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Hi everybody My first post here. I pre-ordered the game a few weeks ago and think the game has a HUGE potential. I didn’t play it a very long time yet, so I know my opinion is sometimes just impressions and not facts. I’m an UFO-Enemy Unknow fan and have played most remake-followers, so please bear with my typicall « it was better in the old time » First, the good points: « TU » mechanism intact (greatest disapointment with Firaxis XCOM). HD graphics (already tried to play XCOM 94 on a 1920x1080 screen ?). User-Interface is clean and neat, not the « sexiest » thing I have ever seen, but functional and easy to learn. A game for the fan by the fan. Crowdfunded. No producers/publisher(?), no console downgrading (interface). One word to sumarise it : « passion ». Now, the things that could be improved (IMHO) No 3D ? I’m not asking for CryEngine implementation, I love the « old » Isometric 3D, but with the possibility to see the battlefield from north, east, south and west. Same isometric/sprite principle as already in the game now. I find it very disturbing sometimes not to see aliens and soldiers when behind some walls/objects. Manipulating them (med., grenade) is also very hard in those situations. The maps are very boring : empty and always the same, especially buildings and alien spaceships ! Is a user map editor planned ? This way the community could create a huge amount of original maps and share them with other players. Is there a « giant » final mission ? Must have too (also a great disapointment in Firaxis XCOM) ! Probably only a difficulty balance problem, but my guys need about 20 shots to hit something… this is frustrating. I would prefer them to hit 80-90% of the time, but with less damage if you really need this to balance the game difficulty against a weak AI. Aliens are very static. Mostly they do nothing, just stand around (and shoot at you when you come near them). It would be more interesting to have them do something, going from A to B, scanning buildings, hunting you... like the human player. Interception : Foxtrot has 2 torpedo (or sidewinder) and nothing more ? Both missile will nearly always miss even the slowest smallest alien ship. I don’t like this kind of difficuly. In autoresolve mode a Foxtrot has no chance against even the smallest alien ship. Is this normal ?? Screens graphic style (for example « enemy movement » picture or initial main game menu) are … not very nice. The overall feeling is weird and kind of childish. I found the original UFO had much more « graphical personality and harmony ». Too late to change that ? Perhaps at least a few « enemy movement/turn » pictures (displayed randomly) ? I can’t watch this picture anymore. I hate it. Sorry. Sounds (and music) are not good (yet ?). Not enough ambiance music , not enough immersion and tension. The alien screams (and sounds) are laughable… at best. Another very personal opinion here : I always find it quit dissapointing when seeing the mission end summary screen. Don’t know why, but I remember this screen was much more rewarding after a very difficult mission in the original game. Need perhaps more info, more « loot » ? You are developping the game way too slowly !! Just kidding, take your time, do it right ! I understand this is not a AAA product with billions $ funding and unlimited talent resources. Just saying what I think, IMHO, should/could be improved to make this game the best possible. I pre-ordered Xenonauts knowing it was not perfect (and it won’t be at release). No complain here, just constructive thinking/sharing ! P.S. No, I’m not a 7 year old dyslexic, english is just not my mother tongue.

it was impossible to make it more modern engine such as C-XOM enemy unknown 2012? If not, it is not better to the old version of the game 1993 from Microprose

We all know how much problems the devs have with Xenonauts because of the engine and the fact that the makers are giving Chris the cold shoulder. Makes me wanna bombard them with e-mails till they learn some manners. I wonder...would a coordinated "we're gonna bother you till you cave in" approach be too cruel and unusual?

Just out of pure curiosity, Why was all of the character animations done with sprites instead of 3D models? I would think models would provide more flexability. I know the original creation is time consuming(I draw them) but once completed they could be made to do whatever, leading to new abilities and movements. Not that sprites can't be used in the same way but it take 1000s of images to do so which is also time consuming. Don't take this the wrong way I love the game so far it's just the implementation i'm curious about, it is a pretty old school way to approach it. It's no problem for me as I am old school will be 40 in 4 days:).My guess is it's an engine limitation. Happy Gaming!

