Skitso

They could maybe lower chinooks flight range and make longer trips simply take more time as it would need to land and fill fuel tanks periodically...?

I have to agree. ATM most levels are too empty. I'd like to have more claustrofobic and tight urban settings with lots of hiding places for aliens and close quarters combat..should make it more intence.

I have to agree. ATM the levels are too empty. I'd like to have more claustrofobic and tight urban settings with lots of hiding places for aliens and close quarters combat..

-Smoothed out LOS edges -Shot down ufos digged in ground (as they were earlier) -Debris, fire and smoke around shot down ufos -Better and more random ground damage sprites from grenades etc. -Line of green squares when moving and aiming is hideous

Lots of great improvement ideas, guys! Heres my nitpickings While "toggle roof" and "inventory" buttons are colored, the kneeing is not. Change all icons to white (or full color) to achieve cohesive look. Also, one of the main things to make the game look stellar would be to smooth LOS edges.

This absolutely!

This is what i'm experiencing too. Alien placement and/or moving doesnt seem that random...?

Yeah, I would love to see aliens surprising me on their own turn instead of me always chasing them. You know, alien moving in from fog of war discovering me for a change. Atm all they know is run away and reaction shoot my troops.

There isn't a thread for Beta AI behavior discussion yet. Or at least I didn't find one. I posted some of my thoughts in the mapping section already but I seemed to wander off there. I think alien placement should be more random and dynamic. At the moment the levels are full of places that you simply know not to have aliens in. I know the AI is not done and that it's ment to be more passive at crash sites, but I'd like them to wander around the levels more active, set ambushes in second floor windows, patrol in packs etc. There should be more variance in alien numbers, like 1-6 on small scout vs. always 2 or 3. My point: there shouldn't be too rigid rules on maps or alien placement to keep things fresh and frightening. Surprising and unexpected should happen now and then to keep the player on their toes. ATM I can move around the levels too carelessly knowing where the enemies are and how many are left to kill.

Sorry to doubple post, but I think alien placement should also be more random. At the moment the levels are full of places that you simply know not to have aliens in. I'd like them to wander around the levels more active and set ambushes in second floor windows etc. My point: there shouldn't be too rigid rules on maps or alien placement to keep things fresh and frightening. Surprising and unexpected should happen now and then to keep the player on their toes. ATM I can move around the levels too carelessly knowing where the enemies are and that there is only one left for I have killed two already.. ugh, going slightly off topic here..

I think too rigid rules on how to create a map in a certain tileset could make the game too predictable. IMO there should be lots of maps that break the pattern to surprise the player. Of course there has to be some guidelines to make maps functional and playable but otherwise I'd like lots of different and even surprising layouts in each tileset (although I understand they should in general differ from each other gameplay wise)

It would also be an organic way to provide cover around the ufo's. You know, dirt piles, loose debris, smoke etc. This needs to be done!

Yea.. dammit. That was one of my favorite graphical details in the game. I sure hope they make a come back. :-/

Huh, not a single response? Doesn't anybody agree or has this been discussed already elsewhere? Or are the shot down ufo's graphics in ground combat maps known to be work in progress?

Are the crashed ufo graphics final? I'm asking because I think the older ones looked much nicer. They had lots of visible air combat damage all around the hull and were digged deep in the ground with long crash landing trails in the ground behind them. I hope the new ones are going to get the same bashed up treatment. I also hope they will have some debris (as additional cover maybe), fire and some smoke around them.

there's only one "right" value: the slowest possible animation framerate without actor sliding is the right one. I think 28 is pretty spot on.

It's not only about the animation speed but the relation to xeno's moving speed. It's really fast to experiment on your own actually. Just alter one troop (for example a xeno with basic armour and machine gun) it's only 8 files. Then in game equip all troops with machine gun and move troops around.

Okay, I changed xenonaut with basic armour armed with machine gun to use frametime of 25 in running animations and it sure looks a lot better already! Maybe should be a bit slower value .. (maybe 30?) I don't know if other animations like shooting and going prone should be fixed too, but the running was the most important and it looks much better this way as the animation speed matches better with the units running speed. Maybe jumping over obstacles should be made a bit faster too..?

Yeah, too much work to be done by hand. (and without salary ) I really hope Chris gets this fixed in the final game as it makes the otherwise good looking animations seem a bit unfinished.

I cant find the correct xml-files that contain the frametime setting. I looked in units\xenonaut\armour.basic\none\run_(direction).xml but it must be a wrong file...?

It's not like you would need to re-render everything. Just display the existing frames faster to fit the speed xenonauts are moving in the gameworld. I myself am not a technically gifted, so this was just kind of a tip for the developement team to consider to make the game even better and more polished.

I think the walking animations of xenonauts are a bit off. The units seem to "float" and "glide" and not have a proper connection to the ground. I think it's because of the animation speed is a bit too slow compared to the speed the sprites are moving. Fixing this little thing (either by slowing units a bit or speeding the animation, or a bit of both) should make a world of difference in grounding the units in the game world. Maybe there could even be an option to alter unit movement speed

I think they should even use these graphics (scaled smaller) in the base building screen instead of the topdown old square room pictures.

My only experience on Xenonauts is the old Kickstarter demo, but I also noticed the jarringly bad FOW effect. The black isn't that good looking atmosphere wise. The other thing is smoke: there should be lots of it around the downed ufo. And fire too. While Xenonauts is smart looking game and captures the original X-com feel better than any other game yet, it lacks some of the atmosphere and ambience. This is mostly because too sterile and clean looking surroundings. There needs to be more random crap, blood, rocks etc. all over the place over the normal tiles. FOW effect also plays a role in this and I think it's a really important thing to fix in polish phase. Please get it right and you have a gem in your hands.

I agree that the room selector seems a bit out of place style wise compared to geoscape look. Same problem is with air combat graphics. Miniguns, missiles and all the other green/red graphics (while nice) are completely in different art style than soldier portraits, and weapons in ground combat..