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Anyone else constantly reading "Sesamestreet Union"?

Anyone know what the benefit is of having a "smartlink" weapon?

 marv335 wrote:
Anyone know what the benefit is of having a "smartlink" weapon?

More accurate I think. However I find that without further advances beyond them that I'm sticking with the other high tier guns. They lack the extra functionality that the others do ( I think that you can just use the "aim" command, rather than say burst fire or the like), but they have the same stats as the lower capacity high tiers. Personally though I choose the extra ammo ones over them as you can just buff your accuracy.

Elevators? That mission requires you to take a decker, but I see no reason than taking more than one (I used one of the Network's ones, rather than a conventional decker). Really the only issue I had in that whole mission was the time it took to do the decking parts, holding off the guards was a non issue. I placed a Street Samurai with a double tapping shotgun overwatching either entrance, and had my shaman mix between buffing them with haste, placing traps at the doors and occasionally summoning something to tie them up.

As for the toolkit. I'm finding the texture limitation thing to be odd, though I can understand perhaps that the game can only cache so many at one time. It takes a bit of time to get your head around how perspective effects how you build the levels, but its really simple once you get it. I would say that the main issue I had with my first level was its size. I'm going into it after using the Bethesda ones which operate with open worlds. Shadowrun's worldspaces however are quite small in comparison. I do take issue with how characters move about a level though, or at least on the existing tilesets. I'd really love to have stairs as a feature, but as it stands I'm unsure if the engine could handle them ...though it'd be really easy to emulate them instead.

So, in testing the toolkit I've decided what my first level will be. Anyone played Chaser? Well the skyscraper assault level in which you land on a dojo on its roof before descending each floor all the way down to the bottom seems like it could be transferred into the Shadowrun Returns engine without too much effort. Come to think of it damn near any level from that game would look great. ...I may need to do some "research".

I did find one minor thing that annoys me, but it's present in other games, too. When someone in your party dies, if you have a trauma kit on someone else, you can bring them back. But if YOUR character dies, the game ends. Doesn't matter if the rest of the party are all carrying trauma kits, you're reloading.

Annoyingly the devs just patched the Editor without releasing some patch notes beforehand. Perhaps a bit picky of me to ask for them, but as a result of some changes the mod that I've been making's lost a wad of its story data and other little details. The changes however do make it more user friendly, but it would have been nice to have been able to have backed up all that dialogue. =/

When did they patch it?
I've been messing around with the editor and it's great fun. Making the scenes and the maps is pretty simple but scripting everything is making my head spin.

After five this morning at least. It only patched when I run the launcher a few minutes ago. I could only tell that it had been patched at first due to my mod being changed to only contain data (and by doing this everything under the story section was removed).

For the most part the editor's really simple to work. Scripting is a pain, but that's mostly just because I'm acclimatizing myself with it. I will say that the way props clip into things a lot of the time is really counter productive and I'm struggling to wonder why you can't force props to be placed in front of things they clip by.

^^ Currently, barring the setback, my mod's sitting on five cells (with a silly number of interactive objects). I've yet to work on any npcs other than just some placeholders as I'm still working out the story though. On the subject of interactive objects though, I'm wondering if I'm adding too many. Personally I like being able to walk into a kitchen into a Corporate Executive's home and have a popup saying something like, "you wonder why a CEO would need to prepare his own food. Properly paranoid perhaps", or looking at a mirror and it reading, "you can barely make out the outline of an antiquated astronauts helmet in the condensation. Weird". The base game only really had these around important objects, however I feel like putting at least two in every room. Maybe its just the roleplayer in me.

...Yes I have included a Truman Show reference in my mod. Its somehow became highly relevant to the plot.

I think if you kept it consistent throughout the campaign it would work. It you stopped it halfway through it may seem odd.
I'm a bit behind you still (Trying to get my head around triggers)

I've gone to duo-ing all missions by now. Main character + support mage (+decker if forced to take on). My main character drops 2 enemies per turn and has, iirc, 16 armor and max Body and max Quickness so is a walking doomsday device. Supp mage for +AP, +Armor and the occasial heal.

