100.000s of sprites; why not realtime render?

I haven't bought or played any version of this game yet; still considering it.

It looks really great on the screenshots and the stories.

However my 'fear' currently is that I see a lot of good hand drawn art work and the GUI stuff looks very nice, but I worry that this game might be just a whole box of art with a tiny bit of gameplay. I.E. awesome artists combined with average programmers (no offense).

My biggest question is; I've read somewhere all the soldier sprites (which are apparently over 100.000) need to be pre-rendered etc, etc. .. But Why would you go the sprite way ?!

I'm looking at all the screenshots and wonder two things:

- Those sprites are 'tiny', why would it take so long to prerender. (3 servers need several months?! Huh?!)

- Those sprites don't burst with high details, why not just render them ingame in 3D and stop limiting yourself so much; Render them like 'borderlands or TF2' does, then they don't need high polygon count and probably look very similar to what you have now

By limiting the game so much by using sprites, you took away so much freedom; you can have males/females, africans/caucasians/chinese; you can mix procedural movements; much easier to introduce armor types and guns.

And that's what worries me; you sacrificing possibilities for what reason? Personal preference or lack of knowledge?

Seeing as this game is not too unknown, it should be possible to get some money from pre-orders and hire a guy to build that; and i'm pretty sure there's prebuilt simplistic engines already.

If there's a worry 3D looks crappy; yes it can look crappy, it's why I really dislike UFO:Afterlight, etc. But it's because they also did the entire environments in 3D, which makes me lose sight. I think the best bet for an X-Com clone would be Isometric 2D environments with 3D animated characters.

Anyway, just my two cents. To balance it of, this has been the best X-Com clone I've seen so far, but that's mainly because I see the GUI and hand-drawn art has the right atmosphere.

But strongly reconsider the sprites thing.

Its due to all the other work that's been done. Re-doing it with a 3D engine (its currently sprites due to the game engine used) would pretty much require starting from scratch all over again.

Thank god for the sprites. I woudln't consider this game if the units were 3D rendered. I'd just go with UFO extraterrestrials and be done with it. IMO it's the sprites that gives this game it's charm.

Its due to all the other work that's been done. Re-doing it with a 3D engine (its currently sprites due to the game engine used) would pretty much require starting from scratch all over again.

Correct me where I'm wrong but doesn't it merely just require a 3D renderer and you render it on the current existing 2D Isometric map. From which again there's probably already premade libraries out there.

Since the sprites are 'rendered' I assume that means they're already 3D to begin with, and assuming you have to render all the movements, you already should have the animations?

I would suggest considering it; because you will keep hitting a wall where you can't get past due to the limits you're already excessively fighting by needing to prerender so incredibly much.

I mean to quote Chris from a related topic: "would look like we'd done a half-assed job" .. How isn't spending so much time generating 2D sprites from 3D characters a half-assed job?

Thank god for the sprites. I woudln't consider this game if the units were 3D rendered. I'd just go with UFO extraterrestrials and be done with it. IMO it's the sprites that gives this game it's charm.

Um, as far as I know they're prerendering the sprites; so they are 3D to begin with. The only difference it's not rendered real time in the game and they changed into sprites. That's generally not a very good thing :-) Visually there shouldn't be much difference.

Except that it allows the option of females, different races, custom suits, etc. That's not something you would just not consider because 'i don't like 3D'

Again, you are right in the fact UFO Extraterrestrials did it completely wrong .. but that was, like avatar vs. alice in wonderland, 3D done the wrong way.

Yes, the sprites are 3D models that are rendered out and post-processed to add a border so they have a slightly more cartoony / stylised appearence. The only advantage they have over 3D models is that they require less processing power, so the game will run on a more basic machine.

The main problem is the engine; it's not a very good piece of kit. Perhaps it would be possible to hack in some features so it can display 3D models, but that would take time. Right now we've got everything in place to do the renders (I even bought the servers this morning) and we know the pipeline works, so it makes sense to stick with that.

But even if you had asked me a couple of months back, the simple fact is that we have excellent coders, but we don't have access to them all the time. Our lead coder was the lead coder on the latest Heroes of Might and Magic game, and he's pretty damn good. But would I rather have him code a 3D engine into the existing engine, or get the game mechanics done so we can get the game finished? The latter makes more sense.

We made mistakes in the beginning when I had no idea what I was doing, and unfortunately you reach the point where you just have to crack on and finish the game despite the fact it's not going to be perfect. You can always make it better if you start over, but you've gotta finish it at some point.

We made mistakes in the beginning when I had no idea what I was doing, and unfortunately you reach the point where you just have to crack on and finish the game despite the fact it's not going to be perfect. You can always make it better if you start over, but you've gotta finish it at some point.

