TIGSource - May 2013 (68 posts)
#483 May 02, 2013 04:04 AM
Holy shit! Thanks everybody! That was fast! I’m thinking to write some nonsense on why I think it got greenlit in such a short time. I planned nothing but in hindsight might be able to explain it.
@gene123: [Ideas]
There are some good ideas here. The reducing food costs was planned, but I completely forgot about it. I’ll definitely do that. Luggage is something I cut for good after implementing the search system. It just turned out to not be necessary enough to be worth the work. The other stuff is cool, but not quite what I have in mind.
@qqqbbb: [rightclick drag papers, slavic gender names]
Someone else suggested right-click for dragging papers back. My response was that I don’t want to add a whole new drag mode to optimize out a part of the game that I think is important. For the names, I actually have some gender consideration for the names, but I guess it could be wrong. The problem unfortunately will only get worse when I integrate the user-submitted names. There’s over 10,000 of them now so I’ll probably just punt on any kind of gender correctness.
@arkhometha: [newspaper bug]
Thank you for trying to reproduce this bug. Someone contacted me with a video showing the glitch. Basically, you have to correlate his name with the card, then when the detain button pops up, click it and immediately give him the card. The detain button will pop up a second time. If you hit it then, the newspaper will show both stories.
@Gila: This kind of takes the challenge out of the game and reduces the replayability value at least for me
The main story mode will only have a small amount of randomness. I’m more inclined to get the narrative right than to make it replayable. Hopefully the endless mode can satisfy that itch.
@Angrytemplar: For some reason medicine didn’t work
Medicine doesn’t immediately cure sickness. I’m not sure about the exact stats but it can take a few days to get better. Could this be what was happening?
@Monolith: Consider adding a one-off immigrant who wants to buy your “dirty” photos.
SSSHHHH.
@GepardenK: [family stuff]
I’m 80% set on the current family setup. But people are pretty consistent in asking for more. So I’m going to keep thinking about it. I doubt I’ll go as far as adding a shop menu. I’ve been thinking about ways to expand what’s there while maintaining the vagueness that I like.
Re: Sniping
Trust me, you will want to pull the trigger and it will feel good when you hit your target. I’ve worked out a story arc that’s deeply integrated with the sniping. This is my favorite arc so far so the matter is completely settled in my mind.
Re: The Eagle
As JohnnyG says, the eagle is not only a fascist mark. The world is overflowing with countries that use the eagle. I realize it’s not normally associated with communism but it’s a more eye-catching government-y symbol for me than a star or sickle. The original eagle was based on the Romanian shield. I wanted something more crazy and so switched to the current mix of screaming bird and American eagle.
Re: Ideas/Suggestions
Part of my goal for this game is to do a lot with very little. It’s basically a single-screen game with a mostly-static interface. I’ve worked out enough of the story to think that I can make a good game using only the elements that are already there. That means I probably won’t add new modes like night-time duty, walking-to-work, or pulling-guns-on-entrants. I know this sounds short-sighted, but please just give me the benefit of the doubt. :) There is still a lot of unexplored territory in only the features available in the beta. There’s more I haven’t shown and I want to explore that thoroughly before adding anything else.
Replies
#484 Nebula268 (May 02, 2013 12:46 PM)
Congrats on making such an amazing game, I thoroughly enjoyed the beta :)
And just a thought, perhaps you could add a few more families trying to pass through? Normally you get plenty of wailing kids and tired parentsat checkpoints, and that’d make a dark and somewhat fitting decision of whether or not you let discrepancies pass if they’re a family (Kid’s got a bad passport… let him through or deny the poor little guy? Sounds like harsh choice to have to make but it kinda matches the whole atmosphere, i think). I know you kinda have your own view on how the game will turn out and what you’d like in terms of moral choices and content, but its only a suggestion anyway. Thanks, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll do next :D#485 Johnyliltoe (May 02, 2013 02:16 PM)
Love Papers, Please! Finally finished my Let’s Play on YouTube. Split into 4 parts, so here’s the playlist:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoN9hgE6w-Rm7Nlh9KJfYh-XtXNK06KLG
#486 tterrag (May 02, 2013 03:34 PM)
I’m running into a minor problem where I’m getting cited for invalid expiration dates, when the expiration dates are in 1983 or 1984.Edit: Also, how do you check for district? It’s different from issuing city.
#487 Hempuli‽ (May 02, 2013 05:07 PM)
Quote from: tterrag on May 02, 2013, 03:34:12 PM Edit: Also, how do you check for district? It’s different from issuing city.
I’m quite certain only Arstotzka has its districts listed in the guidebook.
#488 tterrag (May 02, 2013 05:27 PM)
I didn’t see districts listed for Arstotzka either, but I can check the game again.#489 pakoito (May 02, 2013 06:32 PM)
I came to congratulate you for this game. I’m at the 8th day and I don’t think I can play anymore, because I started hating the emigrants. Being one myself and having dealt with bureaucracy the irony was too strong.#490 Monolith (May 02, 2013 08:35 PM)
Re: Ideas/SuggestionsDoesn’t sound near-sighted at all. There’s a beauty in simplicity and holding fast to your creative principles is a sort of virtue. The concept and execution of the game so far has been very clever, and I for one trust you to do what’s right. Congrats again on the success! Looking forward to seeing new builds/the final product!
#491 Eigen (May 02, 2013 09:45 PM)
Will you be adding Steam achievements? :who, me?:#492 pluckyporcupine (May 03, 2013 05:02 AM)
Quote from: dukope on May 02, 2013, 04:04:10 AM I know this sounds short-sighted, but please just give me the benefit of the doubt. :)
Actually, I rather applaud it. Keeping a small range of features and doing a lot with them is the ultimate way to combat feature creep and it keeps a well-designed core in mind at all times, rather than overextending with a ton of features that only partially work.Definitely interested in seeing what’s next from here. :)
#493 player1 fanatic (May 03, 2013 11:28 PM)
I have one suggestion.Instead of an option of not buying any food, to save money (20$), there should be option to buy less food (10$), normal amount (20$), or none. It’s more realistic.
#494 Ghost13 (May 04, 2013 03:39 AM)
Thanks for the great game! I loved mechanics and classical “back into 1990s” feel. Got carried avay for hours. It would be nice to have leaderboards and more story. Some tutorial or game guide will also be nice sometimes you are not sure how to use some of the features.Suggestions
UV light, there was already a suggestion for watermarks in the documents. But I have feeling it will be difficult to implement in current interface and game pallet. It would be nice if the game include UV light to reveal forged passports just like it done in real world. Some of passport elements will change color under UV light so the player should remember which elements of the passports will shine in what color. It surely should be later in the game.As for the fingerprints
It would be nice to have bulletin of criminals or some other unwanted individuals where fingerprints are the only clue to the culprit (no name, or photo or else). There may be special rewards for capturing these criminals via fingerprints identification. Also there may be people who will have been previously deported but changed the name and\or identity so fingerings are also the only way to get them. I think this will make the fingerprint feature more useful and interesting.#495 SuperBunnyBun (May 04, 2013 07:58 AM)
Quote from: Ghost13 on May 04, 2013, 03:39:27 AM UV light, there was already a suggestion for watermarks in the documents. But I have feeling it will be difficult to implement in current interface and game pallet. It would be nice if the game include UV light to reveal forged passports just like it done in real world. Some of passport elements will change color under UV light so the player should remember which elements of the passports will shine in what color. It surely should be later in the game.
