Search the Community

Hi all. It's been a little while since I posted an update, and that is mainly because I've been working on one very big job - creating all the tiles for the Xenonauts base, to be used during base defence missions. Chris has already posted up a few preview shots of the base using some mock-ups I made, but now that everything is running in the game I wanted to give you a look at more of the base. Here's a few (HUD-cropped) screenshots to get started: Radar, storeroom and workshop Command centre, medical wards and laboratory Hangars and living quarters And the following is a stitched together image I made manually showing the entire base, in the default layout as it exists right now. You can also see how our alien breaching system works, with multiple alien pods breaching the base at different points. These will be hidden from the player to increase the tension. Do note though that the graphics for the alien pod breaches are place-holders which will be replaced soon enough. Screenshot of complete base (About 3 MB in size). In addition to the base I have been steadily working on props to fill out the other tilesets, and here are a few of those: (Click for game size)

Hi guys, I'm a n00b at XCOM. I usually play RPGs, but also shooters, e.g. Arma series. Personally I hate the debate saying that FPS are braindead software for braindead players. I bought XCOM:EU by Firaxis and enjoyed the tactical map a lot. I like the turn based concept very much. I was aware that the Geoscape has been drastically "streamlined" but so what. For me it was a new and good game. I wasn't missing anything the same like I won't miss a Geoscape in Call of Duty You know what I mean. XCOM:EU brought me to original XCOM and then I heard about Xenonauts. I must say I enjoy it as well. A different game for me, with a very specific mood. And well done except I don't like the comic like soldies. They're kind of flat and 2D, whereas vehicles are painted 3D - inconsistence here. But thats just a minor thing, all in all it's just great fun. Even though I must say I'm beginning to lose my first game in Ironman/normal. "Ironman" which is both in Firaxis and Xenonauts: I must say it's a great option, because later you have no chance to save or return to old saves (except maybe if you manage saves on file system level). Otherwise I know myself, I couldn't resist to load old saves... I wish more games had it... All in all I think gamers often think too black/white. I can enjoy everyting: Just killing players in Multiplayer FPS, or doing micromanagement in Dwarf Fortress, or play chess, or play COD,... just depends on my mood. I am an ENEMY of terms like "COD Kids" etc... It's too over simplistic. I think nowadays we are in a great position of having millions of gorgeous games! And no, old games weren't better per se. Thanks for your time and thanks for Xeno devs for doing a great job! Michael

Here's a preview of how the new UI will look. This is more to keep everyone in the loop as to what we're up to rather than to solicit much feedback at this stage. The UI has gone through enough concept iterations now that we know pretty much what works; in fact in this iteration we've stayed much closer to the present design than previous designs have. The main changes are: 1) A consistent topbar across all the screens. This improves on the current design which only has 4 tabs on the Geoscape, and vastly improves on the previous "immersive" concept which would have awkwardly used a sign on the wall for navigation. It means that the navigation buttons and the date / money information is all in a consistent place on every screen, which is key from a usability point of view. 2) We've implemented a tabbed "speech bubble" menu type on most of the screens. This has two advantages - it keeps the UI clean as we don't have to have all the information on screen at once (the player can just click to the desired tab) and also it adds more character to the game. There's now a chief on most of the screens, which involves you in the organisation a bit more. 3) It looks a lot nicer. Our painted background are nicer than our previous ones and you can see more of them than before, and the light background works better than the dark one we currently use. It's just much more coherent than before. Some of the art is placeholder. The topbar name is the same on each page because there was no need to update it, plus the background art repeats on the right-hand side. I can't be bothered to go into details on aspect ratios, but if you have a 16:9 monitor you'll have the ideal experience from the game. If you have at 16:10 then the actual playable area will remain the same, but there'll be a band of background on the left and right of the screen that will be hidden. So, here's the UI: Laboratory Screen: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/3_Research_1610.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/3_Research_1610_2.jpg Workshop: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/4_Workshop_1610.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/4_Workshop_1610_2.jpg Barracks: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/5_Barracks_1610.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/5_Barracks_1610_2.jpg Stores: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/6_Stores_1610.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/6_Stores_1610_2.jpg Soldier Equip: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/7_SoldierEquip_1610.jpg Vehicle Equip: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/8_VehicleEquip_1610.jpg Aircraft Equip: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/9_AircraftEquip_1610.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/9_AircraftEquip_1610_2.jpg Base Screen: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/2_Base_1610.jpg (this does not yet have a painted background, it's just a layout!) There's also the Geoscape and Xenopedia screens, which are not yet complete. The Geoscape is being concepted up at the moment. Here's the current concept for the Geoscape screen: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/Geoscape_normal.jpg http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/Geoscape_zoomed.jpg EDIT - if you want to come up with your own alternative concepts (as I'm not tweaking these concepts any more) then you can download the Photoshop files for the UI screens here and have a go: http://www.xenonauts.com/devfiles/finalUI.rar

