thixotrop

Explosion Logic sounds good to me to make it a playable and somewhat realistic feature. Sure thing only gameplay will show if it "feels" right. Do you intend to use a ballistic arc to shoot over obstacles, mainly the large rock formations, with the grenade launcher? I mentioned this in post of the last version. Let them take their holidays, don't rush. Better have a good game than an early and buggy game.

Two games with different settings: One thing I noted is that if you have a download going, like Steam updating games for me, X2 has tremendous stuttering problems independent on settings. I switched those off for the games here. Though I guess this will be gone once the development games are switched off. Fastest with 1920 x 1200 vs. Fastest with 1280 x 800: "Fastest" settings seem not to help me here; the stuttering, bullets leaving the muzzle with odd angles (although not as drastic and often as before), burst and LMG fire slow and laggy and the errors when throwing grenades are still there (although sound is not out of sync anymore). Changing the resolution is more effective; stuttering heavily reduced and bullets paths mostly OK. But LMG fire suffers still the same lag. Grenades still have same stupid effects mentioned before. Other things: An alien was in view. Soldier could target and shoot but missed. Alien vanished from view. Another soldier approached a bit and alien reappears on same spot. Some trees vanish and reappear when rotation the map (from 1 to 4). In the four images below the tree next to the selected soldier is not visible, then it is visible for some rotation and then gone again for the remaining rotation. Other trees of this model have the same problem. I have mentioned this for an earlier build before: When helaing the heal cursor jumps and locks on terrain tiles. It depends how the cursor is approaching the targe, i.e. the passing tiles, where it locks itself. Rotating helps to avoid these sticky terrain tiles. In both images the soldiers hit the dead alien only. In the left image the (here dead but still standing) Sebillian moved along the blue arrow. Was targetted by the near shotgunner in overwatch, but only the dead body on the street was hit. In my round the other soldier also only hit that body and not the Sevbillian. In the right imagethe soldier only hit the two dead Reapers at the door (no they couldn't pass the door before they died), and the Alien inside hit those too when backfiring. A soldier had to go near the Reaper corpses to hit the living Alien. Dead still standing but dropped their weapons: This soldier can't end his path in the marked tile. And further things: - In most cases grenades cannot be thrown over the obstacle in front. Sometime they explode, sometimes nothing bhappens at all. - Alien always go to the spot where another alien died. Even if they are in a perfect kill zone then. - Aliens still can shoot through walls when a soldier is adjacent to it, when standing or walking past it. Soldiers can't. - Doors and Reapers don't like each other. And my two logs: recording_3.rec recording_4.rec

Hadn't had the time to play 11.0, and only one game now with 11.2.: Grenade Launcher: - Two times the grenade sped at right angle from muzzle into nothingness. Don't know if it left the map as it was faster than normal. - As a grenade it should have an arc when shooting over an obstacle like a rock formation, even if it is into the fog of war. The solider should do that automatically. Yes like a hand-grenade but wth more range. - I think the grenade "bullet" is to fast for that weapon. - Damage is moderate as mentioned. Destruction of scenery seems moderate too, even bushes are unaffected. No suppression at all or? - Explosion animation looks great. Would like to have some lingering dust in the air that settles over time, at least in the sandy environment. But it should be able to move the soldier before dust has settled fully. Hand-grenade: Strangeness all over. - Almost always a sound comes in the beginning of the animation, sounds like a bullet hits a rock. But two times I had no sound. - Sometimes the throw-animation comes and then...nothing. No explosion, no damage anywhere, hand-grenade is gone. Once the initial sound did not come but the rest as described here. - Wrong order: Sound, targetted alien gets damage, throw animation comes, then explosion at alien position. - I never see a visible grenade in the air. In general the game is quite slow, the movement of soldiers in stuttering, sometimes more sometimes less. Aliens doesn't have this problem it seems. Burst shots are extremely problematic. Sound and bullet animation are out of sync. Bullets stay in the air before going on. I play on 1920x1200 and Fantastic setting. Here my log: recording_2.rec I will play more later the week.

