Chris

From my point of view, it would help if you'd separate out the "new" maps into a folder for me when you make new ones. Just means I don't have to sort through ones I've already seen! EDIT - and good luck with your paper, too!

OK, I've sat down and worked through all of your submaps (I think I had some left over from last time too). Anyway, I've thrown out the ones I didn't like and I've revised the ones that I did like. Overall, you've got some really nice work here. Aside from getting some ground tiles done, specifically the carpet tile for the flats, these maps should be pretty much ready to go now. Some have been quite heavily modified, but they're all still credited to you because the ideas are very useful. Here's a list of the submaps that have made it into the game in edited form: -Stasi: 2 variants -Bungalow pair: 3 variants -factory variants: 2 variants -flats: 1 variant -soviet garage: 1 variant -hospital: 1 variant (I reworked this heavily, changing it to the flats wall tiles instead of the government tiles) - records office: 2 variants - shed: 1 variant - outhouse: 1 variant Be careful of double-painting floors where you can. Having two different ground tiles on the ground can confuse the engine sometimes. Also, you'll have to redo your levels. A joint pack of buildings and submaps isn't going to work that well because once I've sorted through and renamed all your sub-maps, your levels no longer work. So you'll have to redo them, then I'll have a look. I'll release the updated tiles / maps containing some new tiles and the new maps in the next few days.

I think there's two of them.

Gam - yes, it's in /scripts/_basebuilt.lua

This might make an interesting mod, but it's not how I intend to do the Xenopedia. The Xenopedia research descriptions are meant to be for the benefit of sci-fi enjoying player rather than actual military reports. You already get to experience the aliens' military capacities in the ground combat, so these reports are just as much for flavour and personal player interest as they are for actual useful battlefield information. Your mileage may vary, of course, but you're literally the first person I have ever seen complain about them talking too much about non-military things whereas I've seen a few people commenting that they like the backstory and lore around each race.

The current Xenopedia text is being edited but forms quite a good basis already. Probably V19 will have the final Xenopedia in it, but it'll mostly just be adjusting word order and stuff I'd have thought.

Your post was fine, Knightpt. Don't worry about it.

Wow. This is very impressive stuff. If you do finish this mod, I'd probably be happy to bundle it with the game so people can just activate it from the drop-down menu (so as a mod, rather than default in-game content).

Do you have the up-to-date drivers for your graphics card? If not, go to the card manufacturer website and download them. That'll probably help.

It's somewhat true the aliens aren't that visually distinctive, but it's pretty hard to change that at this stage. It's meant to be more realistic, which has worked quite well in some respects (the aliens are more convincing) but has sadly lost a bit of the character that the original aliens had.

Yes, this thread did get a bit out of control. @OP - I'm sorry you don't like the game, and I apologise for some of the responses you received. I don't agree with your assessment of the game but that's no excuse for the level of abuse you were given. @Everyone - chill, please. People can express their opinions of the game, even if they are derogatory.

That's not the final background art for that screen, so it won't bother you in the final game.

It's impossible for us to say whether you'll find the game meaty enough or not, because everyone has different preferences. If you're not sure, it's probably best to to wait it out and play the demo or wait until release and read the reviews. Or you could read the post above yours, which seems to be answering your question.

Wait for the demo and give it a try, that'll be the best way to find out whether you like it or not. You've created 4 threads asking the same question now

Yup, at present it doesn't scale with increased resolution. That'll change before the final game and hopefully this won't be an issue after that.

Woah, I thought AP was capped at 100? Does it go up to 122? That's not meant to be happening.

Thanks for the feedback. As others have said, it's not possible to rotate the battlefield because it's not 3D. We are also working on a new UI for the strategic layer which will hopefully address most of your points for the final game!

Also, I wasn't aware you were the ultimate arbiter of good game design? Feedback is appreciated but there's no need to be quite so condescending about it. If you actually know as much about game design and development workflows as your posts suggest, you should consider making your own game. You'd make yourself a fortune.

Chill out, please. Following your opinions will in no way guarantee my game a good review score and profitability, so please don't imply that you speak for game reviewers when you put forward your views, let alone everyone on the planet. Please also bear in mind the game is in beta, so not finished. That said, a LOS view overlay for your soldiers is a good idea and it's something we're thinking about adding in. Tutorials will be in the final game, and the footsteps volume may be tweaked too. The blue uniforms were a design decision and I like them, not to mention it making it easy for the player to see their soldiers. But even if the only thing I cared about in the game was making a tactical game, how do you even know the aliens can see the visual spectrum like humans do and don't just see infra-red where colour wouldn't matter? So they'll be staying as is. I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about with LOS resetting, so please clarify. Are you suggesting you should have LOS to an area you've viewed last turn when you start a new turn? That means you'd be able to see aliens move into areas where nobody is looking, though. The reduced sight ranges are a relic of X-Com and invoke increased tension at the expense of realism. It's a deliberate design choice and we'd rather be faithful to the source material here. The reduced range / accuracy of weapons follows from this, because realistically nobody would ever miss from that sort of distance and that wouldn't make a fun game. For the comments about the game development practices, as other posters have mentioned earlier the spritesheets are a limitation of our engine (although if you look, the weapons do appear different). This is an engine we don't have the source code for, so it's not possible to update it. This situation is not ideal, but there's no point commenting on it further because it's not going to change.

Yes, the game works fine in XP.

This is an exploit that won't be fixed, simply because it's better than the alternative.

There's no point in the later dropships if you start with a full-size starting squad (later dropships have a bigger capacity), and having a big team makes the starting missions take longer. The idea is you build towards having a large team of well-equipped guys, rather than you start with them. Again, it's something similar for the armour. You don't start with Jackal armour or the Hunter because this way you get a pop-up explaining what they do (making it better for newbies), and so your engineers have something to do early. Plus, you have to choose in what order you want to unlock and build them. Previously, the game was balanced so you had everything you wanted at the start of the game. That's not really a challenge or even particularly interesting, so I don't see us returning to that.

Heh. Allegedly that's not the only book I've edited.

http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Mapping:_Creating_new_in-game_battlefields That has some explanation on what to do. If the launcher isn't working, you can try going into the /xenonauts/ directory and loading them from there, that should work.

Interesting idea. We're not planning to do a TFTD expansion pack though...I think it'd be getting a bit too meta at that point!