Some suggestions from playing 17.1 (and the new XCOM.) (Here's hoping they're already being planned!) 1. More hidden movement screens: Considering the player stares at the hidden movement screen for minutes at a time (cumulatively) in each encounter, it will be great if there's a rotation of hidden movement screen so it doesn't get boring. Bonus: the screen is based on the tileset the map is made of! The existing one is ace, by the way. It's just going to seem a bit off when all my soldiers have advanced armor and the chaps on the hidden movement screen are in regular old BDUs. 2. Geoscape details: The Geoscape we see is a terrain map, basically. Is it possible to show signs of civilization, such as lights on the night side? In general, the geoscape feels too static compared even to a slowly rotating globe, so any kind of animated detail that lets us know we're not staring at an atlas would be very welcome. 3. One feature I really miss in Xenonauts after playing XCOM 2012 is the calendar on the screen (that you can expand) showing all items on the agenda for the next month. This is a timeline that includes research times, new soldiers arriving, pending requests, constructions, and pretty much any base activity that takes time to occur. It's also much easier to plan when I can see the big picture, instead of being surprised about popups for activities that I scheduled ages ago. 4. Speaking of pending requests, the random requests for equipment from various countries in XCOM 2012 was also a nice touch, generally a windfall just in the nick of time. Does Xenonauts have anything similar? 5. The font size is really tough on the eyes! 6. The soldier run animation does not match the speed at which the sprite moves along the ground. So it looks like the soldier is skating sometimes. This should hopefully be an easy fix? 7. Any chance we can see a dirt trail behind the hunter as it moves? As things stand, a livelier map would be great. I know idle animations are in the works and animated tiles _might_ make it in, but I suppose there are other ways to liven up the battle map too. And then there are some longstanding suggestions (that I made ages ago) that I know can't be fixed because of the engine, but I'll reiterate anyway: 1. Bullets as slow white streaks, lasers as slow red streaks feel really underwhelming. Any chance the bullet sprite could get a makeover (or at least a velocity increase)? 2. Projectiles emanate from the center of the tile, and not from the barrel of the gun. Anyone else find this annoying? Is this something you just get used to as you play more of the game?

Found some concept art on CGHUB, and I thought you might like a looksey. Sorry if this is already posted elsewhere... If you don't want to see some future tech ideas then don't click the link http://cghub.com/images/view/351541/ Scroll through the image tabs through the top of the page for more

I'd like to have an option to set the menus to various degrees of transparency, as they cover up all the artwork. Also, how about making the various menu windows scollable, so that they do not take up so much of the screen?

