Xenonauts

[michal]

Hello,

 

There is new indie x-com like game in making:

 

https://xenonauts.com/

 

There aren't any screenshots for now, but it still looks interesting.

[Space Voyager]

The more the merrier. I wonder how many of all these projects will be finished.

[Azrael Strife]

Looks very nice, professional

[Bloodmoney]

I wish all those people who try to remake X-COM, start announcing project when they really achieve something (like two sides), like atleast 10% of game done. So far all they have to offer are empty promises. Still good luck to them.

[chiasaur11]

So, an official X-Com game as a FPS with geoscape management, and, if we're lucky, an X-Com alike that works?

 

It's like Alliance and Genesis all over again. Only, hopefully, without the cancelling.

[Space Voyager]

A year later - an IGN preview!

 

I may not like the site's opinion much but they sure like X-COM!

[Gimli]

If you were among the purple-faced hordes of X-Com: UFO Defence fans who howled with fury at 2K Marin's heretical plans to remake the vintage favourite as an FPS, you'll be pleased to hear that someone's got your back.

 

Howling with fury? Hardly. Lots of people were disappointed, but some are looking forward to it. There was a lot more rage when Fallout 3 was announced.

 

Anyway, the preview makes it sound interesting. Dogfights are an idea I've been entertaining for my imaginary X-COM sequel that will never happen. I'm not sure if it will work though, because it could get tedious as you progress through the game, much like the ground combat got eventually. I think the key here is not to make the game too long, and lots of games fall into this trap these days. I guess we'll see.

 

Cover is a great idea that I've also been entertaining. If properly implemented it could make the battles much more interesting tactically. For example, everyone likes hiding behind walls, but you've often been forced to lose move out of cover if you wanted to shoot an alien. This way you could "peek" out of your cover and shoot with a reduced chance to get hit yourself. Obviously this would work for aliens as well. One area in particular where this would be useful is for snipers. You get your sniper to high ground, move to the edge (e.g. of a building), enter crawling mode and snipe away with reduced chance to get hit.

 

There's plenty of other chances for improvement, but even these two are improvement enough for me. As long as it's properly done of course.

[Lysear]

https://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/10/xenonaut...-walkthrough/2/

 

 

Honestly starting to get frickin excited by this, realy wanna pre-order to be part of the testing, but also want to wait til completion and be suprised by everything lol.

 

Reading that blog has made my day.

[silencer_pl]

I thought that Xeno project was abandoned

[Azrael Strife]

It's not only alive, but closing to completion from my last talk with Chris England. They've released a preview of the battlescape to PCGamer, IIRC, with the Geoscape pretty much complete this means they've got an almost complete game on their hands, bar game balancing and bug fixing of course.

[Lysear]

Another update on their main page https://www.xenonauts.com/

 

Coming along nicely now and lots of publicity, some of those house models already have me drawing up attack plans on them (or i could just rocket the whole structure!! )

 

Apparently a ground combat mission is included in the next update for the beta/pre-order people so will be feedback on the forums, which will be soon released.

 

 

Off to lurk around a bit...

[ShadowBlade]

Little nitpick here: MiGs don't use even numbers in their designation.

 

Also, I wonder why they bother with renaming aircraft when that's all they're doing to them. The "F-17" is an unmodified F-16, and while the "MiG-32" looks like a normal 29 in the concept art section, it looks like a 31 in others.

 

Anyway, aside from that, it does look exciting.

[Azrael Strife]

Xenonauts is now attempting to be KickStarted.

 

They also have a public demo available for download.

 

This is disconcerting, weren't they supposed to be about to be completed?

[silencer_pl]

Not to mention they were selling pre-order with alpha builds for a year?

[Pete]

If you care to read the Kickstarter page you'll see it's nothing to worry about.

[Azrael Strife]

I did, I just find it an odd movement.

[silencer_pl]

I find it funny though that all their soldiers are men

[Azrael Strife]

Surely placeholder troopers.

[silencer_pl]

No - they said on Kickstarter that their troops are only male. So if you are girl gamer and donate to have your picture then tough luck.

[Danimal]

No - they said on Kickstarter that their troops are only male. So if you are girl gamer and donate to have your picture then tough luck.

Flat chance, everybody knows there no girls on the internet , also their kickstarter conditions are the same as before (20€ with pre-alfas for year as lower donation) and then extra goodies if you pay more.

[silencer_pl]

Then definitely there is something wrong with this picture

 

https://i1.kwejk.pl/site_media/obrazki/2012/05/85c28b2ecae8fdcdeb677e353c0dad36.jpg

 

(text in bubbles)

I have tits / I have brains / I play games

[FullAuto]

everybody knows there no girls on the internet

 

/does a Jame Gumb

 

Coooee!

[Azrael Strife]

Xenonauts funded.

 

If they reach 200k, there will be female soldiers.

 

We're also thinking about stretch goals. The current thinking is that we'll do a Mac / Linux port of the game if we raise $100,000, and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000. We're still looking into the practicalities of both of these, so this is not yet confirmed.

 

That is simply one of the stupidest things I have heard. Insulting, too.

 

You're telling me that to create a not-so-simple-to-make Linux and Max port you only need $50,000 more from the amount you were requesting, but from there to include female soldiers you need $100,000 more? Female soldiers would require two or three things: soldier portraits (surely worth about $33,000), some equip screen images (another $33,000) and, and this is optional for some games, female soldier sprites (let's say $34,000, since it includes animations).

 

Wow, isn't it expensive to have women in our games?

 

For the female soldiers, these will appear on the Soldier Equip screens with female faces and more feminine Basic Armour art (all other armour is too bulky to show off the differences between the genders). In the ground combat, they will appear the same as the male soldiers, except for female sound effects (without going into too much detail, this is due to sprite issues).

The main problem with this is actually the portraits - our character artist is extremely overworked and doesn't have time to do the 20-30 new female portraits we'll need. We're doing some tests to see if other artists can match his style before we confirm this stretch goal. If one of them can do so convincingly, female soldiers will be go.

So, not even female sprites, just portraits (and sounds, which basically anyone can do). Just for portraits and equip screens $100,000, quite profitable to be an artist, I know a lot of people who can do those during lunch break.

I am glad I didn't contribute to this project, this is ridiculous.

[Pete]

It does seem a little odd. I know the proportion of men to women in armed forces in real live isn't 50/50, so would it not have made more sense to ditch a few male portraits originally and draw some female ones?

 

I suspect they're going to get a fair amount of stick for this goal.

 

That said though, the female voice acting might put the price up a bit?

[silencer_pl]

and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000

 

How generous. X-Com had it as default, XCOM will have it as default, UFO:ET, UFO:AM/AS/AL has it as default and in AL women to men ratio is almost 50/50 (if you don't count the aliens).

 

With all due respect to their work but with such statement they should feel ashamed.