Suggestion\petition about Xenonauts 2.

[Raymond Saint]

I just want to say, If the game is commercially sucessful, I hope Chris and others will make a spiritual successor of UFO2: Terror from the Deep

I'm very happy with the game, glad you make it.

Proud Kickstarter pledger

[KevinHann]

Only if it's a Xenonauts expansion on the same engine!

[Msvknight]

my idea for a remake of the old TFTD

X-com: More F**king boat missions

[KevinHann]

Was it really that bad?

[Irishguy117]

Chris has already said that whatever the next project is, it won't be Xenonauts 2. I wouldn't exactly mind another one, but its his company.

[Msvknight]

Was it really that bad?

well, considering that boat missions would take nearly 1 hour due to multiple levels, yeah

[MrPyro]

well, considering that boat missions would take nearly 1 hour due to multiple levels, yeah

And that any half-filled mags would disappear from a soldier's inventory on level transfer. I once started the second level of a boat mission with only half my squad actually having any ammo.

And we don't talk about the Lobsterman in the walk-in wardrobe.

[Irishguy117]

Its really amusing when someone told me why the game was that hard. Apparently there was originally a bug that no matter what you picked, the game was on easy, and people complained that the game was too easy before the devs picked up on the bug. Thus TFTD.

[Sandyxx]

I have only one suggestion about next game :

NO F*****G SPRITES for soldiers\enemies, use 3d models instead.

the game would me much easier to mod. E.g. to fully add new weapon modder needs to not only redraw main image, but redraw each direction for each armor with new weapon in hands, to add new armor... redraw each weapon animation with new armor.

[silencer]

Its really amusing when someone told me why the game was that hard. Apparently there was originally a bug that no matter what you picked, the game was on easy, and people complained that the game was too easy before the devs picked up on the bug. Thus TFTD.

Nope - that was in Enemy Unkown case. In TFTD it was Superhuman level that was changed after saving. There are however fixes from the community.

And why TFTD is considered harder. Well first Lobsterman, then in EU you could use lasers till the end. Gauss on the other hand were useless. Attacking alien base (colony) was very hard due to PSI (molecular) attacks on the first level and it was very dark. Ships missions - long and potentially hard. Artifact missions - colony mission revisited + you could be MC'ed on both levels. And the last Tentaculats (sp?) - Chrysalids that can fly.

[silencer]

I have only one suggestion about next game :

NO F*****G SPRITES for soldiers\enemies, use 3d models instead.

the game would me much easier to mod. E.g. to fully add new weapon modder needs to not only redraw main image, but redraw each direction for each armor with new weapon in hands, to add new armor... redraw each weapon animation with new armor.

Well Chris way back when admitted that choosing the current engine was big mistake. I bet that their next game (even next Xenonauts if they will finally make them, and if the next game will be 3D), probably be under Unity engine - quite popular for Indie developers.

[Sandyxx]

... next game will be 3D...

full 3d is a) costly b) harder to produce (with good quality)

for small companies best design coice is 3d actors + 2d backgrounds. good example is shadowrun (yeah, i know that 3d quality were kinda meh, but...) environment is easy to create and extend (just draw single sprite or some number of sprites if you want animation|destruction) , so is actors (easy to use animation and new weapons).

[Chris]

Full 3D isn't really more costly in our case, given our sprites are all 3D models rendered out in 2D and then painted over by hand. But yes, I've had enough of sprites for one lifetime now.

[Sandyxx]

oh. I see. in this case you can easily go full 3d.

[Ragnarok]

If anything, they should definitly get a proper engine for whatever "NEXT GAME" they are planning.

The Xenonauts engine is SHIT tbh.

[alienman]

I hope next game will be X-com but in reverse. You invade as the aliens. You start with kidnapping cows or the equivalent. Slowly stepping up with abducting humans or whatever race lives on the planet to full scale invasion and you have to fight "Xenonauts" and regular military

(All in sprites of course!)

[Sapare]

I'll just say that I am a huge fan of 2d art in games and believe there are games from the late 90's/early 2k that look better then the majority of today's games. Good, clean, 2d art will always look better then 3rd art for a strategy/top down/isometric/sideways game. But that is just a minority opinion.

