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Author Topic: CSG update #44 - Demo update and status report  (Read 12361 times)
Vince
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« on: May 09, 2020, 09:49:34 pm »

The combat demo:

Overall, it went spectacularly well (for a change). Of course, the beta test was encouraging but there’s a huge difference between handpicked battle-hardened veterans and the general public. It could have easily gone sideways but didn’t, which is encouraging.

To-date the demo’s been downloaded 3,754 times (no idea whether it’s good or bad, but surely it’s better than nothing), the average time played is 3 hours 2 min. We gained 4,359 wishlists in the last 30 days (and lost 227 - I assume they were disappointed with the demo), so our total is 23,261.

We spent the last 3 weeks processing the feedback and improving the overall design (added Recoil Control (a derived stat), close combat engagement (can’t do reaction shots at other combatants, cover bonus is halved), displayed initiative in combat as well as bonus APs granted by feats, full party weapons reload, etc). We’ve also added feat icons, more hairstyles and facial customization options (tattoos and scars), as well as the interface improvements.





The demo is now updated, so you can take it for a spin and see the current changes. We’ll continue improving the character & combat systems,  and interface (and thus the demo), so stay tuned. In other news:

Quests:

We’ve started implementing quests and we expect all the Pit’s quests to be done in 2 months. Let’s say 3 months to be safe, which will give us plenty of time to finish the Armory (half-done) and the Hydroponics (only the first area of the Hydroponics will be available in Chapter 1, the other two areas will require heavy gear and skills) to launch the game on Early Access by the end of the year.



Here’s the very first (optional) quest you recieve. If you talk to Tanner in the demo, you know that he wants you to go to the Armory but it’s a dangerous trip and you might need a buddy, either to become a life-long traveling companion or to shield you from bullets and die a noble death so that you can live and prosper.

The first companion is Evans the Rifleman and he will gladly help you if you help him first.









Animations - much improved; we’re slowly working through the combat animations, then will start on non-combat animations, different poses for bar patrons and such, and creature animations.

Various models - working on more energy weapons, including shotguns (more like that concussion rifle in Dark Forces) and SMGs.

Creatures - four out of six creatures are done, so we’re right on schedule there.

Stealth - next on the list. Sneaking and generating noise are the easy part. The tricky part that determines if the system works or not is what happens when you make enough noise to attract the guards’ attention. It works on paper and screen mockups, hopefully it will work well in-game.
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Urizen
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« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2020, 04:16:06 am »

Procrastination gods have a dark sence of humour, the long wated update is here and I have a deadline for an importan proyect on wednesday, well at least I know i will have a good price at the end of the run.

The adittions seems really interesting, nothing can been said until a full run has been complete, but it seems that STR has receive a mayor overhaul and the improvements in the UI are really well received (specially the reload team botton). Can we have a patch note in order to know the full list of changes? Ok I am an idiot i have seen it know.

It is a pleasure to see that streewise includes the good old bluffs we loved in AoD, and to know that after this terrible year the way until the demo seems more clear. Keep it up guys!

And now the completely off topic petition, fist weapons had been commented again some days ago, I know they have drop out of the squedule and you have good reasons for. My only petition is that if there is a list of maybes it was put quite high on the list. Not only the concept off a beefy juggernaut punching people in the face until they die is a cool concept, but I also thing that low AP cost weapons (I assume that fist weapons will trade raw damage for AP) will make an excelent adittion to make Str and Str pearks even more interesting.

Any way you are doing an awesone job guys.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2020, 04:24:21 am by Urizen » Logged
Deni
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« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2020, 10:43:17 am »

Quote
the average time played is 3 hours 2 min.
I checked "Play time" in Steam it shows me 5 hours, last played May 1 (however I'm definitely played more than 20 hours, last time today).
Looks like Steam counts time only when game is started via Steam interface or shortcut referencing to "steam://" URL, not through ColonyShipGame.exe file.
Tried launch different game via exe - different story, <other game>.exe invokes steam when started unlike Colony Ship. Is it some build option for Steam integration?

Personally I think that to evaluate the demo you should play at least 5-10 hours - try different character builds, fail, start again etc.
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gondor
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« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2020, 03:44:42 am »

some small feedback on the update from CSG update #43 to #44 (which got installed automatically by Steam, maybe I should have disabled autoupdate)

After the update and loading my save my main character lost his perception implant - fine, game is still in radical changing process, things might get lost now. More distrubing was that the eye was still blocked for wearing goggles - but perception was correctly reduced by 1.
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Oscar
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« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2020, 09:18:26 am »

some small feedback on the update from CSG update #43 to #44 (which got installed automatically by Steam, maybe I should have disabled autoupdate)

After the update and loading my save my main character lost his perception implant - fine, game is still in radical changing process, things might get lost now. More distrubing was that the eye was still blocked for wearing goggles - but perception was correctly reduced by 1.

