thixotrop

Just want to spread some info about this game in development at kickstarter. "InSomnia RPG is a dystopia carried out in a murky, retrofuturistic style. The game takes place on a colossal, semi-deserted interplanetary space station. Having left their dying planet behind, this space metropolis, along with its inhabitants, has been moving towards the distant, ghost-like Evacuation Point for the past 400 years, where the descendants of the once great people hope to start over the history of mankind." A bit like Fallout, with exploration, some quests, crafting and survival (?) in a heavily weared down SciFi environment or more like the junkyard of it. The graphics look fantastic in my eyes. Kickstarter-page Here you can find a playable demo Yes I am hyped. Yes I pledged on kickstarter. And no, I am not affiliated to them.

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder" is an old Greek saying by Plato or some other guy. When I read this: I shudder inside with pictures of rainbow-color-paletteously, chewing-gum-fantastic, Warcraft-like comic-book graphics that are too typically nowadays to portrait "futuristic" environment. (I know that Warcraft and "future" are biting each other here).Satellite Reign has that approach too, although the mood is a bit differently. I could have written this on the Firaxis forum for X-COM2: "..don't expect X-COM 2 to look as good as Xenonauts", but I didn't. There are people who likes this and then there are those who like something else. The picture that Chris posted is a good example: I think it is a stupid style, simplistic water-color Kindergarten in every graphical way. Boring to look at despite the intension of the artist. Others like it, I don't. I guess Plato was right. On Xenonauts: In respect to the game setting the graphical presentation of Xenonauts (1) was really great, in my eyes. I loved the hand drawn art and the look of the 2D animations. Everything was a neutral mood and in lack of a word...non-chearfully, fitting to the 70's setting and the alien terror. Yes the overall gameplay did not convey this as much, but the art could compensate a lot for me. And there was even a (visual) mod that dragged everything down even more. More dark, more depressing, more sinister mood themed. I guess it was from Skitso. Ah and yes: Hire Skitso for mapping!

Yes, I am really interested in this. Will go pre-release or even earlier with you, no problem. You know why? I trust you. Not like the "other company" where I will wait for at least a year after release to buy anything from them. Why? With Xenonauts you excelled in being a close listener to the community and things changed in reasonable time and with reasonable explanations. Even if you did not do anything that I wanted to be changed, there was always a good reason for it that you expressed well. I trust you to be the same here. Three cheers.

@kabil Maybe all the little explanations are there. As I just watched Lets-Plays only it might be lost to me. The 20 years was afaik announced after the tutorial mission when you (the commander) are updated to your new/old position. However it just feels stupid to not even have ADVENT technology or anything better than ballistics. @MasterZelgadis Overall agree with your thoughts on time limits. Crawling-through is not what I want, some time limits ar ok; like bombs to defuse, rescue missions or if certain things need to be brought quickly to safety (live organs, computer codes that becomes invalid, living biotech etc.). Starting the timer with the initial combat would totally explain it and will go well with the guerilla theme. However a timer does not mean to end the mission directly. Maybe backup comes in more and more with time. You can take it only for so long then you have to leave. No dead end failure because a number reaches zero. I understand what drages means...though I don't care so much (am already burnt here with X-Com1) And why not compare XCOM with the original? The original was named X-COM. They have choosen the name to have a connection. If they want to cash in some credibilities and breath some ghost of the legend here then they damn well have to observe some obligations.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about your competitor (?). I do not have XCOM2 and do not plan to buy it unless it will be at least one year old. Not because of special sale, but due to the typically not-avoidable-bugs of 2K/Firaxis Games. I was furiously enraged from XCOM1 (and Civ5 before) and their inability and/or unwillingness of react/answer to customer complains about not-running software that were bought for full price. However, I have watched a couple of Lets-Plays and read some reviews from on Steam and elsewhere and found most of my doubts about the game confirmed in some way. I don't want to go into details here, it is my opinion and it is biased in some way... Although I don't think bugs will ever be rooted out prior release anymore nowadays, I think it is a sad trend... Before the internet, a game came out in a box. You had to install it and it worked. Don't want to say that all was good back then, now you much more choice on games and better availability, but unplayable games were rare. Now nearly every game has those issues. "ARK:Survival Evolved" was a nice exception, unfinished but playable. As an engineer I know about quality control, but in software this seems to be of lesser importance, because of the "you can always fix later" attitude; definitely against my nature. Now what I think is really annoying about XCOM2, and what I hope will not enter Xenonauts2 in any way: - "Trivialize the tactical game" as Chris said above with artificial round limits. Yes it can add some stress level, which I see valid with bomb timers, but not when choosing your own way to plan other missions. It is not logical when having the rebel character and guerilla tactics in mind. You have few ressources, have to hide, capture essential technology and avoiding direct contact. Why time limits? So you have to play the game in only one way, not your own. Stealth does not help here as I have seen a lot. Consequence: Low replayability! The tactical game was the core of the ground combat in the original game and Xenonauts1. Here it is watered down dramatically. Please don't weaken the tactical game to some easy solutions like that. - Logical errors XCOM2 is 20 years after the first, ok. The current XCOM organisation says that they hide and keep on working hiddenly since then, ok. But your soldiers beginn with the same ballistic weapons as before!! Where are the inventions like plasma guns from the past? Confiscated? Could be but not mentioned. Lost? Possible but not mentioned. Impossible to rebuild? Definitly not! Even if it is not possible to achieve all components, the least start would be to have similar weapons like Advent. There are more stupids like that... Please maintain a reasonable chain of events and decissions during the game, even if you don't use Xenonauts1 as a prequel.