[Sandyxx]

with current tech 3d can look just as good as 2d (look at new Guilty Gear, transistor, bastion) if there are good programmer on graphic tasks.

the problem with 2d art is that it's costs as hell in terms of work hours.

e.g. to animate 1 char with one weapon we will need at least 5 sets of sprites ( if we would use mirroring E-W NE-NW etc.) or full 8 sets.

for each weapon we should add another bunch.

if armour is displayed on unit, we must repeat all this.

now with 3d:

we need only new weapon model and animations. after creating these we can apply anims to model skeleton.

to add new armour - just create a model. and it will "magically" work with every weapon animations? thus extensibility.

[Lt_Parsons]

There is a limit to 3d animation magic too - clipping.

For best visual results with various combination of armors and weapons you will still need some adjusted animations here or there.

And then there are animation transitions, syncing animations with surrounding world etc.

Still hell of a lot of work.

[StellarRat]

full 3d is a) costly b) harder to produce (with good quality)

for small companies best design coice is 3d actors + 2d backgrounds. good example is shadowrun (yeah, i know that 3d quality were kinda meh, but...) environment is easy to create and extend (just draw single sprite or some number of sprites if you want animation|destruction) , so is actors (easy to use animation and new weapons).

Not compared to sprites. Once you have a 3D model made up and skinned, rotation, movement, etc... is child's play as the 3D display engine does all the work for you. The animator just tells it to turn to a certain position (or whatever.) GH had to render ALL the possible views for each figure! That's thousands of shots from different angles! It's like making a cartoon frame by frame like they did in the old days. It took entire rooms of artists drawing each cell with just a slight change for the movement then liking them all together. Not fun. I remember my buddy having to draw dozens of views of our space ships each with just a few degrees of rotation then writing code that called the correct sprite in memory! I think in the end he figured out a way to do it with a program. Edited June 9, 2014 by StellarRat

[Sandyxx]

There is a limit to 3d animation magic too - clipping.

if we are talking about perspective and scale like in xenonauts\shadowrun - it's not an issue

For best visual results with various combination of armors and weapons you will still need some adjusted animations here or there.

yep but again, at which scale? if we are talking skyrim scale - clearly yes otherwise not really.

And then there are animation transitions, syncing animations with surrounding world etc.

Still hell of a lot of work.

inverse cinematic, i think it's called. and animation approximation. in human words: transitions can be done almost automatically, quality depends on approximation algorithm.

didn't understand what you are meaning under synch with surroundings, so can't say anything about.

atm i'm kinda disappointed that, for example, if we would like to add new pimped-out tactical shotgun ingame all that we could possibly change (in reasonable time) is weapon images.

if we would like to add xcom body armour (yeah that awesome black body armour with shoulder pads) we have two options:

go f*** ourselves

or redraw 104 files... for one weapon... for basic xenonaut armor it's 3827 files.

you aren't saying that create low poly model, texture it, add skeleton and put it into the game (if the game were using 3d models for units) is more work than redraw almost four thousand files, are you?

[Sandyxx]

Not compared to sprites...

that's were my point. for animated units with interchangeable armours and weapons 3d models are godlike: eight times less work, and much easier to extend.

but. for background... if it's static or uses simple patterns in animations, it's quite hard to achieve same level of quality between 3d model and artist created sprite, in my opinion.

[StellarRat]

but. for background... if it's static or uses simple patterns in animations, it's quite hard to achieve same level of quality between 3d model and artist created sprite, in my opinion.

From a purely artistic point, I think I can see what your getting at. That said, we would have had a lot more content and the game might have been done earlier if GH had chosen a good 3D engine (or maybe a better 2D engine.) One of the big reasons we didn't get flamethrowers was because the animation wasn't done. I will say that I've seen some pretty good 3D done on the ground scale that Xenonauts is using.

[Sandyxx]

i'm thinking, that something like shadowrun or bastion works almost ideal in terms of spent time and graphic fidelity.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Sandyxx

[Lt_Parsons]

@Sandyxx - Yeah, you are right about the scale.

Inverse cinematics and automatic approximation - also yes, but then again, any algorithm would need some tweaking.

By syncing to surroundings i meant tweaking animation to not clip to the world objects and to interact with them properly. Part of it is approximation algorithms, part physics, part some other deep magic.

Not saying that redrawing sprites isn't hard - after some Xen modding attempts hate them with passion myself.

My point was - even if it is 3d magic, doing said magic is a lot of work too =)

Maybe less overall and less boring work then 2d spriting, but definitely more complex if you go further then simple model with textures.