THE HACKING IS OK DAMN IT.

[Kileyan]

It got bad reviews because the reviewer had to move his mouse, pick it up, move it again, pick it up, move in agian, just to pick the first long lock pick out of 4 tumblers of the mini game.

 

I am surprised by this. You shouldn't have to pick up your mouse at all!

 

I'm not sure what you mean, unless its some joke I don't understand. My mouse it tuned to make turning, moving and shooting fairly enjoyable and perfect in Alpha Protocol. When it come to lock picking that is an entirely different story. The first tumbler of a lockpick is normally but not always a long slow moving tumbler. Everyone I know experiences this on the pc version. You have to move the mouse far as you can, your computer desk surface willing, then pick the mouse up, move it again, and again just to move that first tumbler, usually wasting almost all the lockpick time on the first tumbler. The only way you wouldn't have to pick your mouse up is if you had a 3 meter computer desk and stood up and ran your mouse across the huge desk surface.

 

Considering the rest of the entire game works just fine with the mouse, it is bad implementation. It isn't hard to figure out that the game was tuned for a toggle stick that just keeps going and going. They never thought a mouse doesn't keep going, you have to actually move it, in this case, you have to move it 5 times the average desk space, over and over for those typical first tumblers.

[Hassat Hunter]

Nope, surprises me too. I got the same as Thorton_AP.

 

Although I guess that explains why others complain it's so hard and I find it the easiest of the 3.

Edited June 10, 2010 by Hassat Hunter

[Oner]

I got the same issue with lock picking, but I figured it's because of the unsupported graphics card.

 

Either way, EM-****ing-P.

[Tigranes]

I used to pick up the mouse to do the long locks, but I realised you don't really have to - it keeps going for a good while even if your mouse is at the top of the screen. Unless you're already starting with the cursor up quite high.

[blackwolfe]

I run in windowed mode just so the game doesnt lock up every time I want to alt+tab. That makes the lock picking game rather frustrating sometimes

[Sparta]

I agree here, the hacking system is fun and challenging. I like it cause the suspense feel behind it. When time is running out, you got this far without being seen, one slip up can result in a life or death. A major plus for this game.

[Thorton_AP]

It got bad reviews because the reviewer had to move his mouse, pick it up, move it again, pick it up, move in agian, just to pick the first long lock pick out of 4 tumblers of the mini game.

 

I am surprised by this. You shouldn't have to pick up your mouse at all!

 

I'm not sure what you mean, unless its some joke I don't understand. My mouse it tuned to make turning, moving and shooting fairly enjoyable and perfect in Alpha Protocol. When it come to lock picking that is an entirely different story. The first tumbler of a lockpick is normally but not always a long slow moving tumbler. Everyone I know experiences this on the pc version. You have to move the mouse far as you can, your computer desk surface willing, then pick the mouse up, move it again, and again just to move that first tumbler, usually wasting almost all the lockpick time on the first tumbler. The only way you wouldn't have to pick your mouse up is if you had a 3 meter computer desk and stood up and ran your mouse across the huge desk surface.

 

Considering the rest of the entire game works just fine with the mouse, it is bad implementation. It isn't hard to figure out that the game was tuned for a toggle stick that just keeps going and going. They never thought a mouse doesn't keep going, you have to actually move it, in this case, you have to move it 5 times the average desk space, over and over for those typical first tumblers.

 

 

If I could take a video of me doing it I would. Maybe I'll load up fraps, but you won't see me moving my mouse, just the cursor.

 

I don't find it an issue at all :\

[Lidda-Bit]

I'm still in the tutorial failing the hacking game haha. It is why I came to the forum right now

 

I can get the left side locked fine and fast with the keyboard controls. I can't get the mouse to go the direction I want it to at allll.. Maybe I need to change my mouse sensitivity settings?

[Tigranes]

Tip: when you start, quickly move the mouse to where the right side code is, so that the mouse is hovering directly over the code that it is moving. This way, it's much easier to make it go where you want it to go. If you are moving it like the lockpicks, with the cursor at the edges of the screen, then it'll feel a lot more clunky.

