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for peanuts? Those must be some mutant big peanuts!

Gone are the days when people enjoyed games for the games I guess, rather than the memory chugging graphics that most of them feel they have to have.

I mean look at Valkeria Chronicles, one of my favourate games of all times, and yet that was not hyper realistic graphics at all! And the content in the story, from a small nation fighting an empire, to tones of racism. Sure it ran on the PS3, but I've seen many games in my time that are just as potent games, and that isn't because of the graphics

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pixels > polygons!

fix the sory, atmosphere and gameplay first.

screw the graphics! as long as you can see whats what it doesnt need to be uber fancy. nice graphics is nice but not at the cost of all the other aspects of the game.

(the monkey island series is a good example. the 2D versions were awesome. the fourth game was horrible BECAUSE of the 3D. the MI episodes worked but i missed the 2D. I do believe it would have been better in 2D)

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for peanuts? Those must be some mutant big peanuts!

Gone are the days when people enjoyed games for the games I guess, rather than the memory chugging graphics that most of them feel they have to have.

I mean look at Valkeria Chronicles, one of my favourate games of all times, and yet that was not hyper realistic graphics at all! And the content in the story, from a small nation fighting an empire, to tones of racism. Sure it ran on the PS3, but I've seen many games in my time that are just as potent games, and that isn't because of the graphics

well i am not 12 anymore, my days of playing green beret and golden axe arcade are well gone, you woulndt enjoy oblivion/ fallout 3 and skyrim without good graphics, good graphics enable better inmersion, if coders dont sort gameplay issues games will fall, it has to be both things these days, even the developers of this game have hinted a completely new engine for "the next game..." i think 3D,

if it takes so much effort to animate pixels that you cant afford female soldiers that should say something.

nostalgia is really nice sometimes until you watch it back as an adult, then you mostly feel dissapointed, how many people play elite/shogun/medieval totalt war 1 these days? consistenly and for real?...... i think is time to move on with the new times

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you woulndt enjoy oblivion/ fallout 3 and skyrim without good graphics

you are obviously modding the hell out of oblivion and fallout 3 if you think the graphics in those games are good...

good graphics enable better inmersion, if coders dont sort gameplay issues games will fall, it has to be both things these days

As I said, Valkeria chronicles has a hand drawn art style, not super realistic graphics. Yet despite that the game brought me right in, and I loved every minute of it. Immersion was there, even though I was never fooled into thinking that I was really there...

even the developers of this game have hinted a completely new engine for "the next game..." i think 3D
The next game Goldhawk is going to do isn't going to be Xenonauts 2. Rather Chris hinted that in hindsight 3D graphics would have been a better option to begin with
if it takes so much effort to animate pixels that you cant afford female soldiers that should say something.
Female soldiers are not in for a number of reasons, though I will admit that the cost of rendering anything with the current engine is supposed to be expensive. It's a limitation of the engine, rather than the animation really, at least as I understand it
nostalgia is really nice sometimes until you watch it back as an adult, then you mostly feel dissapointed, how many people play elite/shogun/medieval totalt war 1 these days? consistenly and for real?...... i think is time to move on with the new times

I think that's a bit of a hard sell on these forums. There are many, many, people on these that still play the original 2 X-Com games, and are not hindered by the graphics. Even though there are newer, prettier, 'successors'

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Mostly because the 'successors' are incredibly buggy or have replaced major parts of the game. Or both!

Cyllan, can you please check what you're typing before you post it? Its a bit hard to read sometimes.

As for this frankly ridiculous and boring argument (again), they both have good and bad. The simple graphics of earlier games were due to limitations of the hardware and could make it difficult to understand what's going on. So they put more work into the story. I quite like them, but they can be hard to adjust to, and pixel dreams are fairly annoying.

Most modern games are garbage imagination-wise. Interactive movie my ass, I'd rather a book. They are however reasonably fun, with the current trend towards some modicum of 'realism' so they are easy to pick up and play.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm trying to figure out how to win a game of Castles 2 and finish the Forsworn Conspiracy quest in Skyrim.

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Valkyria Chronicles had great graphics. :| It's not about the resolution, the colors, the polygons at all; it's about this .. X-Factor .. thing. Like one saying he loves high-res large breasts .. but then he falls in love with a girl with small breasts but you think "hey wait, large breasts wont fit with her due to her frame .. small breasts suit her much better" ..

