Preview 0.34.2 XCE - Open discussions

[sfarrelly]

3 minutes ago, Solver said:

I think you posted the wrong buildings.xml, but I made my own entry with the size set to 3,2.

odd, it always showed up as a 3x2 outline in the build interface?

re-attached. and its possible i sent the wrong one.

 

buildings.xml

[Solver]

Thanks.

Yes, I now see the game only supports 1;1, 1;2, 2;1 and 2;2 as sizes. Anything else will crash. The reason is that those sizes are the only ones with images base thumbnails that appear in the top bar. I understand the limitation, but it's probably better to just draw a 2x2 thumbnail there and not crash. Or you guys could even make a few bigger thumbnails that could then be added

[Solver]

There. Note the 2x2 thumbnail in the top bar being used as a fallback.

 

[sfarrelly]

I'll leave the thumbnails to @drages. He's a hell of a lot better at that than me.

EDIT : fixed  

Thanks for "solving" that for me (sorry, couldn't resist it)

A slightly related question has come up though

At present radars can only be increased by power (and only by integers, no fractions are accepted)

Would it be possible to either :

a: increase the amount of radar ranges

b: allow the radar power entry to accept fractional increases (i.e. 1.0->1.25->1.5->1.75->2.0)

Edited September 29, 2016 by sfarrelly

[Solver]

Probably yes, but why would you want that much granularity?

[sfarrelly]

3 minutes ago, Solver said:

Probably yes, but why would you want that much granularity?

I'm probably not the best person to answer this question (drages or charon would give better reasons) but we think the base building aspect of the game is limited, so we want to give the player choices.

Do you upgrade the reach of your radars or do you upgrade the weapons your soldiers carry?

Do you want to develop better armour for your troops or better defences for alien attacks against your bases?

[Solver]

Even in the default game though, you run out of space if you want 3 radars, medical center, labs and workshops. Then you cannot have missile defenses for instance. I'd rather have the ability to unlock super-radars so you can free up some space in your base.

[sfarrelly]

3 minutes ago, Solver said:

Even in the default game though, you run out of space if you want 3 radars, medical center, labs and workshops. Then you cannot have missile defenses for instance. I'd rather have the ability to unlock super-radars so you can free up some space in your base.

This is kind of the idea behind incremental radar upgrades. Remember, this mod is not meant to be easy.

In theory, after 5-10 upgrades you have 1 radar that is as capable as 3? single radars would normally be (and effects would stack up to whatever maximum is applied)

I noted that there's a LidarArray bonus in gameconfig that is never actually used, so possibly something can be done there?

[Solver]

What I often see in X-Division is what I would call increasing difficulty just for the sake of it. Introducing new concepts, costs or other difficulties just because it's difficult, not necessarily because it's more fun to deal with. But fine, that's a design disagreement in any case, not a tech issue

The Lidar thing is unused. It's also not useful after X:CE. In the original game, radar strength couldn't be changed, it was always one building = 1 radar point. So the lidar was meant to be a stronger radar. Now in X:CE you can define stronger radars via buildings.xml, so there's little benefit to trying to use the Lidar code for anything.

[sfarrelly]

Ok, first of all, thanks for everything you've already done to help me.

5 minutes ago, Solver said:

So the lidar was meant to be a stronger radar. Now in X:CE you can define stronger radars via buildings.xml, so there's little benefit to trying to use the Lidar code for anything.

Yup, understand that, but at present there are only 3 radar ranges available (and you cannot give any radar a range that falls between them (power)).

This is fine as it stands, but makes creating an upgradeable radar system impossible (power is the only modifiable attribute, and it only accepts whole numbers).

This is why i was asking if either of the previous "solutions" were possible.

[Solver]

Yes yes, I certainly understood what you mean If buildings.xml instead accepts fractions for the radar strength, you could potentially create radars at any level of granularity, from tiny to covering the entire planet. So it's certainly a fair idea for an addition.

[drages]

28 minutes ago, Solver said:

What I often see in X-Division is what I would call increasing difficulty just for the sake of it. Introducing new concepts, costs or other difficulties just because it's difficult, not necessarily because it's more fun to deal with. 

Haha @Solver cracked the idea behind X division. 

We just want use use everything to give an option to player at every aspect. Strategic choices and tactical options. If something could be done with an effort which worth it, we just add it. 

Radar is something should be free to edit per building as solver said. I think defense building should have a damage % rather then hit chance too.

[Solver]

Strategic and tactical options exist when there's a tradeoff. You can do X or Y, both have pros and cons, and it's a fun choice between the two because both alternatives eventually lead to fun gameplay. If instead you do something like, there's X and it's cripplingly difficult so you'll have to take three other steps to deal with it, that is just making things frustrating for the player.

Basically, a game should be a series of fun choices - emphasis on fun.

