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April Status Update


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Thought I'd post something up as I've been a bit more distant than normal in the past week or two. Basically, we've been working really hard on the new build. Overall, it's been a mixed bag in terms of results.

The majority of my efforts are being sunk into adding the two new mission types - the Xenonaut Base Defence missions and the Terror Sites. These are both cool setpieces compared to normal UFO crashsite missions. If you've not played the original, fighting a base defence mission takes place in an exact replica of your Geoscape base and a Terror Site is an alien attack on an urban population centre.

The base defence mission has taken up the lion's share of our efforts, for obvious reasons. This mission needs quite a lot of co-ordination between both our Geoscape and Ground Combat coders to pass the layout of the base and the consequences of a mission (if structures have been damaged etc) to one another. More time consuming, though, is the coding that detects whether a structure has adjacent structures within the base or not, and adds walls / doors accordingly. If we didn't add that, there would be lots of doors opening onto bare rock etc in the game.

As of about an hour ago, this code is basically operational but requires some extra work to deal with the 2x1 tile buildings which can be rotated on the base building map and built in two possible orientations. There's also a few miscellaneous features for the mission type - the map starts revealed etc - that we need to add. I think in about three working days (mid next week) we'll have the coding side for the base defence done.

What's been holding us up, though, has been the actual tiles. We've got about 80% of the basic tiles done for the starting game rooms, but these are guide tiles to be painted over afterwards. We can set them up in the game and play with them, but they don't look very nice. Painting over them is going to take a while, unfortunately, and I'm not sure I'm willing to show off the tiles in the current state. I might get the walls and floors painted up for the starting rooms and then use the guide tiles for the props until they can be painted over.

Problem with that is that the artists are busy working on the terror site at the moment. The terror site missions are meant to be a bit more like proper warfare than the crash site missions. There's a Town tileset that is only used for terror sites, and there are no alien non-combatants on the map (nor do any start dead). So basically it's you against a large force of aggressive and well-armed enemies. The maps are designed for this - there's a lot of buildings, and we're going to have quite a lot of cover in the maps too.

The terror site is coming along. I've been working on the map (just one map for now) for three or four days on and off and I think I've found a relatively convincing layout. We started painting the ground tiles today and we've nearly finished the roads and pavements, so again hopefully the ground tiles will all be done next week. We've got two buildings in the tileset at the moment and are working on 2-3 more, but again these are just base tiles. They're quite good ones admittedly but I doubt we'll have the whole tileset painted over before the end of the month. There's going to be a lot of tiles in it. Hopefully we'll be able to show the tileset off as soon as the ground tiles are done though.

The other big thing that's been going on is Kickstarter. It is looking possible for us to get on Kickstarter, although it's going to involve incorporating a US subsidiary of Goldhawk and setting up a US bank account for that. Everything I've seen so far suggests that this will work and cost about $300, so is probably worth it. It'll be a lot of time for the person helping us set up the account though - I'm speaking to someone about it but I'll ask for volunteers if he decides he doesn't want to be involved for whatever reason. My new camera should also arrive next week, so I can think about starting working on the video then.

In hindsight, trying to generate two full tilesets in as many weeks was always going to be a bit hopeful and predictably we've not succeeded at that. We've made overall good progress, but it's been split across both mission types and that means I can't show either off right now. Really I should have just concentrated on the Terror Site from the beginning, but it's a bit late for that now.

So, yeah, we've made progress but unfortunately no Build V9.3 this weekend.

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Thanks for the update. No big deal about the 9.3 I think. You seem to have a lot on your plate and the KS thing isn't helping. You've never failed to keep us appraised of what's going on and that's what really matters I think. It's not the delays that people hate but the silence surrounding them.

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Once you have the terror tiles ready have you considered releasing them with a list of building types you would like?

I am sure there would be a few of us who could knock together a couple of houses or whatever you wanted to help out.

As long as the spectres are consistent between our versions you could always give them a quick look over and use them to fill any gaps.

