Bought yesterday - Uninstalled today

[ThunderGr]

@ThunderGr

I do understand where you are coming from, I really do. And I DO feel the same.

But you have to understand it IS the consumer that decides these things ultimately...we're old and we've long since been passed by a newer generation of ADHD gamers that just want shiny graphics and a quick, easy to pick up title.

Making games with expected play times to finish of 5-10 hours is blasphemy from "when" I come from, I dont give a damn about achievements, yeah thanks for giving me a gold star because I drank a potion or killed 100 skeletons, or clubbed a bear to death while naked singing the start spangled banner.

If you do give a damn about this, I feel sorry you never experienced the times when BEATING a game wasnt a given and the reward found was an experience that MADE you find out how good you really were, one that challenged you to go beyond your own limits.

I enjoyed being awesome because I WAS awesome, not because the game was designed around making me awesome because I had an IQ over 80 and had not lost any limbs in an industrial accident.

But I assure you a few dusty old souls will not change an industry driven by kids that just want their games to give them a quick buzz and be forgotten a few days later.

But at least we have "Remember that one game 15 years ago, man that was such a good time" they will have robbed themselves of this and no amount of convincing from us will change their minds....as in the time it takes to explain it to them...well they would have long since tuned us out and started texting their friends and posting self-shots of themselves on facebook and twittered that they were getting ready to go eat lunch, and what they were having.

I wish I could argue with that...Sadly, I know you are right. Still, all things are connected, and, while I will have to make the best of what is available to us, I will keep trying to hold as much ground as is possible. Fighting a lost battle has a meaning, as history has proven, because it serves as an example to others. Acceptance of what is wrong to the point that I present it as the way it should be, is the worst kind of defeat I can imagine. I am frustrated by the way things are but I prefer to make known to people that the way they are, they are wrong and we should try to change them, instead of just choke down in silence and passive acceptance...I guess it is just me, anyway.

@Alienman

This is why we get enraged when companies dumb down the games we want to play to the point we dont want to play them.

This is why ThunderGr flies off the handle when he sees something get watered down.

We DONT have much left, and we are fighting fiercely to protect what little we do from being lost along with the rest.

So yeah I "was" insanely bitter...but that has moved on to acceptance now.

Yeap. Exactly that. However, if we try hard enough, we may, at least, get an opportunity of having the ability to customize things our way, even if that means we will have to spend a few weeks modding the game. Still, the developers are the ones that decide what amount of moddability will give to us, so we need to make known what we think should be different and hope for the best. And, who knows, maybe some of the things we love will, eventually, make it into the final release! We can always hope .

[Xenomorph]

Yeah I know, indie gaming is the last bastion of hope.

But look at what you said...stay away from those AAA Blockbusters. The games with the largest budgets with the best teams and the largest fanbases...

The stench of Xcom-EU is undeniable.

Dumbed down beyond belief, with big selling point being a hive-like base layout, crappy gray aliens with honeycomb-like eyes, and a jump-to-cover simulation alike gimmick, only one way to play it. And 0 decent mod support, or no one gives a damn about it.

I've been feeling the lack of gaming quality on my bones. Back in the day, most games were good games. Like music, back in the day, most of it was good music.

Can't blame old farts from being grumpy and nostalgic, can we =/ things don't always change for better.

[Nameless1]

While I'm not as upset I can easily understand how one might get the wrong idea. I've been following the development for longer than most and the (semi)-random maps have been "in" for much longer than they've been "out". They're even mentioned on the kickstarter page and, afaik, there's never been an official update stating the removal (or non-implementation rather) of semi-random maps, only the occasional forum post but nothing that's clearly visible. The random maps have just been sort of quietly phased out.

While I can understand the reasoning behind it, after all this is probably the biggest negative hit this game has suffered so far (aside from the engine thing maybe), I suspect this is not the first thread of this kind we'll be seeing.

In the end it's not as bad as the OP's experience suggests since it's a side effect of an unfinished game and, thankfully, there's the map editor but still...

I've not followed the development process apart from the occasional look at the forum, but reading this, coupled with the "there's now infinite ammo" in another thread, I'm really starting to regret the decision I made to support this game. And I made a lot of other people do the same.

I really hope to be wrong.

[alienman]

@Alienman

This is why we get enraged when companies dumb down the games we want to play to the point we dont want to play them.

This is why ThunderGr flies off the handle when he sees something get watered down.

We DONT have much left, and we are fighting fiercely to protect what little we do from being lost along with the rest.

So yeah I "was" insanely bitter...but that has moved on to acceptance now.

I understand exactly what you are saying. I was in your shoes a year or so ago, but then I discovered kickstarter. There is a lot of games in development that looks fantastic and has that old school feel to it. Some examples. Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Xenonauts ( ), Shadowrun Returns (comes out this month), The banner saga, Jagged Alliance: Flashback, and probably a lot more that I can't rememeber.

