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[Taberone]

Would violence also backfire on the CCS too? That's all the CCS seems to do. If violence does get nerfed, will the CCS also play fair? Maybe give the CCS some new tricks, like having their own version of the Liberal Guardian that constantly publishes fake news about the LCS or about random political issues or something?

[SlatersQuest]

I'm feeling swamped with RL right now, so not sure how long it will be before I can implement story events. I've got a couple of other plans as well.

The LCS definitely can engage in very hypocritical behavior, but they do it to other people, not their own members. Once you're part of the LCS, they treat you like a liberal. Now, you can execute your own liberals, but you either gain wisdom or lose juice in the process. Maybe you can do genetic experimentation on your liberals, but if one of them dies/suffers a detrimental side effect, xer contact pays for it by losing juice? That would seem more reasonable to me. It would make the only juice-safe person to experiment on to be the LCS leader, which does make sense for liberal heroes to do - "what I'm about to do is dangerous, and I'd never force it on anyone. Somebody has to do it, for our cause, but that means it has to be me."

Violence backfiring on the CCS is one of the problems that retooling violence would cause. One option would be to have two views for the CCS just as there are two views for the LCS, but instead of people loving the LCS and so supporting their violent acts, people fear the CCS and so go along with them in order to avoid being their next victims. This would enable the CCS to continue using violence, but require the LCS to use other methods to stay popular.

[TastyMints]

Sorry to hear about your situation, I hope things get better for you. Don't think I'd hound you for anything we're speaking about though. The time and hard work you and others put in to make an old niche game better is more than great. Frankly I'm just happy I haven't insulted you with my multi-paragraph "Idea Guy" rambling or by challenging your concept of what the LCS is or how they act.

You're two steps ahead of me in the powers and LCS department with the juice idea. That all makes perfect sense.

To add on to your case about the CCS being able to use violence more freely, it's worth noting that while Cable News could be argued as a netural institution the AM Radio Station is most surely a conservative news establishment and a functional equivalent to the Liberal Guardian. Both organizations feature Arch-Conservative NPCs at the very least. It makes sense for CCS to have a built in advantage as far as press releases are concerned. I wonder if it'd be possible to have them actively hijack Cable broadcasts like the LCS does, or otherwise sprinkle in some activism with their ultra violence.

[IsaacG]

Sorry to hear about your situation, I hope things get better for you. Don't think I'd hound you for anything we're speaking about though. The time and hard work you and others put in to make an old niche game better is more than great. Frankly I'm just happy I haven't insulted you with my multi-paragraph "Idea Guy" rambling or by challenging your concept of what the LCS is or how they act.

To weigh in personally, I'm a big fan of multi-paragraph "Idea Guy" ramblings that exist on this forum.  There's an old thread with people going back and forth about the legal system, and I printed off a hard copy.  "Plans are useless, but planning is essential."  Reading the ideas people present for LCS has so far been a great help and inspiration for me.

I'm feeling swamped with RL right now, so not sure how long it will be before I can implement story events. I've got a couple of other plans as well.

Maybe I should use this time to bring our LCS forks to closer compatibility.
I'll try to get a TV version of the save file stuff ready by the weekend.

[SlatersQuest]

Sorry to hear about your situation, I hope things get better for you.

Nothing to be sorry about; I do enjoy my work. I'm just extremely busy (multiple manuscripts to send to journals, all with deadlines).

Don't worry about insulting me, either. Reasoned arguments are a good thing.

  add on to your case about the CCS being able to use violence more freely, it's worth noting that while Cable News could be argued as a netural institution the AM Radio Station is most surely a conservative news establishment and a functional equivalent to the Liberal Guardian. Both organizations feature Arch-Conservative NPCs at the very least. It makes sense for CCS to have a built in advantage as far as press releases are concerned. I wonder if it'd be possible to have them actively hijack Cable broadcasts like the LCS does, or otherwise sprinkle in some activism with their ultra violence.

This is something I've been wondering about for a while, and how/if it needs to be represented. In RL, country radio stations are more likely to be conservative while urban news channels are more likely to be liberal. This is because rural people by-and-large tend to be more conservative/libertarian while urban people tend to be more liberal/statist, and their news agencies tend to match.

In Liberal Crime Squad, AM Radio and Cable News are pretty much copies of each-other with basically the same function and mechanics. That there should be two of them I think is necessary, since the possibility of having different mainstream news agencies pulling in opposite directions is definitely something that could or should be possible (just look at American media now...). Still, I'd like their mechanics to be more different than they are. Right now, they're different because they create different genres of movies. Any other suggestions on how to make them different would be welcome. I do think they should both be conservative at least at game start, though, if for no other reason than because their being conservative gives the LCS and therefore the player more things to do gameplay-wise.

