Shadowrun Shadowrun Returns - Dead Man's Switch Original Campaign

[SwiftCrack]

That would've been pretty funny yeah.

 

[JWhite]

So, I'm about to buy this game, worth it or better til' people makes content for it?

 

[SwiftCrack]

For me it was worth it for the kickstarter price I paid for sure. Then again I am less snobbish than most of the Codex .

 

[DeepOcean]

So, I'm about to buy this game, worth it or better til' people makes content for it?

Wait until january with the release of Berlin. If Berlin is good and there are more complex modules released, by that time, you buy at full price. If Berlin is the same as DMS, you can be a jew and wait for a 50% discount on Steam. Unless you like to play with the editor making vapourwares like myself.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Yeah the game wasn't very good, so linear all the time I just felt like I was going through the motions. I wanted to tell all these characters to shut up and leave me alone, stop pushing me in all directions. This is actually decline compared to 20 years-old console games, and even Jeff Vogel's games have deeper combat. Telling you what to do all the time, interrupting you at every 10 steps, and pointing where to go is no better than Call of Duty. I wish I hadn't pledged for it, will not use Kickstarter ever again except maybe to encourage some codexers. Weismann has become a shallow, burned-out mobile game developer and it shows.

 

[Spectacle]

Well I am not familiar with the SRR settings at all, its just that the shift was very jarring... an analogy would be sipping wine, then suddenly chugging rum.

So like much of the time when I go out drinking then?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Well I am not familiar with the SRR settings at all, its just that the shift was very jarring... an analogy would be sipping wine, then suddenly chugging rum.

So like much of the time when I go out drinking then?

Well yeah, if your intent is to be a little buzzed when you leave, but are shit faced wasted and puking by the time you return. I gave up all pretense. Cannot into self-control if alcohol is there. i will drink till i pass out, or booze is over. Whichever is earlier.

 

[Infinitron]

Berlin DLC update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/posts/597628

Story: We’ve completed a first draft of our story for the Berlin campaign. There’s still plenty to refine and iterate on but we’re all excited about where it’s heading and agree that the “bones” of it are solid. Without venturing into spoiler territory, it has a lot of fun Shadowrun elements and really plays to the strengths of the Berlin setting – the anarchist Flux state, the many varied factions and ideological viewpoints present in Berlin, and the sense of teeming opportunity for the savvy Shadowrunner. Berlin is a new standalone campaign, not a sequel to Dead Man’s Switch. As such, you’ll start the campaign with a new character. The player is cast as a more seasoned runner this time around, who’s recently relocated to Berlin. You’re running with a small crew which you’ll get to know well as the game progresses.

One thing we’re particularly excited about is developing the player’s home base neighborhood, which we’re currently calling the Haven. In 2054, Berlin exists as a fully neo-anarchist state – it’s not a crazy, lawless frontier, but rather a grand experiment in self-governance and emergent social order. Neighborhoods in Berlin become their own entities, with small communities banding together and often operating completely independently of the rest of the city. These neighborhoods organize their own protection and resources, sometimes even to the extent of walling off the entire block. Technology (and the electricity to use it) isn’t always available, and some parts of the city have fallen back to older patterns of living. We’re focusing on one such neighborhood for the player. Not only do you have a home base in this area, but you can explore and meet people in the surrounding neighborhood – meet a contact at the cafe down the street, or head to that back-alley street doc for some new meds or cyber. While developing this Haven area, I’ve been working with the Shadowrun pen-and-paper team in Germany to make sure we construct a slice of Berlin that’s accurate to the spirit of the campaign setting.

The main campaign of the game will allow you to complete certain missions in the order you choose, and will present you with some different ways to tackle those missions as well as some optional side objectives. To be clear though, Berlin is not a sandbox environment or an open-world experience. What we are working to create is a more flexible story structure and an engaging “hub area” that will give the player some choices and a sense of place and purpose.

Design: For the last few weeks, Trevor and Kevin (our designers who did the bulk of the level design for the Seattle campaign) have been prototyping a variety of gameplay ideas for missions. We want to create meaningful choices for the player within scenes. As an example, Kevin’s working on a run against a corporate facility with several possible ways for the player to gain entry depending on their party’s skillset. The choice of approach isn’t always clear cut, however – one path may allow the player to slip in undetected but at the expense of some innocents. We’re also working on some more unique non-combat elements – the other day Trevor created a dog character in the Haven area that you can interact with and get to follow you around.

Also, this week we welcome two new members to our design team, Simon and Andrew, who complete the team for Berlin. (Simon’s our new level designer and Andrew’s our new writer.) It was really fun recruiting for both of these positions, as Mitch and I got to play everyone’s audition levels which showed off a lot of fun, creative ideas. In fact, Andrew wrote a sample NPC character for his audition that we now plan to use in the game. When these guys showed up on Monday, we actually wound up re-arranging the office a bit so that now the design team has a dedicated space right next to the Berlin art team. This should allow for more fluid iteration on scenes between designers and environment artists.

 

[Roguey]

So they've decided to copy Bioware's structure.

 

[Kem0sabe]

It's a shame that you start with a new character, especially the way that the original campaign ended, implying that there would be work for the player in Berlin if i'm not mistaken.

