W wrote:Guys, it's not like the title of the topic is I will play EVERY level in Eternal X... aw damnit.
Pfhorrest wrote:The reason these first few levels of the S'pht chapter are so light on combat is because there's no way to get weapons or ammo to you (story-wise), since Leela doesn't have a ship full of ammo in this time frame she can beam things down to you from, and there are no Pfhor here yet to steal weapons from. So you could very quickly run out of ammo if you didn't come in with a shit tone from the previous chapter.
Besides some kind of silly plot contrivance, the obvious way to do it is to use MML to gear up the player a little bit if they ctrl-click to that level. Otherwise I don't think running out of ammo is a real issue; as you can see in my screenshots, I have far more ammo than I could possibly need at this point.If you can think of a way of increasing the combat without making it a "fuck you, no-ammo-boy" to the player, I'd be happy to implement it.
Also, I'm beginning to wonder if this point if you're intentionally dodging the failure branches using "out of character" knowledge (i.e. knowledge a first-time player wouldn't have, without reading forums etc) of which branch is the "right" branch. Some of my favorite levels are in the failure branches. EDIT: wait a sec... you went with Leela and ended up on "Second To Last Of The Mohicans"? "S'pht Happens" should take you either to "Eat S'pht and Die" or "Third Rock From Lh'owon". Bug?
RyokoTK wrote:As to your edit, it's your game, not mine! But it looks like the level Third Rock From Lh'owon doesn't exist in the level select menu.
I know people love hardcore things nowadays, but sometimes it gets to a point where whether or not I'm progressing well through a scenario, the difficulty induced stress makes you stop and think about how much fun your actually having.
RyokoTK wrote:She doesn't? I was under the impression she had loaded herself into a ship in order to make the Cybernetic Junction work. Or did I completely misinterpret the point of "My Kingdom Pfhor a Horse?"
Ah yes, the MML-gifted ammo. I've actually added that already a long time ago in the version I have on my HD; each map begins with one of each type of weapon you should have accumulated by that point. I guess I could stand to crank up the combat on some the S'pht levels in that case. Either way the combat on "S'pht Happens" on can get hardcore since it's full of Pfhor from there on out.Besides some kind of silly plot contrivance, the obvious way to do it is to use MML to gear up the player a little bit if they ctrl-click to that level. Otherwise I don't think running out of ammo is a real issue; as you can see in my screenshots, I have far more ammo than I could possibly need at this point.
As to your edit, it's your game, not mine! But it looks like the level Third Rock From Lh'owon doesn't exist in the level select menu.
RyokoTK wrote:Granted, I haven't found the remaining weapons yet, but...
RyokoTK wrote:I would almost make the ammo for the Pfhor weapons infinite (but retain the reloading animation) since for all intents and purposes it amounts to the same thing. The only ammo I even bother to monitor is fusion ammo since it's so hard to come by in levels before the weapons were invented, and that way it will help you with level skippers. Granted, I haven't found the remaining weapons yet, but...
RyokoTK wrote:There's some kind of pseudo-romance between Marcus and Hathor that I don't think has any actual establishment in the storytelling
RyokoTK wrote:It seems to me that the notion of failure/success has to do with noticing some kind of small detail that you're overlooking, rather than making a distinct choice; in other words, it's less a question of intellectual reasoning and more a question of making sure you explore the entire map. Which seems a little dubious to me, but...
Pfhorrest wrote:Well, it is designed so that people will most likely 'fail'* the first time through, if they just charge ahead without really thinking about it much. So in that sense it is dependent on noticing the small details and not just clicking through the first terminal you come across. Even if you do notice the details, though, you still have to choose which of the two paths to take, if you don't already know, though there are clues nudging players in the right direction since so many people get stuck in failure-branch loops.
In chapter 1, when we first meet Tycho on "Sakhmet Rising", most players will remember him as the villain for most of the trilogy, and possibly distrust him; going with Hathor, who has this whole sappy lets-rule-the-galaxy-together-as-bf-and-gf schpiel, might well be the right choice, especially since she's been the protagonist thus far. In Chapter 2, both Tycho and Leela are warning you about how dangerously unstable the other is and both are acting a bit suspicious themselves, so you have to choose which one you trust more. In Chapter 3 you have to choose between abandoning the S'pht to their doomed history as we know it or trying to make a difference and possibly making things worse, which is even more of a substantial choice than who-do-you-trust-more. Chapter 4 here is most guilty of the "overlooking a small detail" thing, since both exits are via the same, almost-identical terminal, and if you took the success path you won't ever have any idea what the failure path might have been. Chapter 5, I think, has the most poignant choice at the branch point, with both choices seeming equally dire and dangerous, but I won't spoil that.
*(I'd like to reiterate what I've said before, that I don't consider going down a "failure" branch to be a failing on the player's part. I think of it more of just a plot event which you can circumvent if you are observant or know it's coming. Consider a level design scheme I've seen in several games, where your ostensible mission objective is to follow down some path to obtain the necessary plot widget, but when you near the end of that path some scripted event happens obscuring your ability to obtain said widget -- an explosion collapses the hall in front of you or something -- so you have to backtrack and find an alternate route around the obstruction. I consider the branches in Eternal to be an interlevel analogue of such intralevel designs. In either case, if you just blindly follow forward until you hit an obstruction, you will go down the one path first and have to come back around, but if you've done this before, or are observant enough to see it coming, you could just go around first and not bother heading down the "doomed" path.)
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