Morgurthion

Do a Xenonauts 3D Remaster, which is the Xenonauts 1 "story" in 3D with all those changes, redesigns and improvements that you talk of. Then use all of those new strides in Xenonauts 2, which is a continuation of the original story. It could be set some time into the future, where the Aliens return to take revenge, or when we have used the techonology that we aquired to build our own star ships and begun to colonize other worlds. You could maybe lead one of the first colonization missions, settling on a planet with hostile environments and dangerous indigenous lifeforms and just as you get a foothold you are attacked by another, smaller Alien fleet that detected emissions from your FTL-drives and followed you. Perhaps in order to contain these clearly dangerous humans and keep them from spreading their influence and bolstering their power, in wait for the alien harmageddon fleet that is on its way from across the galaxy to end humanity once and for all. Just some thoughts

Looking forward to it

I'm so in love with Xenonauts right now, can't wait for the last few things to get fixed and sorted. It plays so well with the exception of a few bugs related to the recent changes in LoS, LoF and AI. There are of course things unticked on my personal wishlist for the perfect X-Com game, but you really nailed your vision and made an incredible game. Can't wait to see what Goldhawk will do next, I could think of no better candidate for a proper Jagged Alliance 2 sequel, just saying. In any case, I'm sure I will be playing Xenonauts for many years to come. Thank you for delivering on everything that made me back you on kickstarter and more. The only regret I have is not backing enough to get my own soldier into the game.

I see. Do you expect this to be a problem if you need to do bugfixes or rebalancing after the game ships aswell?

I was wondering when saves will start being trasferable between updates? Now that the game is "feature complete" I would expect this to be possible soon, but maybe there's still issues that would prevent this?

I like it, hope to see a lot more cities on the new map as well. I think that the night area could be a bit darker though, and I agree that the water could be in a little bit deeper blue. But it's still a great improvemebt over the old one.

You're too good to us, Chris. Thank you!

Looks great, just one thing, there needs to be a picture of the soldiers weapons on the Chinook screen. At first, before you get to know your soldiers, it can be hard to remember what role every soldiers has when you have only their names to go by. And that is information you need to have when you place your soldiers in the chinook. I at least find myself having to switch back and forth between the soldier screen and the chinook screen. Perhaps the green icon representing the soldiers in the chinook could indicate which weapon he or she is equipped with?

I CTD on hiring soldiers

How hard can it be to just center on the Xenonaut closest to the movement and letting you hear the sound panned to whatever direction it emanates from?

Well yes, apart from the out-of-combat real-time of JA 2, they're pretty much the same except that where Xenonauts goes to a hidden movement-screen when the enemy moves outside of your sight, JA2 would just keep the cam wherever it happens to be and display an "enemy turn"-message at the top. My post may have been a bit misleading, since the discussion was more about how to cut down on the hidden movement thingy. The important difference is really in the way that sound is presented; if a soldier in JA 2 would hear the enemy move, the cam would center on him (at least, that's how I remember it) and the sound would then be panned so that you would hear where it emanated from, also there would be a text at the bottom where it said "Ivan hears a sound coming from the northeast". THIS is clearly preferable to centering on the thing that makes the sound while blocking the view with a hidden movement-screen so that you have no clue where the sound came from. At this point, all the shooting and footsteps you hear during the enemy turn only serves to confuse the player. Also, it would cut down on the hidden movement-screen time, since any enemy/civilian action that generates a sound close or loud enough for one of your soldiers to hear would have the camera show that soldier instead. I'll try to find a video that demonstrates this and then edit this post. (btw, will aliens react to both gunfire and footsteps? If so, will there be any stealth movement option?) *EDIT* Ok, so I might have remembered a bit wrong here. It was during the real-time that sound would be displayed this way. Still think it's a good suggestion though, if it worked the way that I described. Here is how it worked in the real-time phase of JA2 (7:40) Quality is shit, but you get the idea. The yellow text in the bottom left is saying that "soldier x heard a faint noise coming from below" or something like that. (Ignore the soldier saying he heard something, that is not something I want in Xenonauts, even if I thought it possible.)

I was thinking about the hidden movement thing, and I was wondering why the Jagged Alliance 2 model isn't an option? In JA2 the camera position froze on hitting end turn, and was automatically moved to show enemy movement. Also, the way that sound is presented would be less confusing as the camera would center on the soldier that hears the sound (footsteps, gunshots, whatever) and a small text would appear that says something along the lines of "soldier X hears a faint sound of footsteps coming from the north". I rather liked how they handled that in JA2, and it is clearly preferable to the hidden movement screen.

Hm, trying to work out if I should go to bed early tonight and try to get some playtime before school tomorrow, or if I should wait up and try it out tonight. How long does it usually take for Desura to authorize?

Great job, just add bacon and it will be perfect!

I know absolutely nothing of A.I. coding, so here are some noob questions: Will the A.I. ever overreach and go for something that has high risk of death but if succeeded would bring great reward, or will it always go for the "safe" option? And how much of that will be based on the way the battle has been going so far? - For example, if a Muton was trapped in a corner, will it be aware that it is trapped and react to that? Would it ever do a kamikaze charge at my Xenonauts in a desperate attempt to fight its way out or at least take one of my soldiers with him, or will it always just move to the safest spot available? - Will it know that it is doomed and become desperate, basically? PS: I'd welcome you to the forums, but seeing as I am new to this place myself it just wouldn't feel right. Glad to see that they brought on what seems to me (noob, remember) like a really gifted and driven coder to do the A.I. though! PS2: Aah, what the heck. WELCOME!