Hello all - as Chris mentioned in the development update, I am now the first full time employee at Goldhawk. I had previously been working on Xenonauts in my spare time for about a year as a tile artist, which is what I will talk about a little in this post. Firstly I should say a little about my background. My previous "real" job was as a software developer at an engineering software company working on fluid dynamics simulation software (I studied cybernetics at university), and prior to that I have also worked as a games/software tester at Lionhead Studios and on other less interesting projects. I am of course an avid PC gamer and also an incurable tinkerer; I started modding around 1997, eventually making some neat little mods for Operation Flashpoint and since then have been modding pretty much continuously - I worked for a long time on the Forgotten Hope mod for the Battlefield series, and also on a C&C Generals mod called Rise of the Reds. I have done pretty much everything in that time - audio, scripting, modelling, skinning, level building and game design. About this time last year I met Chris at the Eurogamer expo and got chatting to him about developing Xenonauts, and ended up doing some freelance tile art. About 6 months later I was starting to look for a new job, and Chris was talking about staffing up Xenonauts and getting an office, and so here we are. Anyway, that's plenty of rambling about me - on to the task at hand. The tools I use when creating tile art for Xenonauts are the 3D modelling package Blender and the 2D graphics package GIMP. The main advantage of both of these is of course that they are free; when I started working on Xenonauts I actually hadn't used either of these before that much, but coming from Photoshop and 3D Studio Max the transition wasn't so difficult especially given the huge number of tutorials; for Blender I particularly recommend http://www.blendtuts.com/ and, for something more advanced, the "vehicle modelling training series" from CG Cookie is well worth the money. Planning -------- So when creating a new building for a tile set, we must of course decide what it should be - we wanted the Soviet town to look distinct from the Western town set, and had decided on a slightly more run down style with some government presence. We also wanted at least one large building that can be used to build a complex centrepiece structure for a map, and for this we decided to use on a mixed use office/archive government build in a somewhat ornate style (at least compared to the buildings around it) as a multi-tier structure. After that came deciding specifically what it would look like. I already had in my mind one clear inspiration immediately, which was the Soviet archive building that featured in Goldeneye (both the film and N64 game) - it was stylistically suitable and also looked like it could be recreated in a tile-able form quite well. Additionally I poured over lots of pictures of KGB headquarters buildings from all over the Soviet Union, particularly for exterior references, as these all tend to occupy a similar style of building. After that I would normally sketch out each different type of object (windows, doors etc...) that would be needed for the building exterior, just to make sure the designs I had in mind for each individual piece would interlock with each other correctly; at this stage though I am practised enough to be able to do that in my head and combine that with the next phase, which is building the geometry. Modelling -------- Creating the geometry of each building piece is one of the simplest parts of the process. I use standard vertex modelling and just extrude, extrude, extrude until I have the shape I need. I have a standard template file for Blender (more on the reason for that later), and each different item gets one layer of this file; this keeps everything related together and means if I were to make global changes, such as changing a colour or texture, it is inherited by all similar objects automatically - this is pretty vital as even tiny mismatches between tiles will be glaringly obvious once they are in the game but are hard to detect during rendering. Here are a couple of untextured tiles: The next step is applying colour and texture. I do this entirely using procedurally generated textures in Blender, rather than the more traditional way of using static files. The reasons for this are it eliminates the need to UVW unwrap anything (a time consuming process) and it means I can make fairly significant changes to my geometry (Chris is a fiend for revisions!) and the textures will just adjust themselves accordingly and still tile nicely with other pieces. For the interior wall above I have simply applied the appropriate colour (from Goldeneye!) and then set a subtle noise effect all over to simulate slight imperfections in the painted finish - in reality you likely wouldn't see these details from a distance, but having the wall completely blank of any detail would counter-intuitively look quite jarring in the game. For the exterior, the bricks have been given a high contrast pattern of dark rendered "clouds" across them to simulate the way they collect water stains and similar marks, while the concrete between them has an even rougher pattern of rendered dark noise to simulate its pitted surface. The window frame I just left as a clean cream colour - it has enough detail on it from the geometry to not need a texture, and applying one to complicated objects at this low a resolution will simply make it look like a mess of noise. Here are some more parts from the complete set: You can see we have a couple of different variations on exterior wall colour - the idea behind this is to replicate the style many of those KGB buildings have, where the ground floor is a darker colour of brick, with floors above that clad in lighter colours. Rendering --------- Once all that is done the final step is to render all the tiles out so they can be put in the game. In theory this sounds simple, but in actual fact it is the part of the process that causes the most headaches, and it has taken me a great deal of experimentation and preparation to be able to get to the step where I can essentially "turn the key" and produce a complete set of renders for a full Blender file. The main problem is these files are small - only 128*128 pixels in resolution - and each tile needs to fit perfectly in the space between every other tile in the set. It must also always be rendered from the same position, otherwise the rendering algorithm may end up placing the edge of one face one pixel too short - this would be undetectable in the render but would show up in the game as obvious seams between each tile. Lighting must also be accurately reproduced to match the existing tiles in the game (all of which are lit more strongly from the right). On top of all that, each building has just a huge number of tiles - the basic set of tiles for the Soviet archives has 96 different tiles in it, not counting those for the roof, which is an awful lot of opportunities to make mistakes. It also consumes huge amounts of time - when I first started working on the tiles I was spending as much, if not more, time on the simple rendering and naming process than I was on the actual creation. Problem Solved -------------- My solution to this was twofold. Firstly I created a template Blender file in which both the lighting and the camera are set-up perfectly, and I then animated the light and camera so that each frame of animation corresponded to viewing the tile from a different direction. This meant rendering a tile from all 4 of the necessary direction was just a matter of advancing the frame count in Blender by one. I was also able to use this animation method to automate some of the more tedious tasks like rendering doors in their open, closed and destroyed state. This was a big improvement, but left the time consuming and error prone process of manually naming each frame into the correct format for the game; so I came up with an additional tool to fix that. I found an application called Blender++, which comes with a command line utility called "brend" that can render out Blender files automatically one frame at a time - this didn't solve the naming problem (all the different objects would come out named after the file with a numerical tag), but it did solve the problem of me needing to manually switch Blender. I then wrote a wrapper for the brend utility as a batch file, that worked as follows - you drag and drop the file you want to start rendering onto the batch, and it kicks off a brend of the first 4 frames in that Blender file and then shows you the results - at that point it asks you what the object is, so you would type "window" for example, and then it automatically names each frame with the appropriate name and facing (i.e. does it face NE, NW, SE or SW?) and moves it to a finished; it then asks you if you want to render more, and if so it moves to the next Blender layer (i.e. where the next object is stored) and repeats the rendering and naming process. This system cuts the time needed to render and name a large set of tiles from several hours to about 15 minutes, and is vastly more robust in terms of avoiding errors. Tiles produced by the process can be dropped straight into the game for set-up, and if there are any tweaks needed it is a fairly simple process to redo the renders again in such a way that the new tiles can just overwrite the old tiles with no need for re-checking the positions. The reliability of this system has also made it possible for me to do more complex building types (such as Nissen huts, which you may not have seen yet) which have curved edges that need to match absolutely perfectly between tile transitions. Once the complete set of tiles for a building like the Soviet archives is complete it gets put in the game for testing and is also passed on to our very talented 2D artist Mikael, who paints over the tiles to give them that stylised look we use for all buildings in Xenonauts; it is always an absolute pleasure to see how awesome the tiles can turn out after he gone over them. Anyway I've enjoyed rambling on about this, and hopefully it will be a bit of an interesting insight into how these kinds of old school 3D tiles are produced. As much work as all of the above may seem, I think once the results are in game they give Xenonauts a high resolution look that is fairly unique amongst modern pixel art games.

