Home » PLAYER'S HQ 1.13 » JA2 Complete Mods & Sequels » JA2 Renegade Republik » Some comments on gameplay so farI
Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #168138]
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Wed, 19 December 2007 12:58
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dbonar |
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Messages:47
Registered:June 2006 |
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I'm loving it!
More constructively I do have a few thoughts.
* The guy at the front of the boat in the NW SAM site seems to be in a very bad location. I walked mercs all around the deck, the inside of the ship, the docks, and swimming around the bow and I never did "find" him. I had to use cheats to kill him.
* Did you upgrade stealth somehow? My mercs are sneaking up to people better then normal. Part of that is the enhanced camouflage outfits but it feels like more then that.
* The area between the NE mine sector and the NE SAM is annoying. Its the first place where I feel that the placement of enemies is strictly for game purposes. Fighting through the building feels very gamey to me.
* Cool weapons although the progression seems fast. I'm fighting for my second mine and I'm finding sniper rifles, fancy SMGs, and some decent assault rifles.
KUTGW
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Corporal
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #169547]
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Fri, 04 January 2008 14:25 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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glad you guys like it
Mad marcus
the guy in front part of the boat is a Bug, i had this before too. apparently, the AI can get there while the player can't. The enemy hasn't been placed there. It moved there by AI failure.
i haven't made any changes to how stealth works, don't have the skills for such. In RR, limited vision is on by default and maps offer much more cover than in vanilla. This might make it much easier to sneak up on enemies.
yeah, there are many other complaints about this sector so i hope i can create an acceptable replacement map once i find the time. the map was taken from vengeance, where the placement of enemies was supposed to be more mean and not so victim-esque as in the maps designed specificly for 1.13
for the progression of weapons, you can try "slow weapon progression" or something like that in data-renegade/ja2options.ini and enable this option to have slower weapon progression
johno
please install the hotfix1 and addition1 patches to fix the crash about vodka/ molotov
you can't get onto a 2nd level roof. Not without my intervention that is ;-D
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #169748]
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Sat, 05 January 2008 21:55 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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your very welcome
just one question, you use the 1080 exe? or do you use one of the exe's provided by the download archive?
the bad condition of the items is something that bothers me too. But that is only like this early on. later on in progress, items get better and will be in a better state too. I'd be quite happy to have some sort of external modifier for this, as it it renders many early game weapons next to useless (why bother repairing if i'll get better stuff at the closest SAM site)
1. No. Galina is bound to stay in a10 and doesn't sell anything. the shopkeeper thing is more a storytelling element. And Fung's store is abandoned, you can grab what you can caryy and that's that. there are more characters that wouldbe cool if they sold any stuff, but this again is something that is hardcoded so i couldn't enable more traders. However, there's gotta be one more of them to discover.
Ilja can be recruited earlier. There might even be a bug that lets him be recruited early on... Normally he should be recruitable once you control the strategicly relevant (Income! Mines) places of the North. Might be 3 working mines, might be earlier i can't grant it 
but be sure to try controlling (it means actually receiving money from) 3 Mines. i can't say off of my head which ones are the relevant mines but i think former Grumm isn't necessary. That would make ex drassen, ex chitzena and then ex alma or ex cambria. something along this lines.
yeah, thx very much for discovering the traps on thug's stuff ;-D It's in fact something that i'm rather proud of, having an NPC try to lure the player into traps without actually turning hostile or anything. Well Thug doesn't like handing over stuff that he errr... found.... to others
5 is unintentional. i haven't had a single look into repairability of things ever, i guess it's a bug then 
6. That 6. is the big show-stopper Bug i'm sorry i haen't found a way to get this fixed.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #169808]
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Sun, 06 January 2008 14:59 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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sgt. york
i think both raw oil and diamonds can be sold to certain traders (Franz for the diamonds)
other than that, they're currently not of much use. they could be converted to be silver and gold like of course. Maybe if i add an actual diamond mine and an actual oilfield. Until then, they're primarily for atmosphere and such.
no, i haven't placed bad condition items on purpose. The game makes the enemy drop very bad gear early on, and in very bad condition. I don't think it was that extreme in vanilla ja2, but then i could be wrong about that.
the repairability thing should be changed for ceramic plates and such but other than that i see little purpose... maybe i remember changing that when working on some items stuff next time ;-D
diabolical NPC behaviour? In ja2 RR?
