Marcade
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Posts posted by Marcade
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@anotherdevil: Now you're just plainly trying to downtalk firaxis' xcom; boy you must really be looking forward to it!
@Gorlom: X-Com/Xenonauts is also 3D; just at a fixed angle.
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I'm a bit disappointed in the screens. I looked at the 3D screenshot and I *cannot* see who has the advantages and who's in danger due direct line of sight. Something that's much easier to determine in isometric view.
It's very very hard to do 3D the right way in this type of game and I fear Firaxis might be doing it wrong, for the sake of consoles I guess. Maybe if they had like a 'situational awareness' overview screen it'd help.
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But .. they do have a hot blonde FEMALE ... *pre-orders*
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I could have done without that, tbh
See it as a challenge Chris. If you game is good, it will sell. Isn't that the ultimate reward.
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Oh then I must have misunderstood when Chris said "Sadly not" and "multitude of lists I have dotted around my hard drive" O_o
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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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.. cuz its expensive, non-essential and time consuming...?We already have idle animations done for the models but we're rendering them last.
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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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
.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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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.
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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.
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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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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
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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.
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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.
Firaxis Games' XCOM: Enemy Unknown announced!
in Off-Topic
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Wow you're really dedicated finding every last piece of info on Firaxis' X-Com; you must really be looking forward to it.