kabill

That's good to know, thanks. I don't have a PhD to be skiving off from any more, so I wouldn't hold your breath :P (But I did spend a lot of my limited free time this year writing sadly more or less redundant mods for Stellaris, so you never know!)

Is there still a limit on the maximum upload size? I remember when the Armour Resource Pack was originally uploaded, you had to do something special to make it work because the file was so big (~1gb). In any case, I think I should have all the original files. I recently migrated computers, and so I need to extract them from my old machine. But they should still be there. I'll see if I have time to sort it over the weekend. I am apparently experiencing all the nostalgia feels right now. Who knew I missed kicking about here quite so much?

Thanks folks Seems like I should be ok to re-upload stuff then. I do remember the forum update, and thought things were being migrated, but guess I missed that not finally happening (it does explain why people were bothering me about the Armour Resource Pack on Steam). Maybe. Some folks might not want to use XCE for some reason, so having them available elsewhere is not a terrible thing. But I have no issue with them being bundled as well (is that still a thing? I remember some bundling at one point but I thought it got reversed later. But maybe not. It's been a long time.) I'm genuinely in awe of the fact that you finished building this. It seemed to be so very big, what you were making, that finishing it would be an impossible task. So well done!

So it's, err, been a long time. I've been summoned by someone asking about mod availability on the site. Looking at the downloads tab, it looks like all the mods got wiped at some point. Is there a particular rationale for that? Although they're all available through Steam Workshop, it would be nice for there to be space where folks without a Steam version of the game can download them too. But I don't want to start uploading things if they were wiped with a specific purpose. So advice welcome.

Won't be able to look at this for a few days but will try and get it done no later than the end of next weekend. If it's not up by then, poke me, because it means I forgot.

I actually think they're ok. But now you mention it, I am inclined to agree there's a certain 'blockiness'. I think it's mostly being caused by the sharp edges produced where the ground meets a change in height (e.g. where the ground connects with the dip into the river) where there's almost perfect straight lines. Don't know how much work this would be but it might be worth looking at texturing the ground around these transition points, to make it less sharp. (Does any of that make sense. I can't find a better way of describing it.) I appreciate the technical limits and they're probably why the Androns in X1 feel so compacted to me. Although I think it was their waddle/shuffle movement animation which I found most problematic - they never felt like deadly killing machines but instead... I don't know. Not deadly killing machines, though. In contrast to the X2 Andron model, which feels like it will have nice, clompy, robotic movements and looms large over the other models in a (satisfyingly) intimidating manner.

Ditto, really like the alien designs and I can clearly see the follow-though on the point made ages ago after X1 released about making the alien silhouettes distinctive. The Andron in particular I really like - if I'm honest, the X1 Androns looked a little strange, while the new design has a really solid feel to it.

Finally had some time to look at this. Using most recent build (as of 28/10/2016). Not sure I really have anything new to say. The game ran fine on my machine - smooth and no lag except (except with burst fire but that seems obviously a consequence of it not being implemented fully yet). No crashes or serious bugs, though I may well have gotten lucky. PC specs, for reference: On an aesthetic level, I really like it even in its early, unpolished form. The new soldier designs are strong and the environment has a nice rugged feel to it. It also still feels very 'Xenonauts' - that might just be a consequence of it using a lot of the same assets but even putting that to one side I think it had a very familiar feel to it which is pleasing. I'm not sure how taken I am with the new Psion models but I think that might just be the fact that they're a very similar colour/texture to the environment. In terms of gameplay stuff, I didn't have any trouble at all with the auto-crouch mechanic and would be quite happy for it to stay. Some of that might be due to map design - the demo map has a lot of cover so you're never really in a position where you might want manually crouch in the open anyway - but even so I didn't miss the busywork of having to manually crouch soldiers. Didn't have any overwatch fire so cannot comment on that. Otherwise, again, felt very familiar - balance seemed perfectly in line with X1 experiences. In terms of UI, I assume a lot is currently placeholder. However, I did find the cover/grid overlay surrounding the cursor a little excessive, especially given how much cover there is. I'd be inclined to make it smaller, change the cover icons, or have a key toggle the cover displays (I wasn't having any difficulty identifying cover locations even without the overlay - while it might be useful for new players my feeling is that experienced players won't need it other than occasionally). All in all, then, I'm not sure I saw anything glaringly problematic. There's obviously plenty of issues but none which got in the way of my playing. But maybe I got lucky? Or maybe I just have a high tolerance for early-build issues. Like, the AI turn camera is pretty dreadful at the moment - it's more or less never showing what's going on - but then I recall that X1 had all kinds of camera issues 'til not long before final release so it's not something that bothers me much. So yeah, maybe not the best person to give feedback on that. Honestly, I think I'm just excited to see it, and I'm impressed with how much it seems to capture X1 considering it's been built on an entirely new engine. (Oh, one thing, seconding the comment above about the 'opt-in' box being unclear which state indicates opting in.)

That's gorgeous. Really nice recreation of the original Xenonauts menu screen. That is wise. I have loads of work to do over the weekend and pretty much had to drag myself out of the house this morning rather than play it.

If you're using one of the mods that mixes up the kinds of aliens/UFOs that spawn (e.g. Dynamic UFOs), there's a much higher probability of being able to skip laser weapons as there's a wider range of potential loot to recover. In the vanilla game, plasma weapons are locked behind tech which doesn't tend to appear for a couple of months so it's hard to skip lasers that way.

Thanks both. Helpful and appreciated.

To derail the thread completely, can I ask for an explanation of this? Is relevant to some research a dissertation student of mine completed recently. (He was looking at instances of online identity fraud and found a positive association between use of anti-virus software and being a victim, with computer virus/infection as an apparent causal pathway. The best explanation I could think of for this was user-error/carelessness but would be interested to know if there are technical reasons why AV software might be problematic.)

Sounds really solid. Looking forward to giving you money!

That's a pretty good idea. I like that.

That was quick! Thanks. Although, I forgot to add a description and it seems to have defaulted to the one I used for Enhanced Crash Sites. Is there any way you can change that as well?

I have uploaded a copy of the mod. Can be found on the downloads page. Didn't see an option to assign authorship but will check in with Solver about that.

I was wondering if that might be the case. Will have a look and see which of his mods I have stored then.

This will have gone down with the forum switch. I think I have a copy but am reluctant to upload it as I know Skitso wasn't keen on other folks distributing his stuff.

Update! I did the thing. At last! New version is up, with some bug fixes (fewer than I thought but can't find any outstanding issues that I've not addressed here, aside from some animation issues which will take too long for me to fix at the moment). Change log: - BALANCE: Light Drones now have reduced firepower (single shot rather than burst). - FIX: Updated tooltip info for weapons (should now all be correct). - FIX: Multi-Missile Launcher now unlocks correctly after research. - FIX: Predator Armour Weapons now equip ammunition correctly . - FIX: Fire-producing weapons now produce actual fire! (Previously they produced a simulacrum of fire using the gases template as it gave me more control over the effect but this had issues like not illuminating nearby tiles and not interrupting Sebillian accuracy so have reverted to 'real' fire). I have a bit more time over the next month and a half so if anyone has things they want me to look into regarding balance, I might be able to do that.

Thanks for doing this Solver. Much appreciated. Have uploaded all my other mods now as well.

Re-uploaded and link updated.