Hi there, is it a placeholder atm or is it final? For me it looks not soooo good looks static. Any plans to change the start/menu screen? Thank you

I present to you the icon Xenonauts game. I hope that in the appropriate forum section. P.S. I know that not everyone is able to convert PNG to icon. So intercede link to finished icon. http://www.sendspace.pl/file/1e5233a1543e7c32e5eebd6 http://www.sendspace.com/file/r34ttj

OK, so I'm sitting down and trying to get the major screen for our new UI revised and ready to be implemented (once the rest of the code is done at least). The easiest of these is the Stores screen. What I've aimed to do with the updated UI is to: 1) Make it clear why it doesn't do anything until you capture / manufacture some items. 2) Stop it being quite so overwhelming. As such, there are three "sub-screens" in the design. http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/stores1.jpg Screen 1 is what is show if there are no items in the base stores. Pretty self explanatory really. http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/stores2.jpg Screen 2 is the "Sell" screen, which is shown by default when you load up the screen and there is something in the stores. This has all the functionality of the current stores screen, but minus the awkward columns for Transfer also shoehorned in there too. The base is selected by the dropdown in the top left corner. http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/stores3.jpg''>http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/stores3.jpg' rel="external nofollow"> http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/stores3.jpg Screen 3 is the "Transfer" screen, which is shown when you click the Transfer tab in the "speech bubble" menu in the bottom left. Again, this has all the info you need to transfer items from one base to another without the extra columns from the Sell functionality mixed in. The bases in question can be chosen from the two drop-downs. Overall, I think the changes are pretty simple but they should make the screen both prettier and more intuitive. Hopefully I'll have the updated Personnel screen later today too.