As for the fingerprints
It would be nice to have bulletin of criminals or some other unwanted individuals where fingerprints are the only clue to the culprit (no name, or photo or else). There may be special rewards for capturing these criminals via fingerprints identification. Also there may be people who will have been previously deported but changed the name and\or identity so fingerings are also the only way to get them. I think this will make the fingerprint feature more useful and interesting.I disagree with the UV Light. It would be an interesting approach to forgeries, HOWEVER, it wouldn’t fit the scenario. It takes place at the end of 1982. Not only did no documents at the time get printed with invisible watermarks, but the only way you’d get a UV Light would be to attach a blacklight bulb into a flashlight. Their only purpose was looking for traces of blood at crime scenes, or to make blackvelvet paintings look awesome.
As for the other suggestion, a wanted poster thing would be interesting. A list of known rebels, or even a day where in the newspaper it contains a photo of a fugitive you have to look out for, who will be using a falsified name and nothing visibly wrong on his papers.
#496 Schrikvis (May 04, 2013 10:54 AM)
Congratulations on your greenlightening! Your game is certainly deserving of such praise, as it is indeed very, very well made. It feels refreshing to play something so fun that has nothing to do with anything fun at all.This has probably been discussed quite a few times already, but I’d still like to suggest the following;
- scanlines, film grain and blur filters applied to everything seen through a monitor/camera
- terrorist attack on people waiting in the queue
- the photo’s correct but the name has been used already (shot in the dark)
#497 traetig (May 04, 2013 12:41 PM)
I just want to say that you’re doing good work with Papers, Please.
I just had my first playthrough and I fell in love with the art and sound immediately. I even set speech-announce as my default message-tone on my phone, I hope that’s ok.
I’m really looking forward to the finished product, and with what I’ve seen so far I’m positive you’re making all the right choices. I will pop in again with some real feedback, I need a couple of more playthroughs for that.Now, if you don’t mind I’ll try out some other things you’ve made before I head back to Arstotzka.
#498 metasynthie (May 04, 2013 05:43 PM)
I’m yet another person who signed up just to comment on this game (although I’ve read these forums many times).dukope: Congrats on the greenlight and the excellent, really interesting game! I’ve played through a bunch and haven’t encountered any bugs of note, which is also pretty impressive. I wanted to give you a playthrough report that might help you make some decisions about balance, since the results seemed interesting.
Because Papers, Please is a game with such interesting ethical choices about who to take a citation for – from people who obviously just have one misspelled vowel in their name all the way to political refugees and Jorji – I thought about doing the equivalent of the “pacifist runs” that people do in games where killing is a main mechanic. So I tried a few different “extra rules” of the kinds that people use when they’re doing special runs:
“Open Borders” Run
The rule for this run was to never turn ANYONE away from the border, but still try to keep your family alive and healthy. This is possible as long as you can process at least 10 (or after rent increase 11) “correct” entries to the country; basically you just have to approve every single person as fast as possible. You also have to make up for the shortfall in pay on days where there’s a terrorist attack, which are a little more predictable in terms of how many correct/incorrect entries you’ll be handling.I was able to keep my family in rent, food, and heat until Day 7, where you must search every Kolechian, and you really start to have few “correct passes” coming through. After that, people started to get sick, but I made it to the end without anyone dying. You can also increase your # of successes by prodding the people who just haven’t taken out their missing documents, fingerprinting people to get a correct alias or match, etc and the extra seconds are usually worth it.
It’s also worth noting that there’s no “increased terrorism” downside in the game for playing like this, which I’m not saying there should be; the presence or absence of an effect for passing everyone through a border could be seen by some as an endorsement or rejection of the right-wing idea that borders are needed for safety, though!
“Revolutionary Conscience” Run
In order to try and stay in the black I made a different set of “ethical” rules. (Note that I don’t believe doing a “pacifist run” necessarily means you’re a pacifist in real life, so various kinds of ethical rulesets could be used for games regardless of your real-world politics.)
- People who just seem lazy/inattentive about their missing / expired documents get sent back. People who have a compelling reason (sudden change in requiring tickets/permits, had passport taken away, want to see son, etc) get sent through.
- Jorji goes through because he’s clearly a little more helpless than just lazy/inattentive.
- People forging documents are resisting the system or desperate for work, or trying to overthrow the regime you work for, so get sent through.
- Anyone with a name mismatch or misspelling goes through, because bureaucratic crap.
- You may not searcn anyone based on racial profiling (Kolechians).
- You may not scan or reject people for gender mismatch, since as in real life that’s unfairly detains/rejects transgender people, or anyone who just doesn’t “look like” the gender on their ID, etc.
- You may only detain the human trafficker and the suspected girlfriend-murderer.
This method is a lot more survivable for your family, even though the only people you’re “correctly rejecting” are those who just didn’t really bother to get their paperwork in order. You still just accept as many people as fast as you can to reach your quote of 10 or 11. (And you still have an economic incentive to help fix those whose situation can be addressed via fingerprinting or asking for documents they forgot to give you.) Basically, you can build up a big stockpile in the early days and then use it up at the end where you have to let the Kolechians through. (I considered saying that you can detain people carrying weapons, but since there’s no way to detect them without racial profiling, it didn’t fit the ruleset.) Still, it’s quite possible to play this way and have a healthy family at Day 9. (I imagine you’ll make it more difficult later, perhaps.)
“Racist Asshole” Run
This was sort of the opposite scenario, where you are ignoring the criteria given you in favor of some… different logic. And you mostly just rapid-fire reject people to reach your quota of 10 or 11 “correct rejects.”
- No Kolechians can enter.
- All other non-Arstotzkans can enter only for transit or visits of less than a month, anyone immigrating or working is not allowed. (Including anyone whose purpose is unknown in early days.)
- Anyone with a mismatched gender or who can be searched due to gender discrepancy is kept out, even if they are Arstotzkan.
- You may detain anyone who can be detained.
This method is VERY profitable, because you can rapidly reject a lot of people without looking for errors, and there are enough people with even minor errors (forgot to produce a document, etc) that you always make your minimum 10/11 needed except on terrorism days.
However, when you get to day 6, rule one causes you to hit an endless loop: there is an infinite line of Kolechian suicide bombers, all with perfect paperwork, who continue to stream in even after the clock runs out and turns into a blank grey box. So it’s not possible to play as a 100% anti-Kolechian racist.
Some last thoughts – if these playstyles seem weird and unrealistic, it’s probably because racking up 12 “correct processing” cases and 24 mistakes would probably get someone fired in real life, not let them go home with $60. I don’t really want to suggest rebalancing the penalty / payout system since it seems to work pretty well for typical play, and these lopsided ways of playing are still fun. Still, if they need to be capped so that a super-simple strategy doesn’t become dominant, maybe it’s worth having an extra penalty kick in after five or ten mistakes, etc.
Other things: you can fingerprint to clear up a radically-different photo mismatch, but not a gender mismatch? That seems like a discrepancy. Also, if names are being picked from a random list and won’t have an “obvious” gender anymore, I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to spot gender mismatches. A lot of the portraits are kind of androgynous as is, although I guess inexperienced players can just use the discrepancy-finder to determine if the “system” believes someone’s appearance is male or female? I guess that’s kind of realistic, in a way; gender is notoriously problematic as a validation measure for security checkpoints because it’s fairly subjective when security personnel have to make a guess about someone androgynous.
