The "Microtransactions" Mod
Posted in SHAR: Mod Showcase
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Fluffy I've moved the mod to our official downloads, available here now: https://donutteam.com/downloads/Microtransactions/
I've moved the mod to our official downloads, available here now: donutteam.com/downloads/Microtransactions/
Cars For Speed I guess now I won't be able to play Electronic Arts games without thinking they'll offer some downloadable content that no players will want to buy in order to enhance their game experience,
I guess now I won't be able to play Electronic Arts games without thinking they'll offer some downloadable content that no players will want to buy in order to enhance their game experience, especially for a new Simpsons game. XD
[deleted user] Pardon for bump but I have tried the mod a couple of days ago and found slightly disappointing. The idea is great but the execution could be better. Here is what I think of the mod:
Like I said, the i
Pardon for bump but I have tried the mod a couple of days ago and found slightly disappointing. The idea is great but the execution could be better. Here is what I think of the mod:
Spoiler
Like I said, the idea is great to make fun of the Microtransactions system and Epic Games launcher that I both really dislike and are what plague the gaming industry these days, along other things that I won't mention since there are so many things wrong in the gaming industry these days, such as Pre-Order bonuses, Expensive DLCs, etc. However I will just say that the amount of coins required to purchase the required cars and clothes is too exaggerated, in my opinion.
As seen in Some Bot's spoiler, the Plow King costs a million of coins. This wouldn't be too bad if you are playing with the Starting Coins hack to set you the maximum starting number of coins right at beginning of the game because you can buy it. Which if you are wondering, the maximum amount of coins possible in SHAR is 9999999. If you set higher than that or you collect a single coin afterwards, the game will crash because can't display 10 millions or more. A bit useless info about my past but I remember back when Lucas Tweak was available in 2007 and after managing to reach around 750000 coins legitimately (using the glitch that causes police to not chase you anymore when using Mission Select, combined with the Monster Truck in Level 5) and getting tired of that and then I discovered Lucas Tweak (around same time I also found out about the cheats), I found the option to edit my save which by that time I had 2 million coins, as since I got the tweak first time, I found a slightly faster way to get coins by modifying the traffic cars to get destroyed on contact, combined with the cheat code that causes the other vehicles to explode when you touch them. So then I set it to 9999999, which was the maximum it could accept.
That is when I found out about limitation, where collecting a single coin after that would crash the game. It made my game unplayable but I could easily edit the value back. That kinda made collecting coins useless, so I gave up on using that save editor and collecting coins altogether. I doubt anyone managed to reach maximum amount of coins legitimately (without any cheats and hacks and mods, not sure about the no police glitch if it's acceptable, I know that Wager Race in level 7 can give you 200 coins if you complete it with the traffic hearse which is actually a decent vehicle despite the Hard difficulty given and a legit way to get extra coins quickly, also in past two years I found an interesting method by watching speedrun videos about kicking the cola crates at film studios in Level 6 while using Mission Select to reset them, though that method would require starting a new game since in my 100% save I destroyed every single destroyable object that doesn't come back).
Now back to Microtransactions mod, I was hoping that setting up 9999999 starting coins and also having Unlock All Missions hack enabled would be enough to be able to purchase everything (while being careful to not pick up any extra coin that crashes game). I assumed all these 10 required items are priced at 1 million. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The amount of coins required for later levels items is insane. In level 2, Mr. Plow costs 4 millions and in level 3 the School Bus costs 9 millions. Forgot how much the Cool clothes cost (probably somewhere around 9 millions too) but anything in level 4 and above are far too much than what you can have in the game. With the level 7 zombie car being some incredibly insane number, probably somewhere above 1 billion!
Now before anyone says anything, I know the mod is supposed to be a joke and not to be taken seriously but I was hoping it would at least be playable...with the two hacks mentioned earlier and not caring about the rest of the game, just using Mission Select to warp to the specified missions, after starting a new game, then purchasing the necessary items, cancelling mission and moving on to the next mission that requires an object to purchase.
