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Yeah, the Chimera, Cerberus and Manticore just became the Light, Medium and Heavy Drones.

The enemies that were cut were the Scuttlers and the Juggernaut, which was a three storey tall Godzilla-style Andron vehicle that would only appear on Terror missions. Looked like this (at in-game size): http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/juggernaut2.png

EDIT - and this was the Scuttler: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/scuttler.jpg

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Scuttler went because the design is too spindly to work properly at the game scale - it's only a tile wide and not very tall, so you couldn't really see any detail. I experimented with turning it into a two tile robo death spider but it doesn't do anything that the Medium Drone didn't already do.

The Juggernaut went because the thought of doing multi-tile enemies vertically as well as horizontally gave the programmers headaches just thinking about it. Also, the terror sites in the game were meant to be more like conventional warfare when the design was concepted - but we've increasingly realised that that just doesn't feel very X-Com (the current terror sites suffer a little from this at the moment). So there wasn't really much need for them and we cut them out.

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Do you have any sprites (or ingame screenshot) of the scuttler? I think seeing details might be overrated and that something small spiderlike could work very well indeed, without it beeing clear/relying on how pretty it is. Less might be more ^^

Aah, too bad about the Juggernaut. I would have liked to see a multi storey enemy. The concept fascinates me, but I can see how troublesome that might be. :(

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Could you imagine it moving? The game would have to lock the screen at 3 stories high, and in my minds eye I could see painful issues where a third of the thing moves faster than the other two thirds (Apocalypse springs to mind, actually).

Maybe it could be scaled down to 2 storeys and 1 tile base? ^^

Ah one can dream =)

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Yeah, the Chimera, Cerberus and Manticore just became the Light, Medium and Heavy Drones.

The enemies that were cut were the Scuttlers and the Juggernaut, which was a three storey tall Godzilla-style Andron vehicle that would only appear on Terror missions. Looked like this (at in-game size): http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/juggernaut2.png

EDIT - and this was the Scuttler: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/scuttler.jpg

I *KNEW* it was a four legged spider!

Damn, it's too bad they had to go.

Maybe we should do a Kickstarter next year for the "Xenonauts: Terror Within" expansion, featuring the Scuttler and the Juggernaut as well as the Reaper Hive terror mission!

Just a thought. ;)

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I *KNEW* it was a four legged spider!

Damn, it's too bad they had to go.

Maybe we should do a Kickstarter next year for the "Xenonauts: Terror Within" expansion, featuring the Scuttler and the Juggernaut as well as the Reaper Hive terror mission!

Just a thought. ;)

I would but I'm already too busy throwing money at the screen now. ;)

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i registered just to make this post

Why did you not simply make the Juggernaut a copy and paste of the Hunter Scout car, but give it a really tall graphic? There is no need to program anything differently. Give it a 3x3 base the same as the scout car, give it stats as appropriate, and give it a very tall sprite animation. Program it to only be on outdoor tile sets, and to only stay outside.

There is no crazy programming issue with line of sight (the game does not know or care what it sees from. only that it has a radius it can see) or with hit box's. If there is some problem with LOS its simple. Give it flat sight on all tiles in X distance around it. Period. If that means it can see through roofs then it can see through roofs. Heat vision. Whatever.

It strikes me as either lazy or incompetent that you run into the problem of multi-story enemies or really a "large" enemy at all and just gave up and scrapped the idea. You can not intend to keep the game to infantry only on the alien side can you? Nothing but 1 tile 1 story enemies because it is too difficult for you to do other wise?

Similar to the spider, if a 1x1 tile did not offer the fidelity of detail needed then why not a 2x2 for a small fast light enemy? Why not a 2x2 that spawns much smaller 1x1 enemy's that run at the enemy and explode?

As someone with some years of programming training, i am finding myself regretting my purchase of a few days ago and i now question whether or not you are capable of producing this game to the full potential that it has. If i were you i would immediately focus on resolving whatever issue i have with the engine supporting enemy's more than one tile big.

