Mutants Rising 2011 Demo Teaser and more modding news

[WorstUsernameEver]

For those of you who are looking forward for some more classic Fallout modding, the team of Mutants Rising has been progressing steadily with their mod, and announced on their website that they'll have a new demo available for Christmas. In the words of the team:<blockquote>Dear Fallout fans,

It has been some time since you last heard from us. Rest assured that we have been working hard on the project and have made significant headway. If you followed the progress bars, you'll notice that they have been updated today, increasing by at least 8 percentage points in each category (with the tiny exception of mapping). To showcase some of this progress and to reward you for your patient wait on this mod, we will be offering you a Christmas gift:

<center><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AEokML9qkqA?version=3&amp;hl=en_EN" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></center>

The new demo will showcase the town of Elko, i.e. the first location of the game. You might ask why we would release the same stuff we released over 4 years ago. The main reason is that Mutants Rising has evolved greatly since then and the only "stuff" that remained from the original Elko are the general lines of the story. We could say that Elko 2007 was a draft, while Elko 2011 is the fully implemented, frozen location of the final product, with cutscenes, fully voiced and animated talking heads as well as blackjack and hookers (in fact, forget the blackjack and the hookers).

The demo also presents an opportunity to reveal some of the new game features we have implemented. First and foremost, we completely overhauled First Aid and Doctor skills. Each time your character receives a critical hit, you suffer a bleeding wound. For each such wound, you lose 1 Hit Point every 10 seconds. In order to heal these wounds, you can either use drugs, or apply your First Aid skill. Using First Aid also increases your Healing Rate. It does NOT restore your lost Hit Points though. The Doctor skill on the other hand, is still used as a means to heal crippling injuries, but it also enables you to restore Hit Points. The effects of both skills depend on your skill level - the higher the skill, the greater the bonuses. Moreover, the HP bonus from using Doctor is increased by your Healing Rate, so it's convenient to apply First Aid before using the Doctor skill. This was our attempt at making both abilities more useful, and preliminary tests showed that it does add a challenge and forces you to boost these skills or spend a fortune on drugs. Another prominent modification was done to the character traits. We have replaced many useless traits from the original with new ones, and modified or tweaked the remaining ones, increasing the number of valid choices. There are also many other tweaks such as decreased ammo counts, decreased Carry Weight, etc.

The demo will be available on 25th December this year. Stay tuned!</blockquote>In other news Fallout 1.5: Resurrection has come out of hibernation early to announce its impending completion. For those of you unfamiliar with this mod, it is a FO2 TC that has been in the works for some time now. Website.

While we are waiting for these mods to be released, be sure to check out ArekBalcerzak’s demo of Desert Duty here and Lich’s full V1.0 release of 13V.

 

[Dude101]

You beat me to the post.

 

[Richwizard]

Progress is much better than regress. I very much want to play this game.

 

[shihonage]

Lookin' good!

 

[dev]

that was SEXY, dont stop guys

 

[Elric]

Ah, nice Xmas present...

 

[Gizmojunk]

Looks interesting, but I'm skeptical about the tinkering with the skills and perks. First Aid was fine as it was (IMO). The system afforded 6 heals per day, but only 3 for crippled limbs, and you had to prioritize who got what treatment if you played with NPC party members. I wonder how this plays out with NPCs bleeding out every 10 seconds also? (or do they? It would not be appropriate if they didn't).

** What useless traits & perks were there? "Gifted" could certainly be toned down; but I'm hoping no one just assumed, "Why would anyone take Jinxed!? it makes you get critical fails".

It would be neat if they chose to release their mod in "Content only" and "Content & Gameplay" variants. That way to each their own and everyone might give it a try.

 

[Surf Solar]

It would be neat if they chose to release their mod in "Content only" and "Content & Gameplay" variants. That way to each their own and everyone might give it a try.

Why should they? It's a total conversion, not just a mod. They make the game so how they want to have it and adjust the mechanics for what works best for their game.


Best of luck to you guys, looking forward to christmas!

 

[Ardent]

@everyone: Many, many thanks for support!

And now, for some constructive feedback:

Looks interesting, but I'm skeptical about the tinkering with the skills and perks. First Aid was fine as it was (IMO). The system afforded 6 heals per day, but only 3 for crippled limbs, and you had to prioritize who got what treatment if you played with NPC party members.

In the original game, there was almost no difference between First Aid and Doctor - both skills were used in the same situations, only one allowed you to heal up to 5 HP, and the other 10 HP (and of course the XP value was different). The amount of HP healed was very small, smaller than your regular Stimpak or Healing Powder. All these factors combined made the skills virtually useless the moment you reached Level 4-5, when you have accumulated enough Stims not to worry about them running out during combat. Broken limbs were a rare occasion, even if you played on hard, so the alternate use of Doctor wasn't needed very often.

Thus, we decided to re-design the whole healing system. The original code is disabled and all effects are written in the player's script now.

