Welcome to our third Special Edition "Creating Aftershock" Newsletter!

In this penultimate newsletter (oooh, long word!), we'll be chatting with Lukáš "Izmi" Veselý, Game Designer at ALTAR Interactive, who's letting us listen to a cool music track from the game, some more models and yet more in-game sound effects!

As always, we'll also be bringing you more from some of the other games we cover - the X-COM series and, of course UFO Aftermath.

Contents

Please select a section to jump to by clicking on any of the headings below, or push the boat uot and read the whole thing if you can handle it!

• Creating Aftershock
  
  
  • Lukáš Veselý Chat
  • Exclusive Media
    
  • Pre Order Now
    
    
• X-COM
  
  
  • FullAuto's Alien Races Guide Part 2
  • Fan Fiction Story Preview
    
    
• UFO Aftermath
  
  
  • Accounting Troll's Personal Defense Weapons
  • The Reticulans
  • Fan Fiction Story Preview
    
    
• StrategyCore
  
  
  • Next Edition (Creating Aftershock Part 4 preview!)
  • Feedback
    
  • Unsubscribe

Creating Aftershock

We fired off the same questions as usual at Lukáš "Izmi" Veselý - ALTAR Interactive's Game Designer (action-shot to the left can be enlarged... if you really want to see those legs!)

1) Tell us a little about yourself - what is your name and where are you from?
My name is Lukáš Veselý and I am from the Czech-Moravian Highland. I've lived for many years in Brno where ALTAR Interactive is located.

2) What is your job on the Aftershock team?
I work on Aftershock as a game designer, though not the lead ;) Besides designing the game, I constructed the interface, tested the first versions of the scene editor and so on. In short I also go in for issues that are not purely graphical or programming.

3) What do you do in a typical day working on Aftershock?
I read reports from our bug tracking system, sort issues and write tiresome notes in there, start up editors made by our programmers frequently (honestly - editors crash rarely yet), fill up and export tons of tables with meaningless items and numbers, run around between programmers and graphic artists to ensure things will be as designed.

4) What was the funniest moment for you when working in the office while working on Aftershock? Are there any office pranks you'd like to tell us about?
The funniest moments are watching recordings from TV, game presentations or reading interviews about Aftershock. Game design and actual progress is mostly far from where interviewees say.

I don't know about any office pran... Ouch! Our breaks for lunch and lunches themselves are one big prank. Is that clear enough?

5) What additions in this game do you feel make it really stand out against other squad based strategy games, and it's predecessor – UFO Aftermath?
I can't speak for all players but I really do like the mix of real-time and turn-based when I plan my actions during a paused game. Our SAS-system is very good. Creating weapons and drones is another fine thing I belive players will like, as well as our combination of tactical and strategy aspects of the game. I think we've created a unique mix of very interesting features that really stand out.

6) What influenced your particular part of the development? What sources did you get inspiration from?
I like sci-fi and I am interested in new technologies and new scientific breakthroughs, so creating Aftershock's technology tree was very satisfying. Planning the political aspect of the geosphere, I respected actual world geography and population densities, as well as speculating about future occupation after such cataclysmic events.

I didn't get my inspiration from any specific sources. I rely on a muse :)

7) What are your hopes for the future of the UFO series (without giving too much away)?
Too much of anything is not good, but three is about right, isn't it? Let's see if we'll be nicely surprised.

8) To finish off, would you like to give a message to the gamers or anyone else out there?
Dear reader, do you think game developing is fun? I did. But now at the end of the project I don't ;) You'd also change your mind. But yes, it is like a drug.

Cheers Izmi!


Media

Izmi's also given us a neat soundtrack from the game. It's very cool - an interesting mix of styles with a more serious tune in the background.

We've got some more sound effects from the game as well. This week's are reloading an energy weapon, rocket launcher, shotgun and sniper rifle.

The music track, sound effects and the screenshots above are all available in one zip file in our files section here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/?dlid=215


Competition Update

Well we're up to almost sixty entries now, but time's running out if you still want to win the great prizes below!

The competition will close on Wednesday the 28th of September at 6pm and it's going to be a long time before we do a competition with as many prizes as this one!

Full details of our amazingly simple competition can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/pg/competitions

A reminder of the prizes below:

• For the winner - a signed copy of the UFO Aftershock Special Edition PLUS an original boxed copy of X-COM: UFO Defense - now a rare collector’s item!
• For the two runners up - A copy of UFO Aftershock each

As if that wasn’t enough, all three winners will receive a signed UFO Aftermath t-shirt and a signed UFO Aftermath poster because we’re generous like that.

