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New UI preview!


Chris

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I'll have to voice the same feedback as others have stated earlier: darker greys instead of whites are easier on the eye.

The UI looks good, but is a bit too much somewhat... work-like. Reminds me of modern business software.

One thing that'd help it feel less formal would be the addition of small icons. They make it easier to recognize items at glance and provide additional information that'd be hard to squeeze in otherwise.

Examples:

Descriptive icon in front of item listings

[p] Laser Pistol

[p] Plasma Pistol

[r] Laser Rifle

...

Icons next to column descriptors

$ # etc. Especially useful for abbreviations (soldier stats?)

In general, colour coding and icons help the UI feel more "gamey", but also make it more intuitive to use. You'll be able to skim through listings to get to the part that you're looking for and locate information using visual cues.

Obviously not telling you to remake the entire UI, but if you're able to squeeze those changes in, I'd be willing to argue that they'd have major impact.

Good job none the less!

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Yes, I hadn't noticed there were no women in the background of the screens. Maybe we'll paint in a few ponytails etc.

Great. Having been drawings of men, now that they have ponytails they'll look just like the women of....

1. Draw ponytail

2. Insert the name of the country of your choice where you think the women are particularly unattractive.

3. Laugh uproariously at your politically incorrect joke.

4. Share.

5. Start small scale conflict with neighbouring country by telling it to the wrong people (Optional)

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Great. Having been drawings of men, now that they have ponytails they'll look just like the women of....

1. Draw ponytail

2. Insert the name of the country of your choice where you think the women are particularly unattractive.

3. Laugh uproariously at your politically incorrect joke.

4. Share.

5. Start small scale conflict with neighbouring country by telling it to the wrong people (Optional)

Priceless :D

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Yes, I hadn't noticed there were no women in the background of the screens. Maybe we'll paint in a few ponytails etc.

No Women??? I see several on the posters in the barracks. Women only cause a distraction and with an alien invasion going on the fewer distractions the better.

Ahem!

Will there be any cut scenes of female aliens being interrogated :rolleyes:

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I've given the Xenonauts alpha a go and took a look at the UI shown in this thread...

My biggest concern is accessability. And it has led me to two things that I've been wondering about:

-where is the option to buy Earth-made equipment? Or is it like in Enemy Unknown where you automatically have such equipment in an infinite quantity? There does not seem to be an option to buy anything, only sell stuff. Since the game has ammunition management and customization of soldiers, I thought that the option would be there.

-One of the few things Enemy Unknown did well and that I think was nice was a 'situation' screen that indicate the worldwide level of panic and quickly show the level of coverage you have over the planet. I think that it would be handy to have a screen that show the level of alien infestation in different zones and that quickly show your short-range and long-range radius for all of your bases at the same time. In short, a screen that show you how satisfied or disatisfied each region of the world is with your organization right away.

Note that if either has already been addressed, I apologize in advance.

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1) Starting earth equipment is free. It makes sense that as an elite force you don't have to buy your own rifles and whatnot but are supplied them. Aside from launchers you have infinite ammo (at least for the first two tiers), which is a nice compromise. The only downside was the frission on when/how many people to go heavy plasma vs laser rifle on the original based on how many ammo clips you had, but in the end buying ammo clips isn't the funnest thing in the world.

2) afaik Xenonauts is going to be more similar to the original in this respect and rely on the vague funding screen - which is more realistic (you can't mindread world governments) and there's no gamey abduction mission balancing you need to do.

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1) Starting earth equipment is free. It makes sense that as an elite force you don't have to buy your own rifles and whatnot but are supplied them. Aside from launchers you have infinite ammo (at least for the first two tiers), which is a nice compromise. The only downside was the frission on when/how many people to go heavy plasma vs laser rifle on the original based on how many ammo clips you had, but in the end buying ammo clips isn't the funnest thing in the world.

2) afaik Xenonauts is going to be more similar to the original in this respect and rely on the vague funding screen - which is more realistic (you can't mindread world governments) and there's no gamey abduction mission balancing you need to do.

It's not, nothing is free even for elite force and even goverment army have some budget. Why governments supply us by unlimited aa rockets but not unlimited planes(unlimited rockets is more expensive) or money or don't build our bases for free and why any amount of arms or cars is teleported instantly(it not in the store because it not occupies place(I also didn't see any store capacity, for what we need to build it?)) but planes and soldiers is not. They fund us and this funds is to run our operations and buying suplys, it's our budget. Any equipment costs a money, and funding it's how many money governments want to spend for us. Cost of this equipment at least must be substracted from month cost to make sense. I don't want to say it must be like this but it's still just gameplay decision, not some "realism"

you already can to see a region relations and predicted funding change by hover mouse above specific region - it will be just possibilty to see it all simultaneously, whole picture. And in original you also has lots of graphs to see how and what is going on

Edited by zzz1010
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Cost of this equipment at least must be substracted from month cost to make sense. I don't want to say it must be like this but it's still just gameplay decision, not some "realism"

It can be explained with pretty realistic way. Some countries (say, USA) can have a special clauses in the X-COM pact. Part of their pay will be in weapons, just because they have many spare weapons and not so many spare cash. And they can say, like "Take as many as you need, protect us, we have no time for the economic games. Just dont sell them in the black market.", meaning a hundred or two of rifles is no big problem. Do you ever needed that much in xcom?

The planes are difficult case, no only in game balance terms. Planes are insanely expensive, using state of art technology. And times, that was the times of the unbelief and tension. You cant blame the USA for giving you an aged fighters (and make you pay), and USSR for giving you their newest plane without avionics. That solids the mood of the Cold War era.

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Also, it is likely that the USA, in particular, has a large amount of surplus military equipment lying around. Vietnam would have ended a few years before the start of the game, leaving the US with large amounts of military equipment that it no longer had a use for. Given the small size of the Xenonauts organisation, the cost of equipping them with small arms is within a rounding error of the US military budget.

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There was talk of an overlay system for displaying things like nation relations.

Something like clicking a toggle button (or holding down a key) and seeing the nations outlined in a colour representing their support of your organisation, level of alien activity, or anything else you can convert to a simple colour based system.

I don't know if that is still in the pipeline but I would like to see a nice visual representation of the information.

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Research screen:-

Laser - Ah, Commander. Please, do tell me how to do my job...

Plasma - Soddy commader. Come bak when my nodz isn't bwoken (with facial bruising)

Tier XXX - Say hello to my little friend.

Final Mission - I've joined forces with the aliens, you toady. Over lunch I designed a toaster to take your place.

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