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DarkPonzu

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Posts posted by DarkPonzu

  1. Out of curiosity, I googled sci-fi movies released in 1979 (the year Xenonauts takes place) and here's what I came up with:

    • Meteor (1979)
    • Time after Time (1979)
    • La Mort en Direct (Death Watch) (1979)
    • Alien (1979)
    • Moonraker (1979)
    • Battlestar Galactica (1979)
    • Stalker (1979)
    • Quintet (1979)
    • Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
    • Mad Max (1979)
    • The Black Hole (1979)

    Got to love that Alien came out then, I wonder if the creators knew that? How funny would it be if you were watching Alien when the aliens invade? Talk about coincidence. :eek:

  2. Haven't played Xenonauts for awhile, and now that it's closer to beta, there's one thing I'm wondering. If you've played the latest version, have you had any tense or frightening game moments? One of the best parts of X-Com was the feeling of not knowing what was around the corner. Few games kept me on edge like X-Com, and I'm hoping Xenonauts captures that feeling.

    Some specific examples: Do you worry the first Xenonaut to leave the chopper will get immediately sniped? Do you fear for the xenonaut that you send into a dark corner, or a downed UFO? And maybe the most important question: Do you actually get mad or upset when one of your best guys die even though you know they're not real, but it seems like it?

    Oh yeah, and does the music lend to the tension too? Cause that was another thing that added a lot to X-Com.

  3. I'm bored, let's do a Xenonauts what-if thread: If Xenonauts did well enough to get a film version made, who would you want to star in and/or direct it? Here are my picks:

    Director: Peter Jackson

    Scriptwirter: James Cameron

    Producer: Stephen Spielberg

    Special Effects: Industrial Light & Magic

    Musical score: Howard Shore

    Lead: Channing Tatum or Keanu Reeves, cause they have about as much personality as a typical video game character ;)

    Lead's Sidekick: Dane Cook, he would be the comic relief character who makes the occasional wisecrack in a stressful situation. Probably my favorite stand-up comic, who needed better films to establish an acting career on than he got imo.

    The Rookie: I'll throw in Angelina Jolie to put an actress in there.

    Main character's love interest: Natalie Portman or Anne Hathaway

    Cameo role: Michael Cera or Christopher Mintz-Plasse cause they play awesome nerds. I think a funny scene would be them freaking out in the middle of a terror mission and getting saved just in time by the main characters.

    Other character types:

    The Grizzled Commander Guy/Woman: Edward James Olmos (for his role as Adama in the new BSG series) or Sigourney Weaver

    The war weary veteran: Ron Perlman

    The computer/tech guy: Justin Bartha, cause I think he's funny and needs to be in more stuff.

    The bad guy: (maybe a corrupt xenonaut/politician, evil alien leader voice or in costume?) Johnny Depp, because you can pretty much put him in any role and he can play it.

  4. I think its kind of a sad commentary on the state of our culture when we have to keep propping up tired, overdone IPs. It frustrates me because I love sci-fi / space opera, but what are my options? Star Trek or Star Wars, I'd say that's pretty boring. I think its time for something new, a Star Wars for my generation. I'm sick of remakes, I'm sick of exploiting franchises that should have been largely retired by now. It's like no one wants to take the chance to do something original, its too risky, or it would cost too much or take too much effort.

    Even Lucas wanted to redo Flash Gordon, but he couldn't get the rights and actually had to come up with something on his own. Interesting enough, when you de-construct Star Wars, its a hodgepodge of film references and ideas Lucas took from other works (with some philosophy and classical mythology thrown in), which is not in itself a bad thing, but it goes to show how hard it is to do anything truly unique any more.

  5. Can anyone recommend some fun PC games (besides Minecraft and MMOs) for people who are socially impaired? It gets hard to play single player games sometimes. Multiplayer games remind me that there are other humans out there, although I don't know why that's so comforting to someone as misanthropic as myself ;)

    I got Torchlight 2, but I'm focusing on single player for now. I'm thinking about getting into Realm of the Mad God. I also like iSketch and Ace of Spades. If anyone has any other quick to get into Co-Op or PVP games (preferably free) feel free to list them here, thanks.

  6. Hi all, just want to let you know I finished a Xenonauts fanfic screenplay. Hope no one minds if I link to it here.

    I started the project for two reasons: 1 was to show my fandom for the game, the 2nd was to practice my writing.

    This is the first episode of a series if there's enough positive feedback. Writing it in screenplay format may seem like an odd choice, but I had several reasons for this. In my experience, writing, reading and revising scripts takes less time than traditional prose. If people like the story, but want me to write future episodes as short stories, I will, but I can't promise it will be perfect ;)

    I also thought that writing it as a screenplay would make it easier for people to read online. I don't know about others, but I prefer reading long prose on an e-reader or print book, rather than on a website. The screenplay is 44 pages, which roughly equals 44 minutes of screen time. I wrote it as if it was for an hour long drama series (counting commercials.)