So get your entry in today!

Pre-order Now!

If you don’t want to enter the competition, you can still pre-order your copy of Aftershock in advance by clicking on the image below:





X-COM


Alien Races Part 2

Alien races and hierarchies addendum. Tactical brief-368, by order of Agent J.P. and Agent D.S. Classified EYES ONLY.

By Valerie Durban, Intel Analyst.

Good afternoon. Following Matsuka’s sprained wrist, I’ve been assigned to brief you. Firstly, this is an emergency brief, I apologise for the short notice. Secondly, because of the urgent nature of the brief, there will be no jokes about Matsuka’s unfortunate injury. Please confine such comedy to the writing on the toilet stalls. The information here is incomplete, so please, no questions. The only answer I will have for you is "I don’t know."


Race: Muton
Associated Terrorist: Silacoid/Celatid
Mutons appear to be the elite of the alien invasion force. They have armoured skin, and appear to have very dense musculature and bone structure. Standard rounds from a pistol or rifle will not even pierce their skin. Close combat is ineffective due to their superior height and weight, the shortest specimen so far being six feet six inches tall, and weighing in at approximately four hundred and sixty pounds. Their skin doesn’t conduct electricity very well either, so rods are of little use. Use the most powerful weapons you have, and if psi squaddies are available, use them to their fullest extent. Doing otherwise only gets you a rising bodycount.
Ranks: Soldier/Engineer/Navigator

Silacoids are relatively inefficient terrorists, with no projectile weaponry and a fairly weak melee attack. They are slow and although very resistant to incendiary damage, HE rounds will soon see them dead. Grenades are also useful, as their slothful crawl means they rarely get out of the explosive radius before detonation. Again, rods are of limited use, the Silacoid nervous system does not appear to be affected much by electrical impulses at all. Stay at range and kill them from a safe distance.

Celatids are a somewhat more effective terrorist species, having limited antigrav capabilities and a strange offensive weapon which lobs gobs of poison high into the air. When taking cover, please keep in mind a Celatid can spit these projectiles quite high, somewhere around twenty to thirty feet, and although the accuracy is not phenomenal, it is a threat to unarmoured people, and even those in armour may take slight damage. Do not treat such wound with water, it will only wash the poison further into the wound. Let your medic deal with it. Celatids are not particularly tough, laser weapons are quite sufficient to stop them.


Race: Ethereal
Associated Terrorist: Sectopod
Ethereals appear to be the leaders of the alien invasion. It’s either the Sectoids or the Ethereals, we don’t have enough info to decide which yet. Every Ethereal you encounter will have psi powers at their disposal. Missions against this alien race will require extensive psi screening beforehand. One member of your squad under alien control can cause a lot of damage, so if any squaddie complains of feeling strange or hallucinating during a mission, put him down with a rod. Do not hesitate to kill them if necessary. You cannot let one man bring down your squad. Ethereals are tough, despite the frail form under their robes. We speculate that they can use their psi powers to enhance their physical abilities. They definitely use it to fly, much more effectively than Floaters, actually. Telekinesis is a power only this race has, and it may be put to multiple uses. Be wary. We urgently need members of this race taken alive, but do not, I repeat, do not under any circumstances take risks to do so.
Ranks: Soldier/Leader/Commander

Sectopods are simply gun platforms. Bipedal robots, heavily armoured against plasma weaponry and heavily armed with a plasma turret. These are the only terrorists that really require you to take a technological back-step, laser weaponry being much more efficacious than plasma in this instance. Stun Bomb Launchers are also useful; they disrupt some of the delicate bio-circuits that a Sectopod requires for movement, rendering them immobile and unable to fire. If neither lasers nor stun bombs are available, the current orders dictate a tactical retreat. If withdrawal is not an option, make the best use of cover you can, and concentrate your fire on one target at a time and hope you get lucky.

Thanks again to FullAuto for another entertaining piece!


Fan Fiction Story

What follows is an excerpt from Skonar's excellent fan fiction story - X-COM Chronicles: Prophet

She looked up at the tiny vents in the ceiling, originally meant to let out buildups of explosive gasses in the sewers. Dull green mist began to pour from them, swirling into the room's air. It smelled faintly of disinfectant, she clung to a woman's leg, pressing her face against the woman's knee to try and get away from the horrible smell and the noise, the reality of what was happening. Her hands began to slip, her vision blurred as she fell over, staring up. A man in panic dropped his weapon, pulling off his helmet. She could only just make out his eyes, tiny eyes... human eyes...

