Afterworld Problems!?! (spoilers)

[Mikey_rex]

First let me say that I really enjoyed what I've seen so far from the scenario, but there appear to be several annoying bugs (single play only, all with the 3.03 patch). I haven't been able to finish because of the bugs, so here's what I've noticed so far:

1- the log only seems to keep track of the chats. The quest log, etc. are all grayed out.

2- in the second quest, I can activate the deception beacon, but I don't leave the beacon behind, I can't drop it either.

3?- In the third quest, I never get 90 or 100%, after 80% it just stops and moves on to the 4th quest (Sever, what are you doing?)

4- I can't get Sever to activate the barrier thingys. I place him over the glowing ones, but nothing happens.

5- Sometimes your goal spot fades to nothing.

6- When I rebooted to try to see if the bug related to the barrier activation would disappear, my mini map shrunk to 1/3 normal size (the top and bottom disappeared.. it's like it went into widescreen mode).

7?- There are doors that won't open (i.e., the 2 doors to the small room with the 2 big red mutant headless freaks... and do you really have to kill them 3 times or is that a bug as well).

8 - Sever just disappears... not turns invisible, but suddenly is gone... not killed though because that would end the game.

9- There doesn't seem to be a set way the acceleration thingy's work. Sometime I click them and I am at full hit points with motion, other times just hit points. At least once I clicked on an acceleration icon in Sever's inventory and it didn't disappear, but I got full HP.

10?- And lastly... I'm not sure this is a bug... I found it kind of annoying that the entry scenarios flashed by long text in what seemed like less than a second, and then keeps really short pieces of text up for 3 or more seconds.

 

[Psyringe]

I just completed Afterworld, so here's my take on the things you mentioned. I'm playing with the 3.02 patch.

1- the log only seems to keep track of the chats. The quest log, etc. are all grayed out.

The tasks you have to fulfill are covered in the conversations of the team members. You can rewind these conversations (or move forward) with the arrow icons under the "End turn" buton. So a quest log isn't really needed, although it would be nice to have.

2- in the second quest, I can activate the deception beacon, but I don't leave the beacon behind, I can't drop it either.

Confirmed. The team member who carries the beacon gets a special action button which looks like the beacon. Activating this button does nothing however. However it's not necessary to activate this button. If the team member who carries the beacon simply steps on the tile where it has to be deployed, the story should move forward.

3?- In the third quest, I never get 90 or 100%, after 80% it just stops and moves on to the 4th quest (Sever, what are you doing?)

After "80%", Jal says "Done.", so the transfer gets completed. You just never see Jal saying "90%" or "100%". The conversation that leads to Jal saying "Sever, what are you doing?" follows afterwards.

4- I can't get Sever to activate the barrier thingys. I place him over the glowing ones, but nothing happens.

There are three barricade triggers. When Sever steps on the first one, the second one should light up. Logic dictates that when Sever steps on the second one, the third one should light up, but this didn't happen in my game. I think that's a bug. Nevertheless you have to step on the third trigger for the barricade to open. But you seem to have done this since you describe that Sever has been removed from your game, and that only happens after he opened the barricade.

Perhaps you just didn't see the opening of the barricade? There are two doors about 13 tiles eastward from the last trigger. These two doors are the "barricade". They are also the "exit" that your task objective speaks about, although they weren't lit up in my game. After stepping on the third trigger, the camera should zoom to the doors, which should swing open. But that's easy to miss because the area isn't lit.

5- Sometimes your goal spot fades to nothing.

Yap. I had that happening with the goal spot for the third barricade trigger. And I think the "barricade" itself should be lit as well.

6- When I rebooted to try to see if the bug related to the barrier activation would disappear, my mini map shrunk to 1/3 normal size (the top and bottom disappeared.. it's like it went into widescreen mode).

Unlike usual Civ4, the minimap in Afterworls only displays one portion of the map. Which part is shown depends on the position of your team and on the current task. When you load a save, the minimap shows the *whole* map. The map of this scenario is much wider than it's high, so when it gets displayed in the minimap area, you get the widescreen effect you describe. This is remedied after pressing "end turn".

7?- There are doors that won't open (i.e., the 2 doors to the small room with the 2 big red mutant headless freaks... and do you really have to kill them 3 times or is that a bug as well).

Hm, I don't know which door exactly you mean. I could open every door I tried, but it seems I played the scenario very close to the way the designer expected it to be played. Some doors might be locked to prevent the player from getting to some areas too early (i.e., when the story hasn't advanced far enough because a previous task hasn't been solved yet).

Regarding the enemies that you have to kill multiple times: I've noticed that too. I'm not sure whether that's supposed to model a stack of enemies on the same tile, or one undead enemy which has to be killed multiple times until it actually *stays* dead.