Interestingly, I also found a bug. I don't know if it was intentional or not but this mod doesn't use a new directory for saves, instead it uses the vanilla SHAR saves directory, which means you can just load your 100% completed save and play the missions like normal. Not that I played any of the missions, I just started them to see the requirement message and the Epic Games icon. That's all I did when I tested this mod, nothing else. Oh and I reminded of another inconsistency: the amount of coins mentioned in the warning message in later levels isn't specified properly, it was different than what shown at the buying screen. Like in last level, I think the Zombie Car was said to cost 999999999 or something like that, yet at the buying screen it was more than a billion.
With that said, this mod would have been better released as an April Fools joke, instead of how was released during summer. And if there are any plans for updating it, I hope to take care of the issues mentioned above, as well as my own suggestion of setting up the prices for each item which I will mention below. I think even 10000-100000 coins would have been enough because in vanilla game it is very difficult to get so many coins in a short time, unless you use the hack to start game with more coins.
Here is how I would have personally priced each item, while still retaining expensive pricing but made possible to buy everything with the Starting Coins hack set to maximum value mentioned above:
Level 1 Mission 3 - Plow King - 100000 coins
Level 2 Mission 6 - Mr. Plow - 200000 coins
Level 3 Mission 4 - School Bus - 300000 coins
Level 3 Mission 5 - Lisa Cool - 350000 coins
Level 4 Mission 3 - Marge Inmate - 400000 coins
Level 4 Mission 6 - Marge Police - 450000 coins
Level 5 Mission 3 - Car Built For Homer - 500000 coins
Level 5 Mission 4 - Apu American - 550000 coins
Level 6 Mission 6 - Globex Super Villain Car - 600000 coins
Level 7 Mission 2 - Zombie Car - 1000000 coins
That means the total coin requirement would be: 4450000 coins. Anyone that sets starting coins to this value or higher, means that all of these can be bought, while still retaining the high prices that this mod offers. I personally think this would have been much more fair and still give me a laugh, though I have a feeling the insane prices were made on purpose so people can't buy everything even with the Starting Coins hack set to maximum.
Overall, a nice joke mod that could have been executed better.
Also a minor request to Lucas for future versions of the Launcher: Is it possible to fix the maximum coins crash by either restricting maximum number of coins to 9999999, so that picking up more coins doesn't crash the game or alternatively, raise the limit so 10 million or more is possible, probably increasing limit to something like 999999999 like in GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. I propose the first option for now, restricting to just 9999999 is fine.
As seen in Some Bot's spoiler, the Plow King costs a million of coins. This wouldn't be too bad if you are playing with the Starting Coins hack to set you the maximum starting number of coins right at beginning of the game because you can buy it. Which if you are wondering, the maximum amount of coins possible in SHAR is 9999999. If you set higher than that or you collect a single coin afterwards, the game will crash because can't display 10 millions or more. A bit useless info about my past but I remember back when Lucas Tweak was available in 2007 and after managing to reach around 750000 coins legitimately (using the glitch that causes police to not chase you anymore when using Mission Select, combined with the Monster Truck in Level 5) and getting tired of that and then I discovered Lucas Tweak (around same time I also found out about the cheats), I found the option to edit my save which by that time I had 2 million coins, as since I got the tweak first time, I found a slightly faster way to get coins by modifying the traffic cars to get destroyed on contact, combined with the cheat code that causes the other vehicles to explode when you touch them. So then I set it to 9999999, which was the maximum it could accept.