Hi, when installing/unpacking V16 I noticed the huge amounts of files (> 80.000) being unpacked from the archive and I wondered what these files are. Then taking a look at the assets and subfolders I noticed each image (icons, aircraft in various build states, etc. ) are located in separate files! I have seen multiple examples in other games where files contain multiple images and are referenced via x/y offsets. I think performance could be tremendously improved if related images where stored in combined files for different kinds, like icons, aliens, equipment, etc. and separated for tactical and geoscape. I think loading times can be improved and memory and file handle management cleaned up. What do you think ? Regards, Michael

Because of some problems I had with the game and Desura today I googled for a few solutions (and was able to solve all problems). While googling, I've stumbled upon the phrase "We don't have access to our engine's source code" multiple times in connection with Xenonauts. And... Well... What's the story behind that? It seem really weird that the developers of a game are developing it without a source code. What happened?

Out of curiosity, did anyone notice a slightly fps increase in the latest build (v14.1) versus the previous ones (v14 and v13, mainly)? We did some work on the UI managment code (the best we could do, without having access to the engine's source code), that should have reduced UI refreshing times and lead to a fps increase. Just wanted some feedback on this. Thanks! Edit - just to give the right credits: the original idea behind this improvement was by Gijs-Jan, so thank him (or blame him ) for this!

Look at this video http://youtu.be/8vXgtoxV6fE If I understand it correctly, with this system you only have to make a model and then animate it. When you change textures, armor, or weapons of the model all sprites will be automatically generated. The soldiers can easily looks different just by changing a texture. You could even add wounds if they are hit. Adding female soldiers would be trivial, adding crouch-walking, prone positions and the like would also be quite easy. The possibilities are endless. I think the development is probably too far ahead to use this. However the devs have also said that making all the sprites for female soldiers, or prone positions, are not done as they would take much too long to implement. Using this system to redo all the previous animations as well as new ones might actually not take that much extra time. Especially now there's a lot more money from the Kickstarter they could dedicate someone to implement it. Of course developing the animation system would probably take much too long, but maybe the Zomboid team would be willing to license it for a modest price, or a small cut once the game become profitable. One can dream

So I notice allot of extreme weather events and thought to myself, well wouldn't it be a nice addition to have some of these occur in the game combat now and again depending on area or something? For example you can have Light Rain, Heavy Rain, Storm (heavy + wind), and also perhaps snow/hail effects. Perhaps some missions will have some flooding and on raining missions perhaps ponds of water exist. But first of all it be nice to see some simple rain in combat now and again to flesh things out. Is this possible with the engine? It can come under weather effects.

Hey, I was wondering is Xenonauts made with an engine or did you all go from the ground-up(using SDL+OpenGl, etc, etc). The reason I ask is related to porting the game over to other systems. It sometimes is easier to port things over when it is made from the ground-up then using engines, but it is also true visa-versa. I hope to hear from you all soon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you all are using C++ and OpenGl with SDL for sounds and input...

I haven't bought or played any version of this game yet; still considering it. It looks really great on the screenshots and the stories. However my 'fear' currently is that I see a lot of good hand drawn art work and the GUI stuff looks very nice, but I worry that this game might be just a whole box of art with a tiny bit of gameplay. I.E. awesome artists combined with average programmers (no offense). My biggest question is; I've read somewhere all the soldier sprites (which are apparently over 100.000) need to be pre-rendered etc, etc. .. But Why would you go the sprite way ?! I'm looking at all the screenshots and wonder two things: - Those sprites are 'tiny', why would it take so long to prerender. (3 servers need several months?! Huh?!) - Those sprites don't burst with high details, why not just render them ingame in 3D and stop limiting yourself so much; Render them like 'borderlands or TF2' does, then they don't need high polygon count and probably look very similar to what you have now By limiting the game so much by using sprites, you took away so much freedom; you can have males/females, africans/caucasians/chinese; you can mix procedural movements; much easier to introduce armor types and guns. And that's what worries me; you sacrificing possibilities for what reason? Personal preference or lack of knowledge? Seeing as this game is not too unknown, it should be possible to get some money from pre-orders and hire a guy to build that; and i'm pretty sure there's prebuilt simplistic engines already. If there's a worry 3D looks crappy; yes it can look crappy, it's why I really dislike UFO:Afterlight, etc. But it's because they also did the entire environments in 3D, which makes me lose sight. I think the best bet for an X-Com clone would be Isometric 2D environments with 3D animated characters. Anyway, just my two cents. To balance it of, this has been the best X-Com clone I've seen so far, but that's mainly because I see the GUI and hand-drawn art has the right atmosphere. But strongly reconsider the sprites thing.