Gameplay review by MetalCanyon here. The only thing I don't like (at the moment) is the 2-action-combat system, although they have a bit more options here than in the "other game". Action camera and the GUI colours/design are also too much look-alike. Hope that get its own style in the end. Phoenix || Xineohp ---> Xeno f ---> Xeno. F. ---> Xenonauts Forces Hell, Yeah !!

Similar to the post about Phoenix Point there is a new game to back if you want. The game is called Flash Point: Fire Rescue and it is also a crowd funding campaign of Fig. It is based on the board game of the same name, where you control a fire squadron to fight fire and rescue people in danger. No fighting and no guns, you may have to axe through walls and doors though... Game looks cute and a bit comic stylish. Just check it out. No I am not affiliated to any of this, just spreading the word.

Also backed this as soon as I knew about... Yeah I guess (sub)sea warfare will not come with the initial release. Hopefully with a DLC or Patch(?). And I never have heard about FIG ...though I guess the majority of other possible interested gamers haven't too. I never have seen advertisment/mentioning of it at least.

Again two games past and will report my observations. Funny that Skitso mentioned adding some half height ground tiles. There are some "quarter-half" ground tiles like sand and snow already there. The soldiers feet clip right through. Spilled blood hovers near/around the obstacles. Might look good from one perspective, but when rotating the map it looks weird (Maybe not visible with images). Also, all blood puddles are too shiny out of one viewing direction and turn white. Some UFO interior got visible between turns, but no soldier looked in that direction. Sebillian came near - never seen them move so near in one turn and not shooting first - and ended on top of a structure, i.e. higher ground. None of my soldiers could hit it for two rounds, not even suppressed him, and there was an LMG. The alien could not hit too. The Sebillian was killed o that spot in the third round. Is there something wrong with the hit calculation when shooter or target is on different ground levels? Self-healing works. But when a tree is in front the crosshair jumps away. Trees cannot be healed Shooting through walls when next to them is still possible, maybe because the gun protrudes into the wall? The spot near the start of the yellow arrow is not the gun tip, but alien blood splatter. Aliens also could shoot through the walls. My soldiers were not near the walls. UFO wall problem still exists. Reaper come near the door frame but do not cross. Inside this UFO the Reaper the visible Reaper is immobile, maybe it can't pass the hallway? By doing this the smaller alien couldn't get past it. After the Reaper was killed, a second Reaper appeared from the yellow circle, went to the spot of the then dead reaper and stood there too. It also stopped the smaller alien from moving. And now the record files: recording_1.rec recording_10.rec Wow, guess I haven't forgotten anything to report this time.

Sometimes they do: Stone Forrest China Stones in the Forrest More stones in the Forrest But I am still for a better integration, it looks too blocky, though not exactly ugly.

@Ngong8: I know the original game (UFO: Enemy unknown {EU name} or X-COM UFO Defense {US name}). Maybe the interior and the "overall" design looks a bit like the terror ship, but I meant this specific shape. It looks like a sprite shape that has only one colour and comes down the screen and drops pixel-bombs.

Finally could play a game of 0.9.1, did not have time for 0.9.0. So as usual: When switching weapons with X, soldiers occasionally clip halfway through the floor. Either they come back by itself after some time or when switching again. Also sometimes when switching, the soldier goes to a half crouched position for a split-second. In general change of weapon need an animation, not the abrupt change...but this is my opinion. Shotgunner Ok here Ok here And its retarded... LMG and Rifleman have the same "problem".... Wall error still there. Shotgunner moved along the outer wall and interior became visible. Ok this was strange, only Reaper visible. Soldiers moved in and died in alien turn (2x one-hit). Didn't see a shot animation but heard it. Got the impression the Reaper killed without moving, as it didn't at all and none other alien visible. There was a fight with two other aliens in that room before. Next round, a Sectoid stands behind structure (yellow position). No bug but, the UFO design looks so familiar....is it an homage to Space Invaders or some other classic slot-machine-video-game? And the log file: recording_9.rec And also as usual I forgot somethings: During the initial alien contact outside the UFO and while it was not revealed yet, the map panned into the black area when in hidden movement. I suspect an alien moving around. This shouldn't move the map. Self-healing with the Medipak doesn't work On one ocasion, I rotated the map (E) while a soldier was moving. The soldier triggered reaction fire of an Alien. Then the map continued rotating by itself. Only pressing the opposite rotation button (Q) a couple of times stopped that.

