Duck and Cover

OnTheBounce wrote:
BTW, when are we going to see another effort from you, Endocore?

I was about to ask the exact same thing.

Stop reading my mind, OTB! STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!

Hey there, any big projects in the oven over at Max-Violence Studios?

If I had any time (which I don't), I'd also like to make some mini-campaigns someday that I don't think I could post for downloading due to trademark violations, but others are welcome to take the idea and run with it: would anybody else like to hear the repeated refrain of

YOOOOOOOOOO JOE!

(Or maybe know one knows what I'm talking about. That's okay too)


Endocore

Someone lend me his lawrence of arabia video for almost an entire year and I never bothered watching it.

It passed on a French channel a month or two ago (in original English format and no subtitles weirdly enough... though I was glad about all that), watched it and found was it a fine movie. Now I can't say I'm a specialist in movies (and even less so in older movies) but the point was that it held my attention with a lot more then "I was told it's a great movie".

endocore wrote:Oddly enough (the war film genre is one of my favorites), I've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, but I'll definitely check it out.

I don't think you'll be disappointed. Lots o' fine actors in it, and since you've more than a passing interest in/knowledge of History I'd say you'll probably like it. While the movie blows T. E. Lawrence's importance out of historical proportion and doesn't give a lot of information on the real T. E. Lawrence that actually would have been relevant -- the next time you think you're academic hot shit read his bio and you will be humbled, guarantied -- it is a great movie w/awesome cinematography. (If you watch it in full-screen format you are wasting your time as you lose the wide panoramic shots.)

endocore wrote:Is it just me or is the young Peter O'Toole an extremely creepy looking guy?

I can't give you anything approaching an unbiased opinion there since I'm a huge fan of his.

endocore wrote:...but it will be interesting to see what someone like yourself with a more extensive knowledge of military equipment will conclude.

Hopefully you're not thinking I'm trying to do some sort of "realism" mod w/this, because that's not what I'm after at this point. (I confess that early on I was trying to infuse as much realism as possible into the weapons catalogue, but that gave way to game balance, which -- as the enlightened Map Rats all know -- is the final arbiter of design.)

Basically what I'm trying to do w/the weapons catalogue is to encourage teamwork as much as possible. Some of the effect is lost in TB because you can't supress people w/low-AP weapons, but hopefully too much isn't lost in making the weapons catalogue a maze of advantage and disadvantage in other than CTB mode. It was simply too easy to "run the map" in the core campaign w/one Fast Shot and a Shotgun.

To this end I've set most of the Pistols to 3 AP base cost, SMGs and short rifles at 4 AP Semi- and 5 AP Full-Auto modes, Rifles at 5/6 AP and Big Guns at 6 AP. It will undoubtedly be humiliating for a Big Gunner to try to charge into a building only to have his arse shot off by two Raiders armed w/fast-firing pistols, but those are the breaks. In a situation like this you'll need to have two characters, one armed w/a pistol and the other w/a heavier weapon (SMG, Assault Rifle or Big Gun) clear the room. (Of course you'll be better off w/numerical superiority, too...)

Another thing I've done -- at least for now -- is to set the armor types back to what they were in FO/FO2. (The "Energy" damage type is an average of Laser and Plasma DT/DR, w/fractions rounding up since advantage should always acrue to the defender.) One thing I noticed was that Explosion damage Thresholds and Resistances were set higher in FoT. The same situation applies to Fire damage. I think that by setting these values back to what they once were a designer can offer a limited amount of special weapons that will have real tactical advantages. It also allowed me to set the Rocket Launcher to the FO/FO2 damage levels so it wasn't the super weapon that it was in FoT. (I'm still working on vehicle thresholds/resistances at this point.)

endocore wrote:No time soon, unfortunately, due to my job and the long hours I work. I have about fifteen hours in on an urban combat scenario I'd love to see, but in all honesty I don't see any way I can flesh it out in the foreseeable future...

Ugh, urban combat maps! A beautiful thing when they're finished, but getting them there is a beastly pain in the arse! (Which is why Phase 2 is on hold while I recuperate from being sick of looking at my version of The Hub...) Good luck w/it, though.

Right now the only game I'm looking forward to is Greyhawk: Temple of Elemental Evil, although I have to applaud MTC for making me look forward to an AD&D game... 8O

endocore wrote:I think I'm just going to try for now to play some of the new SP maps a couple of other folks have made, especially since there's nothing coming down the "professionally made" gaming pike that interests me for at least the next six months.

I know how you feel. After Phase 2 is release I'm going to take a bit of a break from designing and get down to some playing. There are some maps that I'm just dying to play, but every time I've sat down to do it I always feel guilty that I'm not working on my own material.

