Bionic Dues Alpha Coming Up!

[madcow]

I'm really curious if these are roguelike potions or "traditional" potions. Aka randomized effects vs fixed effects.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm really curious if these are roguelike potions or "traditional" potions. Aka randomized effects vs fixed effects.

I'm actually implementing them this very moment.  There are 12 "potion terminal" types with different appearances, and each type is randomly assigned one of the possible "potion conseqeunces" at the start of a new game.

There are four lists of "potion consequences" internally: Very Nice, Nice, Mean, and Very Mean.  Different numbers of them are pulled in based on the difficulty.  On easy it pulls 2 VeryNice, 6 Nice, and 4 Mean.  On highest difficulty it pulls 5 Nice, 5 Mean, and 2 VeryMean.

In short, basically the roguelike model.

The interesting twist here is that since an exo blowing up is not the end of the game, you can do some degree of "poison tasting" (poor Science exo).  But it's quite possible to lose a mission because of one of these, and that could greatly inconvenience your plans of winning the game

[madcow]

Please oh please. Once it's identified let it stay identified   having to remember what types of potions are linked to what is a game peeve of mine.

[x4000]

Having to remember is rather the idea. Otherwise we might as well just tell you what they are in the first place, since its the later missions you'll want the positive ones for. This is a traditional part of the genre.

[keith.lamothe]

The trouble there is: if it tells you "that's the potion type that kills an exo instantly" once you've had that happen to you, it should just stop seeding those terminals on any map after that, right?  Or at least utterly prevent you from hacking them, right?  Otherwise it's the interface letting you do something that it obviously should not.

Which is a problem without the interface telling you too, I suppose, but ultimately that's a problem with the basic idea of the original roguelike mechanic, I think.  So perhaps we prevent hacking of known-negative terminals or just scrap the mechanic altogether.   We'll see.  It's more something we're adding because many players are nostalgic for it than because it's really needed in the game, but sometimes the cooler features come about that way.

[madcow]

To me. The fun has always been (and I'll be honest it's more from the game toejam and earl rather than a traditional roguelike and the ratio of good to bad items there is like 4:1) oh crap I'm in trouble better open this random present in the middle of battle and hope its what I need.

 The metagame of needing to write down parts from a game is not one that has appealed to me.  I mean don't scrap a mechanic entirely because of one forum post.

Edit: I just feel if its the game remembering vs me remembering. The game might as well do it for me.

[x4000]

If this doesn't work out, that's not a bad alternative.

[keith.lamothe]

To me. The fun has always been (and I'll be honest it's more from the game toejam and earl rather than a traditional roguelike and the ratio of good to bad items there is like 4:1) oh crap I'm in trouble better open this random present in the middle of battle and hope its what I need.

 The metagame of needing to write down parts from a game is not one that has appealed to me.  I mean don't scrap a mechanic entirely because of one forum post.

Edit: I just feel if its the game remembering vs me remembering. The game might as well do it for me.

Right, and that's why I think the original mechanic is flawed.  But I'm not 100% sure it's worth implementing with that "fix".

Though in this case I think it is: but it needs to prevent you from hacking a terminal with a known negative effect, otherwise it moves the UI flaw from "UI not telling you something it should" to "UI letting you do an obvious misclick".

[x4000]

I think that part of the appeal of the original mechanic, for those who like it, is literally the memory game of it. If you play Memory and write down where everything is, then that's a pretty different game - you may as well leave the tiles flipped up. Same deal here, too. Memory games can be fun and exciting I think, and that's really all it is.

[keith.lamothe]

I think that part of the appeal of the original mechanic, for those who like it, is literally the memory game of it.

Out of curiosity, would anyone who feels that way please speak up?

Personally I have little patience for UIs that hold back on me in a case like this.

[x4000]

Hi.

Personally I also normally hate that sort of thing. But in the context of certain genres, I find the mystery interesting. As here. It's just plain fun, without the news to be optimized or whatever else. Tradition!

Still, I'm willing to explore other ways of doing it. For example, having the function of the terminals show once you know them, but having one function change each day or so, for instance. So you have to keep poison testing as you go if you want the effects all known at the end.

[x4000]

Alternatively, we could make it show you the function of the ones you've found, but only put these in the final battle and in smaller numbers in the robot command missions.  And put in more negatives, potentially.  Failure in those missions is critically important, so that would help make these more rare.

Or we keep these out of the final mission, and it's just another thing you can spend your hacking points on, and otherwise it works as now but showing you the results.

There are a number of options that are interesting.

[orzelek]

As far as I remember roguelikes I played remembered that this potion you just drunk with silly name is exactly this potion and named it like that from that point onwards.
And I don't recall them having any instant death effects... thats a very bad welcome for player.

If I'm aware that terminal can kill the bot... I will tend to skip all terminals especially after I die to it once and game is unable (robots without short term memory?) to store for me somewhere - watch out this terminal we tried already and it did that.

[x4000]

As far as I remember roguelikes I played remembered that this potion you just drunk with silly name is exactly this potion and named it like that from that point onwards.

Right, same as here; except instead of a silly name it's a visual.

And I don't recall them having any instant death effects... thats a very bad welcome for player.

Those were definitely there.  Those aren't here except for on the higher difficulties, and even here they are less severe than other roguelikes.  Losing an exo is routine, relatively speaking; you will lose multiple per mission, most of the time.  It's not as severe as the implementation in the other games, where it's just the end of the game because you drunk a potion.

[Tridus]

I think that part of the appeal of the original mechanic, for those who like it, is literally the memory game of it.

Out of curiosity, would anyone who feels that way please speak up?

Personally I have little patience for UIs that hold back on me in a case like this.

I'm with you, Keith. I don't like a memory game aspect. If the UI wants me to know, the UI should tell me. If it doesn't want me to know, it shouldn't tell me in a roundabout way. Making me remember just means that if I haven't got a great visual memory or if I haven't played in a while, I'm being denied information that someone else would know. Particularly in a game about bionics and robots, why can't the computer I'm using to control the exos remember this information?

Personally I'd much rather see one of two things:
1. Keep the memory aspect, and remove the mean ones. If I'm expected to remember which ones are bad, all you're doing by putting them in at all is punishing me for forgetting and essentially doing something that I should *never* do once I know better. Decisions that the player should never actually make are just false decisions, not interesting ones.

2. Remove the memory aspect, such that what you get is truly random. Now it's just a straight gamble: do I risk it?