The Clockwork Captive: FREEDOM Style

Lycantropus · 05-04-2012 03:36 PM

Whew, finally got the time to put the polish on it and get it published. Sorry about the delay for those who have been looking forward to this.

As a result of feedback and personal decision. I 'tweaked' this, and the Bonefire arc with remodeled Contacts, and some of the NPC citizens, using the character creator. The asthetics were a bonus, but I realized that hostages and allies using NPC models can be quite limited in their 'emote' pose capability, particularly citizens.

So without further ado, I present The Clockwork Captive: FREEDOM Style

Arc name 002(A)-The Clockwork Captive: FREEDOM Style
Arc I.D. 544909

After getting Carla Brunelli's card from Manticore at the conclusion of Bonefire, what starts out as a simple cleanup job turns into a race to save the life of one of Steel Canyon's citizens!

My next arc will be a followup to this one re-writing the arc "The Mind of a King" where you continue where you left off with Carla to help investigate the mysterious robots that are the Clockwork.

I hope you enjoy

"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.

Lycantropus · 05-04-2012 03:43 PM

Okay, one thing I've noticed working on these arcs there's two things that bug me a little, and try and work around when I'm writing them.

One, there's a LOT of bean spilling right as you walk in the door. It's like every Captive, Boss, and Ally toss out every line as if you had approached them, which really disrupts the flow I try and get (the first mission with the patrols in the Clockwork Captive work out pretty nicely though most of the time). So I tend to design around that script flaw.

The other is NPC AI. I plan on setting every ally NPC to Defensive unless I have a really good reason otherwise. Nobody wants a General Z (most of the time) running around and aggroing everything. Unfortunately, in the AE, that means they're kind of slow to react and not so willing to fight a lot of times.

I'm sure these are probably 'old hat' complaints to a lot of the AE community, but I just wanted to toss these out here as reasons for some of my design decisions.

"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.

dugfromthearth · 05-09-2012 10:04 PM

Just played it. Generally enjoyed it but have some suggestions.

The contact varies between short comments and longer. I really like her mentioning other contacts from the game and working them in. I wish the first mission text were a bit longer. And I'd like to see a bit more of her personality in it.

Also I'd like the first mission text to set up the whole arc. The first mission is kind of dull - go clear out clockwork from a place and look for clues. A named boss or some other distinctive objective would help. It just feels generic.

And I believe the first mission is a defeat all. Avoid defeat all's. They feel like there is no real goal. I'd rather the first mission be searching for clues in a bunch of bins of tech junk.

I'd like to see the enemies doing more in the missions. I'm not sure if they are limited in emotes, but having them doing welding other emotes would be cool. You can set up a boss encounter, set the boss to be an lt - and that lets you set their emotes. Emotes I'd recommend:
- Being Repaired standing bent over at waist, robot resting
- Carrying Pipe holding a pipe
- Welding (low or medium) welding, but there is nothing in front of you
- Tech Scanner scanning with a device

Also you can set up defend an object encounter and have them attacking something as if they are dismantling it.

Or set up click on object objective and put cartons of tech bits and other such things. Adds flavor to the area.

The enemies do get repetitive, 4 missions of the same. It's hard to mix others with the clockwork, but a bit of variety goes a long way.

One thing you can do is to make subgroups of enemies. Make a group of Clockwork Oscillators. Then have spawns of them. I'm not sure if you can spawn gears directly, but that would be interesting.

Lycantropus · 05-11-2012 02:33 PM

Well I covered a lot of my response in the Bonefire thread, but there were a few here I'll address directly for relevance.

Just checked to make sure, nope first one's not a defeat all. In fact the only objective is a boss. Like I said, I'm not fond of them either. Lou's Garage at the end is though. I really wish it wasn't so big but it's a unique map, and I'm not going to sacrifice that for obvious reasons.

As for emotes on NPC's, many of them, particularly older ones like Clockwork (and Citizens in general) are woefully lacking in available emotes.

That's why I broke down and am now making new models for the NPC's, particularly civllians, when I can. The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, is when I wanted Lou welding on them when you first meet him and the regular NPC's couldn't (The clockwork can't lean over with the 'being repaired' emote I set them to, either ). In the end, I think it was a good style decision too, as it updated the older models. Sadly, I can't reproduce many of the unique villain groups for this, and the newer ones I could have much better emote-ability making it moot.

I also liked the idea of making more of an introduction with Carla in her opening dialogue, so I did add a bit to that. I had to re-write it from scratch after losing it the first time (computer issues) so some of that was trying to meet my personal deadline and was already really behind. Yeah, I like Carla. She's got a lot of personality, and I thought that having actual faces in Steel Canyon being part of her neighborhood watch was a neat idea.

In the end, I want these stories to evoke the idea of a 'living city' where the character actually makes friends and allies. I'm thinking when I get to the Crey arc I really want to pull some of that into it... we'll have to see...

"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.