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Steam Game Festival Demo Released!


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Steam are currently running their quarterly Steam Game Festival, an event where developers can sign up to showcase demos of their upcoming games. It seemed sensible for us to put a demo of Xenonauts 2 into this event to help promote our upcoming open beta and subsequent Early Access launch.

We've been busy working on this demo for the past week or so (which is why I've not been very active on the forums) and it is now available for download on Steam. It contains only a single tactical mission but it is set in the updated Dockyard biome that will shortly be arriving in the main game, which has a lot more verticality than other biomes (being based around shipping containers and warehouses). We've also fixed a number of small issues with the tactical combat as part of our polishing process and those will all be arriving in the next build too.

You can download the build by clicking the link on the right hand side of the Xenonauts 2 page on Steam (there's a button a little way down the page).

Note: unfortunately, because of the way Steam works, it seems like you'll be unable to play the demo if you already own a copy of Xenonauts 2. Sorry about that - not sure why Steam is set up that way but it doesn't seem like we can do anything about it!

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Doesen´t matter Chris, we will testing the Main Game and can wait for the upgrades and new Version Beta 18 with the cool new Upgrades you announce here and show in the Demo.

The Demo is good for such People, which don´t know what has done in the long long Development-Time between first Demo on GoG (which I played with a :)) and the new one on Steam.

Edited by Alienkiller
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Hey,
Just wanted to share my thoughts on the steam demo - last time I played tactical combat in Xenonauts 2 was like 2 yrs ago I think or even more (on GOG if I am not mistaken).
I got over 100 hrs on Xenonauts 1 and played all XCOM games from 90s and 2000s.
What I liked:
- camera rotation
- improved graphics
What I did not like:
- line of fire is still broken, I would say there is no improvement from Xenonauts 1 at all, the drawing of line of fire (still) resembles a line in paint on 400% zoom, why stick to these 90 degrees 
rectangulars? Cannot a game engine just draw a straight line based on mouse pointer location? Sorry about complaint but it just feels strange. I remember you said the new Xenonauts is based on a completely 
new engine so I was expecting something else I guess. Certainly not the glitchy system from part 1. 
- game seems a bit slow (turns waiting times, movements etc, like in part 1) - some optimization would be certainly welcome
- some graphics (enemy movement) are taken from part 1 but I guess it will change in a final version?
Good luck on improving the game

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I noticed some problems with the doors in this version:

1) They could not be closed.

2) They closed themselves after the aliens moved (like the doors of ships and alien bases).

3) When they closed - it was not visible visually (they looked like an open door, although they were closed).

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Yeah I find the shooting system to be a little disappointing. It's a 3D engine so I guess I thought that bullets would simply trace a line between the alien and the gun instead of using essentially the system in X1 which was always a little funky. Hopefully at least some of the strangeness will be fixed.

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Hi, immediately downloaded the demo. I am long time fan from X1 and from 90's Xcom games. Also I am not a beta tester don't know why. 

 

So it was fun for me to have a test of X2, will definitely buy the game whenever ready. It crashed for me at the last alien or so don't know why. I will report the bug but so far in line with my expectations. Thanks for the effort so far! 

 

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Hi! I have played probably all x-com like games the last 30 years because the first one is still my favorite game of all times. (Even though it did have its faults.) I have followed X2 through the dev updates but are not a beta tester. So maybe I have some fresh eyes? Anyway, played the beta on steam. My thoughts:

0. The music. Wow! I love it! Seriously! LOVE it! Promise it will be in the final release! Please?

1. The graphics looks a bit boring especially compared to XCOM and Phoenix Point. Its not bad but its not good. (I do understand its so unfair to compare with AAA titles but obviously thats the thing people will compare with.) The map was ok but a bit bland. Maybe som stronger colors on the containers? Or maybe some black outlines around objects?

2. One thing that just looks ugly and I would STRONGLY recommend you change is the green aiming ”line” on the ground. As someone else here wrote it just looks ugly. Please replace with a single uninterupted line from the shooters eye to the target. Maybe starting fully green and then for every obstacle changing color ending in red if no/low chance of hitting?

3. A green field of tiles like in XCOM and PP to show where you can go. Its just the standard of the industry right now and I do missed it in the demo. Maybe colorcoded to match your primary weapon. Green for move and fire burst, yellow for move and fire single shot, red for move and cannot shoot. I do understand X2s movement is more complicated than that and I much prefere it to XCOMs simplified movement but still. I did see that the game showed the number of TUs left if I move to a tile but a more graphic represenation would be much better.

