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Volcris

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Everything posted by Volcris

  1. Must have been recently, I was playing last night and had both a tank and alternatively 4 soldiers lock up at the back of a chinook and become unable to leave.
  2. important detail: the community loved it, but the company went out of business.
  3. Thank you very much for the kind words . I'm a 23 year old college student who took a couple years off due to family sickness. After this year, I will have degrees in Psychology and Economics. I don't really consider myself much of a writer, I tend to write the way I speak. I don't really know what I plan to do with myself; current plans are to graduate, work with the economics degree for a little while, then make the choice between medschool or gradschool. If any passion hits me between now and then, I could end up anything under the stars.
  4. Welcome to Xenocom... This. Is Xenocom.... At Xenocom anything is possible.
  5. It was doomed from the start. Another, similar game from a structure standpoint is stellar impact. SI is a game that is multilayer only, and had a sloppy launch. Luckily, SI revived itself via steam sale, and has a small, active community. However, while I enjoy SI, I know it is fated to die. Indie games always start as cult hits, and bloom as the quality of their game play catapults them to gaming stardom. Unfortunately, most of the quality of a competitive multilayer-only game relies on a robust, active community. No community, no game. SI's community shrinks after each steam sale bloom, and when it gets too small, it will die. That is why many struggling mmos, and the brightest star of multilayer indie competition; league of legends, are all free to play. If your model requires a robust community for any success at all, then you have to remove all barriers from new players to enter. As much as many of us loathe the micro transaction model, micro transactions for objects without impact on game play are the healthiest means of drawing revenue from a niche product that relies on a community to succeed. Micro transactions also supply a steady stream of revenue to cover server costs when your market is saturated. I am convinced that multiplayer indie titles that rely on an upfront cost to fund themselves are always doomed to die no matter the quality of game play. It is simply an untenable economic model.
  6. and still breathlessly fun. Your opponents come in interesting flavors and have unique mechanics (midgets with shotguns who fly backwards when they fire, shielded commandos who toss grenades and fire short smg bursts, hulking brutish monsters who retreat and throw rocks unlike their more charge-happy compatriots etc.). Your weapons lack the easy accuracy of a military shooter, so strategy in range of engagement and rate of fire play a big role in your ability to efficiently dispatch your opponents. That, and the plethora of "explosive barrels" coming in flavors from old fashioned detonation to corrosive acid to strategically thin the horde. Enemies also die interestingly, retreating when their health is low and falling in pain from substantial, near death injury. Overall, the game is a triumph of mindless fun. It rarely provides the tense moments that fill a game like Xenonauts, but it always leaves me with a grin on my face.
  7. Thank you very much! I was able to originally read the code, but couldn't make sense of the numbers. Now that I know the large number is cost, the small number is days of labor, I can edit it with a xml reader. Very informative response.
  8. I don't mind, but I have trouble following it >< I guess I'll download office viewer so I can tell which numbers I'm looking for in the code EDIT: downloaded office viewer, and it refuses to open it. If any one with a working knowledge of xml files could help me, it would be much appreciated . I do not regularly work with code (the most I have ever done is set up small servers for games like minecraft).
  9. I can't seem to open this with open office, and opening it with XML viewers is not very useful. Is there an alternative to Microsoft Excel that can open this? I don't want to put down the money for an office code right now.
  10. 239 responders is more then enough for statistical inference, and the pretty normal curve lends credit to the sample, the bigger issue is whether or not 2k forum posters are a representative sample of the xcom population. What I find interesting about this is that this lends credit to the idea that their is allot of potential for video games designed for adults, not just thematically, mechanically. Not every gamer wants non-stop call of duty style game play, allot of us enjoy video games for their deeper themes and strategic or intellectual objectives.
  11. Beta will include the majority of the game, with I believe the final missions withheld. Right now the game is in alpha, and only a small, playable sliver is available for testing.
  12. Sadly the damn Chinese bullets we use seem to be the only thing they aren't putting lead in.
  13. I have repeatedly tested this, and I know before I updated to 14 I was not getting this issue. The F-16's cannon fails to initiate until around 2 seconds inside it's range. I further tested with the afterburners to see if this is a faulty range setting, and sure enough, the time delay was still present. Under full afterburners, I was able to get within a ship's length of a light scout before the cannon engaged (and thankfully finished the thing before I lost the F16).
  14. I can confirm this, I rarely use the MG, but I brought it out on some trial runs on a new game. A Sibby darted down a row of crates into the waiting Barrel of my MGer. While the one round fired was enough for the injured greenback, it was still odd to see only one round from the weapon.
  15. Thank you very much! I am enjoying the hell out of this game; the first time I loaded a quick play match and felt the controls I knew I had a worthy successor before me. I cannot wait for the game to be feature complete, I'm sure it will end up devouring more of my time then even a Bethesda product.
  16. as far as your men being inaccurate, I have found my captains to run and shoot like Usane Bolt with the eyes of an eagle. Try running them around allot, and when possible, setting up a firing squad each time you spot E.T., once they get a little training your men can easily out shoot the aliens.
  17. Xcom was an amazing game, but it had it's fair share of issues. From round one it felt like you, the appointed last hope of the world, are given some duct tape and a couple of sticks and asked to MacGyver your way out of an alien invasion. I often ended up editing myself a better start to nail how I have always felt this kind of game should feel from round one. Xenonauts starts you generously. Your freshly dug base is well stocked with tanks, aircraft and men. You have plenty of cash and teams standing by to develop further tools. Life is good. The beauty of this kind of start is that it gives you a false sense of security that I believe accentuates the true gravity of the situation. As humanity looks on in horror as our skies are darkened with bizarre and hostile ships; 3000 years of military development wakes up in a world well stocked for fighting itself. Xenonauts deserves to give the player the feel that a freighted world really wants to leverage it's full might against the encroaching hostiles. And then, after we initially repel the first alien craft to descend into our atmosphere, it starts. Slowly but surely greater and greater forces descend to wreak havoc with humanity. An initial cautious optimism is replaced by the horror that our best weapons are quickly becoming irrelevant, and no matter how many 21st century guns and planes we can leverage against the invaders, the longer it takes us to adapt their own tools against them, the quicker the noose tightens around our necks. Because of how hopeful our initial start is, we become all the more aware of the severity of the situation as fighters shred through our aircraft, and larger more powerful aliens chew through our ground forces like paper. To me, the original Xcom felt like the noose was already around your neck, your hands bound, and one false move from day one dropped you to your doom. Xenonauts gives you hope before it takes it away, and that lends the game an even greater feel of urgency and a more suffocating tension. I hope this feel remains in the final version. If not I will probably mod it in .
  18. I love the hell out of this, every time I see a round penetrate an alien it just feels awesome. I'm never worried about hitting my own men, my strategy is always to spread out in a "sweep the grid" fashion with men operating in teams of two. If a team sees more hostiles then they can engage themselves, I bunker them down and flank from a side, but I haven't had any crossfire risks yet.
  19. that's too bad. I enjoy the training as an option to bring fresh recruits up to speed with my normal men. If it worked, I would very much enjoy the option to be able to level up my soldiers outside of combat, so that if my main team gets wiped out in a brutal invasion, my backup squad is fresh and upgraded enough to not die to rookie stats.
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