True, shooting it is not stated as being illegal, but your character is implied to already know of various different species of aliens, meaning that you might give them the benefit of being a sentient species automatically. That would make a moral dilemma, except because of the time machine, you’ve already seen the future and know its going to shoot you, and you’re still evil for shooting it.
Hey guys! I’m Steve, the guy who wrote MAM, and I wanted to say thanks for all of your thought and insight. I’m working right now on the first update to the first mission, and I’m going to try (if possible!) to put a lot of these suggestions in action! Some of them might be too big of a rewrite, but I’ll see what I can do. Again, thank you, and if you have any more ideas, I’m open - don’t worry about ruffling my feathers. Of course, don’t get yours ruffled if I don’t take your ideas! :0)
@dfabulich - thanks for clearing that up. I read that plagerism accusation and thought, “Crud, I’ve never even heard of that book!” Ha! Thanks man
Freaking LOVE you guys’ morality debate here, by the way. Awesome stuff.
Also, if you know of any true and real bugs (you know, as opposed to my science just being ridiculous), I’d REALLY like to hear about them soon! The other stuff is good to know too - thanks guys!
1 Like
@Reaperoa - if you’ve got those other things that were “cringeworthy” handy, if you remember them, I’d like to hear what they are!
Also, I’m definitely making a sequel. It was just too much fun not to. And so far with my plans, it’ll be a LOT less “on rails”, and there won’t be any temporal tether. I’ve even got a clever reason why! I like the tether idea, but I can TOTALLY see why it would also be irritating to replay parts over and over!
1 Like
@Dangerpuppy First of all, it’s nice to see a writer that can take someone really ripping into their story, particularly 'cause I’m a a-hole when it comes to reviewing things. >.<
As for the things I disliked, IIRC, they mostly revolved around the fact that a lot of combinations of choices ended up with strange things. Like if you run to the powerplant when you first touch down, you’re admonished for not scouting and forced to, then if you run to the warehouses (east?), a marine is killed and you’re told off for taking the time to scout. If you’re playing a nice guy and come across the alien that surrendered a second time, you have to take a shot in the back to stay a ‘nice guy’. The last major one I can remember is you being able to send the marines at the final door whether or not you killed them all already. It just seems like the game was far undertested, as most of these seem like things that would crop up in a beta test. (There were a few other things that I can’t really recall, but I think most of them were personal issues, either from the fact that MAM is soft sci-fi, and I usually only read harder sci-fi, so any ‘science’ problems really get to me, or from an inability to optimize the tactics used in game.)
1 Like
@Reaperoa Sweet - thanks! So far, all of the things that you named I’ve already edited for, so … that’s a good sign! You now won’t need to scout the settlement unless you want the glory (and the code to the hatch, or the puppy - you can get the code from the kid in the tower, and the puppy is a shortcut with the woman, or it can become the Ajax mascot, but now you can skip the puppy with no repercussions if you want to. That little guy seemed a sore spot to a lot of people! Whups!), and when you meet that alien, you now have the choice of taking it prisoner (why wasn’t that an option before? Beats me!) And yeah, that part where you could send the troopers in even if they were dead was a total glitch!
I’ve also added in the option to sort of reset your temporal tether to send you back to right before you go into the power station. That way you don’t need to replay the WHOLE mission, at least… I THOUGHT that tether idea would be better than dying, but I think it was more irritating than I realized…
Beta testing revealed almost no mistakes at all. How funny is that?!
And you are certainly right about it being under-tested… I wrote the game in two days! And then much later, went through to edit it, and it was total junk, so the final game is a weird product of vomiting out a story, and then re-writing it like 6 months later. Which works OK for just plain old stories, but not so much for something like this… Anyway, don’t worry about being an a-hole! Hahaha! It’s all right! I want this thing to be awesome, and if I get all bent out of shape, who is that helping?! I really do appreciate how much thought you put into this. Thank you.
1 Like
I’m not sure whether this is fixable, but the romance and friendship are non-optional, particularly the meeting with John. There’s no agency on the player’s part in either case; if you’re the opposite sex to John or Eleanor and the conditions are met, you start shagging, and if you’re the same sex, you become friends. This is particularly badly done in John’s case, as whether you meet him is random (from a first-time player’s perspective) and you can end up in a relationship just by being purely aggressive. To wit, a female marine can be a hell-out Dark brawler who charges head-on into combat and then, suddenly, sex happens because you charged John there at the end of the paintball game.
Romances really need at least a subplot if you want to include them; I’d scratch John’s route entirely, but that may leave the game teetering in another way.
Also, shouldn’t Light and Dark stats both start at 50 instead of 5/95?
1 Like
Yeah, light and dark should have started at 50 - that was a weird mistake! Thanks!
For the romance part, that’s a good point. I reworked them to ignore your own gender, and now you sort have have the option to pursue whatever you want, fight John and create and enemy, or to just brush them off as not important. Keeping John in allows for romance or friendship possibilities, and now those same are possible with Eleanor - so players who are working towards one of those two purposes have two chances to do it…
Maybe there should be more in there that deals with it… Hmmm. If I don’t shove something in here, there’ll certainly come up again in part 2…
Thanks for the ideas and suggestions! Keep em coming!