Because essentially, this thread says "There will only ever be 1x1 tile enemy's."

You already have a game that has no vertical height at all. (so no putting a sniper on the roof to shoot down into a parking lot)

Now you are ok with a game that has no enemy's other than reskins of infantry?

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Because essentially, this thread says "There will only ever be 1x1 tile enemy's."

You already have a game that has no vertical height at all. (so no putting a sniper on the roof to shoot down into a parking lot)

It says nothing of the sort, nor are we lazy or incompetent. There are already multi-tile enemies (horizontally) in the game, and there are also jetpacks that let you put snipers on roofs and other terrain.

Edited by Chris
message delivered a little bit more diplomatically
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It says nothing of the sort, nor are we lazy or incompetent. There are already multi-tile enemies (horizontally) in the game, and there are also jetpacks that let you put snipers on roofs and other terrain.

Or the stairs or the balconies and such. There's height in this game, albeit sparsely used. Used well, though.

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i registered just to make this post

Why did you not simply make the Juggernaut a copy and paste of the Hunter Scout car, but give it a really tall graphic? There is no need to program anything differently. Give it a 3x3 base the same as the scout car, give it stats as appropriate, and give it a very tall sprite animation. Program it to only be on outdoor tile sets, and to only stay outside.

There is no crazy programming issue with line of sight (the game does not know or care what it sees from. only that it has a radius it can see) or with hit box's. If there is some problem with LOS its simple. Give it flat sight on all tiles in X distance around it. Period. If that means it can see through roofs then it can see through roofs. Heat vision. Whatever.

It strikes me as either lazy or incompetent that you run into the problem of multi-story enemies or really a "large" enemy at all and just gave up and scrapped the idea. You can not intend to keep the game to infantry only on the alien side can you? Nothing but 1 tile 1 story enemies because it is too difficult for you to do other wise?

Similar to the spider, if a 1x1 tile did not offer the fidelity of detail needed then why not a 2x2 for a small fast light enemy? Why not a 2x2 that spawns much smaller 1x1 enemy's that run at the enemy and explode?

As someone with some years of programming training, i am finding myself regretting my purchase of a few days ago and i now question whether or not you are capable of producing this game to the full potential that it has. If i were you i would immediately focus on resolving whatever issue i have with the engine supporting enemy's more than one tile big.

Because essentially, this thread says "There will only ever be 1x1 tile enemy's."

You already have a game that has no vertical height at all. (so no putting a sniper on the roof to shoot down into a parking lot)

Now you are ok with a game that has no enemy's other than reskins of infantry?

So you are ok with copy/pasting the scout car but not copy/pasting infantry?

Your first section makes very little sense.

"There is no need to program anything differently" followed almost immediately by "Program it to only be on outdoor tilesets, and to only stay outside" both of which would require reworking a lot of the ground tiles as well as added coding to support.

What about outdoor tilesets that have trees or overhanging buildings, lamp posts, signs etc?

All of those would require some kind of exception to prevent the tall sprite passing through an area it should not fit.

A month or so before the release candidate is not the time to be making large code changes with the potential for introducing more bugs and requiring an overhaul of both the tile system and the level creating tool at a minimum.

Anyone with years of programming training would be able to tell you that.

Line of sight is a very important part of a game like this yet you want to throw it away and make some lame excuse to cover it?

With your suggested "solution" no one would be able to fire on the behemoth in front of them because they would be completely blocked by small objects less than a third of their size.

The enemy would also be unable to fire on your soldiers they could clearly see because there was a knee high wall in the way.

Unless when you throw out the strategic line of sight you were also suggesting they should be able to attack through all tile types as well to cover the other major flaws in your suggestion?

I would suggest that spending years developing the game would tend to disprove your lazy insult and the fact that the game is this close to release would also show incompetence is unlikely.

If the dev team had thrown in the half considered features you suggested then I would definitely have had to consider how their sanity was being affected by the stress of game development.