Of course that's the kind of thinking I develop after some 15 years in the company of game designers

[Charon]

21 minutes ago, Solver said:

Strategic and tactical options exist when there's a tradeoff. You can do X or Y, both have pros and cons, and it's a fun choice between the two because both alternatives eventually lead to fun gameplay. If instead you do something like, there's X and it's cripplingly difficult so you'll have to take three other steps to deal with it, that is just making things frustrating for the player.

Basically, a game should be a series of fun choices - emphasis on fun.

Of course that's the kind of thinking I develop after some 15 years in the company of game designers

Thats what im saying and what our goal is. I cant really agree that you think X-Division adds steps without trade offs and i think you havent dived deaper into the game to see that. Because i agree - from very far away you are not capable of seeing the details yet, and i beg your pardon, we are still in the beta on dont have a PR team. We basically focus on that the game plays awesome and not that people know everything about the game before they play it.

There you have it , in my oppinion.

 

What sfarrelly has touched will be the thing XNT ultimately wanted to achieve the most. True Economic/Aircraft/Production/Research paths and decisions.

Let me give you an example:

Lets say we have a ressource like alenium ( just an example ) which the player gathers during gameplay for various different useable manufactures. For 40 alenium he will have a choice to upgrade his workshops efficiency by 10%, or labs efficiency, or medical efficiency, or for 100 alenium their hangar efficency ( this is why we play around with 3x2 and 6x2 buildings ), or their radar strenght from +0 (standart) to +1. If the player chooses 1 upgrade it will unlock the manufacture for the next upgrade, in our case +2 with an increased alenium cost again for a total of 45, and so on. At later stages the player additionally needs alien base loot to further upgrade which is even scarcer in demand than alenium. See where this is going ?

 

I would call this a true decision game element where the player has all the freedom he wants and how he wants his individual game to play out with a limited ressource, because ofcourse he cant have it all. All this needs is a good balance.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Charon

[Charon]

For the example above the deleting manufacture code will really come in handy . Thank you for that Solver.

As you can see we already make some crazy things happening, but there are still crazier things ongoing in the development :D.

[Charon]

Oh, yeah and thank you for helping all the way - with all our silly requests and ideas .

[Charon]

And about fun.

Let me quote Long War here:

Quote

 

Q: Say what? Ten HP Outsiders with regeneration in the first downed UFO mission? I love all the new XCOM options but don't like the difficulty. Why did you make a mod that is so hard?
A: This mod was made by people who loved the vanilla game and saw lots of opportunities within the engine for much deeper strategic and tactical play and a greater variety of problems to throw at the player. When someone tells us it is too hard, there might be any of three things going on:
 

The player hasn't adapted to the changes in the mod and expects their suboptimal strategies to succeed (we believe this is the case with outsiders). We have a Long War Strategy subforum you can go to for advice.

The player's definition of fun is different from ours; they expect the game to provide them easier situations, make solutions more readily available or be geared to provide the illusion of challenge but actually make it pretty easy to win. In this case the player should play an easier difficulty setting and/or use the Cinematic Mode Second Wave option, which gives accuracy bonuses to both XCOM troops and aircraft. They player can also mod Long War to their personal preferences or play another mod. Long War isn't for everyone.

The mod really is unreasonably hard (or bugged in a way that makes it too hard) and should be changed. Specific feedback about the situation and how you attempted to address helps us; general complaints about difficulty really won't induce us to make any changes.

 

 

EDIT: They have their own studio producing games now.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Charon

[Charon]

I have to add that this information is all in the main thread, nicely sorted, since the very beginning. Its all there - for people who look.

 

... and man, you really pushed a button there.

[Solver]

I don't mean to be heavily critical of X-Division. Certainly not for difficulty - I like hard games, as long as they feel fair. My main actual criticism of X-Division would be that the mod perhaps focuses too much on quantity instead of balance. It already adds an astonishing amount of things, and of course with every addition it gets harder to balance. I would ideally like something a smaller and better balanced, and I think even Long War goes a bit too far in the sheer amount of additions, even though the quality is excellent.

That is, though, my personal opinion and preference when it comes to game design. This comes after a long time playing, modding and being closely involved with the development of some games, so it's at least an opinion based on experience. Like as I said, I don't want any of you to take this opinion as a criticism of X-Division - I am not on the mod's design team, so it's not my design. And you're right about me not being deeply familiar with the mod. It's much bigger than vanilla Xenonauts, so it's simply too time consuming for me to play enough to be well familiar with it.

[drages]

59 minutes ago, Solver said:

I don't mean to be heavily critical of X-Division. Certainly not for difficulty - I like hard games, as long as they feel fair. My main actual criticism of X-Division would be that the mod perhaps focuses too much on quantity instead of balance. It already adds an astonishing amount of things, and of course with every addition it gets harder to balance. I would ideally like something a smaller and better balanced, and I think even Long War goes a bit too far in the sheer amount of additions, even though the quality is excellent.

