Hi guys,

After a long weekend, we are right now uploading 1.0.0 rc1.

We think we crushed most critical and high priority bugs, we rebalanced a lots of stats and completed various features.

There are still a few rough corners, but at this time we need your help! We need to know about game breakers! We need to know about the balance!

So please please give this one a spin and keep this thread on the big issues that prevent anyone from having an enjoyable experience when the game releases Tuesday.

We have a long list of nice to do, improvements and also features that we want to take a look at post launch. A lot of those also come from you. Thanks a bunch, and nothing is ignore or forgotten. But everything depends now on a smooth launch.

Thanks for sticking with us on this and helping.

Best

Thomas

Ok, I am streaming live atm 0.9.0 and having trouble finishing the Angetta trip quest, maybe this version works. Pops just says he'll carry me over but nothing happens.

Any ETA when we can play 1.0? Steam didn't update it yet?

hi, nice build so far, just a question:

Will there be a german version at the start? Still oall text fields are empty after chagning language.

@Shanga: Download was just loaded ;)

For non-critical bugs which you think they should be addressed BEFORE release:
http://www.jaggedallianceflashback.com/forum/1790/5001#post_5001

Still havent this update,,,

German is still on for release and/or 1-2 days later. The localization company is working overtime this weekend too. And the texts we got so far need.... a little massaging....

First sector: The 2nd guy left. I covered and waited until he shot all his ammo. Then I hit "end round" 20 times. The enemy does not move anymore, does not a melee attack. I go before him he does not do anything. 
Only when I go to him (1 tile before him) he uses his knife. but this is a endless fight as we both have only 1 or 2% hit chance with the knife. What is going on? EDIT: Ok I know - I have so less chance with knifes as my melee skill = 1. But the enemies should be more or?

But it is a AI bug. He just does not move anymore and does not panic.

First of all - thank you all very much for your hard work on the game. I hope I was not too annoying with my huge posts :D and I hope they helped.
Posting my first feedback right now. I might have more later / tomorrow. Sorry in case my english is messed up, I am a bit sick right now.

- I am happy to see that the game seems finally playable in a 4:3 (I only tried 1024x768 for now) resolution (although it's overlapped by the feedback button right now, but I guess you are going to remove that anyway). Thank you very much for fixing this.
1280x1024 still doesn't work, though (and I guess other 5:4 etc(?) resolutions as well). Playing in 4:3 on a 5:4 monitor should be acceptable for most (it certainly is for me, although I would love to record this in 16:9, which would only be possible in windowed mode), but only resolutions that actually work in game should be selectable to avoid unhappy customers (I was just about to complain since I started in 1280x1024)
- windowed mode still sucks because you can't scroll by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen (not really crucial, but since it kinda belongs to the point above because windowed mode would allow to use more different resolutions, I added it here)

- Mercs are still having trouble getting through doors when being selected as a group. They either stop at the door or try to find a way around instead of waiting for the merc before them to move through. This is not extremely critical but highly annoying and can kill your mercs (especially at the prison because it has tons of doors in long corridors), so I think it should be fixed before release if at all possible.

- Is the range with pistols really a lot lower than it was before or is that just me? Not sure whether this is intentional, but seems like they are kinda useless again, at least my IMP's standard Bolt 1822.

- Gamebreaking is that all merc commentaries and interaction is gone. Even in the hiring screen as the build has no soul. Even when seeing a new enemy, we get a wired text instead of the voice.

- BUG 2: Cliff deceased (because my mercs shot the own man twice which happens to often in JA:F). But going to the next sector he is shown in the portraits left with the signal "deceased". Only this info and picture should only be shown in the sector he died in. But even so I can't click on him. In the strategic map here is gone already. 

Gamebraking
I hire all mercs I could afford at the end I had 2 squads. (The new mercs arrive in Badilla.

(WHY? This is nevery explained why this is the base. In JA2 you could select the starting sector after freeing the helicopter men. Before it was the starting sector not the next town. I have to select where the should land hmm?)

BUG: So now I check both squads into one sector. Loading the sector means I can only see and command the squad I am in. That means I cannot fight with more than 6 mercs. Bugged?

I cannot see the condition of weapons, only armor. 

I would appreciate to receive feedback from FC about which features are planned for the future and a time indication for those. In that way we have a better understanding about what the road ahead for JA is.

@Scope - yes. We know that you'd like that, and I will make one on the other side of release.

