- we will have a large single player PvE part - for Jagged Alliance we plan for 150 missions at launch, which can be played singleplayer or co-op. Multiplayer does not always mean PvP, although we will of course want that, since no one is as good and adaptable as a human player. But always voluntary, arena style PvP.
- hardcore casual is the core market for much of the US browser games. In Germany you actually have quite a big percentage playing traidional as well as browser games, for example. And why should casual gamers want to play Shadowrun when there is Whateverville to entertain them? So we stick to the smaller but no less viable group of gamers
- On the official JA site, there are screens mainly of the "Reloaded" offline game. If you visit Cliffhanger and go to our JAO section, this is early screens of the game.
- for the rest, I can't answer that reliably yet. You will be able to equip them fully and see that, chrome up etc., but probably not much in the way of faces etc.- it simply does not show much inside the game and costs a lot of time I would rather spend creating cool features

First off, welcome to the SR forums.

Second, may I so kindly ask you to back up your credentials in some fashion? A link to your profile on the Dev site perhaps or the name I could find you listed under in other games credits? Trust but verify, I hope you understand.

Now I will opperate under the assumption that you already passed muster and say, I am so very happy for you are not trying to develop a MMO in the vein of WoW. Good on you guys.



If my opinion counts for anything, I loved Neverwinter Nights 2 and its expansions (and the last of the NWN1 expansions Hordes of the Underdark) - I even recently picked up a back up copy on Steam. It should be possible to do the slowed down time and still have the expanded options, which is the method I would prefer to see. You could do slow moving real time with snap to cover, blind fire, stances, etc. The challenge I see in the slowed down real time ("hidden" turn based) is in a few things that I would think are in some ways essential to staying true to SR combat (from my limited understanding) would be Perception, Stealth, Surprise, Initiative, Initiative Passes, and Called Shots. But I think that those challenges are not insurmountable, in that you could allow those with higher Init and IPs to simply move faster through their actions than those at lower tiers while still moving the same total distance, which reminds me of the challenge and fun I had with Max Payne 1 & 2. Called Shot could be the difference between using right and left mouse buttons in combat or a shift/ctrl+click if you want a bit more finger gymnastics. I would strongly suggest using WASD (or whatever configuration) for movement rather than a mouse click on ground.

So yeah, I would like the action more than pause and go turns but I don't think it means we have to give up the tactical options.

That's good, because nothing sucks as much as going to bed and finding your character dead the next day because someone PvP'd you over the night. For called matches, of course, a human enemy is much more challenging than a machine, which usually ends up being predictable quite soon (though, the extra hard AI in SupCom is really nasty).


You do? I genuinly was unaware of this. Always thought there's quite the divide there, but it's not my business, but yours.

That said, your plans sound a lot more promising than I originally thought. I'm interested to see this develop. Will you keep us posted here with concept art, et cetara? Also, I assume this will work account based?


That's shown in the browser? That looks pretty stunning for flash graphics. Actually, it looks like 3D polygon based. There's an engine for this now?


Alright, how about custom faces for the character box (like the faces in the JA-O shots)? Of course, this game des not necessarily have to provide a de facto free character portrait generator, but it'd be ... nice to have this, especially for metahumans like dwarfs, orcs and trolls, not to speak of the possibly eventually added variants.

Speaking of which, how are you going to handle size differences? Trolls are huge, they won't easily fit through every door and air duct ...

And I get to the end, and now all I remember is 'Jello Shots'.

I like the idea to maybe take an Arcanum approach (speaking of steampunk) whereby you can choose real time or turn-based with APs. For those of us who enjoyed both the real time aspect of JA and the turn based style of Fallout.

Re: Credentials: Anybody can post this link, but for what it's worth I am the second guy from the top.



We are building in Unity, which is a full 3D Engine - the polygon count for webbrowser compatibility is limited and we won't have a lot of the fancy bumpmaps etc., but otherwise it is a normal 3D game.

Faces to choose from: yes. Custom built: maybe - since you need to do this for multiple races it means multiple generators, so it is a quite a lot of work...
Size differences: Good question that. We haven't agreed on this yet, though we are leaning towards not offering air ducts and making Trolls duck through doors, so you choice of character does not prevent you from accessing any missions. But Trolls also won't be able to use just any tiny pistol etc., so we will limit certain items probably.

The problem with having both is, that we have an AI Server who either understands one ruleset or the other. Making him understand both is again much more effort (read: costly). And in co-op multiplayer you would always have to agree on a system, which isn't ideal. So we would really need to choose...

While I am sort of sceptical about browser prformance, if this works it's good for bridging the (gaping) quality gap between most browser games (graphically stuck in the 16 bit era, more or less) and modern computer games ... is there any game that actually uses this engine, so we can get a look at how well this works?


I was more thinking of sending in a portrait (an appropriatly trimmed version of this for instance), and you guys nodding it through to be used, or something like this. Of course, mapping your own character with custom textures would be very nifty, even though requiring a LOT of work to be anywhere near where, say, APB went. That's decidedly unrealistic, I guess.