Even if they don't make it past this particular test version it would be nice to see something we made actually be of use.

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It's not the delays that people hate but the silence surrounding them.

That's right We hate to sit and wait without any news. Now it's everything known so there is time to play V9.2 ;) It's weekend! :D

Good luck on the coding, painting and other stuff You do Gentlemen, and have a nice weekend.

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I have to do taxes this week, school loans and scholarships, plus online divers school. You go right ahead do what you got to do. Thanks for the update. That's one of the reasones I bought in. I always know whats going on. Well, with the project anyway.

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Wow, I missed the entire release of version 9.2! I was waiting for it to appear on the main page.

Either way, so excited to hear of the progress. I am guessing this will be too time consuming, but there will not be city specific buildings or anything like that in the terrir sites correct? (like Paris having at Eiffel tower) I know the original game did not have those, but I always thought that would be a cool feature.

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Now that 9.3 isn't arriving this weekend, I've started up 9.2 and I have to say: BIG KUDOS! It really is a substantial improvement over 9.0 (I skipped the .1 version as it seemed very buggy), especially with the Extended Soldiers Background mod. Now I've got Canadians, Cuban vets and even an Italian by the name of Lollobrigida :D

As a sidenote, I've read a current review of Xenonauts on a German gaming page, and while it was very positive, it was also skeptical whether there will be a release build this year, seeing as a lot of "higher level" content isn't in the game at present. I'd be very interested if that content is already existing, but not yet in the game, and what you, Chris, think about the odds of a release this year. Is it still within reach, or is it likely that the projection has to be shifted (especially with all that work of painting tiles, as I imagine there is still quite some to be done)?

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Once you have the terror tiles ready have you considered releasing them with a list of building types you would like?

I am sure there would be a few of us who could knock together a couple of houses or whatever you wanted to help out.

As long as the spectres are consistent between our versions you could always give them a quick look over and use them to fill any gaps.

Even if they don't make it past this particular test version it would be nice to see something we made actually be of use.

that can get complicated.

because you created the artwork and you don't have an employment contract than the intellectual property would legally be yours. If Goldhawk were to distribute it in the game, you could sue them. you would have to distribute it as an independent mod, or do some sort of public domain licence thing, or they would have to employ you or send royalties, ect.

now if you don't mind, I'me going to go stab myself because I've turned into a bureaucrat.

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I enjoy how brutally honest and candid you are with us in these updates. I know you don't tell us all the juicy details but you definitely keep us in the loop and it's much appreciated. Thanks so much not just for the update but for all the hard work going into the game!

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that can get complicated.

because you created the artwork and you don't have an employment contract than the intellectual property would legally be yours. If Goldhawk were to distribute it in the game, you could sue them. you would have to distribute it as an independent mod, or do some sort of public domain licence thing, or they would have to employ you or send royalties, ect.

now if you don't mind, I'me going to go stab myself because I've turned into a bureaucrat.

Artwork? wait do you mean like the actual art or are you like guaddlike talking about how the art provided by Goldhawkinteractive is put together in their mapeditor into submaps? Drawing new art versus mapdesign useing existing art.

Are designs by fans useing goldhawks artwork and mapeditor really the fans intellectual property? If so wouldn't a requirement that you give over the rights to goldhawk to be included in the submission for it to be used fix that particular legality?

Edited by Gorlom
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I should start by saying that I'me no expert, but from what I've seen of copyright law:

newly drawn sprites and tiles would be owned by the creator, unless s/he signed it away somehow.

stuff made using Goldhawk software is a gray airea, and the owner of that depends on the goldhawk tos, licence agreement, or whatever.

stuff that is made in a Goldhawk proprietary format by a non-associated artist could swing both ways, as goldhawk could sue because of patents/copyrights on that format, and the artist can sue because of copyright violation.

I thought that guaddlike was talking about the actual art for the tiles, but I suppose the point still stands.

I just want people to understand that Goldhawk can't legally take work done by other people without some proof that they allowed it.

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