The roof symbol in your UI, below the coloured stat bars and right side of the backpack icon, should hide all structures above your current level. One click more should make everything kind of transparent to look through blocking structures like walls and with another click everything comes back to normal view. At least that's how I remember it. Does that work?

That looks quite similar to the T-1 robot of the Terminator 3 movie, though caterpillars and arms are not quite the same. Nevertheless, cool!

Looks like it, see here. Possibly the source for the model...

When F2P turns towards Pay2Win about some time in the game it is time for me to depart. Most recent example I have experienced is Hearthstone. It was a lot of fun for the first couple of months. As a "Magic the Gathering" player of old, before they started to pour out new card editions each quarter, I could easily dive into Hearthstone. But then suddenly I always fought and lost against the same powerful cards, regardless of the opponent. As I only play from time to time, say days will pass, it could be me lagging behind of game rewards, but a friend of mine played daily week after week and he did not own those cards too. Hence either all of my opponents play as crazy or buy the cards. Now it could be a problem of the game putting unbalanced players against each other, but not if I see the same cards all over. I lost the fun in that game, due to tedious battles destined to loose and/or to pay to keep up. Another one is "Mechwarrior Online", although not completely a P2W game, you can definitely gain a lot of advantage when paying for better Mechs, upgrades and weapons. Most annoying game of that behaviour was "Lord of the Rings online". Again fun to play in the beginning. But when you have to pay money for a simple horse or learning to ride a horse, a third inventory bag, a bit more space in your bank and everything rather vital to normal game play it becomes a tedious management of what to cary/produce/store or to sell. Not mentioning being on foot the majority of time as you haven't revealed the travel points yet. War Thunder for instance was not annoying. I had the feeling (had, because I haven't played for some time now) they found a good balance between F2P and payable content. It was visible where and what you can pay, but it was never in your face.

Cthulhu related instead of Aliens, why not. I propose to read about the board game Arkham Horror. In a city some portals to other dimensions open and monsters enter the city. The goal is to close these portals before one of the Ancients is ready to enter the world, which has to be battled then, but it is damned hard. To close the portals you have to enter them, survive/overcome an obstacle and when coming back having enough of some tokens to close it. For the transistion into a Xenonauts game a lot of intersecting points are there to be used, I guess.

Instant-YES! Hooray! Sounds as the game is below the distant horizon of eventuality. OOoohh...