Balance would have needed quite some work

Currently I'm writing up the dialogue for my first scene. However I'm trying to think twenty moves ahead of myself constantly I like for a player's actions to effect the world. For instance in this first scene I'm considering that you could pick up certain information/items which could be checked in later situations to provide more choices (in the base game as far as I can tell you can't say pick up someone's wallet in scene A, and later give it back to them in scene F).

As for triggers as I've not made up any combat scenes (though my first scene will feature one) so I've kind of avoided the scripting heavy ones. When I go back and build up more detail in the levels I'll certainly be chucking a load in, but as this campaign's just to allow me to get used to the editor works its the case that with each new scene I'm trying out something new. =P

I'm considering limiting the party size to just one runner. Its the player's choice whether they have the skills to access all the features of a level. Ie, more like say Fallout:New Vegas, where your companions don't directly effect the choices you have in a situation constantly. However the difficulty level for a single runner campaign is iffy. As in I'd have to limit the karma range so somebody doesn't go in and gets hammered.

I'm looking forward to players re-building actual, already existing Shadowrun adventures with the editor.

Okay, just finished the game.

Good game overall, I'd say 7/10. The story really saved the game as it was pretty darn awesome, better than the crap Bioware etc. keep throwing at the market. The game itself...hmpf. I only played on the 2nd highest difficulty, but the game was way too easy, my main character almost solo'd most of the missions starting at about 1/3 of the game. Melee is vastly inferior to ranged attacks. I am severely disappointed in Adepts as in the tabletop, they are incredibly strong due to their passives, but in the game, they fall short. AI is very sub-par, not able to apply any tactics.

The last missions was very disappointing. You get a NPC (hint: makeup) that is completely useless except for casting heal and you basically spend an entire missions killing one type of enemies. The "end boss"...really? My character just shot the last enemy thrice and defeated him / her, mop up and that's it. The closure at the end was ok, usual hinting at DLC.

Overall: very good first game that's saved by its extremely well-written story and kept me going. Sadly, the game itself falls short.

But for 20$ - buy it! It's a real steal as you get an actual RPG which is rare nowadays.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I did find one minor thing that annoys me, but it's present in other games, too. When someone in your party dies, if you have a trauma kit on someone else, you can bring them back. But if YOUR character dies, the game ends. Doesn't matter if the rest of the party are all carrying trauma kits, you're reloading.

This. Extremely annoying. Also if you hire runners to help you, and you give them items, those items leave when they do.

Other then that this is game's fantastic, I chewed my way through a big chunk of the Dead Switch campaign last night and had a blast!

Sigvatr wrote:The last missions was very disappointing. You get a NPC (hint: makeup) that is completely useless except for casting heal and you basically spend an entire missions killing one type of enemies. The "end boss"...really? My character just shot the last enemy thrice and defeated him / her, mop up and that's it. The closure at the end was ok, usual hinting at DLC.

Huh. Really? In my game, that NPC was rather useful for the fight, as he / she

What weapon did you use? Assault Rifle? I've heard some people say it's OP, which, together with your choice of upgrades, could have made your playthrough easier than average/intended. My smartlinked HK227 SMG certainly didn't feel too powerful (just adequate), and the end boss had loads of HP as well (presumably due to youknowwhattheydid). I actually had to reload the save once, though on the second try I aced it ... still was under pressure the whole time, which only increased with every further round and you end up getting swarmed not by one but by three types of enemies.

To me, the fight felt "just right", but it looks like there's a slim chance to have an easy mode if you're real quick and have a powerful weapon?

As for the closure, I actually thought it was awesome. Felt like the ending to a novel. I could perfectly picture that final dialogue line to be printed on the last page of a book.

Yeah, everyone I know who played through as a ranged combat specialist said it was too easy. I felt like it was fine, because I was a decker/rigger and had like 5 ranged combat at the end of the game.

 Lynata wrote:

Sigvatr wrote:The last missions was very disappointing. You get a NPC (hint: makeup) that is completely useless except for casting heal and you basically spend an entire missions killing one type of enemies. The "end boss"...really? My character just shot the last enemy thrice and defeated him / her, mop up and that's it. The closure at the end was ok, usual hinting at DLC.

