@paul No problem, it’s as good a place as any to discuss them.
We haven’t had a decent gangster / mafia game in years so I have high hopes for at least one of these, but I dare not start playing anything just yet as I know it would only distract me!
@LawrenceJWatson He certainly needs some real advantages to offset the difficulty in playing that character background and make it a viable alternative, but overall I think he will probably remain the hardest one to start with, at least.
The next update will be mostly a technical one to solve the loading speed problem for Chapter Two and beyond. It’s a major revamp but a necessary one, unfortunately.
For me the paroled convict backround isn’t any harder than the others. It actually seems to have an advantage in certain scenes, so I wouldnt change it too much.
As with all backgrounds, it is just a case of playing to their strengths and trying to avoid their weaknesses (which probably makes it sound easier than it is) but some weaknesses can be more crippling than others in the early stages. The paroled convict has two of those to overcome, which are not quite offset by enjoying high Intimidation & Awareness and reasonable Firearms. Some balancing is needed I think, but only in subtle ways, as I definitely prefer for the level of overall challenge to vary from one background to the next, rather than all be more or less equal.
MINOR UPDATE ONLINE
Behind-the-scenes, technical update this one, in an attempt to reduce (or at least, spread out . . .) the loading lag during Chapter Two. The end result should be more, but definitely shorter, pauses, at different points during the Chapter–hopefully to the extent where loading delays are now minimal (and bearable) overall.
It seems better to me but I have a decent net connection so I’d welcome opinion, if anyone can spare the time to flick through it some more. Many thanks.
@LawrenceJWatson Just been running some load speed tests and Chrome is definitely faster, but the game looks so ugly in that compared to IE (or indeed, Firefox . . . when that worked). I find it hard to read with Chrome, not nice at all. It reminds me of those old dot-matrix printouts! (Damn, showing my age now). Urgh.
Edit: scratch that, I’ve just found a Windows setting (this is an old XP machine) to switch to ‘Clear Type’ fonts only. Chrome looks much better now.
I’ve just been doing some final balance tweaking on the Demo as it currently stands, one aspect of which is to reduce the Respect you can earn from various actions (it was being a little generous overall for just the first two of nine Chapters). Bear in mind that Underworld Respect is not intended to be just a rating–it will have a direct affect in various ways, most especially how other “men of respect” treat you in your dealings with them in future (and if, indeed, they will deal with you at all in some cases).
At present you can boost your perceived Respect by the things you buy (i.e. your overall “Appearance”)–clothing, jewelry, car, abode, and stuff for your partner. But is there enough incentive to do so gradually, or do you find that you simply save all your money for business & racket opportunities, especially in the early stages?
One alternative being considered is to change the way your “Appearance” modifies Respect, and therefore how you are perceived. Instead of just boosting Respect, it could do so to some (a lesser) extent and instead also act as an artificial ceiling. In essence, you might have earned (e.g.) 40 Respect from your actions but unless you also “look the part” (based on your current Appearance / things bought), the outward perception–your current Respect rating–would be lower than it actually is. This also means you could not achieve 100 Respect unless you also have the best of everything you can buy.
If the system is changed to this “artificial ceiling” based on Appearance, then other changes would also be made to Chapter Two so this can have an earlier effect. For instance, instead of your interactions with Dino being based on Leadership stat alone, Respect would be used as a modifier even at this early stage. This means that if you still look like a bum he would be even less inclined to accept you usurping his leadership, but if you at least look more like a boss then he would be more inclined to follow you even if you presently lack real Leadership ability . . . Dealings with the likes of Hugh Scanlon, the Fischettis, Rocco Bagalia and even such as Angel could also–potentially–be affected accordingly, and it would modify the end result of many Weekly options. The main effect would, however, still be in Chapter Three and beyond, as planned.
If you have an opinion either way I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.
When playing the current version of the demo, I tend to spend almost nothing on ‘Respect’ items. I focus pretty much exclusively on saving money for business/racket opportunities. Maybe I’m missing something, but thus far it seems like there aren’t any events where your respect is a significant factor in your success, but very many where money/businesses and rackets owned play a big role in your success. If scenes show up later where your Respect heavily influences your ability to succeed, then I’d probably change my play style.
As Lux said. Right now, the only thing I spend money on is the funeral suit (where I go for the five-hundred). Otherwise, I’m building up money to buy rackets.
Frankly, since if you don’t buy, for example, the Fischetti rackets the moment you get a chance, you have to spend a Weekly on ‘em, it’s important to keep a full money clip. It’s probably Chapter Three when you can ease up on making money and start livin’ like a boss.
When playing the demo, I’d make sure I had enough to purchase a racket when I knew the opportunity was coming up and spend the excess money on respect items. E.g. I’d hang onto around $2000 until the fish shop became available, but I’d usually have enough to buy some nice things before then.
