Hero or Villain: Genesis (feedback thread)

Is the version 1.2.1 here? Because on playstore it says 1.2.0

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More-so I want a guide on dialogue trees and Romance options.

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I had no problems defeating Neuron Butterfly, but when it comes to battling Moon Crusader I always lose.

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The game has been now updated to V.1.2.1., incorporating all the changes that I had made up to Christmas and various other bugreports after (see below for a list).

@Kain_Leingodā€¦ I never made such a guide, sorryā€¦
@AlexHaydenXā€¦ I thought that Neuron Butterfly was always the one causing troubleā€¦ but yes, I guess Moon Crusader is a hard one have you tried holding back from the fight, dodging etc as soon as possible, letting your minions attack -even if you lose some of them- etc

V1.2.1. List of changes
-3000 extra words.
-Added option to be able to train superhuman strength by lifting train carriages (only available once).
-Added side mission on villain path, allowing to attack a police station.
-Various bugfixes and typos corrected.

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At the EHGI centre, does anybody manage to use the machine? (somebody has reported a possible bug, I was wondering whether any other people were having troubleā€¦)

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Nothing really happens when you go there,maybe you have to go to the centre at a certain point in the story? By the way a very enjoyable story nonetheless,canā€™t wait for the sequel

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Iā€™m still confusedā€¦ When you say that nothing happensā€¦ You get into the building? Or cannot make it inside? (Sorry, Iā€™m trying to pinpoint the exact source of the problem, as there is definitively a bug somewhereā€¦)

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You do make it into the building but nothing really happens when you are inside,you just end up going back home after breaking in

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Just played through it again,you go to the centre and then end up leaving the centre without really doing anything

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where can u play it ?

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@adrao
Conceding the EHGI side mission

As of right now you are able to make it into the building and examine the machine but then you get interrupted by enhanced guard.

After the fight scene with the enhanced guard the game immediately skips to the following day which for me the following day in my play through was the museum scene. So the only thing you can do right now is fight the guard before the game skips ahead for some reason.

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@AlexHaydenX, best way to beat her is to get your psyche up to 60 or so like I did, I then use powers on her afterwards. Works pretty darn well not sure if youā€™ve noticed that as well. With me I had animal abilities (custom animal vampire bat). Now I went and had my ability points at a 1000, so was able to diversify as much as possible. Strength was at 60 or so, ditto agility and endurance, I then put in some points for intelligence 37 or so, and removed five at beginning to make way for psyche. Later during the second encounter with Steel Atronauch (spelling?), I nicked the stone and enhanced my psyche, all while using the law book approach to brush up on intelligence.

@adrao when will the next part be out perchance? Iā€™m eagerly waiting to play the next part or even beta test if you have that up and running :slight_smile:

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Sorry for my long silence, Iā€™ve been trying to concentrate on working on the main structural part of the second part of the game. Not sure how this will mean to many people reading, but basically the current playthrough length is at 37,000 words (I reckon the final game will above 40,000, possibly 43,000-45,000 words). Up to around 10,000 Iā€™ve also gone through my second read. The main structure is ā€œcompleteā€ up to around the 25,000 word mark. After that I still have to finish coding the fights, and there are several parts of the narrative that are still not there (i.e. from 25,000 to 40,000 I have written a bit, but have left some of the trickier parts for later).

Structurally Iā€™ll be following a a slightly modified version of the one of part I. Basically, in this one I anticipate that much more weight will go onto the side missions (allowing people a variety of playthroughts throuhgout the game, rather than the branching at the end -which is more difficult to see, I mean, I wonder how many readers went to Mongolia, Philippines, joined the supergroup, or became villains in part Iā€¦ or even pursued the SA, which I always thought was the main path through the gameā€¦)

Butā€¦ even after I finish the main sequence, I still will have to code the side missions (there are some there, but many missing) and interactions with the characters (RO still largely absent, etc). My hope, however, is to have the main ā€œcoreā€ of the game finished in the next couple of weeks (wishful thinking?) and start playtestingā€¦

Otherwise, Iā€™ve also been working on the bugs reported from time to time (sorry I havent replied to earlier comments, next update probably wonā€™t have much new content, but should smoothen out the bugs and hopefully fix the EHGI mission). :slight_smile:

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I definitely agree that the endgame with a slew of hard branches and sub-branches in game 1, and the favoring of the SA path, was kind of problematic. I like the idea of instead having a ā€œmenuā€ of sidequests that you can combine in various ways. Particularly if 2 isnā€™t the last game in the series.

