Vendetta: Rise of a Gangster - Resumed

cant wait to see how she ends up.

MINOR UPDATE ONLINE

I’ve tweaked and fixed some bits & pieces (we should now finally be rid of the last missing / repeated scene bug . . . Hooray! :smiley: ), completed the full Morello poker scene and the one leading directly on from that (which also includes another hit option, for those who like waving their gun around), added another Angel scene mid-Chapter, and also the first of the other relationship scenes–in this case “good-time girl” Monique.

Don’t forget that if you do want to pursue a relationship in future (e.g. Monique) it needs to a) Be someone you’ve met, and b) You need to use a Weekly option at least once to indicate your intent. If both conditions are met then at some point during that Chapter there’ll be a main storyline scene for that relationship (although it won’t necessarily be in the same week you used the Weekly option).

As always, if you can spare the time, thoughts and suggestions would be very much appreciated.

http://vendetta1.webs.com/web/mygame/index.html

D’aw, I enjoyed being able to save the bakery. Possible error found, if I choose not to flirt with Carina the first week it’s available then the option is no longer available for the proceeding weeks. At least for the Black Hand background. Also found a small inconsistency, as with the bagman background if you use your contacts to negotiate the price, Scanlon will say $200 while the choice will say $300 and $300 is subtracted from my money clip.

How do you get the Angel scenes? The only ones i’ve seen are the ones where you meet her, and when she leaves.

I’ve had the scenes with Angel, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to find the scenes with Carina or Monique.

Grah, still no Mariella. :frowning:

The Morello plot is quite intriguing though. Kudos there. I tried playing briefly through some of the new character scenes, too, and they seem like interesting enough additions to the world.

@13ventrm Changes have been made to the Weekly options for the new relationship scenes being added to the main storyline–this will temporarily cause problems with how the Weekly relationship options used to work (i.e. for those with no main story scene yet), in that they will disappear sooner.

Well spotted on the Scanlon price, thanks. He was clearly inclined to be a little too generous!

@Shintaro After taking her from Bianchi’s clutches, you have to allow Angel to stay with you for any further scenes in Chapter Two. If you do that there should another scene at the very start of Week 4, and sometimes a later scene near the very end of the final week (if still with you at that point). There is no qualification other than letting her stay with you. If she leaves at any point you should always be told, and you won’t then encounter her again before Chapter Three.

@LawrenceJWatson At present the only extra scene involving Carina (indirectly) appears during the first week of Chapter Two (Week 2)–the tournament at the poolroom. For that one you have to ‘rescue’ Carina from the Bathhouse in Chapter One by giving her a job at the Navy Street Poolroom and successfully taking her with you from the Bathhouse. For obvious reasons, you also need to own the Poolroom.

For the extra scene with Monique, you need to choose her at the Bathhouse in Chapter One, which then gives you the Weekly option to call & hang out with her. You need to use that option at least once sometime during the first couple weeks of Chapter Two.

@Anansi I must admit, right now poor Mariella is in serious danger of slipping into Chapter Three, to tie in with a possible problem involving the alky-cooking racket . . . At something like 3,500+ lines of code (bearing in mind each paragraph counts as just two lines regardless of length) and 46,000+ words (albeit including code), Chapter Two is already a little more bloated than intended–and is not yet finished. You might have to make do with one of the floozies from the Bathhouse for the first few weeks . . . :wink:

Thanks for the feedback guys. If any of the above walk-throughs don’t achieve the desired results, please let me know.

I suppose patience is as much a virtue in this part of the game as in criminal empire-building.

In the meantime, two potential bugs/issues:

  1. I’ve noticed that notoriety rankings seem to (automatically?) downgrade at the end of a chapter? Is this intentional? My public image was a 67 just moments before, but after the “End of Chapter 2” screen picked up, it had dropped to 59. A similar adjustment seems to take place after Chapter 1, although I don’t have numbers on hand. I had before assumed it had something to do with the choices I made, but this seems to happen every time.

  2. Is there any way in the current demo to trigger police suspicion? I tried to behave as flagrantly as possible and take all possible jobs. Admittedly, I didn’t open a Speakeasy or alcohol still. However, I murdered the guy who was “tailing” me, took the first Ginelli job, attacked the guy in the barber shop with a razor, murdered Bianchi in public, killed DeGrazio (admittedly in the restroom), murdered the Alderman and his associates while leaving a witness alive and wounded, ran a protection racket, did the first job with Dino, brutalized the bookie, brutalized the butcher, jackrolled the sailor without sharing my “earnings” and about half the available weeks harassed petty criminals for cuts of their money (the other half spent training with guns). I didn’t buy anything to improve my respect rating, and I didn’t do any charity or even events that could be construed as nice, less that somehow mess things up.