Regarding your "Yo Joe!" idea...I had tossed the idea around a bit before I nailed IOOI down. My brother still collects the figures and has loads of file cards which -- among other things -- have pictures on them. If anyone would like to pursue the idea I could always help w/some scanning of portraits...

As for trademark infringement I don't think it's much of an issue since one would not be making money off of it. Then again intellectual property laws aren't my specialty and I think they're fucked anyway.

Max: I'm not reading your mind...I am, however, looking over your shoulder...just out of your field of vision... ::sinister laughter not heard since the last villian of the 1930s cliffhangers laughed::

Okay, time to wrap some Xmas presents, then it's off to bed so that I can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to suffer the company of my relatives. :roll:

Take Care Everyone,

OTB

endocore wrote:Hey there, any big projects in the oven over at Max-Violence Studios?

Well, not BIG projects, only one map I'm a very "one-map-at-a-time" kinda guy. That's one of the couple reasons I decided to make [plug]Revenge a series of maps instead of a 10-ish mission campaign.[/plug]

The only games I'm looking forward to are No One Lives Forever 2 and Metroid Prime. And, of course, Arcanum (if I ever can find it) and the Greyhawk game OTB mentioned.

Anyone know how oddly difficult it is to make every other letter of a word italicized? I do!

EDIT: Oh, and I hear ya about urban combat maps. No pain, no gain, it seems. I could plug my upcoming map right now, but I choose not to.

Oh, wait, I already plugged it. Sue me

To OTB:

Your comments about weapons and armor modding are very interesting. I'm not all that concerned myself about "realism" either (I think we've had other threads before about the futility of realistic representations of simulated fantasy environments). What does interest me is gameplay, which is pretty much how you have also approached the matter. I don't see the point of the vast array of weapons in the original campaign when there's really no reason to use anything (depending of course on one's style of play) except the FN-FAL, the Gauss Rifle, the Rocket Launcher, and maybe a Pancor shotgun and a Pulse rifle once in a while.

It's interesting to hear about a revision of the weapons and armor based on a gameplay philosophy, rather than some sort or "Ooh, look at all the goodies in this game" philosophy. For me, vastly increasing the lethality of the weapons stemmed from my frustration having to shoot enemies (or having them shoot my characters) ten or twelve times with a firearm with little effect (of course, this is also a shortcoming of any "hit points" based system, but that's another discussion entirely). My reworking of the AP cost values was for reasons similar to your own, namely that there's absolutely no reason to ever have a character armed with a pistol or SMG in the core campaign (unless nothing else is available).

To all:

This "Greyhawk" game does sound quite interesting. Although the swords and sorcery genre doesn't hold my interest like it used when as a foolish youth I spent a few thousand dollars stocking up on all the TSR rulebooks that now sit in a dusty corner of one of my closets, any well-designed game is a pleasure to play and I'll probably pick it up just for the nostalgia factor. Particularly when one is a stick-in-the-mud such as me who has decided to permanently boycott all games that don't offer turn-based combat, news of a project such as this "Greyhawk" game is most welcome. I also think a game called "Rabid Dogs 2" that was the subject of a DAC news item a while back sounds very interesting, and I'll be following its development as well.

I thought Arcanum was pretty decent, MV, despite lackluster graphics and a frustrating character development system. I thought it was a little boring on the combat side of things (I played in TB, and the fights for me were little more than a nuisance), but the storyline and RPG elements were very good. While of course no one of decent upbringing would ever -gasp- cheat at a game, if you play it you might want to take a quick look at the modding side of Arcanum to make a nice "background" (initial stats) for your character that will give you a boost in the direction you want to take him/her/it, since I thought that without any, err, assistance it was not feasible for me to actually develop a competent character that I was interested in playing.

It's interesting that OTB also entertained thoughts of using FOT to make a GI Joe game. I think this concept could make good use of the FOT framework (very little RPG implementation, since the GI Joe troops and their enemies are predefined Stereotypical characters, but good potential for implementing thoughtful squad-based combat scenarios--after all, the Joes do very little except engage in combat). The flexibility of the FOT editors to make something like this fairly easy to implement is why I'm so interested in them. Although I see that someone has already contributed a nice set of GI Joe portraits for FOT to DAC, when I was playing around with this idea the other day I found a nice website with all the necessary graphics at:

www.yojoe.com

I'm not sure what's more worrisome: That someone has put in all the effort to make that website (it is very nice), or that I spent about four hours browsing it.

In regard to urban maps, I think that playing them is so much fun that the frustration of making them is completely forgotten upon the completion of their construction (say that ten times fast).


Endocore