#499 Willowcat (May 04, 2013 07:22 PM)
I was reading this, and I had a few ideas of my own that I’d like to share:1-Your uncle/wife could possibly acquire a job part way into the game, providing a temporary source of extra income, this could later be offset when you have to start paying for your son’s education.
2-Maybe cold weather could be a small mechanic, as the newspaper could warn that snow is coming that night or something (increases the cost of heat that night)
3-Personally I think that the game needs a few more corrupt/dangerous figures, ie: a fleeing Republian leader (Rebulia times anyone?) or maybe someone who arrives without an entry permit, and points a gun at you if you mention anything. Should you wait to long, you may have a high amount of medical bills to pay that night…
4-Lastly (and maybe someone can confirm this for me if it’s already a thing) I think there should be more options for things like, well, *cough* *cough* censorship… :tongue: I really don’t mean to be ’that guy’ but I really think this game would do better if it at least had the option…
#500 TheVerveNerd (May 04, 2013 07:32 PM)
Hey everyone, VerveNerd here! I would like to share with you a 20ish minute Youtube video I’ve produced detailing some Papers, Please gameplay and explaining exactly what this game is all about. Check it out here:#501 TacoDeBoss (May 05, 2013 03:50 AM)
Just registered to post. I don’t really have any suggestion or anything, but I wanted to say that I didn’t even know how to detain people when I found things on them, or help people when they left me notes until I read this entire thing, I always just denied them/ignored their notes. I guess it was made pretty obvious and it was my fault, but you might want to look into a way to tell people you can select the parts of the picture. Or just tell people not to be fucking idiots like me. :roll eyes:#502 Impmaster (May 05, 2013 04:14 AM)
The sheer amount of manbabies in this thread is astounding.#503 Nebula268 (May 05, 2013 04:34 AM)
Quote from: Impmaster on May 05, 2013, 04:14:40 AM The sheer amount of manbabies in this thread is astounding.
I imagine that most, like me, will have created an account to give feedback when they clicked the DevLog link on his site.
#504 babac (May 05, 2013 05:57 AM)
Registered to TIG just because I like this game so much. :)I’m posting just to state I’ll happily shell out money for the final version of this. As soon as I watched :my word!: do a WTF on it I was hooked, and actually trying it out was basically like entering a time machine to early 90’s and playing again on my old 386 PC with its orange monochrome screen. :)
A few questions about the game in its current build (if noone minds):
Is there a benefit to pointing out discrepancies, especially in the early days when no detain option is possible? It seems that it only elicits a confused reply from the immigrant and wastes precious time…
I see that Steam preview movie shows a PG version of the game, with scanned individuals sporting underwear. Is this the plan for the final version? I rather like the way it is now - it neatly references the degrading invasion of privacy enforced on individuals by administration supposedly working for the benefit of the people, and having to scan immigrants makes the player uncomfortable (at least hopefully it should), further fitting the theme of the game. Also, there’s a gameplay feature tied to it - it’s kinda hard to check if someone is really male or female if they still have underwear on. :) While I wouldn’t be exactly sad if I didn’t have to watch naked fat man and grannies anymore, I still feel that the game is more consistent and has a more powerful message in the current R-rated form.
(more a nitpick than a question) The only thing I didn’t like is checking out the issuing city. It’s to fiddly and never worth the time wasted, and while it’s kinda neat that the game actually rewards people for taking the time to jot notes outside of the game or actually remember stuff, I still feel the issuing city discrepancy is something most people will simply ignore and write off as some sort of a random event they cannot control. Maybe replace the names with something which could be more easily memorized via a neat mnemonic-technique, like all issuing cities from Kolechia having two words and those from Arstotzka starting in a vowel, so one can more easily notice the discrepancy without having to learn the literal names?
Again, thanks for the great game and I wish all the success in the future!
#505 TacoDeBoss (May 05, 2013 06:30 AM)
Quote from: babac on May 05, 2013, 05:57:23 AM I see that Steam preview movie shows a PG version of the game, with scanned individuals sporting underwear. Is this the plan for the final version? I rather like the way it is now - it neatly references the degrading invasion of privacy enforced on individuals by administration supposedly working for the benefit of the people, and having to scan immigrants makes the player uncomfortable (at least hopefully it should), further fitting the theme of the game. Also, there’s a gameplay feature tied to it - it’s kinda hard to check if someone is really male or female if they still have underwear on. Smiley While I wouldn’t be exactly sad if I didn’t have to watch naked fat man and grannies anymore, I still feel that the game is more consistent and has a more powerful message in the current R-rated form.
Quote from: dukope on April 23, 2013, 11:38:29 PM Quote from: barley on April 23, 2013, 11:35:12 PM But obviously some people are bothered by it (even though they really aren’t very detailed), so if it was just a checkbox in the options menu that defaulted to off, that’d make everybody happy.
This is exactly how it’s handled now.
In general, I’ll sacrifice message for practicality but it does default to ‘on’.
#506 May 05, 2013 06:34 AM
@Eigen: Will you be adding Steam achievements?
Maybe. I haven’t gotten the SDK yet so I’m not entirely sure how much work it is. I kinda like achievement systems so I’ll probably try to do something.
@Ghost13: [uv light, criminal fingerprints]
UV seals are on my if-there’s-time list. It basically depends on if there’s a need to introduce a minor mechanic complication later in the game. Criminal fingerprints are a cool idea. I’ve already got a mugshots system with pictures but I hadn’t considered just showing fingerprints. Gonna think about that.
@Schrikvis: [post-effects, terrorist attack on queue, re-using names]
After some experimentation, I found that post effects didn’t work well with the low-res minimalist style I’m going for. I have lots of cool attacks planned for the final and that’s all I’ll say about that :) For reusing names, I can’t think of a good way to correlate an already-used name without a full list of processed names and I don’t really want to do that.
@metasynthie: [totally awesome stuff about different run styles, can’t verify gender with fingerprints]
Wow! Those run styles sound really cool. I’m a huge Doom speedrun fan but never expected to see that sorta thing for my own game :) Some of those won’t be viable when I add the escalating penalties. But it kinda gives me an idea for some achievements. Showing gender on the fingerprint card is a good idea. Will try that.
@Willowcat: [family member job, weather, more corruption, censorship]
There will be lots of scripted night-time events affecting your finances. Family members getting jobs isn’t one of them, but there’s similar stuff planned. I’m undecided on weather. A couple people have suggested it but so far I haven’t felt it’s needed. The beta is around one-third of the game so you can expect plenty of interesting and corrupt individuals to follow. And finally, there will be an option to cover up the strip-search nudity.
@TacoDeBoss: [didn’t understand inspecting notes or enabling detention]
Can you tell me when/how you realized you could inspect that stuff and enable detaining? Knowing that may help me figure out a good way to teach the concept.
@babac: [interrogation, nudity, don’t like issuing city]
Interrogation can sometimes lead to the entrant producing a missing document. If you don’t care about that, then currently there’s no difference. As a practical matter, the nudity needs to be optional. I’m totally fine giving up a little bite from the game’s message for practicality. You’re not the first person to complain about the issuing cities. I think TB even explicitly ignored them. Again, this is one of those things (along with the too-small desk and lack of hotkeys) that I really enjoy about the game. An inspector needs to know lots of random facts. And the only cost of not knowing is time to look it up.
