Tin Star testing

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Well, that’s just how I always envisioned what “gunfighting” was, i.e. skills utilized by the classic Ol’ West gunfighters in quick-draw duels and fights at close range with a pistol. And when you go to the old kinda’ festivals that have Ol’ West themes, and you see a “gunfighters show” like at neighborhood events like “Jessie James Days” in Northfield, MN, that’s typically what you’re going to see. A lot of quick draw shows and trick shot dudes and dudettes with pistols, each of which are damn good shots with their pistol.

If we’re talking “mechanically” within the game itself, it pretty much supports that view given when you say… “practice with your guns” and choose to focus utterly on your pistols, only your “Gunfighting” skill increases.

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Gunfighting, as far as I know, doesn’t really mean you’re a good shot. It can mean you’re good at not getting shot. In a bar room shoot-out, I don’t think people will be able to aim much anyway.

That said, in those duels of the wild west where people walk ten paces or something, I don’t think it really matters much how good your aim is either. It can also be about how you can waste all your opponent’s shots before going in for the kill.

For example, as a good gunfighter, I could draw my gun when I know people least expect it and can’t react, I can shoot people under the table where they can’t see I’ve already got my gun out, I can trick Caraway into wasting all of her bullets on a shooting contest before killing her. But I don’t have to be able to shoot accurately to win in all of the above situations. See what I mean by saying gunfighting andsharpshooting are two different things?

Anyway, as the author of the game, @AllenGies should have the best idea of what gunfighting and sharpshooting are.

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If you can’t hit the broad-side of a barn with a pistol at close-range, then I don’t think gunfighting would be your thing. Also, tricking someone to “waste all their ammo” has so many variables as to how to do that, having it encompassed by a single stat under a vague representation would be absolutely nonsensical. I mean, going by your own example of getting Caraway to waste her ammo in a contest sounds more like something that’d fall under “Persuasion” given you’d have to convince her in some way to participate in the first place.

And yes, you will have to shoot with at least some decent accuracy to do any of your examples. Because if you miss, well, and/or you waste all of your own ammo attempting to shoot them after they’ve “wasted their ammo”, suddenly now your entire planning has gone to hell and you’ve just proven yourself to be one hell of a crappy gunfighter lacking skill in actual gun-play, i.e. gunfighting. The flaw in your premise seems to come off as, while you don’t need to be that great of a shot at 10 paces to kill them, they do need to be a good shot 10 paces to be able to take you out. Also, your example seems to be centered around Caraway (what’d she do to you, man?! Did she kill you when you tried shooting her?), but doing so while entirely ignoring the fact within the game she is a gunfighter, i.e. presumably has a high gunfighting skill, so then by the context of your examples, she should be able to do the same sort of things to you if you can do them to her. Which now delves into the insane amount of vague variables and situational concepts, it’d just be simpler if “Gunfighting” were kept to being classic Old West gun-play with a pistol.

Now, within the context of the game, it came off as pretty obvious to me. By increasing gunfighting, done so by practicing shooting your pistols, well, that speaks to the classic pistol gunfights of the Old West, being quick to draw and being a deadly shot with… again… your pistol. Sharpshooting is increase via practicing with your rifle, speaking to shooting at great distances, which makes sense, if you’re going to shoot from a far off distance, using a rifle is typically your best bet. For the sake of simplicity that seems to be how those two stats work out within the game.

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Example of classic Old West Gunplay/Gunfighting: Master Gunfighter 5 Shot (FASTEST GUN IN THE WORLD) - YouTube Only in the Old West it was verses people… who were shooting back. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Nah, gunfighting isn’t about that. Why shoot first when you can shoot last? Look, I’m not trying to start a fight, but all of that quick draw quick shoot quick kill thing is in the bad movies.

What really happens isn’t always like that. By tricking Caraway into unloading her pistols, I got a decent boost to gunfighting. That shows that gunfighting isn’t just about being fast and accurate; that is more like dueling.

Gunfighting isn’t always like that. Gunfighting, as far as I see, is more about shooting last as opposed to shooting fast. That’s what Schimdt says if you ask him about gunfighting. You also have to know when a gun is drawn on you, you gotta keep your peripheral vision in good shape, you got to have quick reflexes, things like that.

The guy over there was fast because he knows and was prepared. Gunfighting isn’t always with you prepared.

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“Nah, gunfighting isn’t about that. Why shoot first when you can shoot last?”

Simple… I rather they be dead before they can shoot at me. Otherwise, their shot may kill me. It’s exceedingly presumptive to believe that they’ll miss. And very dangerous. What I don’t like is the assumption that everyone else must suck, even if they’re gunfighters like I am, because only I know the “tricks”. It’s silly… And kinda’ Sue-ish the more I think about it. If I’m going to go up against an NPC, I like the thought that they know what I know if we have roughly the same stats, and will thus try to use the same sort of tactics against me. And using Gunfighting as a means to trick anyone into a shooting contest just sounds ridiculous, because one would have to persuade the person into even bothering to do such a thing in the first place (otherwise why bother having a Persuasion stat if its not going to be utilized to persuade people into such things?). Otherwise, what’s to stop them from just shooting you while you’re trying to convince them to do this silly contest? I don’t know, there’s just so many variables to it that go unexplained it makes no sense.