I think I mentioned this in re Highway Wars, but I want to reiterate it here: You massively favored the conquest route in that game, and most of the other routes were short and unsatisfying (particularly ā€œremain a marshalā€ and the terraforming mission). If youā€™re going to make multiple branches, make sure that they all have more content than an unloseable mission and a ā€œcongratulations, thanks for playing.ā€

Choice of Robots probably has the gold standard for how to do ending branches, but those should be reserved for the last game in the series. A Study in Steampunk likewise had good multiple branches for the midgame.

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@adrao

Along the lines of the EHGI mission This isnā€™t a bug but more of a suggestion. I saw we were able to destroy the lock on the lab entrance door with telekinesis but we arenā€™t able to shoot the lock off with energy bullets if we have that power. With my characters ability to channel energy into bullets plus the agility stat he had I felt I shouldā€™ve been to blast through the lock. Especially since my characters bullets were the doing the same damage amount as lighting bolt power if I added up the damage right.

Also when we are trying to sneak past the guards/gate I feel like our super speed should play a factor in that since it allows to be untouchable and makes us able to steal from our coworkers without them noticing shouldnā€™t we also be able to zoom past the guards while they are looking elsewhere without them noticing us?

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@adrao Can you add in the section miscellaneous powers immortality and invulnerability?
This can be compensated by spending most of the initial points!
I hope itā€™s not too late to implement it

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@Ramidel Yes, I agree with you. I think I basically suffer (like many authors) of the ā€œrunning out of steam at the endā€. This is a particularly big problem in interactive fiction, where word counts run into the hundreds of thousands. With Highway Wars I ran out of steam for some of the endings. About 6 months ago I started to expand one of the endings, but then this Hero or Villain took over my brain. Given that this later one is more successful, Iā€™m hoping my brain will continue wanting to work on it, so hopefully I will continue to polish it in the future (having said that, I do want to return to Highway Wars and improve a bit some of the endingsā€¦ )

@JVM great suggestions, thanks! (implemented them just now, Iā€™m about to send the next update to CoG). For the superspeed, I added that you have to have a speed of 4x human average, or more (so somebody just with twice the speed cannot do this). For the case of energy channelling, I also added a description in the powers that indicates the user can quieten the noise produced by range weapons.

@black I could introduce immortality, but what would that really do in this game? (Iā€™m not planning on making the game that longā€¦). Invulnerability would be really complicated, as it would allow somebody to just go through the game without caring about anything. In fact though, you can almost do this by playing on super-easy, giving yourself high armour, high endurance and regeneration powers? (sorry, I am always happy to try to implement things, but in this case Iā€™m not so sure how they would help the storyā€¦)

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Just submitted v.1.2.2. to CoG. Hopefully it will go live in the next few days! :slight_smile:

Regarding part 2 of the gameā€¦ I have made quite rapid progress, and Iā€™m hoping to start playtesting this week (though that could be derailed by many things)

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Iā€™d love to be apart of the testing!

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Testing of the game will hopefully start soon-ishā€¦ the main core of the game is written almost to the end (I almost thought about starting to write the epilogue yesterday). Current playthroughs are ~43,000 words (compared to ~41,000 for part one), and itā€™s likely the final game will shoot up to 45,000-46,000, which is more than I originally anticipated, but there you go. Despite this, I still have a lot of work to do regarding the side missions, RO (I anticipate 5, but only one is almost finishedā€¦ Iā€™ve learnt a bit from part 1 and previous games, so hopefully they will feel a bit better than before).

Otherwiseā€¦ v1.2.2. is now live. Hopefully it now allows for the first EHGI mission to be played in full (let me know if you encounter any other bugsā€¦). Iā€™m hoping to eventually write the second one, but part 2 of the game is currently receiving all my attention, so it might have to wait for a month or twoā€¦

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