SCP Beta 4 Issue Reporting

[674293e5e8ecbsarge945]

Here's what I currently have planned for some replacement smokes and booze scripts...

Cigarettes: Smoking a cig will subtract 1 HP down to a minimum of 1 (vanilla script will take it down to 0). It will also add 1 PSI, unless you're at  1 HP, in which case it will do nothing. This is to discourage using med beds to abuse the PSI-for-HP exchange mechanic. If you have Strong Metabolism, you can smoke cigs without losing HP. You will never be prevented from smoking a cig, even if it will have no effect.

Liquor: Drinking alcohol will add 1 HP and subtract 4 PSI, just like in vanilla. My original thought was to make this symmetrical with cigarettes, so you couldn't gain HP unless you had PSI to exchange, but alcohol grants HP because it's a subset of food, just with a side effect of subtracting PSI. If you have Strong Metabolism, you can drink without losing PSI. You will never be prevented from drinking, even if it will have no effect.

I like to think these changes will bring about a generation of hard-drinking, chain-smoking OSA agents.

Thoughts?

Y'know, now that I think about it, it's odd that SS2 provides a device to cheaply restore your full health, but doesn't provide an equivalent device to restore your psi power (like Prey does). Would probably be too unbalancing to add such a device.

I would just keep it simple and allow the player to smoke themselves to death, because it is both in the spirit of immersive sims and, more importantly, it's hilarious. Smoking Kills, after all.

Medbed healing shouldn't be an issue as it costs nanites to heal.


Completely unrelated (hey wow, someone actually used the horizontal rule!), I was thinking: For the OSA start, how do people feel about adding a short description for the psi disciplines in brackets after the ability names for the descriptions of the years, so that newer players are more likely to understand what they are actually signing up for, since the ability names are usually very vague and overly complicated.

So, for example, instead of
Mission Posting: Sens Dep Tank 437/WH1: Kinetic Empathy
[Gain: Second Tier Neural Capacity, Croyokenesis and Kinetic Redirection]

it would read as something like
Mission Posting: Sens Dep Tank 437/WH1: Kinetic Empathy
[Gain: Second Tier Neural Capacity (Tier 2), Croyokenesis (Attack) and Kinetic Redirection (Psi Pull)]

EDIT: Holy double-post batman!

[674293e5e935dZylonBane]

"If you have Strong Metabolism, you can drink without losing PSI" maybe a bit too good - would it be possible to just halve the psi point cost? or maybe reduce the psi point cost to just 1.

Let's go reductio ad absurdum and say, what if Irrational had made it so drinking booze straight up KILLED you? If the player is then offered an upgrade that allows booze to give you +1 HP instead of killing you, that would seem pretty reasonable, right?

Basically, in game theory, penalties and rewards don't always have symmetrical weight. Upgrading booze from -4 PSI/+1 HP to just +1 HP wouldn't add extra PSI to the game economy, because smart OSA players wouldn't be drinking booze in the first place. Instead this would merely be adding a few +1 HPs to the game economy. The global effect might actually be less than the Cyber Assimilation upgrade, which lets you extract +15 HP modules from destroyed robots. And unlike booze and cigarettes, robots respawn.

That reminds me, I still think it would be pretty cool to make Cyber Assimilation also allow the consumption of creature organs.

[674293e5e951bvoodoo47]

yeah, best to not overthink this, probably. removing the psi point penalty completely will be just fine.

[674293e5e9988tiphares4]

Cigarettes: Smoking a cig will subtract 1 HP down to a minimum of 1 (vanilla script will take it down to 0). It will also add 1 PSI, unless you're at  1 HP, in which case it will do nothing.[...] If you have Strong Metabolism, you can smoke cigs without losing HP. You will never be prevented from smoking a cig, even if it will have no effect.

Liquor: Drinking alcohol will add 1 HP and subtract 4 PSI, just like in vanilla.[...] If you have Strong Metabolism, you can drink without losing PSI. [...]

I like to think these changes will bring about a generation of hard-drinking, chain-smoking OSA agents.

Thoughts?

Ohhh wow, what a nice addition! Go for it!!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[674293e5e9c8fZylonBane]

ZyklonB

Why are you such an idiot.

[674293e5e9d99tiphares4]

I'm sorry, changed it : /

[674293e5e9e98sarge945]

Now that you edited it there are people who will deny it ever happened at all, despite clear evidence.

[674293e5ea007ZylonBane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVO2NWs6Wk
It's not super apparent from the video, but in addition to the eye wobble, drinking alcohol also makes you wander off course while walking. Unfortunately the method used to accomplish both these things makes leaning into walls or objects while drunk glitchy, so this effect will be an optional mini-mod.

