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[Ozyton]

Adding an outline to stuff is something that's actually pretty common from what I understand. It's called occlusion, I think, and it's what allows games like Left 4 Dead to render outlines of other players through walls, or for RTS games to render an outline of units obscured by objects in the foreground. They should be able to figure something out.

[gimli]

It can't be that hard to implement. 

[Virtz]

You can have two ways of how sprites are made. Hand drown, or converting 3d models (so if something is 2d, it doesnt mean it must be pixel art or hand drawn)  Also good 3d is actually more expensive and harder to do than 2d. From programing point of view, to detail and complexity 3d will always be more expensive and harder as a whole to do than 2d games.

Anyway I do not like that they are going 3d with this game, as it means they need to meet some minimum things/quality to make the game look at least OK, and that is a lot easier to do if they went 2d.

Well from what i heard SNK decided to make their latest King of Fighters game in 3D mainly because high quality spritework was too expensive.
Then again maybe they decided to go on with the times and this is just an excuse.

Well, think about it from a scaling point of view.

It's harder to create a model, texture it, and rig it (and whatever else you do with 3d models these days before they're ready to animate), than it is to draw a picture. Drawing a 2d animation, on the other hand, you have to draw a picture for every single frame, for every distinct direction, for every overlay (such as equipment), for every character type. In 3d you don't have to do the whole modelling, texturing and rigging again for every animation. You just make an animation. You can even reuse the same animation for multiple different models and equipment sets.

So basically the more animations you intend to have, and the more equipment and characters you intend to apply the same animations to, the more it starts to pay off to go with 3d.


Plus they already needed 3d modelling for Xenonauts. They made the graphics from 3d pre-renders they later drew over. Probably cause hand-drawing organic shapes in isometric perspective is a nightmare.

[Cruxador]

I didn't even realize Xenonauts 1 was supposed to be finished...

[Vilanat]

A very important element of this could be creating an outline shader for the game that adds a thin black outline to all of the objects; this was actually something we used extensively in Xenonauts 1 and it played a large part in making props and units "pop" from the background. Unfortunately it's much harder to do in 3D than it is in 2D, but we'll spend some time on it and see if we can make it work.

In Unity it's pretty easy to add an outline.

[somebody]

Is the amount of time units used for firing weapons and such still going to be a ratio based on the individual units?

[RAM]

Unity is fine and all for the appearance, but what of the actual gameplay? Is there any hope of Apocalypse-style terrain destruction?

[gimli]

^ The various objects are destructible in X1 [IIRC all of them, except for the UFO hulls, but I am not 100% sure.]
Anyway, I will ask about the "possibilities of destruction" in X2 on the official forum, maybe we will get an answer. It would be cool if we could blow up whole buildings or parts of a building and let it collapse.

[BurnedToast]

Biggest problems I had with xenonauts 1:

Difficult to figure out line of sight to see if you had a clear shot before you moved. It all felt so unintuitive, I'd have my shot blocked by the corner of a car that should be trivial to shoot over, or once I had a shot curve at virtually a 90 degree angle to hit my tank with friendly fire because the game decided it was somehow blocking my line of sight. I even once had an alien shooting at me around a corner that I had a 0% chance to hit back, that should never happen, you should always have at least a small percent chance to shoot him if he can shoot you.

Poor weapon balance. Percent based TU costs for weapons completely ruined the lmg and sniper rifle and made the shotgun (and to a lesser degree pistol) godlike. With high rank soldiers I could either take one sniper shot, or run across 25% of the map, take two point-blank shotgun shots, then still have the TU to duck back into nearby cover.

Enemy psionics were pure and utter BS. No defense (bravery did virtually nothing), no counterplay, no strategy, nothing.... just constantly getting slammed every turn and hoping RNG favors you. I kept expecting to be able to research some kind of tinfoil psi defense hat or armor or something but nope, nothing.

If they can fix those problems it should probably turn out to be a pretty decent game.

Edit: I'm a little sad to see they are redesigning the air game to be completely different. I hated it at first, but after a while it grew on me and I thought it was kind of fun.

[Krevsin]

I'd actually really enjoy a standalone game based entirely on the airgame from Xenonauts. Make it a iOS or Android type thing, it'd be perfect for tablets.

[Sharp]

I'd actually really enjoy a standalone game based entirely on the airgame from Xenonauts. Make it a iOS or Android type thing, it'd be perfect for tablets.

Steambirds
http://armorgames.com/play/5426/steambirds

[Majestic7]

UFO Aftermath/Aftershock/Afterlight did one thing very well - there were different damage types and they had different uses. So it wasn't just plasma being better than laser, while laser being better than projectiles. Rather, certain enemies were vulnerable to damage X while other types were vulnerable to damage Y. It was thus wise to have different types of weapons in your squads.

I think this would be nice to see in some other game too, especially if the projectiles would have different effect on the enviroment. Such as gauss rounds going through anything, explosives destroying the surroundings, lasers igniting fires etc.

[Ozyton]

I think Xenonauts had damage types as well but I think it was limited to 'kinetic' and 'energy' (and I suppose stun, too), but you basically never wanted to use kinetic because the aliums were more resistant to it.

EDIT:

Difficult to figure out line of sight to see if you had a clear shot before you moved. It all felt so unintuitive, I'd have my shot blocked by the corner of a car that should be trivial to shoot over, or once I had a shot curve at virtually a 90 degree angle to hit my tank with friendly fire because the game decided it was somehow blocking my line of sight. I even once had an alien shooting at me around a corner that I had a 0% chance to hit back, that should never happen, you should always have at least a small percent chance to shoot him if he can shoot you.

There's a mechanic in the game where if you're standing at the corner of a building you can sort of shoot around it. It's supposed to simulate being able to peek around the corner, shooting, then ducking back. It's similar to how objects you're adjacent to don't apply their cover value to your shot, even if you're crouched behind it.

[Kot]

The first one ever got finished? Huh, I guess I am very far behind with news.

[redwallzyl]

yes i believe it finished.