What features would you like in the Funding Thermometer?

ha ha yeah, I mean who honestly used personal armour by the time they had the avenger! =p

And red Muton man...

Not sure if this has been suggested in the last 6 pages, but if you're going to go to the trouble of adding a Soviet Weapons pack I'd really enjoy seeing it be usable at all times, not having to choose between the NATO and Soviet ones. I can understand it would be a bit disorienting to have two visually different styles of weapons at once, which I agree with, but if you used the black finish style of weapons instead of the wood-stock style that is most commonly known (particularly on the AK), I think they'd fit together fine. This would lend itself to having slightly different stats for them - most games lean to giving the Soviet weapons slightly more punch but slightly less refire/accuracy - but even if you leave them the same stats as each other, this would give community balancers twice the elbow room if they did want to make the ballistics tier more varied.

I totally agree with this idea! Honestly i was thinking to mod those as soon as it is possible to do so

While most of our (Russian) weapons in 79 were using wooden stocks/handles - new plastic variants were about to enter production. It is possible to assume that Soviets supplied the most advanced rifles/prototypes to the xenonauts.

AK-74. Looks different from current m16 rifle used in Xenonauts though: http://world.guns.ru/assault/rus/ak-74-e.html

SVD. Also a greatly different weapon compared to G3S: http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sniper-rifles/rus/dragunov-svd-e.html

RPG and current rocket launcher are almost similar: http://world.guns.ru/grenade/rus/rpg-7-e.html

A shotgun analogue can be an early KS-23. However i assume that Soviet analogue to shotgun is not that necessary: http://world.guns.ru/shotgun/rus/ks-23-e.html

Only PKM (as analogue to M240 used in Xenonauts) never had plastic stock, but wooden stock of PKM would be hidden under the arm/shoulder of the soldier in xenonauts. M240 and PKM look quite similar: http://world.guns.ru/machine/rus/kalashnikov-pk-pkm-e.html

I think that most of the people who are pre - ordering represent the most fanatical fans. there will be more than likely a lot of people holding back in fear of not receiving a game that will live up to their expectations or indeed that you will fold before the game reaches completion. my hat comes off to those who were the first to pre -order, with surely only your promise that their investment would one day reach fruition and to you guys for getting this far. As for me, I only found out about this game while seeing a random comment on the facebook xcom page a few days back and after seeing the video and seeing you guys are in the uk am willing to go premium, I can only hope more of the scroogy skeptics realize its not going to be a good game without our pre orders.

As for ideas to further ideas to rattle our money boxes, maybe offer the game on disk on its completion, Easter eggs like signs with the persons name on in game.

alternatively I would have thought there are government grants? and also surely more advertising would lead to more sales I would have contacted the people who are releasing the new jagged alliance to see if you can put a flyer in every game sold?

Hey Chris,

Here's what I think

1) Soviet weapon pack - this is a replacement pack for the starting weapons, which are currently NATO weapons, so they are Soviet weapons instead. The player will be able to choose one or the other at the start of the game and they are identical in-game.

That Should really be the last of your priorities. Sell it as a DLC later on.

2) Tileset Specific NPCs - the civilians would be dressed appropriately for the tilesets they are in, rather than having general purpose civilians across all the maps. I think this will give a better impression of geography rather than the feeling everywhere is somewhere in or around America that often happens in games. This will also extend to the local friendly NPC soldiers, which is part of the reason why we have the Soviet Weapon Pack - you'd want Russian or Arab troops armed with AK-47s and RPGs rather than NATO style weapons.

Maybe different civilians clothing, but still. It is something you might what to add afther a working game is out. The weapon that are in the game atm are prety generic. They don't really feel Nato or Warsaw. They are black, so are 1970 ak-74 ar AKM. PK really look like a M-60, they both stole the tech from Gremany, it's the same rifle, different stocks.

If you get a hit game it will be because of a nicely coded game, not fancy graphics (IMO)

3) Extra portraits - at the moment we have 25 soldier portraits. These repeat too frequently as is. I'd like to have 45-50 in the final game so there's more variation.

