karthink

Will the images change as time goes on? I mean small changes: a laser rifle or two lying around the workshop, a corpse/containment chamber in the labs and so on. Considering these are hand painted backgrounds, drawing in new props is probably extremely time consuming, so I understand if what we see now is what it stays through the game. EDIT: I just realized something else about the UI. It will be a little weird to see the same people on the screens of every base, won't it?

How are night missions triggered? Is it as straightforward as shooting down a UFO in a part of the geoscape where it's night?

Some suggestions from playing 17.1 (and the new XCOM.) (Here's hoping they're already being planned!) 1. More hidden movement screens: Considering the player stares at the hidden movement screen for minutes at a time (cumulatively) in each encounter, it will be great if there's a rotation of hidden movement screen so it doesn't get boring. Bonus: the screen is based on the tileset the map is made of! The existing one is ace, by the way. It's just going to seem a bit off when all my soldiers have advanced armor and the chaps on the hidden movement screen are in regular old BDUs. 2. Geoscape details: The Geoscape we see is a terrain map, basically. Is it possible to show signs of civilization, such as lights on the night side? In general, the geoscape feels too static compared even to a slowly rotating globe, so any kind of animated detail that lets us know we're not staring at an atlas would be very welcome. 3. One feature I really miss in Xenonauts after playing XCOM 2012 is the calendar on the screen (that you can expand) showing all items on the agenda for the next month. This is a timeline that includes research times, new soldiers arriving, pending requests, constructions, and pretty much any base activity that takes time to occur. It's also much easier to plan when I can see the big picture, instead of being surprised about popups for activities that I scheduled ages ago. 4. Speaking of pending requests, the random requests for equipment from various countries in XCOM 2012 was also a nice touch, generally a windfall just in the nick of time. Does Xenonauts have anything similar? 5. The font size is really tough on the eyes! 6. The soldier run animation does not match the speed at which the sprite moves along the ground. So it looks like the soldier is skating sometimes. This should hopefully be an easy fix? 7. Any chance we can see a dirt trail behind the hunter as it moves? As things stand, a livelier map would be great. I know idle animations are in the works and animated tiles _might_ make it in, but I suppose there are other ways to liven up the battle map too. And then there are some longstanding suggestions (that I made ages ago) that I know can't be fixed because of the engine, but I'll reiterate anyway: 1. Bullets as slow white streaks, lasers as slow red streaks feel really underwhelming. Any chance the bullet sprite could get a makeover (or at least a velocity increase)? 2. Projectiles emanate from the center of the tile, and not from the barrel of the gun. Anyone else find this annoying? Is this something you just get used to as you play more of the game?

The only thing about XCOM: EU that I wish Xenonauts had was a better gunfire/projectile system. Slow moving white bars as bullets are making it hard to take guns seriously. Lasers as beams would be great too. Also, I must be one of the few who like the cutscenes in XCOM. There was some talk about homeworld style storyboard type expository cutscenes at key moments in the game. That would be fantastic too. But with most other design decisions, I'm with Xenonauts. I actually prefer Xenonauts' 2D engine and sprites to XCOM's 3D.

I just installed Desura and saw that the Xenonauts alpha was about 2.1 GB in size. This is not a problem, but my bandwidth is capped, and I can't afford to download large (~500 MB) updates on a weekly basis. Can anyone tell me how frequent build updates are nowadays and how big they are on average? I've been meaning to dig into the alpha but can't handle large (and frequent) downloads.

I remember raising this issue around the time of the kickstarter, but here goes: 1. Why are bullets rendered as little white ticks? I assume this is so the player can clearly see the trajectory of the bullet. The realistic case (where you can't see the bullet, just its impact) would be confusing indeed. But! Is it possible to replace the ticks with streaks instead? I mean something like gunfire in this here video. If not anything that fancy, then just a solid white streak. Somehow a slow moving bullet really kills the immersion. Also, could the projectile be sped up instead? 2. Bullets originate right now from the center of the tile and not the muzzle of the gun. Thanks to the tile system, I don't suppose there's anything that can be done about this, is there?