The full story can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=4185. As always, please feel free to leave any comments in the X-COM Fan Fiction forum here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=20




UFO Aftermath

Weapons Guide

Accounting Troll strikes again - this time with an overview of Personal Defense Weapons in Aftermath.


Personal Defense Weapons in UFO: Aftermath

Personal Defence Weapons, sometimes called sub-machine guns, fall between pistols and rifles. They are classified as handguns in the game, and they utilise the handgun skill. However a PDW is used with both hands, just like a rifle.

PDWs are designed to be light and have a high damage potential in burst fire mode. The downside is that the range in aimed mode is significantly less than that of human assault rifles. A PDW has a reload time of 2-2.5 seconds, more than a pistol but considerably less than a human assault rifle.

The Uzi is available in infinite quantity at the beginning of the game. Other PDWs can sometimes be picked up after a successful base assault mission. Also, the humanoid transgenants are often equipped with PDWs from the mid-game onwards.

The Reticulans do not have a direct equivalent to a PDW in their arsenal.

The Scorpion is light and it has an excellent rate of fire, but in all other areas it is the weakest PDW in the game, and the least threatening in the arms of a transgenant.

Range is the biggest weakness of the Scorpion. Its range in aimed mode only just exceeds that of the Uzi in burst mode. Range in burst mode is so poor that you might as well use a shotgun instead.

Although the magazines are lighter than those of other PDWs, this is more than offset by a capacity of only 20 rounds.

The Scorpion is simply not worth taking on a mission. The low weight may make it tempting to issue a Scorpion to a physically weak soldier, but he will not gain many experience points because other soldiers will take down an enemy before it gets in range of the Scorpion.


The Uzi is one of the few weapons available in unlimited quantities from the beginning of the game, which makes it important in the early missions, particularly for a soldier who has above average skill with handguns. Remember that you will be outranged by a transgenant with an assault rifle, so you will need to make use of whatever cover the local terrain offers.

The Uzi is outclassed by the MP5, which has lower weight and better range and damage potential.


The MP5 is useful for urban missions against the transgenants. The transgenants will use more powerful weapons as the game progresses, forcing you to go over to weapons that give one-shot kills such as hybrid plasma rifles. The high rate of fire means that the MP5 will still be useful in the second part of establish base missions, particularly when you round a corner or open a door and you are faced with a balloon fish.

As the MP5 uses soft rounds, it is not the best PDW for missions against the well armoured Reticulans.


This is the second most powerful PDW in the game, despite the relatively low rate of fire in burst mode. The armour piercing rounds makes the P90 a powerful weapon in close range engagements against the Reticulans such as urban missions, or the second stage of UFO recovery or alien base missions.

The MP7 slightly outclasses the P90, but the P90 is a good substitute if you don’t have enough MP7s to go round.


This is easily the best PDW in the game. It was even more powerful in version 1.0, but Altair toned it down in the patches to improve balance.

The MP7 is highly effective in any mission against the Reticulans except in open terrain. It is indispensable in the second stage of the Area-51 and Russian base missions.

You should think very carefully before using the MP7 against the transgenants. Although it is useful in a medium or close range engagement, you will be squandering your limited supply of ammunition for one of the few weapons that is effective against the better-armoured Reticulans.

Unfortunately, the MP7 is not very common in the early stages of the game.



The Reticulans

This article is an introduction to the Reticulans, the alien race that was the primary adversary in UFO: Aftermath. It is intended to serve as background information for anybody who is interested in UFO: Aftershock but has yet to play UFO: Aftermath.

This article contains spoilers to UFO: Aftermath throughout, but I expect UFO: Aftershock will as well.


The Reticulan People

The main enemies in UFO: Aftermath are members of a renegade faction of an alien race called the Reticulans, and better known to enthusiasts of the paranormal and sci-fi as the Greys.

The Reticulan homeworld is located in the binary system of Zeta Reticulum, a pair of remarkably Sun like stars 40 light years away. Their homeworld is similar to Earth except that it has a lower gravitational pull and a greater oxygen content. Life there has a very similar biochemistry to Earth, and the in-game glossary goes as far as to suggest that life on our two worlds has a common origin.

Earth is very uncomfortable for the Reticulans because of the high gravity and low oxygen content. They can only survive here at all by using special environmental suits that double as combat armour. These suits are responsible for the distinctly reddish-brown colour of the Reticulans.