Full 3D - We'd make the game in full 3D with a (90-degree) rotatable camera. I'd also want to replace soldier paperdolls and painted screen backgrounds etc on the strategy layer with 3D models. Sounds great. But please no first person view in a tactic/strategic game. It can be used to check for gun view perspective, but I don't think that will be necessary as long as the aim/hit calculation is reliable enough. Aliens - I'd like to add some more aliens, rework some of the existing ones mechanically to be more interesting and also redesign them so they look more striking and "alien" in the ground combat. I did not have a problem with the aliens in Xenonauts, a “standard alien” exists only in games and movies . However, other alien races or alien classes would be great. I can also imagine seeing aliens that adapt to the earth atmosphere/gravitation/temperature/whatever, so that aliens encountered before change in abilities, features and armour/weapons without being a new class or type of the alien. Furthermore aliens could adapt to the weapon and tactics you use. If you settle on gas grenades the aliens use gas masks after some time. If you use snipers a lot, they will use smoke launchers. If you use laser weapons, they use reflecting armour. Class/types can exist too but with adapting aliens you have more diversity of enemies and will have them around a bit longer during the game. Drages wish for fearsome aliens is valid, but for me “just fearsome looking” aliens will wear off after some time. I was pretty afraid when encountering Reapers, because they are so dangerous to my units. Reapers sounded fearsome, but I have never experienced a lot of there capability; they seldom used the “beam behind, fire, beam away” tactics, what is their most dangerous feature. Androns were also quite hard to tackle, but luckily they could be destroyed and would not fight further if they were damaged. Imagine an Andron that is shot down loosing its legs and crawls further to attack you, like in the Terminator movies. Man what a horrible situation when fighting those in close proximity. The Aftershock series had one fearsome alien too: It “shot” a cloud of insect that approached and followed and made a hell of damage. Although it could fire not often, it was pretty much my Nemesis, as I was loosing people often, and whenever I saw it on the map I despaired to go further. Research / Development - I want to add the concept of 'development' to the research tree, allowing you to continue researching "hub" technologies (like laser weapons etc) to increase their effectiveness if you choose. Choosing whether to improve existing tech or research new stuff should add more choice to the research tree. The research tree in Xenonauts was pretty boring once you knew what was coming to you, stopped my wish to replay it a bit. I think a research tree that splits into different branches like the Techtree in the Civilization series would be better, so that you can not achieve anything directly or only to a certain degree. Having different ways of technology allows for different playstyles. Yes I imagine balancing will be a hard task then, but with my above mentioned adaptability of the aliens, I guess it can be handled. I agree with SoulFilcher that the cannibalizing of alien technology and weapons to adapt them to humans or updating human technology with theirs would be great way. Actually this can be a whole research tree in itself. Adapting/improving alien weapons and technology for human use instead of analysing and rebuilding form scratch (the other research tree). Both trees can merge after some time, so you get the fancy final design weapon eventually, but with the adapting tree you can focus on other trees as well. As an engineer I always try to imagine how this research would happen in reality. I am not talking university research here where each and every last bit of the theory is tested and investigated in fine detail. I mean industrial research where you need usable results fast because of money. So rather than saying “research weapon X” then “technology Y”, you put your resources (money, people and time; yes three different resources) in topics. The topics will be presented with possible outcomes, a time-line, costs (amount and type of resources). Sure, one result will be new brancches of research topics. You as the commander have to decide which way to go. So as an example, researching plasma technology for some time, will bring bonus effects for similar technologies, but not for lets-say force field technology. So if you after some time decide a change of plan, you have to invest a lot, maybe better to go the one way you know more about? That doesn't mean that you can't research everything, but expect to have the results later when splitting research. Maybe the war will be over before the first results will surface, and the one laser weapon could have helped some month before... Destructible UFOs - the UFO outer hulls should be destructible, which means we'll have to redesign them visually too. Nothing against what will enhance the tactical ground combat. But maybe the aliens will counter act that with some defence weapons, reactive armour or whatever. Vertical Terrain - we should have hills etc in the game, rather than purely flat maps with buildings offering the only verticality. Oh please yes. In Apocalypse I definitely liked to search for aliens in tall buildings. However, please no tedious room to room, looking in every corner. You should know with technology or other if there are aliens around when you are in a certain vicinity. And yes the aliens should do something there, not lurking around watching TV and emptying the refrigerator of the original inhabitants. XCOM Cover System - I think the cover system in XCOM was very easy to understand and also integrated 'leaning' in an intuitive way, whereas our cover system was a bit of a mess. I think we'd probably switch to their cover system. OK, but I did not have that much problems with Xenonauts. Soldier Colour Customisation - I want to redesign the armours so they are more recognisable from silhouette, allowing people to customise their colours of their troops (including having role-specific colour schemes). Uninteresting like achievements (a cheap excuse for real content) in my eyes. But for modders interesting I guess. UI - the existing UI is a bit of a mess, particularly with regards to the strategy layer, so we'd redo that. I did not think it was a mess, maybe a bit clunky. As it was related to the original game, I thought it was OK. Tool-tips and more description would have been handy in the beginning of the game though. Air Combat - I'm not sure exactly how I'd redesign this yet, but I think it could do with further improvement. Like the aliens the UFOs should adapt their tactics to the playstyle of the player, I can't remember if kabills of Max_Caines mod did that a bit. Your units should have more abilities, 180° loopingn turns, afterburner, flares, whatever. The time stopping during combat was OK but a bit annoying when close and fast actions required to start/stop within a second. Tutorial - the game should use the Iceland Incident as a playable tutorial that explains the setting and the basic game mechanics. Yes please. Modding Tools - we've been working on some pretty cool game editors and level editors, so the modding / translation / level creation tools will be much better than in Xenonauts 1 and will handle the "modular mod" stuff automatically. Yes please, always wanted to do maps for GC and UFOs but the editor and the sorting of submaps and items annoyed me a lot. I wanted directories for each type (trees, cars, houses, house props, UFO props and so on). Never could remember where or in what region folder I have seen that one wall type or ground type and scrolling like hell through the directory.... I would definitely buy that game, regardless of refund for having the first one. And don't bother to repeat the same setting or that it is not a real sequel. Civilization is the same game since forever (played Civ 1 on my Amiga 500) And love to play the current version. One game that doesn’t get old, forever replayability. What I did not like in Xenonauts? - The short ending!! - Bugs in GC - Money shortage. Always thought it is a lame idea to limit advancing the game with a setting like this. Come on, the Xenonauts were established to fight aliens, and then they have money shortage? Maybe at the beginning as it was unclear what the aliens where up to, but after some terror missions, abductions, and what-else it should be clear that it is necessary to do something against them. - Loosing nations due to the money shortage. - Repetitive maps (over and over and over again) - The cold war atmosphere did not come through for me. Possible improvements? - Missions (like everything what drages said) - Research tree overhaul and adapting aliens like mentioned above (PM me if you want, I have a lot ideas for this) - More maps - Some special tactics for GC (calling reinforcements, air strikes, ammo drops, whatever).

