Cyberpolice (Minor Update: 9th of November 2024) (WIP)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Thanks, fixed it. The change will be in once I upload new stuff tomorrow.

At present the different skills don’t change too many things in practice, since the consequences for most things are yet to be seen. The vast majority of the game so far is just setup(In retrospect I think it’s too passive for a bit too long, all things considered. Too much setup, not enough pay off as of yet. I might change the pacing once the “basic version” is done, if people agree with this).

Once I get the sub-plots in(some day), the skills will matter quite a lot(potentially even too much. The skills were the easiest solution I could come up with as to how to divide the sub-plots, but if I think of a better solution I might change that to a more player-driven choice rather than it relying on the skills you chose at the beginning).

Overall I’d say the skills probably have less impact than you’d think, compared to the other things that change the narrative(though sometimes skills open up some of the choices and possibilities to actually make the other choices, so I suppose they do have bearing after all? Hmmh. Depends on what you specifically mean by narrative I guess).

Currently the biggest changes in narrative come from your choices in dialogue more than anything else, I believe(what you say to whom, what information you’re told, or what you leak to others, etc). That will partially be true for the rest of the game too. The skills and backgrounds do sometimes offer vastly different results(like the sub-plots), but the base narrative isn’t reliant on them(plus those scenes haven’t been uploaded yet. At this pace it remains to be seen if I can get everything in by Sunday).

On the other hand, the dialogue choices, choices on where to go, decisions on how to approach a situation, and so on have an immediate difference most of the time. Some of them also have delayed effects that will be revealed only later, or might affect some changes in conjunction with other choices.(the latter part is currently mostly planned as opposed to implemented, so we’ll see how realistic that is. What I want to do is to have the games final stages be divided into several different finales, which depend on what you’ve found out and whom you suspect and so on, but chances are I won’t be able to implement it anywhere near to the level I hope. Time will tell).

If you’re going to play through it from the beginning at some point, I’d suggest trying out choices you’d not otherwise choose(on other playthroughs) to see how much things differ in practice(feel free to save and load to see changes in dialogue, for instance, unless it ruins your immersion). In any case, you’ll probably want to wait for until all the scenes are in for the complete experience(hopefully Sunday). :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’m rambling again so it’s time to sleep.

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Updated with next file. Also included new “skip-to” point. You can now choose to start just before Mari Badr’s video-phone call back at the police station.

Includes most of strategy meeting. (Warning, mostly info-dump of sorts. Despite polishing efforts, will probably have to make it more readable eventually, given that there are large blocks of text and few choices. Also, the choice texts themselves are by necessity incredible long to give proper flavor. For now it will have to do)

Current average playthrough 57,500 words.

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Updated with next file.

Includes rest of strategy meeting.

(Even more of an info-dump than the last one. I REALLY have to do something about it, didn’t realize the scene was this heavy and exhausting before this polishing pass. This time there aren’t even really any choices in the scene, which is pretty crazy. Once I’ve uploaded everything else, I’ll take another look at it and see if I can make it more bearable. If not, I might remove it until I can do it better, to make the rest of the experience more smooth. Hopefully I can think of some way to either distribute the information over a longer period of time, or to make it more interesting for the player/reader, maybe add some breaks with character interaction or something(though I’d hate to add even more text to it). We’ll see.)

Good news is that the rest of the stuff I’ll upload are for more choice-heavy with less passive stuff.

Current average playthrough: 62,000 words.

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Screen Shot 2021-02-19 at 10.32.01 AM
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Small typo error.

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Thanks, corrected.

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If you choose heavy rating should you not be able to choose more than 1 Implant.

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it seems like the implants you get are more and more heavy duty and take up more space this still only 1, if thats what your talking about. this is just what ive seen based on descriptions initially.

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I chose heavy cause i thought you would get to choose more than 1 implant. Since i wanted armour and super strength.

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i might have gone for 2 mediums or a medium and a light if i had the choice but eh oh well.

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I would go for armour strength and speed and maybe a hidden weapon.

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I’ll think about the implant options at some point. At present they’re not particularly important overall, so I suppose I might as well let the player choose them more freely, but we’ll see. Hopefully I can think of a “drawback” to them as well at some point, so there’s a reason not to choose them(other than flavour).

As for today’s upload, unfortunately I didn’t have time for it, and neither will I be able to upload tomorrow. There goes the “hope it’s all in by Sunday” strategy. At least I got a bunch of stuff in during the week.

Same uploading rate will continue on Monday however. We’re at around halfway point overall in the entire batch, so it’ll probably be all in by next Sunday. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Damn I love this series, bookmarked, looking forward to it’s ending!

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You can make our implants need to like … recharge energy or something like that. If we don’t recharge them, we will be weaken to the point that we can’t even move our body properly so we will need to spend some time for recharging them but in exchange, that amount of time can be used to explore the city, looking for clues, deepen our relationships,…

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But I like that flavour. My main mc here is a forensic detective near retirement, so he knows all too well the drawbacks of technology, being a survivor of the Gray war.
Which really makes that background war survivor/war criminal dialogue option of “I’ll never forget what we did to those children” take on a really sinister undertone. And also adds some real punch to the otherwise throwaway line that the mc has seen worse in the decerebrated corpse scene. So kudos for that. Although I don’t think my mc will ever divulge the worse he’s seen to Still as it was likely during the war.
But with so much disinformation I guess my mc used his science background and knowledge to join to police to try and atone somewhat post-war.
Also gave him a perpetually crumpled “Columbo” esque look and cheap sunglasses which makes a nice contrast with superhuman Stillwell as a partner.

Overall I think the dialogue is this game’s strongest suit, makes the characters really come alive and I am already eyeing a second playthrough as bright-eyed and somewhat naive youngster too.