“Look, I’m not trying to start a fight, but all of that quick draw quick shoot quick kill thing is in the bad movies.”

Actually, the whole quick draw thing wasn’t in simply “bad movies”, it was in reality. Many of the old gunfighters back in those days did actually know how to “quick draw” accurately. I brought up Jesse James (not just because I live a half-hour away from Northfield, MN where they have the “Jesse James Days” festival at the place he died), but because it’s a historical reality that he and other gunfighters of his time could draw amazingly quickly and gun down several people, even on horseback, with their pistols in a matter of one or two seconds. That wasn’t simply “legend” that was straight up reality as a testament to his skill as a gunfighter of the time. Their pistols were their tools. What’s a gunfighter without gun-play?

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@Apillis @Wyrmspawn
You’ve both made good valid points. I think it is time to just leave it to @AllenGies to decided. I think you will its a mixture of both of your points.

With the increase in gunfighting from Carrys shooting contest though, I think that comes from watching her technique.

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Why is it if you die choices are greyed out?

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Hi, can I please get a list of all possible romance able characters?, thanks

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pigglywinks- Good catches on those. The Harmonica glitch has been around a while, as has the Winthrop variable mix up. not entirely certain what is causing the Hancock mix up, but I reset the lines as it looks like a *goto statement accidentally got folded into a dialogue line, causing a hiccup to occur.

All of the above were certainly nothing I would have caught on my own. Keep it coming. :slight_smile:

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Xt1000305- Hmm… I’d better add a little clarity to that portion of things where you drink with Miss Caraway and wind up in the office. A bit of hang-over or bad breath ought to do.

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Matteller- The Bowery Bear can be killed either with a respectable Sharpshooting skill or a high gunfighting skill. An good riding skill can also be useful in controlling your horse in order to line up a killing shot.

More on this later as I explain what I figured the difference between gunfighting and sharpshooting happen to be.

1 Like
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Mardam- Which choice are grayed out if you perish? I never really got the hang of using that particular method with programming choice-script and can’t remember using it with tin-star.

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Moonrider- The Romance characters are, Miss Caraway, Dan Schmidt, Maria Agustina, Yiska and J.T. Preston.

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O.O man pigglywinks is the best at finding glitches…*silent respect*

EDIT
@AllenGies
I know a few I know for sure that has the issue Mardam mentioned is during the Gold Coach getting killed trying to get the coach past.

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Okay, in regards to the difference between Gunfighting and Sharpshooting, both sides have it right in many ways. (WolfieGrey gets serious points for realizing that and also where the gunfighting bonus comes from after getting Miss Caraway to fire off her pistols at the target range; watch an artist at work and you are certain to improve your own technique)

Sharpshooting deals primarily with rifles where accuracy is needed because of the distances involved. Gunfighting deals primarily with close quarters combat with a pistol where being even a little slower than your opponent can mean your demise. However, there are numerous areas of overlap between the two skills and that is where things get a bit mushy.

Take the bear encounter for example. Sharpshooting excels here because although the bear is close, the killing target is small. If you don’t shoot the bear’s head or, preferably, the eye, then you’ve pretty much wasted your shot. A good gunfighter can put up a lot of lead and hit the bear’s center of mass pretty easily, but unless the critical target is pierced, that doesn’t mean much because the bear will kill you before it dies.

However, an excellent Gunfighter can also be devastatingly accurate. Which means not only does he or she skin out their pistol quick, but they can nail the beast’s eye as well. It is just harder than winging a drunk in a saloon to take him down quick. (That reminds me to add in an excellent sharpshooting result versus Hungry Snake in the Painted Caves. Hip shots via a rifle from a pro can be be executed quickly.)

Gunfighting also has a defensive component. Shoot first, yeah, but if you can’t shoot first then try not to get shot so you can follow up afterward. Sharpshooting doesn’t really cover that (Except in sniper fights), and is almost entirely offensive based.

As noted, Jesse James was an exceptional short range shot. He blended speed (Because if you don’t shoot first, you might not get a shot off at all), insight (Who to shoot first when confronted by a posse matters. Choose wrong and you might not get to pull the trigger again) and accuracy (Because it doesn’t matter if you shoot at the right guy first if you miss). I have no idea how proficient a shot he was with a rifle, but I would guess he was at least fairly good because, again, there is some overlap between the two skill sets.

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AngelOfTheBroken-If you can provide a grayed out line, I can look into it. Indeed, I want to because the program shouldn’t be doing things like that.

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In other news, I’ve begun to debug the next chapter. It is very long (900k or 550 pages) but players might find it very short as there are many stray threads that are cut loose here, but not everyone will have those to deal with.

My target time for completion is Sunday. I hope the debugging will go smoothly.

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Good luck! Can’t wait :slight_smile:

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The debugging took considerably less time than I had assumed, thanks in large part to the accuracy of notepad++ for cross checking error lines and the fact that I somehow didn’t make more than forty mistakes this time around.

The link is below. This is the second to last full chapter, so tell me what will make it better.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89217689/web/mygame/index.html