Akavit
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Posts posted by Akavit
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I'd find this system useful if it were ingame. In my current game of UFO: ET I've taken to giving my men extra gear then dropping it at the start of the mission. If the dropship had the option to load it with some gear that would be easier and more elegant.
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Hmm. Bit of a topic derail we have going on here. It is also a particularly annoying derail as well.
as religion wanes an aversion to gore becomes more pronounced.It would be pretty hard to support that statement in America. Obsession with gore has increased dramatically over the past 50 years based upon the content of movies during that time.
Yes, the whole thing regarding gratuitous violence being more accepted within the entertainment industry than gratuitous sex and foul language is weird. However, there is one thing even more absurd and that is the way of thinking that we should attempt to balance the first by adding more of the latter two. Perhaps a more reasonable suggestion would be that the American fascination with endless amounts of gore, guts and decapitated body parts needs some serious toning down (perhaps it's a European fascination too but I wouldn't know since I don't live there).
There is a reason why I am supporting a game like Xenonauts and not Wasteland 2 even though I actually enjoyed Fallout 1 more than X-Com. That reason is largely due to the different vibes of their respective forums. When I started reading the Fallout/Wasteland related forums after I had played Fallout I noticed some rather disturbing trends I'd not seen before in other game forums.
People were saying things like...
"The more violent the graphics and descriptions are the better!"
"The sequel better let me be a porn star!"
"Killing children was the best part of the game!"
"There needs to be swearing and cussing in every conversation!"
"Violence done right is bleeping funny!"
It is true that not everyone (or even the majority of folks) made statements like the above but such conversations were in general, pretty well accepted or even approved on many of the sites I was reading.
Now most people I would assume play games for enjoyment. The question I've asked myself is, "Do I really wish to take pleasure in doing the above mentioned things in recreational gaming?" The short answer is no. I do not wish to be like that. I'll gladly enjoy the tactical challenges of of a strategy game like Xenonauts but I can see nothing good out of teaching myself to relish the prospect of watching a monitor display of chunky bits of people flying around.
Having said that, I'd prefer that the thread stop derailing into a discussion of the less admirable trends of computer gaming and focus on Xenonauts instead.
Regarding the Xenonauts update, I'm happy to see that the inventory portrait of the female soldiers is well done. The number one reason I'm leery of games including woman characters is because many developers insist on cladding Barbie clones in skin tight jumpsuits or armor (for sci-fi) or bikinis (fantasy). Getting a game where they have normal, sensible clothing is a huge plus. Kudos to Chris for his design decision.
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Now we just need phosphorus grenades - smoke and fire in one handy package.
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I see no reason why the game shouldn't be possible to play using starting tech for awhile. I'm currently playing a new game of UFO:ET and the majority of my tech is still the starting equipment. That's because I decided to invest in base infrastructure and can't afford to devote many resources towards upgrading gear.
5 months into the game:
4 bases, 21 hangers, one upgraded transport, 19 interceptors, expanded labs and workshops and improved radar systems are what ate up all of my money/research/manufacturing. I've finally gotten to the point where I can afford to research armor for the men and build better cannons for the interceptors.
The soldiers have no special gear except for a motion detector and some mind shields (protection from psionics). They also had very short lifespans until I started using cheap tanks to absorb the losses. I often have to make two trips and lose 3 or so tanks to clear an alien fighter wreck. The scouts I can usually handle without losses by using the two tanks and a motion detector to locate enemies at a distance. A soldier with an assault rifle takes out some of the aliens from a distance and the tanks mop up the rest.
My preference for game balance is to have the economy setup where it's not possible to equip a large team with the best gear. Players get the choice between a large force and assorted low quality gear or a small squad armed with the very best.
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I hate to fan the flames of internet trolldom but...
This is becoming an incendiary topic.
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One tactic is to keep some men back and have them use sniper rifles. The men in the front should focus on staying alive rather than going for the kill. Forward troopers are for scouting, the ones in the rear do the killing.
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The suppressive mechanics in the new X-Com are actually the only feature I've seen mentioned to date that I really, really like. It's as near to a believable representation of suppressive fire that could be put into a turn-based game. It should improve tactical gameplay quite a bit. I like it a lot better than the AP reduction methods that were suggested for Xenonauts.
Unfortunately, it won't be possible to get full use from that ability. With such small squad sizes no one will be able to order a 6 man fire team to direct bullets into a building while another squad advances.
