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Xenonauts: This X-Com clone looks good and might be released
JerikTelorian
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Xenonauts
What's this? An X-Com successor that might be good?
Hey! Xenonauts is approaching some sort of Alpha, and they are taking NON-REFUNDABLE preorders.
Here is an awesome video of the Geoscape
See full size
What's this? An X-Com successor that might be good?
Hey! Xenonauts is approaching some sort of Alpha, and they are taking NON-REFUNDABLE preorders.
Here is an awesome video of the Geoscape
See full size
1 October, 1979: Extraterrestrial forces begin their invasion of Earth. Panic spreads across the globe, and nations struggle in vain to organise their ill-equipped militaries against the alien threat. A clandestine organisation dubbed the 'Xenonauts' surfaces, claiming to have been preparing to defend the planet against alien incursion since its inception twenty years ago. Though distrustful, the major global powers reluctantly give their agents authority to operate in their territory and airspace.
Xenonauts puts the player in control of an organisation tasked with defending the planet against extraterrestrial invasion. Battle the aliens with your interceptors in the skies above Earth, or attack them on the ground with your elite strike teams in tense turn-based squad combat. Build up your bases and manage your budgets carefully to keep your men and vehicles well-equipped and the aliens at bay, buying yourself enough time to research and unlock the secrets of the extraterrestrial technology. This is strategy on a grand scale; tactician, commander and quartermaster - you must master them all if you are to succeed in defeating the alien menace. Humanity's very survival rests on your shoulders.
There will be limitless replayability on offer. Advanced AI will keep the player challenged at every stage of the game, and with randomly generated battlefields for every mission and numerous distinctive alien races it will be impossible to guess what lies around a corner or on the other side of a door. A battlefield cover system and fully destructible scenery means that every battle will unfold differently, while providing the player endless tactical possibilities. Missions will be interesting and varied too, with multiple victory conditions and occasional secondary objectives keeping the combat from becoming stale and repetitive.
The game is heavily inspired by the classic X-Com series of strategy games that arrived in the mid-90s courtesy of the now-defunct Microprose. It is a labour of love for many of the team, all of whom are big X-Com fans, but we have decided to try and reinvent the game rather than recreate it. The result is a game that is neither a sequel to X-Com nor a remake. We have taken our franchise in a different direction, retaining the core mechanics that made the original so compelling but updating the settings and features of the game to fit in with the modern age. Gone are the near-future stylings of Xenonauts' forerunners, replaced by a militaristic Cold War setting and a retro-inspired art style.
Xenonauts will be single-player only and is presently only in development only for the PC. Ports will be considered closer to release date, which is currently slated for Christmas 2010.
The game is being developed by Goldhawk Interactive, an indie group that's been working on what they regard as an "X-Com upgrade". So far they seem true to the goals of the original game -- a full-featured strategic simulation with an isometric tactical battle component. It looks like they'll be selling it, and say they are aiming for a Christmas 2010 release.
Perhaps I should note this here, to prevent any confusion down the road: this won't be an X-Com clone. They are making changes they feel are important to making a better game, and some (e.g. Interception and air combat) sound pretty neat.
A note about renders: I don't have a source on this, but the Goons say that they're using the 3D models to generate sprites for the isometric gameplay. Apparently this is similar to the methods used to make sprites for Starcraft, among other things.
Features
- Geoscape as in XCom
- Isometric battle map
- Randomly generated terrain for battles
- Ability to control up to 16 soldier and four mechanized units
- Victory objectives: instead of "kill all aliens" as an objective, you might only need to capture and hold a UFO for a set amount of time
- Adding variety to weapons
- A variety of armors with more depth than in XCom -- rather than simple Kevlar jumpsuits, you might equip soldiers in heavy armor for breaching... at the expense of speed and carrying capability.
- A cover system for combat
- Soldiers can receive classroom training based on your research so that they have an edge in the field. It won't be as effective as just getting out there in the fights, but now your late-game rookies might be able to contribute a bit more.
- NPC Civilians and military. Cops will shoot aliens during a terror mission. Civilians won't run headlong into a chryssalid den. Scientists and Engineers will need to be protected during base defense missions.
- Air combat is getting an upgrade, with it's own tactical sequence. Different interceptors will be available with their own strengths and weaknesses (e.g. big payload vs. light and fast; quick vs. long range)
- And others, with details
But Jerik, there's been so many remakes and they all sucked. What makes you so sure this will be good?
This image really did it for me. Seeing the potential for complexity in outfitting your soldiers makes me giddy.
