doctorfrog

When you identify the issue as a timer, it kind of excites me a bit. Timers can be adjusted based on other factors and events that can vary from game to game. A cold winter that slows alien progress (somehow). A preference for sandy areas of the earth for setting up bases. A hyper-aggressive alien commander that doesn't research as quickly. Nations can be similarly tinkered with. Small adjustments or mutators that "fake" the appearance of that invisible chess game. It gives the player something else to try to figure out, and provides a greater level of unpredictability to the game. So this thread might be seen, in a way, an opportunity. It's feedback: "I like your game so much, here's the wall I'm hitting." Is that wall something you can take a crack at? It's not like fixing a flabby AI, creating a competing faction, or someone being unhappy that it's got aliens instead of zombie pirate ninjas. This is something that seems like it might be fixable without changing out the whole engine. (I say this as a non-programmer.) I'm not saying it's simple, or that it's mandatory (ie. "fix your broken game." The game's not broken and this is not a bug), just that it's an opportunity to expand the game. (And yes, I do understand that you're chomping on the bit to start that next project.)

I agree with you, to a point. To play devil's advocate here, a game can provide a difficulty curve that can be overcome, but still require differing strategies each playthrough. It's hard to accomplish, and fairly rare, but possible. To give an example, I play another game, a roguelike, called Brogue. The entire thing is randomized every time I play, from level layout, to character loadout. There are also many constants, such as the same types of monsters, or sets of tiles, traps, and what have you. However, my overall strategy in playing the game is different each time, because my character is defined by what equipment he can find, and how I decide to use it and improve it. If I find a really good sword early on, I might plow my resources into improving that, search for good armor, and be a melee character. Or I might decide to stick with magic instead, and risk the dungeon not coughing up the magical resources I need. My choices might be wise, or disastrous, but are dependent upon some degree of unpredictability; no one strategy will work for all (or even many) playthroughs. In other words, once I overcome the initial difficulty of understanding the basic strategies of the game, there's a whole other level of adapting to unpredictable combinations of situations and resources. In essence, that's where the real game begins. I think the poster's complaint has more to do with the perceived lack of that second level of challenge. He's worried that by grinding away at trying to figure out how to play a winning game of Xenonauts, the only thing left for him to do is play against "faster monsters with more hit points," which is not the same thing as breaking open a new level of mastery. All it is doing is testing how well you know the script of the game, which is not really exciting to look forward to. It may be unfair or unrealistic to expect that level of depth from Xenonauts. It's not Chess or Go, after all. It's a game with some degree of breadth, and some limitations are the cost of that breadth. Many strategy games have these great rulesets, and lots of mechanics to master, but ultimately these are absorbed by the player and a limited set of strategies emerge that allow human players to thrash the AI, and the only thing left to do is give the AI more artificial advantages, "faster monsters with more hit points." At that point, you're just flexing the same set of muscles over and over. The promise of mods don't quite solve this worry, either, since they are more likely to just push values around, include fan service additions, or fix real/perceived bugs rather than break new ground within the game itself. Mind you, I'm pretty happy with Xenonauts as it is, and I really look forward to seeing what modders do with this game. I see no dark clouds on the horizon: Xenonauts is already one of my favorite games. But overall I feel that this is a common issue with strategy games, and I think some anxiety over it as a player isn't unreasonable.

Interesting thread. Seems like: Game Community: Don't pick difficulty setting based on how good you think you are at video games. Pick normal if you are new to the game, or want to play a reactive game. Pick the higher difficulties once you have a more thorough understanding of the different phases and overall arc of the game, and normal no longer has surprises for you. Thread Maker: If the game has a static, predictable arc, and can be beaten by using the same, repeatable strategy (or a small set of strategies), then discovering that strategy becomes the focus of the game. It's no longer about repelling a dynamic, strange, alien invasion, but recognizing which part of the game you're in, then sticking to a predetermined counter-plan. After which, you're either done with the game (the discovery being the fun part), or hone your existing strategies against a higher difficulty level (which does not sound as fun).

