Published by FASA Interactive

http://games.ign.com/objects/026/026421.html

i wonder what one of those simulators would cost, if they are available these days...

Well if you think it is just taking one person that you don't know at there word, sure. But if you research and dig deeper you'll see that it isn't just that. There are other things that corroborate that statement. Such as when their last title was released. The info leak from that publicly posted resume some time back. The old concept art. Etc.

Besides the collective Shadowrun lore being rife with dated 80's and 90's lampoons, ripoffs, and in-jokes? Along with those other reasons I gave in my last post.

Setting aside your disbelief that this was a Shadowrun game from the start, as they've pointed out a number of times the game was built to stand on it's own as a fun computer game. Pen and paper is an entirely different medium that computer games. That is the customers they are selling to, people that play video games. Not people that play pen and paper games. As I mentioned before there is market research that suggests the intersection of those two is less than you might expect. Especially with this particular type of computer game. So it is entirely logical that their first priority is the computer game.

I think they did though deviate from canon more than they had to, to even have effectively the same computer game they do now. But apparently there were some scope changes that occured that presents the oppotunity for them to bring it closer to canon. It would be nice for the few people that do make the computer game to P&P jump later, and for P&P folk going the other way if they clean some of it up.

then they shouldn't be calling it SR, should they? since it isn't.

Welcome to the world of refurbishing dated items. Giving it a new dated look of today instead of yesterday. Same name. Same spirit underneath. Roughly the same theme. But different, more Now!, hair and clothing style.

Luckily for most of us Shadowrun has that stuff, but does not require that stuff.

On the XBox360/PC crossplatform? Very doubtful. They aren't even going to make the game mod-able. Besides that being an enormous investment to have any sort of quality, and the Shadowrun license has roughly 1/10 the name pull of D&D. In computer games it has even far less than something like Rainbow Six.

That said I would have liked to have seen something like that too. Or maybe even something with Matrix support, although with the advent of SR4 that would have been largely dated a year and a half before release. Which kinda underlines the problem of lack of coordination with Fanpro.

But this is OK too. Depends somewhat on what I have for gear next year though whether or not I'll play it.

So you're suggesting that capture the flag between two clearly marked teams who summon trees and resurrect each other somehow is a refurbished, updated version of the diverse, conflicted world of shadowrun?

Boy do I miss the eighties...

mfb, for chrissake. They didn't remove orks from the world, they just did put them in this game, I'm pretty sure they even included them in the count of metahuman types in the fluff text in one place, they just don't mention them by name. Welcome to budgetville. Dwarves are slightly antimagical in Shadowrun via increased Willpower, although not actively so in a Counterspelling way. It doesn't "completely" change the history of the Awakening, although it does adjustment/change a of lot of details.

So yes, for chrissake it is stylistic. It ain't close canon. And it ain't what you want to see. Can't say all of it was what I was looking to see either. But it roughly follows the basic concepts and themes of the Shadowrun world.

Already addressed the "clearly marked teams". Yup, the company guards are wearing uniforms. The others aren't. Wow! Never come across that before!

Then in the crappy little bit of fluff they have put on their site they actually have managed to portray a "diverse, conflicted world" as the premise for the two sides. Both sides are turds doing nasty/destructing things, and both sides claim they are doing it for the betterment of all. But of course that's lost when people go in and start picking at it line by line and saying "HEY, WHERE'S SHADOWRUN F#$$#ERS!"

Speaking of trees. Lost in the trees while looking for a forrest.

P.S. The way they are using Resurrect is more like a heal spell. But then they didn't call it that. One of those deviations from canon that didn't need to go as far as it did.

now thats a wet dream if i have ever had one

They resist magic moreso than the other metahumans. That got used in the computer game in a way that is actually meaningful to create an interesting ruleset for playing. It is obviously not a literal direct correlation. But given that the computer game decided to maximize design resources spent of magic to give something that wasn't already covered by guns, so there aren't any spells directly affecting enemies. So instead they used a rough approximation that has meaning, but mostly was aimed at what they thought would create a fun computer game to play.

How about while you are at it point out; Base on the spirit. Roughly following. Not literal canon.

P.S. Oh, and also maybe you could get it straight that I didn't say "dispel magic"? Ya, that post is certainly something to judge you by.

AFAIK there isn't any magic aimed directly at enemies. They intentionally avoided that. Instead the area of effect seems to act like sort of a dampener, but to enemies only. Sort of like an aspected background count almost. I agree it is wierd twist on Dwarfs, but given the lack direct affect offensive magic I kind of see the path that lead them to implement it like that.

No, there would be bitching and moaning about how Microsoft wasn't creating a CRPG, MMORPG, or whatever.