If you read the features list, you can get an idea of how they feel. I'd like to say that they seem to be fans of the game and want to preserve it's feel; all while introducing features they may not have had the computing capability to put in the first game. Also, as a small, privately funded indie dev, they're really looking to bank on the nostalgia from gamers who liked the old games, and hopefully won't push to dumb the game down to sell to a wider audience.
As people post things of importance in the threads, I'll add it up here (say if you find something cool in the forums).
Links
I found out about this on the SomethingAwful forums (from whom some of the images were shamelessly stolen). Here's a link to UncleSmoothie's fine thread.
Xenonauts Dev Page: http://www.xenonauts.com/index.php
Xenonauts Forums: http://www.xenonauts.com/index.php?option=com_agora&Itemid=53
Early Preview from Rock, Paper, Shotgun: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/16/xenonauts-the-x-com-anti-apocalypse/
Pictures
Flamethrower
"Jackal" Combat Armor
T-80 Main Battle Tank. Fuck you Mutons.
SteamID -- JerikTelorian
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
EtherealWalrus wrote: »Anyone notice how some things (mattresses and the copy machines in Highrise) are totally impenetrable? A steel wall, yeah that makes sense, but bullets should obliterate copy machines.
I don't know about you, but I always buy a bullet proof printer. Its a lot more expensive, but I think the advantages are apparent.
JerikTelorian on
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XBL: LiquidSnake2061
Eerily similar to Barney in Half-Life 1.
Probably just as much cannon fodder too. :P
I was always pissed that I was the only human group operating in the field. Nevermind the low squad cap. Where the hell are the cops during the Terror Missions when the Chrysalids are running rampant?!
More excited about this than the actual X-Com game being made.
Content: This looks really great and it seems like they got a good feel on what made X-com so incredible
Please be awesome...
get your own starcraft 2 signature at sc2sig.com
Anyway, color me intrigued. Far, far more intrigued the shitty-looking X-com "sequel" Take Two is pushing out. Looking at that map makes me want a mod which throws Defcon in there as well; screw things up too badly and get to enjoy all the pretty colors of thermonuclear war as you try to wipe out infested countries before they start lobbing nukes your way.
But mostly I just want a proper new X-Com game which doesn't suck. It looks like the graphics will already avoid the bleeding eyes issue so progress is promising.
EDIT: Five bucks says Take Two will try to get this shut down.
I don't see how they could possibly do that.
I doubt they would need to. Fanmade project? Ambitious goals remaking fan favourite game? Website consisting of nothing but concept art and target screenshots? Nothing approaching gameplay?
This game is NEVER COMING OUT.
Why you gotta be like that?
But yeah, it's probably never coming out. Getting a good new Xcom game actually is far too much to ask for.
Thankfully, we have Take Two to continue the proud tradition of trying to cash in on beloved titles with shitty sequels.
As much as it pains me to agree... well, I agree. If we're really, really, really lucky, we might see an alpha version 4 years from now before the project is declared dead and the team breaks up. Tis the nature of these things, sadly.
+1. I don't even bother getting worked up about stuff like this until I've played it twice through already to ascertain that it's not a dream or an LSD trip but actual reality we're dealing with. And frankly I'm not even sure this will get far enough along for me to play it on an LSD trip let alone in real life.
We keep seeing these attempted remakes because obviously there a plenty of people who want to see that type of game furthered but no official devs are willing to do actually do the job.
But if they wanted to actually make the game happen, they should never have gone public with it. They should have kept it a total secret until it was completely functional and just needed some testing. Now they're doomed.
Perhaps it's the insanity talking, but I'm sorta hoping that these guys are in it to win it. They seem to be going about this in a professional way, and they also seem to want this to be a for-profit exercise.
A lot of internet games crash because the time and effort to produce something for free can be a bitch, but if they're actually looking to make money off it, we might see it come around.
Also, the word from the Goons is that there exist some gameplay and actual engine renders, but that the developers don't want to release lots of rendered shots/videos without there being something worthwhile to render; they'd rather present it in a nearly finished form. Naturally I don't know if that's true or not, but maybe we'll all be wrong this time?
Part of the reason, at least for me, is that I'm sick of all the niggling little problems in UFO and would like to play something a little more refined. Things like the 80-item limit or being able to see Soldier's stats in the loadout menu would go a long way in making UFO wildly more playable.
Oh also I haven't been able to get UFO to run for more than 20 minutes on my machine without causing some horrible graphics corruption and bombing the whole damn thing.
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
Preorders are now available to fund development, but they're non-refundable so consider it a bit of a gamble.
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
As far away as possible.
Which is good, since every non X-Com group would be an active liability in that scenario.
Why I fear the ocean.
I am, however, a little confused about why Toronto has migrated to the Northwest Territories.