ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: HELLGATE LONDON

[Ross Scott]

Halloween Game Dungeon!  This is a game I was always considering making an episode of before, so this year I tackled the beast head on.  Have a Happy Halloween!  New special "Halloween hangover" episode coming in a few days!

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[Swamp]

2 episodes in 3 days. I feel blessed

[kerdios]

I'm sorry you had to leave a piece of yourself in hell just to give us a video, at least you got out of there fast enough to not lose most of yourself to it.

The thing with the unusable equipment always drive me nuts, it feels many many times like the game is doing that on purpose (probably so you'd have to trade in multiplayer with your teammates, but as you say it's completely moronic to do it also in single player). I've played "torchlight 2" a few months back and about 60% 80% of the higher tier equipment that dropped was unusable or unfitting for my class! Especially when it comes to sets!

Edited October 31, 2020 by kerdios (see edit history)

[RCDv57]

Um, actually...

In Warhammer 40k they also use swords because swords don't run out of ammo. When fighting Tyranids, Orks, Chaos, or pretty much anything, there's a good chance that they have more people than you have bullets. And yes you can run out of bullets with a laser gun.

The Chernobyl show also brought this strategy was brought up. Two men with guns vs over 100 miners. Miners only have melee weapons, but they'd totally win. Not enough bullets.

 

You still kinda gotta be all kinds of crazy and/or desperate to use a sword in a gunfight though.

[kerdios]

5 minutes ago, RCDv57 said:

Um, actually...

In Warhammer 40k they also use swords because swords don't run out of ammo. When fighting Tyranids, Orks, Chaos, or pretty much anything, there's a good chance that they have more people than you have bullets. And yes you can run out of bullets with a laser gun.

The Chernobyl show also brought this strategy was brought up. Two men with guns vs over 100 miners. Miners only have melee weapons, but they'd totally win. Not enough bullets.

 

You still kinda gotta be all kinds of crazy and/or desperate to use a sword in a gunfight though.

I'm not sure that's true, in goblin slayer they claim that an average sword breaks after 3 fights.

[RCDv57]

1 minute ago, kerdios said:

I'm not sure that's true, in goblin slayer they claim that an average sword breaks after 3 fights.

I don't think that's true... but it is backed by Breath of the Wild.

And Katanas are known to be very easy to bend... hmm...

 

But also factor in that the average 40k guardsman will either immediately break and die... or never break.

They also aren't the ones who normally get to use the swords thou.

If you're a lady then you can probably get a sword. Not a lady guardsman. That's different.

 

But they should all be using spears. Spears are really good weapons.

[Im_CIA]

6 minutes ago, RCDv57 said:

Um, actually...

In Warhammer 40k they also use swords because swords don't run out of ammo. When fighting Tyranids, Orks, Chaos, or pretty much anything, there's a good chance that they have more people than you have bullets. And yes you can run out of bullets with a laser gun.

Not going to lie, the more I hear about the 40kverse, the smoother my brain becomes. Is their entire empire logistically challenged like the Red Army from 1942?

[kerdios]

5 minutes ago, Im_CIA said:

Not going to lie, the more I hear about the 40kverse, the smoother my brain becomes. Is their entire empire logistically challenged like the Red Army from 1942?

Pretty much, yeah
Also it has insane human experimentation units/corps.

5 minutes ago, RCDv57 said:

I don't think that's true... but it is backed by Breath of the Wild.

And Katanas are known to be very easy to bend... hmm...

 

But also factor in that the average 40k guardsman will either immediately break and die... or never break.

They also aren't the ones who normally get to use the swords thou.

If you're a lady then you can probably get a sword. Not a lady guardsman. That's different.

 

But they should all be using spears. Spears are really good weapons.

are all spears javelins?

Edited October 31, 2020 by kerdios (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

I always thought that in Warhammer universe looking cool just magically makes you more powerful, because the whole world is a mix of interwoven physical and psychological stuff. E.g. orcs' sincere belief in that their crude machinery should work actually makes it work, against all laws of physics. And just like that, human ships looking like Catholic cathedrals ACTUALLY make them quantifiably stronger. So it's the same with swords - they look cooler than guns, thus they are OBJECTIVELY MORE POWERFUL than guns.

[Icebox]

2 videos in a few days, nice!

[Im_CIA]

4 minutes ago, kerdios said:

Pretty much, yeah
Also it has insane human experimentation units/corps.

 

Sounds pretty dumb. They can field massive fleets of FTL warships and build floating cities, but can't afford the most basic shit like ammunition? Which means they have to adopt some kind of medieval military doctrine for the front lines. 

 

Russia today can barely afford one put-put diesel carrier but still manages to export a small arms cornucopia. 

[kerdios]

6 minutes ago, Im_CIA said:

Sounds pretty dumb. They can field massive fleets of FTL warships and build floating cities, but can't afford the most basic shit like ammunition? Which means they have to adopt some kind of medieval military doctrine for the front lines. 

 

Russia today can barely afford one put-put diesel carrier but still manages to export a small arms cornucopia. 

If you'd check out some of their adversaries you'd understand why their supply lines are tattered messes.
They have to fight space orcs, space ants/roaches, space rebels and all this under the insane dictatorship of some lich dictator with a brain in a jar. XD
That is, they can afford it, they just can't supply it to the front lines fast enough. And (I think) they consider human lives cheaper than ammunition XD

Edited October 31, 2020 by kerdios (see edit history)

[RCDv57]

19 minutes ago, Im_CIA said:

Not going to lie, the more I hear about the 40kverse, the smoother my brain becomes. Is their entire empire logistically challenged like the Red Army from 1942?

Actually it's worse. Worse than you can imagine.