This is a more Direct approach to player interraction. I have these soldiers in may face all the time, all the games. It's a good one to put on the tops.

4) Alien Corpse Variations - at the moment we've got a corpse for each alien type, but as each variation costs about $50 each we've not done one for all of the different alien ranks (it'd cost several thousand dollars). Ideally though, we'd like to have a unique corpse for each alien race/rank combination that reflects their model.

Different corpse. Maybe, not a big deal for me.

5) Medals System - soldiers level up through combat experience at present, but there's no rewards for specific behaviour like getting seriously wounded in action, surving multiple missions or killing a dozen aliens. It'd be good to add a system where there were a dozen or so medals that soldiers could earn that would provide them small stat bonuses and add a little character to the troops.

Interesting Idea. Also, since we are the leader of the place, why not let us put a medal on the guy ourselves and give the top promotion. Somtimes, I got a Commander in X-Com wich was only there because he had Hi AP in early game but low moral and Psy defense ... a real liability compared to another one who was made out of Iron. Give me control on these things. I'll give a medal to my guys myself for "enter reason here" and nickname him Plasma Fodder!

Might save you a lot of Coding too.

6) Intro Movie - we don't have an intro movie at the moment. It'd be good to have one. I'm thinking something like the Homeworld one, which looks awesome but would also be affordable for us. It would cover the Iceland Incident and the origins of the Xenonauts, and maybe be 2-3 minutes long. Link to the Homeworld cinematic below as an example:

Movies are a must for promotion of the game. Good one.

I loved the Homeworld series. The movies make a very good use of flash with great emotionnal feel. However, they also went with a full orchestra and vocals. Might be a way to emulate that, but it's a BIG part of these video. To make it powerfull you will need something akin to that or something new that you invented.

7) Community Prizes - I want to encourage people to help us out in the beta, most notably with mapping and the game balance. Therefore I'd like to offer a $1000 prize for the best mapper and the best balance patch, as well as smaller prizes for other outstanding members of the community in areas like generally being helpful or bugfinding. I'm hoping that will get a few people involved (as well as get a little press coverage).

Good one, might want to carry it out when the game is done to get more people involved

8) Animated Ground Tiles - it'd be good to have some animated ground tiles for the ground combat, particularly in the UFO and the alien base. Glowing power cores and things floating in test tubes etc.

This one is important since it influence the immersion in the whole game all the time.

9) New GUI - This would basically involve rolling out the style of the Main Menu across the rest of the game. The idea is that instead of a glorified spreadsheet (which is how the game currently looks) we go for a more immersive hand-painted look that puts the player actually in the base. The layout of the screens wouldn't change that much, but I think it'd really improve the presentation.

I agree 100%. It is on of these first impression thing. When you hire a guy and he looks messy, it's a bad sign, right? Same goes for the game layout. It's really important to get this kicking ass, but not before you sort out what goes where. Sadly, you have to put that just before release.

10) Dynamic GUI - This is an improvement on the new GUI shown above. The basic idea is that your base and the personnel change as you perform in-game actions. As you research new technology, the people you're talking to change (so the head engineer might start with a blowtorch but by the end of the game has an alien cutting laser tool or something) and the backgrounds change too. So the research lab starts off looking pretty old-school but by the end has lots of advanced computers etc in it. I'd love to put this in.

Thats a cool idea. really is! Woa! Still, get this done last. I prefer having a working game that a fancy one.

11) Hire our staff full time - as mentioned above, this is the eventual aim. Having our lead coder go full time would help us immensely because he's working more than full time on his normal day job already and we're probably working at about 20-25% of the pace we could be because of that. Our weapon artist would basically be working for us at cost, which is pretty low given his rates for everyone else are about $100 an hour. Right now he's basically donating his time to us for free, which can't go on forever.

