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Image Miroir

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Posts posted by Image Miroir

    random crap and unclear objectives in this game is driving me mad

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I already played the "mode" Dead is dead in Jagged Alliance 2. It was rather simple: when a character was killed I wasn't coming back to a save, and when my main (IMP) character was killed, I was starting a new game.

    I'm amazed that developers spent time developing such a mode.

    When you purchase a DVD, or watch a movie on Netflix, you can choose to watch directly the last 10 minutes. Some people read the resume of the thriller they watch, knowing all the twists before watching a thriller. It's up to them!

    If game developers were fully grown up, they'd know that no one need a second mother. Now, if you need a mode not to come back to the previous save when you mercs die... maybe you're too young to play video games.

    Stats vs. perks

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    As JA2 was released a long time ago, they had to rethink the skills to introduce options like hacking.

    They could also think about percentage going higher than 100%, and level beyond 10 (maybe 20). It could help to make a one-man army and eventually run/finish the game with a single merc.

    But whatever, the game's done and it's fine for me like that. Waiting for JA3 to be released...

    Spec Forces DLC

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Elite77 said:

    But most spec op forces don't have missions that last longer than a few hours, go in, do something, get out. Usually most of their gear is pre-planned, and there is no real item loot necessarily.

    It's why I'm more speaking of Black Ops. Please just read. But if you accept a country called Grand Chien that never existed on this planet, I don't see any drama to accept Special Forces running Black Ops missions.

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    Tabletop roleplaying game != a professional video game.

    A character is a character. Steroid (like Ivan or any other) has a background "defined" over 10 lines. No serious TTRPG character has such a poor background. So, again, the level I present in TTRPG is much higher than what we have in JA2 (I can't speak about JA3 for obvious reasons).

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    Not to go into the whole problem of AI-tools that you are overestemating wildly.

    I'm using them daily for work, and most of the time for companies bigger than Haemimont Games. And many colleagues I know do the same, so I'm not at all overestimating AI. I'd even qualify myself as a basic AI (but professional) AI user.

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    The raw material from that probably works perfect for a tabletop RPG, it does not necessarily translate to actual video games and isn't plug and play.

    We're speaking about background here, character conception. What you can witness in good TTRPG right now is way far advanced than what you have in ANY video game. Everyone knowledgeable enough in video games industry would tell you. The best TTRPG went to help and develop video games 30 years ago. The complexity of worlds and characters of the best TTRPG of the 1990s still don't have any equivalent in video games.

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    The raw material from that probably works perfect for a tabletop RPG, it does not necessarily translate to actual video games and isn't plug and play. Write a prompt and then just magically insert it into a game.

    Who's speaking of plug and play??? You create "Bob who's belonging to SEAL Team 6, after 2 years in MIT, and several covert missions in Kenya... blablabla..." You make it the proper way and you have a character. You just need answer a simple grid for that "name, surname, age, unit, major accomplishment/failure, demeanor". If you're a game designer and can't create 30 fictional characters in a full week of work, change job, they need arms in agriculture!

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    Write a prompt and then just magically insert it into a game. Not to mention the whole grey area of AI-tools to make copyrighted commercial products.

    It's almost that. It just work fine for companies making billions, so I think Haemimont Games could comply with it until they make their first trillion.

    There's no grey area for copyright. Just read and learn. A copyright can only be related to a production achieved by a conscious mind. So, it's been ruled by law that no animal can get copyright and has there's no AI with consciousness in this world (yet), if you do it before the 2050s you don't have any problem.

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    You keep saying things like this without any regard for how much time it actually takes to do these things. It is time consuming work all of it, not to mention every game out there gets rewritten, refined and changed up during production. Because the things you did (models, voice lines, text etc) just didn't work as you intended.

    You can do it in Sims' for over a decade. So, if you weren't first designing a tool to easily create the faces of the characters in a professional video games released in 2023, I wonder why you call yourself a professional.

    When I worked on my first serious game in 2018, the designer who knew a bit of Blender (but not that much), did a dozen of characters in 7 days of work. Still the guy wasn't a game developer.

    3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    THREE DAYS TO CONTACT NATIVE SPEAKERS AND GET SAMPLES AND TWO DAYS TO MIX IT. What in the actual what. Here we are talking minimum several months because you need to prepare and plan for recruitment (what are you looking for, what is gonna be the salary for the work, how much work are we talking, how are you gonna advertise it and for how long so you make sure you get enough response, how do you filter through candidates, how are you gonna set up interviews and what is your backup plan if you don't get decent candidates). And that's even before salary negotiations, writing up contracts and setting up time to do the actual work, and then evaluate the product you got, do-overs, changing up the script because it's not working. And then finalizing it.

    In my day-to-day job as a e-learning designer, I can find, recruit, get a voice record for a 3 hours speech in 3 days. And the requirement are much higher than having Ivan to say basic sentence in Russian language.

     

    Seriously, if you want to have it done, the first think is to consider it possible, the second to want to have it done, and the third to mobilize yourself to do it. Maybe they should hire Ukrainians, they seem to be smarter and more adaptative!