I'd always wish for more dialogue, but there are practical limits of how many lines a player will be able to stand until he decides to just skip most of it, there are practical limits as to how much dialogue a voice actor can record (especially lenght/ detail of the lines) and there were even stronger filesize limitations we had when actually recording the stuff (prior to .OGG support, everything was in .WAV)
the only thing that can be done in this respect is doing it without actual voices, just text lines for NPC, then you can perfectly snycronize the NPC actions to their dialogue, but if you're working with dozens of external voice actors, you can forget that. If you don't want to invest decades into the developement of your storyline, you'll have to hand out dialogue to the voice actors usually long before the actual NPC actions are all scripted. if you wait for everything to be scripted perfectly, the potential voice actors might already have dissapeared somewhere in the web.
for a small mod you migth want to try this approach to have all scripts running prior to recording actual voiced speech. But then again there are practical limits concerning the voice actor's time and availability. So unless you find extremely reliable speakers that can't dissappear without you knowing, like your neighbour or a close friend or something, i wouldn't recommend it.
in this respect, the community has to deal with the results of the quality of their own cooperation and support once they finally play a mod in question.
in ja2 RR i'm actually very proud of the community. The number of voice actors and their cooperation is on a scale completely unseen in the ja2 community, even easily surpassing the time of the "Golden era".
of course even then, given the scale of ja2 RR, we're far away from how a professionally made computer game would look like, but in this respect i'd like to refer to wildfire 6, where they were working with a professional company that provided voice actors and everyhing yet the olny thing they came up with are a handful of shitty-designed, stereotypical and uninteresting AIM Mercs. Not a second did they dare to add anything of importance to the storyline. They got rid of some NPC's, but they didn't add anything. Not even the empty RPC slots! I mean c'mon they could've just put 2 of their boring mercs to these slots rather than overwriting existing popular mercs, but they wouldn't!
I think this nicely illustrates storyline problems. Because as soon as you add an RPC, people will ask themselves, what is his/ her Role, and had they just put 2 new RPC's into wildfire, they wouldn't have had any storyline to justify their existence. You see what i try to imply, as soon as some really new content in terms of a character is added, it asks for accessories like a fitting map, like maybe other NPC's referring to this new person, matching equipment etc.
In ja2 RR, we've shown a couple of very interesting features, and i have more of them in the drawer but not the time for it. My hope is that future modmakers can pick up and improve on it. That's why i made ja2 RR of such a huge scale, that i could squeeze in so many inputs and ideas, exclusive new stuff in many places combined with the awesome potential of 1.13's external data.
i know of at least one modmaker who has told me that his aim is to "beat" ja2 RR with his own Mod. As weird as it sounds, it's what i hope for in the longer run ;-D
so i encourage anybody to research the things he likes about ja2 RR and also analyse the weaknesses and take this into consideration for future mods. Look at the community just in this forum. they are many, and they have much more skill in almost any respect than i'll ever have. Just with some small consensous, they could come up with kick-ass mods in little time. it's just apparently they don't share my interest in what a new mod would have to encircle. it's always just Guns Guns Guns (oh, and lately it was items and micromanagement in the inventory project, but that's still not the area i was hoping for)
Noone gives a damn on characters, maps, storyline, quests etc. the ja2 RR beta hasn't changed anything about that, so my hopes were dissapointed in this respect. But it was well worth the try, and i think it at least provided a couple of hours of fun ja2 gameplay for those people that could bear the crashes and that i'm happy about.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170185]
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Wed, 09 January 2008 13:08 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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1. Bodyguard has three functions: he protects conseil if conseil is in the sector, he is part of giving the former skyrider quest (if conseil is in sector) and he can repair the chopper if the chopper was damaged in the tactical map (don't ask me if this feature ever worked... i've never seen this happen since i never damaged the chopper tiles...)
if conseil isn't in the same sector, you don't need to talk to him much
4. yes you can. see the folder batllesnds? leon's character 63, check out the wav files that start with 063_ ....wav
the cursing might be in there
it could also be in the folder speech, check the first couple of .wav files that start with 063 again... one of them might be it.
5. During certain versions of ja2 1.13, the civilian turns took incredibly long (this was before "speedupcivillianturn= true was possible) also you can't do much sensible stuff using civilians anyway. also i have map file sizes under suspicion of being related to the map loading freezes you describe in section 8.
6. Yeah, they are weak. They'll carry different stuff in the next version.
7. agreed. the game is supposed to be easy early on. The point of this is to allow the player to advance far in the game despite the awful crashes and to be able to focus on the new elements. This is slightly selfish on my part. you can make the game harder by adding additional elites in ja2options.ini, but be aware that this will provide even better equipment for you.
i've already read a couple of times that too much good stuff drops. One can try using slow_progression=true and see if it makes gameplay more enjoyable
8. Yes, this is the main problem IMO.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170522]
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Sat, 12 January 2008 12:39 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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i can fully understand that feeling. It might have been careless to release a beta with such a show-stopper bug known and not fixed, but i had hoped with more people knowing about it, somebody migth be able to help us out.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170670]
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Sun, 13 January 2008 22:48 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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burzmali
good point about the save game filesize. This time i had the first prototypical map loading freeze at 1.82 megs save game size, the map only contained 1 NPC and few buildings.