Can't wait for the next update, more maps (!!!) and from what I gather some very basic updates to the A.I. - It's going to turn the battlescape-part of the game to a completely different beast. Too bad it's a Sunday release and I got school all week so I will have to wait until next weekend before I can "fully immerse" myself in the game (if you get my drift) Btw, will you be able to choose different difficulty-levels for the geoscape/battlescape? (in the finished game, that is)

Hm, maybe I should be over in the suggestions-thread instead, these are mostly just thoughts of what could be if one were allowed to dream a little ;P

Gauddlike: Ok, well, that makes sense then. Jungle was the only one that was really missing from my list there minus some of the stuff in the parenthesis, but they were there because they were less important, so that's ok. Coasts aren't that important when I think about it - the chance of the UFO crashing on a beach every time you shoot one down close to water is pretty slim. As for mountains, they could perhaps do something like what they did for the sea - just have a text pop up that explains that the craft crashed and can't be reached. Could even make it so that if your interceptors catch up to a UFO over mountains you can choose to "tail until over land" - I would find that plausible enough.

Gorlom: True, that's why I'm all for having those elements. Set up moments that forces the player to either engage during these horrifying conditions or take a penalty. It could be something like not responding in time to save civvies, but it would only mean missed loot and maybe slightly reduced approval - it would still be plausible to play through the whole campaign without doing missions during extreme storm night missions. I think that the game gains from being hardcore to the bone, as long as it is clear on the rules and conditions and it always gives the player some form of a choice. And again, I'm not talking about game-changer-type effects, I'm talking slightly lowered vision range, accuracy and perhaps a few less AP's. Maybe more for extreme conditions, but they would probably be really rare. Like one of those "level 5 storms" of alien origin that are mentioned on the geoscape. A mission where would intervene the Aliens while they are causing one of those storms would be really interesting. Maybe not doable in this title at this point, but interesting. Also, these things would effect the aliens to, so the balance would not have to change. Btw, aren't people who engage in save scumming already missing the point of the games challenge?

Commissar Pancakes: Sure it isn't all jungle, but when a UFO crashes in parts that are clearly jungle it might be a little bit weird to see farmlands or temperate woods or whatever they choose to substitute the jungle with. Gorlom: Isn't very important, but it makes the game feel a little bit more dynamic. I mean, it shouldn't do a lot, just maybe 10% penalty to accuracy and vision. The main thing is that it makes >some< difference, to me that makes the whole experience a little more immersive.

Khall: Thanks, I guess American/Soviet will do, seeing as that was more or less how the world was divided during this time period. Missing a few other terrain types there, but seems to have the most important ones. Only two I'm really missing that can't be substituted by any of the others to a plausible degree is Jungle and perhaps Mountain. What type of terrain will there be when a UFO crashes in middle-africa I wonder...

Isn't the point of making this game to improve on the original? 20 years has passed since then. so doubling the variety in environments does not seem that over-the-top. But yeah, I know that it is more complicated than that, and that there are many things that makes building environments more time consuming now than back when X-com was first released. So maybe it wasn't very realistic of me, but I was thinking more of what I could accept as plausible. I mean, the point of adding different tilesets is to make the connection between the geoscape and the battlescape seem natural and plausible, right? I'm thinking purely out of that perspective, the goal being that there should be no place in the world where I could shoot down a UFO and the battlescape would seem out of place. Maybe for the sequel, right?

This question has probably been asked and answered already (didn't find anything when I searched though), but how many different types of terrain is planned? Jungle, Desert, Steppe, towns (western, middle-eastern, asian, african, south-american), cities (same geographical varieties apply), leaf-tree forest, needle-tree forest, farmland, mountain (rock/forest/snow?), tundra, coast (there should be variants of this with all of the different themes) and arctic are the minimum if you ask me. Also, will there be seasonal differences on terrain type? Also, will there be height differences in the terrain or will all maps be flat? And lastly, will there be different weather-types? For example hunting down a crashed U.F.O. in the arctic during a storm would give a really cool The Thing-like atmosphere. As I see it, this is (together with a functional A.I.) the last piece of the puzzle before I can start enjoying this game fully - I already know that I like the general design of everything else, so much depends on how this is handled. What is known at this point? *EDIT* Something that would be really cool was if the weather was visually represented on the geoscape, so that if you could see formations of rainclouds over the crash-site, there will be a high chance of rain in the battlescape. These things could have effects on vision range, weapon accuracy and such things. This would mean that you might have to make a tough call beforehand - say if you're stuck with rookies, and a U.F.O crashes in a powerful lightning storm, you might just decide to bomb the site instead because your rookies won't be able to handle those conditions, or do you send them in, risking your whole crew, or do you wait and hope that the weather changes before the aliens scatter or gets picked up by their allies who will most probably slaughter or abduct all the civilians at the site?

It still freezes sometimes, but now it isn't as persistent as before, a couple of reloads usually does the trick to get it moving again.

Only work-around that worked for me was decommissioning the Chinook and ordering a new one. Vehicles-tab's still messed up so I've no chance of using vehicles again, but I can continue playing using only soldiers, so far at least.