Straylight on 25/12/2005 at 19:47
Happy Winter-een-mas.
Rather than reviving that huge old thread by this name, I thought I'd start a new one for the new release of that mod I've been working on. Yes, I've finally made a second release. Kolya is kindly hosting it at (
http://www.strangebedfellows.schwarzsilber.de/index.php/topic,25.0.html) Strange Bedfellows, but it's a 28MB file, so you may want to start downloading now if you were interested in the previous release. You can come back here and read the rest of this (and maybe a book or two if you're still on dial-up) while you're waiting.
I'm still not done, but I probably never will be. I have been hacking away at it now and then, and I've reached a point where I've made enough progress for another release and everything I've taken apart has been put back together in close enough to working order. (Why are there always one or two more screws left over?)
It's still alpha, because I've only played through it once since the last changes to make sure it even works. I didn't encounter any significant problems, but that doesn't mean they're not there. If you do find any problems with it, let me know, because it's certainly possible I may have missed them.
Of course, it's also possible that some of you may not like some of the changes this time around. These changes are a bit more significant in their effects on gameplay. Standard weapons and Grenades are the biggest change.
Standard weapons in this version require little skill to use, but still require the usual six points to master. The Shotgun can be used with Standard 2 and the Assault Rifle with Standard 3, but they do less damage at that level than they did in the original game. You have to keep increasing your skill if you want to get the same damage you're used to.
In the original game, three of the five grenades had scaled damage. They got damage bonuses for everything bullets did: skill levels, sharpshooter upgrade, research, and modifications. I tried making all five grenades scale like that, for consistency, but I don't think it's possible with Proximity grenades, and it really just doesn't make any sense anyway. Everything needs to do more damage as you progress through the game, because the enemies get tougher, but that can be accomplished by just having access to more powerful grenades as you progress. Making the Disruption grenades actually powerful accomplishes that, since the EMP and Incendiary grenades are already properly distributed for that use.
So I disabled most of the damage scaling on all the grenades and significantly increased their base damage. Now extra skill, researching your target, modifying the launcher, and being a "sharpshooter" have very little effect on the damage the grenades do, which makes more sense. And the damage they do isn't as good as it could be with all those bonuses stacked together, but it's an extremely good deal for only 1 point of skill. The result is a single easy-to-use weapon with a variety of ammo for every occasion, but the ammo is the rarest and most expensive ammo in the game. The EMP grenades are not as good as the EMP Rifle, and the Incendiary grenades are less powerful than the Annelid weapons, but when you're playing Impossible and can't afford all the cyber modules for the specialized weapons, here's your cheaper alternative. Oh, and Disruption grenades will kill just about anything with one direct hit, so how many of them you find depends on the difficulty level you're playing.
Speaking of difficulty, here's another big change. Impossible just got more challenging. I removed all the Auto-Repair Units, French-Epstein Devices, and Ice Picks from Impossible mode. On Easy mode, all the original ones are still in their original locations. That's 8 ARUs, 7 FEDs, and 5 Picks. Normal mode has 4 ARUs, 6 FEDs, and 4 Picks. Hard has 2 ARUs, 3 FEDs, and 3 Picks. And none for Impossible.
Oh, and if you're not familiar with Winter-een-mas, you can look it up on (
http://www.wintereenmas.com) Wintereenmas.com.
Yay more modifications to try...will be looking into it over the next week or so.:cheeky:
Standard weapons in this version require little skill to use, but still require the usual six points to master. The Shotgun can be used with Standard 2 and the Assault Rifle with Standard 3, but they do less damage at that level than they did in the original game. You have to keep increasing your skill if you want to get the same damage you're used to.