As others have said there are already enemies and friendly vehicles that are 2x2 tiles in size or greater so your final point is not only invalid but poorly informed.

The issue is not with large enemies but purely with tall enemies.

You are free to put a sniper on a roof if you can access the roof, if not then a top storey window will have to do.

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i registered just to make this post

Why did you not simply make the Juggernaut a copy and paste of the Hunter Scout car, but give it a really tall graphic? There is no need to program anything differently. Give it a 3x3 base the same as the scout car, give it stats as appropriate, and give it a very tall sprite animation. Program it to only be on outdoor tile sets, and to only stay outside.

There is no crazy programming issue with line of sight (the game does not know or care what it sees from. only that it has a radius it can see) or with hit box's. If there is some problem with LOS its simple. Give it flat sight on all tiles in X distance around it. Period. If that means it can see through roofs then it can see through roofs. Heat vision. Whatever.

It strikes me as either lazy or incompetent that you run into the problem of multi-story enemies or really a "large" enemy at all and just gave up and scrapped the idea. You can not intend to keep the game to infantry only on the alien side can you? Nothing but 1 tile 1 story enemies because it is too difficult for you to do other wise?

Similar to the spider, if a 1x1 tile did not offer the fidelity of detail needed then why not a 2x2 for a small fast light enemy? Why not a 2x2 that spawns much smaller 1x1 enemy's that run at the enemy and explode?

As someone with some years of programming training, i am finding myself regretting my purchase of a few days ago and i now question whether or not you are capable of producing this game to the full potential that it has. If i were you i would immediately focus on resolving whatever issue i have with the engine supporting enemy's more than one tile big.

Because essentially, this thread says "There will only ever be 1x1 tile enemy's."

You already have a game that has no vertical height at all. (so no putting a sniper on the roof to shoot down into a parking lot)

Now you are ok with a game that has no enemy's other than reskins of infantry?

God Jesus are you obnoxious. Forget the fact that the current code team is working with an engine terribly suited to the game. Forget the fact that what the original coder produced has been, to the best of my recollection, completely discarded and reworked. Forget the fact that there are medium and large drones, which are 2x2 and 3x3 respectively. Forget all that. You're suggesting that a month before they want to actually release the game--the game that they said they'd release almost two years ago (not that we're impatient at all, Chris. We Kickstarter backers are more than willing to wait for the polished final product)--you're suggesting that the team spends its precious time futzing around trying to make one enemy work instead of, Christ, I don't know, making sure the rest of the game is good? Yeah, you sure have "years of programming training"; Java doesn't count. It's the equivalent of saying that you know how to produce lifelike sculptures because when you were a kid your mum praised your stick figure drawings. Go poke around in the code for Open X-Com for a bit, then come back and tell us how easy this is, jerk.

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When i made my post i had not run into anything at all other than infantry and had owned the game all of 3 days. I was reading around to learn more about it when i found his post, and the tone and vernacular lead me to believe that the entire game start to finish was Cesarans, Sebillians, and Androns, with each race having one "add on" unit. Reapers for the lizards, drones for the androns(after i saw one).

Second, im not ok with just copys of the scout car. I meant that for the code side. The game does not care if it is Object.Reaper or Object.HunterScoutCar. to the game, it is just objects, flags, variables, ect.

So you copy paste the section of hunter scout car code, hit ctrl f, and change it to behemoth. then you have the pointer for the sprite graphic simply be, a larger graphic. You now have a working behemoth that is 5 stories tall. Then you simply apply a few other lines of code that tell it to not try to go indoors, to not spawn on base defense or base assaults, ect. basic things to keep it outside. For firing lines, yes, it can hit anything it sees because it is SO high up cover is meaningless to it. So you just give it 100% blanket vision, 100% blanket ignore cover.

to ensure soldiers can do the same, you put in a line of code that says "if i can see them they can see me". boom. done. now soldiers can fire on the skyscraper anytime it is in vision range.

