KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[Raghar]

Now that we got your reading this topic, can I get your thoughts on why was the starting number of soldiers in Xenonauts reduced to 8 from 14 that Xcom has?

Xcom had a very terror atmosphere which got reinforced each time your troops got one shot from darkness. And you could lose a 6-8 per mission without large loss because you had such big teams and replacing recruits was not expensive. I think it made for a better game.

UFO:EU had 8 soldiers per mission. But it didn't have hordes of aliens to shoot.

 

[ArchAngel]

What is ufo:eu? I am talking about xcom 1994.

 

[Raghar]

What is ufo:eu? I am talking about xcom 1994.

Filthy US knave. How dare you not know the original name, it had before it was released in US.

 

[ArchAngel]

I know that name but I assumed you were talking about some other game because that game certainly had 14 soldiers at start and more later. I played a lot of Open Xcom recently and I remember how it is.
You could replace some soldiers with a tank but for a long while my core team was 6-8 soldiers with rookies to fill up the skyranger.

This and because xcom has ways to defend vs enemy Psi is why I prefer Open Xcom to Xenonauts

 

[Luka-boy]

Life in discussion forums would be so much easier if people got used to calling the original games X-Com and the reboot ones XCOM.

 

[ArchAngel]

We call reboot nuxcom, learn it, love it.
Or just Xcom2 as there is no old xcom2

 

[Mazisky]

The game seems nice but i don't know if i like the art. If you look close at the environment, it seems the exact Xcom 2 temperate one, even the assets, rocks, river, fences, roads, look how the environment is built.
Ofc it's too soon to judge for an alpha demo but i hope the full game will bring something varied.

Btw, is the soundtrack from xeno1? it sounds pretty cool

 

[Goldhawk]

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that earlier - the environment artist deliberately duplicated some of the XCOM 2 temperate assets so we could experiment with how much graphical fidelity we could achieve in Unity versus Unreal, and experiment with the effect of the different camera distances relative to those in XCOM 2. We're not gonna be copying the other assets from XCOM 2 but we figured it was a good yardstick for us to use when taking our first steps into 3D environments (no use reinventing the wheel etc).

Yup, that's the X1 soundtrack, which we'll add to for the final game. Anyways, I'll answer the other questions when I'm back in the office on Monday.

 

[agris]

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that earlier - the environment artist deliberately duplicated some of the XCOM 2 temperate assets so we could experiment with how much graphical fidelity we could achieve in Unity versus Unreal, and experiment with the effect of the different camera distances relative to those in XCOM 2. We're not gonna be copying the other assets from XCOM 2 but we figured it was a good yardstick for us to use when taking our first steps into 3D environments (no use reinventing the wheel etc).

Yup, that's the X1 soundtrack, which we'll add to for the final game. Anyways, I'll answer the other questions when I'm back in the office on Monday.

Hey Chris, what do you think about the current visibility of units and the suggestions I made on your forums?

 

[Goldhawk]

Now that we got your reading this topic, can I get your thoughts on why was the starting number of soldiers in Xenonauts reduced to 8 from 14 that Xcom has?

X-Com ended up with stupid numbers of troops, so we set a cap of 16 troops (the most we thought was manageable) at endgame and then worked back from there to ensure there was a progression for the dropships. I think the starting squad was originally 12 but we reduced it to 8 because we just felt it made the missions feel a bit faster-paced when you weren't ordering around vast numbers of soldiers every single turn. Plus you get more attached to your guys if you have a smaller team ... in the original X-Com I remember there were only like two guys in my team that I actually cared about and the rest were just meat for the grinder.

I swear that x1 had some sort of building collapse mechanic though. I remember killing one of the teleporting aliens by collapsing a building.

Also, while I am wildly requesting improvements: How about more differences between weapon tiers than just ++damage, and differences between later aliens more than ++stats? X1 did a really good job imo of giving each alien race different strengths and weaknesses, but it really didn't scale well to lategame.

Collapsible buildings were in X1, but by the end of development even I didn't know how they worked and they caused no end of crashes too. They weren't worth the headaches imo. Yeah, it'd certainly be nice to give the aliens and weapons more individual character but that's something we'll discuss later in development as it's really something we'll need to playtest I think.

Hey Chris, what do you think about the current visibility of units and the suggestions I made on your forums?