I wonder how this plays out with NPCs bleeding out every 10 seconds also? (or do they? It would not be appropriate if they didn't).

Neither companions, nor NPCs/enemies bleed like the player does. Companions, because it would be way too hard to manage their injuries and prevent them from dying out of involuntary neglect; enemies, because there would be no more extra challenge - enemies could hurt you worse, but you'd kill them faster as well, right? Finally, it would have been damn hard to script the bleeding effects for critters other than the player.

** What useless traits & perks were there? "Gifted" could certainly be toned down; but I'm hoping no one just assumed, "Why would anyone take Jinxed!? it makes you get critical fails".

Hey, we're not that one developer that dumbs everything down to prevent kiddies from whining. Traits are meant to give you an edge in one field, and a handicap in another. Here's my list of useless traits that no one ever picks if they think of making an effective character build (incidentally, it is almost 100% consistent with Per's guide to Fallout 2):

1. Fast Metabolism
2. Bruiser
3. Kamikaze
4. Chem Reliant
5. Chem Resistant
6. Skilled

In MR, all of these got replaced by other traits or have been tweaked to become (more) effective. For instance, Bruiser now gives you +2 Strength and +20 extra Carry Weight, but takes only 1 AP, instead of 2. As Per pointed out in his Nearly Ultimate Guides:

Two more stat points, but you need the AP. That's like losing four points of Agility, which is ridiculous.

-1 AP is still a severe limitation, but one you might consider acceptable, seeing as you get fat bonuses to strength and carry weight (Carry weight has been significantly decreased to prevent maxing out on carried loot/weapons).

Also, FYI, we didn't touch Jinxed or Bloody Mess.

It would be neat if they chose to release their mod in "Content only" and "Content & Gameplay" variants. That way to each their own and everyone might give it a try.

You can always delete the .ini files responsible for trait and stat modifications, and there is also a simple way of turning the healing system off (which nonetheless breaks certain healing items), but as Surf Solar pointed out - why would you do that? The game is balanced to account for these changes and playing without them impacts the experience negatively.

 

[Surf Solar]

Hm, reading that only the player suffers from certain mechanics, no npc etc - it sounds a bit cheesy if you ask me. Have you tried it out to apply the same to all npc, or did you just say "it will get annoying" without testing/tweaking it?

If some thing in the game only applies to the player it breaks some "immersion" and looks a bit forced in my humble opinion.

 

[Ardent]

Hm, reading that only the player suffers from certain mechanics, no npc etc - it sounds a bit cheesy if you ask me. [...] If some thing in the game only applies to the player it breaks some "immersion" and looks a bit forced in my humble opinion.

There's plenty of such mechanics in Fallout: radiation and poison are the first that come to mind. No NPC has any traits or perks. NPCs don't suffer from drug addiction/withdrawal. Bleeding is similar, in a way. If you need an NPC suffering such effects, you script it individually for them.

Have you tried it out to apply the same to all npc, or did you just say "it will get annoying" without testing/tweaking it?

No, we haven't tried it on other NPCs actually. Like I said, it's a ton of scripting. It could potentially be applied to companions, true, but doing so for every NPC in the game would require us to put several hundred lines of code into every critter script, which already is about 400 scripts to cover.

The time and effort needed to implement this system globally (and debug it) is just not worth the outcome. It might make your enemy die 1 turn earlier, but you'd kill him anyway, right? You only see 99.9% of your enemies once, during a random encounter, or until you kill them. So any long term bleeding effects won't show.

When you play the game, the fact only you are suffering from bleeding doesn't feel too cheesy or out of place. I mean, at least none of our testers reported so. Ultimately, the demo will show the community's attitude towards the system, and depending on the feedback from the players, we will tweak it in one way or another. But it'll have to take into account our processing powers.

 

[ericjones]

Looking forward to this! I'll reserve my judgement on the bleeding mechanic until I've played it - if the game is well balanced it could be an interesting addition indeed. If I recall correctly, only the player would get radiation sickness and poisoning in the original game, and this doesn't seem all too different.

Great voicework as well, and I'm hoping that there will be several talking heads in the game. I always wanted more of the characters in the Fallout games to have a distinct voice, as I believe it gives one a better impression of the character you're dealing with.

 

[Atomkilla]

Heh, Xmas coming earlier for me!

 

[Tom9k]

+ there is big patch for Fallout of Nevada incoming soon so it's good to see that modding scene is doing fine!

 

[.Pixote.]

"Why would anyone take Jinxed!? it makes you get critical fails".

I love Jinxed...sure you get critical failures, but so do the enemy, and if you 'up' your luck to 10 then you will only suffer a critical failure rarely, while everyone else is losing their ammo, or their weapon is exploding, or they are just falling down with crippled limbs. This works so well with a melee/fists character where you don't use ammo...

With the slayer perk (a guaranteed critical hit), life is beautiful, and there's nothing more satisfying than an enemy killing themselves with a critical failure.

