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Author Topic: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad  (Read 67278 times)

cowofdoom78963

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #540 on: August 27, 2009, 11:32:53 pm »

Quote
If economic downturns happen -for whatever reason-, preferably not linked to any particular policy, and people start getting more conservative feelings as a result, it'd make you really have to push harder.  Make it happen while you're on the slope towards winning, and we have a fun gameplay mechanic, ramping up the curve at the end.
Wouldent an economic downturn cause liberal feelings?
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Servant Corps

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #541 on: August 28, 2009, 12:53:28 pm »

There is one important update I need to point out.

LiteralKa has modified it so that Political Violence now affects the Flag Burning issue. This means that you need to now promote Political Violence in order to convince people to support violent actions such as burning the American flag.
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #542 on: August 29, 2009, 01:44:46 pm »

I don't know, I haven't been working on the game recently, so I couldn't say about a release. I have three big questions that I would want to look at if I were preparing for a release:

1. Has the addition of the Stalinist Crime Squad been tested thoroughly? Have you played a full game and won against them? Can they be defeated, similar to the CCS? Is there a setting for it in the opening screen, so it can be turned off if the player doesn't want to play with that option? I worried with the original CCS that some people wouldn't like that addition, and I'm glad that it's been more or less accepted, but one of the things I wanted to do with this release was to let people play LCS without other crime squads. To do that we need to make sure both the CCS and SCS have settings in the new options screen.

2. Are all the new features communicated clearly to the player (so that you don't have to be a developer to know what's going on with them)? For example, how does the player know what the economy is like? Can you check on the national debt while you're playing? If not, then they aren't done, because as far as the player is concerned, their effects will just seem random instead of understandable. The player has to be able to learn the rules of any new system and react to the situation, or it's just a black box roulette wheel.

3. Do saving and loading respect all the new features? I would want to make sure the economy, stalinist crime squad, national debt, and any other additions don't revert to default values or even crash the game if you quit and come back.
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Think0028

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #543 on: August 29, 2009, 03:26:43 pm »

Dunno why, but when I get to the name entry section on my Vista laptop, hitting enter doesn't do anything, and I can't input a name, nor can I start the game, as a result.
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Servant Corps

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #544 on: August 29, 2009, 05:58:12 pm »

I don't know, I haven't been working on the game recently, so I couldn't say about a release. I have three big questions that I would want to look at if I were preparing for a release:

1. Has the addition of the Stalinist Crime Squad been tested thoroughly? Have you played a full game and won against them? Can they be defeated, similar to the CCS? Is there a setting for it in the opening screen, so it can be turned off if the player doesn't want to play with that option? I worried with the original CCS that some people wouldn't like that addition, and I'm glad that it's been more or less accepted, but one of the things I wanted to do with this release was to let people play LCS without other crime squads. To do that we need to make sure both the CCS and SCS have settings in the new options screen.

2. Are all the new features communicated clearly to the player (so that you don't have to be a developer to know what's going on with them)? For example, how does the player know what the economy is like? Can you check on the national debt while you're playing? If not, then they aren't done, because as far as the player is concerned, their effects will just seem random instead of understandable. The player has to be able to learn the rules of any new system and react to the situation, or it's just a black box roulette wheel.

3. Do saving and loading respect all the new features? I would want to make sure the economy, stalinist crime squad, national debt, and any other additions don't revert to default values or even crash the game if you quit and come back.

Ah, okay, Jonathan S. Fox. I'll start doing tests soon, but as for #2: the Player can indeed check up on how bad the economy and national debt is by checking the Polls, specifically, how many people believe that "the economy is fundmentally flawed" and are "concerned about the national debt". I don't know how to communicate how the economy and the national debt affect the issues though, but the players can indeed check up on it.
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Glacies

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #545 on: September 04, 2009, 05:18:19 am »

Well, personally I don't like the idea of dealing with other crime squads. But that's just me.

E. Albright

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #546 on: September 04, 2009, 08:40:51 am »

I honestly was never a big fan of even just the CCS. I grudgingly got used to it, but still wouldn't complain about being able to play without it, let alone others.
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #547 on: September 04, 2009, 12:20:16 pm »

Ensuring you can turn off the CCS and others is something I'm committed to ensuring this release. The setup is already functional for the CCS -- the game just starts the CCS out as destroyed, and that's that.
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Gimmick Account

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #548 on: September 04, 2009, 01:01:44 pm »

Yeah, development seems to be going in a direction that doesn't really mesh well with the existing game. The LCS/CCS thing works because both organizations fight for diametrically opposed ideological goals. The Stalinist Comrade Squad doesn't seem to fit into this binary system very well. In fact, I don't remember anyone but Servant Corps giving much thought to the idea of adding a third terrorist group (at least at this stage of development; once the playable area spans the entire continental United States, there could be room for some 'local' groups), so the whole thing seems like he's pushing a pet project. Sorry if that sounds harsh, I don't mean to insult you or your work. I'm just worried about the game experience for the rest of us and that you're missing the 'big picture'.

That feeling has been growing stronger, lately. With all the talk about the SCS, national debt and other things, I'm afraid of the project losing the focus it had under the singular de-facto leadership of Jonathan S. Fox. Everyone just seems to be adding their ingredients to the cauldron without using a common recipe as a guide.
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Leafsnail

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #549 on: September 04, 2009, 01:36:25 pm »

Looking at the basic code for the SCS (actually called "Leninist Crime Squad" in the last release), am I right in thinking there are two groups, one that helps certain elements and one that hinders you on others?