It was one of the additional tilesets though, so the load of custom tiles migth have added to it, plus many enemies.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170672]
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Sun, 13 January 2008 22:53 
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afp |
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Messages:75
Registered:November 2007 |
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There are some temporary text files created in SavedGames folder, have you tried to delete them and restart + reload the game, and check if still crash? Just an idea...
Also, may be a good ideea not to overload the sectors with remaining items, I mean hundreds of items in every sector. Don't know if this counts, but it may decrease the saved game few kb....
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Corporal
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170673]
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Sun, 13 January 2008 22:59 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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reloading the game usually works, as the freeze is semi-sporadic.
it was a previously not visited sector, means 0 items lying about (apart from what enemy soldiers have in their inventory etc.) but no items in the sector inventory screen ;-/
temporary text files in the save game folder? i only have different .sav files... ?
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170679]
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Mon, 14 January 2008 00:11 
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afp |
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Messages:75
Registered:November 2007 |
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I have a lot like this: "LoadMapTempFile1.txt" .... they may left after a crash then...
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Corporal
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170691]
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Mon, 14 January 2008 03:31 
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KEN C |
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Messages:244
Registered:May 2007 Location: Aberdeen Washington USA |
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@ SGT YORK i have played this wonderful mod thru to the end twice. if you want a real challenge please try insane with only minor ini tweaks. it is tough! endless relentless counter attacks! i cannot create militia strong enough, fast enough to hold any towns without a full squad on site to assist. the only way i have been able to complete the game is to abandon the towns and advance my squads directly to the end. i love it!
@ Scorpion i am sure that i speak for many players (people who love to play but who are unable to participate in modding) thank you for giving us a brand new version of the ja2 saga to experience. please try to finish this wonderful using YOUR vision. you have created a unique new atmosphere in this setting and for me it is quite realistic and believable. (by the way do you have irena's phone number? nah, she is probably your girlfriend.)
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Sergeant 1st Class
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #170955]
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Tue, 15 January 2008 12:01 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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OLDNOOB
i'm very happy you had such an intense gameplay! Other players have found it difficult to keep the enemies attacking throughout the long course of a game. if you don't mind, did you make some specific .INI changes to achieve this effect? if yes, i'd be curious about them. thanks
On a sidenote, irina isn't my girlfriend and i only have an e-mail account and ICQ and such (and i'm not passing on, LOL)
My girlfriend on the other hand isn't very fond of the violent nature of ja2 and could therefore not be properly motivated to act any characters for me. Yeah, yeah, i'm a wimp, i know ;-D
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171048]
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Tue, 15 January 2008 21:29 
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KEN C |
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Messages:244
Registered:May 2007 Location: Aberdeen Washington USA |
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Scorpion
i have played rr 2 times "as issued". no ini changes.
rrb17
insane
tons of guns
si fi
i use 6 badass imps (5 to start, 1 joins asap)
in both these games i have found it impossible to hold any sector or town with militia alone. and 1 or 2 mercs cannot replace lost militia fast enough to keep up with 3-4 counter attacks every day. so i soon run out of mercs (limit 18) trying to hold just a few towns and sites. please note: i am not complaining! this adds to the challenge. in my next game i will try to find the spawning areas of the army and cut them off at the pass. maybee that will free up 1 squad to explore more of your wonderful maps and quests.
speaking of quests, i have not been able to complete the ship quest because i get ctd when the ship captian attempts to put the chest into the crate.
i have not been able to do the escort because i have 18 mercs tied up by the time i get that far. what to do?
it will be a long time before i get tired of this mod. thanks again.
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Sergeant 1st Class
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171051]
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Tue, 15 January 2008 21:42 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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for the first problem, there's hotfix1 that changes the way the ship quest is handled
i suggest to also install the other patches, see the thread "RR patches and additions"
the other thing about the 18 mercs is a bit more tricky. The only thing i know is to fire some mercs to make space. the good thing about AIM guys is, that you can usually hire them again soon.
so without specific ini changes, you had a challenging game... this is very good to know ;-D
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171063]
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Tue, 15 January 2008 23:29 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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i think here in the RR section, every thread turns at some point to something else than it used to be, i think it's okay as everybody can easily revert back ontopic or add something new... i'll reply to most of it anyway ;-D (did i ever say i like meta-gaming?)
