Questions about Xenonauts!

[alienman]

Hello all.

I have been watching this game for a while now. Still no pre-order though, but it will come!

After the disappointing Firaxis X-com game, all my hope lies with Xenonauts

Some questions. I have only played the kickstarter demo.

1. Will the maps be random or is it a set number of maps in the game?

2. In the demo I noticed that I could not change the name of the soldiers. Only the call sign. I have always named my characters after friends/family and sci-fi characters. I would miss that option.

3. I noticed some graphical bugs when trying the demo, like walls and such was "drawn" over the soldiers. I hope you understand. I'm wondering if that will be fixed or if it some kind of engine limitation?

4. Will diffrent weapons have diffrent death animations? Right now everyone dies the same. A nice added touch would be if plasma melted your poor soldiers and so on.

5. Will the game be big? Might be a strange question, because the original X-com could be completed fast. Just wondering if it's going to be on the same epic scale, if you are going for 100% research and so on.

I think that was all. Might have more questions later

Thanks

/Thomas

[Buzzles]

Some questions. I have only played the kickstarter demo.

1. Will the maps be random or is it a set number of maps in the game?

It's semi-random.

A map in Xenonauts is comprised three things; an over-arching tileset, which is the theme, the map itself with "zones" defined by the map creator, and finally submaps, which are what fill up the zones.

The idea is that for any given zone, there's 3 or more submaps available that can go into that zone (ie, 3+ different warehouses), which the game randomly selects upon loading a map.

It's worth pointing out there's going to be something like 11 or 12 tilesets (ie, town, desert, arctic), with multiple maps made for each, and then with multiple tileset specific submaps made for them.

In short, although it's not truly random, the chances of you ever coming across a map that's identical to one you've played before is extremely slim.

The details of how it works are here:

http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Mapping:_Creating_new_in-game_battlefields

2. In the demo I noticed that I could not change the name of the soldiers. Only the call sign. I have always named my characters after friends/family and sci-fi characters. I would miss that option.

As it stands, yes, you can only change the callsigns. I doubt this will change as people have paid to put their names (and likeness of their faces) into the game.

Changing the callsign is as good as though, as you'll see that more often (or should, when it's fully implemented to make them appear in the after action report).

3. I noticed some graphical bugs when trying the demo, like walls and such was "drawn" over the soldiers. I hope you understand. I'm wondering if that will be fixed or if it some kind of engine limitation?

The sprite rendering issue is well known and something Goldhawk have on the to-do list. Although it is a glaring defect it doesn't actually affect gameplay nor causes crashes.

At the moment the dev's are focusing on adding new systems, replacing the UI and doing a whole host of actual serious bug squashing. Fixing the rendering issue is on the cards for beta.

4. Will diffrent weapons have diffrent death animations? Right now everyone dies the same. A nice added touch would be if plasma melted your poor soldiers and so on.

Sadly not. While it could be done, it would be such a massive amount of work for Chris and the team as they'd have to render even more sprites, something which is already time and money consuming enough for them.

5. Will the game be big? Might be a strange question, because the original X-com could be completed fast. Just wondering if it's going to be on the same epic scale, if you are going for 100% research and so on.

We'll have to wait and see, but from what we've been told, it will be quite lengthy on that front.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Buzzles

[thothkins]

Gahhh! sniped by Buzzles ... ya got me this time buzzles... >death animation<

Hey Thomas, welcome to the forums

Some answers for you:-

1) The maps are semi random, which means that there are lots of sub maps that combine to make the larger maps. There will be several map types in the final game and there's a map editor for mods too.

2) I know there's been an issue with the original names not quite working with call sign changes, but I'd hope that you'd be able to call anyone anything you like in the final game. The possible exception may be the good folks who paid to have their names and/or portraits in the game on Kickstarter. You can select them to be in your game by following the pregenerated soldier list. I'm #18 on there. Plug, plug.

3) No, it should all be cleaned up before the final game.

4) Only the death animations that you see. Due to the way the game is created, it would mean having additional sprites done for every troop type with every weapon to have more death animations. For what it's worth, the ones currently in the game are an improvement over the original. Melted soldiers and others running around on fire would certainly have been very cool though. You'd probably have to have a psych unit base facility added for the survivors though.

5) It's going to be on the same scale as the original, which was huge. The plan in Xenonauts is that there won't be any dead end research topics, that the original game had (probably due to that rush in Beta). o there will be more rewards to exploring the research topics. This could also mean that the path to get to the final mission, won't be quite as straightforward, but in a good way.

Hope that helps.

[Jean-Luc]

Just to add to point #4,

I guess they should probably be replaced with some "destroyed remains" tiles to show there was something there, and there should be a generic mangled corpse to replace the normal corpses.

