Hunterzyph on 18/1/2003 at 04:46
Morrowind is fairly non-linear, but ultimately you are still trying to accomplish the same goal, just by different means.
Fred Chook on 18/1/2003 at 10:52
Not really. You can pick whatever goal you like. Picking the 'end ash curse' line is just a paticularly rewarding goal.
ferret on 18/1/2003 at 11:31
Non-linearity doesn't exist in any current game... and that's a good thing. The closest there has been to non-linearity in a single-player type game is Black and White, and that was just... boring. In multiplayer it's a little easier, but still can get boring and repetitive. It depends on your own creativity and imagination, and personally mine is somewhat lacking, hehe.
I much prefer scripted elements and laid down rules. I like to sorta "feel" how the makers have shaped the game, the ways they have tried to fool us into thinking we have lots of options, and the way they prevent us doing disasterous things. I like sensing the amount of effort they have put in, and especially in games like Deus Ex, where I have no doubt there are some things that only I have tried, and yet there has been some barrier or special case that the coders have included, or the robustness of the engine and scripting systems has dealt with.
Good luck breaking any DX code, by the way. It's quite easy to get some informational anomalies (in datacubes, in game "news" items and such), because for some reason the makers of the game decided to make these elements totally static. But whoever wrote the conversational paths for this game really cared about what he was doing. There's even an eventuality for managing to somehow *not* kill Anna, so that you don't get certain infolink messages form Guntherr, and his reasons for hunting you down are different (as he tells you at the cathedral). There are many other examples of this.
-- slightly technical stuff here --
There is one thing you can definitely do to break the script by setting flags: using the name of any engine character, add a flag using the legend command called "CharacterName_Dead", and the engine will refuse to create any of them. Example "StantonDowd_Dead" or "PaulDenton_Dead". This is one thing in the engine they did so they never had to script code to remember people dying: they just had to set a character's "bImportant" property if the engine was to remember their death and never spawn them again.
Using this, I made various characters not exist, and on some levels that breaks them (not being able to talk to Manderley means you can't leave the UNATCO base, etc.) - but in most cases it doesn't, and there are even some "secret" conversations to allow for you somehow killing a plot character early.
By the way, this "CharacterName_Dead" flag works for any character, set "Terrorist_Dead" and you won't see any NSF terrorists again. The effects of setting "JCDentonMale_Dead" or "Pawn_Dead" I do not know, and I'm not going to try them. Probably a crash, like you get if you try to do "killall pawn" from the command line.
-- end technical stuff here --
The thing with Deus Ex's missions is that they could have gone so wrong, but they didn't. It doesn't feel fake, or contrived. I'm not talking about errors here (there are some, some fixed by patch and bizarrely some introduced by patch). I'm talking about the amount of care and consideration that was put into the making of this game. There's little or no laziness. It's the greatest.
SJamieson on 18/1/2003 at 13:47
I used to have a game, dont know if anyone has heard of or played it.
It was called Vette and was based on Driving Corvettes round San fransisco
It was designed for the 386.
It was the best game I have ever played for its ability to be broken.
(not to be confused with the best game I have ever played, and I was able to break it - Deus Ex)
To keep you in the bits of frisco that they had mapped, there were these big yellow walls
that you couldn't get past. And between each bit of map, there was a section of freeway
reached by driving up an onramp. However there if you drove at high speed into the corners of these yellow walls you could pass right through them.
Sometimes when you did it it spat you back to where you started.
Sometimes you would reach a bit of the map supposed to be unavailable to you.
Sometimes you would reach a completely random bit of the map consisting
of bits of the level arranged in a strange order.
One time i made it onto alcatraz and that wasnt even supposed to be in the game!
the best though, was that you were supposed to drive from one bit of the city
(near the woolworth building), up the freeway, across a bridge, turn around and c
ome back across the Golden gate. however from that section of the city you could
drive through the yellow wall, navigae through a closed of section of the city to
the start of the bridge itself, then just follow up the deserted bridge, until you hit the on-ramp where all the cars coming on from the freeway would appear.
They dont make games as ropey as that anymore.
Anyway I'm off to break Deus-Ex some more.
Haunt-of-DOOM on 12/3/2003 at 02:22
A truly Non-Linear game would have to have a VERY flexible story and.... around... 500 different ways to win ^_^ (or lose)
lunatic96 on 12/3/2003 at 06:41
Quote:
Originally posted by SJamieson I used to have a game, dont know if anyone has heard of or played it.
It was called Vette and was based on Driving Corvettes round San fransisco
It was designed for the 386.
This reminds me of NFS: Porsche Unleashed. On one of the factory test driving missions it was possible to flip your car over the barrier and drive all over the freeway area. From there you could flip your car over other obstacles and basically drive all over the map. It was the best thing ever.
MHK on 12/3/2003 at 18:18
Quote:
Originally posted by Azal In the plane I enabled cheats and summoned a pile of barrels and blocked off the passageway with them so Anna couldn't reach Lebedev.
You don't have to cheat. What I always do if I have Microfibral Muscle is drag one of the metal crates into the 747 from outside and use it to block the door. Then when Anna appears she starts humping the crate because she can't push it out of the way. I just hop over the crate without killing anybody and I'm on my way. The way the game counts it is that Manderley's reaction is the same as if you had let Anna kill Lebedev, except that you also get the line that Manderley cooled off when he heard they picked up Lebedev.
How do you avoid killing Anna entirely?
Dragonclaw on 13/3/2003 at 09:54
It's said that if you harm Anna enough in the headquarters, she will run away, and opening the door for you. So then you can get through there and finish without killing her.
Never tried that myself, so I don't know if it's true.
MHK on 13/3/2003 at 15:13
I've only managed to do that to Gunther, and usually only with the Targeting Aug. Once you get him down to 16% health you need to start using tranq darts or the next bit of real damage he takes will make him explode. When he goes below 10% he turns around and tries to get the hell out of dodge. I chased him just to see if he goes to a retreat point, and he essentially runs the entire route of the cathedral over and over again. I was then able to knock him unconscious with repeated zappings and tranq shots. As for Anna, she always dies too fast. :cool:
ferret on 13/3/2003 at 17:27
This old thread has been resurrected... why exactly? :\
