Castle

Maybe a good question for Mr Currie: What does he think about 1.13, and did he ever talk or was in contact with any of the 1.13 people? (I know/suspect Shanga who ran the bear's pit is a bit of egomaniac but I guess the rest of the people who worked on the mod are aight)

I have a great question for Mr Currie: What does he dislike about JA2, or what parts of it does he think turned out not so well, could've used more work, or needed things added to it? Because, as I think some artists or people working in a creative profession can feel sometimes, sometimes you can't complete all parts of the product to your liking, and have to make compromises or ship with parts not fully finished or done to your satisfaction. Also, a question for Brad Logston (if he's going to be there): what has the development process been like for you, can you describe various parts or stages of development or any interesting things you decided to do during development? (And I can raise the same question to any other members of the dev team present).

Questions for Mr Currie: 1 What mechanics or systems did you cut out for JA2 if any, and what do you make about some of the features that some people have modded into games like JA2, like food mechanics, or any other more feature that increases gameplay depth? What mechanics or systems have you thought of in last 20 years that can iterate the strategy formula? 2 Do you agree that certain genres and certain types of games went away in last 20 years? It can be the typical Sid Meier's Pirates type of game, where you simply have a large open world, with some amount of strategy, RPG, simulation, or can be something like RTSes and Starcraft and Command & Conquer. 3 Do you think social media has given air to a lot of, er, hate online, and that development is much tougher psychologically, because now it is no longer just 10 or 20 friends in a cheap office? And do you think there are any other challenges to development today, compared to development in 1990s? 4 Do you agree that American/Canadian culture has changed significantly since 1990s? (lol this might entail him going into that as much as he wants or doesn't want to). 5 Do you agree that characters and writing in games in 1990s, not just in video games but in tv shows as well, differs significantly to characters and writing now, to where it seems today almost everybody is like a neutral character, and nobody, not even the villains are particularly mean or angry, while the heroes aren't particularly positive, heroic, happy-go-lucky (John McLane perhaps), etc. 6 Do you agree that lots of good visual design died with 1990s, and modern level design and asset design is kind of boring and drab? 7 Was making JA2 profitable, and were you guys rolling in dough after the fact, or was it more of a "break even" situation?

A little bit negative but ok. I don't think Brad Logston is a bad person (at all), he seems to be motivated by the right things, seems to love JA like we do, like 90s era movies, understands the tone JA was going for. Almost nobody on dev team I think of as being poorly motivated, they had the right idea, it's just how they chose to realize it is what's to be seen at release date time.

And the character is also intended to be a positive character, he's not supposed to be like a character who's angry necessarily or has a score to settle or is on a path to vengeance against anybody specific, or is trying to avenge somebody he lost or something, I'm not saying that. He could be motivated by his own goals, and his own drive to become a good merc, or climb the career path. But mostly he's just existing and having a good time, or at least his motivations aren't necessarily made obvious or overt (or present). Another way to look at Radomir's expressions is that he naturally has like a very determined look on his face, or like a very intense look on his face, like a "fiery" look on his face if you like (but I'm not a girl so I probably wouldn't use words like that lol). Sorry for the new posts, there seems to be a short edit window on these posts, so I kind of have to keep adding new posts to add new information or change things around.

Stats are fine, perks can be reworked.

You also should've added the option to ask people if they want Bobby Ray back, might be a hot topic for some (I don't mind personally, I'm sure there's some kind of replacement).

The name for rado merc can be: Stepan Vasijlevic (so east european but not russian can be bulgarian can be whatever), nickname: Thief (or Rogue, Dagger, something knife related). And this will be a serious merc, I saw some people try to imply that it should be like a ironic merc, like maybe he's an ex-game dev, I don't think that's necessary, I think radomir has a great face for a merc in general, and we should make use of that, perhaps.