Never played Shadowrun at a convention, but I'm coming to understand the bad things I've heard from people about their experiences at Shadowurn conventions. Moreso than other games.


P.S. I shudder to think of the downpour if they actually did make an MMORPG. If you took the World of Warcraft boards and populated with SR fanbois I would expect a sigularity that would implode the entire Interent.

there already are. you can't please everyone. but FASA Interactive could please a lot more people by using the existing storyline.

Did you even actually read the post? No direct attack magic, therefore no way to represent extra magic resistance in the canon Willpower way. It was change it or leave it out. It appears they decided that the changed version would add coolness to a team game, and an interesting difference for the Dwarf.

FanPro will actually have a couple of the BattleTech pods at GenCon. MechJock.com is the owner's site -- the software is still being updated, but I'm not sure if they're available for sale at the moment.

You mean another [sound] design decision I already gave the reasoning behind in my post. Conservation of design resources by eliminating functionality overlap. Firearms handle the direct damage freeing up the limited resources to implement magic features to handle other aspects of the game play.

Face it, implementing true canon P&P combat would be an enormous cost and likely not to lead to that great of game. Because combat in a computer game happens in a different way, through a different human interface, and in different a timeframe than when rolling dice.

Now that's the spirit!

oh, malarky. like it's that hard to design a fireball spell. sure, it saves time and money--which is only a concern if you're a) over budget, or b) cutting corners. given what i've seen so far, i'm going to have to go with b.

Fanpro has been trying like Hell to do the same thing, and you know what? They've managed to systematically suck the cyberpunk right out of a game this is still supposedly cyberpunk meets magic. The '80s references aren't there for a fucking whim. They help define the goddamn genre, and I'm getting sick and tired of people completely missing that point because they're young enough to have missed all of the RL factors that went into the CP genre, they missed it because the CP genre in other countries is significantly different from that in the U.S. (due to those specific, and America-specific, factors), or that they are people like yourself who are either ignorant or don't care about the genre upon which the game was founded (with magic (in all its forms) added on top of it).

While that is a cute nonsequitur, it completely fails to address my question in the slightest.

No.

Shit.

That is, thank you, the definition of a "Capture the Flag" game. Shadowrun isn't (conventionally speaking) a "Capture the Flag" RPG.

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't exactly scream "Shadowrun" in the conventional sense of the game and the conventional type of gameplay that the RPG is based upon. It's not that there aren't such conflicts - It's just that those don't, by their nature, involve shadowrunners. You know, since runners are third-party deniable assets with no specific allegiance to a particular client and all.

Plus, you know, Players usually only play one side in the miserable failures of games which can be summed up as nothing more that CtF.

But, like I said, you failed to even tangentially address how a cheap Capture the Flag game incorporates the "spirit of SR."

No, they didn't. Not anywhere on that site.

I'll tell you what I know. I know that you are about to go on another one of your dubiously based rants about the good ol' days when FASA could do no wrong, how all the kids and the foriegners just don't know nothing. Of course I was legal to drink in all 50 states by the time SR1 hit stores, and while technically not a US citizen the Jap scare and a lot of stuff was felt in a very similar way north of the 49th. So what to make of that?

How about making of that this. That I realize it for what it was, a moment in time. The books that came out of it are still around, but the moment is gone.

Yes, but it that also happens to be a description of the combat action part of some runs.

I'd say it was you. Because item extraction is indeed something that tends to come up in Shadowrun. Sure the ideal is quiet with not shots fired. But sometimes that just doesn't fit the situation or things go sideways and slugs fly.

Some runners are ecoterrorists and the like, or have a background of belonging to such groups or organizations. Some teams are tightly aligned with particular organizations. It doesn't always happen, but it isn't at all rare. Much more common is runners being closely tied in with a group for an arc. To give a sense of story over a series of runs.

Like in this game, where an organization is out to grab ancient magical artifacts. Which is why the Atlantean Foundation isn't a non sequitur. Just because you are too dense to grasp it, or want to play dumb doesn't make it so.

Of course you do need to provide some identification to the the groups since that's kind of a requirement for playing a team FPS game. Even if you called them Terrorists and Counter-Terrorist. But of course you wouldn't do that or you'd have people pouncing on such superfical simularities and crying 'knockoff' without actually looking further. *cough*

Actually the GM would be a person playing the other 'side'. Occationally the players are on defense, although that is usually a little tougher to set up because of the open-ended nature of the world tends to favour people that are on the offensive.

Welcome to a different medium! So what's next, you're going to start complaining about the crappy sound quality of the newspaper you bought this morning?

Or c) are realistic about what can be done with quality with the expected sales and still be able to keep the lights turned on, maybe even make a decent return on investment.