That's extremely strange as we didn't change tweak much about that. Can you upload the save? I have very old saves, from even before the demo release, and implants and everything loads fine.
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gondor
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« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2020, 11:05:09 am »

some small feedback on the update from CSG update #43 to #44 (which got installed automatically by Steam, maybe I should have disabled autoupdate)

After the update and loading my save my main character lost his perception implant - fine, game is still in radical changing process, things might get lost now. More distrubing was that the eye was still blocked for wearing goggles - but perception was correctly reduced by 1.

That's extremely strange as we didn't change tweak much about that. Can you upload the save? I have very old saves, from even before the demo release, and implants and everything loads fine.

Hello Oscar, sure will upload the save games - but I have to admit, as embarrassing it is, I couldn't locate the save game folder on my system :/
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Nick
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« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2020, 12:43:28 pm »

Hello Oscar, sure will upload the save games - but I have to admit, as embarrassing it is, I couldn't locate the save game folder on my system :/

%localappdata%\ColonyShipGame\Saved\SaveGames

Insert this into Explorer's address bar, it's a valid path =)
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Oscar
gondor
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« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2020, 03:05:05 pm »

Hello Oscar, sure will upload the save games - but I have to admit, as embarrassing it is, I couldn't locate the save game folder on my system :/

%localappdata%\ColonyShipGame\Saved\SaveGames

Insert this into Explorer's address bar, it's a valid path =)

Thanks! I got it - here is the link to the save files https://filebin.net/ojrk5pxx8z117g97
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PALU
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« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2020, 06:50:35 am »

Some feedback on the demo (tried it yesterday, with whatever version Steam downloaded):
Bugs:
- Trying to buy 1 out of a stack of 2 medium smoke grenades charges me for both of them but only delivers 1 (and claims I don't have enough money if I don't have enough for 2).
- Trying to sell items of which the store already have some (from a previous visit, I think) is refused with the store stack getting a red outline. Can probably be worked around by going to the gun'n'bullets store (or whatever the name is).
- Pathfinding needs some work. After getting the nearly useless sidekick, run to the betting booth and then try to run back to the judge. The character gets blocked by the sidekick (it's possible to work around, but the path finding ought to be able to figure out how to walk around the side kick).
- In the early fight with the three "knife" wielders (at least one of which uses a blunt weapon). I starting by running to a corner to the SE and wait for the opponents to come causes all three to surround the PC. Doing the same move to a corner to the W only cause 2 to approach (into the 2 valid attack positions), with the third one deciding to do nothing until one of the others had been cut down.
- Sort of bug: When you're lucky enough to "knock out" and enemy, that claims to knock them out for a round, which is false. It knocks them out for half a round. Assuming the sidekick is able to move up to the enemy without being shot to pieces, he'll be able to benefit from an increased hit chance, but only provided his next action is before the next action of that enemy. I assume the enemy does get some penalty from being knocked down, but the buggers were perfectly capable of killing my PC on their turn after being both knocked down and then maimed (no reasonable chance to deal enough damage to kill them, and so try to reduce the damage they can cause while chipping away another small piece of health).
- Not a bug as such: It looks like it should be possible to rotate the view to find paths (and characters) behind all those containers, but if there was a way I didn't find it.

The purpose of the demo isn't fully clear to me, and the evaluation depends on its purpose. If the purpose is to show/test the combat system for fully combat oriented characters (like the AoD demo), which I will assume it is, it's in the right ballpark needing tweaks, but if it's assumed to indicate a more or less mandatory starting path for all kinds of characters it's completely off.

