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[Jonathan S. Fox]

Hrm. I worked on others taking over when people die, and I remember testing and it worked even for founder level, but it was months ago when I did that. I'll have to look into it.

Edit: Did the Elite Liberals report directly to the founder? It won't try to promote deeper than that. You -should- only need 100 juice (Revolutionary) to get a promotion to founder, but they have to be reporting directly to the founder.

Edit again: You should get a message like "There are none left with the courage and conviction to lead...." just before everyone loses contact if it's triggered by the founder's death. If you get that message, it means it checked the founder's immediate subordinates and didn't find anyone qualified (they need 100 juice or 50 and a level of leadership skill).

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Skeeblix]

Also, is it just me or are dead bodies not part of the game anymore?
I just had a hostage die on me, but the option to dispose of the body can't be selected. The same stands for dead Liberals dragged back to safe houses after a few shootouts.

EDIT: and an interesting crash for you to check out. Kidnapped a Conservative priest and attempted to convert. Failed miserably, and the news report went out, so I decided to just off the guy, but nobody had the balls to do it. Immediately following this, the hostage committed suicide. "Religious Nut (name given to hostage lol) has died under 's interrogation" followed immediately by the game crashing.

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Skeeblix ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

You're right, there's something weird with no bodies from dead people you interrogate.

Also, your description of the crash is perfect, thanks. Failed attempt to execute them + suicide + blank name in death message = precise enough that I found the bug. That's supposed be the lead interrogator's name, but because *nobody* got up the courage to execute them, that slot was emptied. Cue crash. I've set up an alternate message -- now if you try to execute them and they die on their own, nobody is directly responsible and takes the hit. It just says "Religious Nut is dead." That's the idea anyway, I haven't tested that just yet.

Edit: Okay, tested, should be working for next release.

Edit again: Found the problem with bodies... it was deleting all bodies that ARE in safehouses, when it was supposed to be deleting all bodies that AREN'T at safehouses.   Fixed.

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Toaster]

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>Edit: Did the Elite Liberals report directly to the founder? It won't try to promote deeper than that. You -should- only need 100 juice (Revolutionary) to get a promotion to founder, but they have to be reporting directly to the founder.</STRONG>

That's probably why- I don't think they were.

[Skeeblix]

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>
Also, your description of the crash is perfect, thanks.</STRONG>

Not a problem. Glad I could make it easy on you.

[Trorbes]

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>You're right, there's something weird with no bodies from dead people you interrogate.

Also, your description of the crash is perfect, thanks. Failed attempt to execute them + suicide + blank name in death message = precise enough that I found the bug. That's supposed be the lead interrogator's name, but because *nobody* got up the courage to execute them, that slot was emptied. Cue crash. I've set up an alternate message -- now if you try to execute them and they die on their own, nobody is directly responsible and takes the hit. It just says "Religious Nut is dead." That's the idea anyway, I haven't tested that just yet.
</STRONG>

That's what was probably crashing my game earlier.  I'm glad someone else caught it.

PS. Thanks for working on the game again.  The revised torture system is much better.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm working on the activate screen. One suggestion someone made (forgot who, sorry!) which I also was thinking about was to simply the choices -- legal fundraising vs. illegal fundraising, for example, and then the game chooses for you, based on the stats of the character, which sub-task they'll do. I currently have something like that sitting on my computer, but I don't like how it's implemented. I know what's wrong with it, and that's that it shows a bunch of other grayed out choices, and you look at that and think, "Why can't my guy do community service instead of spraying graffiti?"

Right now I'm thinking one of two things.

The first option is that you pick the category, and you still get to choose which sub-task you want the person to do, but you only get to pick from the ones they're qualified for. So if you pick Liberal Activism, you can't pick hacking if your character has no computer skill, you can't pick graffiti if your character has no art skill. But just because your character has computer skill doesn't mean you can't pick community service or create public disturbances, if you want to.

The second option is that you pick Liberal Activism, and it tells you what they'll do for that. So you pick illegal fundraising, and at the bottom it says they'll sell brownies. Where the next person you pick might have credit card fraud at the bottom. It all depends on the skills of the person.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The first way gives you a choice, and you never have a situation where your artist just happens to be a programmer as well, thus preventing you from doing art related choices with them. The second way has a lot of strength in simplicity, and it makes each character feel more special -- this person I've recruited will do X for that activity, awesome, I needed one of those. And by hiding the options, it gives you a sense of mystery about what they all are.

With both, the nice thing about this will be that it will make characters who start with those skills more special. Sure, in a practical sense, a character who has no artistic talent could run out and start spraying tags, but it makes sense that you won't have the LCS start doing that until you find people who are predisposed towards it anyway.