I mean, the future used to look bleak, but check it out now. So many games coming out, and it sure looks like turned based-games are making a come back in full force!

Big games / publishers feels like Hollywood to me. Most of the stuff they produce is shit, but sometimes you get something good.

[sectoid]

random map was possible in 1994 with less than 20megs of installation files, what makes Xenonauts of today cannot with gigs of files? we are talking of 4.7gigs of files!!!

this project is sooooooo testing the costomer's pennies and patience, first got open-ended project dateline, now dumb down with hardcoded maps. brilliant.

[TrashMan]

No random maps?

*doesn't care*

[bullock]

I've bought the game and enjoying it a lot. I did so after a quick try of the "demo" and felt immediately the huge potential. (and also had the feeling of the elder Xcom, which is quite unique)

I'm still in my first game and starting to have the invasion of cities. I managed to reach 3 of them and i have been each times on the same map which has been a huge disappointment.

Maybe i've been unlucky on that one. But it sounds like a major issue to me.

I'm not here to start over the discussion on the matter, i guess the 6 first pages were enough, but to give the feeling of a newcomer.

Beside that and few crash/bugs (but it's a beta so np) and considering we have an active team of dev working on it, this game is just Awesome !!

[thothkins]

Hi bullock, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Each build tweaks things, so it's always really good to read fresh perspectives.

[Gauddlike]

I would be concerned about random maps if the current number of available maps was final.

As it is not final I am not overly concerned.

I will be waiting until the last version or two before release to make my mind up on that one.

[DaWu]

random map was possible in 1994 with less than 20megs of installation files, what makes Xenonauts of today cannot with gigs of files? we are talking of 4.7gigs of files!!!

this project is sooooooo testing the costomer's pennies and patience, first got open-ended project dateline, now dumb down with hardcoded maps. brilliant.

thats just plain bullshit and shows that you do not have a clue about software architecture.

[lightgemini]

random map was possible in 1994 with less than 20megs of installation files, what makes Xenonauts of today cannot with gigs of files? we are talking of 4.7gigs of files!!!

this project is sooooooo testing the costomer's pennies and patience, first got open-ended project dateline, now dumb down with hardcoded maps. brilliant.

Dont go that fast.Random maps is not really out of the game.

Although the focus is now on static maps, theres still a lot of room for random maps. Not quite to the level of OG Xcom or TFTD, but very close. It may need a mod that purges all the missions in the game and replaces it with its own set of maps so you dont get any vanilla static map, but the tools for random maps is there.

Fact that it is not so easy to do is another thing entirely, but you can do it.

[DaWu]

So after not caring for Xenonauts for exactly one year I may ask where are we at? How did the map situation evolve? Is there now a random system in place? If not did they add thousands of maps to counter repeatetness?

[StellarRat]

I don't think we're going to get completely random maps. But I don't have a problem with the current implementation. The maps in the OG didn't make much sense a lot of the time and the "submaps" were extremely generic. The maps in Xenonauts are very pretty, highly detailed, and the layouts make sense. I can't imagine just scrambling up the Xenonauts submaps tossing them on the screen. They would look awful even with some "intelligence" added to the randomness.

Edited March 12, 2014 by StellarRat

[Skitso]

I have made few maps now and it's actually possible to make almost completely random maps. The whole map needs to be sliced in sub maps and each sub map needs a dozen or so variations that are each chosen randomly. The tricky part is that all those variations need to match with all the possible adjacent variations, and making sure it all works flawlessly is really time consuming.

So it's possible to make fully random maps but making the whole game like that would need something like 5000-6000 man hours (a lot!)

You can try my middle east map pack. They have some heavy randomization in them, but I wouldn't call the random maps as the basic layout is pretty much the same every time.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Skitso

[Chris]

There's about 70 or 80 maps in the game now, and there's a system in place that should stop you getting exactly the same map in another mission in the same game until you've played all the other possible missions of that UFO type.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than it was a year ago. Random maps aren't really possible for reasons I'm not going to go into in detail about; they've probably already been mentioned in this thread somewhere but if not you can always search the forums for them as I've explained them quite a few times over the years.

[Heldelance]

The map situation is good enough as it is (thank god it wasn't as bad as the X-Com remake, now THAT had barely any maps). The map packs that the wonderful modders are putting out make it even better.

As for an earlier gripe I read about the lack of cover; That's why you need to carry smoke grenades. Each of my soldiers carry 2 and they pop them off as they advance. Hell, I don't think I even use cover on most of the missions.

[Darth Draken]

I like the game. The random thing is something i would of loved to see.

The original.xcom used a interesting random system.

Taking same size tiles and puttimg them together to create a fresh map

Now if you go play the REMAKE xcom you will.find a LACK of random.tile.sets too.

This game is more tactical.i feal. Harder and fun.

Yes i have played every xcom type, and ufo type and like this style. And look forward to more tile sets and a shit load more maps.

But also want to see more battle damaged maps and crashed ufo ships.

[TacticalDragon]

I like the game. The random thing is something i would of loved to see.