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Eigen’s Pioneers is a good one
Replies
#507 MegaScience (May 05, 2013 09:32 AM)
I remember bringing up toggle-able nudity a while back when I had someone stream the game on Twitch. Although it might have been acceptable with the adult tag in a game context, if you want the game to get seen more, having it toggled helps.#508 melos han-tani (May 05, 2013 09:38 AM)
The Steamworks SDK is all C++, but I guess that will be okay because of how NME works anyways with CPP targets. I don’t know of anyone who is actively doing HaXe and Steamworks (Andy Moore might have…). Let us know how that goes (if I have some future game on Steam I’ll definitely be needing pointers in this area…)#509 ktom (May 05, 2013 11:01 AM)
Hi dukope,First of all, congratulations on the game, I love it. I would definitely want to buy it, but I have a question:
Will the game be only available through Steam? I’m asking because if it will be Steam exclusive I will have to pass. I hate Steam and I refuse to use it so it would be great if there was a way to acquire the game outside of Steam.
Thanks!
#510 MegaScience (May 05, 2013 11:21 AM)
I was talking to someone on Steam and thought of something which would be funny to happen in the game, even though it will never be officially added:RoyalMilkShake: like
RoyalMilkShake: there is nudity in this game?
RoyalMilkShake: bcuz I know ids
RoyalMilkShake: dis
MegaScience: toggle
RoyalMilkShake: ah
MegaScience: choo
RoyalMilkShake: choo choo
RoyalMilkShake: here comes the train
MegaScience: *train suddenly drives through the boarder*
MegaScience: And now I quote this to the game developer
MegaScience: like “I got an idea for an extremely rare random joke event”
And then you abruptly wake up to someone banging on the gate to start taking people in.First of all, congratulations on the game, I love it. I would definitely want to buy it, but I have a question:
Will the game be only available through Steam? I’m asking because if it will be Steam exclusive I will have to pass. I hate Steam and I refuse to use it so it would be great if there was a way to acquire the game outside of Steam.
Thanks!
Could you explain why you hate Steam?
#511 Gradiant (May 05, 2013 11:29 AM)
This is probably a stupid question, but is there any point to interrogating or detaining people who have incorrect papers, as opposed to just denying them? It takes longer that way, so you don’t get to go through as many people, so you get paid less.#512 Willowcat (May 05, 2013 12:16 PM)
I imagine that most, like me, will have created an account to give feedback when they clicked the DevLog link on his site.
^So true :) I think pretty much 80% of the people posting can probably say this…
#513 Kjammer (May 05, 2013 02:04 PM)
Great Game! I played this game 7-8 time already and am able to get enough money to feed and heat my family twice. I can’t wait for the full version.One thing I would change is how the 6pm cutoff works. Make its so that it counts when you stamp the passport (using the latest stamp for multiple stampings) instead of when the person leaves the booth. Because after that your task is done, he takes the papers and leaves.
RE: The issuing city, Keep it as is. I agree that its something you should know (because its your job to know). I know its hard at first but after a couple of playthroughs I pretty much memorized which cities match which countries.
Once you figure out that United Federation is like United States with American sounding names (like Great Rapids and Shingleton) and Impor is like Japan with East Asian sounding names (like Tsunkaido and Enkyo) the rest is easy. The first thing you should memorize is that East Grestin is in Arstotzka (Because you live there) and West Grestin is in Kolechia (Its on the other side of the border)
Its not a problem because the “false cities” are issuing cities in other countries (if you know Outer Grouse is in Antegria and the passport isn’t Antegian, then you know its fake). It would make it more challenging if the cities were completely fake (as in not listed anywhere in the book) or have the issuing cities change.
Another idea (related to another previous idea that I’m too lazy to search for): maybe have Republia suffer a coup or revolution and thus Arstotzka no longer recognizes Republian passports until things get sorted out. Maybe have the former dictator’s son beg you to let him and his family in or they will be killed by revolutionaries.
#514 axelarge (May 05, 2013 05:47 PM)
Hi there,
Many thanks for creating such an amazing game (been playing it until 4am)! Everything from the style and atmosphere to the music to the gameplay is truly amazing and I will definitely buy it when it becomes available.
That said, I am just another manbaby signing up to leave my 2 cents of suggestions, so here goes :)
- I completed the beta 2 times and on the 3rd playthrough it felt a little too easy. Maybe it would be a good idea for replayability to add an unlockable “hard mode”. This would add more discrepancies that are harder to detect, such as single-letter errors in names/IDs, slightly off passport designs and better seal forgeries, also weight/height checks which unless I’m mistaken are unused right now.
- The reject-all strategy could be fixed by making your penalty amount increase with each mistake - first 5$, then 10$, 15$ etc. But I guess that’s probably what you had in mind when you said “escalating penalties”. If you consider adding suggestion #1, the fines might not reset completely but only decrease by 5$ or 10$ between days
- Currently the switch to open/close shutters has no impact on the gameplay - Since you previously mentioned agitated immigrants banging against the shutters etc, I could imagine needing to close them when an immigrant becomes violent or threatening.
Two ideas that others have already mentioned but I think are really worth repeating:
- I wholeheartedly agree that detain/fingerprint/search buttons should be free to use on the player’s whims (after the day they become available of course). It would also reduce the feeling of the player being spoon-fed (which might be ok for the day when they first appear)
- Except for the 2 scripted events, detention is less efficient than simply rejecting immigrants. Imho, there should be some sort of consequences for letting dangerous individuals go as well as for detaining harmless people too often
Edit: One thing I noticed is that I got dinged a few times for “wrong gender” when in my opinion the name and face surely matched the gender in the passport. Not sure if that might be a bug or just my stupidity
Thanks for reading and keep up the fantastic work!
#515 TacoDeBoss (May 05, 2013 06:32 PM)
Quote from: dukope on May 05, 2013, 06:34:41 AM @TacoDeBoss: [didn’t understand inspecting notes or enabling detention]
Can you tell me when/how you realized you could inspect that stuff and enable detaining? Knowing that may help me figure out a good way to teach the concept.At first this wasn’t exactly clear with the whole Document Forgery thing either, but I figured it out about the same time I figured out the detain thing.
To tell you the entire story, after the day where the option to detain suspicious individuals is obtained, I had no idea how to detain people unless I inspected their documents and the button popped up, which seemed to only happen for one person, so it was extremely confusing. But I remember reading up on this thread and seeing someone say something along the lines of “Instead of busting the guy with the medicine” and a while after that I did another playthrough and discovered that you could select the parts of the picture, along with the “No weapons or contraband” rule. As for the notes, I remember seeing someone on talking about the brothel help note and how you could detain the guy, and it made no sense to me until I saw another post about giving the little note thing you get to Corman Drex,(I think that was his name) which I then tried on the pimp guy, which enabled the detain button. With that said, I also support the option to let people use the fingerprint and detain buttons at their own free will.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: I think why it wasn’t clear with the document forgery thing for me, is because the note that you get at the beginning of the day told me about document forgery and to always inspect it, but never told me anything about using the rulebook to validate them. Also, at FIRST, I didn’t even know you had to use the rulebook to spot discrepancies. I had to look it up.