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You have to spot the tiny font on their homepage to click on and get the news page.
http://www.ufo2extraterrestrials.com/all-the-news/
The latest post was on April 2 and they basically said they haven't finished it yet and need more time.
All this talk about UFO ET has me going through the config files of the original so I can lower the accuracy of enemies. One thing I found annoying is that later in the game is that enemies never miss. A challenge is good but there's no suspense in wondering if your soldier will die or not if you know the alien is going to score three hits for sure.
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Hmm. I didn't know that about the UFO:ET defense missions. I must have been facing a bug because in one game I had a couple aliens start in the same room as the ship. I had to fight out of the ship as aliens rushed in to kill my squad. I'd assumed from that experience that the aliens started with the base in possession.
I really enjoyed alien bases as well once I found a patch that fixed the Hallucinoid bug (Hallucinoids could use psionics without LOS and at any given range with full power) that literally made it impossible to beat a mission that had 20 of them on the map. Tanks couldn't hold back the 30 alien rush and any soldier would end up paralyzed.
Due to that first alien rush I could seldom get through a mission with my tank intact. With some luck I'd be able to avoid a soldier's death but only by pulling back the injured ones as they took hits. By the mission's end I'd often be down to about 4 effective (and slightly wounded) combatants. The rest would be low on HP or out of ammo and grenades.
That's what I call a lethal game.
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It seems to me that most of these articles are constantly stressing how tough the game is but it's starting to sound like PR spin now. Like Xenomask, I'd never thought about the base defense as a punishment to make life miserable for the player. If base defenses are too punitive and it's possible to go through a game with just 22 losses I fail to see where the much vaunted lethality is. They'd have been better off saying that base defense missions don't make sense in a game with just one base.
So X-Com will be lethal compared to a typical RPG but it still looks like most missions won't have fatal casualties.
UFO: ET alien bases provided an extremely intense firefight - at least they did with the Uni-Mod installed. The aggressive AI had about 30 aliens rush the player's position as soon as they made contact. Base defenses were a little easier but what I didn't like is that the aliens started with control of the whole base and the player got one hanger to start in.
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I agree they should lean proper marketing strategy. Even if they end up making the absolute best X-Com successor they'll probably fail to achieve large volume sales.
Still, I'm pretty sure they're still working on the game in spite of their not paying attention to their e-mails.
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I was under the impression that weapons needed to be upgraded on a per soldier basis. That's the part I didn't care to hear. It also calls to mind the question of whether or not soldiers can scavenge the gear of fallen comrades.
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I liked having the option to take lots of soldiers. Managing 20 men was never an issue since I'd just replace some with HWP's. That would leave me with a couple tanks and a dozen grunts to manage. On smaller missions I'd just leave some of them behind to watch the flanks and go forward with about 8 or so.
losing 22 soldiers in one game is pretty low. Either the new X-Com is very, very short or most missions won't have any losses at all. In my last game of UFO: ET I was losing 1-3 soldiers a mission (I was save-scumming too because there were serious balance issues regarding accuracy and LOS) when I first encountered destroyers and sentinels. It got so bad I had to do a lot of recruiting to provide meat shields to take the hits so my dwindling team of veterans wouldn't all be killed.
I agree that 12 was just about right for me. That plus at least 1 tank.
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I wouldn't have expected them to reply. From what I've read, the first game they made kept getting postponed until one day they released it without any warning whatsoever.
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I don't know if I read it wrong but it looks like they've decided to put in unlockable weapons upgrades for individual soldiers. I'm guessing its purpose is to minimize the need for inventory and weapons stockpiling. I don't care for the idea though.
Luckily they don't have to please me anyway since I'm not likely to get the game until it's cheap.
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It's always the exact same mission every time.
You'll have to play on normal mode to try anything else.
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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.
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Here's a game that was linked in the comments of the RPS Kickstarter article. There's an Indiegogo in progress for that one.
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Maybe he got abducted by aliens. He did seem to actually believe in them, maybe he got a little to nosey for his own good.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Silent Storm Gold Edition Finally Available from GoG
in Off-Topic
Posted · Edited by Akavit
Last week Silent Storm was released by GoG for ten dollars. If anyone else has always wanted to try the game out but was deterred by the difficulty in acquiring a used, over-priced copy, now is the time to get it.
This game is unbelievably advanced for something published in 2003. I'd say that this game is the only one I've played so far that has a better destructible environment than X-Com.
Here's the link to the game: Silent Storm Gold Edition