Well, i'll try a brainstorming here ...

hire your artist on a % of the estimated revenues? Get some promotionnal item in from companies like coke? Disney land , maybe more indy like games that are not in competition with your niche but renowed. I remember some games did that. Like doing a street stand with a poster promoting the game name with a retro design. Let you use their artist or some coder / ressource for a $ equivalent ...

Anyway, I'm interested to hear if people have any ideas for other stuff we can add (NOT female soldiers) that would add to the appeal of the fundraising, or any comments on the above.

Terminator girl like robots that shoots laser from their boobs!

Cybernetics might be an avenue to get your soldier back up fast at the price of a part of their soul. Looking in the eye of the beholder ... the more meat they gear up, the crazier they get!

The funding would hopefully come mostly from people buying Standard and Premium pre-orders of the game on Kickstarter at the normal price ($20/$30), but we'd have a few other levels of commit too. We'd probably have a $2 and $5 'tip' level where you don't really get much extra for your donation (perhaps a wallpaper or something), and then some higher ones.

Funding is always a hard liner, especially in a time consuming game like Xenonauts. X-COM came out from microprose under pressure after 3 years. 3 years full time for 2 coders and one artist ... it's a monster of a game. Eat you alive

I think if you keep promising a good product near the original (thats why we buy it, right?),

If you make it open minded for modders (a way to get these warsaw pack weapon for fre btw) you can actually do very well in pre order funding from a lot of artist / coders.

Did you think about doing like Mojang? This team make games, not Cash Cows. I would contact Notch or some of these guys. I think you could get along pretty well!

The higher ones would probably revolve around 'super-soldiers' which would have a 2% chance of spawning when you hire a new soldier. They'd have +5 to all their stats (so they're basically like a starting soldier). One level would give the super-soldier a chance to have your name and nationality, another would let you name it and choose a portrait, and the highest one would let you name it, choose a nationality and have us draw a portrait for it directly from your photo that you'd send to us.

I have no interest in super soldier. Maybe "improving" mine trough doubtfull drugs/implants but stll, are you still human afther so much thinkering or are you more like the ennemy you are fighting? Remember Syndicate from bullfrog studio? Well, that was an Evil Game but sooo damn cool!

So, yeah, thoughts? Do you like it? Does it come off as tacky? Interested to hear opinions.

Hope it help you get new ideas!

Keep up the good work

Your 2 cent critic

PLUCX

The incredibly misleading Xtreme Anime Smackdown?

I was young! Don't judge me!

9 - I really liked the look of the title screen so I can support this idea!

I think it's sounds good. Take my money! Especially if I get an art book, norweenies and credited

But yea, I'd rather you make the game even awesomer with the money than spend it on an art book, if it comes to that. You'll have it either way.

Well, you could gift the game to your friends if you want to spend more

Hey Chris,

Here's what I think

*long response*

I read through your comments and I agree with almost everything. Only thing a disagree with is the Medals part. I don't really think I would award soldiers medals myself, because it would be meaningless if I could do that whenever I want to. Also, I usually name one of the soldiers after myself, so I'd feel silly awarding myself with medals

I read through your comments and I agree with almost everything. Only thing a disagree with is the Medals part. I don't really think I would award soldiers medals myself, because it would be meaningless if I could do that whenever I want to. Also, I usually name one of the soldiers after myself, so I'd feel silly awarding myself with medals

The idea is to give you a way of recording special moments of awesome. (Like say when one of your guys survived a fire fight 1 vs 5+ aliens without a scratch and only carrying a pistol). not to give you bonuses. player awarded medals wouldn't have the associated bonus the game awarded medals have.

So that could be the Brass Cajones medal

I'm fully behind the fundraising going towards the proper reimbursement of the Xenonauts crew. Signed thank-you art sounds nice

Engaging players with the soldiers is something I would argue the importance of, as anything that can be done to give them a personality might enhance the tone that is being set in the game.

Therefore, more portraits is definitely the first (I hope it's the easiest too). The intro movie a close second, to help flesh out any missed detail. Medals are incredibly thorny (as seen on that thread), but worth it. I'd argue the passion with which it was discussed and debated makes it near and dear to our hearts.

