I feel like its more: some choices seem more obvious to work than others.
Could 3 interrogation choices be the reason why it seems easy in your eyes as the creator? Is the end result scale able in changing it to 2? Although that would limit some scenes that people would want to see who wouldnt want to have to restart in the published version.
Disreguard all that ^^^^^^ loaded myself into the start of the interrogation and there are hella choices which makes it tricky
I forget the choice it was, but when the lawyer had to earphone us on it not being legal/needing to backtrack and explain to her why what we just said cant apply
First of all, thank you for the responce and sorry if Iām not clear sometimes, english isnāt my first language so expressing unclear feelings I get sometimes gets a bit confusing.
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?
I sometimes had trouble deciding if option was going to increase fear, guilt or cooperation. If there are options that go for more than one stat (and I can see a few being that) then theyāre also making me a bit unsure. Not to mention, after picking a gialogue option, I have follow-up option that sometimes feels like completely different variant: for example mentioning how her actions might affect the Global Posse then followups being āAre you sure it wonātā and āMaybe it willā ā¦ like, whatās the difference between those two vague options?
Iāll see if I can put conditions like āyou need less than 7 Fear to use this optionā on some of the interrogation options. After all, they donāt 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.
This is one of the options Iād like, would also help to make this interrogation more tactical and thoughtful, starting with lowball questions and slowly ramping up pressure and picking more serious options.
As for the confusion aspect, do you think itād help if I spaced out the progress of the interrogation a bit? What I mean is, after each question thereās 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 āimportantā topic of conversation?
It does sound good. Will make interrogation feel long, plus, maybe, some kind of play up between you two? For example, I totally expected to be able to play up āGood Cop Bad Copā routine - Stillwater works both as a good cop, law incarnate against out-of-town loose cannon, or hardass law pressure vs crooked outsider who can grease the wheels to make her get out, if she gives him something. We have background ācorrupt copā that could be put to amazing use here! Or āwar vetā that can play into strong intimidation factor.
Was a bit busy so less progress than expected. Probably tomorrow.
Heh, I think itās important to cater to a fair number of different approaches. I try to have some broad options and some specific ones so people can pick and choose the style they want. Aināt always easy to keep them consistent, though.
Numbers are very welcome for sure, but donāt feel any pressure from it. Also, thereās no particular need to rush for them either, as such, since the Gargoyle scene has something similar, but not really numbers as such, and I want some feedback on it as well.
Heh. The choices you see are also dependant on your media stance, corporate stance, and some are hidden unless you chose some very specific choices with Walther.
The choice youāre referring to is the ankle-tag threat. Itās one of the best ways to get higher Cooperation.
Donāt worry about it, youāre doing great!
The intent is for it to be partially vague, at least as far as Potiraās response goes. Even if you hope to achieve a higher Cooperation, it might backfire and cause it to lower instead. This is especially true in the few places where I have conditional responses(like, if Potiraās Fear is higher than 6, increase Cooperation, if itās lower, decrease it).
If the changes were obvious to the player, then I think itād be less exciting(just my opinion though, would love to have feedback on it). And as I mentioned above, sometimes the choices get special responses which means I couldnāt make it ātoo obviousā no matter what.
As for the difference between the Globe Posseās āAre you sure it wonātā and āMaybe it willā optionsā¦ thereās none, mechanically. Flavor wise thereās a slightly different reply from Potira, but it isnāt all that different. I suppose I felt like I should have 4 options for the player to choose from no matter what, which lead into those two. Itās true that theyāre essentially the same. I should probably make them more different.
I guess I should go through the follow-up options again to make sure they make sense.
Alright, Iāll see what I can do. The changes will be implemented once I upload the Gargoyle stuff.
Alright, Iāll make some changes to make the scene feel more lengthy. I guess I could also include some back-and-forth between the player and Stillwater too between each question.
