsatisfied.

 

[Excidium]

Dead Man's Switch only has like 20 different scenes. Many of which are just the same location in a different time (Everytime you vist the Union it's a different scene for example). If Berlin was shorter than that...

I was actually hoping for astral space to be implemented but huehuehue

 

[Wyrmlord]

So they didn't initially intend to make something as long as Dead Man's Switch?

I thought the reason that Dead Man's Switch was so short was that Shadowrun Returns was meant to be a continuous series of 6 hour campaigns released every few months.

But now, it seems that Dead Man's Switch was more like a flagship campaign and everything else was just meant to be a short add on.

Doesn't raise my hopes for Berlin, if their ambitions were set so low from start. I mean, it's not their fault; they are a small team. But either way, I feel like if Harebrained Schemes is so stretched for resources, that it's difficult to set even the most basic expectations of any game for their projects.

 

[almondblight]

I imagine that they were originally planning a game more like their Crimson Steam Pirates game. A number of mechanics in DMS (lack of saves, extreme linearity, inability to backtrack, awkward runner hiring mechanics) make a lot more sense in a game like that, as does their plan of releasing new missions every few months. The extra funds probably lead them to expand the scope, but they ended up in a somewhat strange halfway point.

Still, considering the amount of good user content that's come out within three weeks of the game's release, I'm pretty happy. I just hope HBS does well enough to support the editor for some time (and eventually make an expanded SRR2).

 

[Branm]

So they didn't initially intend to make something as long as Dead Man's Switch?

I thought the reason that Dead Man's Switch was so short was that Shadowrun Returns was meant to be a continuous series of 6 hour campaigns released every few months.

But now, it seems that Dead Man's Switch was more like a flagship campaign and everything else was just meant to be a short add on.

Doesn't raise my hopes for Berlin, if their ambitions were set so low from start. I mean, it's not their fault; they are a small team. But either way, I feel like if Harebrained Schemes is so stretched for resources, that it's difficult to set even the most basic expectations of any game for their projects.

Agreed this has me really worried. They planed for it to be shorter then an already short campaign?? WTF.. I guess all their energy is going into making that board game/tablet future kickstarter failure.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I imagine that they were originally planning a game more like their Crimson Steam Pirates game. A number of mechanics in DMS (lack of saves, extreme linearity, inability to backtrack, awkward runner hiring mechanics) make a lot more sense in a game like that, as does their plan of releasing new missions every few months. The extra funds probably lead them to expand the scope, but they ended up in a somewhat strange halfway point.

But why would people of the internet give 400,000$ for such a primitive game. No one had heard of Crimson Steam Pirates or gives a damn about it.

Beyond working on bug fixes, translations, Linux, and finishing the tablet versions of the game, the engineering team has been investigating improvements to our save game functionality. We are aware that there are a number of people who would like the ability to save in the middle of scenes. However, we also know that adding this feature would involve major changes to the core infrastructure of the game. It’s still too early to say whether this is going to be possible, but we wanted to let you know that we’re actively investigating it and will let you know more in the coming weeks.

"Major changes to the core infrastructure of the game?"
"It’s still too early to say whether this is going to be possible?"

Good that they are at least investigating it, but it's not some sort of technological breakthrough. I think they may not have a programmer available who can invest a month or so, otherwise they would simply get this over with and implement proper saves. If people must beg for the simplest of functionality, that's embarassing.

 

[almondblight]

But why would people of the internet give 400,000$ for such a primitive game. No one had heard of Crimson Steam Pirates or gives a damn about it.

I'm not sure if it would have had game play that was much more primitive than DMS (which is just a series of missions without branching anyway). The game would have been 2D, like they said it would be initially, though I personally wouldn't have minded that.

 

[Grunker]

New Kickstarter update:

That's good stuff. Sounds like they're taking exactly the right approach.

It does? It sounds to me like they are about to commit the exact same mistake as last time; trying to give a shallow game the "feel" of a full-fledged RPG instead of focusing on mission-based hubs and focus on what the game did really well. As it is, where is the part where they face the criticism? Sounds to me like they're saying "well, sounds like you guys loved every bit of what you got, so we're making more of the exact same thing!"

Bread too big, pack of butter too small.

 

[Ninjerk]

New Kickstarter update:

That's good stuff. Sounds like they're taking exactly the right approach.

It does? It sounds to me like they are about to commit the exact same mistake as last time; trying to give a shallow game the "feel" of a full-fledged RPG instead of focusing on mission-based hubs and focus on what the game did really well. As it is, where is the part where they face the criticism? Sounds to me like they're saying "well, sounds like you guys loved every bit of what you got, so we're making more of the exact same thing!"

Bread too big, pack of butter too small.

Is that an actual saying?

 

[Grunker]

No. It's Tolkien.

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

 

[Ninjerk]

Ah, yes. After I posted I thought I remembered hearing something like it. One of the Ring-bearers?