The original.xcom used a interesting random system.

Taking same size tiles and puttimg them together to create a fresh map

Now if you go play the REMAKE xcom you will.find a LACK of random.tile.sets too.

This game is more tactical.i feal. Harder and fun.

Yes i have played every xcom type, and ufo type and like this style. And look forward to more tile sets and a shit load more maps.

But also want to see more battle damaged maps and crashed ufo ships.

Second to that, to be precise old Xcoms has maps constitued by 3x3 tiles, resulting in a grid of 9 tiles. Of this tiles 1 is reserved to Xcom Ship and other one for Ufo crash/landing (at random) other tiles of the grid was randomly choose for tile set type. I dont understand why this game can deal with maps.

[Gauddlike]

It can work in a similar but much more varied way.

The problem is that the devs find the maps to be less interesting when randomised so they have gone for more detailed and individual feeling maps.

The down side to that is that playing with the early builds where the final number of maps has not yet been added can easily lead to the same map being played multiple times.

Feel free to have a play around in the submap and level editors provided with the game.

They should provide a lot of insight into what is possible and what looks good.

As an example the ground can be made up of anything from individual tiles to large sections (normally 5x5, 10x10 or 20x20 tiles called submaps) with a theme, for example a field or a section of road.

Each of these tiles or submaps can have multiple variations which are randomly chosen when the map is generated for a mission so they are not identical each time.

The smallest maps are around 50x50 tiles.

On top of the ground tiles walls and props can be placed to provide cover or just for atmosphere.

Again each prop placed can have multiple variations.

Another type of submap are the buildings.

These can be placed anywhere on top of the ground tiles and the exact design loaded up will be randomly chosen from the available options that match the size footprint.

Usually these are divided by type, so placing a 10x10 office would give a different set of random options to placing a 10x10 home or 10x10 workshop.

The alien or Xenonaut spawn zones can also have multiple possible positions and will replace anything they are generated on top of so the start and objective locations are not necessarily the same even if you were unlucky enough to get the same map and have all of the same submaps generated.

Individual alien, civilian, and friendly soldier spawns are also placed and randomly selected at level load so the aliens can be in different places each time.

[TacticalDragon]

It can work in a similar but much more varied way.

The problem is that the devs find the maps to be less interesting when randomised so they have gone for more detailed and individual feeling maps.

The down side to that is that playing with the early builds where the final number of maps has not yet been added can easily lead to the same map being played multiple times.

Feel free to have a play around in the submap and level editors provided with the game.

They should provide a lot of insight into what is possible and what looks good.

As an example the ground can be made up of anything from individual tiles to large sections (normally 5x5, 10x10 or 20x20 tiles called submaps) with a theme, for example a field or a section of road.

Each of these tiles or submaps can have multiple variations which are randomly chosen when the map is generated for a mission so they are not identical each time.

The smallest maps are around 50x50 tiles.

On top of the ground tiles walls and props can be placed to provide cover or just for atmosphere.

Again each prop placed can have multiple variations.

Another type of submap are the buildings.

These can be placed anywhere on top of the ground tiles and the exact design loaded up will be randomly chosen from the available options that match the size footprint.

Usually these are divided by type, so placing a 10x10 office would give a different set of random options to placing a 10x10 home or 10x10 workshop.

The alien or Xenonaut spawn zones can also have multiple possible positions and will replace anything they are generated on top of so the start and objective locations are not necessarily the same even if you were unlucky enough to get the same map and have all of the same submaps generated.

Individual alien, civilian, and friendly soldier spawns are also placed and randomly selected at level load so the aliens can be in different places each time.

What if there are a set of detailed tiles and the total map is like 6x6 (Small), 8x8 (Medium) and 9x9 (Large)?

If each square tile has details and its rows are compatible with any other tiles the map could be balanced, symetric and wonderfull.

[Max_Caine]

Off you go then. All the tools to do that are in the map editor. Show us some maps!

[Skitso]

I tried making a completely random map and gave up after seeing the first result in game.. Hope you have better luck!

[Gauddlike]

What if there are a set of detailed tiles and the total map is like 6x6 (Small), 8x8 (Medium) and 9x9 (Large)?

If each square tile has details and its rows are compatible with any other tiles the map could be balanced, symetric and wonderfull.

I am assuming by tile you mean submap?

A tile is a single unit of terrain, the size of an individual unit.

That is pretty much how it works in the current version but on top of those submaps there are additional semi random elements.

A small map is around 50x50 and a lot of the submaps are 10x10.

You could take it back to the older system Xenonauts used by creating each 10x10 section as a complete self contained submap then attempt to link it to each possible variation that may be beside it.

I imagine that would be a lot of work but I would be interested in seeing the results if you try it.

[Chris]

Yup, the level / sub-map editor has all the tools to generate levels in the way that the original X-Com does it, we just use a more handcrafted method because we think it gives better results.

[Darth Draken]

OK everybody breath....