The point is, I’m a fucking idiot and there’s not much you can do. :)#516 corpocracy (May 05, 2013 07:58 PM)
I don’t know if this is feasible at all due to space, but one way that might help with issuing cities is to include them on the geographical map (little dots with a small label next to them). This makes it really quick to look up and helps with learning them. Again, though, space would be a concern and it would also make the task easier… something you might not actually want to do.As for weather, I feel like there are a few ways that it could be implemented to affect gameplay. One would simply be for mood. Having it rain with subtle rain background sounds would really affect the mood of the player. Rain could also destroy certain documents of people in line (“My work permit got wet in the rain!”). Either the documents would be destroyed or simply very hard to read or make out if it’s fake or not. Snow could also work really well. Again, it changes the mood of the game, but it can also be brought into game elements. I’m thinking of scripted scenes where, say, Kolechia is in the news evicting people out of their houses during winter. Then you get people in line who are essentially homeless and need to cross the border or they will freeze to death in the cold… but they have no documents/incorrect documents. Weather could also affect the number of people in line. Right now, the line is essentially endless and if you are quick enough, even if you make mistakes, you always have the potential for more money. On rainy/snowy/cold days, there could actually be fewer people in line (people would only stand out in the freezing cold for hours if they are desperate). This puts a cap on the potential money coming in, forcing you to be more careful about who you let through or not.
Keep it up dukope! Can’t wait to play the final version!
#517 Gila (May 05, 2013 08:53 PM)
- I completed the beta 2 times and on the 3rd playthrough it felt a little too easy. Maybe it would be a good idea for replayability to add an unlockable “hard mode”. This would add more discrepancies that are harder to detect, such as single-letter errors in names/IDs, slightly off passport designs and better seal forgeries, also weight/height checks which unless I’m mistaken are unused right now. Weight and height checks are used in Arstotzkan id cards at the moment. Also some of the errors are already a bit borderline hard to detect in my opinion. I had a couple of cases where the error was changing one a in the name to e or vice versa. That is just a few pixels and you need to watch very closely to notice it. I suggested adding dificulty options before to add to replayability but dukope felt that adding endless mode would fix that instead. I’m not really a fan of endless modes myself, but I can see how adding separate difficulties might make the game less simple.
#518 babac (May 06, 2013 01:38 AM)
I actually like the tiny mistakes. Keeps one on the edge. In fact, apart from the issuing city thing (which I am warming up to with further replays), I must say that in the current build the game seems to get just slightly too easy too fast. On my initial playthrough I had a feeling that stuff gets piled up too much too quickly, that it was impossible to keep up with everything.. and I LOVED it. But already on the 2nd and 3rd playthrough I was swimming in money, I was regularly solving 10+ immigrants a day and I barely paid a fine or two total.IMHO the feeling of getting overwhelmed and having things slipping up is pretty much the heart of the game - it goes well with the dystopian, depressing setting and it elicits a real, emotional reaction - you start hating those immigrants and their faulty papers, you start hating the Arstotzkan government for constantly adding additional rules and procedures, you know everything is hopeless but you still go on because, well, there’s nothing else you *can* do. This kind of experience is kinda rare to video games today. However when the game is too easy there is danger it turns into one of those time management simulations where once you get into the groove you become completely detached from the game itself and you are just going through the motions, waiting to see how many levels does the game have.
Then again, maybe I’m just a sucker for high (yet fair) game difficulty, something which is so goddam rare these days. :)
#519 axelarge (May 06, 2013 02:58 AM)
Quote from: Gila on May 05, 2013, 08:53:41 PM Weight and height checks are used in Arstotzkan id cards at the moment.
I realize that, however what I meant was I’ve yet to come across an immigrant whose height or weight doesn’t match the ID, which led me to think that they’re in the game but can’t be wrong. I might just’ve gotten lucky though.Love the weather idea. For me, one of the game’s strong points is that it really draws you in emotionally, so that your actions feel like they have true impact on somebody’s life. I think that occasional rain/snow would add to the gritty feeling even more.
#520 babac (May 06, 2013 04:08 AM)
Quote from: axelarge on May 06, 2013, 02:58:04 AM Quote from: Gila on May 05, 2013, 08:53:41 PM Weight and height checks are used in Arstotzkan id cards at the moment.
I realize that, however what I meant was I’ve yet to come across an immigrant whose height or weight doesn’t match the ID, which led me to think that they’re in the game but can’t be wrong. I might just’ve gotten lucky though.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brTJzrXQVLU#t=19m10s
#521 metasynthie (May 06, 2013 05:05 AM)
Quote from: axelarge on May 05, 2013, 05:47:35 PM Edit: One thing I noticed is that I got dinged a few times for “wrong gender” when in my opinion the name and face surely matched the gender in the passport. Not sure if that might be a bug or just my stupidity
Just wanted to say that upon playing a little more and thinking about it, I kind of like how totally vague and thus highly inaccurate the whole “Gender” situation is. The names are going to get even more scrambled with the inclusion of player-submitted names, so you’re going to have to guess based on pictures, which just as in real life will lead to the player guessing differently than how gender is recorded the “official records” or whatever. The system is messed up: real! Players who really want a perfect score can use the omniscient discrepancy-finder more, at the cost of time. I’d even advocate for making this system even trickier by have some VERY androgynous portraits which could go either way; all of this reflects how real-world security systems snag on (and thus mess with) people who’s gender isn’t “super obvious.”
A couple other things:
Difficulty and “Ethical Ruleset” runs
In latest playthrough I refined my execution of the “Revolutionary Conscience” ruleset and passed everyone through the border except people with “simple” expired-paperwork problems. On most full days I was able to process about 25 citizens so despite getting a ton of citations, I made a profit on every full day, lost about $10 on the short “terrorist act” days, and ended Day 8 with $125 in savings. Day 7 and 8 were the hardest, with refusing to search Kolechians and passing through all the forged/missing seals. So yeah, escalating penalties seems like a must, and I look forward to seeing what kind of hard ethical choices will result; may need to refine the “ethics” some more to balance survival with ethical goals.In the “Racist Asshole” ruleset, I do think it might be good to allow the player to refuse all Kolechians, no matter what – this would be a real response to terrorism from some political points of view, right, just don’t let any of them in, in fact I think it is the case with the United States and certain nations in the real world? The thing that makes this playstyle enter an infinite loop is the Kolechian suicide bomber – maybe it’s possible to have that bomber exit the booth to the right no matter whether player rejects or accepts their passport? The player’s speech bubble can say something like “Hey, wait a second, where are you going?” and then a citation can appear (because the suicide bomber always has accurate paperwork) to explain why there’s no other official reaction. This way it’s possible to avoid having to repeat the same Kolechian bomber with perfect paperwork over and over with different faces/names. The Racist Asshole playstyle is still much easier and may remain easier even with escalating penalties, it’ll be interesting to see.
#522 Mirka (May 06, 2013 10:10 AM)
Quote from: axelarge on May 06, 2013, 02:58:04 AM Love the weather idea. For me, one of the game’s strong points is that it really draws you in emotionally, so that your actions feel like they have true impact on somebody’s life. I think that occasional rain/snow would add to the gritty feeling even more.
I echo this sentiment. I’d love to see weather.
And I also echo some other people around here and I would like to see a non-steam version of the game.
#523 ktom (May 06, 2013 11:58 AM)
First of all, congratulations on the game, I love it. I would definitely want to buy it, but I have a question:
Will the game be only available through Steam? I’m asking because if it will be Steam exclusive I will have to pass. I hate Steam and I refuse to use it so it would be great if there was a way to acquire the game outside of Steam.
Thanks!
