ThunderGr
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Posts posted by ThunderGr
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how can they bugtest a game on every combination of hardware before a release exactly?
You cannot be serious, right? With DirectX and OpenGL it is no longer necessary to do that. Back in the 90's things were really a mess. The game had to be made compatible and be tested with all the supported graphics cards and sound cards drivers because there was no multimedia layer API to use that would handle the communication with the driver. They only thing they have to do now, is to test for minimum requirements and do a decent debugging. Still, games in the 90's came out with less bugs and higher game qualities than modern games.
Game companies are what we call "businesses", and as such have to deal with things called "finances". "Money" does not grow on digital trees, and so they cannot afford to pay 20,000 people to test the games for glitches and bugs on 20,000 different hardware configurations. They also cannot afford to keep a game in development for an extra like 25% of its current cycle just to fix every last little minor issue. There is this thing called "diminishing returns", and given that the marketplace has decided that "95% (or so) is 'good enough'", they usually will find that a good enough place to stop, if their finances don't dictate it as such a point first anyway. Once they release and get flush with cash, they can afford to pay for continued improvements and fixes. So, not only can they not find many issues until after release, but many times they couldn't afford to pay to fix them before release anyway.Very interesting. Damn, I wish you say that the next time you pay for dinner and they serve you 95% finished dinner because "they are a business and there is thing called 'diminishing returns'"...Attitudes like that keep the gaming industry in such a pitiful state. Everything else passes through QC (quality check) procedures at various stages of production. Games don't because they have found a way to make money while producing crap and being sure that they won't be sued for that under the disclaimer of warranty they state.
You wouldn't deserve be angry if it was advertized as that, Xenonauts is.This game is still in alpha. I only hope they will have finished it before release but, to tell the truth, I am well aware that my hopes cannot hold water. From what I have seen so far, the engine used is buggy and they are tied to it. This can only mean that the end product will have to suffer unpatchable bugs no matter what. It also means that the engine poses limitations to the developers that will lead to producing a product less good that they had in mind to begin with...
And a lot of people generally like to buy their computers at a 95% ready state: Finished parts that need to be assembled.
Arguably, its the only way to get the best personal computer possible.
Some people, like myself, like to assemble our computers. I was referring to the vast majority that have no idea how to do so and they expect a finished product. Ordering parts for a closet with the intend of assembling it yourself is different than buying a finished closet.
Coding is tough.
I ask you to try to make a mod, with a 23'rd of the content that the full game has.
Do art assets, mix audio bits, and write long XML strings.
Get rid of every crash, bug, and otherwise broken feature....
Its a lot of work, and if I can write code that crashes in lua, java, and xml within a days work...
These guys have their work cut out for them with a years worth of bugs and nasty things.
Writing my mod, I haven't really gotten to actually play the game much at all (There is a dozen hours of testing, and a little fun time I got,) then we have the devs, who spend all of their on hours expanding the game, who, outside of the QA guys, probably get to play the game less then I do.
I am a programmer, so I know that coding is tough and this is why people get paid to do it right. If it was easy, everyone would do it and there would be no need to pay specialists.
Believe it or not, modding is tougher than coding, because you do not have the source code to correct or adjust the game to suit your purposes. I can assure you that the programmer requires a fragment of the time a modder does to accomplish the same result. In addition, unlike the modder, that has to take care of graphic art, sounds, data details etc, these tasks are, usually, divided among a team in the company, so, the programmer does not bother with any other issues but coding.
I have done quite a few modding for several games and my mods are still up if you check the forums.
However, part of making a good game is playing it, and with the raw amount of work that everyone else on the team needs to do, that means they need us to keep playing unfinished games, so they can keep producing better modern games.
I have no problem with that. This is why I paid for Xenonauts, even though it is unfinished. My intention was to support the company in their attempt to produce a great final game and help with the debugging and any other issue I could.
More importantly, how can they scammed you, having pre-ordered the game at a lower price with beta-testing privileges.
1. You saved money on the finished product.
2. You have the power to mold the final product.
3. You basically have a very long demo.
4. What was advertized is exactly what you got: A full game pre-order, with beta access.
-4.a. If lack of content is your complaint, you have full capability of adding all the content you want.
I see that you have not, probably, followed the thread from the beginning. I was not complaining about Xenonauts, I was just commenting on a poster's definitions of the stages of development. In my knowledge, he had all stages wrong but I was particularly riled by the final product expectations to be "90-95% ready" and needing "balancing and debugging".