Opinions:
- Reaction fire seems to be overly effective for the enemies (the sidekick tends to lose half his health on his first turn just trying to get into bashing range), while it seems to be too easy for missile wielders to just run away from the PC to take up a new firing position. There ought to be a significant disengagement penalty, especially since trying to follow probably is more or less guaranteed to result in triggering reaction fire from that opponent as well as everyone else (the characters I tried all had the reaction negating starting trait, hence 'probably').
- I find the combat to be a bit too hard. In my view, an optimal character for a fight using an optimal strategy ought to win a battle at least half the time (most fight will not be ones for which the PC has an optimal build, and the strategy probably won't be optimal either). A character who has "wasted" two stat points on other things, such as e.g. two points in charisma to be allowed to recruit an additional partner but otherwise has spent the resources optimally ought to be able to get through using an optimal strategy with at most 10 or so retries (on average). Also note that "win a battle" in my book means no deaths, which means keeping the sidekick alive. AoD had FAR too deep stat/skill/perk trenches where everything had to be spent exactly as meta gaming knowledge would reveal they had to be to get through the puzzle box without getting stuck permanently (Got through as a fighter to a few shitty endings, had my assassin stuck by failing to either fight or disguise past slum thieves, due to the horrible mistake of thinking disguise might be a useful path early on, encouraged by a mission that then backstabs you with having to fight without armor on top of wasting point on a non fighting skill). Dungeon Rats did allow you to get through using additional party members in exchange for a reduced fighting skill, so it had a decent balance for the scope it had.
- I've probably missed some point, but I found the higher AP cost of using a blunt weapon rather than a pointed one to result in the blunt weapons being significantly worse.
- Flanking seems to do nothing. When the sidekick was able to run up to the back of an opponent to attack from behind, the hit chance was as abysmal as usual, and the enemy just turned around (and turns again when it's the PC's turn).
- As can be deduced from the above, I think the sidekick probably needs adjustments, and I have no idea of how you'd be able to get through without someone to soak up at least some of the damage (the "I work best alone" alternative).
- The furthest I got was to the fight where the judge envied the PC for the prospect of loot, and that was only with the loss of the sidekick. The two first fights got marginally easier as the strategy was improved slightly with successive characters, but neither was trivial with what I though ought to be pure fighter builds (cha/int definitely dump stats that had to be sacrificed).
- AoD again: When you find that you have to hold on to all skill points and spend them only when you have to in order to win a fight or pass a skill check the game has failed to live up to the "Choice and Consequences" goal to end up in "Consequences  dictate Choices" meta gaming territory.
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Vince
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« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2020, 02:44:41 pm »

Quick comments:

- Not a bug as such: It looks like it should be possible to rotate the view to find paths (and characters) behind all those containers, but if there was a way I didn't find it.
The camera is fixed.

Quote
The purpose of the demo isn't fully clear to me, and the evaluation depends on its purpose. If the purpose is to show/test the combat system for fully combat oriented characters (like the AoD demo), which I will assume it is, it's in the right ballpark needing tweaks, but if it's assumed to indicate a more or less mandatory starting path for all kinds of characters it's completely off.
The purpose is to test the combat system, so it's exactly like the AoD arena demo.

Quote
- I find the combat to be a bit too hard. In my view, an optimal character for a fight using an optimal strategy ought to win a battle at least half the time (most fight will not be ones for which the PC has an optimal build, and the strategy probably won't be optimal either). A character who has "wasted" two stat points on other things, such as e.g. two points in charisma to be allowed to recruit an additional partner but otherwise has spent the resources optimally ought to be able to get through using an optimal strategy with at most 10 or so retries (on average).
I agree in genera.

Quote
- I've probably missed some point, but I found the higher AP cost of using a blunt weapon rather than a pointed one to result in the blunt weapons being significantly worse.
Based on the feedback from people who completed the demo several times, blunt is a very good weapon class. I'd say it is as good as bladed if not better. Here's a player-submitted build:



Quote
- The furthest I got was to the fight where the judge envied the PC for the prospect of loot, and that was only with the loss of the sidekick. The two first fights got marginally easier as the strategy was improved slightly with successive characters, but neither was trivial with what I though ought to be pure fighter builds (cha/int definitely dump stats that had to be sacrificed).
I disagree. Here's another build:


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PALU
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« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2020, 06:21:17 am »

Thanks for the response.
- Elaboration on the trade bugs: It manifests itself on drag-and-drop, but things work correctly on click-and-trade.

Further comments on the character builds presented:
Elijah (having to make a guess as to what the third implant is, and guessed +INT): Having a larger group should be quite powerful, and it's typically my preferred option. However, in order to realize any potential you'd have to survive an extreme uphill battle initially, where you have to retry until you manage to roll a very lucky string of good RNG results. Using that approach, you can probably win the first fight with any build whatsoever having a melee weapon using the "tactic" of just pressing end turn. Eventually the RNGs are bound to align such that reaction attacks will kill John Doe, while his attacks miss/grace a sufficient number of times.
  Getting a bit more serious for the second fight (I didn't actually try the above, just tried sensible tactics to win in a reasonable number of attempts), it basically boils down to getting lucky to kill one opponent in the first turn, a second in the second turn, survive to the third one (which probably happens more than half the time in this scenario), and either kill the third opponent then, or be lucky enough to survive to a fourth turn and manage to kill the last opponent then. That probably took about 50 attempts.
  I gave up on the 3:rd fight after 50-100 attempts. I did get a lucky string of RNGs once, with the opponent knocked out with 5 HP remaining and 5 AP on my character, but rolled a grace. It obviously is possible to win eventually, though.
  I would assign the sidekick to the character after the first battle rather than the third. It would serve the purpose of making a party based approach more viable in practice, both by supporting CHA based characters, and allowing the sidekick to gain a little experience a little bit earlier.