It just needs to feel right. X-Com managed that, Dune 2 managed that, Day of the Tentacle, 320x200+256colors, but they managed to make the characters look alive and have emotions! Syndicate definitely managed the blade runner atmosphere. .. X-Com has great graphics. (I mean it has females!! So modern!! /wink ). Xenonauts has good graphics. Limit of hardware is not a reason for 'poor' graphics.

(yes, my personal dream is X-Com+Syndicate having a baby. I'd love to turn my FEMALE humans into mindless cyborgs and blow up buildings with gauss cannons killing aliens <3 )

For Xenonauts it's edging to having the x-factor .. the drawings are absolutely wonderful .. but it's lacking this 'it's alive' feeling. It all feels a tiny bit too static (sorry). I'd love to see more .. movement.. going on. more lights, or computer/tv's blinking. Syndicate had ingame commercial signs for example. Windows shattering, cars driving, lights blinking.

Same with geoscape; I love the map and most things are awesome .. but with the 'super high' resolution you're watching, there's not much.. movement.. for the eyes. Hard to describe.

Lower-res games tend to have this problem less, for some reason.

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They tend to be blurry so your eyes add details. They only really have to suggest them. That and not many used the same subdued palette that Xenonauts does :D.

That said, having little animations really would help make the world feel more alive. I think Apoc had the lack of this as a problem as well. It was really static, compared to EU's random glowy objects and their pulsing, and all the hundreds of moving, twitching alien objects in TFTD (Especially the bases. Damn things were hypnotic). TFTD isn't a great example (it had heaps, bubbles coming off everything), but EU is a good example. Very little actually moved (just some of the plants in the bases I think), but the lighting, and the pulsing of the power sources, entertainment and whatever those red ball things were added some nice atmosphere. And eye candy.

OT: I think you may be the first to actually use the word 'breasts' on this forum ;).

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They tend to be blurry so your eyes add details. They only really have to suggest them. That and not many used the same subdued palette that Xenonauts does :D.

Yes, you're right; same way as some girls are less sexy being bare naked, and more sexy if they wear certain clothing leaving things to imagination. (hah!)

Higher resolution leaves less room for interpretation so it takes a lot more effort to do right.

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The obvious answer must be glowy flashing things that make you feel like you're playing an acid trip. All those new-fangled popular 'casual' games make it seem so.

I have no idea if I'm being sarcastic, I've been listening to the victory song from the 1st part of Chapter 27 of my LP for 3 hours. Not even sure if I can walk anymore...

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Animated tiles are something we'd like to put in the game, but are something we'll address at the end of the development cycle if they're going in. They expensive, non-essential and time consuming, but they would certainly liven the maps up considerably.

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We already have idle animations done for the models but we're rendering them last.
.. cuz its expensive, non-essential and time consuming...? :P

Is there a feature/defect tracker besides this forum which we can see what have been picked up on and what the priorities/severities are? I wonder what's on top of your queues and it makes it easier not to make duplicate suggestions/defects.

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Is there a feature/defect tracker besides this forum which we can see what have been picked up on and what the priorities/severities are? I wonder what's on top of your queues and it makes it easier not to make duplicate suggestions/defects.

I too would love to see something like this. Maybe a sticky in suggestions similar to the bug list that includes planned features and what version you plan to implement them. Then include features which you like, but may not be able to add without additional funding/time. This way people see the direction things are headed, what features are planned, what could be added with additional premium pre-orders and what isn't planned so they can make their suggestions.

Sathra???

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Sadly not. It's all just inside my head and on the multitude of lists I have dotted around my hard drive.

Text files with Caps names, the most critical ones on your desktop in between your shortcuts, and more text files either in your project directory or in the C root? Or if you're modern, Excel sheets. :-D

I might make a planned features list, but it'd takes ages to fill up, since I can't directly remember everything (I remember by association).

It'd be faster and more complete if Chris did it.

Suggest you guys look into a comfortable easy tracker first and avoid 'workaround' solutions like forum stickeys, XLS sheets or whatever, as it's a pain to maintain since it's a pain to update every x times a day. Tracker just need to get used at first, but ultimately it will save you time & frustration. Like Bugzilla, Mantis or Flyspray. Find a PHP one and hack it the way u like.

Better sooner than later, because later you'll get even more people playing and the number of defects will increase drastically and if you're still using text files or xls sheets, you'll spend more time maintaining those than actually fixing defects. :(

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