1 Like
As to the light vs dark aspect of the game, I like the idea someone here shared of using different titles like Renegade or Paragon. I havent played Mass Effect, but it sounds like that’s along the lines that I was thinking! Unfortunately, I don’t have any other terms on my mind to use … Hmmm… Rogue, maybe? For dark? If you’ve got any ideas, please share em!
1 Like
Kindness vs Cruelty? To me the one problem was that it didn’t seem to effect anything. I mean, to me it seemed like it was just telling you whether you’re good or evil, which is something that should be shown through the story, rather than through stats.
1 Like
Hmmm! Good point! So, if you make decisions that lean a certain way, then the story simply unfolds in that direction? Well that makes a lot of sense! :0)
As it stands now, it’s more just a side facet to the game - I think the only things it effect are whether or not you can find love, and then being especially light or dark gets you a light or dark marine ending.
I don’t think that I can really edit this first mission to be more that way - it might be too huge of a rewrite … But maybe for the second one… Hmm… Good point though!!
1 Like
Having played the game through several times, I’ve got a couple of thoughts. First of all, the good:
-I liked the fact that when you were retrieved by the temporal tether, the text was different each time. Though I think the tether is a bit of a dubious plot device in sci-fi terms…well, let’s just say that it’s a decent device for letting you hold onto a character rather than having to do the generation bits every time.
-Each scene was well-written and enjoyable.
-In general, this is on my short list of favorite games on here. I particularly love the Starship Troopers shout-outs.
Now, I would like to see some adjustments:
(1) Enforced stupidity and “dumb or evil” choices are a big problem in a few places. The most notable is the faked surrender incident…I wish there was an unlockable option whereby if you had the requisite information, you could opt to keep your gun at the ready/remain ready to jump and have a shot (if your stats were good enough, at least) of dodging the attack. It’s not alone:
-There’s a difference between saving the kid and making sure he gets picked up and feeding a dog. I’m sorry, but I /really/ wish there was a non-evil option that didn’t involve you either taking half an hour out to feed a stray animal or dumping tools by the wayside to carry the puppy along with you.
-In this vein, I’d like for some option to exist where you /do/ kindle something with Ms. Monroe and lay a bit of groundwork (that is, if you want the romance option to exist as a side-plot for later episodes)…but you don’t start smooching while there’s a battle going on.
-With the alien lab, I’d like to see a fifth “call it in” option (i.e. you inform your superiors of what you’ve found and move on rather than torching it).
(2) “Cartoon evil”/“evil for the lulz” options bug me. I’m sorry…I don’t really even feel terribly comfortable choosing a “randomly kill the woman” option even if this /is/ a game. To put it in a more familiar context, there’s a difference between the corrupt cop who is taking kickbacks and the corrupt cop also willing to shoot innocent civilians.
-Mind you, that’s not to say that there’s not room for some sorts of behavior that qualifies as evil (shooting enemy prisoners/enemies attempting to surrender, for example) within the context of the game (there’s a /long/ history of blind eyes being turned to this during wars, particularly in “discretionary” situations such as the aliens’ spiky tails would likely create).
-A sub-point I would suggest here: Enable the option of the cartoon evil, but each time you cross the line and purposefully kill civilians, you risk some sort of discovery (use a hidden dice roll for this, perhaps) that results in an end-of-mission execution (or, if combined with super-low morale, possibly getting fragged) when someone “goes over the tapes”. Super-evil movie empires notwithstanding, completely random killings of /your own/ civilians does /not/ tend to go over well upon high. That sort of misbehavior tends to be reserved for Chaos in Warhammer 40K and the like.
(3) I’d like to see some sort of “professionalism” rating added, even if hidden from view for the most part. Basically, this would be increased by doing things “by the book”. It wouldn’t correlate directly with light/dark (ignoring the dog, for example, would be professional while clearing out your toolbox to carry him along would be about as unprofessional as you can get; by contrast, phoning in the discovery of the kid is probably going to qualify as professional) or glory/not-glory (diving through all guns blazing, while a fun story when you get back to the bar on base, is more likely to trigger a reprimand from your superior)…but then again, I tend to play the game more or less along the lines of “I am doing this mission as by-the-book as I can while minimizing casualties” and I’d sort of like to see that encouraged.
-It bears mentioning that some options would be a plus here, some would be a minus, and some would be neutral (sometimes the rules offer a bit of latitude; other times, there’s nothing that specifically addresses the option).
-Also, some “by the book” options are going to also be the “stupid” option (surrendering alien with spiky tail, anyone?). Rules of engagement can range from common sense (if you’re lucky) to downright stupid. Ask some vets from any of a number of wars and not-wars IRL.
-For what it’s worth, I disagree with one of the first posters…from how I understand my orders in the game, I need to scout out the settlement in the event that there is another threat lurking somewhere there /aside/ from the overt firefight, particularly since there’s a lot of mystery as to what happened at the colony.
