Apocalypse style maps?

[Guest]

Played 15 hours of 20 V1 and V2. Loving the feel, the gameplay. Combat is good, but I do find the maps not so varied. Am I the unlucky one? I miss the insane mazey maps of Terror from the Deep from inside ships and the condos and highrises of the maps of Apocalypse.

Warehouses, shopping malls. Apocalypse had awesome maps for intense squad fighting.

So far most Xenonauts maps I ran into have been flat terrain with a few city maps here and there. Exception was the first terror mission and europe base crash.

IS it me being not so lucky?

[lemm]

I hated those maps because they took hours to complete.

It was okay in Apoc because they went a bit faster in real-time mode.

[Guest]

True, I forgot about the realtime mode. I used that almost exclusively at the end, as doing it turn-based took a very long time.

[Ol' Stinky]

Two main reasons you won't see multiple heights outside of houses:

1) The A.I. only seems to understand how to get about on ground level, last I checked (v19).

2) Mapmakers cannot place spawn points on anything other than ground level. For example, a mapmaker cannot place the UFO on top of a hill.

[Gauddlike]

Also there are no hills, the game engine cannot handle anything that is not a single tile unit in height.

It cannot generate slopes or proper stairs so all hills would have sheer sides.

[warioland]

Wtf I had no idea. Damn. I guess I'll be happy with literally the ground combat if GH can maximize the fun of it, but that means all the buildings with multiple floors will at least only let you inside but no stairs or elevator to be found... Oh man, elevators... That would of been awesome.

Strange to use a games engine that doesn't let you do something important that X-COM UD did. Freaking X-COM UD!! I bet they didn't know, but who knows unless they tell us.

Just curious, what other original X-COM staple feature will we be missing over a limited engine?

Anyways, back to OXC, my real love.

[Gorlom]

Wtf I had no idea. Damn. I guess I'll be happy with literally the ground combat if GH can maximize the fun of it, but that means all the buildings with multiple floors will at least only let you inside but no stairs or elevator to be found... Oh man, elevators... That would of been awesome.

Strange to use a games engine that doesn't let you do something important that X-COM UD did. Freaking X-COM UD!! I bet they didn't know, but who knows unless they tell us.

I think the game has stairs. Just not "proper" stairs, I think that means that characters cant stand halfway up the stairs without standing inside the stairs or something.

Just curious, what other original X-COM staple feature will we be missing over a limited engine?

Anyways, back to OXC, my real love.

anything related to three dimensions. like the geoscape map for instance. possibly ballistic trajectories for grenades. Edited November 21, 2013 by Gorlom

[Gauddlike]

As Gorlom says there are staircases in the game that allow you to travel between floors they just don't act as real stairs.

You don't walk up them so much as activate them as a teleporter to travel from the bottom to the top.

Standing halfway up the stairs to peek on to the next floor wouldn't work but at least you can still get up to those high spots without requiring jump armour.

All in all a clever work around to bypass a limitation of the engine.

[Raakku]

If the blocks could have a property that moves the soldier/alien sprite up or down there wouldn't be much obvious difference: first part of stairs would function as the first floor and as the soldier sprite would be on them it would look like he is standing on top of something and is "higher", second part of stairs would function as second floor and the soldier sprite would be moved down, looking like he's "lower". Moving from 1st to 2nd stair could work by pressing "climb stairs" button that would be visible and selectable only when active soldier is on stair block, the "climb stairs" function would just transport the unit from one tile to another, same what the stairs do now.

Problems that I can think of would be: 1. the second stair block would be situated on first floor but the soldier using them would be on second floor. 2. the second floor block would be visible on first floor but the soldier would be invisible, because he's technically on the second floor. 3. the soldier might clip on surrounding floor tiles because his sprite is moved out from the tile he actually is in. 4. Moving the location of sprite on specific tile may be completely impossible.

Making the stairs three parted would fix some of these (1st stair=1st floor, 2nd stair=1st floor, 3rd stair=2nd floor) but it would also mean that when the soldier is on second stair it would look like he's on the half-way between levels eventhough he's still technically in first floor and it might mess the shooting (it could look like he's able to shoot something that he's not).

[Gauddlike]

Or just use the current system that works, has no major drawbacks, doesn't screw up the shooting animations, and doesn't risk introducing a whole new set of bugs a month before the game is supposed to be released?

[Raakku]

Hmmm, it would make sense...