Could you explain why you hate Steam?
[/quote]Of course. First of all I play exclusively single player, so all the community features are a bunch useless stuff for me, and I don’t like actually being forced into using services I don’t care for.
Second, I had issues with multiple games in the őast when I gave Steam another chance, and for example the last time I bought a Steam game, I could not even get it to install, because I always got a message saysing “Steam servers are busy, try again later”. So I contacted Steam support who were not able to help, but also refused to refund my money. And of course I couldn’t sell the game, because once it connected to a Steam account it stays that way. So Steam effectively stole my money.So in short:
- Steam installs software on my computer I don’t want,
- Steam service is quite problematic with certain games, but you can’t use the game, even the single-player without Steam,
- Steam refused to make it right when they effectively stole from me.
#524 Kjammer (May 06, 2013 08:07 PM)
Possible bug: If you approve the Kolechian smuggler on day 7 without searching him or confronting him about the contraband, he will give you a bribe “as promised” despite not promising anything. He should probably say something like “whew, I got lucky there” if you let him in without interrogating him.#525 TacoDeBoss (May 07, 2013 02:28 AM)
Quote from: ktom on May 06, 2013, 11:58:58 AM Quote from: ktom on May 05, 2013, 11:01:32 AM Hi dukope,
First of all, congratulations on the game, I love it. I would definitely want to buy it, but I have a question:
Will the game be only available through Steam? I’m asking because if it will be Steam exclusive I will have to pass. I hate Steam and I refuse to use it so it would be great if there was a way to acquire the game outside of Steam.
Thanks!
Could you explain why you hate Steam?
Quote from: ktomOf course. First of all I play exclusively single player, so all the community features are a bunch useless stuff for me, and I don’t like actually being forced into using services I don’t care for.
Second, I had issues with multiple games in the őast when I gave Steam another chance, and for example the last time I bought a Steam game, I could not even get it to install, because I always got a message saysing “Steam servers are busy, try again later”. So I contacted Steam support who were not able to help, but also refused to refund my money. And of course I couldn’t sell the game, because once it connected to a Steam account it stays that way. So Steam effectively stole my money.So in short:
- Steam installs software on my computer I don’t want,
- Steam service is quite problematic with certain games, but you can’t use the game, even the single-player without Steam,
- Steam refused to make it right when they effectively stole from me.
1: Steam doesn’t install anything except the client, the games you choose, and whatever the games require. (as far as I know)
2: That’s a problem with the server you are connected to, and they fixed the offline mode bug.
3: Not sure why you expected a refund considering no DRM programs such as steam have ever done that. Plus, you wouldn’t need a refund if you follow the advice above (switch servers)Seems pretty biased to me, honestly..
#526 May 07, 2013 02:32 AM
There’s no need to argue over Steam in here. It’s a personal preference and I’m working to make the game available on other services.
Replies
#527 Konidias (May 07, 2013 09:50 AM)
Love the game.Questions:
I see the game is at 80% completion… how much more are you adding to the overall content/gameplay?
How much will the game cost?
Estimated release date?
:)
#528 ktom (May 07, 2013 09:56 AM)
Quote from: TacoDeBoss on May 07, 2013, 02:28:27 AM Quote from: ktom on May 06, 2013, 11:58:58 AM Quote from: ktom on May 05, 2013, 11:01:32 AM Hi dukope,
First of all, congratulations on the game, I love it. I would definitely want to buy it, but I have a question:
Will the game be only available through Steam? I’m asking because if it will be Steam exclusive I will have to pass. I hate Steam and I refuse to use it so it would be great if there was a way to acquire the game outside of Steam.
Thanks!
Could you explain why you hate Steam?
Quote from: ktomOf course. First of all I play exclusively single player, so all the community features are a bunch useless stuff for me, and I don’t like actually being forced into using services I don’t care for.
Second, I had issues with multiple games in the őast when I gave Steam another chance, and for example the last time I bought a Steam game, I could not even get it to install, because I always got a message saysing “Steam servers are busy, try again later”. So I contacted Steam support who were not able to help, but also refused to refund my money. And of course I couldn’t sell the game, because once it connected to a Steam account it stays that way. So Steam effectively stole my money.So in short:
- Steam installs software on my computer I don’t want,
- Steam service is quite problematic with certain games, but you can’t use the game, even the single-player without Steam,
- Steam refused to make it right when they effectively stole from me.
1: Steam doesn’t install anything except the client, the games you choose, and whatever the games require. (as far as I know)
2: That’s a problem with the server you are connected to, and they fixed the offline mode bug.
3: Not sure why you expected a refund considering no DRM programs such as steam have ever done that. Plus, you wouldn’t need a refund if you follow the advice above (switch servers)Seems pretty biased to me, honestly..
To be honest, I don’t think I should have to do ANY troubleshooting after I pay for something. Especially because it wasn’t an issue with the game, it was an issue with the Steam service, which I don’t want/need. So I don’t think it’s fair to make someone use a service they don’t want. It’s an issue of personal freedom.
Regarding the client, I’m sorry, but by what twisted logic should anyone be compelled to install some “client” to play the single-player part of a game?
On the refund: Precedent doesn’t count here. As I mentioned, I contacted Steam support who could not resolve the issue. And now I’m stuck with a nice disc in a box on the shelf that I paid money for, without being able to use it. I can’t get sell it, or get a refund. Doesn’t seem fair to me…
#529 ktom (May 07, 2013 09:58 AM)
Quote from: dukope on May 07, 2013, 02:32:30 AM There’s no need to argue over Steam in here. It’s a personal preference and I’m working to make the game available on other services.
Thx, that was all I wanted to know. Sorry about the Steam argument.
#530 RobRendell (May 08, 2013 01:00 AM)
Hi - I’m another one who just registered in order to post to this thread. Amazing game - I’m in awe of your talents. The artwork, the audio, the theme music, the game design, the game concept - all brilliantly done. I feel totally inadequate with my own game development efforts now :)I have a suggestion for the issue of the infinite Kolchean suicide bombers on day six (if the player rejects their passports). Instead of repeatedly sending in Kolchean terrorists until the player lets one through, you could make it that if his application is rejected, the (first) Kolchean walks up to the guards on the west side of the border and detonates. The explosion might take out some of the queuing civilians too, given that the bomber doesn’t have very far to go after he leaves the path and the alarm starts sounding.
That way, you don’t have to pre-suppose the player’s decision with that particular application to enter, and the day still ends with a terrorist attack.
If you eventually have the Detain button always active and the player detains the Kolchean with perfectly in-order paperwork, he can always detonate himself while being led up towards the prison. That option would probably have the highest civilian body-count, because there wouldn’t be any alarm before he exploded right near the queue.
#531 MegaScience (May 08, 2013 08:07 AM)
I will say Steam provides a toggle for the community services, and having all my games centralized through it is useful. Just as well, they provide methods of communicating through the games, warning other players when you are preoccupied with a game, etc.As for refunds on PC games, I haven’t found a service which does this for quite some time. I remember many years ago I had to convince a GameStop employee to take a PC game, and then only one out of the bunch I brought back. It’s too easy to steal games on the PC, keeping the data locally and tricking systems. You have to think of it from their standpoint: They provide games through a centralized service. They can’t give loopholes.