I was looking through the Xenopedia and I noticed that there's no isometric portrait of the command center. It isn't so much that there needs to be an explanation of what the base command center is, I just liked the other isometric portraits (medical center, living quarters, etc.) and wanted to see the command center in a little more detail. Is there perhaps an image of the command center that didn't make it into the game assets?

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. Sometimes a right click will do it, sometimes I have to hit ESC, which really doesn't feel right.

Then, hold a map contest, harness some of the excitement for the game's release to get people to make content for you.

This is great!

I'm not a developer or anything, but there's probably a key generator that GOG allows developers to use for their purposes (giveaways, contests, customer service, etc.), with reasonable limits. Got mine in seconds, thanks GoldHawk!

This is really unexpectedly generous. I'll send you an email.

I haven't known of this either, but it ruffled some feathers over on the GOG forums, so they may have just removed the functionality. I tend to want to opt out of tracking if I can, but a vocal minority of GOG members are basically the video games equivalent of doomsday preppers and tend not to react very well to stuff like that.

I posted this in the 1.05 release thread, so this might have already been noticed and taken care of. The manual for non-Steam versions of the game is just a list of credits, whereas Steam users have a manual with content. I've seen this in the Humble Store distro, and have heard of it occurring in the GOG distro. Buildings.xml is different between Steam and the Humble Bundle distros of the game, assuming that this is probably also applicable to GOG and Desura distributions. That's all that a WinMerge comparison was able to detect.

Stuff on experimental branch have been available from Steam only, if I understand correctly.

Sure, those are mostly good. Not contesting that. However, a lot of folks do their homework by skipping the reviews (which are often ridiculously generous for even mediocre games) and sampling the forum. Right now, the forum's only threads are either complaints or unanswered questions. I'm still in the basics of the game, and am not equipped to run interference for GoldHawk, so perhaps a fan with a few minutes on their hands can help out. If not, I'm sure the game will survive, but the opportunity is there.

Like Steam users, GOG users might visit their forums before buying. At the moment, there isn't a single positive thing to be read on the GOG forum about this game. It's not necessarily negative, but there are some open questions, and some issues related to the unfinished nature of the game, that are keeping the game from giving its best impression. http://www.gog.com/forum/xenonauts#1403033757 Possibly someone more knowledgable about the game than I can answer some of these folks, such as why the game launcher is so clunky. Some GOG users are a little weird about their games, with one dude comparing it to a virus: http://www.gog.com/forum/xenonauts/several_problems_may_need_a_patch For my part, the Humble Bundle version is not up to date with the Steam version, is missing a game manual, and the launcher can take upwards of a minute to complete launching. I suspect the GOG version is having the same issues.

I'm using the Humble Bundle version, looks like there are a few minor differences between it and the Steam version. I noticed this when looking at the game manual, which is currently just a list of credits in the HB version, and with actual content on the Steam version. Other than that, WinMerge only sees a difference in buildings.xml between the two distributions.

It's on the Humble Store DRM free as well. (I only buy DRM-free games.)

That's a good point, rendering video at that size is still an iffy thing for a lot of machines. Are you able to just show static images, zoom, pan, and fade, have a slideshow that way? I'm not trying to pile extra work on you when the end of development is in sight, and I'm certainly no developer, but this seems like something that wouldn't take too long. It could even wait for post-1.5, for when you have a few spare hours. I can't imagine anyone getting upset if no intro video materializes, so I appreciate you considering the possibility.

Actually, I think it is a pretty good example. Obviously, it wasn't meant to be as serious as Xenonauts is, but it's literally a bunch of traced/edited images, some text, and a camera moving over them. It's the quintessential "developer just wants an intro and has to do it himself," intro.It seems like there are enough visual assets for this. Reuse them from the Xenopedia if you have to. Maybe a minimum of 3-6 slides, cross-fading transition, with text running underneath, and some spooky music. No music to spare? Run one of the tracks from the main game through Audacity's "Paulstretch" filter. The text can be a short reference to the Iceland Incident, how now there's a shaky alliance of nations, you're in charge of the operation, and instead of dumping you onto the geoscape, the game starts you on the Xenopedia entry for the Iceland Incident. The whole thing can be under 30 seconds in length. Don't like the intro? Untick the "show intro" box and never see it again.

Same kind of player here, do we know what the stable timetable is?