Sentelin

it never cease to amaze how much people praise the prior installment in comparison to new installment by very opinionated reasons (and often the features that were among the most criticized, equally positive and negative) . X-1 air combat system was double edge sword and opinions were split a lot people like it, a lot people found it impossible to play with ( I have been with this game before it launched out of EA) and hence why developers given players option to auto-resolve ( it wasn't there initially). Atmosphere in X1 was again hit or miss, it's a very biased point made there again. About the bases, while they may have been taken out of picture there are so many more new elements to the Geospace and overall across the board to breath in fresh air into the game. What X1 really excel at was tactical combat on the ground (which was and is , meat and butter of the game) and lacked a lot in so many other areas that I personally and many others have incorporated with mods. Now this is my statement and I don't represent anyone but I can speak for some people I know, that X1 linear progression, sparse of events and more ways to interact on geopsace, or to be more precise lack there of, were main faults of X1. Now, you may not like some changes and developers can't please everyone,however, maybe wait a bit more and have a chance to see how all new features come together to give a new fresh experience with a spirit of X-1, because I sure am not going to pay for a make over for a nostalgia sake - and likely plenty of others.

Well, a properly implemented AI will use it much more efficiently than an average human,that's for sure. I didn't say it's a good mechanic, just an interesting idea that can be expand or it can be reverted, like auto-crouch for example. Let's wait for a product that has all core things functional and be judges and juries from that point on.

Ok, here is my experience from today's run test and it will consist of two points: Performance: I don't know what you had done but game is considerably more smooth from initial build, even when I max details, I also played on a slightly weaker and an older laptop than last time. Reaction shot mechanic: Last time, due to performance obstructing my play through, I couldn't really set a soldier in position to see how it works. Now that I had, it's interesting because when it triggers, soldier can shot at the target of choice, those that are visible to him, which is an interesting choice. As a side note,when LMG is fired, it glitches camera and that's only notable issue I had, on other hand I didn't have AI hangs or any game breaking bugs, and I didn't have micro shutters when "event" actions (like firing LMG ) took place.

That's what I meant in between the lines, "don't spoil anymore, you said enough already" - But someone just couldn't resist xD Yeah, I am not sure how much of the tester I will be at the moment. I have ... er personal, RF mess to sort out and I kind of got involved into the Unity project which started as an idea between friends and it's going on nicely ever since then. Also, there is the Master's studies I am attending (hopefully, I will be done with a University by the end of next year), and I have a part-time job as a web developer ( back-end in .Net framework ). But, I will try to provide as best feedback as I can, when I can and as I progress with the mod

Honestly, everything in this mod is "the" real deal for me, right now. I still have to download this monstrosity though, and try all cool things but a description of the mod alone, is a lot to digest. And seriously men, a 3D model of the Dinosaur above looks awesome, though I am not sure I want to know what you planned to do with it, whatever it is friend or foe!

Sure, CPU:Intel I5 520M (http://ark.intel.com/products/47341/Intel-Core-i5-520M-Processor-3M-Cache-2_40-GHz) GPU: GT 750M 2GB DDR5 (http://www.game-debate.com/hardware/?gid=1715&graphics=GeForce GT 750M 2GB GDDR5 ) RAM: 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz And hard disk is HDD 7200 RPM.

I guess there are a lot of "draw calls " when LMG fires projectiles and yes I get a lot shutter, each time I do for a brief second. Also, all other "event" driven action, like jumping over the edge of obstacle, cause micro shutter. Anyway, the most notable performance drop is when post-processing is present and I dislike how blurry and colorful game looks like with them on. If AA was on, then that definitely has tremendous impact and should be left exposed for a player to disable / enable.