I replied on the forums, but I wasn't sure what advantage rotating soldiers using arrow buttons would have over the standard rotation using mouse right-click?

 

[Jaedar]

X-Com ended up with stupid numbers of troops, so we set a cap of 16 troops (the most we thought was manageable) at endgame and then worked back from there to ensure there was a progression for the dropships. I think the starting squad was originally 12 but we reduced it to 8 because we just felt it made the missions feel a bit faster-paced when you weren't ordering around vast numbers of soldiers every single turn.

Might I suggest an x-com apoc style squad system allowing for moving many soldiers at the same time?

 

[agris]

Hey Chris, what do you think about the current visibility of units and the suggestions I made on your forums?

I replied on the forums, but I wasn't sure what advantage rotating soldiers using arrow buttons would have over the standard rotation using mouse right-click?

Thanks, but I was referring to my feedback post here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/...-2-feedback-priorities/&page=2#comment-157334

But thanks for answering about the turns. As another poster said on your forums, for precision/control.

 

[rezaf]

I can't help but wonder how other X-Com affictionados feel about destructible terrain in those games.
To me, it was a USP even back in the X-Com 1 days, where it was in some ways fairly limited, but totally novel as well. It's to this day cool to me to make my own exit from the barn by shooting the wall or leveling said barn with a rocket launcher. It's a bit anticlimactic when the upper level of the barn remains, floating in the air, or when hitting the ground level from above doesn't create a proper crater, but we're talking about mid nineties tech - and maybe OpenXCom will eventually improve on this.
I honestly don't remember how terrain destructibility worked in Apoc (time to play it again, I guess), but I DO remember the collapsing supermarkets, in other words that buildings crashing down on you if you did too much damage was very much a thing.

After that, everything roughly in the X-Com ballpark, from fan remakes like UFO:AI to pseudo-remakes like UFO:ET to relatives like Altar's UFO trilogy all the way to NuXCom - everybody came up with some lame excuse or other why not even what was possible with 1994 tech could be matched.
The only game that comes to mind taking the concept and running with it - all nine yards no less - was Silent Storm. It's approach to destructibility remains unmatched in the genre to this very day - and I really mourn the passing of the X-Com-like and the JA2-like running on it's engine, both of which were under development at some point.
I mean, sure, I played entire campaigns of SS2 without ever leveling a building or destroying much terrain, but when it happened, it was SO cool and memorable.

Am I the only one that cares about that shit? Most players seem to be content with developers cutting this, it seems...

 

[Wintermute]

Destructible terrain is absolutely essential.

 

[Goldhawk]

Thanks, but I was referring to my feedback post here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/...-2-feedback-priorities/&page=2#comment-157334

But thanks for answering about the turns. As another poster said on your forums, for precision/control.

I've not replied specifically to this but it's definitely something we're looking into. I've said before that we'll be addressing the tree visibility in a future build, and the "red circle around the alien" is something we're actively looking at too.

I can't help but wonder how other X-Com affictionados feel about destructible terrain in those games.
To me, it was a USP even back in the X-Com 1 days, where it was in some ways fairly limited, but totally novel as well. It's to this day cool to me to make my own exit from the barn by shooting the wall or leveling said barn with a rocket launcher. It's a bit anticlimactic when the upper level of the barn remains, floating in the air, or when hitting the ground level from above doesn't create a proper crater, but we're talking about mid nineties tech - and maybe OpenXCom will eventually improve on this.
I honestly don't remember how terrain destructibility worked in Apoc (time to play it again, I guess), but I DO remember the collapsing supermarkets, in other words that buildings crashing down on you if you did too much damage was very much a thing.

After that, everything roughly in the X-Com ballpark, from fan remakes like UFO:AI to pseudo-remakes like UFO:ET to relatives like Altar's UFO trilogy all the way to NuXCom - everybody came up with some lame excuse or other why not even what was possible with 1994 tech could be matched.
The only game that comes to mind taking the concept and running with it - all nine yards no less - was Silent Storm. It's approach to destructibility remains unmatched in the genre to this very day - and I really mourn the passing of the X-Com-like and the JA2-like running on it's engine, both of which were under development at some point.
I mean, sure, I played entire campaigns of SS2 without ever leveling a building or destroying much terrain, but when it happened, it was SO cool and memorable.

Am I the only one that cares about that shit? Most players seem to be content with developers cutting this, it seems...