 

They once decided to bombard a city for a full 24 hours with 50,000 massive artillery guns firing nonstop.

The amount of ammo needed took up more space than the rocky mountains do. It took them more than a year just to transport all the ammunition to the planet. Not to mention all the spare parts and barrels needed to keep the guns functioning for the full 24 hours. Entire regiments of soldiers reassigned just to carry stuff all day because there were not enough vehicles to get the job done.

 

Then once they started firing the solders had to go underground in bunkers they built in preparations for the event. The endless sound and resulting shockwaves not only deafened them but threatened to tear the soldiers completely apart.

 

The punchline is that the city was so heavily shielded that the bombardment didn't really do anything, making the whole thing a pointless waste of time and money.

 

8 minutes ago, Im_CIA said:

Sounds pretty dumb. They can field massive fleets of FTL warships and build floating cities, but can't afford the most basic shit like ammunition? Which means they have to adopt some kind of medieval military doctrine for the front lines. 

 

Russia today can barely afford one put-put diesel carrier but still manages to export a small arms cornucopia. 

No they get bullets. I think the standard guardsmen is expected to carry 3 battery packs for their flashlight lasgun. Thats a couple hundred shots. Many of them do break this rule and bring as much ammo as they can get their hands on.

Its just that the other guy just has a frankly stupid amount of people.

Edited October 31, 2020 by RCDv57 (see edit history)

[Im_CIA]

Look, all I'm saying is that Nicholas Cage once armed half the world without sporting giant pauldrons.

[Skarwind]

2 hours ago, Swamp said:

2 episodes in 3 days. I feel blessed

He loves us.

[Maldrasou]

I remember beating the game with what ever class that let you summon a minion that you could give a weapon to, I think it was an engineer not 100% thou. That was my only time spent with the game and from watching ross, I think the game just had crappy class balance imo.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

The templar at the intro cutscene looks a lot like Uther from the Warcraft universe, and I think that might be intentional considering ex-Diablo devs worked on this game. Also, I think Civvie 11 would snap even more if he covered this game considering the amount of sewer levels and that a lot of the levels are copied and pasted, so it gets a little confusing...

 

I have a theory of why the game became such a chore for you: I think that despite this game giving you the choice to play it in singleplayer they never balanced it around that, unlike Diablo, Borderlands, or any other game like it where the enemies only get "beefier" depending of the number of players in the session. And if it's true, I don't know if it was out of pure laziness, lack of time because the publisher was pressing the devs to release it sooner, or if they did that on purpose to force more than one people in a group of friends to buy the game. (and since EA is the publisher, I think the latter is the most plausible)

 

And speaking of multiplayer, based on what you showed, this game gives me huge The Division vibes. It has the same logic: You can play it alone, but it's only fun when you are playing and messing around with friends, and the dialogue, plot, and characters are incredibly generic. Well, at least Hellgate: London has demons, not generic human baddies that somehow survive many bullets.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Kaiosama TLJ (see edit history)

[Veyrdite]

I didn't just watch this Ross, I felt it.

 

This game deserves to be cheated.

 

Cheating: memory editors

 

Q1: Is your XP shown clearly as a number onscreen somewhere?  (I'm not watching that video again!)

Q2: Does this game bother to implement anti-cheat? (I'll presume not as the trainer partly worked)

 

A memory editor (like CheatEngine on Windows) will let you search for that XP number step by step and then let you edit it live; no need to use someone else's trainer. 

 

EDIT: Don't download the version from the cheatengine website, it's silently bundled with crapware in order to earn money for the author.  This apparently started happening a few years back, it's been a long time since I used Cheatengine/Windows.  Technically you are asked permission & agree to it if you read through the entire EULA, but there is no checkbox or opt-out (I just had a look).  Ratchet has links to builds without this crapware bundled in the next few posts of this topic.

 

This process takes a few minutes of you iteratively performing steps like this:

 

1. Search for values in the game's memory that are equal to my XP
2. Play the game for a bit to increase my XP slightly
3. Search again for the new XP value to narrow down the list
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until we only have a few results that reliably reflect my XP as it changes
5. Set value of these locations to any number you want.

 

Lots of guides on the web to this effect.

 

Once you have found the correct memory locations to edit: you can keep changing the values in these locations until the game decides to re-arrange data.   This typically happens on player death, on game load and on map transition; but it depends on the engine design.  Who cares, your changes should be permanent anyway

 

If the game doesn't show your XP as an exact number

eg if it's shown as a progress bar instead; then things are a little bit more annoying.  Searching will take longer and will require more iterations, but it should still take less then 10 minutes (if you don't accidentally make mistakes and end up with 0 results, which happens):

 

1. Snapshot all of game memory (I've forgotten what this is called in Cheat Engine)
2. Play game for a bit to increase XP slightly
3. Narrow down list by searching for "increased values"
4. Play game for a bit and DO NOT increase or change XP (eg walk for a few seconds)
5. Narrow down list by searching for "equal/same values"
6. Repeat steps 2-4 until we only have a few valid-looking results
7. Set value of these locations to any number you want

 

If the game implements anti-cheat

Common forms include:

• Game detects you attaching a debugger (like Cheat Engine) & closes
• Memory values are scrambled or moved around regularly to annoy you

IIRC Cheat Engine has some workarounds for the former.  Dealing with the latter is more painful and probably not worth it; don't try and escape hell by going to niflhel.

 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Veyrdite (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

This is probably the smoothest Halloween RGD production I remember. Pretty much all previous episodes were either done under horrible crunch and released at the last second, or the initial plans were trashed and Ross had to activate plan J or K.

 

I guess Ross just slowly accustomed himself to Ross Time?

 

[capritsuno]

Hell yeah! I was really hyped for this game back in the day...