    Series Title: Xenonauts: First Strike

    Pilot Episode title: Episode 1: Redemption

    Plot synopsis: Tyrone Mercer is a bounty hunter down on his luck. Just when he's about to go broke, he receives a mysterious visit from two strangers. Little does he know, he will become the newest recruit in the war against an alien menace, waged by a secretive group known as the Xenonauts.

    Few more points to make about the script:

    • I uploaded it in .pdf format. Copying and pasting a formatted screenplay into a forum would probably not look good, so this was the better alternative.

    • I don't know all the lore and back story regarding the Xenonauts universe yet. This includes the differences between the Cold War of our time, and that of the Xenonauts.

    • In my version, the Cold War played out pretty much the same. There were still the proxy wars between the U.S. and Soviet sphere of influence (Korea, Vietnam, etc.) whether or not these would have happened in light of alien invasions, I don't know. Needless to say, the script is by no means representative of the setting's official canon material.

    • If the project is liked well enough, I will try to introduce more things from the game into the story. At first, the Xenonauts don't have much. As the series would continue, they will get the cooler stuff like the flamethrowers, ground vehicles and alien tech based weapons and equipment.

    • I have plans to introduce more female characters into the story, but they will not likely be soldiers due to the culture of the time period.

    • I have no military background (unless playing an excessive amount of military strategy games count? :D) , but I tried to represent soldiers and military stuff the best I could. If I made any mistakes or made a fool of myself I apologize in advance ;)

    • Lastly, if you really like the script and want to see more, have ideas, or even want to help me write more episodes, you're welcome to.

    Hope you guys like it, feedback appreciated.

    http://www.filedropper.com/xenonauts-firststrikeep1

    One more thing, I wrote it under my pen name.

  7. I think it would be interesting if the invasion had to do with the time the game is set in. Maybe there is a good intention behind it. The U.S. and USSR are able to start a world war at any given moment, so the aliens are like a U.N. peacekeeping force from space. They want to shut down the two rival superpowers in order to save humanity from itself. That would be especially interesting considering it would kind of make the Xenonauts the bad guys. Then again, the aliens did shoot first :P On the other hand, the notion of actually declaring war on your enemy before attacking them is kind of quaint in today's day and age.

    2nd theory: The aliens are time travelers from the year 2011. They saw how messed up we are, traced the problems back to the late 70's and decided to go back in time there in order to stop the events of the next 30-40 years from happening.

  8. While we wait for V8, I thought it would be fun to guess at the motives behind the alien invasion. I'll give my somewhat serious answer to start, as I'm sure there will plenty of amusing theories. First, we can take a look at what little we already know and draw some conclusions.

    • They are obviously highly advanced, having presumably mastered FTL speed and interplanetary travel, as well as a host of other futuristic technology. Therefore, I doubt there is anything resource or technology wise they want from us (but I wouldn't rule out the possibility.)

    • They are obviously warlike. Either they don't do diplomacy, or don't think that it's worth it with humans. There are some interesting possibilities depending on which one it is. Maybe they have a culture that favors war to settle disputes, or they don't negotiate with us, because they see humans as mere bugs.

    • They may have highly limited resources, or are in a state of distress in which case invading Earth may have been a last resort. Otherwise, I think they'd launch a War of the Worlds style invasion (leading to a very short game ;)) Because they are in a low scale war with us, it might suggest they are incapable of a grander operation, or the smaller operations benefit some other motive.

    • They see us as a potential threat to them or their long term goals, necessitating an armed response. Either they want to prevent us from challenging them in space one day, or they want our planet and don't want us on it.

    Here are some other factors to consider: the Rare Earth hypothesis (habitable planets are extremely rare, and may be the most valuable resource in the universe to spacefaring civilizations). The Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many advanced races may exist (in my experience, it would suggest a lot) and Stephen Hawking's belief that if an alien race visited Earth, it would likely want to take it over.

    My guess: The invaders represent a small portion of a considerably populated galaxy, with depleting resources and almost no uninhabited Earth-like planets to move to. An alien astronomer gets lucky, sees the Earth on the outskirts of one of the Milky Way's spiral arms, informs their superior, which kicks off an invasion to grab the prime real estate before anyone else. Considering their tech level, they have no qualms invading us because to them, we're semi-intelligent apes (which I guess is pretty accurate :D)

    And they are trying to invade us quietly, because a large scale invasion could tip other races off to their plans and they want to keep the Earth a secret and all to themselves.

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