1. That's something new to 1.13, you have different prof.dat files for the difficulty levels and for tons of guns/ normal guns settings (unfortunately not for sci-fi/ normal)
this means after changing prof.dat by using proedit, you have to rename your prof.dat file to the specific prof.dat file for the difficulty level you use and for the gun settings
e.g. rename the edited prof.dat to "Prof_Expert_TonsOfGuns.dat" as this latter files are the ones actually used by 1.13 (ja2 was different in this respect, right)
(obviously if you use other settings, rename it accordingly)
2. I think this feature doesn't work. You may want to give it a try and be so kind a inform me of any results? thanks, that'd be nice.
3. XN_a maps are alternative maps. Typically weapon caches, skyrider location, madlab location, gabby location, such things. There's an xml file that even allows adding more of those (alternatesectors.xml or something like that)
P3_m is the map file used for the cut scenes. These files don't exist in UB (no alternative maps, no cut scenes) but they are normal for ja2. You can compare them to what you see in maps.slf
make sure to have a look at this xml in question, it allows adding more variety by new alternative maps to the game.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171220]
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Wed, 16 January 2008 19:11 
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KEN C |
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Messages:244
Registered:May 2007 Location: Aberdeen Washington USA |
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sorry to bother you but i can't seem to get the freewebs links to work. is there another way to get the patches? thanks.
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Sergeant 1st Class
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171241]
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Wed, 16 January 2008 21:10 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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try pasting these links into the browser. they're shortcuts and not links, i kinda... well... messed that up.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171465]
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Thu, 17 January 2008 19:21 
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KEN C |
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Messages:244
Registered:May 2007 Location: Aberdeen Washington USA |
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sorry no luck. i guess i'm just an oldnooob. (extra o for emphasis)
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Sergeant 1st Class
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171557]
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Fri, 18 January 2008 10:58 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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PealHi all!
I have done right now, the normale 113 Mod and i love to see, that you guys are ready with a beta of "RR"
So i have just one question and it will be like chrismas to wait for the answer.
Is this beta realy playable, in the way that everything works fine expect some not so important bugs, or should i wait for a update, because i dont wanna push my chrismas present in kind of a brandnew JA2mod into the mud!
willkommen im Forum, Peal.
honestly, as discussed in the threads going on in this section, there is a playablilty problem.
It however only appears in the mid to late game. So what you can do is enjoy the early and midgame gameplay and then, once you notice that the freeze were talking about occurs regularly starts to happen, stop or reload and earlier game.
But i must admit the late game has become hardly playable for many gamers, so if you keep playing to the late game stages you might face too much frustration.
i'd like to add that there are many things that can be seen before these problems happen. However, said freeze is more frequent than in normal 1.13, other than that, RR plays the same as beta17 of 1.13.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #171558]
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Fri, 18 January 2008 11:00 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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hieronymos
feel free to inform us if the outcome of these changes will be as desired. i was very conservative not changing any militia settings and such so there's a lot of potential for improvement.
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Sergeant Major
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Re: Some comments on gameplay so farI[message #172677]
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Wed, 23 January 2008 19:32 
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the scorpion |
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Messages:1834
Registered:September 2004 Location: CH |
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sgt. York
yes, i saw your postings about verteran militia. will have an eye on it when i play next time.
1. oh, this is just an item tossed in the mix by 1.13. it's just for atmosphere in RR
2. Lua console is a feature that will at one point in the future allow to add some scripting to ja2. i guess some hotkey that you inadvertedly pressed opened it or something. these things are beyond my pay grade ;-D
3. Yes, the strategic map doesn't represent the actual sectors. See it this way, the RR map covers large parts of an area, but sectors are small... doesn't make sense. Consider the sectors as parts of what is displayed as a whole on the strategic map. For example towns are out of proportions anyway, thus the town to the west reached out to the ocean 
peal
there shouldn't be much of a problem from using german basic installation. Just the language mix, but this is not that bad IMHO. changing all the language stuff is quite an endevour...
the 13 new playable characters are RPC's. they can be found throughout the game, the first one is at A9, the possible second at a10, spread over the upper part of the map there's many recruitables.
yes, proedit works, just keep in mind ja2 1.13 expects from you to rename prof.dat according to the difficulty level and weapon option (hint: use tonsofguns as the other option is not really supported in RR)
ja2options.ini works as well, but you need to edit the one located in data-renegade folder. I suggest you play a game of RR without first modifing the options.ini though, and once you're finished you can modfiy options for the second game having already the "full picture" of how the game will behave.
there are things in the readme that tell about certain values that mustn't be changed in ja2options.ini in order to prevent breaking quests.
peal: the intro is poorly made, it's maybe better you don't see it ;-D
there's just story elements in parts of the intro but they are not really needed for the gameplay.
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Sergeant Major
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