Right now we dont know if the game sells 10 copies - and then we cannot afford to do a lot of stuff. And if we promised you guys something up front, then we cant deliver and will be kicked in the balls for that.

Thus I decided to keep quiet until we actually know 1) what goes into 1.0.0 and 2) how JAF sells and thus how much we can afford to promise. Maybe then we will run another Kickstarter to get those features in. Not decided yet.

If the game sells well enough, we want to reinvest into expansions etc. But too early to promise anything there.

We do know that for certain we will work on some of the features we either had to cut or had to implement sub-par (shop, shotgun vfx, ..). As well as whatever bugs come up short term.

I am not sure these were fixed in last build so I'll write them down and check later:

1. The Pimp is placed in a doorway and very hard to see. That dude in the bar (Throwing the Trash Away) doesn't accept my beer. Plus the whole herpes quest was a drag to complete (there was ONE bottle of wine in entire country, hidden in an hangar where the mouse cursor didn't even change to open container cursor. That's... evil). Overall the late game sectors are devoid of people. There are no bartenders, no places to buy booze from. 

2. The Tio medic seemed to spawn only on 2nd or 3rd visit to the clinic; again his placement is dubious and you just pass by him. Could these NPCs have that blinking effect the loot bags have? 

3. Spotted enemies not in direct view range are way too grayed out. So much you can't see them due to terrain. They should be REDish like in JA2 for a reason.

4. The quest for OSIM was a lot of fun, but again, the containers that have loot should be somehow highlighted. JA2 had closed/open state for all. And you knew if its closed you have a chance to find something. Also, the scientist vanishes too early. I think during the stream I opted for the rifle, he gave it to me and I had no space in inventory, I closed the dialogue and he went poof without giving me the code. He should only vanish after player exists the sector, to be safe. 

5. When items don't fit in player's inventory, there should be a safeguard and items should be placed in squad inventory, not lost. Both shopkeeper items and quest items can be lost this way.

6. Quest to Angetta updated when talking to Pops, but nothing else happened. And the text isn't clear enough where to go next. I've literally spent 8 hours looking for the damn boat without finding it. Not fun.

7. Fred Bearpit quest is broken I think. He was supposed to give me something? Because I got the special phrase, I went to BP hideout, that retard with the dress mumbled something and nothing happened. Then he went back to his usual "oh i got my dress dirty" dialogue. To add insult to injury, he sent assasins after me. The whole quest writting is kinda shaky. I don't think I ever had the option to actually give him the weapon, just one to keep it for myself. And funny part is, I kept it but I had no actual weapon.

8. Both medikits and mechanic kits should work in realtime like in JA2. I don't see the point of bandages, to be honest. Except if we hack thrash items and make them into bandages to save on medikits. That could be useful. In JA2 small medikits were multiple uses and patched wounds (like bandages). But so did large medikits (beside actuall healing). The whole heal over time system is way overdone and makes medics useless (in JA2 you only healed in Cambria hospital this way, not in the middle of the jungle). So:

a) usage of large repair and medical kits should be tied to skill level

b) all kits should stack

c) all medical stuff should heal bleeds, only large medical kits should heal completely.

d) you should heal only when camping in a sector with a medical equipped with large medikit or in special designated sectors (Tio hospital).

e) repair kits should have a smaller counterpart for quick fixes

One more thing about 4:3 (at least 1024x768 and 800x600) - the information on the top right of the hiring screen is scrambled after pressing call.
(For Magic) I can read "Price $1275" "+20%" (can't read what's after that, when switching res, I see that it says "on squad" and "$255", those 2 are scrambled together) "+Gear $386" "Total $1916".
When selecting a week or 2, the -25% on duration is overlapped with the amount as well.

Since we can see the total cost, it is not absolutely crucial, but it would still be great if you could fix that as soon as possible.

What does 20% on squad even mean? It doesn't seem to change dependent on where the squad is located (not on the 2nd island yet in this game, so maybe it changes there?) Should we be able to get them into a standard sector without additional fee? If so, that is still missing. If it exists just to be an additional transport fee when hiring them, "for transport" or similar would be much clearer.

Edit - I just noticed, that the health of all mercs in the hiring screen shows 0, same with the armor - all the armor they bring with them seems destroyed on the hiring screen.

Edit 2 - why is Lynx the only merc starting at level 2?