    Spec Forces DLC

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    10 hours ago, ninjalex said:

    Have you ever made a video game? Saying that making a character gallery of 30(!) new characters is a few days of work is absurd.

    I never made video games, but I made serious games. I also do tabletop roleplaying games, and created so many worlds, characters, creatures and adventures, I can't count.

    Characters belong to archetypes, and in an environment like Jagged Alliance, you don't have so many. With a concept artist, 30 characters should take a week of work (6 per day), not more.

    With ChatGPT you generate the background of one of them in 15 min. With Midjourney, you create an inspiration visual in 30 min. With Wikipedia you get the unit badge in 30 seconds.

    Once done, you finish the visuals with Photoshop/Illustrators. You identify weapons used by special forces of these countries; most should be already in the game. So for the visual of the few new ones it shouldn't take decades.

    So, in 70 hours of work all the design and narrative/storytelling should be done.

    Now, I don't know how long it would take for developers but given a few of them I think integrating/adapting two faces per day (we already have the bodies) should not be out of reach. So, 2 faces per day makes 7 days of work for two developers.

    Voices? One day to prepare the contract. One day to write the sentences in different languages with ChatGPT/Google Translate. Three days to contact native speakers, and get samples. Two days to mix it all. You have everything done in a week of work.

    So you can make you DLC in a month, for around $8,000. It means you need around 3,000 sales to make it worthy.

    11 hours ago, Elite77 said:

    1 would be very boring, in my opinion, most spec forces missions are very much "go in, kill somebody or capture a politician, get out", it's very procedural bureaucratic stuff, there's no grander narrative about a dictator or anything like that.

    2 How would you make items work in this. No more item loot? No more items being kept from last mission and brought into the new mission?

    You don't need to change the game at all. Black Ops are infiltrating units used to act under cover or false flag.

    So, if it's boring, it means the game is boring as you don't have to change anything in the scenario. The motivation is just a given order instead of the money like usual for mercenaries.

    For sure you have your items to loot, you don't change at all anything else in the game.

     

    So, maybe my mistake it's to name it Black Ops instead of Special Forces, my mistake.

    Spec Forces DLC

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 minute ago, ninjalex said:

    Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell. Modeling a bunch of characters, writing backstories, creating voicelines. It's gonna be a HUGE job.

    It's not to exagerate. Yes you have to model the faces, for the bodies it's not needed.

    The back stories? It's very simple, these guys already belong to a country and a defined unit. With ChatGPT you create a background for each in barely 10 minutes. So it's a full day of work.

    Voices? Offer players to be part of a DLC and you'll get a lot of candidates. Choose them on a voice sample. It's barely a few days of work.

    7 minutes ago, ninjalex said:

    And that doesn't even reflect the changes that has to be done to change how the environment and NPCs react when you have a completely different role than the original game.

    These guys are black ops, so they do the same dirty jobs mercs do. So you have nothing at all to change.

    Spec Forces DLC

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    What about making a DLC introducing Spec Forces?

    With this DLC the narrative would be a little different: instead of a security contractor agency, the characters would be sent by a government, being part of a black op. The objective remains the same, but it's part of a foreign power agenda.

    In that DLC, you choose a nationality (American, British, Canadian, French, German, Israelian, Russian, etc.), you start with 3 new soldiers (2 men +1 one of your choice). Two of the three have a detailed background, being part of most famous special force unit of that given country; and the third character is created like with AIM (in addition you choose the unit you belong to and get the badge of that unit on your character sheet).

    The two detailed characters, would be of medium strength (with country related firearms). Being a little bit better than the mercs you can get at the beginning, for free as they are on mission. Not to unbalance the game, this group will not be bigger than 3 (except for special additional characters that could be related to a specific mission), even if you can recruit other groups of mercs (like usually).

    Such a DLC wouldn't be that difficult to create, and could please a lot of players from all around the world. With 2 detailed characters per country, it'd represent 30 additional characters for 15 countries (it's not that much work). To get the symbol of units for each country, two days of work with Wikipedia should be enough.

    It could be interesting to add a specific quest for these spec forces units, but the more you add into this DLC, the less it's profitable to create and release it.

    So what do you think about this idea?

    New AIM Mercs sucks!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I see no problem with the mercs. First, I expect it'll change something playing this one or another within the group, otherwise the background will be pretty much useless.

    Second, as it take place in Africa, I expect to have several African mercs, otherwise, what the point.

    Enemies will not be blown away from their original positions by explosives

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Jaywalker said:

    After over 20 years, there will by necessity be some soul searching and reinventing.
    What worked to create a cult classic in 1999 is not going to go well with the broader audiences of 2023.

    Would the game be better if it had some more simulation and management aspects? Maybe.
    But the direction they went for was to emphasize the unique "40+ protagonists" aspect that is equally part of the franchise.

    In proportion, JA3 has less money than JA2, and the video game industry is much different now.