This is really not that difficult at all, you can pre-vis the code out in pseduo-code like you learned in high school out easily enough. It cant be that hard to translate it to real code.

I also want to point out, after running into medium and large drones, that those ARE essentially "copies" of the hunter scout car. You could use the same code, the same tile widths, the same stats even if you wanted, just reskin the graphic and boom its a new enemy. Tweak it after its in so it does not feel like an exact replica and your golden.

And there is no way this is getting done in a month. From what i have heard from people much later in the game that i have watched stream it, psionics is heavily bugged giving aliens essentially free los past walls, range, ect, making psionics godlike.

the battle rifle is one shotting anything even in the best armor at range

aliens shoot through the celing in multi level ufos regularly. They also target me through smoke alot of the time it seems.

aliens shoot through walls on some maps. like noclip shoot through it.

so much of the xenopedia and research screens reads ####. Even on the v20 experimental build.

And you would rather they put their time into making new graphics for the menu splash screens rather than put in the scrapped enemies or solve other issues?

Im not trying to be an asshole or a jerk. I am trying to be honest, unbiased, and come at these issues from an realistic point of view. Try to be an adult here. There is too much work to do in one month to be ready. The game does not even have difficulty levels implemented. That is not a "quick thing". The game is hardly balanced right now.

After filling out the rest of the xenopedia, and putting in descriptions for all the ## it will take at least a month to plan out and implement all 4 difficultys. It will take another 2-3 months of playtesting those and tweaking them to get them to a playable level of difficulty. It could take another 6 months of slow balance changes to get the game into any kind of stable good state that players are happy with.

This game will NOT be done by christmas. They simply have too much on their plate to make that deadline. I would aim for summer of next year, maybe spring if they put in overtime very week.

They could just finish the pedia, slap some pictures where placeholders are, ship it live with 4 fake buttuons for difficultys, and then patch them in as they finish them post-release quietly. But that is shady and if they got caught, bad pr.

They could ship with shit difficulty options and just balance them post release. the more probably option if they aim for christmas.

But i dont see the bug fixs being done by then. No way. Not unless they already have them all fixed.

im gonna go try to figure out how to deal with androns, another thing that is not balanced right now. feel free to come tell me how much of a dickhead i am in that thread to.

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Just because something is tall doesn't mean it can see through and fire through walls.

You need to step back and see just how poor that workaround is.

I do agree that the game is unlikely to be 100% ready by the estimated date Chris is working towards.

That is no reason to try rewriting major parts of the code to work with a tall enemy type however.

I also don't think you understand quite how basic the game engine used is.

If the units look like copies with different stats tat's because they are.

You can tweak those stats yourself in the xml files and add whole new enemies if you want.

There is no 'hunter scout car code' there is just code that picks up the xml file for the generated unit and creates that unit.

Trying to suggest that people are being childish by disagreeing with your estimate of when the game will be ready is an interesting ploy as you mentioned none of that in your earlier post so how could we possibly be disagreeing with it?

The disagreement was with your tone and lack of understanding of your own suggestions.

I imagine your suggested implementation of a tall enemy type could work and would likely be relatively quick to do but that's because it is barely even half a feature that doesn't begin to address the problems it introduces and completely disregards the main aspects of the ground combat.

It is something I might expect to see in a poor quality title from a bedroom developer but not what I would want to see in the work of a real dev studio.

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Also, if you're using a sprite that's several "storeys" tall, you need to handle any units getting behind it, unless the height is a trick of perspective and it's just taking up multiple spaces on the base level, which is bad. And, since there are additional height levels in the game, if you were treating the object as a one storey object, Xenonauts would have to aim at the base storey, which wouldn't be realistic. If you handled it the same as buildings and UFOs, which are static, the unit would not be able to move at all. I know it seems simple, but its really not, because whilst an object is an object, a set piece object and a unit object are two completely different beasts as far as the engine is concerned.

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