Inkallim

I'm not sure how useful this will be but seeing as many people seem to be of a mind to hold off map making till things are a little further along I thought it might be nice to bat around a few ideas, as specific or general as you'd like. My first thoughts would be things like recreating real locations or scenes from movies. Being able to play on your street, or an industrial area near where you live would be pretty fun I think.

You know I never even thought about making maps. It's something I'd love to do especially if the editor was fairly straight forwards to use, having ideas is usually easier for me than implementing them in the first place so need all the help I can get on that front. I do agree with Buzzles though, probably best to wait till everythings a bit more solid.

Well I don't think the really high tiers (500+) are something you should worry about at this early stage, they really are for a rare group people with a lot of expendable income, the vast majority of people will be in at $200 or less. I would imagine that the $100-150 teirs should become popular once the $200 teir hits its limit. The way I see it is that many people who had 100-150 in mind as their pledge limit would have been tempted to put in that little bit more to hit the $200 mark as it is something really special and the highest level of the "normal" teirs.

Not a big issue at all, but the use of "clip" for the ammo of many of the guns which obviously use a "mag". Course that's just me being hyper aware of that particularly issue in a general sense after someone pointed out the difference to me in great detail.

I actually kinda like the cutsey visuals when combined with ridiculous levels of gore. Dungeon keeper to an extent had this, not so much in the gore but certainly the art style was cute while the actions you did were pretty brutal. To me it comes together to form a kinda awesome murderous teddybear feel. As for the prevelence of evil necromancers, in terms of a general concept there is room for necromancers that don't have designs for world domination. In a game where you play an evil character though I'd rather be something like a necromancer as opposed to an evil warrior or something. To be honest in Nekro it seems evil is a matter of opinion. The main character you play as was evil when alive but was defeated, but now you are back from the dead and wanting to seek revenge on the corrupt King who trapped your soul forever between life and death. At the very least things seem to be a bit grey rather than black/white good/evil.

Yeah VAT is an interesting one, I am fully expecting the VAT to hurt like a kick to the goolies for the couple of kickstarters I've backed that have a lot of physical rewards. I've no idea how these rewards will be listed in terms of price of contense and also if they will be listed as gifts or purchases. The UK has pretty solid VAT on I think everything over a certain very small cost limit. This leads to situations where sometimes ordering items individually can be cheaper if an item on its own is below the price limit and the shipping is less than the cost of tax. It's one of those things I try to take into account, and I did make sure to have enough funds to cover a worst case importing cost, but I can totally see the value in digital only reward packages for people who want to play it safe.

One thing I liked about the kickstarter done by The Fictory for their Atomic Robo Animation project, they allowed people to add things like extra t-shirts, art books and so on to their pledge, allowing people to kinda create their own rewards to an extent. This is something I particularly approve of because often I would like two t-shirts so I can wear one and frame the other. On top of that you have several projects where things like t-shirts, probably one of the most attractive rewards i would think, are often left until unreasonably high levels like the 150-250 dollar mark. Shipping wise there seems to be fairly arbitrary figures put on these things. I doubt they actually do any real checking of shipping costs they just put a figure that they think should let them cover most of it. Another thing I have seen requested by some is digital only rewards for those worried about being hit by VAT when the packages are being sent internationally, certainly having such an option couldn't hurt.

Okay so I know pretty much everyone is sick of kickstarters after the last month or two being totally overloaded with high profile ones but I thought I'd give these guys a mention because I love games where you play as the bad guys. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343838885/nekro Another good thing about this one is that unlike many kickstarters this isn't just an idea, they have done a lot of work already, they are in pre-alpha, so there is a lot of information, screenshots and a Q&A about the gameplay. http://darkforgepress.wordpress.com/201 ... mechanics/ It's a real shame these guys seem to have become lost in the recent overload. Personally I am more of a fan of things like kickstarter and indiegogo being used in this way for games, to give that last little push of funding to get a game finished, as it means there is a heck of a lot more information about the game itself and far less of a chance of it turning into vapour ware.

One bonus reason for me keeping Xenonauts on Desura is that if Steam ever freaks out and bans my account for some reason, which would probably cost me £1000+ worth of games, I'll still have Xenonauts to play ... and Pineapple Smash Crew and Project Zomboid.

Hmm I don't think it was just the makeup that was too much. Don't get me wrong they look a heck of a lot better than I could dream of doing, but the lips look like they have been treated with a few gallons of botox and some of them look like they are doing that weird facebook/myspace "duck lips" thing. All personal taste of course but I guess I prefer a more natural look.

