Akavit

It was working fine for me. The quick battle option started the game then allowed me to place a base. When the base was established the game generated a terror site "interception" and I was able to start the mission.

Here's a game that was linked in the comments of the RPS Kickstarter article. There's an Indiegogo in progress for that one. http://www.lofigames.com/index.php

You've got it all wrong. Didn't you see the avatar? It is an alien come to spy on us. They haven't realized that this forum is about a fictional game and are busy compiling a list of future abduction runs to stop the resistance before the projected October "launch". Galaxy Quest in reverse! GoodGuyEddy had it right.

Extraterrestrials was a completely different approach to X-Com than Xenonauts. I'm also a fan of the game but not because it was as fun to play as X-Com, but because it utilized a made-from-scratch engine that is perfect for modding. I've never done any mods for that game myself but many others have and it made the game quite fun to play. Creating a new game engine for an X-Com sequal must have been quite a feat in itself. The game certainly suffered from many bugs and missing features. It felt like they spent all their time on the engine itself then hastily put the game together. I believe they are using an improved version of that engine for the sequel so I have some hope that ET2 will be a far superior game than the first. They should be able to focus on getting the content right this time. Knowing that Bman is on the team and having seen some of the planned features has me looking forward to its release.

I'm afraid if you have to imagine what it's like, then you aren't familiar with game development. Modern technology hasn't made it easier to create a game. It merely upped consumer expectations. Actually, you're looking at X-Com through rose-colored glasses. The technical limitations they had back then are glaringly obvious if you take an impartial look at the game. It had low resolution sprites and jerky animations. Power armor and flying armor shared the same sprites so with just three types of armor and the basic uniform they only needed sprites to represent three of them. They "cheated" on the death animations by only doing one facing (aliens did a funny spin towards the viewer before dying). The UI is terrible by today's standards. It wasn't possible to assign soldier placement in the ship, weapons loadouts needed reassignment with each mission (if I remember correctly) and constant inventory juggling was required to reload and use grenades. AI wasn't fantastic either. It was pretty good for its day but not up to today's standards. Anyone remember the hours spent hunting the last aliens that went into hiding on every mission? Game balance was completely messed up in the end game. Just watch the YouTube video titled "X-com: ufo defence - final mission (DOS)". Victory is possible in one round apparently. An interesting thing to note is that Goldhawk did ask for more funds to add features that weren't going to make it in the game. The response came in two forms. First, most people voted in favor of visual improvements over gameplay features. Secondly, people complained that Goldhawk was asking for money to add said features. Also note that Xenonauts has vastly improved every aspect of X-Com that made it into the game: UI, visuals, weapon and armor selections, soldier deployment, saved weapons loadouts, dogfighting, vehicle customization, cover system, etc. But they missed motion detectors and proxy grenades so I guess the improvements are of no consequence now? People want modern games to look better than X-Com so obviously, more time has to be spent on the visual department. People may say that they want proxy grenades but when given the chance to vote, it looks like the vast majority of folks chose the eye-candy in Xenonaut's Kickstarter poll. So obviously, Goldhawk has to make the game look good to sell it. It seems that Chris made a good choice when he opted to put more time into the tilesets and UI instead of those other things.

That didn't come as a surprise to me since I've been following the project even before the current forums were setup. I also knew that Goldhawk had looked into doing up some tall grass for the fire system awhile ago and ran across some glitches in their initial attempt. I believe it had something to do with the animations of soldiers walking through it. Proxy grenades in themselves are simple enough but integrating them into the AI isn't simple. A number of the old X-Com features didn't get attention because the developers had their time sucked away in the efforts to improve other aspects of the game. The improved dogfight system took a couple iterations and some serious modification (testing and feedback provided by pre-orderers) before it was completed. The cover system was redone once as well after it was heavily tested. The 2D artwork resulted in a huge loss of time in creating and rendering the sprites. 2D sprite-based graphics are only quick to produce if the art is kept simple and the number of weapon and armor variations is kept minimal. In a 3D game adding a new weapon is mostly a matter of making the weapon model and entering it into the files. If Goldhawk were to add a new weapon now (let's say an autocannon), they'd have to create something like 24,000 new soldier sprites and enter that data into sprite sheets to get it to show ingame. This is why Goldhawk originally said they'd be unable to put female soldiers ingame. They realized that doing more sprites wasn't feasible. A lot of the Xenonauts assets were actually created in 3D first to save time then rendered into 2D. This was faster than painting each individual image but it would have been faster to just use the 3D assets with a 3D engine. You won't find many games with Xenonaut's level of detail being done in 2D these days. It's just not efficient. The new UI was another factor as well. Tester feedback indicated that the old UI wasn't good enough and much time was spent improving the appearance and function of it. AI was in the same boat. After the original coder was unable to come up with something acceptable Goldhawk had to make the decision to hire a specialist to take on the project (they just started this in the past month or so). In other words, features that hadn't been done yet were put aside to focus efforts on priorities such as UI, AI and rendering the sprites required for the various armors and weapons. So yes, I'm disappointed that we'll probably not get some of those features but I'm not surprised or upset about it. Keeping up to date with the news allows me to understand the reasons and put them into perspective.