I'll try to get a TV version of the save file stuff ready by the weekend.

That would be awesome! My cheat code routines can help with things like that, but it would be nice to alter the save file directly. That would solve a number of other problems, too.

[Taberone]

Maybe have stuff like random events related to AM Radio and Cable News that affect things politically? Something like AM Radio having a podcast about stories where responsible gun owners save lives (pushing public opinion on gun control to Conservative) or something? Technically, that kinda already sorta does happen with the random events that pop up in the newspaper, like an AM Radio Personality going bonkers and swearing a lot (or something like that) but those are rare IIRC.

[SlatersQuest]

They're rare but they're also quite powerful. Those random broadcasts have about the same effect strength as Liberal Guardian special editions!

They also don't really fit what I'm referring to, because they happen independently of whether AM Radio or Cable News are popular or unpopular. What I am referring to with regards to different mechanics is that there is some difference in how the game reacts to the player doing things at the AM Radio station or its people versus the Cable News station or its people. It could be as simple as the conservative influence of the two studios affecting different views, or site actions at these locations having different effects. Or it could be more complicated.

[Blood_Librarian]

Make it a new status screen that shows all the details of all the movies. I absolutely hate the fact that it makes me push more buttons to get through long periods of time. Maybe in the main screen, have it list a number of "unread" movies that are given, and when you push the buttont hat moves you to the movies screen, it lists off all the recently made movies along with the date they were amde and the needed details.

[SlatersQuest]

Make it a new status screen that shows all the details of all the movies. I absolutely hate the fact that it makes me push more buttons to get through long periods of time. Maybe in the main screen, have it list a number of "unread" movies that are given, and when you push the buttont hat moves you to the movies screen, it lists off all the recently made movies along with the date they were amde and the needed details.

Question - if you disband, do you still see movie-related stuff? If yes, then that's a bug and please give me a report of it. If no, then this is what disbanding is supposed to be for...

[Blood_Librarian]

havent actually played the mod since last year, actually.

[SlatersQuest]

havent actually played the mod since last year, actually.

That explains it. The mod has been updated. 

[IsaacG]

I'll try to get a TV version of the save file stuff ready by the weekend.

That would be awesome! My cheat code routines can help with things like that, but it would be nice to alter the save file directly. That would solve a number of other problems, too.

Here are the source files changed to allow for verbose save files.  The first are the changes to allow multiple saves.  The second adds in the plaintext save files.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/3cw65cq2h5dswyx/Terra+Vitae+Multisave+Changed+Files.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ci2g3xnnv452u5t/Terra%20Vitae%20Verbose%20Changed%20Files.zip

I commented out the part that adds labels to every individual skill, crime, and attribute, because of the changes to which skills and crimes exist it would have to be rewritten.  And it's flavor, anyway.  I didn't include a way to turn verbose saving off.  That's part of the debug_defines.txt, and that's a whole other ball game...
Have fun

http://www.mediafire.com/file/v4bk16au65a0qa1/Terravitae%201.42%20for%20Windows%20-%20With%20Verbose%20Saves.zip

[SlatersQuest]

Great, thanks - although, I am looking through the saveload.cpp file from the first link, but am unable to see how it is different from the version I have. It does not seem to write to a text file. Can you tell me what these changes do?

Thanks!

[IsaacG]

Great, thanks - although, I am looking through the saveload.cpp file from the first link, but am unable to see how it is different from the version I have. It does not seem to write to a text file. Can you tell me what these changes do?

Thanks!

format: PDF
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4su8mh5oi7a8755/20180228%20TV%20Assistance.pdf
format: ODT
http://www.mediafire.com/file/scnbttx54kqb6a2/20180228%20TV%20Assistance.odt

saveload.cpp doesn't change all that much.  Mostly it's titlescreen.cpp.
Also, overwrite
Terra Vitae Multisave Changed Files.zip
with
Terra Vitae Verbose Changed Files.zip

I'm not sure i was clear on that.  The second one changes saveload.cpp a fair bit, whereas the first one does less.  I probably should have set it up as a single download.

[SlatersQuest]

Still not clear (forgive me - I'm coming down with a cold). Should I replace the files in my mod with the ones in your verbose .zip, or manually edit the files using the .pdf you linked (or are both necessary)?