It'S an often ignored problem of trolls as a PC race. Of course, you could do the maps to be solved in many ways, not all being viable for all characters. Again, that'd be a lot of additional work, though.

Well, the turn based stuff from fallout would only be in combat like situations, anything else could be left real time. would that work?
Turnbased/AP-Systemf rom Fallout1/2/Tactics would be a good and simple way to make the difference in Initiative. By the way, are you going by the SR3 or SR4 Rule-System?

Unity is used by literally hundreds of games over all platforms, including console. It can run as a browser plugin as well. Brwoser games will get a lot more like real games in the near future...



we were thinking about allowing you to upload your own (though with potentially 500.000 users, nodding each of it through will be next to impossible. We will see how we can balance individualization and budget constraints here.


yeah, as we said: move in real time and go turn based once combart starts would be my current way to go...
Regarding rules: As far as our game goes, the differences aren' that much of an issue, as they mostly touch areas that do not affect us (for example the game would not have a Karma pool of dice anyway, we would need to "translate" that in some way). I must admit I haven't played 4th edition yet (and actually was introduced to Shadowrun with the second edition when it just came out), so I am reserving my judgement on that. From a business standpoint it would probably make sense to go with the current version of rules to allow some easy transfer from PnP to Game and backwards (with all the map and story material we will produce one could think of doing some nice pdf downloadable adventures). But again: we haven't decided yet.

Sorry not to have been as clear as I should have, I was thinking of browser application examples.


Understandable.


Emotionally I'm all for SR3, and with a machine doing all the troubling and complicated rules stuff, it's also the more viable one, but it certainly will need modifications. Do you plan to include riggers with drones, too? And hackers and AR?


PDF downloadable adventues? That's a nice idea! Also, if there'd be an editor application of some kind, where one could create and upload their own maps from default tiles and objeckts ...

Then I'd only dream of a viable character model creatior with decent detail, and freedoms like APB (and yes, I know full well that isn't exactly soemthing that will see the light for business reasons, hence dream) in customisation, and you could do most character management in SRO ... though especially for orks and trolls, a good character image generator would really, really be helpful, sicne it's extra hard to find images on the internet for them.

I'd totally pay for that, FWIW.

What Hermit just said basically.
Sheeiit . . Micro$ucks should have let you guys do the game back then . .

I think Battlestar Galactica Online is using Unity, but I am not 100%.. But in all reality Unity in the web simply scales down things like textures and lighting. The rest is the amount of asset data (hence not an open world game, since it would constantly swap asset from and to memory)- otherwise you can do 3D just fine

Riggers - probably, but we don't want a pure "crafter" class which only runs drones in combat, so we are looking into some changes there. AR: definitely: if you can "see" AR, you will actually be able to see a whole new layer of the game (same for spirit world) you can interact with.

Well, under SR3, you had more Vehicle Riggers who had some Drones maybe.

I played my Rigger as part of an insertion team accompanied by drones since SR1 (it's really hard to play a dedicated rigger otherwise), since it was never stated you need to be in full immersion for captain's chair (and the drones just borrowed my rigged initiative). It's viable by 2E/3E rules. If you want to go with the more well-known, apply the rigger as he is in SR4, though really nothing has changed there, only now it's spotlighted.


Okay, thanks. It's just that this is soemthing the browser was never meant to do, so it could easily eat ressources like crazy, I guess. Also, I'm just curious. Will have a look at BSGO.

Sounds a bit like Commandos, doesn't it?


Just AR, or will you give us the full matrix?

Just . . one minor plea here . . Please DO NOT USE THE TERM HACKING. Use Decking. Please? ;_;

Oh no you didn't!


(Actually I'm on your side. I wonder if I could modify the pdfs to replace hacking/hacker/hack with decking/decker/deck

I miss cyberdecks. And I never got to play with them.

someone even went to the trouble of macking a game called decker which was modeled after the SR3 Decking Rules.
yes, horribly complicated, why do you ask? O.o

One word:

Pixies?



More seriously, is the race selection going to be just the core metahuman regular races, or will there be options to select racial variants and stuff like spirits and AIs and sapient critters ?

I'm guessing it's just the core races, but one can hope.




-k

Pictsies

The game will run on micro-transaction- so it is a free to play and lives by people paying for extra stuff. In that sense: if you bring enough dough, we can talk spirits and AIs

Ouch. Do you not want my money?

That said, I'm curious what will become of this.

@hermit: if you want to see what Unity can do, you can take a look here or there

"The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! We willna be fooled again!"

*nods*
if i ever were to play SR4, that would totally be a character idea i'd be using for a pixie adept . .

Damn you Stahl... That's number four. FOUR!

Now, if you excuse me, I have to me a borderline-sociopathic troll that names his guns and sleeps with them in rotation like his own personal harem, and a pixie adept.

Number Four?
Next you'll be Complaining about Number Johnny 5! ^^

I think I'll use that one in the Shadowrun MMO.

But honestly . . Number Four? Four what?

Four characters now stuck in my head...