Ok, here is my impression: -Environment is great, seriously it is. Being able to cross the river, lean, jump over the obstacles and all other kind of stuff, which Unity allows is awesome. Also, it looks "alive" and just breath with atmosphere and could definitely bring more rewarding and interesting maps to the table, which leads to new ways of handling missions and ... yeah, a lot of potential there. - Aliens, design wise they are for the most part good looking but I would prefer Psyons, to be a little larger and I really hope that "grey" or whatever the "neutral" color is, is just a placeholder because my addled mind had hard time spotting them, since they blend with environment (unless, they are meant to have that kind of camouflage).Officer look good so far, i like them. Drones, I didn't get to see because ... well I ran into critical bug, which prevented me to finish the mission, I will get to that. - I am against, auto-crouching mechanic. I understand that introducing this mechanic may streamline a "cover" mechanic; but what happens when your soldier ends up in the open , without any kind of shelter ? Crouch may not necessary save him, or provide good protection but it is the safeguard in that kind of situation,nevertheless. Besides there could be other uses for crouch mechanic, I just named one scenario. -Another thing that bothered me is a cross-hair. It should be stationary as it is in X1, unless you plan to introduce a system like in Jagged Alliance where aiming at different parts of enemy results, in different amount of damage. - New cover indicators are excellent. It's a good way to notify player, from which side soldiers are exposed and the small yellow circle which warns you about your soldier being flanked is welcome feature. -Uniforms and models of soldiers are obviously something bundled up in last moment, so I won't criticize, but keep that direction, with a more diversity and variety, you are on good track. I can see that you kept LoS from X1 and it works well with X2, overall it feels and plays as X1 with improvements the original game could've never received! Oh and for bare bones AI, it put better fight than AI of XCOM:EU (or even XCOM2), I am not kidding. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Bugs and performance: At one point, when I killed all Officers and Psyons, the UI glitched. All elements disappeared and I couldn't continue the mission, unless I actually killed also droids but couldn't make the difference between them and Psyons and it wasn't a bug at all? In second case, I apologize for a false alarm. I understand that this is alpha but the game ran terribly on my PC, I am not even sure, it used my dedicated GPU (GT 750M DDR5) at all, even though I forced the game to do so (because, activity of dedicated GPU was barely visible ). Also, CPU and RAM weren't stressed much either ( As, I said game could have been using Intel GPU instead).

Yeah, hard to believe that it has been 2+ year now, hasn't it? And they are quite enthusiastic and vocal (I'm looking at X-division team),it reminds a bit of how things were back when X1 was in EA and couple of months after the launch of the game Also Xenonauts 2 is on the horizon (you bet, I will pre-order it today) and you are back supporting small busy modding community, not bad at all for such a low budged game . It's bit of shame, that some modding projects died and some of modders moved on, but hey, it's not end of the world.

Thanks ! And I am glad that so much life was breath into X-Division. Basically X-dIvision, has achieved something XNT never did and even has an X:CE programmer to back them up. While, I am coder I didn't contribute much to X:CE, nothing outside of some semi-finished projects, which I never pushed to repo: a) They were buggy as hell b) I simply realised I had bitten more than I could chew, and some required too much effort, plus my knowledge of C++ and experience with it was very limited at the time. That's why I decided to live X:CE to more capable folks (Illunak and whoever comes along, I am so glad Solver got back). However, i plan to get my hands dirty with Xenonauts 2 this time around, because I've been working for past year and half in .Net framework(C#) ,because of job and maybe I get to do some things I always wanted in Xenonauts but never managed. And yeah, I will check dev blog and rest of stuff!

Hey, it's nice to see that this project (and generally modding scene) is still going.

Damn, I am so glad you finally formed the team and moved this version from alpha stage (how long has it been, almost a year? ) and I see that X:CE got a bundle of modding features from Solver. It would be really shame, if this projected died, when you burnt yourself with modding. (Now, I have a reason to get back into the game, after sooo long).

I don't know what exactly have you done but X:CE works with this mod and playing with just base game (1.5), will only get you so far, because this mod extensively uses X:CE features which base game doesn't have (I am actually surprised it didn't crash. If you still think I am speaking gibberish, go back to older X:CE (you will have to download it manually- Download X:CE 0.31 - this version of mod is designed around that).

Is it really wise to give AI a Mech ? If you do so though, make sure you make special weapons that will handle them, because otherwise they will wreck more chaos than Android among rookie crew equipped with beginning ballistic weapons.

This game is unfriendly to mod or it was until X:CE and Drages proves that it can be modded in such ways we never tried (X-Division is fairly more advance and more ambitious than XNT ever was). Besides Harebrained Schemes LLC is hardly pro indie studio.They made bunch of mistakes in the past and they still tend to do so. What I am trying to say here is that they as GW are still learning ropes, only differences is they have +2 games and 3 kick starter campaigns, under their belt. Damn, congrats on this. I've been trying to test alpha version but I can't get enough time under my sleeve to do it properly.There is freaking a lot of content to cover, on plus side I didn't notice any other bug (surprisingly ) since last one. AI is kind of lackluster unfortunately, I tried to tweaked in old fashioned way through airprops but as I previously stated it's impossible to get desire results that way. I played all their Shadowrun titles. Last one is hardly anything special but it's the most polished title in franchise and if you liked previous entries you will like this too, as long as you don't expect enterily re-done game.