Frankly you are in a pretty damn poor position to judge how hard a fireball spell is to implement. I doubt it even dawns on you all the considerations involved with piling on features.

They might please more existing feverant SR fans by trying to use the existing storyline, but in the end I doubt they'd get close enough to please you. It is pretty much a lock they wouldn't please James. I suspect they couldn't please him if the brought Nigel Findly back from the dead to write the story AND sent a hooker over to James' house to give him a handjob.

But the real question is would they end up with more people overall, and not just existing fans, happy enough to slap down cash for the game? Meh, maybe, maybe not. But I doubt you are, and I'm pretty sure I am not, in a position to offer better than an armchair quarterback opinion on that. You haven't actually done professional market research on this, have you?

In the end though, faithful to canon or not, they are still selling a computer game and that's got to be first and foremost concern of how playable it is. Because totally faithful to the canon of a game that thousands or maybe low 10's of thousands play is pretty insignificant to the 100's of thousands they need to enjoy it as a computer game. More so when a large percentage of those 10's of thousands are just casual or occational players that have a limited knowledge of canon.

I see those as possibilities they could have done, although I'd tend to see that as far more of a slap-a-name-on than what they seem to be trying to do. But given that you seem convinced that it is slap-a-name-on anyway I guess that doesn't matter much to you.

Rocket launchers are not new to games, and variants on it are within the reach of any two-bit modder. A fancy rocket launcher is "piling on features"?

At least with Powerball you'd have LOS issues to make an argument for difficulty.

~J

and you are in such a position? because from my position, i can see a hell of a lot of games out there with a variety of fireball-style effects. if the SR dev team finds that something like that is beyond their abilities, they should probably look into taking some classes at CMU, or any other school that offers advanced programming classes. if your position shows you something different you ought to move, because you're position is wrong.

but i don't think it is. area attacks with flame effects are child's play for any dev who's in a position to work on a game like this. what i believe is that the dev teams are too selfish to use the canon world. they want to tell their stories and produce their game effects without having to do the work of checking their material against a known quantity.

Actually, yes.

Precisely. You see the visual effect and you stop thinking about it. You miss the tweaking upon tweaking of the graphics, and the sounds. You miss out fitting it into a UI. You miss out trying to line it up with all the other game options. You miss testing it. You miss trying to fit it all into a footprint. You miss keeping the feature list from building up to high and overwhelming the player so the game actually becomes less enjoyable to the overall player base. You miss trying to figure out how area effects interact with other things. You miss the exponential increase of complexity when adding features.

In short you are armchairing a job you have effectively no experience with.

Sure, if you want a two-bit job of it. But even then yes, it is feature creep and it'll bit your ass just like that.

Ick. That can of worms is well past it's Best Before date, so I think we should leave it closed.

and you miss the fact that there are ten million games out there that already have this effect--from the visuals to the UI integration to the damage and resistance by equipment and race to the sounds to everything. having tinkered with modding, i'm aware that it can be a daunting task. i'm also aware that it's their job. if the SR dev team is so incompetent that they can't manage it, then what the hell are they doing with that job in the first place?

Shows how much you know. It's a mystical magic stick.

I got the magic stick/I know if I can hit once, I can hit twice

Oh God, sweet, merciful God… Why? Oh God! Why?

Can we use this 'stick' to beat the story developers to death? It seems fitting.

Hit the deck! He's ranting again!

Some of us are old enough to remember it, and are glad it's gone. 80's references are easy to inject into your game if you want them. The reason they're gone is that most people don't want them. You can't win over a new fan base by including lots of inside jokes from a decade before they were born. And you can't please the crotchety old players with a new edition no matter how you make it.

I bet there's a lot more people tired of two old farts whining that the game isn't like it was in the good old days.

Luckily for most of us, and the game itself, you aren't the one that designs the fluff. The game, in order to continue to attract new customers, needs a different image than "That 80's Show... Now with Cyberware and Magic!" There's a reason that show failed miserably: most consumers don't look back at the 80s with enough fond memories to sell a major product.

Obviously you're free to dislike the change, but ranting on about it just makes you one of the old dogs that can't learn new tricks.

Great idea! Make it like all the rest! Whooo hoooo! Only, you know, you have to redo it all. So expending lots of effort to make a "knockoff".

Apparently you've forgotten however that it isn't your job to create commercial grade software, never has been your job, or that don't you even have a sniff.

Ladies and gentlemen, final conclusive proof that Brahm does not have the slightest fucking clue what he is talking about.

Dealing with LOS issues is solved. You add two simple checks to the exact same method used to determine the secondary damage code for the BFG in DOOM. Just for reference, that came out in 1993.

~J