By the way, will healthcare be something making it into the next release?  I can't remember if anything was said about it.  A basic set of ideas -

C+: All healthcare will cost you heavily.  If you can't afford it, go die in a gutter.
C: Healthcare will cost you quite a lot.  There would be means testing in place, but you'd only qualify if you're very, very low on money and resources.
m: Healthcare will cost you a small amount.  You would be exempt from paying if you're quite low on money.
L: Healthcare is free.  It would still cost you  some money if you have over a certain amount of cash.
L+: All healthcare is free.

I dunno, just seemed topical somehow.  The basic problem is that this would also make the game easier as it goes on.  The LCS, as a crime group, will obviously not be hit by higher taxes, but perhaps shops will?  Maybe they will, for example, start charging more for items and start offering less for items you sell to make up for their tax losses as the "tax" issue begins to march towards L+?

Also, as a more minor thing, is the fact that someone who's wounded but not bleeding still spams dying messages going to be fixed in the next version?
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E. Albright

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #550 on: September 04, 2009, 02:26:46 pm »

@Gimmick Account:
Multiple organizations have had broader discussion in times past (e.g.) - SC is just the only brave soul who went forward and acted on the discussion.

@Leafsnail:
The main problem I see with what you're laying out here is that all discussion of wealth and income is actually irrelevant if you consider all LCS income is illegal and/or under-the-table. Health care prices could still be indexed to an issue, though: at C+ no Free Clinic and very high prices at the University Hospital; at C, high prices at UH, and the Free Clinic carries a risk of increasing the Wisdom and Religion of its (slow-healing) patients; at M, the current status quo, possibly with healing times increased at the FC; at L, the FC has normal healing times and the UH has moderate prices; at L+ the FC and UH are both free and unburdened by healing time penalties. Or something to that effect; that was written up with very little thought given to it.
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G-Flex

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #551 on: September 04, 2009, 02:43:49 pm »

Yeah, development seems to be going in a direction that doesn't really mesh well with the existing game. The LCS/CCS thing works because both organizations fight for diametrically opposed ideological goals. The Stalinist Comrade Squad doesn't seem to fit into this binary system very well. In fact, I don't remember anyone but Servant Corps giving much thought to the idea of adding a third terrorist group

My feelings exactly.

To me, the game works because it's a silly pastiche of stereotypical dichotomous American politics. You have the insane Liberals and the insane Conservatives; it's presented in a caricatured version of how American partisan politics seem to work.

Bringing in things contrary to this notion seems like it would spoil the entire premise, especially if you're trying to bring in things associated with real groups, like Stalinists. To me, Stalinists don't even EXIST in the LCS world, only conservatives, liberals, and the people "in between". Adding complexity to the political spectrum in the game ruins the joke, the joke being that there is no complexity at all, politics being a linear-spectrum "team sport" kind of thing, with filthy revolutionary hippies on one side and cigar-smoking fat-cat rednecks on the other.

In short, it subverts the entire farcical premise of the game.


There is one important update I need to point out.

LiteralKa has modified it so that Political Violence now affects the Flag Burning issue. This means that you need to now promote Political Violence in order to convince people to support violent actions such as burning the American flag.

As an aside, this makes no sense to me at all.

Flag burning isn't a violent act, and I know all kinds of people, myself (and the laws of the US itself) included, who support the right to burn the flag but don't support political violence much at all. The issues are completely separate, unless there's some specific reason why they shouldn't be. Really, flag-burning is more related to freedom of speech/expression (which it is) than anything else.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2009, 02:58:31 pm by G-Flex »
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #552 on: September 04, 2009, 03:10:31 pm »

G-Flex and Gimmick Account, you may be happy to know that while you've been flaming such revolutionary rhetoric, I've actually been working on several drastic changes that will likely result in the next release not having the Stalinist Crime Squad in it.

The SVN repository has been restructured:

1. The state of the code as of last night has been placed into /lcsgame/branches/stalin/, so no work is lost on these changes.

2. The "trunk" has been moved to /lcsgame/branches/compatibility_old/ and replaced by the most recent code, but on the trunk directory, I'm removing the Stalinist Crime Squad and any other changes that I don't think are working as intended yet, or that are too controversial to not have a configuration option in a release.

3. The old branch that everyone's been working on has been deleted. If you're accessing the code, you should now work on /trunk/ if you want the relatively stable build, or /branches/stalin/ if you want the Stalinist build with less stability.

4. I'll probably make a release out of /trunk/ sometime soon.

Before this change we had a lot of broken things in the build that were making it very unlikely that we'll see a release any time soon. This should change that.
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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #553 on: September 04, 2009, 03:18:09 pm »

Thanks, Jonathan. I know this will lead to bitterness in some circles, but the project as a whole is better off for your decision.

As soon as the LCS dissolution crash bug is fixed, this liberal will be back in action.
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Servant Corps

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Re: LCS 3.19.4 Download - Let's Play Liberal Crime Squad
« Reply #554 on: September 04, 2009, 04:04:35 pm »

As E. Albright pointed out, there was demand for organizations, among Puzzlemaker and Fieari for one. I really liked the idea of organizations, but believed that both Puzzlemaker and Fox was busy, and thus decided to take it upon myself to do this sort of project. In fact, I believe that either E. Albright or maniac (not sure whom) suggested the idea of the Leninist Crime Squad, which I later changed to the Stalinist Comrade Squad.

The SCS is basically supposed to be a template which can be used to create other groups. Eventually, there would be an organization of Ayn Randians added in too, meaning all four parts of the Nolan chart would have been fufilled.

I didn't realize that there were that much opposition to Organizations in the first place, and for that, I make an apology. I was comforted by the fact that the Stalinists could be turned off, so people could very well ignore my changes if they really hated it. In any event, any good changes from the Stalin build could be carried over to the main build if there is enough popularity for it.

I view LCS not just as a satire of American politics, but also an satire of American extermist politics. I'll talk more later, but they are actual Commie parties in the US, they are just considered minor.
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