Given the difficulty described in implementing new weapons, I suspect that will be something to put aside until funds are available. I quite like the idea of adding personality to soldiers by having people from different parts of the globe favouring certain weapon sets. So if Okim does mod in extra Soviet bloc weapons, I'd love to see it.

7 sounds great. Maybe up the ante, the reward (which is huge if i may say so) is not for mapping or balancing, but a whole "MOD" which is then converted to Xenonauts stock game. I.e. a small community is actually designing the games contents. I have often been thinking that many mods groups deliver a better "experience" that the developers do with a stock game.

Then again, you are already incorporating the community a lot. Thumbs up.

If a Soviet Weapons pack gets implemented, is there any way you could make it region specific? Instead of All the regions getting the soviet guns, only the Soviet Union, china and africa getting them while the rest get NATO guns still?

I think that would be pretty cool.

But if not, I'm still for Soviet Weapons cosmetics.

Hello,

Mike, NATO weapons are from several regions, and is not region specific weaponry (yes majority is US made).

R

What regions other than NATO are the weapons from? Because I meant for Europe and Australia and possibly South America to get them as well as the US.

I'm eager to see this thing kick-off.

Have you considered approaching some of YouTube's more notable LPers? Not necessarily the super huge one, but maybe several of the more moderate stars? paulsoaresjr, jefmajor, and VerbalProcessing, just to name a few that I follow. VerbalProcessing isn't the most well-known, as yet, but this guy does pro-quality commentary and reviews/previews not to mention a good deal of animation and talented projects of other varieties. He's growing quickly and I know that he would give a good showing of this game. Maybe you already have plans in-line with this suggestion and maybe they're better than what I have suggested. Either way, it seems worth mentioning.

So, was this thermometer ever created?

I really like no (10) Dynamic GUI.

it's not created yet, and I'm not sure when it will be. I think after v9, because that's supposed to be the press build, and if Chris wants to capitalise on the influx of new members then that would be the best time for it

Oh, ok. I'm holding off pre-ordering, and this is one of the 2 reasons (The second is I just bought a new game and don;t want my limited playtime to be too distracted with this awesome looking game). I would want to contribute more towards the project (willing to pay full retail £30 for it) and if this "tip" system was inlcuded I could do that.

agree, an intro movie isn't important to me at all.

It won't be very high production value simply because of the cost and I'd much rather have time/resources spent on the game experience other than something I'd be skipping after seeing once.

Not sure if this has been suggested in the last 6 pages, but if you're going to go to the trouble of adding a Soviet Weapons pack I'd really enjoy seeing it be usable at all times, not having to choose between the NATO and Soviet ones. I can understand it would be a bit disorienting to have two visually different styles of weapons at once, which I agree with, but if you used the black finish style of weapons instead of the wood-stock style that is most commonly known (particularly on the AK), I think they'd fit together fine. This would lend itself to having slightly different stats for them - most games lean to giving the Soviet weapons slightly more punch but slightly less refire/accuracy - but even if you leave them the same stats as each other, this would give community balancers twice the elbow room if they did want to make the ballistics tier more varied.

totally agree. They should perform slightly different in game too to provide additional tactical depth.

I don't think an intro movie would go with the feel of this game. I imagine starting a new game should have you, the commanding officer of the newly-formed international anti-alien unit, the "Xenonauts", being briefed on your mission. Have a few documents which sets up the back-story with accompanying photos and which tell you all about the Iceland Incident. Have it all be a bit dry to go with your first view of the geo-scape. With a intro movie, no matter how low-key it is, there will be a disconnect between when it ends and when you start playing by staring at a map. With a simple briefing the start will seem a bit abstract, you place your base, you wait a few days, you cut to a radar screen, you shoot down a plane, you finaly get to the ground combat and you think" oh my God, this is scary".

Perhaps if the chryssalids are in the game if you donate 300 dollars you get a plush toy of it that when you squeeze it it turns into a zombie

or vice-versa!