Zeraan

Thanks, message sent to Chris.

So I finally cleared things out in my life, and would like to start playing Xenonauts (yes I know, many years after buying early access which I never played!). To my dismay, Desura is gone, Xenonauts was the only reason I had Desura in the first place. I dug in my email and there's an email: "Hello - you are recieving this email because you have previously pre-ordered the indie game Xenonauts. We are launching the game on Steam Early Access today, and everyone who has pre-ordered the game in the past has a Steam key available to claim. To claim and activate your Steam key: 1) Go to https://secure.desura.com/cart/cdkeys 2) Log into your Desura account 3) Click the "Request Key" button next to Xenonauts 4) Load Steam and go to Games > Activate A Product On Steam in the topbar 5) Copy the key into Steam" As you can see, Desura is gone and I have no way of doing this. Is there a way for me to request a steam key? Should I try "Contact Us"? Or is this forum the best place to ask?

Thanks. Even managed to accomplish the first stretch goal, yay! My artist is now working full-time for me until I get all the art assets I need for the game. Thanks again for your support!

Oh, that looks very interesting! Thanks for the mention, I'll back it shortly!

Haha, a 7 of 9 Dryad If you're still wanting a copy of Master of Orion 1/2 from GoG.com, I've created another giveaway with 3 keys to close out the kickstarter effort. The link is here: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/another_master_of_orion_giveaway

Yayifications! Thanks!

Right now, ground combat is similar to MoO 1's ground combat, as you can see from the last screenshot on the kickstarter page. I want to add features where you can enable ground-view building like Imperium Galactica series, and with that, tactical ground combat. But for now I'm focused on getting the basic features done so that it's playable As for races, again, right now I'm focused on getting basics done, which means all races share the same technology tree. However, the game already supports racial technologies, I can easily add those after I'm done with basics. For racial attributes, the idea is that each race can specify many different attributes other than simple production outputs (research, mining, etc), such as specifying how well they perform on different planets (Zero People get a bonus on arctic planets because cold improves electronics), whether or not they can inhabit certain planets, their starting planets/systems (More details here), starting technologies, etc. So it'd be possible to create scenarios, such as zombies infesting every star system except for yours, and you need to kill them all, or one where it's late-game and you face off against other races with same level of technologies and number of systems/planets, and so forth.

*crickets chirping* Well, I don't know how many of you participated in the giveaway, but it's now over, with the winners posted in the original post! The kickstarter is now over 50% pledged, thanks for your support! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1093012264/beyond-beyaan?ref=live

Hey, thought I'd let you know that I'm doing a giveaway and a kickstarter! The giveaway is 5 Master of Orion 1/2 keys and 1 Master of Orion 3 key. All you gotta do is head over to this thread on gog.com, and post "I want MoO xxx" (can ask for both!) Why post this giveaway on this forum? Well, because you guys are fans of Microprose! Well, at least their game, X-COM so I thought I'd give you guys a chance to grab their other games Now, what's this kickstarter that I mentioned? It is none other than the 4X space strategy game that I'm developing called Beyond Beyaan! You don't need to back to participate in the giveaway, but I thought it'd be a clever way of promoting the kickstarter, with no Buddhist civilians being harmed in the process (well, maybe one or two )!

You're fired for non-germane comments! *Warms up his printer for some pink slip printing*

What is your opinion on Xenonauts? Does it capture that atmosphere from X-Com? As for MoO, you should check this out (shameless plug): Beyond Beyaan I'm looking forward to your journals, I hope it will help me implement a better AI, since there's not too many resources on a turn-based AI!

Knew your avatar seemed familiar! http://androidarts.com/spaceconquest/gamedesign.htm Glad to know you're also a fan of MoO Looking forward to seeing your work in action!

I think I'm getting burnt-out from all the puns, I shall stop reading this thread now

I'm an developer myself (Beyond Beyaan) and I often have free time where I'm not actively developing the game to respond to comments. I also need to eat, spend time with my wife and daughter, work full-time, etc. I don't have issues with Chris' time management, I'm sure that when he's motivated to work on the game, he will do so. When he's feeling tired or wants a break, he'd browse the forums, eat, or do whatever it is that he does. This is good because if he spend too much time on the game, he runs the risk of being burnt out. Normal people work 40 hours a week for their job (this is a normal workload), working more than that exhausts the worker in most cases. There's even some research in this, programming 80 hours a week is about as productive as programming 40 hours. The reason is that the more well-rested/fed you are, the more you can focus and come up with solutions to problems. The less-rested you are, the more prone you are to introducing bugs and spending time trying to understand why things are not working. Often I have a problem that I've spent hours on the day previous, only to solve it within 10 minutes the next day due to my brain being fresh from sleep. Sorry about the lengthy post, I just thought I'd like to inform people that programmers are humans, not robots

Isn't it possible to flip the tile art in-game so it'll face the other direction? SW could be flipped to face SE? Add a boolean value to each tile indicating whether or not that tile art is flipped, and have the code handle that value, then I think you're set. Unless there's problems with this method? Edit: I just realized, if it's due to lighting/shadows that's pre-drawn, then flipping it would look funny.