Point being: You can disable the community portion and run the game directly from a shortcut which only uses Steam’s client in the launching phase. Steam has downtimes as with any service, but patience is the solution. Once the game is in your list, they can’t simply remove it and give your money back. Hackers are tricky, and a loophole where not only do they get a game but they hand the money for the game back would be a massive embarrassment and damage their trust more than following the same rules as most other retailers for PC games.
You don’t have to get it, I’m just trying to elaborate on the points given. That’s all.
#532 ktom (May 08, 2013 12:20 PM)
Quote from: MegaScience on May 08, 2013, 08:07:18 AM I will say Steam provides a toggle for the community services, and having all my games centralized through it is useful. Just as well, they provide methods of communicating through the games, warning other players when you are preoccupied with a game, etc.
As for refunds on PC games, I haven’t found a service which does this for quite some time. I remember many years ago I had to convince a GameStop employee to take a PC game, and then only one out of the bunch I brought back. It’s too easy to steal games on the PC, keeping the data locally and tricking systems. You have to think of it from their standpoint: They provide games through a centralized service. They can’t give loopholes.
Point being: You can disable the community portion and run the game directly from a shortcut which only uses Steam’s client in the launching phase. Steam has downtimes as with any service, but patience is the solution. Once the game is in your list, they can’t simply remove it and give your money back. Hackers are tricky, and a loophole where not only do they get a game but they hand the money for the game back would be a massive embarrassment and damage their trust more than following the same rules as most other retailers for PC games.
You don’t have to get it, I’m just trying to elaborate on the points given. That’s all.
I understand where you’re coming from, and I even agree that some people find Steam useful, and actually like it. I’m just old fashioned that way, I miss the times when you took the disc, popped it in the drive, installed the game and that was it. No client, no internet connection needed, you could just play.
Regarding the fight against pirating, the issue here as I see it, is that services like Steam are actually creating a hassle for the legal, paying customer, but they don’t really manage to fight illegal copies. Again, I understand that many people like digital content management, but for me, it’s a real turn-off from PC gaming.
#533 qqqbbb (May 08, 2013 11:17 PM)
Looks like your family doesnt need food to servive. I got thru the beta without spending money on food and noone died.
Date on the stamp is the same every day.#534 Akaoz (May 09, 2013 09:02 AM)
Did a Let’s Play with the wife. It was good fun to do. :-) I’ll be picking up the game when it comes on Steam!See the Let’s Play here:
#535 May 09, 2013 10:08 AM
I’m not gonna post any more spoiler-ish stuff here, but there’s still some dev things I can share.
Testing
As a one-person (and before that, two-person) developer, one issue that’s always hard to deal with is testing. Having worked at big and small studios, I know how useful a skilled testing department can be. I also know how expensive they are and how hard it is to find good people.
Instead of all that people-related stuff, I usually try to figure out a way to test the game myself. Without actually sitting down and playing it forever. One common technique is to create an autoplay or ‘soak’ mode where the game can basically play itself. This lends itself well to procedural puzzle games and is what we did for Helsing’s Fire. I wrote a simple bot that could play the game flawlessly and we set it running overnight during the last few weeks of the project. This was really useful in tracking down holes in the puzzle generation (finding unsolvable puzzles due to a logic bug somewhere), and plugging memory leaks (a common point of failure for iOS games).
Papers Please has hooks to do something similar. I could write a bot to move the mouse/click buttons, group these actions, combine groups, build scripts, etc. Some of this work was already done to automate the trailer capturing. But to take it all the way to autplaying would actually be a lot of work. And at this point I don’t even want to test these things. What I really want to test is the high-level progression, story elements, and money balancing.
So instead, I split out the game’s logic from the UI and built a separate fast-play UI that uses the same logic engine:
This screen lets me quickly play through each encounter. Either in order for a given day, or skipping around between entrants. It’s useless for the tactile UI mechanics, checking animations, gameplay pressures from the small desk, etc. What it’s great for though is testing the story and progression. And since I’m implementing the full game’s story now, this fast-play mode is critical for experimentation.
When the story implementation is done I’ll extend this mode to full autoplay for balance testing. I was never quite sure how useful this would be, but seeing metasynthie’s posts about play style gave me the needed kick. Using some basic rules about what to do for different encounters, I’ll script “play style” bots and send them through the game. One bot may deny all Kolechians. One may make a mistake on the first new rule encounter and never after. One may deny everybody. If I build enough of these simple styles, I should be able to set them loose to get a feel how the game will balance out for different players. This should also be a good way to incorporate an “easy” difficulty for the less-skilled styles.
Story
Most of the story threads are done so now the task is to arrange them (in spoiler-avoiding low res):
Right after taking this picture I copied everything into a spreadsheet to make editing easier.
My typical process for designing high-level game progression goes something like this:
- Create a bunch of little pieces.
- Make a grid.
- Fill the grid with pieces.
From the very beginning I’ve been creating little pieces. For Papers Please a “piece” is an encounter, a character, a story thread, a document idea, a puzzle idea, an attack method, etc. I’ve got a lot of these and now is the time to arrange them. I want to front-load some cool stuff to hook the player, expand on longer stories in the middle, add new elements to maintain interest, and ramp things up to a climax at the end.
Once the initial pieces are laid out, I can easily rearrange them or add new ones to fill the gaps. I really like this part of development because it’s when the whole game comes together. It’s also hopelessly formulaic. I’ve tried designing by feel before and unfortunately it just doesn’t work for me. I find it much more natural to impose a hard structure and systematically break problems up into small pieces, then combine them afterwards.
Replies
#536 RobRendell (May 11, 2013 02:47 PM)
That’s a pretty sweet setup. Automated testing is one of those things that, after you start using it, you wonder how you ever used to be able to make large changes with any confidence without it.Have you been writing unit tests as you’ve developed too, or has all your testing to date been manual?
I guess that accommodating a run-through rule of “deny all Kolcheans” implies that you have a solution to the infinite suicide bombers on day 6, whether it’s akin to my suggestion or not :-)
#537 May 12, 2013 04:38 AM
Please stop posting about the pros and cons of Steam here.
TacoDeBoss, MegaScience, and ktom: This is a devlog for Papers, Please. It’s not even remotely close to a discussion thread about Steam, of which there are surely thousands peppered across the internet. I’d appreciate if you could edit out your recent Steam-related posts since they have nothing to do with the development of this game.
Replies
#538 Hempuli‽ (May 12, 2013 06:18 AM)
By the way - is there a chance that in the finished game there’d be multiple problems with a passport? I mean mainly situations where you need to take fingerprints and they turn out to be fine - it’d be interesting if that could happen, but there’d still be a problem somewhere. As it is it’s a bit silly that if for example the passenger forgets to give you their passport and you ask for it, you can know with 100% certainty that they’re clear. :)
#539 May 12, 2013 06:47 AM
Quote from: Hempuli‽ on May 12, 2013, 06:18:10 AM By the way - is there a chance that in the finished game there’d be multiple problems with a passport? I mean mainly situations where you need to take fingerprints and they turn out to be fine - it’d be interesting if that could happen, but there’d still be a problem somewhere. As it is it’s a bit silly that if for example the passenger forgets to give you their passport and you ask for it, you can know with 100% certainty that they’re clear. :)
Yeah. This was mentioned in the last few pages. The counterintuitive thing is that more errors makes the game easier, not harder. So in general, each immigrant will have at most one thing wrong. But this makes certain encounters too predictable (immigrant hands over a document after forgetting it) so I’ll add an exception in those cases. In the final version, there may be errors in the newly-provided docs.