Well I would agree that using a vote to choose game features is probably not the optimum strategy. Gamers seldom have enough of the big picture in mind to be able to make development decisions. I've worked on a couple modding projects and the ones that made the most progress were the ones directed by the developers. Attempts to give the community a chance to vote typically resulted in chaos, flame wars, lost productivity and even worse, rapid shifts in focus and priorities. Community feedback is always great but I think that the important and final decisions should be made by the management. For the most part though, the complaints being fielded in other forums are done by people who know absolutely nothing about the project outside of assumptions based on a 5 minute read of the Kickstarter page. But that is the nature of the internet. People love to jump to conclusions and spout opinions but hate devoting time to research. That's why I'm not a fan of polls for things like this. Far too many people will cast a vote for the sake of voicing an opinion even if they haven't taken the time to evaluate the situation. If polls are going to be used, it's really best to restrict access to people who are knowledgeable enough about the matter to make an informed decision. The people who frequent these boards would likely fall into this group. Those on Kickstarter however, know almost nothing about Xenonauts and its stage in development.

Hmm. Well I do agree with those people that the stretch goals are uninspiring. However, I know perfectly well why those X-Com features aren't already in Xenonauts. The biggest problem for Xenonauts is likely the 2D engine. I noticed a few of the folks on that forum seem to think that a 2D game should automatically be cheap to produce. If Goldhawk had chosen to make do with less weapons and armors, jerky animations and re-using armor sprites as X-Com did then yes, art assets would have been inexpensive. Getting the smooth animations and visual styling of Xenonauts using sprites undoubtedly took a huge chunk of dev time. If the game had been made in 3D most of those stretch goals would have probably made it in the game without Kickstarter. But that's the sort of mistake that happens when new developers start brand new new companies and create their first product. Despite the crippling engine, Xenonauts seems to be coming along much better than nearly any other indie game I've been watching. I expect that Goldhawk's second game will benefit a lot from the experience gained making this one. As a side note, Wasteland 2 looks like it will be done with the Unity engine. Some people were clamoring for a 2D engine but the more knowledgeable folks are pointing out that 3D isometric is cheaper than 2D and can give the same effect.

Vanilla only? The best games are the 5-10 year old ones that have been loaded with tons of extra goodies! Professionals can't do a lot of the things accomplished by modders and still remain profitable. Usually games are released with just enough features to be considered a complete game and that's about it.

Selling female portraits would look bad now that Chris has said he'd be including a starter set as a feature. I was also under the impression that the portrait artist was getting maxed out with work already. If that's not the case I'd suggest offering more slots of the $200.00 option. I'm pretty sure they'd sell as well as they did the first two days.

I'll bet that people would pay an extra $25.00 to have their least favored 70's politicians show up in an alien abduction notice in the Geoscape. Perhaps in-laws and lawyers too. That might reflect poorly on Goldhawk though. It would be funny despite that.

Yes and no. I don't think the mission objectives will be the same but I also don't think they'll be a new mission type either. I was under the impression that they'd be used in terrorist missions. None of the tilesets with the exception of the Reaper option came bundled with a promise for a completely new mission type from what I read.

Thanks. That did the trick.

Yes. I've been looking it over some and the visual feedback does exist. It's an upgrade from the old Outlaws map-making tools which only had a CAD type 2D interface to work with. Painting stuff seems reasonably straight-forward as well. The hardest part looks to be doing all the little settings and that's more of a learning curve issue than actual difficulty. Given some time with the community posting feedback and tips online I think this will work. The main issue I see right now is that the preview/painting screen doesn't open as a window like it says it will. If it did the whole process would be much faster. Alt-tabbing to move between the two is a pain.