RC1

- game looked like it froze after tutorial completition; player instead should get a screen telling him he's done and a button to exit to main menu

- could you please do something about window priority for JAF? it's somehow set to "Always on Top" since recent patches... quite annoying - when I play in window mode I play because I need my desktop.

- merc voices just came back after first battle in the Bushy Point farm... no idea what happened...

- most pistols and sawedoff have ranges set to 1.5, which is ridiculously low; imho pistols should have a range of 2-3 tiles, SMGs and shotguns about 3-5, ARs 5-8 and sniper rifles beyond 8. Considering a car is 2-3 tiles long ... you can't use your handgun to shoot the guy on the other side now.  

- again, Spice is placed badly in that kitchen, hidden out of sight, and the gun dealer could be mistaken for any other guy on the map - needs SOMETHING (ammo crates?) around him to give the new players a hint of his occupation

- David Knudsen in Spice Bar has a dialogue icon but doesn't respond.

- Squad was full, talked to Vicky, she was gone, poof...She is availabe for recruitment (for cash) in the regular recruitment panel. Wasn't she supposed to be free?

- You now can't use the X to close inventory when you loot a container unless you press All to Squad/Merc, even if the loot container is empty.

- Gabriele quest - Paying your respects - godamn Boquet of Flowers still has no icon (it lacks a .png in the resources JSON, in case you wonder what's broken)

- Boonie hat, protective glasses - wrong icons

- We need an informative message telling the player he can't unequip leg/chest armor until he empties the quickslots (found that the hard way during stream) because quickslots aren't visually associated with the chest armor (or leg armor for that matter).

- enemy encounters need to be balanced more - my squad has shotguns and rifles and look what I am fighting the first second I step on next island (roaming patrol encounter): AKs, Steyrs... etc. Plus they take a lot of shots to kill.

PS: I've lost 1 merc and got heavy wounds on the rest but won the battle. Loot? 1 Desert Eagle, 2 clips of ammo, 1 pair of leggins, 1 grenade. Worth it? Nope.

As a matter of fact these roaming patrols and counterattacks are by far the hardest fights in JA:F. I took OSIM secret base easier. But enemy patrols are always outnumbering and outgunning you, nevermind the fighting which usually takes place out of position and cover. Except when you pack like 10 grenades, that takes care of their rush tactics pretty easy. So... bottom line is they need to scale to progression better, both in numbers and in gear. When we introduced Drassen Counterattack in v1.13 (with elite black shirts) we scared the shit out of 90% of the JA2 community. Don't do that.

[to be continued]

Please note my 2 edits on the post above. I am taking a break now, but I might add stuff to this post later in case I encounter anything else.

We definitely need more loot. I haven't come very far (just finished the prison), but so far pretty much no valuable loot from the enemies, not a single gun and barely any ammo.

When a merc had his/her interrupt the last turn, it still shows "!" the next turn instead of the number for the reaction timer.

This belongs in the other thread, but I did not want to start a new post there just for that:
You go into realtime after your first action on your turn. That should happen at the end of a turn, either the enemies or yours (not sure what would be better and how it was handled in JA2)

Doing a quick collection round now.. and yeah Shanga I am annoyed with that as well (windowed issue)...could actually be a Unity automatic change...Thanks all..some good catches here. 

Some feedback:

- Mac version issues: I am running the game on a MacBook Pro 13inch Retina and the highest resolution that the dropdown menu gives me is 1280 x 800, which doesn't make sense as my screen supports much higher resolutions. I have pointed this out several times, but still no adjustments have been made. 

- MAC Optimizations: This version is much better optimized, however I would appreciate that even more attention would be spend to optimize the game for mac system.

- MAC graphic issues: When it is nighttime, a few textures in the sector have slight issues. They don't load fully well, and have a white glowing effect on them.

- Optimization: The load on PC seems to be much heavier during nightbattles and rain.

- There is hardly any loot, enemies hardly drop anything

- Some of the infographics have typos

- Pistols are totally useless now, the range has been limited too much, it should be extended a little bit. This should balance the game more.

- Switch from RTS-TBS bug: After 2 turns of no action the game should automatically switch to RTS mode. However, currently it switches to RTS mode after I move one of my MERCS

- The tutorial provides the player with an introduction to the story, however not everyone will start the tutorial. So something should be done to provide everyone with an introduction to the story!

