Search the Community

Hello, So I had an interesting conversation with Chris: Dzsimbo: As $1000, but Xenonauts Project Lead Chris England will fly out to meet you for lunch (available anywhere in the US or Western Europe). We'll also let you off the $10 international shipping, as we're nice like that! Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): yeah Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): I'm getting in a box Dzsimbo: will you arive in a box? Dzsimbo: and jump out of it yelling surprise Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): lol Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): yeah Dzsimbo: dressed a sebillian Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): I'd be surprised if anyone bought that level Dzsimbo: i will just see you jump out from a box in a sebillian dress Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): lol Goldhawk Interactive (Chris): that would probably be worth $5,000 We should put some money together just to see this, meet somewhere in the world and watch our beloved Project Manager jumping out of a box dressed as a Sebillan. PS: Don't let Chris see this thread

OK, so if anyone has been watching the Kickstarter, you'll notice a major anomaly in the pledges - the $200 pledge point is unbelievably popular, while nobody gives a damn about the more expensive stuff or really in the $100-$199 region, either. This presents us with a problem. The artist who does the portraits only has so much time as he works with us around a job (and he doesn't want to leave his job), so we can't just throw open the floor to more people contributing $200. I think he'll be at full capacity doing the 100 portraits that are possible if people buy the full number of limited tiers. This is especially true if we add female soldiers. This is a potential stretch goal, but I'd have to discuss it with the artist. So - I'm open to suggestions on what can be an alternative reward in and around the $200 mark. And if there's a $350 reward we can add somehow (preferably without the portrait), then I'm open for ideas for that too...

The Kickstarter has gone live here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts It's already got a backer even though it went live less than 5 minutes ago, which is nice! Any help you can give us would be greatly appreciated - this includes spreading the word about us if you're not donating! The demo is available for download on the page, so if any of your friends are unsure about the game, just tell them to download it and have a play. I'm really hoping that this Kickstarter will give us the funds to put together a small team to work on the game full-time so we can finish it far more quickly and to a higher standard than otherwise. Just to clarify - anyone who has already Premium pre-ordered the game will get access to all the Kickstarter Premium Preorder rewards too. If you've already pre-ordered and want to claim a higher reward, you can donate and email us and we'll add the price of your existing pre-order to your pledge. So if you have a Premium Preorder already and stick a $20 donation in, you'll get the equivalent of an $50 donation minus the extra copy of Xenonauts. Thanks for the support of all the people on the forum who have helped us out along the way - there's an awful lot of you! Special thanks to Kilrathi, who worked with us to set up the US company which allowed us to get around not being US-based. It was a lot of effort and I appreciate the tinme you sunk in. Let's hope this goes well - fingers crossed!

So, it's probably time for a quick update on what's been happening and will be happening over the next week. All the hard work on the Kickstarter has paid off as our US company has been set up and has a bank account that has been authorised by Amazon Payments. The page is set up and good to go - its only the video we're working on now. That's all been shot and we are editing that together. The press builds have been sent out already. They went out on Thursday, but all the preview coverage is embargoed until Wednesday. This is when the Kickstarter goes live, although don't start shouting about it till it goes live obviously. We want to time our coverage so we get bang for our buck. The other good news is about Steam. I'm pleased to say that we've signed a distribution deal with them so all preorderers will have the option to claim a Steam key when the game is released. We'll keep you posted as things progress, but if you're planning to donate to the kickstarter then please do so as soon as possible after it goes live as it'll give us that much more legitimacy as a result.

Would it be possible, when selecting the 'Quick Battle' option, that the game would already start a new game, select a difficulty (say, normal or veteran) and place the base for you on the Geoscape? All of this could be done without user input and would not need to be shown on screen. Basically for instance when I click on "Quick Battle," the game would automatically create a new game, select "veteran" difficulty, and place a base for me at the southern tip of South America (or wherever) named "ALL YOUR BASE" (or whatever). The end result being, when the user clicks on "Quick Battle," it throws them directly into the Terror Site mission without having to navigate through the game menus and place/name their base on the Geoscape before getting into the action. Just seems like a good idea for the press/kickstarter release if it wouldn't be too difficult.