How is that a reason for not nuking the place? Do we get paid for saving them or something?

I haven't looked at the current editor yet but I have no doubt it's far easier to use than the ones that came with games I've worked with in the past. I'm not concerned with a lack of maps because if there aren't enough to suit me while playing I'll make them myself and upload them as well.

Labor isn't a problem for a modding community. If modders are interested in creating new tilesets they will do so. Doing a reaper tileset would be especially viable since it the difference in visual style could be glossed over due to its alien nature. I suspect the work could be done using mostly open source software. The modeling and rendering could probably be done in Sketchup. The two things that do stop modders are the lack of development tools and engine limitations. If Goldhawk releases their development tools after the game is launched then the only hurdles remaining are within the game engine itself.

The tileset isn't the issue. I'm sure someone could make one and add it to the game without a problem. It's engine support that's critical. If the code-base isn't there to permit spawning nodes for reapers then it's not possible to add it to the game unless someone capable enough to modify the game engine does it.

Actually it's rather funny because I normally can't stand infinite spawning enemies either. I don't like it in FPS and didn't care for the mood of Space Hulk myself (though I didn't actually play it). In a turn-based X-Com style game it did sound a lot more interesting though and I was curious to see how it would turn out. Plus it would likely have added some new options for modders to toy with.

It wasn't so much a put down as referring to the fact that more maps were something we already had in the bag. We'll get them faster now but it'll amount to the same in the end (hence the reference to short-term thinking). Getting more engine features was my priority since once the game is released, there's nothing we can do to add to it. Tile art is good so I actually voted all of that pretty high. I just don't care much for fighting on military bases hence the lack of interest in it. I did vote it high though since as Jean says, once the game is released we aren't likely to get new tilesets. It's just the level designer that boggles the mind for me. Everything else makes perfect sense.

Hmm. It unfortunately seems that most people think short term rather than long. I still see a dedicated level designer as a complete waste of resources. It's strange that people actually wanted that more than anything. Stuff like reaper missions, motion detectors and tall grass will likely never make it ingame as player-made mods if they require engine support. Modding Xenonauts is next to impossible from what I've heard so adding new game mechanics once it's released is pretty much out of the question. Hopefully the Kickstarter can make it to at least the Soviet tileset since that's the only thing near the top of the list that I look forward to.

Are most players aware that there's a level design tool in the current build? If I'm correct, we should be able to make as many maps as we like for the game after it's released?

I'm of the same mind as Erutan. I don't have a place for posters and don't have much use for t-shirts either. Things that I don't use will probably end up at a secondhand store so hopefully Chris gives us the option to forgo a portion of our rewards so money won't be wasted on them. The art book sounds nice but there again, I'm trying to minimize the personal belongings that I keep around so I may not hand onto that either. My interest really lies in the game itself and having the fun of seeing myself show up in an X-Com style game.

Actually, the tall grass feature is what made the top of my vote list. Destructible terrain and the ability to set fire to fields were the most enjoyable features in X-Com for me. Without tall grass it won't be possible to torch a field with a flamethrower then watch the fire spread over time. Things like proximity grenades, reaper mission, motion detectors came immediately after. New tilesets followed that. Features that are entirely cosmetic and don't contribute to actual gameplay got the lowest votes. Pilot names and callsigns, and memorials along with female soldiers are on that list. A dedicated level designer seemed fairly low priority to me as I believe that we are supposed to get a level editor tool with the game. If players can create new maps I expect that after the game is released there will soon be hundreds of downloadable maps to add to the game. No need to spend development time doing something that is so easy for the fans to do.

I remember awhile back we were told that fire mechanics were coded into the game but currently do nothing because the flammable tiles needed for fire to spread were not in the game. If the above is true then what I'd like to see more than anything else are flammable items such as wooden walls, hay bales, tall grass, wheat fields, etc. Fire was my favorite feature in X-Com. Collapsible buildings - I'm assuming that it's already in game since it was planned but I haven't tested it to see if it is or not. If not, then I'd like to see this make it in as well. Super advanced AI would be excellent. Some things I'd like to see aliens doing are as follows: Work together in teams that tend to stay within LOS. Attempt to destroy a building if they see multiple soldiers within. Flanking attempts.