Huh. Really? In my game, that NPC was rather useful for the fight, as he / she

Spoiler:

was the one chasing Miss Crazy around, pommelknocking her AP away and applying liberal use of Cleave to strike both her as well as the "beacons" with one attack, whilst the rest of my team - my streetsam, the Tir Ghost, and a support mage - took care of the bug army

What weapon did you use? Assault Rifle? I've heard some people say it's OP, which, together with your choice of upgrades, could have made your playthrough easier than average/intended. My smartlinked HK227 SMG certainly didn't feel too powerful (just adequate), and the end boss had loads of HP as well (presumably due to youknowwhattheydid). I actually had to reload the save once, though on the second try I aced it ... still was under pressure the whole time, which only increased with every further round and you end up getting swarmed not by one but by three types of enemies.

To me, the fight felt "just right", but it looks like there's a slim chance to have an easy mode if you're real quick and have a powerful weapon?

As for the closure, I actually thought it was awesome. Felt like the ending to a novel. I could perfectly picture that final dialogue line to be printed on the last page of a book.

Yep, keep in mind that's my anecdotal experience

I went for a rifle-gunner and breezed my way though the story. I just leveld it up (btw, Double Tap seems to be bugged, the skill doesn't show up) and then stacked armor. Skill-wise, I got myself the healing skill and that's about it.

Nice to hear that you had a better experience, so it really seems that ranged (especially Rifle) is too strong in comparison. Melee felt very underpowered as I easily dealt thrice the damage the melee NPCs did. I'm in for additional stories!

Not put any points into charisma? Its an RPG, so I dumped 9 points in it despite not using any shaman powers, which I guess meant my combat stats weren't as high as others by the end of the game. I mean to say that if you're min maxing of course the game's going to be too easy. For me it felt "just right" too. Combat wasn't a total breeze, but it wasn't like I ever lost a runner to anything but my own stupidity (five crazy mental patients attacking my medic. Hmn... a grenade in there will sort that right out. Oh it didn't? The medic's still alive? Chuck another one in. ).

^^ My campaign's now sitting on six separate quest segments, and twenty five unique locations (and you return to certain ones at relevant times in the plot, though with suitable noticeable changes). The design document for it's fifteen pages long, and that's just on basic scene descriptions/flow of the quests. ...It'll be hell once I begin to flesh out the dialogue.

...What? I like modding.

Is it a bit OT to put the plot past people here in this thread? I'm considering that its perhaps a little cliche', but I have been coming up with it on the fly, so its a bit rough around the edges.

Ended with 6 points in charisma, but it didn't pay off tbh...in the end, I would have saved about 500 Nuyen I'd else have spent on bribing people. Plus, the game is extremely linear, there's only one (!) alternative mission (which felt...slapped on. I don't know...). Did anyone "free" him? I knocked him out and dragged him with me, if anyone "freed" him, how did that pay off?

I considering letting him go, the thought " it". Its a dog eat dog world and I want some cash. I presume that you'd get a smaller amount of cash as a reward and that'd be the last you heard of the guy. Oh, and when returning to the employer you'd get a little speech about how you ruined everything/ this was only a temporary setback and they'll pick the hostage up soon enough.

The way that the engine works makes providing alternative questlines a bit iffy. Iffy as in it requires a lot more work, but not so that its difficult to do. I suppose the devs didn't implement branching quests (or at least multiple quest endings) due to how much time would be involved making the alternative scenes later on in the game. Mind that the game had a really short developement time. =P

But yeah, that one side quest felt a little tacked on. At first I thought that it was setting up for more of them, but this didn't occur. I'm guessing that they may wanted to make more but didn't find the time to, or that it was just to show off that they can make side quests, but felt that they'd be more suitable for the DLC, or modders to make.

Oh and on dialogue choices. I feel as though you could choose any of the options, but they only seemed to effect what tone the NPC takes afterwards. Ie you could get into a long discussion about philosophy with an enemy, or yell at them, but they'd still try and kill you afterwards. The same goes for bribing someone. You could do that, or you could just follow a few more dialogue choices, you'd still get the information you wanted. Its not like the editor doesn't allow you to change how an NPC reacts after a conversation...

.

Magic wasn't exactly overpowered but mages and shamans could be insane force multipliers with the right skills and spells.

Yep, the Support Mage I hired from the Nephilim Network certainly paid off.