My line of thinking is along the same route as irongamer's. Certainly the whole idea of a pool of potential recruits is one I very much support, but penalising a player for doing badly in addition to the fact they are already going to be leaking money from less than perfect mission completion and from all the body bags going home is a tad harsh. Making use of it as an insentive to do better on the other hand is great, your organisation is going well so better trained personel are thinking, hey it's a better paying job, sure it's dangerous but these guy's know what they are doing I'll put my name forwards.

The idea of upgrading packages is a really good one, and one which I am very surprised digital distributers, steam being the prime example, don't make use of as it would seem to basically be a way of printing money when it comes to "digital special editions." Someone might not be willing to pay the extra money before they know they like the game, but if they do like the game spending a little more to upgrade to a "special edition" or whatever would probably be an option at least a few people would make use of. It's not like it is that hard to create and sell a code which updates from a standard to an advanced version.

Great news Chris.

I don't think he wants to change his title to "Baroness Margaret Thatcher."

To be honest I had a feeling that may be the case, considering my initial thoughts were pretty obvious ones they were bound to have been suggested before and either been looked into or seen as unworkable/not fitting. The most important thing in regards to the thread though is there are plans for more objectives.

I don't have a Facebook account so I couldn't add to the comments myself but the Escapist articles on the Firaxis X-com could be another place to politely mention Xenonauts.

On the "play" list of Desura when there is an update a symbol should come up in the status column to show there is an update pending for the game.

Well I'm rather a newbie myself, but I can give a few pointers tactics wise for Xenonauts, early game at least. Air combat :- A Mig can take usually take a scout 1 on 1. It takes 2 F-17s to bring down a scout. 2 Migs can bring down a Corvette. Ground combat :- Personally I like to take a mix of weapons. 3-4 Riflemen, 1-2 Snipers, 2 Shotguns and a Bazooka (though generally I don't get much use out of him sometimes you need to turn walls into doors and your Hunter is out of ammo/dead) Don't send guys off on their own, try to at least keep them in pairs. Leapfrogging is very useful when advancing. It'd be nice if you could always leave your guys with enough action points for some reaction fire but this is often not possible, at least if you want to get anywhere quickly. If your advancing soldiers detect an alien those in the covering fire group can try to deal with them, or if an alien moves out to attack the advancing soldiers in their turn they will take some reaction fire.

There are more mission objectives planned for the game as on the Ground mission start screen it has sections for Primary and Secondary objectives, there just aren't any Secondary ones yet. I could see certain event driven missions working pretty well and if they were rare they wouldn't get too repetative. Couple of quick ideas:- - You have an aircraft shotdown but the crew have survived. You must rush to rescue the downed pilot/survivors of the helicopter crash before the aliens get them. Basically a normal map but with a pilot/soldiers somewhere on the map instead of a crashed UFO and a number of aliens from a landing party trying to kill/abduct them. Kill all the aliens, save the crash survivors. - The UFO you shot down was transporting abductees. Discovered upon searching the crashed UFO. The normal "capture the UFO" objective is extended a number of turns and more aliens spawn. You have to hold out and protect the abductees long enough to drive the aliens off.

What resolution are you running the game in? It sounds rather like THIS reported one, though it would lock up both upon killing the last alien and capping the UFO.

I had this happen recently myself but didn't notice a pattern to it and it was while I was testing another bug so wasn't really paying attention to other things. The reaction fire idea should be repeatable/testable though.

I'm sure the Xenonauts in the modding forum will be more than happy to help you out.

Really not liking the look of it at all. Even if mechanically it is okay there is so much in the screenshots I'm not liking.

I had a similar thing to your second screenshot happen when I loaded a save. All my soldiers with 2 handed weapons lost the weapon from their primary slot but still had it in their secondary, my single guy with a pistol had his pistol in the primary slot where it was supposed to be. I carried out the mission using the weapons in secondary slot, when I next went on a mission everything came up in the correct slots. There was another already reported bug which had one soldier occasionally lose his primary slot weapon but all you had to do was re-equip it in the inventory, that didn't work with this bug. The double weight thing is a known bug and it affects all weapons not just the rpg so you should check none of your guys are over their weight limit after you do a mission because of this.

I'm a huge sucker for art books so another vote for that as a "thing to give people who donate a certain amount." Of course that does mean faffing around getting quotes from printers and then working out layouts and so on. Naturally the most important things should always be whatever adds the most to the game for it's cost in time and money. Certainly I don't think putting a kickstarter up looks desperate, it is always worth while trying out various methods of getting funding in, and as you say it creates a extra page to post about and hopefully get more people to look at the main site and maybe buy the game.