Given that I’ll be going on a sort of vacation from the 3rd through the 11th of July(during which I won’t be working at all), the interrogations are probably going to be the last update I can finish before that so I’ll be doing them properly rather than rushing them out.
If I do manage to finish them in, say, two days, I might be able to post something else too(possibly a visit to City Hall for those who have the City Hall Cooperation stance chosen), but that remains to be seen.
Hey! Just wondering if the relationship stat thing has been implemented yet, I remember a couple of months ago when I played, there were no implemented friendship stat things, so if I had been rude or kind to someone consistently they would still react neutrally to me later, etc.
I haven’t played the game in a month or 2, and at the time it didn’t have it. Like I said, and the author confirmed: the characters always used to react “neutrally” to you despite how you treated them after one scene moved to the next, so if I was horrible to someone in one scene, by the next they had forgotten it and would do favors if I asked, etc.
I just played again, and same thing was happening, which is why i asked, but now I’m realizing that it’s probably bc I loaded a save from 2 months ago, so if it had been implemented since then I wouldn’t notice lol.
Unfortunately the relationship checks exist only from halfway through currently. I’ll add them to the early game once I polish it later on(a month or two from now? I’ll edit the “November 2020” in the title into the appropriate month once I have done so to signify that the game is in proper working order).
Currently you do get different replies if you have different “like” rating with the characters at specific times(there are almost always 3 variants, sometimes just 2). However, as I said, they’ve been implemented from the slums-section onwards, not before it.
The early stuff neither changes the numbers, nor does it check them, but the midway stuff does both. As such, the moment it starts checking the numbers, you can’t actually have them anything else but Neutral if you play normally.
The “easiest” way to see how it works is if you use one of the skip points and simply insert the desired status of the relationship(good, normal, bad). If you do this, then you can see the variable stuff.
Didn’t get much done, so it’s starting to look like I’ll just be able to finish the interrogations before my break, but who knows. Regardless, I’ll be posting daily updates to keep up the habit, since it’s important for my motivation. I’ll have to remember to continue doing so once I return too, lest the beast of laziness overtake me.
Includes the entirety of the Potira interrogation scene. (Unfortunately I didn’t include the other parts yet, more on that below. Potira being the suspect you chase in the Stillwater path, so you see it only if you caught her)
Also added skip points to various locations(lunch break, media events, interrogations). You can access them the usual way(start the game normally, play the Train scene, then you get the choice to skip to a later part), so do NOT use the special Rutherwood skip point, but rather the “After the strategy meeting”, and so on. Be sure to put in the details carefully, if Potira escaped or got hospitalized, you won’t get the content in this scene since she needs to be conscious and in police custody)
Current average playthrough:
Total average: 93,500 (was 93,500. Didn’t actually bother to check since I didn’t include all the stuff I meant to. In any case the Potira interrogation is 15,000 words in all. The average playthrough of the scene is much, much less though, since it’s largely variance. Some obvious, some not so much.)
Alright, unfortunately I could only manage to polish the Potira version for now. Putting in the final details took way, way, more time than expected. In retrospect I should’ve known, since the fine tuning is always the biggest time sink due to how tedious it is.
You’ll have to live with this for now, I’m sad to say, since I really doubt I’ll have time to do much about the other versions as I’ll be leaving on my vacation on Monday and I’ll be busy tomorrow and on Sunday. If there’s something wrong with the newly added stuff, I’ll probably have some time to check and fix it, but that’s all.
For those of you who’re lucky enough to have gone through the Stillwater path and arrested Potira, you can check her scene out. Others will have to use the skip points or simply wait until their content is added once I get back around Sunday next week(though it’ll take a day or two for the final polish of those scenes too, I need to add some stuff and do the final polishing. It’ll be much quicker though since it’s only 10,000 words currently for both combined and there won’t be as much fiddling with numbers and making sure every bloody variable works like it should.).
The plan was to have the Gargoyle interrogation immediately after the Potira one, but I didn’t since it ain’t done yet it can’t be helped. It’s kind of a drag to cut it out for now since they’re connected. The Zoe interrogation will be the smallest so I left it for last which in this case meant that I didn’t really get to it at all, polishing wise(it’s also partially incomplete content wise too).
As for what’s included in the Potira interrogation… it’s a mixed bag. On one hand I’m really pleased with it, on the other hand I feel like I didn’t get to do all the cool stuff I intended in the manner I intended. As such, parts of it are overly elaborate while parts are kinda just sorta there. That’s nothing unusual for me, though.
It’s a sort of a mixture between lots of dialogue choices and numbers that go up and down. If I do say so myself, I think it’s pretty elegant overall. Lots of weird things have an effect on the numbers, and thus outcome, so it’s not as straightforward as it might seem on first glance. The real questions you folks will have to answer are: Is it fun to play? And is it immersive enough? And so on.
One thing I’m not super pleased about is how I implemented the “retino social enhancer” eye cybernetic. (and to a lesser degree the Negotiation skill). Both are sort of okay, but nothing special. Barely any added flavor text, mostly just a mechanical effect on the scene.
I also added some callback variables to the earlier parts of the story that I hadn’t included the first time around, so if you’ve played through it normally you won’t have certain conditions set(such as if you shot the other suspect on the roof or the street during the chase).
I’m really interested in some opinions about the scene(and naturally the media stuff too, which now have their proper skip points so you can check them out pretty easily). I’d love to have a few by the time I’m back.
As in some other scenes, I’ve included a request to post the numerical data of the interrogation on the forum in the end(or message it to me if you don’t want it in public).
