cybrbeast

There is more detail about their approach in a blog post http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/05/on-the-reanimated-dead/

No Zomboid is all isometrically sprite based, it's just that the sprites are generated from 3D models without the need to then paint them over. Looking at the video in 1080p I think the effect looks quite good in game. Also you can make the motion quite fluid as you don't have to make all the frames. As you also see they can easily add a different weapon model and then all different soldier types and armors using that weapon can be easily generated from it.

I would at least very much appreciate an indicator if the throw is likely to hit a close obstacle near the Xenonaut like a doorframe or box instead of near the intended place. I also like Demnevanni's idea, you could roll through a corridor, throw if you need distance, and I would add lobbing if you want to through over something like a fence or on top of a building, it would of course decrease distance. As an aside most soldiers are trained to mainly lob grenades, because grenades are quite a bit heavier than a baseball, and if you lob a grenade it tends to stay where it lands instead of rolling on past the target. Also the target has less time to respond due to the grenade being in the air longer.

I think it would be fun if some governments, like Russia, would be able to shoot down a UFO occasionally. Their aircraft might not be able to do so, but they did have surface to air missiles in those times. So if a UFO went too close to a military base it might generate one of these events. The Russians would then request the Xenonauts to investigate and clear the site, as they are the specialists, and especially a bit later, the ones with advanced tech. If the devs decide to make military bases regardless of the stretch goal not being reached, these would make an excellent place for the SAM sites of other countries. It would also give the aliens a good reason to attack them and launch the military base mission. If you are successful enough the SAM site might be spared. The SAM sites wouldn't be able to shoot down bigger UFOs, but it would be very nice to have them shoot down some of those fighters which never spawn missions anyway.

Look at this video http://youtu.be/8vXgtoxV6fE If I understand it correctly, with this system you only have to make a model and then animate it. When you change textures, armor, or weapons of the model all sprites will be automatically generated. The soldiers can easily looks different just by changing a texture. You could even add wounds if they are hit. Adding female soldiers would be trivial, adding crouch-walking, prone positions and the like would also be quite easy. The possibilities are endless. I think the development is probably too far ahead to use this. However the devs have also said that making all the sprites for female soldiers, or prone positions, are not done as they would take much too long to implement. Using this system to redo all the previous animations as well as new ones might actually not take that much extra time. Especially now there's a lot more money from the Kickstarter they could dedicate someone to implement it. Of course developing the animation system would probably take much too long, but maybe the Zomboid team would be willing to license it for a modest price, or a small cut once the game become profitable. One can dream

I think this would also be a very reasonable option, as it seems realistic that you would be able to get some fuel driven in from somewhere near a city. Alternatively your troops could leave the Chinook and tank behind and simply board a commercial or transport airplane.

Instead of showing the icons when hovering the mouse, why not show all the icons (and names) when holding the ALT key or something?

This wasn't necessarily the case. If you built a tech/research/training base without interceptors and didn't shoot any down UFO's close to that base there was very little chance of the aliens attacking that base. So this gave the advantage of not having to build defenses and keep soldiers at those bases.

There are already new maps made by the community in the Mapping section of the forum. They are pretty good, so I don't see why they couldn't be added.

Good points. However the kickstarter still has 26 days to go, so if they have any cool stuff that's near completion and worth adding I think it could provide a nice boost at the end of the kickstarter.

I think it could be a really good idea if you guys were able to release a new demo build before the Kickstarter runs out. If you give it a few more maps (new tileset) and features, I'm pretty sure the release will be covered on gaming sites like RPS and social media like Reddit. More exposure would mean more Kickstarter funds. The big question of course is how much is release ready at the moment? A map pack shouldn't be too hard though.

I think that happened if you aborted a mission with soldiers still outside of the ship.

You can transfer soldiers from one base to another in the demo. When I did it my transport craft was shot down by a UFO though.

It's quite common for a Chinook to have a machine gun or even minigun on the sides. http://www.dillonaero.com/uimages/chinook/chinook_close_up.png http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/standards/areas/Images/RAF_M134_Minigun.jpg It would be awesome if the Xenonaut Chinook had them too. Of course they would be fixed and have a limited angle but they could help out if the Chinook lands close to aliens.

I like the idea of keeping the range somewhat limited to force you to build new bases, however I would like to suggest that if you have a free hanger at your secondary base within range of a full Chinook flight, then instead of the Chinook returning to its own base after it has used half its fuel it could fly on to the other base and land in that hangar. I would have really liked this when playing my first game of the demo and expanding. I had a developed base in Europe and a base under construction in America. However I didn't have enough money yet to fully equip it with tanks and soldiers. But the base was picking up a lot of UFO activity and it was annoying to shoot them down without being able to land there when the range of the Chinook would be able to get there if it didn't have to return to its own base.

Yes, I would much rather have the artist working on crouching and crawling than doing the work to add female soldiers at the 200k mark. I mean this is the Cold War, how many woman were in service then? Even nowadays, AFAIK most countries' elite units like the SEALS do not allow woman to join.

Exactly, the only thing you really need is a small icon of the main weapon the soldier is carrying. Shouldn't be hard to implement, right?

A beach would make sense though as you often let your interceptors follow a UFO until they can engage over land, this would highly increase the chance of a UFO crashing near a beach.

I think crouch walking would really improve the combat, especially if it decreases the chance of alien reaction fire. Now it seems you have almost no way of sneaking up to an alien or passing a wall without drawing reaction fire. If crouch walking is too difficult to implement then I think that a good compromise would be that when moving from a crouch position to another place it shouldn't cost extra TU to stand up can crouch again.

I'm also not a big fan of the scientist staring at you in the proposed UI. I think it would be nice to use something similar to the concept the OP linked to. Then having some variation in the objects show in the lab as you get further through the tech tree.

I can understand that throwing grenades can be quite inaccurate, but for a trained soldier throwing a grenade against the wall or a stack of boxes in front of him is a bit silly. Please make them either not throw if this would happen or make them lob the grenade over a stack of boxes with decreased accuracy.