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Expansions and DLCs


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I just bought the game from the Steam store and now read here that the developer "is done" with the game? What does that mean? That you're not planning any expansions at all?

One of my favourite games is Crusader Kings II and they now have forty DLCs, ranging from 1,5€ to 15€. Understandably, the game is quite different now compared to the original version but that's just good! I think it would be a shame to miss out on the opportunities that come with digital distribution to make smaller, lower priced expansions.

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To be honest, the modders have produced so much content that offical content would be hard to make without cries of "you've ripped a modder off!". While GH has indeed finished with Xenonauts, GH opened up the source code of the game to a band of community coders, and development now continues with the Community Edition of Xenonauts, which extends and opens the game up a lot more.

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Well, Most(not all) DLCs are just cash grabs, judging by what you said about CK2 having forty DLCs, I could almost buy five more games with that. From what I've believe on Goldhawk's decisions to make this game a moddable experience rather than stand in beside the corporate suit idea and take advantage of nostalgic dog tongue wagging,(and kudos to that, Chris). You can get mods in the forums here for free, and most of them are of good quality stuff made by passionate people. What's not to like, apart from a few imperfections here and there?

You could just grab the most current mods or just wait for more awesome things to come out, like new armours (From Max_Caine) or vehicles which I will soon be making a vehicular expansion pack (tee-hee :P).

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DLCs/expansions need to do things that modders can't. For instance, adding underwater 'ground' combat to Xenonauts. That's not something a modder can do, to my knowledge. Or it'd be a serious undertaking.

They can also be things that modders CAN make, say, expanding the research tree and aliens met, etc, but it being professionally done (i.e, Xenopedia pages for everything, etc) goes a long way. There are a lot of mods out now that add new weapons, armors and stuff, but nobody has made Xenopedia pages for them, nobody has made proper custom graphics (most of them are just modified vanilla graphics).

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DLCs/expansions need to do things that modders can't. For instance, adding underwater 'ground' combat to Xenonauts. That's not something a modder can do, to my knowledge. Or it'd be a serious undertaking.

They can also be things that modders CAN make, say, expanding the research tree and aliens met, etc, but it being professionally done (i.e, Xenopedia pages for everything, etc) goes a long way. There are a lot of mods out now that add new weapons, armors and stuff, but nobody has made Xenopedia pages for them, nobody has made proper custom graphics (most of them are just modified vanilla graphics).

The community edition modders has access to the source code, as mentioned. I don't know their background, but working with that instead of just the text files I'd assume they're pretty good coders. That means they have access to everything GH itself does and are able to do anything GH could, assuming they have the skills to do so.

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The community edition modders has access to the source code, as mentioned. I don't know their background, but working with that instead of just the text files I'd assume they're pretty good coders. That means they have access to everything GH itself does and are able to do anything GH could, assuming they have the skills to do so.

Well yes, but not everyone uses the community edition, and not everyone is a CE modder :-P

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Well yes, but not everyone uses the community edition, and not everyone is a CE modder :-P

Everyone can use the community edition, and if you're skilled and dedicated enough, I'm sure you can talk to GH/the CE team and apply to get into that team yourself ;)

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The Community Edition is not some magical super-secret thing. Anyone can apply for source code access, if you have some kind of background in development that is. Then you are free to work on X:CE, or make a branch and work on totally unrelated things. In principle, the Community Coders have access to everything that Goldhawk has done, and so can potentially add anything that Goldhawk could.

Modders are in no way incapable of producing professional content, either. Lore+ has Xenopedia entries and art, those are every bit as good as the Goldhawk-made ones. The additional maps made by Skitso are absolutely of high quality, many of them are in my opinion better than Goldhawk maps.

The main reasons why certain additions are not going to happen are technical. First, as it has been repeatedly said, the game engine is really, really bad for this kind of game. Xenonauts is built on an engine that should have never been chosen in the first place, and that is no longer supported or even available. In addition, there is the typical technical debt.

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The Community Edition is not some magical super-secret thing. Anyone can apply for source code access, if you have some kind of background in development that is. Then you are free to work on X:CE, or make a branch and work on totally unrelated things. In principle, the Community Coders have access to everything that Goldhawk has done, and so can potentially add anything that Goldhawk could.

Modders are in no way incapable of producing professional content, either. Lore+ has Xenopedia entries and art, those are every bit as good as the Goldhawk-made ones. The additional maps made by Skitso are absolutely of high quality, many of them are in my opinion better than Goldhawk maps.

The main reasons why certain additions are not going to happen are technical. First, as it has been repeatedly said, the game engine is really, really bad for this kind of game. Xenonauts is built on an engine that should have never been chosen in the first place, and that is no longer supported or even available. In addition, there is the typical technical debt.

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