[palathas]

I got this game for a console. I'm fairly new to consoles and I find the controllers to be very unwieldy and hard to get my head around. I was going to keep clear of First or Third Person Perspective games on the console and stick to racing games and games that don't need too much precision. I got Red Dead Redemption though and found the controls to be very good and intuitive.

 

So I though I'd take a gamble and get Alpha Protocol on console, big mistake. I find the controls to be near impossible to use. I can manage the electrical bypass and lock-pick mini games but that hack game on a large TV screen just makes me dizzy with all those numbers going nuts like that, it's worse than motion sickness.

 

I think I'll just dump the console version and get it for the PC. I think a lot of my problems will disappear then, especially the dizziness from the crazy numbers when they are on a computer monitor.

Edited June 11, 2010 by palathas

[Thorton_AP]

I think there might be an issue with CPU performance.

 

I FRAPSed myself lockpicking, and while I still didn't have to pick up my mouse, I did however have to move it farther than I normally had to when not using FRAPS.

 

I'll post the link once it is done verifying.

[Amentep]

I hated hacking initially, then I realized if you aborted the hacking attempt it didn't set off the alarms (yeah I was like: when I realized) so it became a lot more reasonable to do hacking.

[Tigranes]

What? It does...

[Thorton_AP]

This is me lockpicking (and some extra fluff at the start of Brayko's mission)

 

[Amentep]

Eh? I just went through a level sneaky last night and it took me two tries (first aborted, second did it). No alarms.

[Thorton_AP]

Are you sure you don't have the perk that gives you a free failure? It's one of the sabotage skills.

[Tigranes]

Yeah, it was just Spy's Luck.

[Amentep]

Ahhh, that could be it. I thought I only had 6 ranks in Sabotage, but I might have 7 now.

[MarteenDee]

I'll just repeat what I've said in some other thread:

 

Controls aren't clunky. The only problem is that cursor arrow don't disappear when entering any of the minigames - and it seems that some people got really confused by that (I don't know how it is with the controler, though).

Firstly I was also a bit confused, because of the arrow and password box floating at the same time. If you focus on the box though, and forget about the arrow - it's easier than you think. Mouse reacts normally. It's only that you're not used to move "cursor" straight only in lines and rows. Same with keyboard - press button once and it moves one space vertically or horizontally.

 

There's a little trick with the keyboard but I'll leave that for the end (as it's kind of "cheat" or "fix").

 

Anyway - what I'm doing to hack quickly is (besides of buying skills and uniform gadgets for hacking):

1. Forget about cursor arrow.

2. Close your eyes slightly to have everything blurred. When you do that - animated grid squares became darker and still stripes with passwords seems brighter. Keep your eyes far enough from the screen to see the whole field.

3. Move both your mouse and press keyboard buttons simultaneously - in the meantime confirm if they match and which goes where. Remember that it's easier to match right key as it moves faster. Then you have to track only one password after security update.

4. Done (my hacking record is not more than 3sec on hard).

 

Now - promised "cheat"/"fix".

In Unreal Tournament you could dodge (roll) left or right by quickly double pressing WSAD keys. To prevent from frustrating and incidental rolls there was introduced key delay setting in ini files - double tap was registered only when you could click movement key not faster than every 0.25 sec and not slower than 0.5sec. As a legacy we have those entries left and active in Alpha Protocol config files. That's why you think that keyboard is clunky and isn't registering your furious attempts to move left password to its position. Here's what you have to do:

 

Go to ...MyDocuments/Alpha Protocol/APGame/Config directory, open in notepad, and alter these values (even to 0.0):

 

APGame.ini

 

InputHeldThreshold=0.5f <---------- 0.5f = 0.5 sec for the game to register double-click

InputPressedThreshold=0.25f <---------- 0.25f = 0.25 sec of delay between two clicks - that's why you think that keyboard

isn't responsive enough.