As for skills, this is about what I went for:

Not the latest screenshot, but it gives you an idea of how I developed the character, and the final version wasn't too far off due to how much you pay for increases at some point anyways. In terms of cyberware, I just went with a datajack and wired reflexes in the obvious attempt to build a character who's strong in agility - moving fast, not getting hit, being good with guns and bare hands/feet. Worked out fairly well; as I said, difficulty level felt "just right" for me. I also liked that the game didn't force you to constantly upgrade your gear all the time, because frankly some of the clothes looked rather silly. Or rather, actually they all have their place, but some really didn't fit with the image of the character I had in mind. I ended up wearing only two different armours throughout the entire game, but I think that in the end, the upgrade that still fit my style was necessary and it became available "just in time".

As for charisma, I felt it had its place. Yeah, maybe it doesn't save you tons of money, but the alternate dialogue options are sometimes just really cool to have. Not just from the basic stat, but also the etiquettes. Didn't regret spending karma on this, especially as it made for a more balanced character it seems.

Oh, and as for the guy from the side run ... didn't knock him out, just told him I would.
For what it's worth, I would've actually loved if there were more side runs such as this one. A simple objective, no connection to the main plot, just a nicely designed level for some cool gameplay. Could very well serve as an inspiration for UGC.

Wyrmalla: Sounds like you're putting a lot of effort into your content module. Let us know how it proceeds - I'm sure we're all hungry for more SR.

That side run was a pain. Had to do it solo since i had no money for a crew. Ended up managing to do it through a judicious use of Confuse and Blindness (Both excellent powers) and the crowd favourite of spamming Fireball (and the rest of my spells I suppose) at groups of enemies.

What a great game, I totally enjoyed it. I played a troll sammy straight off in normal mode and had a blast. My favourite moment was quite early in the game when out of the blue during a combat "I'm playing fallout 2" burst unbidden from my mouth .

I am running a mage through the game now so I can use her in the user generated campaign. I want a casty summony magic dorf!

I missed the smartgun link in the cyber options however (I got a datajack but never connected the idea I could use a smartgun with it - I thought you had to get a link for your hand as well) I also missed cyber spurs, are there cyber spurs? Where are the cyber spurs???????

I cannot wait for UGC!

Is there going to be a Shadowrun Returns Nexus? The Steam workshop is just a little un-user friendly compared to the nexus for me.

As for my own mod. I'm wondering on how to implement the decking portions. A runner with a high decking skill could find out about certain bits of information those without it wouldn't be privy too. This info, whilst not explicitly ruining the plot, will however lead you to question what you're being told more (hint, for the first three quarters you'll have no idea who the real bad guys are unless you take most of the stuff the npcs are telling you as misdirection). As its going to be a higher level single player campaign, players may not have any points in decking at all, or find that they don't have the ability to complete the matrix segments due to their difficulty. For the most part I want these segments to be skippable, but they'll offer up more information on the main questline + access to hidden areas if you do complete them. Should I still provide npcs to do the decking for the player should they not have the skills, or go back to the old rpg mechanic of "feth them, if they don't have the skills that their problem"?

Anyone know anything about the Shadowrun universe? I'm wondering if there's an alternative plane of reality for mages, much like deckers can access the matrix. Though the tilesets are limited, I'd like to create a level like this to round off a chapter of my campaign. (It'd be a ruined version of the apartment block the PC's in *. Or more like the building's returned to nature. The remains of walls surround by grass covered scenery). Pity the game lacks any trees, though it is cyberpunk.

*At this point in the story you're investigating a mage's coven (which at no point should seem weird ...as the whole questline is about the rise in crimes perpetrated by cybernetics). They're inhabiting an apartment block that they've made look like the inside of Hogwarts... but uh cyberpunk. At the conclusion you confront the head mage, but he'd drop you into the alternative plane where you'd have to travel though the previous apartment floor, but in its alternative state, battling mages and their summoned creatures before finally talking to him again.

Wyrmalla wrote:Anyone know anything about the Shadowrun universe? I'm wondering if there's an alternative plane of reality for mages, much like deckers can access the matrix.

I'm not an expert on mages/magic in SR, but I know there is the Astral Plane ..