    In my opinion, they had to keep isometric 2D and improve/structure the game from JA2 or 1.13. The choice of 3D was made after 2000s. It was trendy, but technically much more demanding. Like many video games and films, Jagged Alliance was victim of the "just make it impressive". Scenarists and game designers should be the head of the project, not the developers.

    Now, that they have something, they should keep on improving it over a JA4 and a JA5. They also have to invest the different supports that are tablets and have it fully operational on Android and Apple OS. Doing so they can make it a major game licence by the end of the decade.

    +18 content in Jagged Alliance 3 ???

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Elite77 said:

    Also America was created with the benefit of private firearms.

    It would worth a deep analysis, but I think countries who had no medieval history, who had no aristocratic structure do have a different relationship with guns.

    It means young countries/societies (I'd say with less than 300 or 400 years of existence) are used to have more access to weapons, especially firearms. It's logical as medieval rulers were used to provide weapons before the war and to recover them just after. This was to avoid commoners to revolt and overthrow nobility.

    Even if medieval system disappeared, this system lasted for over a thousand years and structured the part of the vision of civilians concerning firearms.

    The USA had very few border feuds and they had to face a large wild territory with a relatively weak central rulership. This helped to widespread the possession of firearms. In addition the powerful gun factories/companies promoted gun ownership. At the end, almost everyone in the USA has a gun, while almost no one in Europe has one.

    • Like 2

    Release Date?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    10 hours ago, MateKiddleton said:

    It'd probably be a struggle to successfully parody modern day merc personality stereotypes without offending someone in today's climate.

    Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Modern Warfare were able to do it, therefore it's possible.

    Many people were blaming the "politically correct", I think it died by 24th of february 2022. Till that day it was considered business was avoiding confrontation between countries; it was proven false. Now, propaganda should probably thrive for a decade or two.

    The main concept of business remains, a.k.a. "who's your target?" Jagged Alliance will have to clearly identify its target market. For sure there'll be political issues, but the endless debate on CtH shows gaming habits and influences are not negligible either.

    Now, the key element is profitability. Artificial intelligence is diffusing everywhere at light speed. And the game development domain is no exception. The AI will allow to develop games like JA in half the time if not faster before the end of 2024. Most probably, by 2025 a single year of development would equal 7 years of work of the 2010s. It'll benefit first games like Jagged Alliance, so even if it's not sure we'll play the same game in all countries over the world, we can be sure we'll have our "local Jagged Alliance" whatever the porte-manteau name it'll have.

    In the worst case, by the end of the decade each of us would be able to "produce" its own Jagged Alliance with the free game development tools available. At least something equal to JA2. So, live long and enjoy!

    Carmen Dancio in JA3

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 4/9/2023 at 5:56 PM, Lunokhod said:

    It was a very successful additional mission in JA2. Must have in JA3. U dont even need his model if u dont want. For example: Carmen made some money in Arulco and create his own bounty hunter site, sort of "Wanted". So u can find some of bad dudes in this African sh*thole. 5-7 criminals will be okay. No need to cut someone's head, i think photo of dead body will be ok.

    I just love that character, I'd love to have him present in JA3 (or in an upcoming DLC). As a fan of the old "Wanted" TV-series it could be great to arm him with mare's leg rifle (a shotgun version could be fun) he could fire one-handed.

    Instead of hunting down 5-7 criminals, it could be a long quest where he'll track down a single notorious criminal (could be a cartel boss, a war criminal, etc.). But doing so he'll have to investigate and go through 5-7 key enemies.

    Release Date?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, Lunokhod said:

    Showgunners failed, Miasma Chronicles and JA3 will fail. Nobody cares about TBS in 2023.

    We can help the game with good reviews. This genre isn't the most popular but it has a significant amount of fans.

    5 minutes ago, Lunokhod said:

    Not with THQ. They have no money to hire good dev team.

    I think they have to insert JA in the real world, and set it nowadays. Maybe to have a real scenario (with twists) with many side quests. Something "like" Baldur's Gate 2, but with the game mechanics of Jagged Alliance.

    This is just an idea, and there are so many possible.

    Money is important, but experience and creativity can surprise. I think over the last decade, the teams working on the different iterations didn't know the genre enough.

    • Like 1

    Subduing and capturing opponents

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 5/4/2023 at 7:18 AM, Solaris_Wave said:

    It would actually remind me of a MicroProse game on the Commodore Amiga, called Special Forces. If your commando(s) got captured, you could rescue them in an optional side mission. They would always be in a truck park and it was fun to utterly load up on C4 and set the charges next to all the vehicles and munitions, get your guys out of there and then blow the whole lot up.

    It'll be interesting to see how far Haemimont Games went in its benchmark.

    Before being creative, you have to be knowledgeable.

    Necessary upgrades before launch

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Concerning the intelligence of the opponents, you should enjoy people and take advantage of enemy stupidity. JA3 is most probably the last Jagged Alliance game not buffed by "modern AI"; soon every single opponent will be a West Point graduate!

    So, it's most probably the last time you'll outsmart a tactical game AI before experiencing the fate of Garry Kasparov in front of Deep Blue...

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