 

[valcik]

4. Chem Reliant
5. Chem Resistant

Hm, those two traits are pretty useful, when taken together. Negative effect is nullified (+50% / -50% chance to become addicted) whilst positive bonuses remains. Anyway, as long as Good Natured was untouched, I'm good with it. I wish you best luck, gentlemen, can't wait to play this mod!

 

[Blackened]

Nice job! I'm strongly anticipating MR since a long time ago.

I have a question: did you balance the game? It is rather obvious that mostly everything about Fallout 1 and 2 is imbalanced (I will give examples):
SPECIAL (who needs PE or EN or ST? also, IN is too useful);
Skills (reloading > gambling&steal; first aid is useless; actually, all skills are imbalanced to a degree);
Traits (most are useless like Bruiser, Gifted is overpowered, 25-40% are rather fair like Good Natured and Fast Shot);
Perks (half-most are useless, like Snakeater; some are overpowered like Slayer, Sniper, Bonus Rate Of Fire, and there is a very narrow choice of pick-worthy perks).

So as you see, if someone decides to play the original two Fallouts with characters that only pick skills/perks/whatever that are optimally useful, he would have a very limited choice and not a lot possible characters.

Please note that, while they are so imbalanced, they are still great RPGs with great replayability. This illustrates the unimportance of game balance in old-fashioned Fallout games, so I'd say that balancing the mod would not only mean changing a great deal of things, but also it would not have much effect. So I won't be a bad decision to leave MR with some of the balance deficiencies the original games had. Except that it would be a great idea to tune some of the skills/perks/traits/attributes, so that the player would have a broader choice. Theoretically, a Fallout game with everything in it balanced would have tens (or perhaps even hundreds) of possible character builds, very different from each other - just for a battle characters, there are whole 6 distinctively different ways, because there are 6 different combat skills (this doesn't work so well in the vanilla games, because they have flaws - they are too similar, and some of them don't have earlygame weapons).

 

[Ardent]

Nice job!

Thank you!

I have a question: did you balance the game? It is rather obvious that mostly everything about Fallout 1 and 2 is imbalanced (I will give examples):

MR will not be balanced. However, we are doing our best to squeeze out maximum enjoyment/replayability from the existing mechanics. As such:

SPECIAL (who needs PE or EN or ST? also, IN is too useful);

All of these stats are prerequisites to certain dialogue options, more often than it was the case of either of the two original Fallouts. Strength is also a little more interesting, because we severely limited Carry Weight.

Skills (reloading > gambling&steal; first aid is useless; actually, all skills are imbalanced to a degree);

We didn't alter skills in any significant manner, except for First Aid and Doctor. They are now non-redundant skills. Skills are also more frequently tested in dialogue (compared to Fallout 1/2).

Traits (most are useless like Bruiser, Gifted is overpowered, 25-40% are rather fair like Good Natured and Fast Shot);

We have tweaked or replaced several traits. There are more valid options now. Gifted has been nerfed a little bit - you get -15% to all skills, instead of -10%. It doesn't make it not overpowered, I guess. It just makes early game very difficult (especially on Hard), and makes it a trait almost exclusively for fighter characters. Traits and Perks unlock certain dialogue options as well.

Perks (half-most are useless, like Snakeater; some are overpowered like Slayer, Sniper, Bonus Rate Of Fire, and there is a very narrow choice of pick-worthy perks).

We haven't looked at Perks yet.

So as you see, if someone decides to play the original two Fallouts with characters that only pick skills/perks/whatever that are optimally useful, he would have a very limited choice and not a lot possible characters.

We develop the mod with the three principal types of characters in mind - the fighter, the diplomat and the thief. Of course, you can still build a superman, tagging small guns, speech and some other skill, and investing a lot in Intelligence, but it's up to you. We are trying out solutions to maximize benefits from picking skills and attributes that "make up" a certain type of character. For instance, to pick certain doors, you must not only pass a Lockpick test, but also a Sneak test, which is supposed to encourage players to tag sneak/lockpick/steal if they want a stealthy character.

Please note that, while they are so imbalanced, they are still great RPGs with great replayability. This illustrates the unimportance of game balance in old-fashioned Fallout games, so I'd say that balancing the mod would not only mean changing a great deal of things, but also it would not have much effect.

Very true.

So I won't be a bad decision to leave MR with some of the balance deficiencies the original games had. Except that it would be a great idea to tune some of the skills/perks/traits/attributes, so that the player would have a broader choice.

We're definitely trying to achieve that.

just for a battle characters, there are whole 6 distinctively different ways, because there are 6 different combat skills (this doesn't work so well in the vanilla games, because they have flaws - they are too similar, and some of them don't have earlygame weapons).

We made some steps to expand your combat options. For instance, your first big gun appears more or less at the same time your first small gun does. We made throwing weapons more efficient and try to promote unarmed and melee skills as well.

 

[Gaspard]

Congratz, y'all on the MR team !

This is indeed a rewarding piece of news I'll have to dust off my FO2 disk again n_n

 

[vaster]

Cant wait !