- Overall more story immersion is needed. Sometimes it's very unclear to understand how everything ties in together? JA2 did this well by giving an overview of quest logs, history, and the RIS report which gave more background story info. Also cutscenes would be very useful.

- It's hard to read enemy names, because the font size is very small

- Strategic map doesn't display city/town names. It would be nice to know where Badilla or Angetta actually are, instead of arriving there by 'chance'. If it is indicated somewhere, it should definitely be indicated more clearly, because I didn't spot it.

- There is no where that I can find an overview of quests/objectives in the strategic map. Perhaps an overview with some pointers would be helpful. It is currently very tough to keep track of all different quests.

- I am unable to talk to one of the NPCs in Badilla, the one who stands behind the bar. When i click on him, nothing happens.

- IMP is very good, but would be useful if you can actually select PERKS yourself, furthermore more portraits/voices are needed (current ones are good, but not sufficient, we need more choice)

- Weapon merchants interface is very subpar... The merchants should display their inventory just like JA2 did it. The text based inventory is not clear at all, players don't remember every item name by heart.

- Interrupt system: I still prefer JA2 interrupt system, because I stand by that this system doesn't make sense, although it's working a bit better now than during it's initial implementation. However, i think it's somewhat annoying that it has to be activated every turn (very tedious) and I think that the JA2 system is better as it is actually tied in with your MERCS skills, while this one is only tied in with the weapon you use..... It should actually be a combination of both: MERC skills and the weapon you use.

- Still no lockpicking / Explosives / destructables / attachments in the game?

- Still no MERC interaction / voiced NPCs / humor?

- Is stealth implemented in the game? --> We are unable to sneak on enemies.

I just noticed something pretty important - when a weapon is not loaded, there doesn't seem to be a way to tell which ammo it needs.

When you start training militia, time suddenly starts to run. This is bad when you want to continue on your way with some of your mercs. Time is money now, after all.

Bugs:
- Suddenly the save button (in the save menu where you can select saves) didn't show up any more, even after re-opening the menu. After opening the load menu (without loading) and re-opening the save menu, it showed up again.

- Militia don't seem to be able to survive any fights. Whether the game tells me they won or lost, all of them end up dead. This has been the case for at least 10 fights. (very crucial!) On the other hand - they always win the fight before they die, just now 1 militia won vs 8.

- Squad numbers don't change on the strategic map when they do change on the left of it (when moving mercs from one squad to another)

Weapons have a description that tells you which ammo they use, but that text is quite small. I already suggested - make that ammo text BOLD NEON whatever. It's an essential piece of info. 

I still don't see it. The place where it is when loaded - under the Reaction Time Modifier - simply says "not loaded". Is there another place where you see which ammo it uses?

When I open MERC inventory I can see images of some PERCS, but no where can you find what these PERCS actually are. These images should be clickable, and then you should be able to see a PERC name with information regarding it.

Furthermore, the level up button for MERCS always makes a sound if you press it, even though you can't level your MERC up.

Additional bugs:

- Militia always dies, regardless whether they won the battle or not.

- When you click on the militia tab, it doesn't show the sector income (It shows sector income:    )

- Weapon merchants: It doesn't indicate your current funds, neither does it indicate any mutations to your funds. --> this should be transparant.

I hope you find a way to communicate that. IMP is very important and the shop will mentioned in the reviews for sure. I understand everything I am just hoping for good reviews because the game improved so much in this short time.

All perks, stats, attributes etc have tooltips. Hold your mouse for 0.5 seconds and it pops a description!

We will look at and fix militia tomorrow before final release.

I'll take a look at the ammo text too. Should be displayed - if not, then its being added too

Hello All,

I find the change to Pistols too annoying to play immo. Love the game in before this patch but now i'm more kinda like mew. Still really good, but really different to play.

my 2 cents.

PS. yeah shop, at least selling would be cool, beside i hadn't really money issues the first 2 times i played a few hours. 

Just removed the "Not loaded" text form empty weapons and write the ammo type instead. Will be in the final game

for me tooltips are missing for the attributes. even after almost 1 minute scrolling over no tooltip there, so i still don't know what intelligence etc. does

@Loki - what screen are you on (IMP, hiring screen or the inventory ingame/strategic? Also what version of JAF?

Also please try to check your options/gameplay. There is a show tooltips toggle. Try to toggle it on/off or reset to defaults. There might be leftovers from previous installs that fuck up current settings.