Hurlshort

Just like the lack of saving anywhere, it is pretty clearly a question of developer's limitations rather that a deliberate attempt to piss off customers. They really don't have anything to gain by making people re-download the whole game.

Speaking of Steam, this is the first game that has really had me using the Steam Workshop. I gotta say, as long as you stay away from the actual forum area, it is pretty sleek and easy for managing content.

After hockey last night, we went upstairs to the Rink bar, and they had a bunch of new beers on tap. So of course we had to try them all.

I needed that video a week ago

Well I've already spent half a Gandalf on the thing, so I should just be a Balrog away from having a playable alpha.

I got rid of my global variable and the regions that we attached to it, as well as the triggers. It was causing an error and a few oddities. Plus none of my triggers were firing correctly. Everything is working much smoother now. I'm having fun balancing the low level combat. Basically you start with almost no karma in my adventure, and you slowly build up to about 24 points. You start naked and bare handed and end up facing a gang boss with a shotgun and a combat vest. I'm enjoying it, hopefully others will as well. I think I can finish it by next week.

Ok, I've got all my scenes laid out, with transitions and everything. Next I need to flesh out the characters and lay out the bad guys on my big combat map. I have a lot of writing left to do, but I'm excited that I can actually run the character from the first scene to the last without any issues. It is still coming in pretty short. My guess is with combat it will only be 45-60 minutes. But hopefully the quality will justify the short episode.

Actually I'd say playing a made made a huge difference in DA2. The story was way more engaging that way for me. I tried the other two classes and barely got into it.

The steam complaints that really crack me up are about the lack of extra content. The game has only been out a week!

I'm really hoping that the game does well enough that HBS can develop and release a much bigger campaign. Berlin will likely be similar in length, maybe even shorter. This is really just a short story in the Shadowrun Universe. I was reading some of the Steam comments and people really seem upset about the lack of C&C. I love C&C, but I don't expect every game to give it to me. People also sling around the description interactive novel as an insult. I don't get that, I also love novels

Yikes, yeah that Shadowrun Online game looked like it was bad news. It was the same team that was doing Jagged Alliance Online, and that was apparently pretty weak. It's always good to look for who is in charge of development and what they've done. Jordan Weisman created the PnP game, so you knew he was going to nail the atmosphere in Shadowrun Returns.

Point Lighting, in the editor, always seems like it is going to be extreme. Then I get in the game and it is fairly faint. But I've had some good success in some areas. Last night my oldest child turned off the night light because a fly was buzzing around it. My youngest woke up an hour later screaming. After comforting him, when I went to go back to sleep I couldn't stop thinking about what light intensity and radius would be best for that situation I love building sets and feel good about them, and I've got conversations down. So far triggers and variables are my biggest concern, but trial and error is getting me there. Today I set up a scene where I go outside and find two gangers beating up my father. I then engage them, and afterwards have a conversation with my dad. I set up the goals and karma rewards as well. It took a bit of fidgeting, but eventually I got it to work pretty well. The tricky part was getting the gangers to stay focused on my father until the PC whacks at them. If they make a beeline for the PC, the fight becomes very different. So I'm pretty excited to see it coming together.

If I recall correctly, GD had a relationship with this woman before. He doesn't seem to want to let her get away again, and the hopeless romantic in me digs that Best of luck GD, you deserve to grow old with someone.

It is a no brainer at $20.

So I got my first few areas done, characters and conversationscreated, some quest goals and rewards, and one combat scene. I loaded it up locally to see how long it takes to play through at a regular pace: 10 minutes Geez, coming up with content is hard, I can see why so many developers throw loads of combat at people, it eats up the time.

Yeah, HBS has hinted that they will release an item editor in the future.

I'm keeping it pretty linear, I'll leave the choice and consequences to the big boys. It is pretty easy to import a character at least, so when someone starts Act II they can keep the same character with all the karma choices they made in Act I.

I think an hour is a decent goal for a user content pack. I plan on making a series of them, kind of like episodes, if I can manage the time.

One of the pluses on the user campaigns and using small maps and more scene transitions is that it automatically saves the game. Granted my whole mission will likely only take an hour to get through

I have a global story variable set up and it is showing up in the triggers. I must not have it set up right, it is a string variable, I think I have to give it a value somewhere or I'm not setting up the trigger or region correctly. Hopefully someone will upload an example sometime soon, the base campaign is a big mess to look at for help. I have a decent workaround for my current campaign. I am going to setup separate instances of the maps, so when you leave one map and then go back, you are actually entering a new version. That allows me to change NPC's and interactions easier too.

I still can't get the stupid variable scene transition to work, I set it up the way people suggested, and I even checked the base campaign for ideas, but it doesn't work for me. Bleh. I did figure out how to make a custom character with almost no karma and make that the starting character of my story. That was a good mystery to solve. I've been spending hours with this toolset, I've had no time for gaming

By the end I wanted to stab someone every time the theme music played. Wow, that is the most famous theme song in the entire Western genre. You might want to question your personal tastes on that one.

Looks like variables are the way to go when setting up different spawn points on the same map:

Our neighbors bought a horse, but it turns out the fence they just built isn't tall enough, so now we have a horse walking around the front yard. The kids are amused

Super excited that I managed to get an ability check implemented into a conversation. This editor is a ton of fun, I'm addicted to it.