So, here's a thread about the costs of the goods: PDF Art Book: Lots and lots of time from our full time graphic artist, but this is hopefully a worthwhile cost. I'd love to have a hardback book showing off selected project artwork (I think my parents would rather like a copy too) and I'm sure the artists would enjoy it as well. The artwork in the project is one of my favourite things about it and it'd be good to tell the "story behind the pictures" too. Art Book Printing: I'm looking at using these guys as they are based in the UK but have US partners and I assume they'll be able to deliver the right number of books to each country to save me mailing all the US books from the UK to the US. The book is going to be a 48-page full colour book, coming in either hardback of softback versions. I don't know much much that'll weigh, but I'm using an estimate of 250g for the softback and 400g for the hardback. To print the softback book, the costs are: 25 - £7.50 / $12 each 50 - £6.18 / $9.9 each 100 - £5.40 / $8.65 each 200 - £4.78 / $7.66 each 500 - £3.82 / $6.12 each The print the hardback book, the costs are: 25 - £11.10 / $17.80 each 50 - £9.35 / $14.99 each 100 - £8.25 / $13.25 each 200 - £7.52 / $12.05 each 500 - £5.89 / $9.43 each To post it anywhere in the world from the UK, the costs would be: Softback - £2.28 / $3.65 each Hardback - £3.42 / $5.48 each To post it in the US - I basically have no idea how to read the UPS shipping charts. What's all this Zone stuff? Perhaps someone can help me? If we're assuming an A4 size book that's less than 1cm thick and weighing about 400g / 14oz, how much is the most that would cost to ship domestically? This makes the books rather expensive. We could put the softback ones in at the $60 price point, giving the player a Premium pre-order plus the art book. If we got, say, 200 people buying this it'd cost $11.31 each for the extra $30 donation (which is effectively $27 after fees). So it'd give a net gain of about $15 for the time cost incurred. The hardback books cost a fortune. I think any of them we make would be signed and would be a prize for the serious donators out there. We'll probably do a short print run of them anyway for use within the team and sending to friendly journalists too. T-Shirts: I think it's probably best to get these done in the States. A bit of cursory browsing has found this site where you can get what I assume are decent T-shirts screen printed at decent rates. I could do the screen printing with 1 or 2 colours in the print, and I'd imagine we'll probably have white on black T-shirts but I'll do the figures with 2 colour prints to be on the safe side (1-colour is about 5% cheaper). 25 - $9.61 each 50 - $8.11 each 100 - $6.43 each 200 - $5.42 each 500 - $5.08 each As you can see, the price drops off after about 200, and if we can get the number of shirts in the 100-200 region then they're a useful item to have. Relatively they're cheaper than the softcover artbook by $2-3 each, so it'd make sense that they went in at the $50 price point. Posters: Full colour A3-size Posters appear to provide by far the most bang for the buck pricewise, looking at sites like these. Again, if we went for printing in the US then we'd probably be looking at the following kind of prices: 50 - $1.02 each 100 - $0.85 each 250 - $0.72 each 500 - $0.44 each Shipping to an address in the US would be about $22 on top of that, but in terms of production costs these are very very cheap goodies to dish out. I was thinking about scrapping them but looking at the figures that would be frankly moronic at this point. The only problem with this is the postage for the posters, because they'd have to be sent in tubes which cost another $0.60 each or so. Then the actual postage would be relatively pricey due to the fact they're seriously awkward to handle. Again, someone will have to look up the UPS postage rates for me but it's likely to be about 14 inches long and about 2.5 inches wide / tall. Anyone got any suggestions for other things I should be pricing up, or any comments?

EDIT - here's the new updated proposed reward tiers: $20 - Standard Pre-Order (game plus Standard forum medal) $30 - Premium Pre-Order (game plus Premium forum medal, digital game soundtrack, official wallpapers and PDF version of my development diary written up once I've completed the game) $50 - Premium Pre-Order, plus poster OR T-shirt OR PDF art book (including the best in-game art, some developer thoughts on it, artist / developer bios etc - should be a nice momento for the game) $60 – Premium Pre-Order, plus softback art book $75 - Premium Pre-Order, plus two of: PDF art book, poster, t-shirt $100 - Premium Pre-Order, hardback art book OR poster, PDF art book and t-shirt, OR name can be appear as a soldier (there is a 10% chance any new soldier will have a pre-generated name taken from the list of people committing $100 or more. They won't have special stats but might start with a special Medal (+1 Bravery) for "going beyond the call of duty".) $125 – Premium Pre-Order, hardback art book AND poster AND t-shirt AND name can be appear as a soldier $150 - Premium Pre-Order, signed hardback art book AND poster and t-shirt, plus name can be appear as a soldier with the soldier nationality and portrait also set by the donator, chosen from existing portraits. $200 – As $150, but we’ll have our portrait artist do a soldier portrait of you from a photo to go in the game (50) $500 – As $150, but you’ll get 5 copies of the game and will be listed in the game end credits “With Thanks To:” (30) $1,000 – As $150, but you’ll get 10 copies of the game and will be listed in the intro credits under “Special Thanks To:” (incorporated into the intro movie) (15) $5,000 - As $1,000, but in addition I'll fly out and meet you to have lunch anywhere in the States (eventually) or in Europe. (5)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2?ref=live Hot on the heels of the Doublefine kickstarter, we're now getting a crowdsourced sequel to Wasteland, from some of the old Interplay veterans. For those who don't know, the original Wasteland was the precursor and major inspiration for Fallout 1. It's already at $250k, a few hours after launch! The goal is $900k, and the game will obviously benefit from an even bigger budget. So if you miss that kind of game, and wish they hadn't stopped making them, now's your chance! (note: I'm not in any way involved with inXile, I'm just a humble fan of Fallout, which from my experience largely shares the same target audience as X-Com - I hope Chris doesn't mind me spreading the word here)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive/posts/178261 The guy just wanted 57k to do a print re-run on some of his out-of-print books the new readers had been asking for. He got $1.2 million in 30 days. Xenonauts needs a Kickstarter project!