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#540 RageKit (May 12, 2013 11:48 AM)
Adding Story elements in something that firstly looks roguelikish is sooo nice. It breaks the monotony in a very good way. I’ll definitely keep an eye on this game.#541 tterrag (May 12, 2013 05:53 PM)
Something just happened I’m a little curious about. I was processing an Arstotzkan citizen when I saw their ID card and passport listed two different dates of birth. Naturally, I denied the application for this discrepancy, only to be cited and told the applicant was clear for entry - I’m fairly certain had I approved it, I would have been told the birth date was invalid. I was wondering if something was up there.#542 TacoDeBoss (May 12, 2013 08:36 PM)
Quote from: dukope on May 12, 2013, 04:38:40 AM Please stop posting about the pros and cons of Steam here.
TacoDeBoss, MegaScience, and ktom: This is a devlog for Papers, Please. It’s not even remotely close to a discussion thread about Steam, of which there are surely thousands peppered across the internet. I’d appreciate if you could edit out your recent Steam-related posts since they have nothing to do with the development of this game.
Sorry. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but I tend to try to convince people they’re missing out on something awesome whenever they say they don’t like something that I do :roll eyes:
#543 Stereotomy (May 13, 2013 12:08 AM)
Quote from: dukope on May 12, 2013, 06:47:31 AM Quote from: Hempuli‽ on May 12, 2013, 06:18:10 AM By the way - is there a chance that in the finished game there’d be multiple problems with a passport? I mean mainly situations where you need to take fingerprints and they turn out to be fine - it’d be interesting if that could happen, but there’d still be a problem somewhere. As it is it’s a bit silly that if for example the passenger forgets to give you their passport and you ask for it, you can know with 100% certainty that they’re clear. :)
Yeah. This was mentioned in the last few pages. The counterintuitive thing is that more errors makes the game easier, not harder. So in general, each immigrant will have at most one thing wrong. But this makes certain encounters too predictable (immigrant hands over a document after forgetting it) so I’ll add an exception in those cases. In the final version, there may be errors in the newly-provided docs.
This doesn’t actually fix the problem. It still means that if I ask somebody for a document they haven’t provided and they give it to me, I can inexplicably rule out there being anything wrong with any other document. And in the case of something like checking aliases or gender, the remaining possibilities for problems are very limited.
I think there should never be more than one actual error (because as you say, that makes things easier rather than harder), but there should sometimes be more than one potential error. As in, once everything’s fully investigated, there will at most be one actual error remaining.
That still leaves room for people to ‘game’ it a little, by checking things that can never be corrected (e.g. passport expiry date) before things that can (e.g. mismatching names). But honestly that doesn’t really seem like much of a problem.
#544 Konidias (May 13, 2013 09:24 AM)
I agree that there should be the potential for an error on a missing document as well. Then at least you have to give it a glance to make sure it’s correct. I actually assumed when a person didn’t hand me a document right away that they were worried their forged document would be detected… so I checked them carefully. But they were always correct.It’s kind of like “level 2” in a sense. You passed level 1 and then you are on level 2 and have to determine the next set of potential discrepancies with the newly handed documents.
#545 Anonymous (May 24, 2013 09:15 PM)
Have you considered adding the ability to deny or approve brothel invites and replies when doing so? It might add a lovely bit of spice to the game. Also the ability to add stamp marks to just about everything under the stamp might be good.#546 JimmyJimJimJimmer (May 26, 2013 01:28 AM)
Hey guys, just thought I’d share with you all a Let’s Play I made; it’s from the view of a guy who really loves living in, and working for, Arstotzka. You can find itAnd also,
!
I hope such self-promotion isn’t frowned upon here; if it is I can remove this whole top section of the post.
On an unrelated note, I managed to both accept and arrest the human trafficker, which lead to me receiving both headlines the following day. I caught it on video, and
will most likely upload it in another Let’s Playcan be seen in part 2 of my Let’s play, but to replicate it you just need to show the man the note, accept him into the Arstotzka and then quickly hit the “Detain” button. That way you should have both arrested him and accepted him, leading to both headlines being shown, which really messes up the newspaper.Update: I uploaded part 2 of my Let’s Play and realised that I also get a few citations for “Invalid Gender” when the gender is correct, as far as I can tell.
Spoilers ahead, though I think if you wanted to avoid spoilers you wouldn’t be looking at the DevLog in the first place.
I come across Ludum Dari at around 3:20 and the paper is at 5:00. I manage to detain and accept him by passing him the accepted passport, then I give him the note before giving him his ID card back. Then, when he says he’ll break a girl in two I quickly hit the detain button.
As for the incorrect genders, they are at 09:26 with a one “Olivia Hagen”; though she does kindof look like a man looking back on it. And also 13:04 with “Aya Petrova”, but again looking at it, she could possibly be a man. Maybe I just shouldn’t go to Arstotzka to pick up women?
#547 Phugmeister (May 29, 2013 10:11 AM)
Very nice game! Original and compelling.Is it possible to collect all tokens in the beta? (the coins the immigrants sometimes give you) I’ve only been able to find 3 so far. And I don’t know what the larger spaces in the home screen are for, either.
*****spoiler alert*****
Tokens are obtained by:
- Letting in Jorji
- Letting in the husband-wife team (both of them)
- Letting in the mother visiting her son (only after notifying her that her passport is invalid)
*****spoiler end*****
Another thing:
Quote from: dukope on May 05, 2013, 06:34:41 AM (…) You’re not the first person to complain about the issuing cities. I think TB even explicitly ignored them. Again, this is one of those things (along with the too-small desk and lack of hotkeys) that I really enjoy about the game. An inspector needs to know lots of random facts. And the only cost of not knowing is time to look it up.
This is my minor complaint about the game, too. The problem is not so much that it takes time to verify the cities, it’s more that it’s not really worth the trouble gamewise. The time you waste checking the cities makes you worse off in the end than if you just take a chance and disregard the city when deciding whether to approve or deny somebody. Perhaps there could be a bonus when you get everything right on a given day? Or something else that would create an extra incentive to check the city every time, at the moment I feel it’s not worth the trouble.
#548 RobRendell (May 29, 2013 01:32 PM)
Quote from: Phugmeister on May 29, 2013, 10:11:28 AM The time you waste checking the cities makes you worse off in the end than if you just take a chance and disregard the city when deciding whether to approve or deny somebody. Perhaps there could be a bonus when you get everything right on a given day? Or something else that would create an extra incentive to check the city every time, at the moment I feel it’s not worth the trouble.
This point of balance will change as the details of the penalties change, though. I believe dukope is already planning on having the penalties escalate in cost; if you also got fewer than three warnings each day before you start getting fined (or if there’s some sort of carry-over of warnings between days), the benefit-to-effort of checking cities would increase.#549 Frostiken (June 03, 2013 01:21 PM)
I’m a little confused on the protocol for mismatched pictures. Unless I’ve missed something, I noticed mismatched pictures and they say ‘It’s an old photo’. I do the fingerprint scan and it comes back with their name and no aliases.What then? I’ve denied someone, and get told they should’ve been cleared. I allow someone, and get told that they had mismatched photos and should’ve been denied.
I don’t get it, I get penalized every time no matter what I do it seems.
#550 Phugmeister (June 04, 2013 05:12 AM)
You have to compare the fingerprints being printed by your computer to the fingerprints they give you after you give them the slip.