RuneStorm :: View topic - Unable to complete any stage at all

So as to avoid coming off as completely negative, here's what I'd change:

About the Sniffer: Have the device beep at full strength when near ANY amount of blood or a SINGLE offending item. After that, recalibrate the device to not beep AT ALL when no offending items are within, say, 20 metres (the size of a large room) and have it beep faster geometrically as the player approaches the the closest offending item. When the player is, say, within a metre of the offending item, have the sniffer play a continuous tone to indicate that it can't possibly beep any faster.

What this offers: The geometric progression of beep strength offers both decent maximal range, as well as higher and higher precision the closer the player is to the offending item. Precision is VITAL for finding items that generally aren't easy to see, or that you don't know need to be burned (I thought Santa's toy guns had to burn, at first.)

About reaching high places: Give the player the ability to elevate himself off the ground to any height, but prevent him from moving laterally while doing so. Visually, to the co-op partner, the player would deploy a telescopic pole with a ball at the bottom out of his backpack, which will lift him into the air. This could use a dynamic balancing system like in a modern-day segway, but with the ball having full omni-directional movement. It's no more weird high-tech stuff than a machine which dispenses infinite amounts of water buckets and sometimes severed legs.

What this offers: The ability to reach the ceiling in any room. This solves the problem of explosives or weird physics launching gibs into the ceiling and creating inaccessible blood spots while also removing the need for ridiculous annoying towers of physics objects that I may have already burned. But it goes beyond that - when you know your player can always reach the ceiling, then you can feel free to add blood and gore to the ceiling for more interesting level design. Why not, indeed, have an alien speared to the ceiling, forcing the player to telescope up, swat it down with the mop and then deal with it?

Apologies for the double post, but I didn't want to create a wall of text by shoving that all in the same one post.

Author:	Malidictus [ Wed Dec 18, 2013 3:12 pm ]
Post subject:	Unable to complete any stage at all
This was an annoyance in Santa's Rampage, but it's become a real pain now that I have the full game. I played around with the Science Lab level and spent quite a long time cleaning it up. At the end, the level seemed perfectly clean tidy, yet the game told me to "go in shame" because apparently I wasn't finished. And after wandering around the level for half an hour with no idea what I've missed, I gave up. And that's disappointing. Some of the issue is down to the sniffer tool. It's useful in the broadest of senses, but it's woefully imprecise. Here are a few specific issues with it: 1. It's FAAAR too vague. When my Science Lab was clean, most of it was producing the slowest "nothing here" ping, but there were large areas where it was producing the slightly faster "maybe something" ping. I could never get it to speed up unless I was literally on top of an offending spot or item, which in turn only happened because I knew it was an offending item and was testing the device. But it gives me an offending ping over SUCH a wide area that I really have no idea where to look. 2. It seems to track "severity" rather than mere presence. What that means is the only way to get the sniffer to ping positive (the fast, loud ping) is to find areas of extreme carnage where A LOT of blood has pooled. I generally don't need the sniffer to find those, since they're incredibly obvious. I only ever break out the sniffer tool when I've cleaned an area and want to find any residual blood I've missed. Well, it's really not good at detecting residual blood because it's tuned for massacre and so misses low-severity blood. 3. Sometimes it tracks through walls, other times not. It doesn't seem able, for example, to track blood in Santa's office when I'm on the landing directly above his office, and yet in the Science Lab it was tracking a blood stain on the other side of a very large dividing column in the middle of the infirmary. All of this combines together to make me all but incapable of using the device. Because it gives me no indication of the direction of a blood stain and its indication of distance jumps in increments of what feels like 15 metres, finding a blood spot I've missed is a rough guess at best. Because the device is tuned to find large pools of blood that I don't need help to find, it's very poor at finding hidden blood stains which I actually need help finding. And because I'm looking blood spots that I clearly missed the first time, this incredibly imprecision offers no added assistance in finding them. Let me put it this way - if I missed a blood spot or a meat chunk, it's because it isn't easily visible. If I could find it on my own by just being told "it's in this room," I wouldn't have missed it because I've checked all rooms I've cleaned. What I need is specific help which points it out to me, or otherwise gives me some way of seeing faint spots. As it stands right now, I am physically incapable of completing any levels. And because the game lacks any save system whatsoever, it means I've run through several playthroughs, each a couple of hours long, each completely wiped out because I couldn't finish. --- And sideways of the above-mentioned problem: When I actually find the offending blood stains, I can't always reach them. The game played a number of REALLY nasty physics tricks on me this playthrough, specifically causing a crate I'd left on the ground to spin around violently and throw chunks of meat everywhere. One ended on top of an air duct where it was completely invisible from the ground and where I needed to be above eye level with the vent to actually touch it. Not being able to reach high places is something which became a complete gamebreaker for me in Santa's Workshop. That building has incredibly high chevron ceilings, which dynamite explosions really like to stain with bauble paint right at the crest of the roof structure where I can't reach it in any way but through a 6-storey-high chair pyramid. And now this is happening again in the full game, with a chunk of gibs landing on a high-up, out-of-the-way location. I couldn't even see it at all until I made a staircase of bio waste crates and even then I couldn't reach it because my staircase was forced to one side by a gurney. Blood and chunks can end up on high-up locations, and sometimes through circumstances beyond my control (I had A LOT of malfunctioning crates this time, for some reason). Even when I can actually find these with the imprecise, vague sniffer, I have no way of actually getting to them. And it's making the game frankly unplayable, at least if I'm after anything but a moral victory. Yes, I cleaned everything and I'm happy with the achievement, but the game refused to recognise it because I missed a speck of blood behind a drain pipe in a corner of some room somewhere. --- I apologise if this sounds negative. It's not meant to be. I LOVE Viscera Cleanup Detail. It's probably the most creative, entertaining game I've played all year, easily within recent memory. I want to play it A LOT, which is why it's so frustrating that I can't. Being unable to finish a single level ever no matter how hard I try is incredibly demoralising, especially when it feels like the game is cheating on me.

Author:	Malidictus [ Wed Dec 18, 2013 3:27 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
So as to avoid coming off as completely negative, here's what I'd change: About the Sniffer: Have the device beep at full strength when near ANY amount of blood or a SINGLE offending item. After that, recalibrate the device to not beep AT ALL when no offending items are within, say, 20 metres (the size of a large room) and have it beep faster geometrically as the player approaches the the closest offending item. When the player is, say, within a metre of the offending item, have the sniffer play a continuous tone to indicate that it can't possibly beep any faster. What this offers: The geometric progression of beep strength offers both decent maximal range, as well as higher and higher precision the closer the player is to the offending item. Precision is VITAL for finding items that generally aren't easy to see, or that you don't know need to be burned (I thought Santa's toy guns had to burn, at first.) About reaching high places: Give the player the ability to elevate himself off the ground to any height, but prevent him from moving laterally while doing so. Visually, to the co-op partner, the player would deploy a telescopic pole with a ball at the bottom out of his backpack, which will lift him into the air. This could use a dynamic balancing system like in a modern-day segway, but with the ball having full omni-directional movement. It's no more weird high-tech stuff than a machine which dispenses infinite amounts of water buckets and sometimes severed legs. What this offers: The ability to reach the ceiling in any room. This solves the problem of explosives or weird physics launching gibs into the ceiling and creating inaccessible blood spots while also removing the need for ridiculous annoying towers of physics objects that I may have already burned. But it goes beyond that - when you know your player can always reach the ceiling, then you can feel free to add blood and gore to the ceiling for more interesting level design. Why not, indeed, have an alien speared to the ceiling, forcing the player to telescope up, swat it down with the mop and then deal with it? Apologies for the double post, but I didn't want to create a wall of text by shoving that all in the same one post.

Author:	Black Eagle [ Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:06 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Thanks for the thoroughly informative feedback. We'll see if we can improve the Sniffer's precision a bit. As for the height thing, we have a few ideas for that which we'd like to try out in coming versions, it's certain to be an interesting device to get right.

Author:	Malidictus [ Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:55 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Thank you for hearing it Viscera really is a very entertaining game, and I can't wait to see how it develops. Really, I think I can boil my wall of text down to a simple suggestion: Tune the sniffer to find the smallest bit of blood the game supports, and simply have it peak at anything more severe than that. Yes, it would make it useless in a room full of gore, but a room full of gore doesn't really call for it. I recall there was a suggestion for a "black light" device which would reveal faint blood spots. That would also help tremendously. Or failing that, a bottle of Luminol that I had to get out of the pizza slicer vending machine would also be nice. I could spray that on walls to check for blood, but then I'd have to clean it up afterwards. It puts a cost to using it because it's making a bigger mess, but in the name of cleaning up well. --- I look forward to whatever device you come up with for reaching the ceiling. I would, however, be very cautious of letting people move quickly with it. You don't want to let people essentially fly. It needs to have some kind of cost associated with it, like not being able to move laterally, or not being able to carry items, or having some kind of cooldown to it, or needing to find fuel or some such. In general, though - thank you kindly

Author:	Error302 [ Sun Dec 22, 2013 4:27 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Malidictus wrote: So as to avoid coming off as completely negative, here's what I'd change: About the Sniffer: Have the device beep at full strength when near ANY amount of blood or a SINGLE offending item. After that, recalibrate the device to not beep AT ALL when no offending items are within, say, 20 metres (the size of a large room) and have it beep faster geometrically as the player approaches the the closest offending item. When the player is, say, within a metre of the offending item, have the sniffer play a continuous tone to indicate that it can't possibly beep any faster. What this offers: The geometric progression of beep strength offers both decent maximal range, as well as higher and higher precision the closer the player is to the offending item. Precision is VITAL for finding items that generally aren't easy to see, or that you don't know need to be burned (I thought Santa's toy guns had to burn, at first.) About reaching high places: Give the player the ability to elevate himself off the ground to any height, but prevent him from moving laterally while doing so. Visually, to the co-op partner, the player would deploy a telescopic pole with a ball at the bottom out of his backpack, which will lift him into the air. This could use a dynamic balancing system like in a modern-day segway, but with the ball having full omni-directional movement. It's no more weird high-tech stuff than a machine which dispenses infinite amounts of water buckets and sometimes severed legs. What this offers: The ability to reach the ceiling in any room. This solves the problem of explosives or weird physics launching gibs into the ceiling and creating inaccessible blood spots while also removing the need for ridiculous annoying towers of physics objects that I may have already burned. But it goes beyond that - when you know your player can always reach the ceiling, then you can feel free to add blood and gore to the ceiling for more interesting level design. Why not, indeed, have an alien speared to the ceiling, forcing the player to telescope up, swat it down with the mop and then deal with it? Apologies for the double post, but I didn't want to create a wall of text by shoving that all in the same one post. if you're having alot of trouble using the sniffer to find a particular source, it is possible the source has fallen outside the level, this still happens pretty regularly, you can use F8 to flip through the render modes, in wireframe mode you should be able to spot things like shell casings and such that have fallen out of the level and survived. unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to DO anything about these atm other than restart. (some of the other render modes make it REALLY easy to spot stains)

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Author:	Malidictus [ Sun Dec 22, 2013 9:59 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Hey, that's not in the controls! My problem isn't objects, though - the green sniffer mode is usually at minimum. My issue is blood spots that either show up in places that I literally can't see from inside the level, or otherwise are so hard to see that I don't know what they are. Even so, though - the Sniffer shouldn't be calibrated to look for lots of blood or body parts, since those are easy to spot with the naked eye. It should be calibrated to look for tiny invisible blood specks or single small items, since that's where I need help. Having the sniffer peak in large dirty rooms isn't an issue for me, since it's not very useful when the carnage is all over the walls, anyway. I repeat myself, but I'd still like to see some kind of black light or lumniol, or blacklight + luminol... Hey, here's a thought. Have a single device which sprays Luminol with the primary fire button then shines a black light with the secondary fire button like a flashlight.

Author:	Malidictus [ Sun Dec 22, 2013 9:40 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Here's another example of the problem: Right now, I'm standing in a room I've cleared completely. There's no visible blood anywhere that I can see, not with any of the rendering modes. And yet, my sniffer is beeping blue, and vigorously. I managed to track a very strong signature to a place on top of two animal cages, and it's strongest right up against the wall behind them, playing almost three beeps per second. It's registering something major, clearly... But there's nothing there. As of right now, I've spent 15 minutes from when I cleaned the room to now unable to find the blood spot. I tried cleaning inside the cages, I tried cleaning behind them, between them, I cleaned the wall, the ceiling, everything. My sniffer still alerts me to blood. And I just can't find any. I don't know if a smear showed up on the "outside" of a wall or in a place where I physically can't get to like underneath the cages, or what happened, but I can't find the thing to clean it. I'm not just saying this complain, though. I'm just saying that even with a perfectly functioning sniffer - and I'm seeing as strong a signal as it's ever given me - I still can't find the blood. We definitely need a solution of some kind to this, because the fun of Viscera is cleaning up... Well, Viscera. That scavenger hunt for the last few pixels in a room in a corner behind a bunch of stuff I need to make prop ladders to climb over detracts from the actual legitimate exhilarating fun of it Apologies for repeating myself, and I look forward to the complete game. edit Oh, and after alt-tabbing to write this, my notes and PDAs turned blank. Ah, well

Author:	GuybrushThreepwood [ Sun Feb 02, 2014 4:47 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
Hey, you said this earlier in the post. Malidictus wrote: And sideways of the above-mentioned problem: When I actually find the offending blood stains, I can't always reach them. The game played a number of REALLY nasty physics tricks on me this playthrough, specifically causing a crate I'd left on the ground to spin around violently and throw chunks of meat everywhere. One ended on top of an air duct where it was completely invisible from the ground and where I needed to be above eye level with the vent to actually touch it. My advice is use the physics system to your advantage. Stack boxes on top of tables and make towers. You can jump on the edges of objects and get right to the roof. I find I do this for fun and it helps to spot hiding guts and splatters of blood. Anyhoo, just a suggestion.

Author:	Error302 [ Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:48 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Unable to complete any stage at all
it's probably also worth adding that the level designers for the regular viscera cleanup levels LOVED to hide stuff in high up places =P so you always have to check up near the ceilings for hidden messes. they seem to have backed off this practice in the santa's rampage and shadow warrior levels. dunno if this reflects their level design theory moving forward, or if they're just trying to go easy on the newbies =P

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