SS2 No Keypad Cheese - No more metagaming passcodes

[66432bd46608dsarge945]

If you have technical feedback, or gameplay ideas, or other feedback to offer, I really appreciate it. But I don't see the purpose of your post other than to point out that you can't hack keypads. Umm... Yes. You couldn't hack keypads in vanilla either (except for a few, which are all still hackable with this mod). The only thing you CAN'T do is memorise the passwords, which has absolutely nothing to do with hacking and everything to do with metagaming, reduction of which is entirely the purpose of this mod.

If by "hacking" you actually mean "guessing" well...Lets see here. The majority of codes in the game are 5 digits. That gives you a 1/10000 chance of guessing with 1 attempt. This is realistically a non-factor when it comes to the "gameplay feel" of System Shock 2. In order to guess a code, a player would have to be astronomically lucky. Even with 3 attempts per code, you are very likely to complete the entire game without ever guessing a correct passcode. The only possible exception is the 00000 code, but that's already been discussed to death in this thread and I stand by my original theory - it's supposed to be hacked, given that the hacking information kiosk is right next to it and it's the first hackable panel most players will find in the game, so the 00000 code seems more like an oversight than a deliberate code choice. But even if codes were supposed to be guessed, having the player stand around for minutes at a time punching random numbers into a keypad, to me at least, sounds like really awful gameplay design and I respect the developers of System Shock 2 enough to think that they aren't stupid enough to actually design their game around that sort of gameplay. Deus Ex contains many codes which are realistically supposed to be guessed, and in all cases hints are present in the maps. You can guess Maggie Chow's code by her note about Tai-Fung being an invalid passcode. You can guess the key to the Dragon's Tooth Sword based on her birthday, which you find in a datacube. System Shock 2, on the other hand, offers absolutely nothing. There are no code clues whatsoever in the entire game. There is no puzzle to solve. Instead we have people suggesting guessing is a "real" mechanic because it's present in other immersive sims where the developers have actually put in the effort to realise it as a real mechanic. System Shock 2 is NOT comparable to other games in this regard.

In short, I understand you're trying to give your perspective on this kind of mod, but your criticism doesn't seem particularly relevant to the actual mod itself. Your issue seems more like an issue with the vanilla game. If you don't have a technical issue and aren't actually requesting changes on gameplay grounds, then there's probably nothing I can do to really address it inside of the mod.

[66432bd466228sarge945]

@voodoo47 I have finally fixed this for SCP5, including the new transmitter code notes.

Can you please transfer the downloads and nuke the old files?

EDIT: actually, maybe keep 1.2 for the few people still using SCP b4. This now reads every qval for deck 5 from 10 to 25, so if they were used for anything else then this is incompatible with scp4. Everything else should be fine with either version of SCP

[66432bd466412voodoo47]

it would probably be better to remove v1.2, as we don't really support outdated mod combos. so whoever has b4 with the corresponding mods is recommended to finish the current game in progress, and then just update everything to the latest build (b5/v1.3 in this case).

[66432bd46671csarge945]

it would probably be better to remove v1.2, as we don't really support outdated mod combos. so whoever has b4 with the corresponding mods is recommended to finish the current game in progress, and then just update everything to the latest build (b5/v1.3 in this case).

I agree, but certain mod authors STILL haven't updated their mods to work with the latest SCP version, giving a compelling reason to still use SCP 4 for some people. Hell, I only updated this yesterday and SCP 5 has been out for months.

[66432bd466857sarge945]

So has anyone actually had a chance to play this since the new version?

I guess no news is good news, but it's somewhat frustrating as a mod author to have lots of people giving feedback when something doesn't work, only for everyone to go silent when a fix comes around - how am I supposed to know if the fix actually works if everyone stops talking about it?

Life of a software developer, I guess.

[66432bd466984voodoo47]

still better than seeing your meticulously crafted mod having less downloads than something that turns the waste barrel into a puke-colored turd.

[66432bd466aafsarge945]

This mod has way less downloads than the peanut-butter-and-bricks interface mod, so there's that.

[66432bd466b9fvoodoo47]

at least we are having fun.

[66432bd466dd7ZylonBane]

The issue with this particular mod is that there's barely any practical use case for its primary function. It's pretty much only useful for players who:
- Have all the keypad codes memorized,
- And lack the self control to not enter codes before finding them,
- But somehow do have the will to seek out and install a mod to stop themselves.

So yeah. If you want better uptake, I'd rebrand this as something like "Keypad Enhancement Mod", touting the HUD display of found codes as the main feature, because people like mods that add functionality instead of taking it away. Then maybe offer variants with and without the anti-cheesing function.

Also only offer the most current version for download, and PM a mod to roll over the download count when you update.

Also also, was this thread moved directly over here from Engineering? It's usually a better idea to create a new, uncluttered thread when going "live" with a mod.