The question is really how far you expect destructible terrain to go, and what you want from it - in Xenonauts 1 pretty much everything is destructible other than the actual ground and UFO hulls, and you could even collapse buildings. It's better hidden than in the original X-Com because a burst of rifle fire won't flatten a brick wall (you generally need access to explosives), but the realism of a rifle not taking out a building is probably an improvement too. Did you notice that when you played? It's also a bit misleading to imply that "1994 tech" is an easy barrier for a developer to beat, as X-Com has some of the most advanced destructibility in any game ever and it's difficult to see how it could be improved beyond adding building destructibility in (which I believe they did in Apocalyse). I think Silent Storm had some neat stuff with bullet penetration, but I don't think they had destructible ground etc ... or did they?

Really the best any developer could hope for is to match X-Com, especially because the complexity of destructible environments increases exponentially with how complex the graphics are. If we made a game with primitive graphics like X-Com we could definitely match their destructibility, but the complexity of making a building collapse realistically in terms of both gameplay and modern graphics is far more than just drawing a dust cloud sprite and making the building disappear. Even on the Codex, allegedly a bastion of gameplay over graphics, people are very quick to criticise a game they perceive to have sub-par graphics ... so you can imagine how well having obviously crappy visuals would play with the general population of gamers. You've either gotta do stuff like that well or not at all, so unless you have an unlimited budget then you're gonna struggle to make something that has X-Com destruction with modern graphics. Also remember that most of these turn based games are relatively low-budget productions that are already expected to contain vast amounts of content - there's not a lot of money to go around.

The intention there isn't to sound defensive; this is just a rambling post noting that having everything in a map destructible except for the terrain and collapsing of buildings will account for 99% of your destructibility needs - seeing a rocket go awry and take a chunk out of a hill in X-Com was cool, but it doesn't have much of an effect on the gameplay and I'd argue it wasn't really a USP in its own right. In fact, I think if you lowered the hitpoints of the terrain in X1 so small arms fire would destroy tiles easily then I think you'd have something that feels far more like X-Com, but I'd also get lots of complaints about realism. People want a higher standard of realism these days.

I'm still puzzling over whether we should use fully-destructible box UFOs in X2, though. Not having UFO destructibility in X1 was a genuine regret of mine and I'm wondering if box UFOs might add enough to gameplay to make up for the fact they'll look awful.

 

[agris]

I'm still puzzling over whether we should use fully-destructible box UFOs in X2, though. Not having UFO destructibility in X1 was a genuine regret of mine and I'm wondering if box UFOs might add enough to gameplay to make up for the fact they'll look awful.

Thanks for the replies. Why does destructible UFO = ugly box UFOs? You've got nicely destructible non-symmetric art in X2 already.

 

[Volrath]

We call reboot nuxcom, learn it, love it.
Or just Xcom2 as there is no old xcom2

You should just call it shit, because that's what it is.

 

[MRY]

The question is really how far you expect destructible terrain to go, and what you want from it - in Xenonauts 1 pretty much everything is destructible other than the actual ground and UFO hulls, and you could even collapse buildings. It's better hidden than in the original X-Com because a burst of rifle fire won't flatten a brick wall (you generally need access to explosives), but the realism of a rifle not taking out a building is probably an improvement too.

Obviously everyone's taste on these things is different, but I'm not sure realism is an improvement here. I mean, having the building float despite having its ground floor destroyed is silly, but being able to shoot out walls had significant gameplay implications, which you lose if you make it too hard to break through walls.

 

[Leechmonger]

The buildings can have non-destructible support columns that don't block LOS but explain why the second floor hasn't come crashing down. Or you can make these columns destructible but much tougher than the walls.

 

[rezaf]

Really the best any developer could hope for is to match X-Com, especially because the complexity of destructible environments increases exponentially with how complex the graphics are. If we made a game with primitive graphics like X-Com we could definitely match their destructibility, but the complexity of making a building collapse realistically in terms of both gameplay and modern graphics is far more than just drawing a dust cloud sprite and making the building disappear.

Thanks for replying.
First of all, I obviously was not only focusing on Xenonauts but the entire line of X-Com-alikes.

