Entering "Polishing" phase!

[qdlat]

Any word on when we can expect the next Stable version? In at least one thread Chris mentioned that *likely* we will have something this week (perhaps today?).

[Chris]

It'll be a Stable Candidate - i.e. released on the experimental branch and will be promoted to the Stable branch after a few days if it doesn't have any major issues in it - but it is due out in a few hours.

[Gauddlike]

Just in time for the weekend, good plan.

[frank_walls]

I was looking at screenshots of the game, and came across this:

I'm assuming that the broken ground around the crashsite was something that was never added? Just curious because it looks really cool!

[Commissar Pancakes]

It was taken out due to issues with the maps I believe...

[frank_walls]

It was taken out due to issues with the maps I believe...

Aww. That was something I thought was missing from the crashed UFOs, and then I saw that image and got excited. Oh well.

[Commissar Pancakes]

Yeah, it would have been great to have kept them.

[Skitso]

Yeah, I miss those too...

[DNK]

At least they could add some fire/smoke around the hulls. But full art would be preferable (or both).

[Gauddlike]

That was on the old style UFO submaps.

The new style ones don't have ground tiles attached they overlay on whatever is underneath them so it wouldn't work as well.

The picture you have there for example would look really odd if it crashed into a field, patch of sand or whatever but somehow had broken concrete piled up around it.

I would like to see some kind of crash damage but I am not really sure what would work without making different crashed UFO hull for each different terrain type.

I believe the current design is supposed to reflect a controlled but forced descent rather than an uncontrolled crash.

The old design also had damage leading back from the resting point of the ship to the initial impact which looked very nice.

Again though with the overlay system that would just significantly increase the amount of space required for a crashed ship and take away any elements placed in a massive area just for the aesthetics.

[Skitso]

I'd settle for some debris, fire and smoke around the wreckage..

[Gauddlike]

What debris though?

Remember that the same submap is used for all tilesets so any rubble would need to be appropriate for all possible backgrounds.

Having a UFO crashed in lovely green field would look very odd in the middle of an industrial area or as the only green part of a middle eastern village or Arctic area.

The crashed UFO exteriors are not damaged enough to purely use debris from the craft unfortunately, although it could be from the underside which is not visible...

If you specifically design a crashed UFO background submap for each tileset then it should work but then you lose the option to have multiple possible positions for crashed ships on a single level or for sharing the same map for a crashed and landed craft.

Might be worth investing some time into thinking about what could work.

[Skitso]

Yeah, I was thinking ufo parts and stuff, but you are right abot ufo spawning points making it a bit more complicated affair. I would love it if GH would be able to add a ufo debris submap to spawn automatically under crashed ufo hull submap. (Along with fire and smoke) The submaps just need to be designed per ufo so the debris wouldn't block any crucial paths or all the tiles would need to be walk-throughable. (Whats the word?)

[Gauddlike]

I will definitely think about this more but I reckon we have drifted so far from the polishing topic we are in danger of becoming alien invaders ourselves.

Would it be pathable?

Whatever, I understood what you were saying

[DNK]

For debris, brown dirt exists everywhere. Just sayin.

[Gauddlike]

Not as easy to come by on the arctic maps, stands out from the desert and middle east maps and looks a bit odd to have piles of dirt around something crashed on a tarmac/concrete parking lot on an industrial map with no broken tarmac/concrete visible.

You can sort of get around it by having a little bit of transparency in places so the underlying tiles show through but for some reason the transparent tiles I have made show the transparency as black areas so not been able to experiment.

Anyway if people want to continue this discussion it would be best to make a new thread in the mapping subforum.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Gauddlike

[Benscachar]

What about the Colossus power armor or other features and equipment that haven't been added.

[Gauddlike]

If it has been dropped it will stay dropped.

[Max_Caine]

Here's what Chris had to say about the Colossus (again).

[DrunkZombie]

Awesome! Can't wait to play the final game. Congrats on all the hard work paying off Chris and team.

[flashman]

Glad you are into polishing phase, well done.

However, I would be careful with steam since you have picked the moment that the floodgates have opened to set a release date. The amount of shovelware on the front page is now forcing new games off the release tab with hours instead of days.

Hopefully steam will add new store filters within the next 10weeks, otherwise you can see rants by totalbiscuit and others about the issue.

If you give the community notice about who you have spoken to etc then we can push other elements. Remember you are pushing Win/Mac and Linux and there a lot of very vocal mac and linux mags/sites who would give you coverage.

[flashman]

wrong thread- the end

Edited March 23, 2014 by flashman

[hanzde]

Hi will be steam workshop included for moding??

[Dix]

Congratulations - looking forward to playing this game so much!

[Ragnarok]

Hi will be steam workshop included for moding??

Thats a good question in my eyes.