I also liked Apocalypse a lot (played on Amiga 500), but - and this is a large BUT here - I prefered the turn based option. Not that I don't like the intense atmosphere and the action, but I want to have control over my units. And this is because of stupid AI, and I haven't seen anything good actually. Yes, in the original Dune game, the game Command & Conquer was based on, units were stupid too, but reliably stupid. Sometimes later a game like Total Annihilation used many many units, all stupid as hell, but also reliable stupid so that you could adapt too. However, it was not one of my favourite games. An actual example is Company of Heroes, which I had to stop and give it away. What rage when seeing your wounded units retreating and passing in front of the enemy units, or approaching the enemy over an open field despite a trench and obstacles to hide behind, damn... Hmm sorry, got carried away. But thats why I prefer TBS games. Not that I want to have the micro management, but to avoid stupid AI behaviour. And I have high hopes that Goldhawks next big game will be right after my "gusto".

I remembered some discussion about the Hunter vehicle, why to use vehicles at all and if it should be possible to retrieve them from GC (read here). And I know that back in V21 the Hunter had 4 damage states, as I have used the Hunter in Alien Base assaults and had to experience that. Dunno if it is still that way...not playing at the moment. Maybe this damage method can be used for other vehicles as well? The last state would be some remains, scorch marks, burning floor or all of them randomly in a submap...

3 & 4: If you build your own maps, or use other maps (but better ask if you can use community maps) and alter them with a submap of an already grounded 2nd Ufo that is untouched by the regular Ufo placement of the mission, and place additional alien spawn points inside nand around...maybe this could work. I guess someone like kabill, Max_Caine or Skitso could answer that much better than me. I am no coder or modder, just one lingering jerk around here... And thinking further with your No. 4, maybe use a larger submap of an Ufo, Corvette or one of the heavies, that actually has two or three smaller landed/crashed Ufos, instead of the one larger brother. Multiple ships to enter and clear. Will then work on any map for that larger Ufo. Hmm just realized I repeated all of your description with my own words...already too late for me.

Have you seen this thread about Modular Ufos ? And this sticky about some blender templates ? As far as I remember about the Modular Ufo thread, you can create new Ufos. You can give them the same name like the existing ones and put their submap, spectre and what-not in the same folder like the others. When a GC is loaded the game will then randomly load one of the existing Ufos of, for instance, lightscouts. This way all existing maps will have a change to use your Ufo-design too. Although that means to check (all) maps for proper placement, i.e. entrance of the Ufo available and not blocked by the edge of the map. The other way was, to create your own Ufos with new names, but then you will have to add the submap placeholder onto all maps it should be able to appear, so that this Ufo can be placed there. And this is hell of lot of work. Not all maps have all Ufo types by the way. I guess kabill can tell you much more about that. And your art is truely cool, so in phase with the original. *thumbs up*

...ground combat practice for rookies ...all/half damage redone at end of mission, but stats enhanced like a regular GC ...no game progress though Wasn't that something asked for by a lot of people? Maybe possible then...