TL;DR rado merc is a long range recon soldier who's not at the height of his career path but pretty close to being there, he maybe leaves armed forces because the engagements he was in are no longer there so he pursues career advancement and personal goals on the frontlines at AIM and as a merc, and he's supposed to be a mid-level or mid-high-level merc that's basically a Shadow Jr, more in terms of background than skillset necessarily. Comes with a silenced AR, maybe silenced pistol, maybe a knife. Is supposed to be a solitary or lone wolf type merc. His defining characteristics are supposed to be speed or agility, and stealth.

As maybe some know there's been some ideas to include radomir in the merc cast, due to him looking kind of like somebody who might be a merc. Why radomir? Well, radomir has very good face for a merc, that looks very much like what you'd see in JA2 merc cast. Why? Well two reasons, I think. Reason one: he has a very angular face. Reason two: he has default expressions that are kind of interesting, and showcase a certain personality type that might fit with a merc cast. Like how some people, presumably, have "resting bitch face", Radomir has "resting troll face", or maybe "resting interesting face". Here are some examples and comparisons to mercs from previous games: Here are some JA2 ones, hope you'll pardon the low res on some of them. So basically: 1 Radomir has a good face for a merc, because he has 1 very angular features and 2 has resting troll expression, where his eyes look a bit tired and a bit determined, but his face below the eyes is smiling, which make him look like he's energetic or determined, and it's a interesting face expression regardless. You might say it's a cheshire cat smile, but I wouldn't say that, that expression usually implies a more nefarious intent, I think radomir is perfectly altruistic, and there can be some overlap between anger, being energetic, being resentful or wronged, and being determined. The same expression can imply many things (plus discerning and interpreting faces is not a perfect science nor is there supposed to be 100% connection between faces and actual emotional states, plenty of people have one face, whether its resting b face or whatever, and then they have a completely different or normal personality). Face looks good regardless. 3 what is the background of radomerc, well basically radomerc is supposed to be in his early 20s (basically, he's not a kid anymore, but he's still to reach the high levels of his professions or path, and he's still has room to grow in terms of his career and profession and not self-actualized yet), so the right place to place him would be somewhere in the mid-range or mid-high range of mercs. I see him as a shadow Jr type character. His basic background is recon type missions, and I see him as a kind of like, lightly armored, not necessarily super heavily armored (typical AR, like look at some CQB or SBR type rifles maybe with some camo on top of it, similar to what JA2 Shadow had in AIMNAS) guy, with a tight t-shirt on top of camo pants, with a lot of LBE on top of it, a very like light gear build (at least visually, he can wear whatever he wants item-wise), and the idea is, that his two defining characteristics are: speed, and stealth, or some kind of like solitary combat type of deal, which usually implies stealth. This can imply: knives, this can imply pistols with silencers, and this can imply more short range silenced weapons, like ARs in SBR with silencers on top. 4 the reason for mercing, that may or may not always be important, is that the last military engagement he was in for his country got wrapped up and they no longer had a need for a huge military force so they shortened down the amount of contracts they had. This can be important (or can not be), because you want to know, did radomerc get fired for being lazy, was radomerc fired for being a bad boy, was radomerc let go because the miltiary ran out of money, did radomerc leave, did radomerc leave because he had "noble reasons to leave" and like he was dealing with a "corrupt bureaucracy and brass" and this like typical hollywood idea of like "I am being unjustly treated and the organization I was in was full of corrupt idiots who didn't care, and I care, so I left", or was it more realistic, like maybe he just wasn't seeing any action. In fact I think that's the best explanation, radomerc wasn't seeing any action, so while he could've stayed on and polished floors or done some other menial bullshit, he chose a life of active duty to fulfill his desires to like reach the upper levels of his career. (And you can come up with all kinds of secondary explanations, like, oh, radomerc had specific reasons to be in this conflict, maybe his girlfriend was stolen or killed by the armed forces while she was taking a trip to this country, maybe his brother was killed in the country by the armed forces while he was vacationing and he knows he can't find him but he can, in a certain way, try to prevent others from sharing the same fate, maybe he didn't like what was going on in a specific country could be arulco could be somewhere else, and he was like "why are people so indifferent, people are dying", etc. That kind of thing. Not TOO like excessive, but within limits). 