The Accountant from Hell, the borderline-sociopathic troll that names his guns and sleeps with them in rotation like his own personal harem, Puppy the Dog Shaman, and that Pixie Adept.

And that doesn't even include the characters I use in my stories (*Points at sig*), and the stuff planned for them...

*snickers* ^^
i've had the idea since i first read about the wee free men and the pixi puncher adept on dumpshock ^^
and now the Mr. Johnny Five idea for a Drone/AI or something like that ^^

I would ask you to reconsider and go with your slowed down time real time idea instead for one specific reason: Multiplayer.

When we played Fallout 1 & 2, Jagged Alliance 2, Baldur's Gate, and so forth, when we went into turn based mode because we were in single player it didn't matter how much real time we took to select and confirm an action for our characters to attempt based on their stats. In a multiplayer situation, if I take my sweet time selecting where my next chess piece is going to go, the game is not progressing and the other player has to wait on me - social restrictions in meat space indicate pretty quickly that the other player is getting frustrated at not having their turn and if I want to avoid the other player storming off so the game can go on, I better hurry up and make a decision but when online, anonymity as you well know increases the chances I am delaying taking my turn just for shits and giggles, to grief and rage quit the other player.

So, what do you do, put in a timer limit on how long your turn goes? Even that adds up to annoyance if a player just lets the clock run out all the time and the game world just has to wait on them. So, I implore you, reconsider using your real time slowed down "turn based hidden" method. I wonder, since NWN had more mulitplayer focus than previous D&D PC games if that is part of the reason they chose their implementation of the real time "background turns" method, other than just to show off the animations more frequently...

A valid point - we are using a timer as well as an incentive (get extra Action Points) for people finishing their turn earlier. But we will see how that works out and it is indeed the main argument for a "real time" game.

That's why I like the idea of everyone planning their next actions at the same time and then resolving simultaneously. Though in that case "interruptions" should be possible, but I guess they could be dealt with quickly enough.

Another problem you'll face is that if you chose turn-based, you'll have reviewers complaining that turn-based is obsolete and should be dead (I've seen a lot of games get bad reviews just because they were turn-based!) and if you choose real-time you'll have tactical fans complaining that your game is about acting fast rather than being tactical.

Well, that looks pretty nice. Textures in the crane game are a bit low-res, but the shooter almost looks like a client-based game. Gives hope for SRO.

Incentives are nice and well as long as all participants behave themselves...but the question is, how good does the system cope with human failure or griefers?

Actually, surprised I didn't think of this before, but a browser game that's got a good storyline is CSI: Crime City for FaceBook. Apparently they got the series writers involved.

Now, it's not fine art or anything, but it's the rare video game that is, either. Not every game can be Max Payne or Alan Wake...

Facebook .... how much do you have to pay to actually play it? How much spam does it create?

I've paid nothing, and gotten next to no spam. It's made by UbiSoft, an actual game company, not a company designed to make money from spamming and "Click to extend bar" games. The worst I get is notices that other people share, just like all their other wall posts.

The incentive is one part - there will still be a maximum time allowed, then the next player's turn begins.



A lot of the FB games have a conversion rate of play to pay of less than 10%, meaning less than 1 in 10 regular players pay for them. While many people seem to be suspicious about free to play, I still think it is the fairest model out there: You don't pay 50 bucks for a game that turns out be crap or only 4 hours long, you don't pay for months when you are not playing anymore (as in subscription based models) to keep your account. Of course many are designed in a way that you have to pay eventually to get full benefit of the game, but at that stage you have invested considerable time into a game - so apparently you liked it in some way. Of course some make up for the decrease in profit per player versus other models by spam, ads etc., but many of them actually don't.

Some of you might remember me, I'm Joe "GreyPawn" Pishgar. I was the project lead of the previous Shadowrun Online attempt, and head of the now defunct Sixth World Games.

primetide here is the real deal, and I have to say that I'm excited about what the Cliffhanger Productions team has put together already. I contacted him awhile ago, and we've been discussing the project and comparing notes for a few weeks now. I was fortunate enough to be privy to some of it already, and it's incredibly exciting. Most likely, several of my former team members and I will be involved. Hopefully some of our experience will be useful towards the culmination of a truly immersive Shadowrun gaming experience.

That is unofficially a good sign right there.

Grey!
Where da fuck ya folks been man?
Good to see you back!

My only concern with real time is how things like wired reflexes, and other IP increasing (initiative so to speak in 2E terms). At those speeds a character is reacting much faster than a real life person would.

Do you plan on designing the game around one-offs or would there be an overarching story arch?

Finally, are you talking to catalyst games about the options?

We are planning several story arcs for various locations in the world- each location will have its own arc and some may be sharing story elements.
We are talking about a number of ideas...but we cannot reveal more at the current point.

That indeed sounds promising. Locations? Which locations are you considering, if you can already talk about such things?

Denver? Hong Kong? Manhattan? LA? London? Montreal? Winnipeg?

EDIT: Let's stay away from Bogota, for one thing, there's no map of the territory there.

The only place "real" runners care about is Seattle =P