That is, though, my personal opinion and preference when it comes to game design. This comes after a long time playing, modding and being closely involved with the development of some games, so it's at least an opinion based on experience. Like as I said, I don't want any of you to take this opinion as a criticism of X-Division - I am not on the mod's design team, so it's not my design. And you're right about me not being deeply familiar with the mod. It's much bigger than vanilla Xenonauts, so it's simply too time consuming for me to play enough to be well familiar with it.

Don't get us wrong too, solver! We accept all critics and we revise our thought with those. So your critics are important to us. As the responsible one with the huge amount of things for this mod, this is something i want to see after years of playing xcom.. Probably because of my "fear" for "short/simple game with less concept" i started this. To make something long, big, challenging (not specially lame difficult but something serious) and complex. You can think this a "grand strategy" concept of paradox games against "4x" game styles. This is "Grand" version of Xcoms.. and Long war example showed us there is a possibility for this and the fan base is huge for this. Huge openXcom mods are not different.

The key is UI.. if you can somehow manage to create good UI, any complex game becomes playable easily. For that reason, i begged for manufacture UI help for months. Xdivision got nearly 5 phases which you feel a new game with every one. You can name it as "ACT".. for that reason, even we got tons of things in the mod, player meets them one by one at every act and there is 3 to 5 month to get and use them before the new ones comes. We don't throw everything in front of the players, everything got it's own research line and follow up.. For this reason we don't have any balance issues for strategic layer. Tactical layer as ground combat is already one of the richest gameplay in gaming industry. 

But this is about taste totally. But we think we can manage that.. there is not much left after buildings..

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by drages

[Charon]

1 hour ago, drages said:

.. there is not much left after buildings..

Dont believe him a single word ... he doesnt code the stuff he invents.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Charon

[Charon]

but otherwise: +1

[Charon]

1 hour ago, drages said:

Xdivision got nearly 5 phases which you feel a new game with every one. You can name it as "ACT".. for that reason, even we got tons of things in the mod, player meets them one by one at every act and there is 3 to 5 month to get and use them before the new ones comes. We don't throw everything in front of the players, everything got it's own research line and follow up.. For this reason we don't have any balance issues for strategic layer. Tactical layer as ground combat is already one of the richest gameplay in gaming industry. 

Yes, this actually helps immensly balancing out the game in many ways since we dont have to infinitely, granularly balance it, but instead can focus on certain, concrete steps and levels of challenge. This really has to be stressed as a very good game design step, helping out at all ends of the game.

[Charon]

May i be a bit evil ? Its not meant to be personal and i appreciate your feedback fully, one of the reasons for that is that it gives me good ideas.

 

Here I go.

1 hour ago, Solver said:

I don't mean to be heavily critical of X-Division. Certainly not for difficulty - I like hard games, as long as they feel fair. My main actual criticism of X-Division would be that the mod perhaps focuses too much on quantity instead of balance.

( Clears his throat ) .. What balance ? We are in the middle of the beta adding stuff left and right, and one of the things which are detaily described in the main thread is that the balance is not done yet.

Or as someone else put it:

  <disclaimerText        value="Xenonauts Beta 
 This is a beta build of the indie strategy game Xenonauts. It does not represent the final quality of the game.It is best viewed in 16:10 or 16:9 resolutions as it has not been formatted for 4:3 resolutions yet.Please report any bugs encountered on our forums at http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums." comment="This is the disclaimer text." />

 

This gives me an actual good idea. Im going to reactivate this and put it in the game in case anybody still had doubts .

 

Did i mention i love beef ?

 

Dont take it too hard, I want to stress again that i fully appreciate your feedback in every way and i hope we give you good feedback for good ideas as well .

[Solver]

Why balance? That's a great question. I believe that game design is an iterative process. Or should be treated as such. You come up with some ideas, you implement them, and you look how they feel. Are they fun? Do they sound better on paper than in practice? You have an iteration then, and in your next iteration you work on the idea further, or not. Better yet, an iteration that you do touches all the game systems, so you get to experience the new interaction.

So then I believe that after an iteration that's heavier in terms of design/new features, you should do a balance iteration. Not because your beta should be perfectly balanced but because balancing gives you a much better idea of whether your new systems are fun. Maybe a system that seemed unfun in the last iteration is actually quite fun after a balance pass. Maybe you find that it's actually a useless system after balancing - it's something that ends up either being unbalanced or very boring. That in particular is something that happens very often in design.

It just ends up giving you a better game with less work. I believe that approach to game design works far better than first trying to get your systems in place and then balancing them in another phase of development.