The āGood Cop Bad Copā stuff is something I considered, but I kinda made the situation too strict in a sense. The system in place in Neo-Terminus kinda prevents something like that from happening, especially with a minor like Potira. I know itād be a cool thing to have, but I couldnāt think for the life of me how to implement it without compromising the setting itself. Intimidating(threats and the like) suspects or lying to them or such is against the system of law Iāve envisioned in the city which made it really hard to put stuff like that in so I scrapped it for the moment. Since her lawyer and the Chief Prosecutor are in the mirror room, it aināt easy.
Hmm, perhaps I could let the player whisper some stuff to Potira in private or such, or imply things more vaguely? Stuff like that is a staple in cop stories and Iām sure lots of people would want it as an option, but if I do put it in it has to be done properly so it doesnāt feel out of place, and that might be hard.
Great idea about the backgrounds being put to use. I like it. Iāll just have to think of a way to implement it in a way that feels right.
Potira was ultimately: Persuaded to make a deal with the prosecution.
Take 2
I didnāt get the numbers at all for some reason? But the interrogation ended with Potira crying, so Iām going to assume she didnāt take the deal.
Had more stuff piled up after my vacation than I expected. Thatās dealt with now. Should be able to focus on the game more tomorrow. I hope.
Pretty cool, never watched that show. Iāll see if I can put something subtle like that in the scene. Might not be easy though since it requires a lot of cleverness.
Thanks!
As for what happened in Take 2, she indeed did not take the deal but was instead jailed, which made the game read some code that had a minor mistake in it that made it skip the numbers part entirely.
But itās fine, from it I can deduce that your Cooperation was 5 or less and your Fear was 5 or less, since otherwise you wouldnāt have gone to that particular piece of code, so itās still useful information to a degree.
Almost ready, should be posted tomorrow. Iāve implemented a bunch of new options on the Potira scene too, plus fine tuned the numbers and changed a bit of the responses. Overall the slow progress is mostly laziness, though.
The idea of using restrictions like āIf fear is lower than 7, grey this option outā isnāt so easy to implement as I hoped. I put most of the options behind such things, but the problem is that theyāre pretty much always available due to the restrictions I chose. For instance, theyāre usually either greyed out if one of the three scores is too high or too low, and as such theyāre almost always available at the beginning, only going out after a few choices. This in turn means the change is almost irrelevant(at least from my point of view). Obviously I could change the restrictions, but then it wouldnāt make any sense at all since the dialogue options were originally meant to be pretty all-purpose. Anyway, once I post the update itād be cool to have some input from them, especially from people who already played through it to see if the change matters or not.
I suppose, but Iām loath to do so until I do the second polishing run on everything, especially since Iāve promised that once I update the title everything is in place as it should be. I guess I could just put āMinor Update: Day X Month Yā instead. Yeah, I guess thatāll work. Iāll try it out tomorrow if I remember.
Unfortunately just the update on the Potira scene, no Gargoyle scene yet. Still, itās 6,000 new words in it and a bunch of mechanical changes on how the numbers and so on are generated. If you tried it already, give it another spin and tell me how it feels compared to the first iteration.
(Gargoyle version should be out tomorrow, as always )
(Also, I changed the title of the thread as was suggested. The Major Update part will be changed once I get the Big Second Pass done on some beautiful day, while Iāll change the Minor Update text whenever I put something like this out. Iāll also try to use stuff like (Minor) before the āUpdated with next fileā phrase to signify the relative contents of the update).
Current average playthrough:
Total average: 93,500 (was 93,500. Added 6,000 words to the Potira Interrogation which is 21,000 now.)
Okay, so I guess I didnāt get the Gargoyle stuff out today after all. Spent quite a bit of time on the Potira stuff, and had to write/rewrite a lengthy part for the Gargoyle stuff I didnāt realize was missing(Harmsworth variant based on whether you had the Potira interrogation before or not).