Although the Reticulans are vertebrates, they reproduce by parthenogenesis, a word derived from Latin and meaning virgin creation. During the course of her lifetime, a Reticulan ‘queen’ gives birth to large numbers of males that were developed from unfertilised ova. It is not known whether the few Reticulan females are reproduced in the same manner. Parthenogenesis does not necessarily mean genetic cloning – on Earth some species of social bee use this method to produce male drones which grow up to become genetically distinct from each other and their mother through a process not yet fully understood.

Reticulan society is highly regimented with limited room for individuality, almost like an insect hive. An individual who is willing to make personal sacrifices, including laying down his life for the good of the group is regarded as being highly virtuous. As the overwhelming majority of Reticulans are male, the females are highly regarded and well protected against danger. If the Reticulans have a religion, it almost certainly centres on the worship of a mother-goddess.

The Reticulans are known to have a limited psionic ability, although what they do with this power is uncertain. It may be useful for communication, although they have a complex written and oral language anyway. Reticulans are unable to use their psionic abilities in combat without the use of devices such as psi stingers and psi projectors. It is likely that this psionic ability was a factor in the development of the hive-like Reticulan society as personal space would be an illusion in such a society.

Despite their biology and regimented society, individual Reticulans have their own names and personalities. They are also capable of appreciating art and music; human art has become quite fashionable among their people.

Reticulan technology is almost entirely based on biotechnology. Tools, weapons and armour are grown from genetically modified organisms and not manufactured. Even their ships are organically grown around a Reticulan pilot who ends up mentally linked to the ship for life. The symbiotic relationship between ship and pilot is so close that neither can survive without the other. This is probably why refitting the captured Reticulan battleship in preparation for the lunar mission takes so long.

The Reticulans are known to have been spacefaring for several thousand years, which makes them as youthful as humanity in comparison with the age of the galaxy. They do not have a practical means of faster than light travel. Instead they use a network of Qports, which seem to be large space based facilities that act as an anchor for a rift between two solar systems.


The Dreamland Project

The first confirmed contact between Earth and the Reticulans was the 1947 Roswell incident. It is not known when they first became interested in humanity. Several popular authors have claimed that extraterrestrials have interfered in human evolution and history, particularly the building of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, however there is no suggestion of this in UFO: Aftermath.

Shortly after the Roswell incident, the Reticulan government made unofficial contact with the leading national governments of Earth. Under the Dreamland project, several top secret bases were set up to act as a focal point for contact between the national governments and the Reticulans. The two known bases are Area-51 in the USA and Kasputin Yar in Russia, although there are probably others.

This unofficial relationship between humanity and the Reticulans was mutually beneficial and trade began to flourish. We got access to some of their technology, and they got access to our art. Although works of art were Earth’s main export commodity, it isn’t known if the Reticulans acquired original works or copies.

It is not clear how accounts of alien abductions fit into the UFO: Aftermath universe. The Reticulan renegades could not have carried out widespread abductions before the invasion without their government and the governments of Earth finding out about it. Also, according to the abduction accounts, the aliens tend to go out of their way to ensure that the abductee is unharmed. In UFO: Aftermath, the interiors of renegade Reticulan ships and bases are littered with human remains and body parts, so it is unlikely that they would show much consideration for the welfare of any luckless abductee.

Cattle mutilations and crop circles probably have terrestrial origins in UFO: Aftermath, just like in real life. Cattle mutilations are the work of Satanists – the underbelly of the Neo-Paganism revival. Crop circles are the work of local farmers as either a practical joke or an art form, and they rarely appear on a wet night!


The Invasion

The beneficial relationship between humanity and the Reticulans came to an abrupt end on May 25th 2004. In the game, the renegade faction is simply referred to as the Reticulans, and the mainstream faction is referred to as the Old Greys. From this point on, this article will do the same.

On May 25th 2004, a Reticulan ship entered Earth’s atmosphere and released millions of spores which reproduced rapidly and blocked out all light from the Sun. They ensured that the Old Greys would not be able to stop them by destroying the Qport that connected our solar system with the rest of the galaxy, and then launching conventional attacks on the Dreamland bases. On June 1st, the spores rained down and wiped out most life on the planet.

A few weeks later, the spores broke down and the few people who had survived in air-tight shelters emerged into the new world. The only signs of life they found were mutated zombies of some of the people and animals that died in the attack. These strange monsters, called transgenants only had one purpose to their existence – to destroy the surviving humans.

The Old Greys were ready to use military force to stop the Reticulans, but in practice there was little they could do to help humanity. Very few of their personnel on Earth had survived the invasion. Although their government despatched a fleet to stop the renegades, the fleet did not have the ability to travel faster than light. The estimated journey time from the nearest intact Qport (probably at Alpha Centauri) was twenty years.