Or else you end up with Duke Nukem Forever or Dikatana.

Then lets hope for Xenonauts: TFTD in the future from Chris and his team in full 3D

Yes, the sprites are 3D models that are rendered out and post-processed to add a border so they have a slightly more cartoony / stylised appearence. The only advantage they have over 3D models is that they require less processing power, so the game will run on a more basic machine.

The main problem is the engine; it's not a very good piece of kit. Perhaps it would be possible to hack in some features so it can display 3D models, but that would take time. Right now we've got everything in place to do the renders (I even bought the servers this morning) and we know the pipeline works, so it makes sense to stick with that.

But even if you had asked me a couple of months back, the simple fact is that we have excellent coders, but we don't have access to them all the time. Our lead coder was the lead coder on the latest Heroes of Might and Magic game, and he's pretty damn good. But would I rather have him code a 3D engine into the existing engine, or get the game mechanics done so we can get the game finished? The latter makes more sense.

We made mistakes in the beginning when I had no idea what I was doing, and unfortunately you reach the point where you just have to crack on and finish the game despite the fact it's not going to be perfect. You can always make it better if you start over, but you've gotta finish it at some point.

Thanks Chris, appreciate your candid answer.

"post-processed to add a border so they have a slightly more cartoony / stylised appearence"

Yeah so it reminded me of Borderlands/Valkyria Chronicles where they don't have complex 3D art but add a cartoonesk style over it. Which is good, because trying to reach realistic 3D is a mistake many game dev's make. Another game that done simple 3D really well is "Evil Genius".

"But would I rather have him code a 3D engine into the existing engine, or get the game mechanics done so we can get the game finished? The latter makes more sense."

Getting the Game finished always makes more sense, as long as you do not sacrifice too much gameplay/quality to get it done asap. I understand your choice.

Here's three yogscast movies who recently streamed them playing X-Com; for inspiration:

1. X-Com: They all look like Guile

2.X-Com: Chuck Boris

3.X-Com: Captain Jungo

Thanks,

Marcade

FYI i did buy it now and played it for a short while. But I probably first scavenge the forums before giving suggestions. I saw many suggestions were already given.

I also read there's a new GUI coming up? That's my main gripe atm. The fonts, buttons and checkboxes are too small and it's missing the feeling where you know what to do without needing to read a manual. I'm totally new to the game so I have to rely on the GUI to be easy-to-understand. For example by giving the Clickable text a different color from un-clickable text. And or/clearly highlighting buttons/what's clickable. Also I'd love to be able to scroll the screen by grabbing the world by keeping my right mouse button pressed and then drag. Both ingame and geoscape.

oh and aliens can run through walls when the walls are stilll covered in fogofwar? Some alien escaped through a fence I think.

Ah, wonderful. Those little GUI niggles are really helpful. The 'old guard' have been playing the builds so long that we don't notice them as readily (and with the old forums gone, all the old discussions about it are as dust in the wind).

As for scrolling, any reason for R-click dragging over L-click dragging? The current method is L-click.

Doing it in geoscape might be hard without changing how the combat and shooting works a bit. You can use the WASD keys to scroll though, which was something requested previously.

The new geoscape GUI is intended to be in the theme that the main menu is. Period-themed with clipboards and advisers and paper.

oh right it-s l-mouse in geoscape. However in combat it's currently only the wasd/arrows which already been reported, way too slow. Also it's probably good practice to make sure everything can be controlled by mouse only, not relying on keyboard. I mean that's why you generally have all those buttons onscreen below in the middle, right? (about that; i cannot tell what's clickable or not there, esp. since some features seem disabled. )

in geoscape there's a difference between l-clicking (selecting) and l-hold (dragging). I figure you can do the same thing in combat with r-mouse, which currently seems only to change direction of the selected puppet.

The main menu theme is nice but also lacking. The mouse point seems to be a targetting rectangle which is not ideal to select things with; i think a 'regular' arrow is preferred. Also as reported before it's hard to select things; it would help if options highlight when hovered above them.

Combat scroll speed can be increased by changing the Scroll Speed setting in the /assets/config.xml file (near the bottom). Perhaps if a few of you want to try a few settings to find your preferred value, and post it up here? If they're all in the same region then I'll just update the default.

It's easiest if you load the game in debug mode for this, as it loads up a combat mission about 2 days into the game without having to shoot down a UFO. Is somewhere in the region of 800-1000 more usable?

We'll put more customisation options in the game options later on in development but it'd be good to have a reasonable baseline to work from first.

There has been a game that merged really fine 2D graphics with 3D actors. It's been Temple of Elemental Evil.