Finally, I think there’s a bug in the game…when I take the blue liquid, I can still “call for backup” even though when I do, I see there as being 0 troopers with me when I do. Is this an error (and if all the troopers are dead, shouldn’t that mean I can’t call for backup)?
1 Like
@Gray Thank you VERY much for the in depth response there! I’ll take all of that into consideration - and I think you’ll like my first round of edits.
I’m hoping to wrap those up and send them in today, but before I do I wanted to get your feedback on something (if you see this in time!) I like your “by the book” idea a lot, and I’m wondering if I couldn’t fuse that with the light/dark meter. Here’s my idea: I’ve already added a part to your training where a chaplain talks at your group about the idea of “walking in the Light”, and gives a rough idea of what the mitary’s expectations are. This is sort of a fusion of a basic morality and doing things “by the book” - super generally, in Dungeons and Dragons terms, they hope that you’ll act Lawful Good.
And this way, your Light meter can increase through things like NOT helping the puppy, if your reason is because you have orders and duty. So in a few places, there can be a couple of ways to increase Light.
Oh and I think that when dark increases, I’m going to chnge it to simply say, “dark increased”. I think my creepy “darkness grows within you…” might be … Too judgemental?
The chaplain will also make a small mention that as a Mobile Armored Marine, your actions are recorded and come under greater scrutiny than regular infantry…
Anyway, I had that idea after reading your comment. What do you think?
1 Like
@Dangerpuppy:
I like the ideas in general. I guess the one thought that comes to mind is this: Do you want a straight Lawful Good-Chaotic Evil axis? Or would you like to try for the “traditional” (i.e. standard RPG) two-axis morality system? I ask because when I think about a few situations, different combinations of actions generate different moralities in this context:
-Lawful Good would, in my mind, definitely help the kid…but romancing Eleanor and helping the puppy are definitely questionable to unlikely (and throwing out equipment to stash the puppy in the carrier would be /right/ out) given their impact on the mission. They’d also hold tightly to rules of engagement (possibly to the point of Lawful Stupidity…again, I’ve heard fun stories of Lawful Stupid rules of engagement).
-Chaotic Good would probably help everyone out that they can, even at the expense of the mission. Basically, you help everyone you can, chase love, etc…and probably get chewed out more often than not by your CO. Likewise, this guy might be a gloryhound while Mr. Lawful Good will stick a bit more closely to the manual when dealing with some combat situations.
-Lawful Evil would, in this context, probably still help out the kid…but there’s at least some room for shooting the aliens a bit more indiscriminately and not accepting surrenders IMHO. Basically, if his mission is to save the colony, then this guy is going to save the colony and/or save his men if he has to shove the aliens up against a wall and start firing to do so. However, I don’t see /literal/ dog-kicking here…if you’re in a bar fight, he’s the guy you want to have your back. He’s got a moral compass…it’s just got a certain lean to it that’s a bit more ruthless than average. He’ll hold to the RoE, but there’s a wonderful grey area in war that differentiates him from lawful good.
-Chaotic Evil is, in this context, the guy who (literally) kicks the dog and randomly kills people (I see this as the classic “cackling villain”). A lot of the super-dark options fall here. In the context of the game, I believe that the technical term is “war criminal”.
Mind you, you could still fuse the effects as an “overt” light/dark stat but use a pair of hidden stats to actually determine things. It would mean more coding, but it might be more effective for handling “you cross this line and so help you” situations. Not everything has to be “on top”; some “under the hood” stats doing the real work can be used to give the player derived stats.
I prefer a two-axis system to a one-axis system, but that’s because I do see a categorical difference in handling certain sorts of dilemmas. Chaotic Good is probably going to be the most personally satisfying in certain regards (there’s something really cool about the ending where you’re having drinks with your best friend, you’ve got the puppy as the station pet, you’ve got the girl, and everything is great). However, I suspect that the Lawful Good and Lawful Evil tendencies I described above would have their own rewards (praise from above in the first case and men who really care about you because they know you’re that one-in-a-million commander who is willing to throw out some “inconvenient” rules to protect “his” men and/or make sure that their lives aren’t wasted in the second). And yes, I may be mangling the compass slightly to explain the ideas, but I think you know what I’m getting at.
One other thought, per the above suggestion to make the game follow a slightly different bent depending on how you’re playing: I think keeping the first mission (i.e. this one) pretty straightforward but adjusting subsequent missions slightly (either in some slightly different stats at the start, in perhaps adjusting a few of the situations/scenes, or both) would be the best course. There’s really no need to redo the first mission from the ground up…it’s a great mission and I love playing through it.
1 Like
Just wondering, but any idea how long it usually takes for new code to be updated for these stories?
1 Like
is there going to be a mobile armed marine 2 ?
1 Like
@Gray it was about 3 weeks after I submitted my update that it was published
@Zane yeah I’d like to! In fact I’ve got a rough outline ready. But unfortunately, I need time…
1 Like
judging from the title, it sounds like a military type storygame, i like military storygames, can someone pm a demo link please.
Look under the Hosted Games label on the main site. This one’s free.
1 Like
Sooo how do I get Eleanor romance?
1 Like
What gift do we need for Eleanor romance? I found her but can’t start romance.
1 Like