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Wow, thanks! :slight_smile:

I appreciate it.

We’ll see. In general I prefer not to “punish” the player like that. What I might do is make separate content for those with cybernetics and for those that don’t have any. Like, you need some maintenance so you get a scene based on that, and if you have no or just cosmetic cybernetics, then you get a different scene.

Well, the flavour is the main point ultimately, but there can be other points too. :wink:

You actually put it really well into words. The reason why I added that stuff in the first place is exactly that; to let each player create their own unique context so they’ll feel more immersed with their character and the story. Really glad to hear that it’s working as designed. :slight_smile:

Also, it’s nice to hear that you enjoy the dialogue, I’ve put a great deal of effort into it, especially near the beginning. Hopefully I can get the latest sections up to the same quality before the game/story is completely done. Admittedly I polished the original batch more since I wanted to make a good first impression. :slight_smile:

(also because I think the beginning is really important to create and reinforce the context of your character, since you’ll remember it for the rest of the experience if it’s done right, as long as I manage to remind you about it every now and then. For the latest stuff there aren’t all that many references to the background choices at the moment, but I’ll likely add them in after I get the sub-plots done(who knows when). Once everything is done, there should even be at least one unique(shortish) scene per background, plus a few interesting dialogue choices you can potentially say to certain people depending on the story branch you’re in, which might give some very unique outcomes. But all of that is currently only on the planning phase and might get cut if it’s super much work)

I’d love to hear what you think about it if/once you do a second playthrough with very different choices. I tried to make the dialogue as responsive as possible, so I’m very interested to know whether it feels like that between two separate playthroughs. For some choices there’s some repetition, but I usually try to make each answer have its own unique or at least partially unique reply, which in turn lets you choose your own reply, etc.

Anyway, had a long day, so I’ll sleep now. Back to more uploads tomorrow.

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This is a very fascinating story. I love the character creation and the cyberpunk world building, as well as the characters themselves, and the writing overall is superb.

I understand that some info dump is necessary, but perhaps it would be easier to read and digest if they’re broken up into parts instead of presented in one huge section. There’s way too many details presented all at once, it’s quite hard to keep track.

Another suggestion, if the player chose the war veteran route, perhaps there could be more options for the cybernetics to be added because of injuries during the war? So far the game only gives that kind of background for the light cybernetic eye replacement, but not for the arms or legs.

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Thanks for the praise. :slight_smile:

The problem with info dumps is that as the creator it’s hard to see what’s necessary and what’s a “bonus” from the reader/players perspective. I could probably do with a lot less of info dumping for sure but I’ll have to think a bit as to what I can put aside.

I could also put more info in the inventory screen, so people CAN read about it if they want to, but don’t have to.

I could(and probably should) cut it into smaller parts, especially ones where the player can react to it in some way, but it’s surprisingly hard for me to get into the mindset of chopping it down.

I could also make it so that the information is given to the player in small chunks across the game, instead of in large chunks all at once, but that’s a bit trickier, especially context-wise. Given that it revolves around police investigation, it makes sense for the information to be given in a large chunk, but I understand that it isn’t necessarily the best option from the player’s point of view. The smaller chunks is probably the best approach if I can do it, if I combine it with player reactions too. It’ll require quite a bit of work since I’ll have to restructure a lot of scenes based on that, but it’s likely worth the effort since it’ll make everything a lot smoother. The downside is, of course, that if I disperse the information throughout the game, it’ll give less chance for the player to think about what’s going on and try to theorize about the mystery while they’re playing. Hopefully there’s a “middle of the road” option that gets most of the benefits of both approaches without sacrificing anything important.

The real question is: Should I make the info dumps better as soon as possible, or only after I’ve finished with everything else? I’m guessing it’s probably a better idea to do something about it after I’ve uploaded the current batch, since it’ll make it a lot easier for any future info dumps too(though there won’t be too many from now on, I think). It’s also a fact that the sooner I do it, the easier it is for new people to try the game/story out, since I can fully understand that some people might be intimidated by the infodumps(unfortunately there’s one pretty early on in the game too, which I should do something about for sure).

As for the cybernetics options, sure, that’s really easy to do. Might as well do it right away. It’ll be in with today’s upload.

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Putting the infomations into stat screen will be the best, you can choose to still show the entire info with character’s respond but also move it into the stat screen with a different category from the rest ( maybe a little more organized )

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Afterwards, please.
But for my first mc, it makes sense for him to know most or all of that stuff already as he’s got a lot of life, police and scientific experience already.
Now my second mc I probably going to play in the next couple of days is far younger and would realistically still have a lot to learn as for them the report is their first and not their last assignment as it is for my first mc.

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Updated with next file. (included new jump point to after the strategy meeting)

Includes your return to hotel after a long day and associated scenes for the evening. Mostly flavor, but very important nonetheless.

Current average playthrough: 63,500 words.

(despite low average word increase, actual word increase massively larger. Mostly due to two scenes being extremely variable content-wise depending on your background).

I’ll definitely put some of those info dumps into the stat screen once I start organizing it better, it’s a good idea. For many of them it makes sense to have a transcript or recording of what’s been told to you, so it’s pretty simple.

Yeah, doing it afterwards is probably better for my overall progress and work motivation, since that sort of editing is exactly the kind of thing I hate. :slight_smile:

I doubt it’ll be possible for me to do any sort of info-dumping that depends on the player’s choice. What I mean by this is, it’d be cool if you could choose “lots of info please”(for a fresh recruit) or “I know everything already”(for a grizzled veteran) or such, and it’d affect the way the information is told to the player. Cool, but way too much work so I probably won’t be doing it. :slight_smile:

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