Inkallim

Not to mention that the 1993-2004 era was the golden age of game modding too. I'm pretty sure back in the early 2000s I had filled 1/3 of the memory of my dads PC with Unreal Tournament mods. All the past aside though I must say I am finding the current situation, and hopefully the future to come, very interesting. The growth of indie games, at least partly in retaliation to the homogenising of gaming by a great many of the big developers, could be as good if not better than the golden age. While there are a lot of poor/quick cash in indie titles there are also a great many people putting out wonderful games. Super Meat Boy, Explodemon, Stealth Bastard, Section 8 Prejudice, that x-com style game set in the cold war who's name I can't remember...

I guess one issue with kickstarters is the whole time limit thing and needing to reach goals to actually get the money. Is it possible to do lots of little kickstarters rather than one big one? I must admit though I have backed a few projects on it in the past I know very little about the actual ins and outs of the service.

Okay done some retesting of this. In 720 windowed mode there is, as before, no issue at all everything goes through to the Mission Debrief fine. I was testing using the "hold UFO for 5 turns" rather than killing all the aliens as that way I could replicate the test, though I think I did end my first full screen try by killing all the aliens and had the same issue mentioned below. Full screen 1280x1024. Upon hitting turn 5 of holding the UFO the game would lock up, not on a Hidden Deployment screen this time just on the normal battle view as it was when I hit end turn. Task Manager says program not responding. I tried this 3-4 times with the same lock up each time. Then I went and wiped out my own squad to get a Mission Failed screen and that came up fine so it appears to be some kind of problem with the Mission Success screen.

I have no military experience so this is based on nothing but films and such and could be more of a WW2 thing than modern but don't squad machine gunners usually have someone else to carry their ammo? Presumably due to the weight of the gun and ammo being to much for one guy to carry and be effective in combat.

To add another few titles to Riddleys FPS list: Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life are obvious additions for me but the pick of the bunch in my opinion Aliens Versus Predator, man that game scared the crap outta me so much I hardly played single player but the multiplayer was some of the best fun I ever had gaming. Strategy wise I'd also throw in the Close Combat series of WW2 games especially the 3rd game The Russian Front, without a doubt the high point in that series for me. With CnC I am 100% a Westwood fanboy, for me the series ends at Yuri's Revenge simple as that. Of course it might have something to do with one of my earliest games being Westwoods Dune II: Battle for Arrakis. "Wormsign Detected!"

Not tried this out yet but I can see how 5 round bursts with a 50 round belt would be rather punishing. Reducing damage or ammo count which would make it feel somewhat less realistic, even the 50 round is already significantly lower than real belt lengths but I am happy to put this aside as taking into account the spray of the weapon, so the belt is ACTUALLY 100-200 rounds long but only 50 of them have a any chance of hitting a man sized target. I know balance issues are something for the future as anotherdevil says but I'd think increasing the weight, or having a straight reduction of action points attached to the weapon would be preferable to my mind than reducing damage or rate of fire. Ofcourse reducing the accuracy is another tool in the balancing box aswell.

Ah thanks for that.

As Akavit says anything us regular folk can do to help the game even if it is only in a small way is worth its weight in gold ... well maybe not gold but you never know, you tell one person about the game, they might tell another, who tells another... Also I think one of the real strengths of Xenonauts is the Cold War setting. Of course it is an alternate-history take on things but due to the simple nature of the power struggle it isn't a time period which has had much in the way of love from the medium of computer games in any form.

Perhaps 1980 to March 2003 would be more accurate for me because even to this day I love text adventures and rogue-likes. Who needs graphics when the story is good or better yet you are creating your own story!

Some wonderful ideas here. At a very basic level certain soldiers often become stand out characters because they pull off something wonderful in a battle so any way of recording that at the time would be brilliant, medals fit this role well. Giving some stat advances names would be great, also something perhaps worth looking into would be negative traits too. Sure some people are just going to play the game in a "min/max" style and cut loose a soldier who got a negative trait but for those taking a more roleplaying view negatives are often just as important as positives, if not more so. They don't even need to be permanent, infact that's probably even better, for example if your most cared about soldier picked up a drinking problem, taking a slight hit to his accuracy but a boost to his moral as he takes some dutch courage. Not a character ruining negative it just makes for a deeper character but more importantly think of the added feeling you'd get when/if that soldier then kicked their bad habit. Continuing the example above that would perhaps undo the lost accuracy and also give a boost to moral for the willpower shown and being able to beat his demons. That sort of thing can be taken as far as you want or are able to within the constraints of everything else as it is all just an added bonus to the immersion of the game which is already very strong. The idea of keeping medals and stat changes seperate sounds good to me, the medals being more of a record/diary of important events for the player should they want to do so rather than becoming an extra tactical weapon.

1993-2004 without a doubt. Infact I can be more specific about the end date. March 2003. The month EA finally murdered Westwood Studios. just doesn't do it justice, there isn't an emote sad enough for that.

Well I expect when it is able to carry more than 5 rounds at a time the infantry MG's balance will be changed somewhat.

Another tiny thing, almost not worth mentioning but I suppose it's part of the "simulation" immersion. "Clip Size" for weapon ammo really should be "Magazine Size" or just Mag Size if you want to save space. For the guns that have mags anyway, I guess the machine gun would technically be "belt length" or something.

I've read through the other similar threads and this one seems to be the closest to what is happening with me. Naturally I don't know for sure if it happening upon killing the last alien but everything else is exactly the same as Rob. The other threads seem to make mention of wounded aliens causing the problem but every alien I have encountered has been killed in a single turn. First mission, I take out 4-5 aliens, hit end turn, game locks up on the "Hidden Movement" screen. I've restarted another 2 times using the autosave just before battle with the same series of events. The first 2 times I was playing in full screen 1280x1080 and when I opened the Task Manager it said Xenonauts was not responding. 3rd time running in 1280x720 as Lurker suggested, and also in windowed mode, it is stuck on the Hidden Movement screen however when I open Task Manager it says the program is still running. Also for a split second after opening Task Manager the game flicks back to the Ground Battle view as it was before I hit end turn then the Hidden Movement screen comes back on. It is possible this happened the first two times aswell but because I was in full screen mode Task Manager had minimised the game so I didn't see it. Edit: Just to check I had a 4th go, killed all my soldiers before letting the aliens kill my Hunter. Aside from it being a little odd that the battle doesn't end automatically when everyone dies, I still had to click End Turn and the aliens did a little running about before it finished, the game at least continued on to a mission report screen and then back to the geoscape without issue. More Edits: Try 4: Full Screen mode, restart from same save just at the Ground Battle. -Kill 5-6 aliens over the course of a few turns. -Press end turn after killing what I'm guessing was the final alien. -Game freezes on Hidden Movement, though the music is still playing. -Open Task Manager, program not responding, close program. Try 5: Windowed mode, new campaign. -First crash site of campaign. -No problems at all, Mission Complete screen came up fine. I guess whatever change the switching of resultion made didn't take effect on the first battle of my saved game which had been made while in full screen mode. Also don't worry Rob I now feel like a total numpty too, I finally saw it in the Master Bug list. "- Game freeze after killing last alien. 26/12"

The phrase "console audience" fills me with dread considering it often means a company designing a game with consoles in mind then porting it, badly, to PC. Also not liking how hideously generic the space marine hiding behind the car looks, and a little confused as to why he is hiding behind a car when confronting a 3ft tall alien that is being blinded by headlights. Don't get me wrong space marines can be cool, Aliens Colonial Marines, but this guy looks like he is wearing bmx armour.