8 - Sever just disappears... not turns invisible, but suddenly is gone... not killed though because that would end the game.

That's working as designed, it's part of the story.

9- There doesn't seem to be a set way the acceleration thingy's work. Sometime I click them and I am at full hit points with motion, other times just hit points. At least once I clicked on an acceleration icon in Sever's inventory and it didn't disappear, but I got full HP.

They seemed to work for me, but I only used them two or three times, so they might well be buggy and I just missed the bug.

10?- And lastly... I'm not sure this is a bug... I found it kind of annoying that the entry scenarios flashed by long text in what seemed like less than a second, and then keeps really short pieces of text up for 3 or more seconds.

Not a bug, but certainly an annoyance. I had to view the opening and closing scenes twice because some text boxes went away too fast for me, especially when I wanted to look at the graphics as well.

Some more things that caught my attention:

11 - I'm not sure whether Riest's sentinels are working as designed. I could only "conjure" each type of sentinel once. When the sentinel is killed, no other sentinel of the same type can be created.

12 - This scenario would *massively* benefit from a small civilopedia. The promotions should be explained somewhere, and it should be noted which team member has access to which promotion. Some additional flavor (like short biographies of the team members, or some backround info about the world they live in) would enhance this scenario a lot. There *seems* to be an interesting background, but since you're just plunged into the game with very little explanation, the background info is more confusing than enlightening at the moment - which is a shame because as I said, there *seem* to be some interesting and rather original concepts. But they remain hidden in the shadows.

 

[Mikey_rex]

11 - I'm not sure whether Riest's sentinels are working as designed. I could only "conjure" each type of sentinel once. When the sentinel is killed, no other sentinel of the same type can be created.

12 - This scenario would *massively* benefit from a small civilopedia. The promotions should be explained somewhere, and it should be noted which team member has access to which promotion. Some additional flavor (like short biographies of the team members, or some backround info about the world they live in) would enhance this scenario a lot. There *seems* to be an interesting background, but since you're just plunged into the game with very little explanation, the background info is more confusing than enlightening at the moment - which is a shame because as I said, there *seem* to be some interesting and rather original concepts. But they remain hidden in the shadows.

Thanks for the input. I'll try reloading a save and giving it a try again. With regard to the sentinals, isn't it supposed to be a level-up kind of thing where they are just stronger sentinals? If so, then I think my game was working correctly... but then again, the traps were different icons that could be used, so maybe the sentinals should have been too.

Personally I've always found the civilopedia part of the game... not just this scenario, but the whole of Civ, to be one of it's weakest parts. There is always something that is missing that I feel should be explained. For example, I don't think you should have to run a bunch of trials or have to surf the web to find out whether or not and which bonuses a building has all become obsolete with a tech. I think it should all be clearly spelled out. Or to use a more up to date example, when they don't tell you what it means when your great spy infiltrates a city... you shouldn't have to do any hunting beyond looking up great spies in your civilopedia.

Now for another topic... if they use this scenario to build an entire new game, I would prefer that they at least do the following (other than just cleaning up the bugs):

1 - have the bodytanks do something more graphic when fighting hand to hand than the limp body slapping that's currently going on.

2- personlize the bodytanks a bit more so each one is slightly different

3- allow you to zoom out quite a bit more

4- vary the landscape a bit more... it reminded me too much of endless Diablo dungeons.

5 - make the game alter your quests in response to your choices... say you have the choice between bringing someone out of suspended animation or not or you find some banned psychoactive space drugs.. you decide what to do, then what happens? Hopefully not the same thing each time.

 

[Sherlock]

I get to the end of the second level, put the unit with the device on the console, wait ten turns, NOTHING HAPPENS.

I try putting JAL on the console, wait ten turns. NOTHING HAPPENS.

THIS BE BROKE.

 

[Lazylen]

started and finished my run of this today.

There are still a couple problems with this.

1. The bomb that you can place does collateral damage to your units, but in the description it states that it only damages the enemy that steps on it.

2. I leveled up to level 3 sentinels, but I could still only deploy level 2s.

3. The final boss was far too big and it was difficult to see where to target as a result. Was a wimp due to characters damaging by %age. Also, sentinel bombardment did the same damage as character bombardment (10%). I wiped him out in one turn. The gauntlet to get to him was far more worrying.

4. If I had wanted to, or had thought of this, I could have simply blown up walls using the nuke/throwable bomb to get to the end with my entire party instead of doing the Sever quest.

5. I had sentinels left alive behind me on the minimap. If they were still alive when I had advanced the map, instead of deleting them, the game scrolled the screen as far left as it could go (which wasn't far enough), and the sentinels did their combat off-screen.

6. No sentinel level-up

7. The final Sever beacon stayed lit even after he was gone and I was fighting the last boss.

I think thats about it.