5 what should he look like, as his defining characteristics look to be and appear to be speed and stealth, or some kind of recon related ability, they can be: These are not perfect (try to ignore the faces and add radomir's face there instead), but the basic character model should be in shape but not overly muscular skinny guy, who's not wearing armor per se, has a t-shirt or some other form-fitting shirt, and light LBE harness on top of that, not a full vest or full LBE but one of the more moderate normal LBEs. And the pants can be typical cargo pants people wear now, single color. He doesn't have armor because he's not supposed to be a top-end merc, and he's a comparatively new merc, still. Shadow Jr, kind of. rado's lines, I want him to be not cocky but like a confident successful person, so he expects success to a certain extent. the direction I would give, for when you have a good reaction or a successful reaction, that he kind of has a troll-y cocky way of speaking, calm but cocky, but not like overly cocky just like a bit cocky. on 1-shot kills: "he didn't really stand a chance" we have to add some weird lines to make the character stand out, mannerisms are the best way to make characters memorable even if they don't really make sense always. "Birdie goes poof" "you can't escape me" "I am your shadow" "Gone" need healing: "I'm in pain" "I'm hurt" pretty standard, there's not much you can really say when somebody needs meds, what are they going to go on a long shakesperean speech about their life circumstances, probably not. "Don't want to become swiss cheese" "Need meds" "Bits missing where they shouldn't be" - though this is more of like a tough 30 year old merc line imo. "losing blood" "Red isn't my color" though I don't think this line fits on a radomerc type character (at all, if anything this is like a girl line, and even then I'm not sure I'd have them say that) "Not used to seeing red on this side of the gun" - this is more of a radomerc line, because while he's not like a fully egotistical character, he's confident and successful and at some level expects success, so he's surprised more than anything at "failure" or being lit up. Maybe this line can be rephrased. good encounter with an npc: "Starting to like some of these villagers". "The civilians aren't all so bad". bad encounter with an npc: "asshole". Or something. I see him being very straight to the point, and very non-implicit and overt in whether he likes somebody or not. random 1% or 5% chance to say this line in any level out of combat. "Does a bear poop in the forest?" And you think "what is this guy saying? What is this related to?" and there's like no answers, and that can be the funny part. Of course, radomir is supposed to not participate, but maybe if he wants to have an input he can make an account on the forum and infiltrate maybe, add his own suggestions...who knows 🤣 Maybe nobody will mind. PS: "rescue pavel" DLC quest idea, lost developer took the wrong turn on the map, and is now in grand chien and doesn't know how to get out and is surrounded by a bunch of mercenaries, he says he was promoting the game, and his truck has a bunch of Posters in it, and when he gets back to his country he says he'll give us a free version of the game, and that he won't "forget us", but after 2 weeks we get like a 5% discount voucher and some gift cards, or some other like underwhelming gift or something. (And then IF YOU REALLY want to like overthink a small quest like this, MAYBE there's a specific super-fan n grand chien who was waiting for this game to come out, and he's like "omg I can't believe you have this" and he gives us like a great item or some big discount at his store, like permanent 10% discount that stacks with other discounts). The only negative here, can be, that people can think that this is like a bit too familiar and forward, it can feel a bit too much like developers are making JA3 for themselves vs for a random customer, so you can try to like de-specify pavel to be a more generic pavel-esque character, who maybe has his model and has like some funny twist on his name like Paul instead of Pavel or something like that, and the premise is still the same, but it's been de-specified away from Pavel specifically. Because you don't want to have too many in-jokes, because if you have only in-jokes then people who aren't in on the jokes won't laugh and will be insulted slightly like "ok, is this product for me". Or you can make the in-joke a bit more like understandable and less of an in-joke, and make obvious references to JA3 in conversation, can be like "we have been working on a very important title called serrated team 3: revenge of adrianna").