I was just looking through the game files and I came across the background imagies (stores, personal, etc.) I looked at a few of them and I noticed something I don't think anyone else has yet mentioned. I love how that in the personal there is a bunk with a poster of and intercepter from X-Com. Has anyone else seen this? I love the tribute!

Please note: This is a thread that I incorrectly put in the Community Involvement thread. Same text, just can't delete incorrect thread! This is an "it would be nice" thing, but would it be possible to have a hidden movement screen for each different map type? I mean, don't get me wrong, the "in a barn" screen is nice, but it would be nicer still if we had hidden screen with xenonauts stalking through a warehouse, a xenonaut examining unfathomable alien equipment in an alien base, xenonauts returning fire in a xenonauts base... it would add to the ambience and that oh-so-important sense of immersion if the hidden movement screen reflected the type of map I was on.

Hey everyone Im new to Xenonauts and Im shocked I didnt know about this indie game, its been around for awhile without my notice! I wont start suggestin crazy ideas here but Ill here often since Im an XCOM hipster lmao, I liked XCOM before it was kewl!! ANyways, I noticed the Xenonauts art is heavily inspired by the original XCOM game, YES! Thats a very good thing, sadly the artist forgot this most important piece of background art: TThe XCOM project monthly report or purchase background screen alone with the shady corporate figures or operatives, whichever they are, standing in the back and the Smoking Man-like character holding a suitcase full of money is the most amazing and hopefully will be added into the Xenonauts game!! That kind of background adds a lot of atmosphere. Im hoping the developers add it into the Xenonauts Monthly Performance screen in the style of XCOM. Get your art director working on it now! Thats my only suggestion for now and Im full of ideaz LOL... Everything else in the alpha footage gameplay was as swweet as candy and Im so glad I can finally put some of my money in the right place. Still deciding whether premium or standard. hmmmmm lol:p On a lsat note, I read the whole f.a.q before creating this suggestion and Im sad you wont have female operatives in the game Im not thinking about the boys, they have themselves:rolleyes:, but girls worldwide who would of wanted this if they were approached by a tall, dark, and handsome to join a top secret organization!! a Thank you for reading my thread.

I heard about the game yesterday, checked out the WTF is....Xenonauts video on youtube, and decided to pledge on Kickstarter. Been playing the demo I got off Desura for a couple of hours, and I've got some questions. I apologise if these are asked all the time. I did search and read some threads, got some of my other questions answered already in fact. 1) During ground battles, I always ended up fighting in the same 2 locations. I assume this is because it's a demo, right? There will be more locations in the full game. 2) The "hidden movement" screen, will there be any way of toggling it off? I know it's similar to what X-COM had, but I'm not sure if it stayed so long on screen. Sometimes I miss an on screen action because the toggle between HM - action on screen - HM is too fast. 3) Some screens look a bit...off (on the world map section, when you can build buildings, research new technology etc), like the UI isn't finished yet. Am I right in this? Thank you. PS: I do realise this is still in its alpha stage.

I'm a fan of the marvelous King of Dragon Pass, which combines text with some splendid art. By pressing the space key, the UI becomes invisible and you can view the art fully. Seeing as Goldhawk is making all of those fancy backgrounds, perhaps it's a good idea for Xenonauts? It's hard to admire the art if it's covered by the interface.

low priority - please remake the artwork/drawing for the end-combat screen (the one that says who died and who survived) and the main game menu artwork too (new game, load, quit). I really don't like them. What i don't like is the persons faces.

I was wondering, is the picture for the Alien power source the warp core from U.S.S. Voyager?

It would be a nice idea to have facial expressions in each soldiers personal screens. You could have new recruits looking clean shaven and raw, veterans with stubble etc. , and their expression would instantly indicate what state they are in (panicked etc.). This could maybe even be animated. The unique art style was a key feature in the original.