However, you took it a little far by arguing the best ANY developer could hope for was to match X-Com - I suggest you go check out the game I quoted - Silent Storm.
And no, this was by far not an AAA game. I'm still with you if you say in Goldhawk's league, matching Silent Storm would be a little much to ask for.
Let's see. Is there a game that offers a similar degree of destructible terrain? With impressive explosions that blow holes in the ground and terrain, forming craters and leveling buildings?
Maybe something low-tech and indie? Hmmm. How about Minecraft?

So I totally agree that destructible terrain isn't really an achievable goal if you're aiming for AAA graphics at the same time as a small indie studio, but if you pick and choose what you want to bring to the table, I strongly disagree that it's immediately out of reach like you claim it is.

What I've seen from Xenonauts 2 looks impressive, but I kinda fear that you will again be forced to limit yourself when it comes to variety and polish, just like you had to in the first game.
My personal opinion - and I may very well be wrong - is just that IF you find yourself unable to match that old game you want to ride on, you'd better bring something new and exciting to the table that I can't get when I'm playing the original.
NuXcom dropped or dumbed down many of X-Com's features, and I still have not purchased the sequel nor replayed the original because I didn't like a large part of the new approach, but the one time I played through it, I have to admit they made their calls and it was an interesting, enjoyable - and different - ride. It's not for me in the long run, but I can see why people like it.
Xenonauts changed relatively few things from X-Com, but most things that were changed ended up falling short of the original. This is why, if I want my X-Com experience these days, I'm much more inclined to fire up OpenXCom (which offers all the original had and more) than I am to fire up Xenonauts. Ain't that a little sad?

So, if you were to make a voxel based sequel where everything looks like in 8-bit Armies, but the terrain is fully destructible and with impressive physics, I'd be much more interested than I am if you say: We're making Xenonauts, but a little prettier.

Maybe I'm too harsh on you guys - and you don't deserve too much criticism, so much is for sure. You went out to make an X-Com remake and saw it through - many, MANY similar projects failed beforehand, and those that brought up a final product are all worse than Xenonauts, imo. Well, except for OpenXCom. (Most of which was made by a single guy and happens to be free - how did that happen?)

I really want you guys to succeed, I just hope you either went for a style/approach that allowed you to match the original X-Com feature for featue and then pile on some more OR deviated more from the original formula to make a game that can really stand on it's own feet.

Aww man, I wrote far too much. May I just close with wishing you guys best of luck?

 

[Alienman]

I have to say, even if I don't mind that much if the game will lack destructible environments is that technology seems to have gone backwards when regarding this stuff. When I played Silent Storm or X-com back in the day I could only dream what the next game-engine would let me do! Instead we get nuXcom that was a step back in every way, and that game is considered the epitome of turn-based games by devs now. Even Gollop seem to have designed his new game after this instead of his own masterpiece.

 

[Jaedar]

It's also a bit misleading to imply that "1994 tech" is an easy barrier for a developer to beat, as X-Com has some of the most advanced destructibility in any game ever and it's difficult to see how it could be improved beyond adding building destructibility in (which I believe they did in Apocalyse).

They did, and it was amazing.

As you see, it's not perfect though, but it is very cool. Just one of several cool things apoc did really well. If I may be so bold, I'd recommend you play it and mine it for ideas for X2. It's quite unpolished (unfinished even in several places), but it really tried to bring the whole (sub)genre forward.

 

[Alienman]

Was there a devastator mini-gun research I missed?

 

[Goldhawk]

Obviously everyone's taste on these things is different, but I'm not sure realism is an improvement here. I mean, having the building float despite having its ground floor destroyed is silly, but being able to shoot out walls had significant gameplay implications, which you lose if you make it too hard to break through walls.

Yeah, that's a valid argument. Unfortunately we've shot ourselves in the foot in this regard because we portrayed Xenonauts as quite a serious and realistic game, so it's more jarring when we have obviously unrealistic stuff happening in combat compared to any other X-Com game. However, writing this reply did make me realise that we missed a trick not making the laser / plasma weapons incendiary (which means they do 3x damage to terrain), which would mean you keep the realism but that as soon as you got your first advanced tech you'd get back to X-Com levels of destructibility. Can't believe that never occurred to me before! Shame it's two years too late.

The buildings can have non-destructible support columns that don't block LOS but explain why the second floor hasn't come crashing down. Or you can make these columns destructible but much tougher than the walls.