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But the distance of USA to China is much much greater than say Greece to middle eastern countries.
Did I say Eastern Asia? I think I did. The proximity of the American continent to Asia is easy to see by looking at the Globe. Alaska was a part of Russia(before being sold to the U.S.) for a reason.
Whatever, it is always easy to disregard other peoples national issues, not so easy when it concerns your own country. The worst case scenario is not to play the game. 20$ in the bin...rats. Next time I will wait for release and previews. It could have been worst though.
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Since I am a Greek national and since it made a really bad impression to me that Greece was put with the Middle-East...out of nowhere...I looked at the rest of the territories to see if other such absurd things were done. So, why not put the U.S.A. in the Chinese Republic territory? Since it is not important and they are "little things" I could accept Greece as part of the middle east if the U.S.A. was part, let's say, of the Eastern Asia...Believe it or not, it is the same thing.
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The only thing freakier than made up creatures are the real ones.
I find it amazing and beautiful!
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My turn to pour some oil into the fire...Sooner or later we are all going to burn one way or the other!
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*whistles* I think I'll be waiting for 19.4 heh heh heh
My thoughts as well...
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Lots of things that do not make sense
Hmmm...So, you think the territories are well thought of and make sense as a setting for the 1979 beginning of the game...Well, if this is the case, it is interesting, since you are the only one, so far, that thinks so.
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ThunderGr, you're clearly in a very angry state of mind, or you'd see from the links I have posted that people have already had valid concerns about the state of territories and funding blocs in the game long before you saw red about the reassociation of Greece and have made a variety of proposals based on REAL geopolitical associations at the time-of-setting, such as making Warsaw pact countries a separate funding bloc. If you were calmer, you would see that you could use the materials that other people have made (including proposed funding block maps) to support your arguments, and any proposals you would put forward. I know you're upset with me in particular from previous threads, but try and damp down your emotions and actually read what other people have written. It's not fair on them just because I have looked up what other people have done and put that at your disposal that you instantly dismiss it.
Oh, well. Maybe you are half-right. I can assure you that I am not upset with you for saying your opinion, at any thread.
I do not disregard the opinions of others in these threads you have linked to. I have read several proposals before. All UFO-related games, and the OG, kept the territories loose and did not specify an actual historical point, whatsoever and they were right to do so.
There are many reasonable propositions in these threads and lots of good arguments, yet all have been disregarded in the name of making things easier for the development of the game...If they weren't this thread would not have come to being.
I decided to start this thread, half because of the unreasonable placing of Greece in the Middle-Eastern Territory, half because I saw the development goes from being rough to being unreasonable, disregarding all previous arguments about territories...
EDIT: Seeing the huge area the USSR expands to and the Europe being, at least, half of it, I cannot but wonder in what way it is justified for eastern Europe to be part of USSR in the name of "keeping the territories roughly at equal size", as was stated in the development thread by Chris...
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1. He is from England.
Obviously, I know that. This is what the argument was all about
.2. That is the worst argument ever. The game takes place on earth. Many books movies games etc take place on earth. Maybe I am the only one that thinks you just using a bad argument to make your idea with has been thoroughly denied sound better.
Idea? Tell that to the Czechs that died in the intervention of the USSR. Tell that to the Polish...Gee, you have to learn history!
3. Sensitive? Why would that impact a game what so ever.
Because games are played by people and memories are still fresh. You may not care about your history but I do. And so do many people. You'd better not use an actual setting in a wrong way if you do not want to offend people. It does not matter if it is a game or not, since it is not fictional. The developers have kept stating things have to be one way or the other because of the state things were in 1979. So, they have to do that for territories, as well. Some respect to the history of the nations won't hurt, disrespect will.
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Let me refer you to previous discussions on this matter.
And in what way does this help? I am referring to the territories as they are in V19 build 3. Some generalizations are acceptable, others are not. Simple as that. You can very well place the U.S.A. of the 1979 in the Chinese Republic territory, in a game, but I am sure the Americans would not like it. So, instead of being such "helpful" maybe you can start making sense.
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Since the developers have chosen to place the start of the game at an actual date in the history of mankind, I think that there is a lot more work to be done with the territories. The reflecting of the actual status of each country is more important than game convenience from the perspective of development.
- Having eastern Europe as Soviet Union is unacceptable. It is just like having western Europe as U.S.A.
- Having Greece as part of the Middle-East is absurd.
If the game was developed by someone in the U.S. it would be more understandable how you have disregarded sensitive issues that goes with what countries you include in what territory. European developers should have been more understanding about these issues.