Getting a couple of posts with some numbers and outcomes would be nice for future balancing purposes, but it seems like I’ve gotten the previous “numbered scenes” more or less right on the first time as well, so I think this’ll probably be the same too.
Anyway, enjoy! (or if not, be sure to explain why so I can make it better once I get back)
(Sorry for the potentially rambling-filled post, it’s 4am. I’ll check the forum before I leave in case anyone’s posted anything)
Welp, hope I didn’t disappoint you and everyone else with just the partial update.
Alright, back from my vacation, work proceeds tomorrow.
Had a lot of fun. Swam in the lake several times each day, ate great food with my friends, tried some standup paddleboarding, as well as some other pleasant activities.
It was good to take a break like this, I’m already eager to start working again.
Thanks for the feedback, it’s very useful. Good to know that I got it right on the first try once again.
It’d help a bunch if you could post this in the forum so I can balance the numbers out, along with an impression on if it’s too easy, too hard, too boring, too confusing, and so on.
Potira’s Guilt: 10
Potira’s Fear: 7
Potira’s Cooperation: 9
Potira was ultimately: Persuaded to make a deal with the prosecution.
It was a bit confusing and a bit easy, though latter I suspect is because of social skills being my main focus in character creation. It does feels strange to have all the questions stay after using a few. It feels like the more I go in one direction of interrogation, the less completely 180 degrees options should show: if I go for fear, light cooperative lines shouldn’t be possible and would just make officer look silly.
I’ve no idea if it will help you to know this, but I managed to perform so poorly during the chase after the Gargoyles that Potira is unconscious for the forseeable future… bless her, I hope she ends up alright (though my MC does not). At least that route isn’t inaccessible I guess!
Tolerable progress on the Gargoyle interrogation. Might be ready tomorrow? (will also depend on what changes I might make to the Potira stuff based on the feedback below)
(As always, please forgive the occasional rambling lines of thought on the replies below )
Thanks for the numbers! Looking at them I’m not surprised to hear that your character has social skills.
Still, overall it seems that it might indeed be too easy since everyone managed to get her to make the deal. Guess I should make the starting situation harder, or fiddle with the numbers. I think it’s fine if 50% or even 2/3 players manage to have her make the deal, perhaps even 3/4, but 100%? Nah. (then again it’s hard to say with this small a sample size)
As for the confusion… that’s not good. It’s definitely a huge problem if a player feels confused in a story like this, no matter how small the confusion since it’ll build up over time. Any particular reason you felt it was confusing? Was the setup itself strange, were the dialogue options confusing, was it how the characters reacted, or some of the descriptions, or what? It’d help a lot if you could point me to a direction. (unless it’s caused by the questions you mentioned, more on that below)
I do understand your feeling about the “weird” options being there, but I’m not sure I should limit them.
First of all it might lock the player into a situation where they have nothing to choose which is a huge bummer in my opinion(or conversely might force them to choose something they don’t want to if the numbers don’t work the way they thought. It’s likely to be frustrating to be locked out of a choice you intended to make just because the foolish creator put some arbitrary number changes you didn’t predict). Writing more of the isn’t really possible since it was already pretty hard to write the ones currently present, as they’d otherwise look way too similar.(suggestions are welcome, though)
Second of all I don’t necessarily think that a “weird” option is bad. Each player has their own ideas of what their character might say, and to limit them doesn’t serve much of a purpose from my perspective, at least on this instance. Someone might want to purposefully play a comically incompetent character, for instance. A player who doesn’t feel like the options make sense simply won’t choose them and as such will control their own flow of the story. At least hopefully.
There’s also the fact that it’s not beneficial for the player to choose contradictory options, since due to the numerical system in use it’ll lead you to making zero progress as such which should end up with you not being able to achieve your goals. Although I guess the player doesn’t know that necessarily.
Is the fact that the options are visible rather than hidden or grayed out a real concern? If so, and if it increases the confusion, then I’ll do something about them for sure. Although I suppose it might be true that them being visible in the first place might take the player out of the story and thus would be distracting and make the experience lesser(if that was indeed what you meant rather than something else, sorry if I misunderstood).
I’ll see if I can put conditions like “you need less than 7 Fear to use this option” on some of the interrogation options. After all, they don’t all need to have them necessarily, just some of them. Having a few of them gray out might be tolerable. Might even make the interrogation feel more special if the player sees the options changing as it goes on. (Anyway, I’ll think about the matter and see if I can do anything that won’t compromise anything)
As for the confusion aspect, do you think it’d help if I spaced out the progress of the interrogation a bit? What I mean is, after each question there’s a short description that the interrogation goes on for some ten minutes where Stillwater talks to her before you, the player, get the chance to choose another “important” topic of conversation? That way it might not feel as absurd to choose an “opposite” dialogue option since some time has passed and the situation isn’t as immediate as it currently is presented as.
Thanks for the data!
I see that in your latter attempt you triggered the “Potira panics and agrees to the deal” condition. It normally happens only if Cooperation is at 6. However, now that I think about it, I might want to exclude it further by needing high Fear as well, as currently it’s unrelated to her Fear which is kinda nonsensical. Just thinking out-loud here.
It helps in the sense that I know that some people got that outcome in the chase, which makes it easier to fiddle with the numbers, so thanks for posting! (I’d prefer roughly 1/3 of player to get that outcome from the chase). The more opinions/information people post, the better the game will be by the time it’s ready. So, don’t feel shy about posting anything, folks!
As for what happens to her… you’ll get to see that relatively soon in an exclusive hospital scene. (relatively soon meaning within a month unless I pick up the pace )
I’ll check the forum before I leave in case anyone’s posted anything)
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