 

You might also for some reason open APInput.ini and alter

 

DoubleClickTime=0.250000 <---------same but delay for the mouse. Higher the value - more time to register double-click.

 

Save your changes and enjoy grief-free hacking...

 

Also - framerate is definitely influencing how your controls behave - especially in lockpicking minigame.

[Lidda-Bit]

Finally getting used to it. Thanks guys. The blurring your eyes thing works amazingly well for some reason haha :D

 

On the mouse part, I just have to over exaggerate my mouse movements to get it where I want it for some reason. Though once when the code was way at the bottom, I ran out of screen to move my mouse =/

[Hassat Hunter]

If, like stated before here I think, you just ignore your cursor when moving the block all is fine.

 

I prefer the mouse-block above the keyboard one, much easier to click in it's right place.

[MarteenDee]

Finally getting used to it. Thanks guys. The blurring your eyes thing works amazingly well for some reason haha :D

 

On the mouse part, I just have to over exaggerate my mouse movements to get it where I want it for some reason. Though once when the code was way at the bottom, I ran out of screen to move my mouse =/

 

 

It's not "for some reason". It's the way how your brain try to approach the problem. With your eyes wide open your brain is trying to match fast changing numbers to the code you want to find. When you "blur" your eyes - instead of infinite code matches - brain is only trying to find darker spots in the pattern. It's how you reduce amount of "data" available for your "processor" to calculate "variables"...

 

[Kamikaze_Watermelon]

Also the difficulty of hacking has more to do with the computer you are hacking. Take this weirdness for example. In Rome, where you infiltrate the CIA base, there is this latop with some emails I think, for me it had 4 symbol combinations and the protocols shifted every 5 seconds, while the giant mainframe thing had 8 symbol combinations and they shifted after like 9 seconds. GO figure, weirdness on Obsidians part.

 

It gets more hilarious than that. Bypassing the final stage's alarms and keypads requires you to find 6 'lines'. In comparison, the final mission in Taipei had alarms that required TEN lines to bypass, in the same time.

 

Also, despite my poor eyesight, I honestly had no problems with the hacking mini-game. Those skills that reduce difficulty help in a big way too.

[junior]

I hated hacking initially, then I realized if you aborted the hacking attempt it didn't set off the alarms (yeah I was like: when I realized) so it became a lot more reasonable to do hacking.

 

It depends on the computer/lock/circuit board (though admittedly most of the latter are alarm controls, and thus setting off the alarm via failure usually isn't a concern when you're rewiring these...). I've found that on many computers you can freely cancel out of the hack without setting off alarms. With others, cancelling will set off alarms. So far as I can tell, there's no way to determine beforehand whether the object that you're about to try and hack/unlock/rewire will trigger an alarm upon aborting.

 

I even found one computer that didn't set off an alarm when you cancelled out but did appear to spawn an enemy directly behind you...

 

It gets more hilarious than that. Bypassing the final stage's alarms and keypads requires you to find 6 'lines'. In comparison, the final mission in Taipei had alarms that required TEN lines to bypass, in the same time.

 

I think that the difficulty of these is primarily tied to the amount AP that you have. I ran the Rome hub last during my initial playthrough, and the hack/unlock/rewiring jobs there were - by and large - much more difficult than they were in Taipei (which I ran first) and Moscow. Given that you have considerably more AP during the hub that you run last, you end up with more difficult hack/unlock/rewire jobs. Though given how drasticly the difficulty ramps up between the last hub and the hub immediately before that one, I think the equation that determines it all needs to be looked at...

 

Later on for fun I modified the level up ini file to add 10,000 AP to my character at level 1. I restarted with a new character, reached level 1, and then ran off to go hack the e-mail computer next to the spot where you change clothes. Instant failure (and I mean a very *literal* instant here). Same thing happened when I tried to run the obstacle course and couldn't hack the door to get in.

 

 

 

By and large I like the mini-games, but the dramatic upshift in difficulty as the game progresses is a massive strike against them imo.

 

And the mouse controls on the hacking are far too clumsy.