 

[7/10]

The only way DMS could've been more on-rails is if it took place in a metro tunnel, so even Bioware's fake non-linearity is an improvement at this point. The areas will probably still be boring corridors with 2 NPCs in them, so it's basically same shit as the last time.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

The only way DMS could've been more on-rails is if it took place in a metro tunnel, so even Bioware's fake non-linearity is an improvement at this point. The areas will probably still be boring corridors with 2 NPCs in them, so it's basically same shit as the last time.

But it is TB shit. We aren't exactly drowning in it.

Also when can I start begging for a Berlin key?

 

[DeepOcean]

So they've decided to copy Bioware's structure.

If they don't copy Bioware's nature, I'm okay with that.

 

[Psquit]

Time will tell.

 

[Excidium]

It's a shame that you start with a new character, especially the way that the original campaign ended, implying that there would be work for the player in Berlin if i'm not mistaken.

Their mechanics just don't support long campaigns like that. What would you do, put points in skills you don't use?

 

[Fens]

Berlin DLC update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/posts/597628

In 2054, Berlin exists as a fully neo-anarchist state – it’s not a crazy, lawless frontier, but rather a grand experiment in self-governance and emergent social order. Neighborhoods in Berlin become their own entities, with small communities banding together and often operating completely independently of the rest of the city. These neighborhoods organize their own protection and resources, sometimes even to the extent of walling off the entire block. Technology (and the electricity to use it) isn’t always available, and some parts of the city have fallen back to older patterns of living.

...so it won't change at all ?

 

[almondblight]

It's nice to see it going off rails a bit. I think a large part of the reason the first one was so extremely linear (to the point of all doors being one-way) is that scene variables can't be saved in the engine. If they fix the save engine, I'm guessing that'll help. Modders have been getting around that somewhat by saving lots of things in a scene as a story variable; I suppose the output of modders after one month shamed HBS into putting more effort into their own stuff (well, that and the community in general).

 

[DeepOcean]

It's nice to see it going off rails a bit. I think a large part of the reason the first one was so extremely linear (to the point of all doors being one-way) is that scene variables can't be saved in the engine. If they fix the save engine, I'm guessing that'll help. Modders have been getting around that somewhat by saving lots of things in a scene as a story variable; I suppose the output of modders after one month shamed HBS into putting more effort into their own stuff (well, that and the community in general).

You pretty much have to attach alot of things to story variables if you want to allow the player to return to that scene. Let's say you entered on a scene where there are 6 enemies and you kill them, if you turn back they would all have respawned again. You have to create a story variable and a trigger at the end of fight to change it and another one at the map start to check for it and tell the trigger to delete the actor spawners.I could be wrong but the game only save the status of your inventory (that is why quest items are as useful as story variables),karma, story variables. Triggers are another problem, let's say you mark a trigger to fire only once but the only once thing just work if you don't leave the scene, because if you return, all the fire once triggers are going to be loaded again unless you make a check at map load using a quest item or story variable to disable the triggers. I just making conversations and map design on my mod while waiting to see if HBS is going to fix this, because the save system add unnecessary work. I didn't checked if conversations are saved but if they are not, that is alot of work to attach to story variable and quest items.

 

[Psquit]

Soo is kinda like the rpg maker. You have to program all the quest to only trigger once or else they would loop, right?.

 

[DeepOcean]

Soo is kinda like the rpg maker. You have to program all the quest to only trigger once or else they would loop, right?.

Yeah, the game don't save any change that happens inside of a scene, if you returned to that scene, all dialog, enemies and quests that are in there would loop again unless you attach their status with story variables and quest items that the game actually saves but that is a ton of work.

 

[Psquit]

Edit:

No wonder all the Workshop content are props and lame quest stuff of 2 hours... We will have to wait some years for real mods...

 

[DeepOcean]

With the rpg maker was easy cause you could create a world map with little towns and do simple to complex things but with this... seems to complicated since you only do scenes and link them to other scenes...

It isn't complex, the editor is simple to use. The problem is that is very easy to lose track of small details that can fuck everything. When you are making a map that have 40 triggers, you forget to attach one of those to a story variable(something simple but annoying to remember to do all the time), so you play that scene and everything is going fine but suddenly when you return to it, a dialog of a quest that you already finished appear again. You have to find that scene trigger to attach it to a story variable and that can be problematic if you forgot which of the 40 triggers is responsible for that dialog. If the game saved every change inside of a scene, the potential for fuck ups and annoying work is greatly reduced.

Another annoying thing is how the goals system work, goals appear in the journal, so the player have some idea of what to do but goals don't work like quest items or story variables. They only work for one scene, so you have to create a copy of them in every scene the player can have access to, before finishing a quest or the mission objetive will disappear in one scene and magically appear on another. If you create a hub with 10 quests , you need to create 10 goals to appear in the player journal in each scene if you don't count the different stages on a quest, it doesn't take too long for you to say fuck goals and say: Figure out what to do for yourself because you will not get any help from the journal. They need to do some changes in the editor if Berlin is going to be hub like.

 

[Psquit]

Ohh. In other words if you have 150 triggers you are going to have a hard time trying to attach... No wonder why i hate to program stuff i always forget about the small details

 

[Metro]

Have mods fixed it yet?

 

[Psquit]

The game? nope.