I'm leaning toward the first option (giving you a choice, if your character qualifies for more than one), but I'm open to feedback. If these both are horrible ideas, you can tell me that too.

[Torak]

I'd just like to know what the skill level is of a person with a certain activity.

Such as

code:

 
Soliciting Donations (0)
Selling T-Shirts (3)
Selling Art (0)
Selling Music (0) 

The person I've chosen has no persuasion skill, no art, and no musical skill. But he does have 3 garment making.

Pretty simple to implement, Im guessing.

[ February 05, 2008: Message edited by: Torak ]

[Earthquake Damage]

I have to protest against the "fundraising/activism only shows skill-relevant options" change.  I especially don't want the cyberterrorism options to be restricted by skill (though having no skill may yield no juice/other results).  The only hassle free way I know to gain computer skill is through non-poll activism (since with polls you have to reset their activity daily, plus you get yet another screen between days you may not want).  I'd rather have the default selection when you press, say, A for activism, be the one they're best at (assuming the person in question isn't already assigned an activism activity), but still be able to press a number and choose an option myself.

On a different note, I haven't noticed any Art skill gain (from 0) for someone assigned to graffiti for two months.  Does it just raise very slowly or does it not improve your skill at all?  Similarly, I've noticed people selling music/art haven't been getting skill either.

Oh, and I'm really looking forward to the teaching system.  That'll greatly reduce the tedium of training fresh recruits.  Suggestion:  Perhaps teaching could have a smaller effect with multiple students (student defined as someone in the same safehouse with a skill level low enough to benefit from the teacher in question).  An inverse linear relationship would suck horribly, so maybe a logarithmic one (base 3 maybe?) would work better.

[ February 05, 2008: Message edited by: Earthquake Damage ]

[a1s]

quote:Originally posted by Earthquake Damage:
<STRONG>On a different note, I haven't noticed any Art skill gain (from 0) for someone assigned to graffiti for two months.  Does it just raise very slowly or does it not improve your skill at all?  Similarly, I've noticed people selling music/art haven't been getting skill either.[ February 05, 2008: Message edited by: Earthquake Damage ]</STRONG>

hmm... it used to in alpha4. it does rise slowly though (however it should still go up in 2 months)

checked it: they go up.

[ February 05, 2008: Message edited by: a1s ]

[Spelguru]

*is waiting for LCS with training/teaching*

[Jonathan S. Fox]

quote:Originally posted by Earthquake Damage:
<STRONG>I have to protest against the "fundraising/activism only shows skill-relevant options" change.  I especially don't want the cyberterrorism options to be restricted by skill (though having no skill may yield no juice/other results).  The only hassle free way I know to gain computer skill is through non-poll activism (since with polls you have to reset their activity daily, plus you get yet another screen between days you may not want).</STRONG>

I'm actually trying to actively avoid allowing you to train skills by putting someone on a task they absolutely can't do. It doesn't make sense to let someone who is computer illiterate, and expect anything to happen. But I know what you mean.

Prior to the recent interface change, the only reliable and safe(ish) way to get computer skill up was to have them check polls all the time. Boo. Checking polls is -slow- skill gain. Real slow.

What I would propose as a substitute for being able to just put anyone on the task you want and expect them to grow into it, is to get training working. So if you really want person X to be a computer hacker, you'll have to find someone with the skills and teach person X. How does that sound?

quote: On a different note, I haven't noticed any Art skill gain (from 0) for someone assigned to graffiti for two months. Does it just raise very slowly or does it not improve your skill at all?

Hm... it raises slowly, but shouldn't be that slow. I'm not seeing a reason for it to be static though. Let me know if you see any movement?

[beorn080]

Perhaps instead of disallowing the options, make it so that if they have no skill it would be practice as opposed to just straight up doing it.  So say for computer hacking, instead of actively trying to hack a website or steal credit card numbers, he wanders the web studying HTML and learning about common back doors and other tricks.  For art they would work with finger paints and crayons. Not sure about the others but somebody could think of something for them.

[Earthquake Damage]

quote:Originally posted by beorn080:
<STRONG>Perhaps instead of disallowing the options, make it so that if they have no skill it would be practice as opposed to just straight up doing it.  So say for computer hacking, instead of actively trying to hack a website or steal credit card numbers, he wanders the web studying HTML and learning about common back doors and other tricks.  For art they would work with finger paints and crayons. Not sure about the others but somebody could think of something for them.</STRONG>

That's sort of what I was getting at by the "no juice gain/other effects if untrained" thing.  They dick around 'til they've learned how to do something first.

[Vengeful Donut]

I'd suggest that it still leaves you some choice, but the most appropriate one is selected by default if you want to save keystrokes.

Also, I think current garment making system is really irritating. If someone makes a second-rate or fifth-rate police uniform, they should be trying again until they get it right.