All in all I hope Iāll get it out tomorrow, but who knows. Figured I should post something today after such a long time of nothing, and the Potira stuff was relatively beefy all things considered, so why not post it by itself?
Perhaps posting an update will also motivate me to post one tomorrow as well.
As for the changes to the scene, I added a bunch of background options(one for each of Grey War, Corrupt, Hero, Unnotable), plus I added some new Stillwater stuff between the questions, and fiddled with the numbers(to make it slightly harder to get the deal, but that really depends on the options you choose).
Theoretically some options will be greyed out at times, but from my testing it was probably way too rare and only happened sometimes, rather than much of the time(I couldnāt really figure out the proper numbers to use so I left it as is). As such it wasnāt really exciting or strategic, but rather arbitrary, it seemed to me. Opinions are welcome, especially from those who already tried the scene out, would be good to know if itās improved now.
Thereās also a bunch of less important changes that I mostly forgot about already. Minor improvements mostly, I think. I did rewrite some of the more boring second depth sub-options, but theyāre not super important either.
I put the Good cop/Bad cop suggestion in the back-burner for now since I want to proceed with the Gargoyle stuff for real, so Iāll revisit it in the fabled second polishing pass at some point.
PS I made some changes to the opening post in the topic to make it slightly more palatable. Is it, or is it just more confusing now?
Laziness is both my oldest friend and my biggest enemy. The duality is often quite frustrating. Without rest things would be torturous, but with too much rest nothing gets done.
Thank you for your patience, but just a bit more before I get some new stuff out for real.
Change of plan. The Gargoyle scene will be delayed until probably Tuesday, since I decided to rewrite it a bit.
Itās currently at 10,000 words and will need maybe 5-10k more words until itās ready in its new form. At present itās quite a bit different from the Potira stuff, so hopefully itāll also feel very different altogether. Had to rewrite it since I felt it was a bit too repetitive in comparison(the previous version that you havenāt even seen, that is ).
Hopefully this will prove to be a good idea in the long run, even if itās frustrating in the short term. In general Iām not too comfortable stapling two similar scenes back to back, so I shouldāve known that it had to be done in the first place. Perhaps in the future I wonāt do the same mistake.
Iām loving so far what you have written and I must say that this book gives off huge Cyberpunk vibes even through just text. Keep doing what youāre doing and I wish you the best of luck for the future. Canāt wait for the full release.
Gargoyle interrogation will probably be ready tomorrow, but given how optimistic I always am(especially with the final fine tuning of the scenes!), take it with a grain of salt.
Thanks! Great to hear that youāre enjoying it, itās always good for my motivation. I canāt wait for the full release either.
Haha! Nice to know that my work is good enough to be a replacement for some of the hope lost of Cyberpunk 2077.
Funny how speed is a matter of perspective. My own view on the matter is that Iām awfully slow since Iām way behind my original schedule and all that. I suppose most WIPs progress slower, then?
I personally really love the ideologies I can make with it, since it changes up gameplay massively in the sense that Iām āforcedā to follow the tenets whether I like it or not. (Canāt eat meat, canāt cut trees, and such for the bigger ones, or you can eat fungus or insect stuff better, and so on)
Yet, if youāre the type of person that can roleplay during the game without much trouble and donāt need in-game rules, then it doesnāt really add that much as you can just pretend youāre following strict rules. (On the other hand, the different choices do come with mood modifiers that definitely have a gameplay effect).
Havenāt seen the new dryad tree stuff since Iāve started a new game like 4 times so no comment on that one.
Thereās also a few miscellaneous things like enslaving people and forcing them to fight gladiatorial duels, but whether thatās worth anything or not obviously depends on whether youād do it or not.
I guess it more or less delivers what it promised, it seems to me. Just read what it contains and if you think itās nice and would like to play Rimworld with some new content, go for it. If not, just wait. Itās pretty much the same as with the Royalty update, Iād say, as far as changing the game goes.
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