Even with all that, however, the police never even suspected me of anything. Is this just an aspect of the game that hasn’t come up yet? I’m sort of at wits end, and unless there’s some “public confession” option, I don’t see how else I can attract heat.

Have a bit of an issue with how quickly I can gain respect, I was able to get to 49 respect by the end of the chapter, and that got me thinking, if there’s nine chapters, then I can peak pretty early. And while cool, if I get to 100 respect fairly early then there’s nowhere to go in regards to that stat.

@Anansi It certainly is, and thanks for your understanding. In particular, I do very much want each of the possible relationships to be potentially meaningful in different ways, and beyond the obvious (the first clue is already in there with Carina, for instance). It’s really for this reason that I also don’t want to bunch them all too close together.

  1. Notoriety rankings: this is an intentional effect, and it occurs immediately upon making your future “career” choice at the end of Chapter Two. The reasoning behind this is that so far you’ve been pretty much the lone wolf, dabbling in whatever takes your fancy (or for which you have the attributes, anyway), doing jobs for / with various groups, etc. In essence, your Notoriety, like your Respect, is very much personal to you. There will therefore be no change whatsoever if you continue the ‘lone wolf’ route beyond Chapter Two . . .

Should you choose one of the other three options, however, some changes in perception are made, most especially Notoriety. It can go either up or down, and more so the farther away it is from 50/50 (i.e. it heads back towards the middle). The larger the group you join, and based on your perceived rank within that group, the more perception will change to reflect your new public image. For example, if you finally join with Ginelli/Mangano et al–the largest Italian gang–you become just another common hoodlum, at least until you rise in rank once again.

  1. I should have mentioned it sooner to save you the trouble (sorry), as Heat is one section I keep putting off and putting off until there’s a large enough section of the game working over which to properly balance this feature, but I’m still tweaking the behind-the-scenes factors for this as the story develops. At this very moment in time you are in fact immune from investigation, arrest and any subsequent prosecution. That won’t be the case for very much longer of course, as you can make enough mistakes within the Demo alone to find yourself incarcerated before the end of that, so the entire Heat system is currently high on my list of things ToDo. I wasn’t planning to do so originally, but I now also want to include the possibility of such as jury tampering and using your Contacts to sway the end result of any investigation / prosecution, which is one of the reasons why I’ve delayed delving into this whole side of things thus far. Soon, though. :slight_smile:

@13ventrm Although you can gain easy respect by boosting your appearance (clothes, jewelry, car, abode, partner…) this is limited to about one third of your total. That said, as with the Heat and Notoriety balancing, this is certainly a topic likely to undergo a final revision in the near future and some early actions will certainly be downgraded in terms of the respect you can earn from them. I was aiming for about 40 respect to be achievable, on average playthroughs, by the end of the demo, so it’s definitely currently running a little high.

Ah, I see. So how goes the demo refining?

It’s going well, thanks, and I’m putting in some extra hours this week to get things done as I really wanted to be further along overall than I am at present. Oh, well–the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that . . .

VENDETTA - RISE OF A GANGSTER SURVEY

I’ve knocked up a 20-question survey to help with overall Demo balancing, fine-tuning and future development stuff, if anyone can spare the time to share some thoughts and help improve the game / influence future development. It’s completely annonymous so please, don’t pull your punches. Brutal honesty is the best policy!

Many thanks.

The first dozen results are in and already we’re seeing some interesting patterns emerging–and some quite surprising differences of opinion on particular topics. It’s certainly proving to be an eye-opener, with some very insightful and thought-provoking comments. Interesting stats on the most / least preferred Backgrounds, too . . .

These freebie things remain available online for ten days, so towards the end of that period I’ll post the final overall results / findings here, together with conclusions drawn from that, for any final comments & discussion.

Thanks again everyone, this is proving to be a very useful exercise and I’m sure it will be of tremendous benefit to the game, both in balancing the Demo and to help guide future development.

You’re most welcome.
I know I haven’t been commenting much, mostly because life is keeping me busy and I can only be on for a minute or so every now and then, but I managed to do the survey this morning before school, and I really hope that’s (kinda) made up for me not commenting.
Am really sorry, and I would like to take this chance to say how completely awesome this game is (and how depressed I would have become had you really left it :C)

I have completed the survey, I look forward to seeing the patterns.

I somehow got the option for Angel to blow something up :smiley: This was after I hit her with the butt of my gun and took her to my apartment.

Although it’s entirely for my own selfish reasons in developing my own project, I’d be very curious to see any results of the survey that you feel comfortable publishing. I’ve already completed it myself, it’s a great idea.

Ven don’t allway give into cosumer want this is your vision, and making this game for free.

I’ve completed the survey, although I’m not sure I had much to say on some questions- I filled them in anyway, but my answers were kind of sparse.

@Cheeetar
Don’t worry; mine were too :smiley: