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 https://store.steampowered.com/app/986130/Shadows_of_Doubt/ Shadows of Doubt is an investigation-focused immersive sim that uses procedural generation to create small but detailed environments where cases play out - it's usually about five city blocks or so and each instance seems to contain several hundred NPCs. As usual, every NPC has their own routine, job, characteristics, preferences, etc, which influence their interactions with other NPCs. Every job you get comes from an individual, who has an apartment in the city, and some kind of motivation for asking you to do something, and the game gives the player a lot of flexibility in actually executing an investigation. Most of what you'd expect is there: reverse phone lookup, phone logs, trashcans with crumpled notes, fingerprints, footprints, voiceprints, photography, surveillance retrieval, canvassing. There are a few things you can't quite do yet - like ask specific questions about a case or present evidence to elicit a certain reaction, etc - but the foundation for an incredible system is there and functional. The writing is competently executed satire that distinguishes itself by not missing the point re: cyberpunk tropes, so there's lots of fun fluff content to make the world feel plausible and ugly in just the right way. So far, even in very early access, the game is great. It's very impressive, cheap, and feels like a mixture of Obra Dinn and Deux Ex. Here's some screenshots from the store page:    Here's a screenshot of my corkboard after resolving the first tutorial murder without googling anything or otherwise using any outside resources:  Couldn't find a thread for this game but it is fascinating, unique, and ambitious, so I think it deserves one, if only because the complexity inherent to the mystery mechanics makes this kind of game where bouncing ideas off of other players is extremely useful vis-a-vis resolving cases and want to be able to do that on SA.
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Apr 28, 2023 16:09
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Anyone thinking of purchasing this should know that it's EXTREMELY buggy and you will routinely be unable to finish investigations due to bugs. Besides the tutorial mission, I was only able to finish one other mission without the game bugging out and making it impossible to turn other missions in. There were even a few times where I couldn't actually START a mission. I strongly recommend waiting a while before purchasing unless you're okay with wrestling a pretty busted game. That having been said, when it actually works, it's an amazing experience and actually makes you feel like you're solving a mystery with no handholding. I can't overstate how satisfying it is to think of your next move and have it pay off with a lead. During the tutorial mission, I had used surveillance footage to identify the last known contact of the victim in a diner, then traced her to her apartment. I had just interviewed her and I was standing there thinking about my next move when the killer ran past me and into the apartment, shooting the woman I had just interviewed dead in front of me. I beat the killer unconscious, handcuffed her, then solved the case. On one hand, that's a pretty great emergent experience, and the whole world is simulated in such a way that those things can occur. On the other hand, it didn't feel very realistic, just having the killer strike again in front of the detective hunting her. Felt a bit cheap and cut the tutorial short before I could learn more mechanics. It's another example of how the game has some amazing bones and it's almost there, but needs more time to bake with bug fixes and tweaks, and there's no way that the devs didn't know it was buggy as gently caress before releasing it, which sucks. Early Access isn't an excuse for how busted it is. It also has pretty nasty performance issues, but thankfully due to its art style, it doesn't suffer much when down-resing to below native for the extra frames. I'm very much looking forward to going back to it in a few months when it is (hopefully) in a better state to enjoy, but as mentioned, stay away for now unless you're okay with an extremely buggy game.
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Apr 28, 2023 16:22
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Yeah it’s definitely riddled with the kind of bugs you’d expect in a project this ambitious and complicated. My first world with the tutorial case was fine at first - solving the case was a lot of fun even if I never managed to discern the motive, which I later learned a little about investigating the perpetrator’s roommate - but more or less completely went to pieces after that. All of the cases I got seemed to revolve around the aforementioned roommate and were characterized by glitched turn-ins or wonky stuff where there were inconsistencies in the info but it still automatically identified someone and filled in the target ID when I found them without updating their photo (which I had from the government, their workplace, landlord, and their own apartment) so I couldn’t show it to their neighbors, etc. All the small glitches seemed to aggregate because the procgen emphasized this lady so much and my subsequent “big” cases were all hosed because of it - I did a bunch of small photography ones without a problem though. I found plenty of other generation errors too, including briefcase location pictures rendered during generation so they look like a mostly empty skybox, every single employee in every restaurant liking sports and being flirtatious, etc. that being said you can drop things and the stakes are so low the problem is mitigated a little and when it works it really is, like you said, immensely satisfying. I’m hoping they’ll be able to iron things out and make it workable with more investigative stuff related to getting info from NPCs, like interrogations, more specific questions, etc over the course of EA.
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Apr 28, 2023 18:42
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It's definitely unfinished and undercooked, but I'm still having a lot of fun with it. I'm hoping they give you the ability to consolidate info though, I had a pin for a character that had her first name and phone number, then a second pin with all her info except her phone number 
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Apr 28, 2023 19:59
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wouldn't be an immersive sim without being janky as gently caress so im here for it they nailed so much of the game that they really just need to polish and flesh out the sides to have an instant hit on their hands.
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Apr 28, 2023 20:09
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Danaru posted:It's definitely unfinished and undercooked, but I'm still having a lot of fun with it. I'm hoping they give you the ability to consolidate info though, I had a pin for a character that had her first name and phone number, then a second pin with all her info except her phone number Yeah that in particular is driving me nuts. My last case I had a "Target?" pin and it resolved into the right guy when I found him, but it didn't ever associated with any of the four or five pictures or comprehensive files I found on him everywhere else, so I wasn't able to actually make any inquiries about him as I couldn't ask about his picture. I also searched his apartment and entire office (including lockers, drawers at other desks, etc) and found an envelope - making it the seventh envelope I've stolen from that office because all my other thief missions focused on it too - but couldn't turn it in as it felt I hadn't identified the suspect and found the item. The "steal an envelope" missions are definitely so bugged they basically can't be completed right now, and I've read on Reddit/Steam there are weird bug combinations that can completely gently caress things up by radiating outwards. One person said that if you check the phone router after the note writer in the tutorial case dies, it fucks up event patterning or something and things won't happen right after that, forever. Might have happened to me because my first game has been going for four in game days and there hasn't been a second murder. My understanding is there's supposed to be a new one within a day. FZeroRacer posted:wouldn't be an immersive sim without being janky as gently caress so im here for it agreed. I think with the right attention and care this could be something really unique and memorable. The biggest problem right now is basically just the inability to tell if something is intentionally obscure because it is a mystery game or if you're experiencing some kind of bug - it's basically impossible to verify anything without save scumming, which is fine, but does make running down leads frustrating sometimes.
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Apr 28, 2023 20:19
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one of my favorite things that happened to me was when i was starting out in a new save and no murders had been done yet, so i'm just doing side missions. the mission i picked up was to humiliate a person by throwing food in their face, which, easy enough. the details i had were what floor they lived on and their build (skinny). as any seasoned detective would do, i start off by knocking on the doors of everyone on the floor, grilling them for details. none of them want to talk, and half of them refuse to open the door. with people refusing to talk, i just break into their homes when they leave for work, grab their id / details etc until i find a match. nothing too scary until one of them came home while i was looking around, putting me into a bit of a pickle. so i hid under the bed and tried to flee while they were watching tv. sadly he saw me and began chasing after me trying to punch my lights out, but he couldn't catch up as i quickly ran down the stairs and lost him in the city. by then i had already found my target in his home: his wife matched the details perfectly, and she worked at a nearby cafe so i knew exactly where to go. i set out to complete the job. from a nearby hardware store i pick up a camera, since one of the goals was to take a photo of the event. and thankfully i already had a burger from earlier shopping. i walk up and burg her, and she responds by pulling out a gun, shooting me and breaking my leg. before i can even take a photo and skedaddle, the game manages to crash right after i was shot. game good
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Apr 28, 2023 20:51
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My best case was a series of shotgun murders. The first victim I didn't have too many good leads on, clean scene, didn't even find any fingerprints I couldn't account for. The next day someone else gets shot, same murder weapon, I manage to lift a single print, but she worked at the same office as the other one. So I head down there to see if I can pick up any leads. Just snooping around scanning the whole place for prints to match the one I found at the scene. I see one guy go to the bathroom so I sneak over and scan his cubicle, and find matching prints on the keyboard, but that's not conclusive enough so I wait for him to come back and sneak back over to secretly search him while he's working. In his inventory is the shotgun. I dutifully tag it on my pinboard "murder weapon(?)". I unpause the game and he, immediately stands up and shoots me in the face with the shotgun. Case closed 
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Apr 28, 2023 21:09
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Yeah it seems like it isn’t possible to search someone without alerting them which would be a problem if there was any penalty for brutally clubbing and handcuffing them. I have avoided that strategy since it feels too gamey, though, so I’d very much like to see some kind of purchasable search warrant or some other way to compel people to allow you to search them, maybe even just threaten them with a gun. The developers have said the player will never be able to shoot guns - so you can have one and ammo and not fire it - so that would be a nice application for the ones that are in the game
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Apr 28, 2023 21:40
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My Steam library tells me I've played this game for 25 hours. I think for about 7 or 8 of those there were no murders. I had some side-jobs I wanted to try and resolve before giving up on the save and earlier today someone died, this was before I installed the update that fixed some pathing issues killers were having with like trying to buy a weapon. I think what did it was me interacting with the victim for another case of mine, was kinda freaky that she was killed after I had talked to her about some other job. The murder itself was easy to solve because I recognized the print the killer left behind since I've been going through as many employment records as possible since some of my side jobs as of late have been kinda nuts. I have two where my info was they where glasses, are clean shaven, and what their blood type is, one even said they had an average build. The trick to these cases is to investigate the person who gave you the side-job and then look into all of their contacts and co-workers essentially. Although one I have like that I've exhausted everything so idk wtf. Another I can't turn in for some reason, possibly because the guy isn't home...or at work...can't find him at all really. An older case I've been holding onto just in case was only they're 35 and have green eyes. I think also tennis elbow and high blood pressure but that's not super helpful on its own. I had it in my case files for probably 10~15 hours, and then I accidentally found them while investigating their spouse. Didn't realize it until an hour later when I checked and noticed the "unknown citizen" had changed to "Molly Fraser" or whatever it was. I haven't seen many of them in my game but the tailing missions are actually alright in this, probably because they make the most sense in a detective game. One was a bit dodgey at first since they start with a description of a person nearby with a briefcase you should follow and in this case they were outside the bar I was in so I had to run around real fast to find the one person with a briefcase before they got too far. Worked out at least. Frog Act posted:One person said that if you check the phone router after the note writer in the tutorial case dies, it fucks up event patterning or something and things won't happen right after that, forever. A number of the glitches that were plaguing me have been fixed actually, like the phone calls telling you to go to another phone function properly now, zooming breaking in the map and corkboard should be fixed now apparently, they seem to be keeping pretty busy with it at least for now.
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Apr 28, 2023 21:43
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Same, I’m noticing a general improvement after the patch - the UI is behaving better and NPCs are doing things I didn’t see before like having conversations with each other. Here’s one thing I’m stumped by: do the huge mixed use buildings have an office with resident files? I’ve gone up and down all 18 floors of this building and can’t find one, just the associated managerial/security offices for the businesses on the middle and upper floors
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Apr 28, 2023 22:19
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I've seen them in the mixed use ones, it was above the office floors even. Some buildings seem to just not generate the landlord's office though, idk if that's a bug, or intentional, or if the files are in a regular room.
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Apr 28, 2023 22:44
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I was excited to play this but the 'procedurally generated' part bummed me out
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Apr 28, 2023 22:50
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Miss Mowcher posted:I was excited to play this but the 'procedurally generated' part bummed me out I’ve never played a procedurally generated game I actually enjoyed before this one. I usually hate that mechanic and the sterile, inhuman worlds it produces, but this one feels like an exception insofar as the worldbuilding that guides the generation is constrained and solid enough to avoid those pitfalls. NPCs do feel a little bland in terms of interaction options so I’m hoping that gets fleshed out over the course of the next six months homeless snail posted:I've seen them in the mixed use ones, it was above the office floors even. Some buildings seem to just not generate the landlord's office though, idk if that's a bug, or intentional, or if the files are in a regular room. Yeah I think it’s a bug, removing such an important and consistent way of narrowing down leads seems baffling. I’m just glad to know I’m not missing it
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Apr 28, 2023 23:15
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The thing that makes this work as a procgen game is that every case is totally defined in mechanical terms, everyone has a bunch of attributes that describe them and connections to other people, and its just pure logical deductions based on what random subjects and clues the case generates for you. There's a nightmare parallel universe where it makes the mistake all the other procgen games does and tries to fill in the social life of the npcs and motives and poo poo by making you read a bunch of the same dialog over and over again, that would be interesting maybe once then quickly repetitive. Because it skips all the bullshit and is purely deductive though, even if all the cases are kind of the same thing and can be solved with the same tools, it still keeps your interest because you have to deal with whatever weird intersection of clues the procgen shits on you this time. Currently have a case where my only lead is "brown hair. partner is in a book club" and like, how the hell do you deal with that. That's the kind of game it is. It is absolutely, a janky early access procgen game, though.
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Apr 28, 2023 23:42
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I'm glad someone else made a thread for this because I'm lazy. I've been watching the development of this game for several years and I'm loving elated that it's out. It's everything I expected too.homeless snail posted:My best case was a series of shotgun murders. The first victim I didn't have too many good leads on, clean scene, didn't even find any fingerprints I couldn't account for. The next day someone else gets shot, same murder weapon, I manage to lift a single print, but she worked at the same office as the other one. So I head down there to see if I can pick up any leads. Just snooping around scanning the whole place for prints to match the one I found at the scene. I see one guy go to the bathroom so I sneak over and scan his cubicle, and find matching prints on the keyboard, but that's not conclusive enough so I wait for him to come back and sneak back over to secretly search him while he's working. In his inventory is the shotgun. I dutifully tag it on my pinboard "murder weapon(?)". I unpause the game and he, immediately stands up and shoots me in the face with the shotgun. A SERIES of murders? There can be more than one per murderer?
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Apr 29, 2023 06:51
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If you don't solve the case quickly enough yeah, the murderer is still out there and can go on killing.
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Apr 29, 2023 06:57
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Solved a case where there was a grisly bludgeoning. At the victim's home, I found a note implying the murderer did it because they didn't get promoted. Found a matching print at the office and then when I knocked on the door I fell through the geometry and died. A mixed bag but I'm having a lot of fun with it. Anyone find any really fun SyncDisks?
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Apr 29, 2023 08:12
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All the current SyncDisks are known - there's only 18, as the game helpfully labels them all for you and you can only have one of each installed. Most have at least at least two specialization branches (with exclusive upgrade trees) that you have to choose between before installing, and the only way to swap for any indvidual is to uninstall your current one and plug in a spare of the same type of SyncDisk. Spoiled in case you want to have the fun of learning for yourself, I've divided the effects by slashes (if it's increasing numbers, that's just what the total effect is at that upgrade level; if it's additional keywords or effects, they're additive up to the current level).SyncDisks posted:#1: Beauty (3 upgrades)
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Apr 29, 2023 09:36
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Watch out if you augment your height btw, fully augmented you are too tall to walk through doors without crouching.
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Apr 29, 2023 09:39
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Hogama posted:All the current SyncDisks are known - there's only 18, as the game helpfully labels them all for you and you can only have one of each installed. Most have at least at least two specialization branches (with exclusive upgrade trees) that you have to choose between before installing, and the only way to swap for any indvidual is to uninstall your current one and plug in a spare of the same type of SyncDisk. Spoiled in case you want to have the fun of learning for yourself, I've divided the effects by slashes (if it's increasing numbers, that's just what the total effect is at that upgrade level; if it's additional keywords or effects, they're additive up to the current level). Yeah, the SyncDisks are a bit... For one thing "increased inventory capacity" is just such a convenience benefit I can't imagine ever picking another option on any disk which offers it. Making people more likely to offer info for free is also something which is so good that you'd be insane to choose its counterpart. And removing all fall damage is, again, just so convenient, since it means you never again have to ride the elevator down for fifteen floors. I think there's a handful of really good useful ones and then a bunch of pointless cruft. A low payout for a successful side mission is $750, why on earth would I be excited about getting $4 for throwing away trash? Or even $25 every couple of hours?
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Apr 29, 2023 09:54
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Screw you, Lipstick Nightwalker, it may have taken me days but I got you in the end, you absolute jerk. He tried to commit his second murder right while I was catching him too. He walked out of his apartment and I was following him with my cuffs out, and he walked right into someone else's apartment and started shooting StarkRavingMad fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Apr 29, 2023 |
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Apr 29, 2023 10:19
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Also, I love this game but it sure heats up my video card like nothing else, even with the framerate cap on. I can run all sorts of heavy graphically intense games with no real problems, but this game has my video card fans spinning up like they're about to take off.
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Apr 29, 2023 10:33
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The other big conceptual problem the game has at the moment is that it's undecided about exactly what the player character's role is. Like. On the one hand, the enforcers won't let you into murder scenes, even though you can pick up "Murder Solving Case Forms" from City Hall and they'll accept your verdicts. But on the other hand, the enforcers will give you sidequests to arrest people on their behalf. (And this is a circumstance where it's really weird that they say "Yeah, we want you to arrest someone with brown hair and handwriting that looks like this." because if they don't even know what the person looks like or what they're called, what the heck are they even arresting them for?!) It also feels like the developer can't make up his mind about how viable he wants violence to be as an option. He's said he doesn't want to allow the player to use guns, because then players will be tempted to solve all their problems by shooting, but at the moment you can just buy a sword from the pawn shop and bludgeon everyone unconscious, and there's no kind of long-term consequence to this, because once you leave the building and the security alert stops, the people you attacked just forget about it... I really like what's here at the moment, you can do some incredibly cool things but I think it does need quite a bit of work before it will feel more like a game than a tech demo...
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Apr 29, 2023 16:43
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My save has been getting more and more scraggly. One case won't let me turn it in, another left the "steal the envelope" prompt so that pops up every time I go in or out of the corkboard, but I'm at social level 9 so I'm almost out or I would start over. Also I just had a murder happen on the street, which I didn't think was possible. No evidence of the murderer at the scene, gonna try to find surveillance footage and maybe canvas the area, but atm this seems tough. bgreman posted:A mixed bag but I'm having a lot of fun with it. Anyone find any really fun SyncDisks? #6's second option is probably the best one as far as fun goes. It's called Vigor which shouldn't give it away, so prioritize any jobs offering it.
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Apr 29, 2023 17:33
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I had a bug where my whole murder board disappeared, so save early and often! I'm kinda stuck on the tutorial case, I know who did it, but I don't really have a motive or murder weapon, and I have two bodies...
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Apr 29, 2023 17:45
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All you really need is a fingerprint of theirs at the scene, motive isn't part of the resolution and the weapon is optional as is arresting them. They might have the weapon on them though, so if you do arrest remember to search them.
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Apr 29, 2023 17:49
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I started a sandbox game, a person in the crowd started screaming to get away from them, so I followed them to their apartment where as they were opening the door another npc gunned them down then proceeded to take the stairs down, disabling security cameras on each level so they wouldn't show up CCTV. However this is illegal and they were gunned down by other npcs. I was unable to close the case because it never opened. I love this game. I've found a very efficient way to get into secure areas while people are working there. Grab a fire extinguisher, set it down next to the door, knock, pick up the extinguisher, concuss whoever opens the door, this is somehow silent. Pick up the extinguisher, cleanse the area of consciousness.
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Apr 29, 2023 19:58
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So I got a case to take a photograph of someone, and the only leads I got was that they wear glasses, likes music, and earns 169000 per annum. ...any idea how to start with this one? Going through the employee records of every single corporation in the city doesn't seem like a very fun endeavor. On the other hand, I watched someone gun down someone else in the middle of the street, ran up and arrested the culprit immediately, and got a fat paycheck for like 2 minutes of work.
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Apr 30, 2023 00:07
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Investigate the client (either through the hand-in point or the phone number). They want pictures of people they met so they're overwhelmingly neighbours and maybe sometimes colleagues.
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Apr 30, 2023 01:04
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Chev posted:Investigate the client (either through the hand-in point or the phone number). They want pictures of people they met so they're overwhelmingly neighbours and maybe sometimes colleagues. That's an interesting approach that I hadn't considered, might try that, cheers! Though I don't think any of my previous photography jobs have had delivery in the same building.
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Apr 30, 2023 01:43
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pro tip: in the lovely empty basement apartment you get after the tutorial case, you can pull up your inventory and hit the "Edit decor" button for a furniture shop I assume this is true for any apartment you buy, and that buying one actually brings up a prompt for it Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Apr 30, 2023 |
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Apr 30, 2023 01:49
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After the tutorial case in the pre-made city bugged I just started a new city and a sandbox game. The procedural murders I've had so far have been fine but the random board jobs are far from sometimes. The Good: Had one to take a picture of someone that went well, gave me a name so I just started asking and eventually got to their workplace and apartment building. They worked and "whatever their name was consulting" at city hall. Except it wasn't a real business, or at least not a physical one you could go to. Got lucky enough to find their apartment though so I knocked on their door, took their photo when they opened it, and ran when they tried to beat me up. The Bad: Seems like higher paying jobs are the more difficult ones, meaning the cases are harder. 1) Had someone with a book of theirs stolen. I came by, they finally invited me in after some jank, and I checked out their apartment. The only fingerprints and footprints in the entire apartment not just around the bookshelf were theirs. No leads beyond "must be someone I know." I am not going through your address book person by person for 24 people to maybe find a book somewhere in their apartment. Case dropped. 2) Had a job to photograph someone. After having to hunt around an entire block to find a briefcase with the details the only info I had was that they were a manager. Not where, just their job title. Case dropped. 3) Had another where I had to find a briefcase for the job info. The photo of the briefcase clipped through the wall and was a solid purplish blob. Case dropped. 4) Find a special envelope in someone's apartment. No clue as to who or where. Building is 18 floors and a basement. Case dropped. The Janky: Was walking in an apartment to investigate it. Clipped through the floor into another apartment, the tenant started to beat the poo poo out of me and without a key I was locked inside with them. Also had a wall or piece of geometry clipping into a vent. Touched it and was stuck. No way to get out, lost 30 minutes of progress. What's here is an incredible foundation but you take "early access," "proc gen," and "immersive sim," all three synonyms for "janky as gently caress" and you know exactly what you're in for.
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Apr 30, 2023 02:31
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How do you proceed if you have literally no information except fingerprints?
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Apr 30, 2023 04:49
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Is there a way to know if you've found the murder weapon? I don't think I've ever gotten it right. Most of the murders I've solved are "slashed with a bladed weapon" and the killer has like 9 knives in their apartment and I don't know if there's a specific way to tell if it's the murder weapon or you just have to guess right (or if it's not even in their apartment at all).
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Apr 30, 2023 05:12
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If it matches the victim's wounds and the perp's fingerprints, it should work.
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Apr 30, 2023 05:31
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I hope going forward they reduce the amount of trace evidence in scenes but increase the types of trace evidence
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Apr 30, 2023 05:57
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Dark_Swordmaster posted:3) Had another where I had to find a briefcase for the job info. The photo of the briefcase clipped through the wall and was a solid purplish blob. In my case those have almost always meant "on the shelves in the first shack on the right in the nearest dead-end to the street in the photo label", if that's any help.
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Apr 30, 2023 08:03
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My first sandbox case was a guy who managed to kill four people before I finally nabbed him. The very first victim was an unemployed guy with almost no friends or acquaintances (he seriously had like three entries in his address book and they were all neighbors), and all I had to go on was that he had a shitload of debt on his bank statement and the killer wrote that the victim 'HAS PAID' on the wall, so I assumed it was probably a paid hit by a loan shark or something. Beyond that I had jack poo poo to go on - he was shot, I had the caliber of the weapon, some spent shell casings, and one fingerprint. I ended up investigating every name I could find connected to him - which consisted of his three neighbors, a woman he was matched with via an online dating service (grabbed her name from an email), and the doctor who prescribed his insulin, all of them dead ends. While checking that out, a second person was killed, a few floors up in the same building. Same murder weapon, same message saying they've 'PAID', another badly-overdrafted bank account, a couple of the same fingerprints, but no evidence that they and the first victim shared any acquaintances. The victim's live-in girlfriend was still alive, and I found a bunch of ammo boxes of the same caliber in her drawer, so I wasted a bunch of time investigating her as a possible suspect, including breaking into her place of employment. Dead end. I got the closest thing to a real 'lead' around this time - asking around, I found that the staff at her job had seen someone entering the building where the murders took place, at around the time they had happened, in a hurry and looking angry. The only description anyone could give was that they had glasses, so I ended up with just a post-it note that said 'GLASSES?' on it as my entire case. The third victim was killed on broad daylight in the street in front of a diner, and there were shitloads of witnesses, all of whom reported an angry man with glasses. More importantly, there was an outdoor CCTV camera - and while he had not actually killed the guy in view of the camera, he had walked past it seconds before the murder. Now I had a picture, and I was able to go around showing it to people, who all ID'd him as the guy present at all three murder scenes. Still no name, no information at all, beyond appearance and general build. Over a day passed, and I was starting to get frustrated - I was literally just going around hitting up random people on the streets, showing them the photo, and asking 'have you seen this man?', to no luck. I finally got so annoyed that I resorted to brute force. I grabbed the address books from all three victims' houses, broke into a hospital ward, and used the searchable government database on the hospital computer to start pulling citizen profiles on every single name in the books. In theory, anyway. In practice the very first name I printed off turned out to be my guy. Picture was a perfect match, fingerprint was a match for the prints I'd found at every scene, and, hilariously, his job title was listed as 'Hired Killer'. While I was going to arrest him, he killed again, in the same building as his first two victims (which also happened to be the building he lived in; he'd been killing his neighbors). I caught him coming down the stairs from the reported crime scene, cuffed him, and found the murder weapon and a box of ammo for it in his inventory. Headed back to city hall and collected my payment. There is the core of a great game here, but I don't like how...anticlimactic the solution ended up being. I more or less just guessed, and I don't know how the hell I would have made the connection to that guy in any other way except guessing. I spent all this time collecting evidence, asking around, trying to put clues together, and putting together a giant corkboard covered in post-it notes and pictures of crime scenes and strings connecting everything, and none of it actually contributed to solving the case at all - I would have solved it in five minutes if I had just gone to the government database and searched for the first name in the first victim's address book. Still looking forward to playing more, maybe the next one will be better.
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Apr 30, 2023 08:13
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| # ? May 8, 2024 20:54 |
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What a weekend this is! I've had everything, from the manager hammered to death with the hammer covered in fingerprints next to him, in the employee files room to catching the killer running away from the scene to tracking a killer who had struck only on floors without cameras by going over all recorded entries and exits on the ground floor, pruning based on the one clue I had (someone saw a tall suspicious person) to around four unidentified suspects, then running those by the one who had seen the tall person, who confirmed which mugshot was the right one. After that I asked people outside and got a street name from which i deduced the building and caught the perp in the stairs. Very satisfying! A couple observations:
I thought It'd get repetitive a lot faster than it actually is. I only stepped in a factory building for my last case today, and I haven't even touched the shady literal-underground businesses. I also keep trying new feel-it-should-work schemes like scanning all mailboxes in a building entrance (that one wasn't all that successful, because the killer didn't live there). Address books haven't been all that useful so far but I have faith in them because in the Dead of Night you can skip all the leads since the names from the diary are in the address book and are the next victim (who can tell you who the killer is) and the killer. Chev fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Apr 30, 2023 |
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Apr 30, 2023 18:40
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