Since you have chosen a real setting, you have to have real territories. Eastern Europe should be a separate territory and Greece should be part of West Europe.
I am sure there are more sensitive issues about the territories but these are the ones I can speak about. I leave the rest to be pointed out by others.
EDIT: Instead of trying to have artificially made territories just to keep them roughly equally sized, you should try and adjust the funding of each territory according to size. This is more natural.
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It was mentioned before. It was speculated that it is not a bug but the soldier may or may not stop depending on a stat...Noone confirmed or disproved it, though.
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Yeap. Same here. Nasty one.
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I, also, think that the retrieval should be optional. The player should be asked whether they want to attempt and retrieve the damaged craft or not. It would be more interesting if the crafts would have a chance of being recoverable, to begin with, instead of being always recoverable.
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@Thunder - Chill out. Mexico is also geographically part of North America, Colombia is not part of Central America and nor is Iceland part of Europe, but we've tried to make all the regions similar sizes and that means we've taken some liberties with geography.
Anyway, you're proposing that Greece be part of Europe but not actually connected to the rest of Europe because the Soviet Union is in the way (making things messy in game terms)? Or that is should be part of the Soviet Union (which it wasn't either)?
Since Greece was(and still is) part of Europe, always, despite being only connected by sea and air, and not by land, during the cold war, yes, I would suggest making it part of Europe, as it has always been. If fact, Greece was always giving a critical strategic advantage to NATO, because of its placement, during the cold war.
The Hidden Movement screen bug is known and is being worked on. Please don't just assume a bug like that is trivial and criticise us for not fixing it. How do you know that part of the code is easy to work with? It's actually very much not.
A temporary fix would go a long way towards making ground combat more pleasant. As it is, I will have to manually delete the image, just like others have done and I did not want to mess with game files at this point...
Anyway, if Aaron's not updated the version number on the launcher then that's an oversight on his part, and I'll probably get him to fix it on Monday - if nothing else, it'll make bug tracking confusing.
No, he has changed it. It was an oversight from my part, I am sorry about that.
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I would like to say that, in the OG, your promotions depended on the number of soldiers you had. I remember that all my promotions were halted until I got more men. Then, suddenly, I got a bunch of my men getting promoted to various ranks.
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V19 build 3: You cannot see the cursor for moving your soldier behind an obstacle...It is annoying.
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- use plenty of smoke grenades.
- if aliens are in range, use plenty of stun grenades
- Let the grenades take effect and stack them up over a couple of turns if no ones firing into the Chinook.
- Take out anything firing into the chinook first.
- Use a tank as a scout and to soak up some damage
- Use scouts, to spot and to also draw alien fire. Do try to get them into cover.
- Use heavy weapons to capitalise on aliens that your scout spots. they can be suppressed or killed.
- go with multiple rocket launchers.
- Use every bit of available cover.
- anyone out first gets the armour.
Plus, the shield only causes a crash if you try to pick it off the ground. So, use them and don't do that.
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Second thing noted: The hidden movement screen has not been fixed...I truly appreciate the new stuff and fixes but fixing the hidden movement should be trivial while it has a big impact on gameplay. I must admit I am already disappointed. There is already a bad judgement about putting Greece with the middle-east and an issue so much discussed in the forums(hidden movement screen) that was ignored...
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3. Center on soldier on portrait double click.
You click on the quick-select bar to center on the soldier.
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First notice: Greece placed with the Middle-East? Seriously??
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It was probably the loss of one hit killing that meant I wasn't ever likely to return to them. I do recall early builds where having one as a scout was invaluable. They came in handy for Base Defences too.
As a scout and a cover. It was capable of sustaining 3 or 4 hits at the early game. It was invaluable. I always made sure I had 2 of them, when I could, or at least one of them. Having none usually meant, either a failed mission or most aquanauts dead...I remember many occasions where I was feeling quite content to have escaped with only a couple of deaths in missions without a tank and especially proud with no deaths. The rocket launcher carrying tank was especially useful for giving a hand out of dire situations as well, while the other one had a decent accuracy, especially compared with the rookies which were pitiful.
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Can you please, include a version number at the start screen? Steam keeps making delayed updates and I would like to know which version of the game I am playing.
V19 Experimental Build 3 available!
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted
If you have opted for betas you get them no matter what. The update thing only goes for the actual game. So, unless Steam changes it, you will always follow the betas you have opted into, no matter what. This could be addressed if the developers uploaded each build as a different beta. That way, you would choose the release you wanted to opt in.