Yeah, that's exactly the solution we're going with. Everything in a building except the floors and support columns is destructible, but you can't actually collapse the building.

However, you took it a little far by arguing the best ANY developer could hope for was to match X-Com - I suggest you go check out the game I quoted - Silent Storm.
And no, this was by far not an AAA game. I'm still with you if you say in Goldhawk's league, matching Silent Storm would be a little much to ask for.
Let's see. Is there a game that offers a similar degree of destructible terrain? With impressive explosions that blow holes in the ground and terrain, forming craters and leveling buildings?
Maybe something low-tech and indie? Hmmm. How about Minecraft?
....
Xenonauts changed relatively few things from X-Com, but most things that were changed ended up falling short of the original. This is why, if I want my X-Com experience these days, I'm much more inclined to fire up OpenXCom (which offers all the original had and more) than I am to fire up Xenonauts. Ain't that a little sad?
....
Maybe I'm too harsh on you guys - and you don't deserve too much criticism, so much is for sure. You went out to make an X-Com remake and saw it through - many, MANY similar projects failed beforehand, and those that brought up a final product are all worse than Xenonauts, imo. Well, except for OpenXCom. (Most of which was made by a single guy and happens to be free - how did that happen?)

No offence taken - my previous post was just my musings on the subject of destructibility, I thought it was an interesting topic. Thanks for the well-wishes too. I think your post highlights some of the issues with regards to destructibility, though - OpenXCom and Minecraft both have superior destructibility, but that requires much less effort in those games because they have relatively primitive graphics. But yeah, you're right that that's something we've brought on ourselves and we could have chosen a more primitive style to enable more interesting destructibility. I wasn't really willing to do that for the first game, though, because I'd seen so many attempts at a remake try and fail because they would inexplicably try and change the formula ... and every time the fans (including me) would say "Why not just remake it properly?". So I just decided we'd do the remake by the numbers, because that gave us the best chance of success.

You're also right about Silent Storm having some really impressive destructibility in it. I've played a bit of it, but only a few missions (I seem to remember the friendly AI turn took so long EVERY TURN on one mission that I just ragequit). It's kinda a different sort of destructibility, though, isn't it? As in it's more centred around small maps and has buildings made up of lots of different materials that have different penetration and destruction properties? X-Com is more about being able to flatten everything in the map, including stuff like hills, but Silent Storm was more about shooting through walls and floors and stuff with different calibers of weapon? I seem to recall it seemed more suited to a Jagged Alliance than an X-Com game, where the focus was more on a large number of different ballistic weapons (indeed their penetration properties allowed another way of differentiating them from one another).

I have to say, even if I don't mind that much if the game will lack destructible environments is that technology seems to have gone backwards when regarding this stuff. When I played Silent Storm or X-com back in the day I could only dream what the next game-engine would let me do!

Yeah, I do agree with the sentiment as a gamer even if I can see the development reasons why it happens

 

[rezaf]

You're also right about Silent Storm having some really impressive destructibility in it. I've played a bit of it, but only a few missions (I seem to remember the friendly AI turn took so long EVERY TURN on one mission that I just ragequit). It's kinda a different sort of destructibility, though, isn't it? As in it's more centred around small maps and has buildings made up of lots of different materials that have different penetration and destruction properties?

Map sizes in S2 vary greatly, and how much is destroyed depends on a lot of factors. Anything made of wood can easily be penetrated even by small arms fire, concrete requires quite some bullets before a shot gets through - unless you're firing something like a laser.
The most spectacular destruction I ever caused myself was by blowing up a gas tank in a basement - bodies of the soldiers in the building above came raining on the other end of the map. It was glorious - even though my own soldiers I had in said building shared their fate.
Another memorable moment was when Panzerkleins (one of two big downsides of S2) started appearing, but I didn't have any yet. Dealing with them had me empty most of my clips and utilize a ton of explosives on a map with a slope on which the PKs patroled and a building behind. When the battle was finished, the building looked like WW1 just happened...
Anyway, I don't really see how this is vastly different from X-Com, where you usually also don't level the map COMPLETELY. Well, at least I tend not to when I can help it.

Turn-times in Silent Storm are indeed atrocious and the other big downside of the game.

I can understand why you resort to the "indestructible supports" solution, but to me, it isn't a solution at all - at least I have to admit you're now matching mid 90s tech, even if you still fail to match that of the end 90s.