Shadowrun: Returns is live, 20 years since the SNES, 19 years since Genesis Options

[hermit]

I don't want to be social, why should i have to be in a single player game? <.<

I second this. Social doesn't simply make everything better. I'd hate if I'd have to accumulate facebook-like 'friends' just to be able to play a single-player game. This, in my eyes, improves the game. Given other potential problems, I say good riddance.

RE: the pushback ... I'd rather they delayed a month, or two, or even a year, than release a bad product. Edit to add: I say that as a $60 backer, too. I'd rather wait a bit, and be sure to gt my money's worth ... than rush things, and maybe not.

I second this, too. Far too many games have been decreased in quality over a rush to meet deadlines. Many things can't make their development deadlines. Not only in games - look at military development, aviation or automotive design, industrial engineering. Better make sure something works and miss a deadline (which is made arbitrarily at a point in time where you have no idea what the future of the project's development holds), than get a piece of crap that meets a deadline.

If you spend decades in the industry and can't figure out how to estimate properly yet, you're not good at your job.

How many decades have you spent in the games industry (or any job for that matter)? You sound pretty entitled here. Like you somehow have the right to demand the game there, then, with these features, just because you exist. And I say that as a $250 contributer.

Until you try working in the field, even peripherally, and find out that you have to literally have the teddy bear in the right place in order to make the mainframe work right (No, I'm not joking) that you understand that anything to do with computers is Chaos in Reality.

Indeed. Or adding meaningless buffer code, position the computer in a certain way ... those are such complex machines, and program languages have so many levels of translation by now, that it is next to impossible to see causes for effects. Mark my words, eventually there will be Warhammer-Style priests of technology because it will be impossible to understand, and future humans will be reduced to appease it through rituals, like placing the teddy bear at the right place.

[_Pax._]

I second this. Social doesn't simply make everything better. I'd hate if I'd have to accumulate facebook-like 'friends' just to be able to play a single-player game. This, in my eyes, improves the game. Given other potential problems, I say good riddance.

Eh. It would have been nice to at least have the option, as long as it wasn't required.

[Draco18s]

In the latest update, Returns has been pushed back from a January release date to 'May or June'.

The game got bigger, they need more development time. Fine.

At the same time, they've also removed a large feature, in that you can no longer recruit friends characters in your game as fellow runners.

Not a big deal. There were technical hurdles that would have been very difficult to overcome had they pressed forward with it. Like if you recruit a friend's character, then have that character die, and then reload your save from before it happened: can you still recruit that character or not?

It's a much easier problem to solve when the game is server/MMO-based, but not when it's client-side single player.

I'm blind and ignorant for suggesting a skilled worker be able to estimate time requirements, yet I'm the one who took it rude? Whatever duder.

How long would it take to implement a custom-interface video controller that plays in both Internet Explorer 6 (that's right, 6) and on the iPad in Mobile Safari?

I'll let you throw out a number before I tell you.

[phlapjack77]

One practice I've heard is to take any feature estimate, double it, then increment the time unit.

So 3 days becomes 6 weeks, 2 weeks becomes 4 months...

Sadly, mgmt is never ok with this answer...

[Falconer]

That was one of the first rules I was taught 15 years ago as a systems admin & programmer... take your time estimate and double it.

If you're done early... you're a miracle worker.
If you find complications you're done on time.
And if you're truly fubared... when it takes double that amount of time, it's only double your estimate instead of quadruple.


Overall... it strikes me as the kind of thing which is harder than it sounds to add. NPC's tend to have scripted AI behaviour... while players have a lot more intelligence and make better use of gear. Any ally NPC AI would need to be able to handle all possible builds rather than be built and tuned to run a specific one. Only way i can see it being actually viable is if they did have a multiplayer coop mode.

[Byrel]

This isn't really news anyhow. In their first post-kickstarter video, they said that their pre-kickstarter estimate for a January release wasn't going to happen. Because the expected feature set had increased so much with all the stretch goals, second city, etc. there was no way it would be done in January. At the time they'd guessed at April-May if I remember right. If it slips a month, that's still mighty good calculation from the beginning of the project.

Furthermore, I can definitely say that they could wait till next Christmas, and I wouldn't complain if they delivered a decent game. Sixty bucks is cheap for a shadowrun game, even if it is a year late.

[Draco18s]

This isn't really news anyhow. In their first post-kickstarter video, they said that their pre-kickstarter estimate for a January release wasn't going to happen.

You'd be surprised how many people haven't seen that video. I'm still responding to emails about my own kickstarter about when it'll ship despite no less than six updates about the progress.

[Stahlseele]

ooh, new update, techy stuff!
the ai looks promising so far O.o

[Stahlseele]

Shadowrun Returns to feature distributed Biocomputing to power “The Infinite Resolution Rendering Engine”.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/161326...ns/posts/411147


It looks more and more like a Fallout Clone . . AND I APPROVE WHOLEHEARTEDLY!

i still says they should have done something like this YEARS ago . .
just take the engine from Fallout:TACTICS, add in Magic and Matrix and change the rest to look and feel like shadowrun AND YOU ARE GOOD!

[Bigity]

Add some destructible terrain and I'll agree (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I always liked the Silent Storm engine for that kind of thing too.

[Sengir]

Most interesting thing to me: http://www.harebrained-schemes.com.s3.amaz...2/character.jpg

Classic attributes including Quickness, the skill list has seemingly been weeded out a bit, and there is something called "Chi Casting"...possibly related to Adepts?

[CanRay]

Etiquette: Infected?

Interesting!

[Mach_Ten]

Mark my words, eventually there will be Warhammer-Style priests of technology because it will be impossible to understand, and future humans will be reduced to appease it through rituals, like placing the teddy bear at the right place.

I have prayed to the Machine God .. and also done a $75.00 pre-order .. just for the damn Karma

and i wants it NEOW ! gimmeh gimmeh gimmeh.

[ChromeZephyr]

Jake Armitage. I just squee'd.

[Iduno]

Etiquette: Infected?

Interesting!

Huh. I thought that skill was listed under firearms.

[ChromeZephyr]

*snrk* Bravo.

[Sengir]

So, will anybody happen to be in Austin, TX on the 10th?

http://harebrained-schemes.com/post/its-on/

[Stahlseele]

it's for me as improbable as it is for you, as you probably know <.<

[KarmaInferno]

That elf samurai, what the heck is she breathing?




-k

[Stahlseele]

Mariuana is so last century dude . .

[Lionhearted]

For her own sake I hope it's not laës, also what's up with the alt goth look (loving it!)

[CanRay]

That elf samurai, what the heck is she breathing?

-k

Neon.

[Rastus]

Neon.

Nah, it's Jazz. We just never had anyone do a coloured illustration before. All this time Lone Star cops have been huffing glowing gas, go figure.

[Rastus]

So, does anybody want to see actual gameplay footage? Because I got some right here for you!

Dunno about the rest of you folks, but it looks pretty alright to me. To think, they're calling this an alpha.

[phlapjack77]

"Lady Z" hmmm

"arch-e-types" is this the correct pronounciation? I always say "arch-types"...

looks pretty cool tho. could do without the commentary...

*edit* ok, i'm having a little problem with the commentary - at one point they say the game is "pretty true to the rules", then in the video there's things like an "abomination spirit" and "AP for spirit summoning" and stuff like this. I mean, it still looks cool and fun and all, but I'm not sure I would say it really holds to SR rules that tightly. Better than the MS game, maybe...