Flat geoscape isn't an issue to me, but I would love it if planes moved along geodesics, that is, along the shortest path between two points on a globe which is a curve on a flat geoscape. If you're familiar with map projections, I suppose this is easy to imagine. Being able to go south to go north (past a pole) would be great too.

RockPaperShotgun should be doing a Xenonauts Kickstarter update in the coming weeks. While their audience is a perfect fit for Xenonauts, it appears most interested readers have preordered or backed the game already.

Thanks for the information, thothkins, gauddlike, imperialus. Your answers and assurances are encouraging.

I've never played X-COM, but I found the demo surprisingly accessible and easy to play. I think this is because I am familiar with the concept of X-COM as a multilayer strategy sim and had a sense of the flow of the game. So I think the UI and menu element navigation don't really require tutorials. Instead, I suggest including a primer to the idea of the game itself. It's pretty easy to figure out that the top right of the geoscape screen shows your funds. It's harder to understand why you need funding in this game and where to spend it. A big picture view of the game will go a long away towards orienting new players. Once you understand the various layers of the game, it is easy to figure out that you can transfer soldiers from one base to another, for instance.

OK, thanks guys. I'm sure I'll get at least half a dozen playthroughs at various difficulties before I feel the need for more randomization.

I wasn't referring to a NG+ mode; sorry I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was: Will the tech be randomized on each playthrough as well? Some 4x games do this; they randomize the tech tree when you start a new campaign so your progression isn't the same. In contrast, RTSes have this standard build order where you move up the tech tree towards exotic units and weaponry, and it's a fixed order so there's no incentive to play through, say, Command & Conquer's singleplayer campaign twice. An example of this in Xenonauts would be having plasma weapons work differently (different range, weight) each time you begin a new campaign. Maybe switch up the order in which you can research alien technology as well. I hope it's clearer now.

A few questions about the replayability of the campaign: Will all alien tech be "unlocked" in a given campaign if I'm thorough about researching it? Are the attributes of alien tech fixed? As in, will plasma rifles have the same attributes each time, etc. I am wondering what the incentive is to replay a campaign once I've beaten it. Obviously I can ramp up the difficulty or turn on iron man mode, but is there any difference in the tech or the order in which I get it in subsequent playthroughs? If there is randomization/ procedural generation involved, what exactly does it apply to? (Note: I haven't played the original X-COM to its conclusion and don't know how it compares.)

@IceVamp: Thank you! I'm not too keen on muzzle flash myself, I just threw it in to see what people think. I don't think it adds much. And like Buzzles says, it's probably too much work. Chris, glad to know you'll consider FS style gunfire! Also, in the alpha demo, projectiles sometimes emanate from the tile containing the unit and not from the weapon, which looks very odd. I assume this is because there are only eight possible orientations for the weapon/unit and an effectively infinite number of directions projectiles are required to travel in. Is this something you intend to fix? Is it even possible to fix this? Finally, I must add that I got completely sucked in by the Kickstarter demo yesterday (Huh? 4 am? How the heck did that happen?). Despite loving the atmosphere, every attempt to play X-COM has failed because of the interface (oh, the interface); Xenonauts nails everything! This game is already awesome, I can't believe it's going to get so much better.

The modeling of projectiles at present is like in the original X-COM, which seems to work pretty well. But I somehow can't wrap my head around the fact that it's a slow moving white streak. The advantages of this seem to be that this tells us how accurate the shot was, and allows us to trace the path and observe any obstacles along the way. (I'm referring to traditional bullets from traditional arms, of course. I don't know about the alien weapons, etc.) Have the devs checked out the gunfire in Frozen Synapse? Fast projectiles with trails that clearly show the spread/accuracy, bearing and collisions. In addition to being informative, it looks great and much closer to a realistic depiction. Just throwing the idea out there. If there are other specific reasons to prefer the existing design, I am curious to know. As a side note, are there any plans to add muzzle flash or (better) firing animations?