Design mistakes and nitpickery

[robocop]

Hello yet again. I'm nearing the end of my (first) WorldCorp playthrough, and I'm currently even more impressed with the mod than I was before. That said, I've found a few more problems. At this stage, I understand that many problems can't be solved, and almost all the rest will not be solved due to time constraints (except the really game-breaking bugs); because of that, please interpret my latest bug report in terms of lessons that can be learned for your upcoming game. (If you were offering preorders right now, I'd almost consider paying up, without knowing a single thing about the game!)

And yes, most (probably all) of these mistakes are very nitpicky.

1. There are places, more in the WorldCorp storyline than PDX, where LAMs have been placed in ineffective places - that is, if you move in a slightly unexpected way, you cannot be damaged by its explosion. I remember these places:

1A. The safe in the hidden coffee shop in Downtown on day 2 (possibly day 1? Not sure I ever searched it that day). Simply going near the mine causes it to go off, despite the door between you and it, protecting you and rendering the LAM useless. Perhaps you might set it up so that opening the door causes an active LAM to spawn behind it?

1B. The sewers below the slums. Two sets of two portals side-by-side, with a LAM placed on one portal of each set. In both cases the LAM is placed on one portal and close to the other portal, so that going through the other portal sets off the LAM without being in any danger of taking damage from it. It would be simple enough to move the LAMs to the other side of the same portal, so that going through the opposite portal doesn't bring you close enough to set it off.

1C. The ducts under the ABI factory leading to the power box. There's a LAM placed such that moving slowly, hearing the beeps, and stopping dead will save you from all damage - no retreat necessary. This example isn't too bad, and maybe it was actually by design.

2. In the sewers under the slums, there's a guard patrolling who can set off his own laser beams and trigger the alarm. He doesn't seem to mind, but the turrets perk up, annoyingly.

3. At the ATC, you can swipe the ID card and complete the whole mission with all the guards allied with you - but apparently you still need to kill them in order for the helicopter to land there! In this case, maybe I just missed something - it wouldn't surprise me too much to learn that the guards are under orders to stop unauthorised helicopters from landing there, and I now realise that maybe if I'd just gone back to the slums, I might've been able to board the helicopter there.

4. In the sewers under the slums, the water is a bit strange - I take poison damage only when entering the water, not when exiting it, or when swimming through it. In particular, when I tried to surface under a pipe, it made me repeatedly jump out of and reenter the water, causing me to lose all of my health in half a second!

And the following points are extremely nitpicky:

5. One of ZP's barks (or was it part of a conversation?) after joining WC, and during the OiNutter mission, is "So I heard you broke into PDX..." Of course he heard about it! He provided cover fire! And even if you chose not to have his cover fire, he'd still know you were breaking in!

6. Near the ATC, where you come out of the sewer, you immediately spot a big pile of crates. I thought "Ha! Clearly an invitation to climb everywhere to look for easter eggs!" Well, after 5 minutes, the only thing I discovered was that many of the obscure walls high up on that map are clippable, with no items through them or even near them. Didn't have to fly/ghost to get to these walls, but had to afterwards, to get out of the pits behind them...

7. In day 2, I can no longer access Abomination's office, even though I have his office key. Is this by design?

8. The models of the WorldCorp snipers' rifles show suppressors on them, but none of them actually have suppressors. When I pick one up and drop it, the model reverts to the standard model. Unusually for TNM players, my rifle doesn't have a suppressor either, so it can't be accidentally using my rifle's model.

But, aside from all this, thank you very much for completing development of TNM, despite the long time-scale!

[Jaedar]

3. At the ATC, you can swipe the ID card and complete the whole mission with all the guards allied with you - but apparently you still need to kill them in order for the helicopter to land there!

When I did this, I assumed it was intentional, but yeah it did seem weird.

[Jonas]

Some good points. Not too concerned about the LAM issues you've reported, I was never that keen on instadeath explosions in the first place, so think of them more like skilled item drops. If you detonate them, you won't get the extra LAM to use later.

As for ATC, you got it right: The guards would not permit a helicopter to land at the ATC, regardless of whether or not they think you're a regular employee. They're not going to assume the chopper is there to pick you up rather than, say, shoot them all to death. And yes, if you'd gone back to the helipad in the slums, you could've just gone with it from there, skipping the "kill everybody" objective.

The rifle thing is an HDTP bug. We caught it a few weeks before release but decided that we couldn't be arsed to fix it because it would require changes to the actual model.

[metche_steele]

The rifle thing is an HDTP bug. We caught it a few weeks before release but decided that we couldn't be arsed to fix it because it would require changes to the actual model.

Interesting and noted!

Thank you

[DDL]

Should be noted that it's ALREADY fixed in HDTP, and has been from the start.

And was fixed in TNM, until they took all my code out. I didn't add it back in coz I assumed it'd been dumped for a reason.

[metche_steele]

Should be noted that it's ALREADY fixed in HDTP, and has been from the start.

And was fixed in TNM, until they took all my code out. I didn't add it back in coz I assumed it'd been dumped for a reason.

Thank you

And this is right about the point that I'll exit this conversation for the sake of me health - kthxbye.

[Jonas]

Should be noted that it's ALREADY fixed in HDTP, and has been from the start.

And was fixed in TNM, until they took all my code out. I didn't add it back in coz I assumed it'd been dumped for a reason.

That's... interesting. Seems like quite a misunderstanding. Shall we get in touch about re-fixing that for 1.0.3 please?

Sorry about blaming it on HDTP, I didn't mean to imply anything

[Bulzeeb]

For the ATC area, you don't actually have to kill everyone. Turns out guards don't think it's suspicious that the heavily augmented guy in a trenchcoat starts stacking boxes conveniently placed so that individual guards can't be seen being assaulted by batons, heh. Takes long as hell though, and I'd rather have just gone back through the sewers. Oh well.

I'm pretty sure this has already been brought to your attention, but while we're on the topic, I thought I'd just mention that Alpha's and Slicer's endings are messed up in WC-Ryan ending. Alpha receives the "haunted by the bombing" ending, even though the bombing never happens in the WC branch, and moreover, bombing PDX HQ instead gives a non-bombed ending.

Slicer attacks and is captured by WC troops, despite the complete fall of WC.

Well that's it. Don't mean to sound like everyone else, but amazing job on the mod by the way. Figured I throw that in in a post laying out some criticisms...