It wasn’t until January 1st 2005 that some kind of order emerged with the creation of the Council of Earth, whose forces were spearheaded by the elite multinational force known as Phoenix Company. Although the Council of Earth forces initially only controlled a small geographical area, a series of military successes against both the transgenants and their Reticulan creators caused the Council held territory to expand rapidly, and other groups of human survivors peacefully accepted the leadership of the Council. But then evidence of the true Reticulan plans began to emerge.

Outgrowths of alien vegetation, known as the Biomass appeared and began to grow rapidly. Nothing was able to stop or even slow its growth, and any territory that became overgrown was lost to humanity. Even worse, it could cross narrow seas such as the North Sea and the straights between Australia and Indonesia.

It transpired that the Biomass was being deliberately planted by the Reticulans as part of their plans for Earth. The brutal interrogation of Reticulan prisoners of war eventually revealed the nature of their plan. They were using the Biomass to turn Earth into a giant organic computer possessing immense psionic powers that they intended to harness. The destruction of humanity was something that they regarded as a regrettably necessary evil in order to create something far greater.

Council scientists managed to find a way to stop the Biomass based on research on captured alien artefacts, prisoner interrogations, researching files recovered from the Dreamland bases (now under Reticulan occupation) by Phoenix Company, discussions with the surviving Old Greys and by studying the Biomass and the transgenants. They eventually realised that the Biomass was vulnerable to psionic weapons, so a specialist base equipped with a vast psionic emitter would repulse the Biomass over a wide area.

The Biomass repulsor bases became prime targets for direct Reticulan attacks. Most attacks were scotched either by the Council of Earth air force or by intervention of Phoenix Company on the ground. With the Biomass shrinking rapidly, the Reticulans only had one option left.


The Reticulan Offer

The Reticulans made a one time only offer to end the war and to build a giant space station to house the remnants of humanity and they were also desperate enough to offer to share control of Planetmind – the name they gave to their intended creation. The wording of their offer indicates that by this time they regarded humanity as noble savages, but it should be remembered that they waited until their plans were on the verge of collapse.

The player then has to choose whether to accept the offer or not. Accepting the offer immediately ends the game. Rejecting it (which most people do) means the player has to find the location of the Reticulan leadership and put together an expedition to wipe them out, thus ending the war.

UFO: Aftershock is based on the idea that the Council of Earth accepted the Reticulan Offer and agreed to end the war. Presumably they were not certain that they would achieve victory. Besides, even a victory would have meant that the human survivors would have had to survive on a ruined and transgenant infested Earth until the Old Greys turn up and sort everything out.

It seems that survival on Earth would have been possible as in the time of Aftershock it is inhabited by four human factions that the player will have to interact with. As the ETA of the Old Grey fleet was twenty years and Aftershock takes place fifty years after the invasion, it would appear that either the Old Greys are a bit late or that they turned up and were defeated.

Cheers Accounting Troll!



Fan Fiction Story Preview

Another excerpt from another fine fan fiction story from Skonar - "Living in the Aftermath":

The older man continued on, pulled open the corridor doorway. He stepped on into the gloom even as the young man ran after him. The older man counted doorways. He held his rifle steady with his right hand, approached the second to last doorway and reached for its doorknob with his left. The young man pulled in a gasping breath, afraid in the darkness. "... Old man?"

The older man had his hand on the doorknob. He turned his head, and hissed, "Quiet, you fool! Something will hear yo-"

The full story can be found here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=3505. This one's another story that's a little graphic in it's gory detail later on, so be advised before you read too far if you're a young'un!

Comments are happily received in the AM / AS Fan Fiction forum here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=27




StrategyCore

Next Edition

Looking forward to the FINAL part of our Creating Aftershock newsletter series? Here's a look at what's coming up:

In issue 4 we’ll betalking to Martin Klima - Aftershock's Lead Designer and Project Lead! Martin's bringing yet more models and sound effects, some interesting screenshots from the designer's view (lots of code, but also if you look closely enough some NICE surprises!) and he'll also be bringing us a peek at something that'll be in the Special Edition box as well as announcing our Aftershock competition winners!

Along with all that, we'll be bringing you yet more articles from X-COM and Aftermath in one HUGE final Creating Aftershock newsletter!

Feedback

We want to know what you think – what you liked and what you thought could have been better. Let us know what you want to see more of. Your voice could shape future editions, so give us your feedback here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/pg/contact remembering to select Newsletter Feedback from the drop-down list.