Mahlon (making a lot of guesses as to what the starting stats were): The first fight was easy, as it should be, the second one required a small number of attempts to get the RNGs to align sufficiently, the third one requiring a fair number of attempts, but not an extreme number. The fourth fight requires too long a string of lucky RNG rolls for me to continue trying, but is definitely possible eventually: I'd guess it's somewhere in between Elijah's second and third fight in terms of luck required. I was using the "lone wolf" approach of not using the sidekick, even though that perk hasn't been taken yet (it looks like it's the third one on Mahlon). Using a sidekick and then lose/dismiss him when the perk is taken would reduce the difficulty of the fight a fair bit, I think.
I agree a blunt weapon is usable, although I'm still not convinced it's worth the extra cost, but you're better judges of that than I am.

I don't think it's a good metric to say a build is viable because someone was willing to retry a sufficient number of times to get through, especially with the kind of hard core fans AoD had (which I assume are following you here), as they'll be able to prove that almost anything is possible (especially if someone says it is impossible). A better metric would be to record the number of attempts used to win fights, in particular if those numbers were gotten from those hard core followers, as they can be expected to use good tactics. Then use that info to adjust the difficulty to what you think is appropriate for the audience you want to sell the game to.
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Vince
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« Reply #11 on: May 15, 2020, 07:43:59 am »

Elijah (having to make a guess as to what the third implant is, and guessed +INT)...
No. The 3 implants in the demo give you PER+1, DEX+1, and DR+1.

Quote
Having a larger group should be quite powerful, and it's typically my preferred option. However, in order to realize any potential you'd have to survive an extreme uphill battle initially...
Not that extreme. I can reach the first party member with a CHA10 character with no more than one reload per fight to account for bad luck. It gets harder after though.

Quote
Eventually the RNGs are bound to align such that reaction attacks will kill John Doe, while his attacks miss/grace a sufficient number of times.
With balanced characters (high INT, high CHA), I use melee weapons to kill John Doe and the 3 attackers after, even when I specialize in ranged. In general, using melee weapons to deal with some enemies is a good strategy. You don't have to limit yourself to a single weapon type.

Quote
Getting a bit more serious for the second fight (I didn't actually try the above, just tried sensible tactics to win in a reasonable number of attempts), it basically boils down to getting lucky to kill one opponent in the first turn, a second in the second turn, survive to the third one (which probably happens more than half the time in this scenario), and either kill the third opponent then, or be lucky enough to survive to a fourth turn and manage to kill the last opponent then. That probably took about 50 attempts.
Fall back, stand between the two containers so that only two enemies can attack you at the same time, which also forces the second guy to run around, wasting time. Kill enemy #1, then enemy #2, then enemy #3. One reload tops, if someone lands a really bad critical, otherwise no reloads. Use a melee weapon, why waste bullets.

Quote
I gave up on the 3:rd fight after 50-100 attempts.
You're definitely doing something wrong but without seeing the build/tactics, I can't pinpoint the problem. The first 3 fights are easy, the equivalent of a tutorial: single enemy, melee mob, gadgeteer. Most runs (and I had hundreds of them), I kill them without a single reload (with a combat oriented character, not high CHA ones).

For example, to take the two screens in the original post, with Damaris I went through the first 2 fights without reloads, reloaded once on the third fight because I got reckless. With Zebulon, I died once in the second fight, and once in the third fight (and a lot more after, but that's a different tale).
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Stealth
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« Reply #12 on: May 15, 2020, 09:26:20 am »

On the subject of CHA 10, the first 4 fights are absolute hell with a CHA 10 Rifleman.
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Vince
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« Reply #13 on: May 15, 2020, 09:31:55 am »

On the subject of CHA 10, the first 4 fights are absolute hell with a CHA 10 Rifleman.
Using nothing but rifles? Or switching to melee for the first 2 fights, which is logical and fitting, considering that a rifle has never been a close combat weapon?
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Stealth
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« Reply #14 on: May 15, 2020, 10:01:02 am »

It's not the close combat that's the problem, but the low damage, reloading after every shot, and high AP costs. Boomstick Snap Shot is 3 AP and has a higher max damage. Bolter Snap Shot costs 6 AP and has a lower max damage. The other issue is no Artful Dodger or Lone Wolf means that you get hit nearly every time even while in cover.
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