From the overdamage thread: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3107-Overdamage

Not really an animation but still.

[alienman]

Thanks alot for the quick answers!

I'm really looking forward to this game. The demo sure was fun. I like the added air combat. Makes UFO fights much more interesting!

And of course that it sticks to the original gameplay, with some added goodies

"You'd probably have to have a psych unit base facility added for the survivors though"

hahaha!

[alienman]

Ah forgot one important question! Sorry don't want to spam, but I have to ask.

Do the UFOs have a purpose like in the original? So if you shoot down a terror ship, there won't be a terror mission and so on?

[Buzzles]

Ah forgot one important question! Sorry don't want to spam, but I have to ask.

Do the UFOs have a purpose like in the original? So if you shoot down a terror ship, there won't be a terror mission and so on?

Yes. They're quite hard to shoot down though

[Gorlom]

4) Only the death animations that you see. Due to the way the game is created, it would mean having additional sprites done for every troop type with every weapon to have more death animations. For what it's worth, the ones currently in the game are an improvement over the original. Melted soldiers and others running around on fire would certainly have been very cool though. You'd probably have to have a psych unit base facility added for the survivors though.

How weird I wouldn't have expected the weapon to be part of that animation for some reason. But after looking it up it seems that there are individual sprite sheets for each weapon type. The sebillian guard facing east seems only has the weapon in the first few sprites on the sheet. But the caesan guard with a plasma pistol facing east shows the weapon throughout the sheet. (oddly though the plasma rifle and many of the other ranks/classes/whatever ones only show the weapons in the beginning)

I would have assumed it to be easier to show the injury animation (or half an injury animation or whatever) from taking the hit and then directly going into the death animation and not show any weapon in the death animation.

Anyway it could have been fun to have different death animations but it's a bit too much hassle the way death is currently handled.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Gorlom

[ElTee]

I have my own questions.

1. Do missile batteries currently do anything? I thought they'd attack nearby UFOs but I didn't ever notice that.

2. Does stacking radars do anything? What about stacking hospitals?

3. Does Quick Battle actually do anything? When I start it up, it asks me to make a base like normal.

[Khall]

Base defences attack alien ships if they try to invade your base (before the ground combat), weakening the attacking force or destroying it outright. They don't engage random ships that fly near your base.

Radar do stack, 1 radar will give you a 5% chance every minute to detect a UFO that flys within the solid blue circle, 2 radars will give you a 10% chance within the solid blue circle and a 1% chance within the larger, dotted circle (as far as I can remember). The detection rates are shown in the base overview screen.

I don't know about hospitals though

Edited October 14, 2012 by Khall

[thothkins]

How weird I wouldn't have expected the weapon to be part of that animation for some reason. But after looking it up it seems that there are individual sprite sheets for each weapon type.

One of those things. I can see why they did it, but yeah, there were probably better options there. Hindsight and all that.

[IBNobody]

I have my own questions.

1. Do missile batteries currently do anything? I thought they'd attack nearby UFOs but I didn't ever notice that.

If they function anything like the original, they are only there to attack UFOs that are attempting to attack your base.

[ElTee]

One of those things. I can see why they did it, but yeah, there were probably better options there. Hindsight and all that.

Don't most games have the sprites be simply pieces, and then assemble for the animations and stuff? I know that's how it works for at least one turn-based strategy game. Seems like GoldHawk took the harder path.

[Gribbstar]

2. In the demo I noticed that I could not change the name of the soldiers. Only the call sign. I have always named my characters after friends/family and sci-fi characters. I would miss that option.

This question is pretty important for me as I also like to develop a bond with my soldiers through naming them after friends and family. Buzzles and Thothkins answered but it still isn't really clear if it will or wont be possible, have the devs not said either way?

Hovering on the pre-order button! I know it's a crazy thing to be hung up on but to each his own

[V3teran]

This question is pretty important for me as I also like to develop a bond with my soldiers through naming them after friends and family. Buzzles and Thothkins answered but it still isn't really clear if it will or wont be possible, have the devs not said either way?

Hovering on the pre-order button! I know it's a crazy thing to be hung up on but to each his own

Agree,changing your name is a must for your soldiers.

[Gorlom]

Agree,changing your name is a must for your soldiers.

isn't changing the call sign enough? If the only place you see the "real name" is in the soldier file and everywhere else is the callsign, does it matter?

ofc right now the After Action Report shows the soldier name rather than the callsign. Hopefully that will be fixed though.

[Jean-Luc]

Is the name thing really related to KS backers? I've never seen Chris say anything official on the matter.

[ElTee]

There's already a thread about callsigns/names in Suggestions and Features.

I haven't played far enough in one game to see my base attacked. How is it?

Do all on-base soldiers fight? Only unassigned ones? Only those in chinooks? What about vehicles?