[66432bd467c36sarge945]

The issue with this particular mod is that there's barely any practical use case for its primary function. It's pretty much only useful for players who:
- Have all the keypad codes memorized,
- And lack the self control to not enter codes before finding them,
- But somehow do have the will to seek out and install a mod to stop themselves.

I think you'd be surprised how many people this is.

Most players don't have all the codes memorized. Just 1 or 2. But that's often enough to cause problems already. I have literally had people install this because of the 00000 code and no other reason. The medsci2 armoury code is especially important.

This mod is in the vein of QBR Breaker, as well as other mods for other games. These sorts of "anti-cheese" mods will always have an audience because, despite sounding counterintuitive, it is actually easier to install a mod to fix the issue than it is to not abuse them.

I guess you can chalk it up to human nature, or lack of self control, or whatever. My theory is that it's much harder to ignore a clear advantage when it's presented to you, even if you think it's unfair, than it is to prevent the advantage in the first place.

So yeah. If you want better uptake, I'd rebrand this as something like "Keypad Enhancement Mod", touting the HUD display of found codes as the main feature, because people like mods that add functionality instead of taking it away. Then maybe offer variants with and without the anti-cheesing function.

There's no real point offering the non-cheese version since people might as well use this one, and rebranding this will mean that the people who ARE specifically looking for the no-cheese functionality aren't going to know that it's some secondary function of a QoL codes mod.

If it was all just about pure download counts, you're right, this mod is not the most popular idea and a pivot to QoL is likely to generate more clicks. But I think it's more important to service this specific niche, which is a small but significant portion of SS2 players.

I'm mainly annoyed that I got a bunch of "it's broken" posts after SCP b5, then fixed it, and didn't get a single "it's fixed now" post, so I have absolutely no idea if my fix actually worked or not other than it working on my machine (which as we all know, isn't a good standard for developers to use).

Also only offer the most current version for download, and PM a mod to roll over the download count when you update.

Normally I do this. My other mods usually only offer the latest version. If there's an experimental beta that's usually available too. In this case, SCP b5 is still new enough that some important mods haven't been upgraded to be compatible with it yet, so I want to keep the old version around for people who are still using SCP b4. I will probably remove it once more mods have made the transition.

Also also, was this thread moved directly over here from Engineering? It's usually a better idea to create a new, uncluttered thread when going "live" with a mod.

I was under the impression that this was standard procedure. All of my mods have done this. I don't mind having "cluttered" threads personally, so it's not a big deal.

[66432bd467d7fvoodoo47]

yeah, unless there is a ton of clutter, topics are just moved from Engineering to Modifications. but this is not set in stone, so if the mod author wants to start a new one, sure..

[66432bd4682e9ZylonBane]

I'm mainly annoyed that I got a bunch of "it's broken" posts after SCP b5, then fixed it...

What was the problem anyway? Other than the art codes, nothing else with keypad codes should have been changed in B5.

[66432bd4684bdStingm]

There was one in engineering that didn't work. I believe he fixed that with this version.

[66432bd468919sarge945]

What was the problem anyway? Other than the art codes, nothing else with keypad codes should have been changed in B5.

I don't know if it was specifically related to B5, or was a longstanding issue, but the OnKeypadDone function seemed to behave differently than expected. The mod was coded with the assumption that OnKeypadDone was only called when the keypad was successfully opened. As a result, the "Locked" variable was being set to FALSE to disable the code display messages on the HUD, but the code was never actually being changed back to the old code, because that was supposed to be done in the OnQuestChange function when the qvar changed. This discrepency broke the keypads because the Unlock function checks for the "Locked" variable to be set otherwise it aborts.

This was pretty well tested at the time and seemed to work pretty well. Multiple people played multiple playthroughs with it and it seemed fine. As soon as B5 came out, I noticed the OnKeypadDone function was being called every time the keypad was frobbed, for some reason, and so was breaking them. Honestly it should have been breaking every keypad in the game, not sure why people were still reporting some of them working, so maybe it was unreliable.

Either way I did a minor rewrite and now OnKeypadDone isn't used at all.

If you're interested, I have included the new and the old versions of the script. The DML is unchanged between versions.

[66432bd468ad3ZylonBane]

Oof. Should have looked at the SCP keypad helper. Hooking into KeypadDone is how it adds playing an error beep when the wrong code is entered.

Code: [Select]

function OnKeypadDone() {
local mCode = message().code;
local code = GetProperty("KeypadCode");
if (mCode == code) {
SetData("Opened", true);
playSuccess();
}
else {
Sound.PlaySchemaAmbient(self, "no_invroom");
}
}

[66432bd468bd2sarge945]

In that case, I wonder why it worked with SCP B4 at all...

[66432bd468cf4ZylonBane]

Schrödinbug.