4. Darkness. One thing i dont like about PP is that even though it draws from lovecraft there is no horror in it (as far as I have played. The game is not at all what I expected and have played about 20 hours and just cant like it how much as I want to.) If possible, make the first missions play out in the night. Maybe the first UFOs only land at night and fly away at morning. And if needed returns at night to the same location perhaps 3 nights in a row. So you have to play at night giving the proper horror setting early in the game. To get you in the mood. And even in the beta - why was it light indoors? Probably the aliens would have electronic interference making all lights (except xenonauts specials ones) go dark. So even in daylight it could be dark inside. I had an alien in the warehouse in the middle of the map. Would have loved for it to be dark and visibility perhaps only like 4-5 tiles. Sneeking around in there carefully and walking around a corner suddenly facing 2 aliens would have been GREAT!

5. Using the standard map rotation of 90 degrees there were spots in the center of the map where I just couldnt see my soldiers due to the angles. It was between the large containers pretty much in the center of the map.

Thanks for reading. I want to love this game. A final word of what made UFO defence great for me is that it IMHO first and foremost is a economic/strategic game with tactical battles thrown in. Or at least its a good balance betweeen the two. PP for all its promises has a VERY shallow strategic level and a kind of boring tactical level. (And we are not even going to mention firaxis XCOM) So please make the stratigic level as interesting as the tactial, if not even more.

Thank you again for reading. Just my thoughts. And sorry for the wall of text!

edit: oh and forgot number 6. Bullet time. The shots just flies so fast its impossible to feel the hits. Would bullet time like in XCOM be possible where time slows to perhaps 1/10 of normal time? It doesnt have to zoom in or anything, just go muucch slower. Maybe be a toggable setting in options?

 

Edited by Argen
Forgot one thing. And spelling.
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1 hour ago, Argen said:

A green field of tiles like in XCOM and PP to show where you can go. Its just the standard of the industry right now and I do missed it in the demo. Maybe colorcoded to match your primary weapon. Green for move and fire burst, yellow for move and fire single shot, red for move and cannot shoot. I do understand X2s movement is more complicated than that and I much prefere it to XCOMs simplified movement but still. I did see that the game showed the number of TUs left if I move to a tile but a more graphic represenation would be much better.

Honestly I'd rather have the OpenXcom solution, where the route line tells you at what point you can still fire. I'm not sure if the PP solution can work here giving the nature of the game and how all the actions take different amounts of time units, from throwing grenades to different fire modes, plus crouching or inventory managment. I know PP kinda does this but I'm not totally sold into this system.

2 hours ago, Argen said:

5. Using the standard map rotation of 90 degrees there were spots in the center of the map where I just couldnt see my soldiers due to the angles. It was between the large containers pretty much in the center of the map.

Not sure if you can do it in the demo, but you can configure the camera rotation. I'm using the free camera mode.

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I think he means a cosmetic change for #4. Like most of his suggestions it would be prettier but less functional.

But in terms of light cover (cover which does not totally obstruct vision), OpenXCOM has the worst cover system. AI doesn't acknowledge it exists at all because to do so they'd have to raycast 20+ times to every tile in range. Neither can it be indicated to the player for fairness sake. Rolled hits are extremely accurate so cover often just gives 10% defense with no option for the modders to change it. But some cover can unpredictbly give 80%+ for being an inch/10cm higher. I have advocated for it being removed/replaced by modder option on the OpenXCOM forums, which resulted in extremely negative feedback of course.

OpenXCOM does have amazing terrain destruction, hills, collateral damage, and water/space/night levels. Also the best melee by far due to wounds causing stamina loss, CQB which causes adjacent rifle fire to be deflected if you have high melee, characters frequently going unconscious / berserk / bleeding, stims / food items, enemies worth capturing. So the lack of light cover doesn't hurt it as much as it would hurt other games.

Edited by Bobit
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14 hours ago, Bobit said:

I think he means a cosmetic change for #4. Like most of his suggestions it would be prettier but less functional.

No. Especially #4 is a gameplay change. Either you have game in sunlight and beeing able to spot enemies 20-30 tiles away and snipe them or you have darkness and spot enemies 4 tiles away and go into close combat. Or a bit of both. Still, they represent very different playstyles/experiences. So no, not cosmetic. X-com 1 and TFTD had (some) murky maps and night missions very truly scary (=awesome). And IMHO that represent the UFO genre best. Like in ET, Close contact, X-files aliens often lands/flies in darkness.

And the rest of my proposals is not less functional to me. To be able to spot where I can go and still shoot at a glance instead of having to check every single tile is more functional for me.

About #5 yes one can change rotation in the demo. But if 90 degrees is the standard one should you not be able to see every tile on the board from at least one of the angles?

So, to summarize, I dont see that any of my suggestions are less functional, at least not to me. To me they are more functional, or the same level of functional and prettier.

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Oops, got confused, not sure what # I was referring to even.

Yes extreme night-time missions are very fun. Although unfortunately in Xenonauts that would often mean you just wait until day. There's just not enough night-related mechanics that it should be emphasized.

Edited by Bobit
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