5punk

I don't think I've posted about this before. We might have had a few comments from Trev before the demise of the old forum, but it's worth mentioning again at any rate. It's a homage to X-Com, and almost exactly what I've been hankering after for years - a modern remake in the original style, with modern graphics and UI. This article on RPS has proven to be a fascinating read, looking at the details of how they're developing the graphics and map generator, as well as hinting at the sound. Sounds dull, but it really brings you closer to the devs. DI, as they say. I'm very much looking forward to the game.

Yeah, I've been keeping my eye on this for a while now, I'm impressed enough by both the ongoing development and the fact the team is made up of actual professionals who're being paid a wage that I paid for the pre-order about 6 months ago. I think it might be one of the few XCOM-style games to reach a proper polished release.

I also really like the idea that they've transported the XCOM style into the late 70's for Cold War fun an less future stylings.

It's about time that someone actually remade X-Com. Not improve it, no 'in the spirit of' crap, just remake the damn thing with modern graphics and UI. Hopefully they'll get it right this time.

Actually, they're improving upon it while remaking it.

Most of it is usability like UI and work on the underlying systems like AI, but the big improvement they're working on is the aerial combat, which if you're honest, is pretty piss poor in Enemy Unknown/TFTD.

Yeah, there was some room for improvement on the original, but from what I've seen of Xenonauts they're pretty trustworthy with the title. Things like having combat NPCs - SWAT teams under fire in urban maps, or mujahadeen in desert maps, and making them visually distinct depending on the tileset is something that they've said is not optional in this day of modern graphics. That to me translates as attention to detail and putting care into your design is crucial to success, which is the theory Valve go by.

Dog Pants wrote:Yeah, there was some room for improvement on the original, but from what I've seen of Xenonauts they're pretty trustworthy with the title.

Its hard to say for certain without having actually played the finished product, but they seem to have a good handle on what made the original good, as well as a good handle on what was bad. Most of the changes appear to be additions too, which is a good sign. Like Buzz says, adding some actual gameplay to the aerial combat is a good change. Old XCom dogfights were basically "Do you want to fight, fight really hard, or run away?"

Joose wrote:Old XCom dogfights were basically "Do you want to fight, fight really hard, or run away?"

Unless you've got plasma cannons, in which case even the big UFO's would fall to the basic interceptor (or two of them if for some reason you clicked the wrong button and let your fighter get close).

So, 7.1 build was released the other day and I've had a go.

It's buggy and incomplete, as you'd expect from an Alpha. The strategic view is nearly done though, mostly missing quite a bit of content and a few functions (research and production being the two main missing ones atm), but it's certainly visually good if a bit dark in tone.

The new aerial combat system is hard. Really hard. You will be sending in squadrons (a nice feature) rather than invidual craft for a while, but it does need some tweaking and polish. Certainly seems to be a good idea overall.

Ground combat is still in its infancy. It just about works, but as it seens to be the current development focus it was to be expected.

I've been playing the latest alpha build of this tonight and while still incomplete (although more complete than Buzz's experience above) it feels a shitload like UFO: Enemy Unknown. The tactical view is a bit buggy (it crashed when I got a fluke hit on a gribbly with a 50 cal burst from miles away) and is still lacking a few features, but it's definitely playable and looks lovely in both art and animation. The strategic view is almost feature complete although there's a lot of placeholder text on the Xenopedia. As Buzz says, the interceptions are hard. I lost four or five F16s and had to retreat on several occasions. They're also pretty, watching the stylised craft wheel around each other trying to get on target. Finally, a lovely touch I spotted was that every trooper you hire lists their nationality, former unit, and previous combat experience, all period accurate (I had two Canadian paratroopers who saw action in Cyprus, a Czech who had fought in Afghanistan, and a US Airborne who served in Vietnam). The late 70s setting just adds to the atmosphere. All very promising indeed.

Like I said on the other thread, I am super-mega-holyshit excited about this. If I were rich, or a genius level one man development team, this is what I would be making. THIS EXACT THING.

I still have a worried little bit at the back of my mind telling me that will fuck it up somehow, because everyone who tries to make XCom games fucks it up somehow. I've yet to see any evidence of that happening though, so I am throwing mental shoes at that bit of my mind and telling it shush.

For me the changes, outside the inevitable graphics and UI, are subtle enough to not be jarring. Only those who love the original would even know they weren't there from the start, and the adjusted setting has enough character of its own to carry it.

So, 9.2 came out this weekend.

It's quite good. There's still quite a bit of work to do, but it's certainly shaping up well. Just lost an hour and half to it (then it crashed, ).

Coincidentally I went to have a game last night, but after the painfully slow Desura download had finished I was doing something else.

Desura's weird on the download front. 9.1 took about 2 hours to download the 1 gig zip (I use the standalone versions) last week, yet 9.2 took about 10 minutes this afternoon.

v10 "Press Release" preview version came out recently, and apparently it's still going in the right direction

In other news, there's also the Firaxis remakes, which is also supposedly true to the spirit of the original. So we have indie kickstarter and A list dev house going head to head. I wonder which will turn out the more fun to play?

The Firaxis version is something of a deviation from the original. They've kept the back story and many of the units, but they've changed a lot about the engine. I hate to be pre-judgemental, but they've simplified it and they're releasing it on console, and normally those two things together do not make for a good game. However, I'll reserve my judgement until I know more.

On the RPS interview posted Yesterday, the lead designer of the Firaxis revealed he tried out an option which the community had been asking for: Hiding alien health and the damage you do to them. He enjoyed it and admitted it made the game more tension filled due to the unknown. Then went and said it would definitely be an option, implying that it's going to be off by default.

That suprises me. Mostly because it's somewhat akin to dumbing it down and it's certainly taking away from the spirit of UFO/Xcom, but it also means the game as it stands runs the risk of being a bit stale by giving away too much information and removing chance. It also makes me wonder what else they've changed outside of the TU system and squad sizes being limited to 6 max in the game (4 initially).


Xenonauts is shaping up well still. 10.2 build should hopefully squash some of the last big bugs and give a bit more content to play with. There's also going to be a Xenonauts kickstarter later on this coming week.

Xenonauts kickstarter is now live.

Bumping this I can't seem to find any newer threads.

Xenonauts has now gone gold. If you're a backer and have the Steam version, the development branch contains the release version. May still get a couple of small patches in the next week or so for crash and bug fixes, but it's pretty much done.

In two weeks, to allow review copies to circulate, it'll be properly released.

I've not played this since v14ish, last dev build was v22, so I'm interested to see the final result.

I think you just decided what I'll be playing next while feeding the boy one-handed.