Some Caesans have PSI abilities, one of those is to detect soldiers on the map, non-LOS if I remember correctly. I am not sure if it is still in the game, but if it is then they can use this low-cost ability in each of their turns. And if one Caesan knows where you are everyone will know. The shooting through walls is a bug I guess, though I thought it was solved some time ago. As far as I know Reapers have an extreme range of LOS and maybe can detect you when near. Yes be afraid of them, be very afraid. With Reapers I advance real slow, double and triple coverage of soldiers, look around repeatedly, 2-3 soldiers fire on one Reaper. Retreat and regroup if necessary.

...and the only reasonable and playable version that will not provoke complains from realistic-fans or smooth-gameplay-fans would be to have a real globe map like in the original game. This was discussed before too. Reason why it is not in here was engine limitations and amount of work, afaik.

Like I mentioned here some time ago. I guess either in that thread or a similar one was the setting of the "Xcom2" proposed (as I mentioned above) from someone...

Lost battle over earth...years later an underground team of soldiers try to recapture the planet... Isn't that exactly what has been discussed here in the forums over a possible Xenonauts sequel some time ago? Seems like some of THEM has followed the forums HERE, or...they had the same idea because it is one of the logical next steps. Hmm... Whenever this comes, I will not buy it instantly if at all, because every Firaxis game I know is plagued with heavy game stopping bugs when released and they don't react to any complaints (Civ 5 = Multiplayer was fixed only after a year after release, then broken again with an addon, then fixed after another year and broken directly again and nowadays barely working but with heavy lags; XCOM-2012 = Game crashing bug was removed after 10 months with the 3rd patch). So I will wait and see. I have more high hopes with Goldhawkes "Pathfinders".

tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'?

There is no one as Terry Pratchett, but... Douglas Adams, "Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy"-Series, all 5 books of the trilogy And a bit off but also funny: Piers Anthony, "Prostho Plus"; where a dentist is abducted by aliens to fix there teeth. Yes, very bizarre but very funny.

Damn it, I just heard. Very sad. My favorite author died...I have read every regular discworld book there is. "Raising Steam" and "Shepherd's Crown" still waiting for me. Although I loved the earlier more chaotic and less streamlined books more than the latter, better and complex story-writing with more suspense, there were only a few that I thought to be merely ok. Actually, Discworld books brought me to learn the english language with more enthusiasm. Having read the german version of "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic" with each page serving a good laugh, I felt some jokes were not working properly due to translation. I bought both in english and man was it hard; so many unknown words like mooring and eerie that I have never seen anywhere else. So I picked up a dictionary (yes it was made out of paper and you had to thumb through to find the words) and noted every unknown word I came across over these two volumes and learned them with the flashcard system. The next books were easier and fewer words were to learn. Yes, my english capability skyrocketed...so much for motivation and the correct method of learning. So another influencial person (for me) died; Hansruedi Giger last year, Leonard Nimoy and Terry Pratchet just lately.

Just for clarity: Dubbing means translation with voice actors and subbing means subtitles with the original voices? What is "voice over " then? Is it so that you can hear the translated voice over the original but more silent voice, like polish-version movies have that sometimes? Actually I prefer the original version, but I have to limit this to english movies and TV series as I understand that. My french is too bad for understanding, reading is ok though. Sometimes I use the english subtitles with the original english movie/TV series, but only when it is hard to understand (due to accent or mumbling). But in general subtitles annoy me as they brake the immersion. Maybe funny to hear: My DVD edition of the movie "Dune" has english subtitles for the english version that you can't switch off. That annoyed me so much that I taped the subtitles on my TV screen so they were hidden. Yes I am a crazy one. But then I also watch the original language when the german version is plane stupid. Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cup) is really good to watch in original japanese with the (few) english subtitles, the emotions of the voices are understandable without knowing the language. Ghost in the Shell: Stand alone complex is also good in japanese with german or english subtitles, but actually the german translation (dubbing) is really great here. Mood, emotion, atmosphere all in the voices and no stupid translation as far as I know. One could think that they could manage the quality of translation nowadays, but oh no. In "Game of Thrones" the german voice of Tyrion Lannister maybe ok as it fits the original and translation may be ok too but not mood and emotion. The sarcastic and cynical element of the character is completely missing when he is talking with the german voice. I have watched the original version first, then tried to watch the german version and had to switch it off because it was so bad.