As I have started to read through this text my immediate thought was about the UI. I know why you used the X1 interface, no prob here. I am quite certain you will find an improved version, let it be with a certain resource or via the community. One comment from me; please don't forget to implement all possible actions with icons or tool tip descriptions. I personally always forget how to use the Medkit, or that I can stop the walking soldier with the space bar. Otherwise, thanks fo this update and the description of next development steps.

Oh, please no.

Oh man how I love the free camera rotation!!!! I am spamming WASD to pan and QE to rotate all the time now. Zoom in/out via mousewheel would the cream now. Could only play one game, but the map was great. This ground combat felt exactly like the original X-COM (1994 version for all that don't know what means "original"): team spreads out, enemy contact, focus, suppress, take down, move further, cover ground and watch those corners!...great. One Sebillian hid and lured my team to come out of cover, killed one of mine before he got nailed. Great tactical feeling. But now to my observations: Although nothing has changed here, now I really would like to be able to change the end tile my soldier is moving to after I already clicked somewhere else. I misclicked two times now and ended in the wrong spot. Yes my fault but, yeah. Also a "next-soldier" or a cycle button would come in handy. Clicking the icons is great, but I don't always know what icon is which soldier. I always forget how to use the Medikit in this demo. Is it possible to have the all the key descriptions somewhere in the options too, not only in the launcher? Now pictures as usual: Shotgunner is against rocks (red arrow). Can see two aliens, although hidden behind rocks. Possibly because end of weapon is inside rock. Shotguner has the rock not as an obstacle, rifleman behind him does. UFO interior becomes visible. Edge error? Left: It is not easy to target the alien when it is at the door frame. The actual crosshair appears only just above it, a littlebit fiddly. Right: Although very near it is impossible to hit. Only option is directly in front line. See text in picture... And again I forgot the rec file: recording_8.rec Oh by the way, a couple of rounds inside the UFO, the game crashed to desktop.

I can only agree on Pavels "If I can see you, I can hit you" rule that the aliens seem to have. They use it a lot but with the addition "...with a perfect shot." In my first game with 0.7.1 only my Sniper survived and could conquer the UFO alone with ist MP5. While I am at this...as my Sniper with his MP5 got inside the UFO he was attacked by an invisible Reaper, twice. I have checked the first room completely but was hit in melee I guess. The third round, back to a wall, the Reaper appeared in front of my Sniper in its turn and missed (oh what luck). Burst killed the Reaper then. There is still the annoying bug that soldiers often, very often, hit the rock or rocks they are covering behind. Something is not right with the alien indicators (the alien heads on the right hand side of the screen): I know there is a hidden alien on the orange spot. The rifleman on the left has two alien indicators. When panning away, the lower head pans back focussing on the lower alien, but the other head doesn't do anything. The alien in yellow is visible and can be shot at but has no indicator. Same situation as above; The hidden alien is still there. The left soldier has two indicators, but only the orange will be panned/focussed when clicked. Red doesn't do anything. Yellow can be shot at, but no indicator. Aliens can shoot through UFO walls: In three successive rounds my soldiers were shot t through the UFO walls. One soldier was killed. I am very certain the shots came through the walls. First I thought the aliens were inside the UFO, but they were actually on the other side and could shoot through the whole UFO. Healing field is too small when HP numbers with comma appear. Also in this picture; the Aliens that could shoot through the UFO were behind the UFO as I have seen them coming around the corner. After my first game, I wanted a second, but the launcher did not start immediately. I started it again, but no luck again. I killed Xenonaust2 demo with the Task manager and the second started launcher appeared. I clicked play and the game started as a tiny screen in the upper right corner on my desktop screen. Couldn't click in it and had to kill it again. I always use fullscreen 1920x1200 with "fantastic" setting. Now everytime I want to start it I have to wait at least 40 seconds until the launcher appears. Forgot to add the logs: recording_6.rec and recording_7.rec

Ok, just saw the Phoenix Point thread again. The shown monsters remind me on Dark Souls video game series or the horror board game Kingdom Deatch: Monster. Due to the horror vibe ... I just want to spread a bit about SCORN. I know it does not fit completely into a turn based game forum. Being myself a long time fan of the art of H.R.Giger and other "fantastic artists" like De Es Schwertberger, I can't say how beautiful this trailer looks. Maybe others do not see the same like I do though... The only thing I fear is that this game will be a FPS game with nearly no or reduced morsel of adventure in it.