I’ll have to echo those that regard Respect as nearly worthless in the demo. I always prefer to save my money for more practical uses, like rackets or legitimate businesses. If I am at the end of Chapter Two, I usually do purchase some respect items just for the sake of boosting my stats before the game ends, but it’s not something I would seriously invest in if I knew the game was actually going to continue. Currently, the lack of respect doesn’t interfere with my play style at all, so I have no reason to change things.
I do like the “ceiling” idea for respect, as it seems plausible. However, in my early attempts at the game, I was actually thinking about a potential negative effect. That is, will there be relationship between increasing respect and increasing heat? I figured no one would suspect a guy that looks like a bum, and so intentionally avoided buying anything nice. My precedent here was the way Vincent Gigante of the Genovese Family quite notoriously pretended to be mentally ill to avoid prosecution. Or how, in the recent film American Gangster, the first hint the police had about the identity of underworld kingpin is when he decided to dress fancy and show off his wealth. So could there be both a “ceiling” that would penalize players for avoiding buying things and an effect of this sort that could reward them? Or is that too complicated?
Just a quick thing. I went with the Carina romance and used the weekly flirt option. But at the end of the week update it told me I had tried to seduce her and failed to get the father’s blessing. I did get the blessing, and i dont even remember a seduction scene? Any help? (:
Edit: I killed myself off and did it again (accidentaly killing myself once wrong button) -______- and this time i got the fathers blessing at the end of the week. So maybe just a fluke?
Thanks guys. It does sound like we need to do something where Respect is concerned, as I suspected, but at the same time be careful not to make it completely crippling if you choose to neglect your Appearance early on. There needs to be balance. Any direct negative consequences should also be made clear at the time, and positive benefits at least hinted at in the text. I’ll rework that whole side of things towards the end of the week, if there are no opposing views offered.
@Anansi I like the possibilities . . . (i.e. pros and cons either way, so it remains a question of player preference, perhaps for a particular background, etc). Whether it’s too complicated or not remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.
@dragonfly I’m aiming to have all the Demo fine-tuning done and Chapter Three online by the 1st of April (and besides, “Fool’s Day” seems somehow appropriate where deadlines are concerned) but I doubt the full game will be available on the app store before, say, September or even October. At this stage, a final release date is very much pure speculation . . . I would be happy to see it up there by the end of the year.
There’ll be a smaller update sometime before 1st April (probably this coming weekend) to upload / playtest all the Demo tweaks and additional / still-missing scenes for the Demo, including a brand new one in Chapter One (coming just before the ablutions sequence) to better balance the Mangano / Chuck / Dino early choice route and make it a tougher decision . . . with an interesting possible twist to consider.
@Raven Strange, I thought I’d fixed that one . . . but it’s possible I didn’t upload the latest version of that file at that time. I’ve now added some extra code to make that bit more certain (or at least, even less likely to refer to events which never actually happened), and uploaded the appropriate file. Thanks for pointing it out.
There’ll be an update later today to better balance and round off the Demo (Chapters One and Two) including some new scenes, mostly relationship ones for your partner at the time–Monique, Carina, Lucinda or Adamo–and a separate scene for each of those meeting Angel for the first time, as they’re all very different people and react to / are treated differently by her. In some cases their own personalities make all the difference and its just a story extension, while in other cases your own Choices are paramount.
I’m still aiming for April 1–next Sunday–as my deadline for the next update pushing forward the actual main storylines, i.e. at that point I’m aiming to upload the bulk of new Chapter Three.
This is mainly to address some balancing issues in the Demo and to fill out the relationship side of things mentioned above.
Note that there is a completely new scene in Chapter One so be careful when clicking through fast. It comes just after you decide what to do with the Poolroom, before the ablutions sequence. It’s available to all three main routes (Mangano, Chuck, Dino) but does differ quite considerably between Mangano and the other two, for reasons as will become clear within the storyline itself.
To save some of you wasting time searching for them, please note that no new ‘explicit’ scenes have yet been added. I’ve decided that for now it would be better, and suit more playtesters overall, if for now I focused my available time on the main storylines for Chapter Three.
As always, thoughts, comments and opinion would be very much appreciated. In particular, if anyone still has serious loading-delay issues, please let me know roughly where these seem to occur. Thanks.
Didn’t know there was a new bit with the Irish at the start. Nice.
What happened to the scene with Angel and bombing the shop for you? Couldn’t trigger that anymore. Then again, didn’t like the scene too much with her dropping the bomb and it’s pretty much what Black Hands do.
Personally I loved the bit where the girls met Angel, and it is very good that the girls’ reactions are different too. Look forward to seeing the next chapter