That is when I found out about limitation, where collecting a single coin after that would crash the game. It made my game unplayable but I could easily edit the value back. That kinda made collecting coins useless, so I gave up on using that save editor and collecting coins altogether. I doubt anyone managed to reach maximum amount of coins legitimately (without any cheats and hacks and mods, not sure about the no police glitch if it's acceptable, I know that Wager Race in level 7 can give you 200 coins if you complete it with the traffic hearse which is actually a decent vehicle despite the Hard difficulty given and a legit way to get extra coins quickly, also in past two years I found an interesting method by watching speedrun videos about kicking the cola crates at film studios in Level 6 while using Mission Select to reset them, though that method would require starting a new game since in my 100% save I destroyed every single destroyable object that doesn't come back).
Now back to Microtransactions mod, I was hoping that setting up 9999999 starting coins and also having Unlock All Missions hack enabled would be enough to be able to purchase everything (while being careful to not pick up any extra coin that crashes game). I assumed all these 10 required items are priced at 1 million. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The amount of coins required for later levels items is insane. In level 2, Mr. Plow costs 4 millions and in level 3 the School Bus costs 9 millions. Forgot how much the Cool clothes cost (probably somewhere around 9 millions too) but anything in level 4 and above are far too much than what you can have in the game. With the level 7 zombie car being some incredibly insane number, probably somewhere above 1 billion!
Now before anyone says anything, I know the mod is supposed to be a joke and not to be taken seriously but I was hoping it would at least be playable...with the two hacks mentioned earlier and not caring about the rest of the game, just using Mission Select to warp to the specified missions, after starting a new game, then purchasing the necessary items, cancelling mission and moving on to the next mission that requires an object to purchase.
Interestingly, I also found a bug. I don't know if it was intentional or not but this mod doesn't use a new directory for saves, instead it uses the vanilla SHAR saves directory, which means you can just load your 100% completed save and play the missions like normal. Not that I played any of the missions, I just started them to see the requirement message and the Epic Games icon. That's all I did when I tested this mod, nothing else. Oh and I reminded of another inconsistency: the amount of coins mentioned in the warning message in later levels isn't specified properly, it was different than what shown at the buying screen. Like in last level, I think the Zombie Car was said to cost 999999999 or something like that, yet at the buying screen it was more than a billion.
With that said, this mod would have been better released as an April Fools joke, instead of how was released during summer. And if there are any plans for updating it, I hope to take care of the issues mentioned above, as well as my own suggestion of setting up the prices for each item which I will mention below. I think even 10000-100000 coins would have been enough because in vanilla game it is very difficult to get so many coins in a short time, unless you use the hack to start game with more coins.
Here is how I would have personally priced each item, while still retaining expensive pricing but made possible to buy everything with the Starting Coins hack set to maximum value mentioned above:
Level 1 Mission 3 - Plow King - 100000 coins
Level 2 Mission 6 - Mr. Plow - 200000 coins
Level 3 Mission 4 - School Bus - 300000 coins
Level 3 Mission 5 - Lisa Cool - 350000 coins
Level 4 Mission 3 - Marge Inmate - 400000 coins
Level 4 Mission 6 - Marge Police - 450000 coins
Level 5 Mission 3 - Car Built For Homer - 500000 coins
Level 5 Mission 4 - Apu American - 550000 coins
Level 6 Mission 6 - Globex Super Villain Car - 600000 coins
Level 7 Mission 2 - Zombie Car - 1000000 coins
That means the total coin requirement would be: 4450000 coins. Anyone that sets starting coins to this value or higher, means that all of these can be bought, while still retaining the high prices that this mod offers. I personally think this would have been much more fair and still give me a laugh, though I have a feeling the insane prices were made on purpose so people can't buy everything even with the Starting Coins hack set to maximum.
Overall, a nice joke mod that could have been executed better.
Also a minor request to Lucas for future versions of the Launcher: Is it possible to fix the maximum coins crash by either restricting maximum number of coins to 9999999, so that picking up more coins doesn't crash the game or alternatively, raise the limit so 10 million or more is possible, probably increasing limit to something like 999999999 like in GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. I propose the first option for now, restricting to just 9999999 is fine.