[674293e5ea23eZylonBane]

A minor thing that's often bugged me about SS2's elevators is how the door-opening button is almost comically huge, but the panel to actually use the elevator is tiny. It looks strangely unbalanced.

So I'm thinking about tweaking the sizes. Making the door button a little smaller, and the floor select button larger, so they're close to the same size. Something like this:

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, after so many years of looking at these buttons at their default sizes, this looks a bit weird. On the other hand, I think this would look perfectly natural to newcomers or people who hadn't played SS2 so much. Well, as natural as they can look together, considering those two buttons were designed in completely different styles.

What do you think? Thumbs up or down?

[674293e5ea58dRoSoDude]

Had the same initial reaction of "oww this isn't what I'm used to" but it's probably for the best. I just noted that with vanilla textures I didn't even realize the floor select button had an "elevator" text label since it's so tiny in black letters, and the new sizes about equalizes the text label sizes on both buttons.

I also presume that the little green screen there allows the user to select the floor they want to go to, so being a bit larger is more believable.

[674293e5ea6b7voodoo47]

I slightly like this, though I wouldn't go as far as making them the same size.

[674293e5ea7a9ZylonBane]

Would you consider the size in the second screenshot to be too large?

[674293e5ea8afvoodoo47]

yes, to my eye, the floor select button looks a bit too large on the second screenshot - unlike the door open button, which is probably just about right.

[674293e5eace0sarge945]

If it was up to me (and thank god it's not), I would create new assets for both of them, something large and vertical for the floor select button (like button panels now, but with a screen) and a brand new door open button that fits the style of the rest of the elevators. That way the elevator might have some actually cohesive design, as it seems like two unrelated artists built both buttons completely independently of each other, which looks tacky.

But that's way too far from vanilla, so this is more as a "what if I was actually making the game from scratch" type idea.

The giant door button is hilarious though. I always imagined Goggles pressing it with both hands and a lot of force, like it's a large piece of industrial equipment.

My theory is it was more reasonably sized, but then playtesters kept missing it. So it got bigger. And bigger. And bigger. People were playing in 640x480 without anti-aliasing, after all, so small objects would have been much harder to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVO2NWs6Wk
It's not super apparent from the video, but in addition to the eye wobble, drinking alcohol also makes you wander off course while walking. Unfortunately the method used to accomplish both these things makes leaning into walls or objects while drunk glitchy, so this effect will be an optional mini-mod.

This would be a lot better looking IMO if the vision wobble was circular, rather than side-to-side, like it is in Deus Ex

[674293e5eb0d0tiphares4]

What do you think? Thumbs up or down?

thumbs up 3000... great find for improvement. this would look great now imo, as rosedude 🥀 already wrote: 'elevator' is equalized now, it looks about right to me

[674293e5eb43cChandlermaki]

yes, to my eye, the floor select button looks a bit too large on the second screenshot - unlike the door open button, which is probably just about right.

I second this. Slightly smaller door select button, but would look great otherwise.

This is one of those changes I didn't even know I wanted until someone pointed it out.

[674293e5eb810ZylonBane]

This would be a lot better looking IMO if the vision wobble was circular, rather than side-to-side, like it is in Deus Ex

Dark Engine scripts can't change the player's vertical view angle.

[674293e5ebb20sarge945]

thumbs up 3000... great find for improvement. this would look great now imo, as rosedude 🥀 already wrote: 'elevator' is equalized now, it looks about right to me

What even is this text formatting?

It's like a webpage from the early 1990s. It just needs more flying saucer or dancing banana gifs

[674293e5ebc2evoodoo47]

it's a puls-a-quote. every modern forum software will allow you to set a quote to pulse like that.

[674293e5ebdffKolya]

Some emojis pulse a little.  I don't remember how I chose which, I think it was pretty random. Anyway, it's usually hardly noticeable. (I wrote that code years ago and no one ever mentioned it.)

In this case @tiphares4 accidentally wrapped emoji code around the last line of his post, which resulted in this emergent beauty.

[674293e5ebeeaZylonBane]

"Accidentally".

[674293e5ec00fsarge945]

I've always felt the "are you allied with her?" dialogue from Xerxes in medsci 2 was always WAY too spoilery and revealing, to the point where I would just remove it.

I guess that's mainly a new player problem, though. On alternate playthroughs it doesn't really matter

[674293e5ec12fZylonBane]

Kind of tempted now to, at some point in the game, have a mug appear where there was no mug before, as a Prey reference.

[674293e5ec229voodoo47]

I'd be fine with that. also with waiting for another 20 years for somebody to actually notice.