I know the game's 2D. What I meant is that you can take a line drawing algorithm that plots a line to pixels, and use it to plot the course of destruction in the map. You set a start point, and a end point, for each of the UFO's front tiles (i.e. if it's 8 tiles wide, do 8 lines), and apply the destroyed state to tiles that intersect this line. Then add a line to either side and apply damaged state to tiles that intersect. You can convert it to use three dimensions (x, y, height), since the map isn't just 1 tile tall, then it'll be possible to have the ufo scratch the top of a building while crashing. It was just an suggestion, one that I don't think will be too difficult to implement. However I'm a developer myself, so I can understand how a simple thing may be actually very complex to implement under the hood, so if this don't work due to how things are done internally, no problem. I thought it'd add a nice touch, seeing the destruction that the ufo wrought on its crash, not just on the ground, but on the nearby buildings as well. Yeah, it'd be more practical and aesthetic to just have a version for each tileset.

What I mean is that instead of having both ground and ufo art composed together, they'd be split so the game can use different terrain with the same "crashed ufo" art. So if it's snow, then just use snow tile under the crashed art. But it can make it look funny in some cases, might be just better off creating different art combinations by hand to make it look nice. As for destroyed buildings, the code is already there for tile destruction by weapons. The game could plot a collision vector, the size of ufo, then apply the "destroyed" state to tiles that intersect with the vector, and "damaged" state to surrounding tiles. The problem will be adding the collision vector, but I don't think it'd be too much of a problem. Anyway, I apologize about getting off-topic, this isn't the suggestions forum Back to the awesomeness of the new art!

I too have this problem. I just bought the game yesterday, then played my first ground combat mission. After it was done, I saw that it kept a plasma pistol, but auto-sold the plasma rifle and ammo. I'm not sure why this is happening. This was my first mission, on my first game. According to what you people say, it should have kept both pistol and rifle.

About the crashed ufo, will it be always on the grass tiles? No damaged buildings/roads that it passed through while crashing? I realize that it might make things a bit more complicated, but I think it'd be possible. Have the map be pre-populated, then plot a "collision" course through the map, and apply "destroyed" state to the tiles that intersect with the collision course. Then blend the "rubble" tile around the ufo with the tiles underneath, so it's not restricted to just grass tiles. It'd be pretty cool to see a warehouse with a gaping hole from the crashed ufo. Or an ufo partially inside a building. In any case, the art is fantastic!

Alright, I bought the game! Hope my humble support allows you to add more features! I think soon Desura will host my game, Beyond Beyaan, but no confirmation yet. It'd be awesome if we have "Classic Bundle", you with your X-Com game, me with my MoO game I will try out the game tonight and see if there's any problems with accessibility (I'm deaf).

From the articles, it looks like there's a lot of cover, and moving consists moving from one cover to another. Assuming that you're always under cover, this means that one move - one fire action makes sense. However, this means that those tense situations when you move your soldier to a cover, but running out of time units, leaving him exposed, won't exist anymore. It looks like more of "obvious cover/tactics" resulting in less deaths than in the original where aliens could be anywhere, and the cover system consists of standing behind a wall and being unable to fire around the corner. I'd need to see a gameplay footage first before I can make any decisions.

I will make sure to point out any areas that may need to be more accessible. From what I've seen in the videos, it looks pretty much accessible for a deaf player. I'll find out for sure when I actually play it As for MoO 3, yeah, it was a bit underwhelming... In my opinion, MoO 1 was the best of the series. Many people think MoO 2 was better however. Each game in the series is very different from each other.

Hello all! I discovered this after a person referred me to the project through my own project. Disappointed at a lack of a good 4X turn based game similar to MoO 1/2, I've decided to start up my own 4X game project, named Beyond Beyaan. I've been working on it for over two years now, and hope to release it on May 31st. (Teaser footage here: )Anyway, since MoO 1/2 was developed by Microprose, naturally I'm a fan of their other games, like X-Com and MoM. Which led some people to refer Xenonauts to me. Soon hopefully I'll be able to afford to buy a premium membership! I want shiny badges! Oh, I'm deaf also, just a bit of an interesting fact

I see many references to Master of Orion 1 and 2 in this thread. The sad thing about MoO clones is that most of them seem to fail after a month or two. But I do have good news! There's a Master of Orion-esque game in development for over two years, called Beyond Beyaan. The main screens are almost done, most of the core functionality are implemented. Just a few minor screens and maybe a few tweaking, then work on the space combat will start. Its target release date is May 31st. Right now, it features ship design, building stuff, research, exploration, colonization (will be re-done shortly), ground invasions, custom races, and a bunch of other goodies. Diplomacy and fleet list will need to be re-done due to recent changes in design, will be re-done after space combat. Currently the features not implemented in the game are space combat, saving/loading, espionage, racial perks, and some minor features such as radar. And in case you're wondering, yes, I am the developer of Beyond Beyaan