*rummages*

There we go:

"While the physical realm is the world characters know and walk in every day, another realm exists alongside it, invisible and unnoticed by most of the people on the planet. That place is called the astral plane, a sort of photo-negative of the physical world where only living things - things infused with mana - are real. The astral plane is the home of spirits and magic. It is suffused with mana, the essence of magic, which flows from the metaplanes into our physical world and through it to the astral, where it pools and infuses the astral plane with its presence.
The astral plane is fueled by the life force that exists in and on our planet, and the general aura of that force illuminates the astral world at all times with an ambient glow. Things that exist only on the physical plane can be seen and heard from the astral, albeit with blurred features and indistinct sound - emotional content registers far more strongly than exact details."

"Many Awakened characters can perceive the astral plane from the physical world. This ability is called astral perception, available to any characters who take the Magician quality during character generation. It is the primary sense used in the astral plane; it shows auras, allowing magicians to examine living creatures in the physical world as well as creatures who live on the astral plane. [...] It takes a Simple Action to shift one's perception from the physical to the astral, and another to shift it back again. It is not possible to see both at the same time, though almost everything in physical space is reflected on the astral, albeit without detail."
- Shadowrun 4th edition, p181/182

I suppose you'd need a special "greyscale" tileset for a proper representation ... would be a cool feature for mages and shamans, though.
There were a few scenes in the main campaign where NPCs were looking into it, though the player character was only able to witness their weird behaviour (blank stare) or listen to their descriptions. Remember the hangar?

Tah. Ah yeah, though that scene slipped my mind. According to the wiki there's many of these planes, so I would assume that they wouldn't all look the same. For the purposes of the plot I think I can get away with the idea that the Player gets dragged into one of these planes (one closely linked to our reality) by the mages. They're the ones keeping them there, and the PC has to either get their leader to let them leave or destroy the thing tying them to it (an altar of some sort or a tree). Again, being tied to our world, inside this plane the Player could interact with objects from the building that its a reflection of's past, including finding out information about the mages and their goals (which of course hints that they have nothing to do with the cyber crime plot).

It is a pity as you said that making a grey scale world would be difficult, as would presumably making material objects look unfocused require a new tileset (thus why I'm considering using ruined building parts as stand ins). The current grass however is grey though, but I guess that I would need to stick to similarly muted colored objects too.

However on the note of grey scale, you can edit the region colours to produce a dark looking environment. I'm sure if I messed around with the sliders long enough I could get something looking similar to that. A bit of green would be a nice highlight, with the plane representing nature's reflection of the city; ie sickly, and dying bar around the mage's altars.

Meh, as long as people find the segment fun and interesting to play I'm guessing it'll be fine. Jaunts out onto the astral plane presumably won't be common in that many mods right now (unless the devs decide to realize a tileset for one of them that is...).

Non-Awakened can't really go to the astral planes.

Technically, you are always "on" the Astral Plan, as everyone has his body's representation on it, correct?

Iirc, non-awakened characters just can't see or consciously enter said plane.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Technically, you are always "on" the Astral Plan, as everyone has his body's representation on it, correct?

Iirc, non-awakened characters just can't see or consciously enter said plane.

Non-Awakened can't project either, which is rather handy, especially when you're visiting the Deep Astral or the meta-planes. You can technically drag a non-Awakened person along to the latter, via rather intricate rituals. Ares uses it to nuke the Hive from their manufactured orbital astral bubbles.

If you're making the astral however, I'd go with most of it being grey. However, grass and anything else living ought to be rather vibrantly colored. If it's alive and bigger than a microbe (or it's FAB), it has an aura and is impermeable to astral forms (unless you kill it first).

So, I've begun to check out the user-generated content now. After a slow start in the first week (presumably because everyone was busy playing the campaign and/or getting to know the editor), it really seems to kick off now. There's new content almost daily, ranging from missions and campaigns to simple kit modules (someone made a content pack with 53 guns from the P&P) to be added to other content.

A fun one is the Random Runs pack, which ... well, it doesn't have any sort of story whatsoever. You have a small hideout from where you can contact a couple of people (your Johnson, merchants, etc), then you get some basic assignment, and off you go to some map with randomly generated enemies and a random objective. Rinse, repeat. If you like SRR's combat as much as I do, this can soak up quite a few hours!
Word of warning, though. The enemies are tough, and a character who has finished the main campaign (200+ karma) is recommended.