For me, stepwise rotation is good enough as long as there aren't blind spots. I want to change the view quickly without fiddling with the mouse, although this would be much more precise if required I agree. Zooming by mouse wheel is also good enough when the increments are not too large. Next request (by some other one I guess) would be elevation angle, to move the camera form 90° bird-eye perspective down to 0° ground level. I don't need that as long as I can see everything, the 45° isometric (?) is good enough for me. However, it would be quite a view if you could go to the individual soldiers view, and take a look through the soldiers eyes, maybe with truning the head. But I don't want that automatically like in the Firaxis versions!

Wall transparency? Ok, but what about having 45° rotation angles instead of the 90°? Especially in this UFO, the view is exactly in between the corridor angles: - standard 90° view angles (orange) - soldier on yellow or on blue is hard to see when you also want to see the next room (here the entrance room) - 45° view angles will help here (green arrows) I don't know if you want to restrict yourself in the UFO designs so that unlucky angles will not be an issue. So I think a finer rotation will make everything easire.

Played a bit with this: I think the hit calculation is again (?) a bit off. Is there some RNG at work that screws me up? Often my soldiers cannot take a shot with more than ~15% due to all the rocks in between and miss horribly. And then two aliens shoot form their unchanged positions and one-hit my soldiers through the same shooting path. WTF. Other incidents here: It was impossible to shoot at this alien with my shotgunner, although he could see it, and it could see him: This was so unfair, and so wrong: The sound of the UFO door opening - always happens when an alien comes into view - is still so immensly loud that I nearly jump out of my chair... Sometimes it is hard to identify what alien/soldier has reacted shooting in overwatch. Shotgunners shoot in overwatch although the distance is much to far to be reasonable.

Had two plays and loved it. I could successfully conquer the UFO in botch cases. No pictures this time, as there was no real new stuff to show. So funny to see this old UFO model, I know you will change to nicer ones. This is just a nice gift for us old gamers, thank you. However funny the UFO model, it seems it is made out of the wall models for the modder community of the customized UFO discussion back in X1 days. Reason: it has the same flaws. The alien inside can look through the walls or their interfaces without being seen from the outside. Guess this effect is two tiles around the outer hull. The sound of the UFO door is immensely loud. Aliens will occupy the pace of a killed other alien within my turn. Blood splatter looks good im amount, not in position but I know. I also think the blood is to shiny or has a too even mirror effect. It always looks as if the blood if spread on a glass plate. Randomizing the reflection will mimick surface topography. Also someone other mentioned this already: The rotation angles coud be halfed to have more view positions. My soldiers do hit better than ever, also the aliens are quite good shots and surpass my regulars, overall it feels more balanced. Great. Corpse doll effect of the Sebillian is still funny, especially if one is hurdled onto the street on its tummy with the arms twiddling around like a turtle on its back. I know you will do something here, but you may have to add some sagging effect on the body when its killed. It looks artificial if it looks like a cylinder with attached arms.

>1. Go into the menu with the icon on the top left corner of the map and change the range for the cover icons. >2. Haven't tested that myself. >3. Not yet implemented I guess. >4. Might be, never have seen that too.

@Akhmed >1 Never had a crash myself, only that map rotation with Q/E and elevation with up/down did not work. Next game everything worked as normal. Yes the game stopps completely, I guess this is intended. >2 Yes normal behaviour, I guess it was just forgotten to implement. >3 A lot of things are re-used from X1 and will be reworked. >4 Others have requested this too and Chris thinks they will implement it. >5 Correct, not implemented. So you also cannot go to a corpse and use the dropped weapon.

@Chris I know the cover radius option and have played with it a bit. Sometimes I like to set it to 3 or 4 so you can better see where is the best position to move your soldier, but then only when the soldier should go a great distance. For short distances range 1 is better. I thought about a dynamic range adaptiion first, but I am not sure if it will be useful. After some ground combats the player should know what will be a better position and don't need to have 20 or more icons to choose from. Ragdolls are fun at the moment, the corpses should be still though. The "swimming" Sebillian was killed by the (later be killed) shotgunner with the cover icons. The Sebillian jerked back as if the carpet was pulled from under his legs, toppled and rolled over at least 2 fields. Looked really powerful. I can't remember what center was, maybe I remembered the original or Apocalypse or another game. I guess you will rework the UI in a certain way, please consider the number for identification of soldiers or a similar method, also the suppressed state and other.

Another play, it seems the bugs are mostly gone with this version (for me) and so I can only post some observations that might lead to optimization(?). I miss the "center" command (c button) to go back to your selected soldier after you panned the map. Soldiers can be selected by pressing 1-8 on the keyboard, great! But soldier icons should have the number that selects him attached to it. When some icons are gone due to... death, it would help to select the remaining ones better. Now you have to click-select the soldier in the map or the icon. I often switch between soldiers to see who can better shoot or walk to a position. Always clicking by mouse is to slow. The icons of supressed soldiers should be easily visible, either by adding "suppressed", new icon or color change. I know that persistent vision (or is it called team vision here?) maybe the answer here, but I think it is not completely correct: Left side image: The aliens behind the rock shouldn't be visible to my sniper, as the three soldiers at the right egde of the screen shouldn't see all of them either. Before this, I had a shotgunner to the rock formation on the right outside the screen, he got killed, and he could see all of them. But after he died the aliens shouldn't be seen anymore right? Center and right side images: Once the soldier walks near, the Sebillian becomes visible, and when he turns his back, it vanishes again. So far so good here. Still the aliens behind the rock are somehow visible. Three things here: - I prefer that when the crosshair appears, the cover icons disappear, maybe as an option in the game menu. - The crosshair is to big or rather to bold. If aliens would stand close and behind to each other (in this perspective) you will have problems to identify which one is which. Sure you can rotate the map, but what if this happens in a near alley with walls or containers? Maybe the wireframe tactical view or the "transparent bubble" helps here. - And at last: The persistent vision/team vision feels stupid here. The sniper cannot see/target the alien without anotherone looking at it...*sigh*. I know game-play-wise it is correct, just feels awkward here. And now to more corpse events Is it possible that a dead alien corpse has some vision blocking or cover features? One alien could not hit me while near. And another came close and did nothing at all. Maybe I was lucky until not anymore... And here as usual: recording_10.rec

What about the transparent bubble that the old Fallout games and Divinity: Original Sins games have?

Hm, yes maybe. The consequence will be to simplifiy the game so much that the touch screen users are able to use it in a convenient way. That means, if they have to be precise enough to select a soldier on the screen and rotate him 45° they will not like it, because it is "too fiddly". And don't tell them to use a pen or similar, that is sooo antique. And yes, simplify just means then: Nerf and dumb down to pre-school level skills, understanding/game depth and complexity, but for marketting we cal it "streamlined for widespread/all-user access: You don't need to be a Gamer to play this Game!" Cynism off: I don't have anything against gaming an a touch screen, but please PLEASE don't go this way by sacrificing the better controllable "standard" input devices. Bejeweled, Tetris or Angry Birds games are OK to play with its minimal interaction needs. A game like Xenonauts where you control single units with a variety of options at all times demands better and more precise control. And even if you could zoom in and out of the map to do that, you will loose the overview of the battlefield soon or get annoyed pretty fast by "always need to zoom in to control my soldier". So if you want to make a touch screen game, do a small game that doesn't need complexity (in game play, control, strategy and so on). Make a mini-X2 game parallel to the "full content" X2. If the touch-screen users do not have interest in "normal" games, OK. But the majority of these users will not expect that X2 will be ported, as they don't know about. The minority that knows surely want it, but then do it properly and take on this market with a proper game, not a simple 1:1 solution, to also get the majority of others. In short: Don't dumb down the game in favour for a touch screen possible game.