Game News Indie X-COM: Xenonauts Kickstarter Now Live

[Burning Bridges]

I think I asked this in another Xenonauts thread but don't think there were any replies: does anyone have (links to) any old posts from the Xenonauts developer saying how much of his money he invested and into what? I'm pretty sure I can remember there being specific budget info at the very start of the project, but I can't find it anywhere anymore. Am I confusing it with another game perhaps?

I think that's hard to quantify, as they have put in three years of free work. But what they have is already on level of what I - eventually - expect from eg Shadowrun returns, so there is no question this gets finished, no matter if they get 100k, 200k or 500k. I think the kickstarter rather determines how much money they will get in return for their work, and how much they can invest in the final polish, and I'm fine with that.

But as i said, I expect something in the range of 500,000. Everything else would be a travesty, considering how much other projects got for beautiful animated wallpapers, while this one is a ~75% finished piece of software.

I also really hope the best for them, because there is a time after Xenonauts. And we'd only need 5-6 good game companies like inXile, Goldhawk operating, to stop the decline.

 

[Zak]

Not far from target now.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

bros I can see the glorious stretch goals already

1) easy weapon, equipment and alien stat editing

2) total conversion modding support for W40k gudness or fighting off invading magic ponies

3) more location types + tiles for ufos to crash into

4) instant action mode + selectable map, friendly and alien tech levels etc

5) absolutely nothing related to voiceacting, xbox live or orchestral music

also fuck intro cutscene, who the hell cares about that shit in a strategy game, I bet all of you watch the jagged alliance 2 intro everytime rite, a cinematic trailer won't make joe newshit care about your outdated turn based nostalgia

 

[shihonage]

But as i said, I expect something in the range of 500,000. Everything else would be a travesty, considering how much other projects got for beautiful animated wallpapers, while this one is a ~75% finished piece of software.

Unfortunately most people simply don't get it. To them, a beautiful rendering of "in-game concept bullshit", is more interesting than an isometric screenshot of an actual game, the latter being about 500 times more difficult and time-consuming to create.

 

[Haba]

Trending toward 855% of goal

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

sgc_meltdown, 1) is almost ready, there is a guy on the forums making an app to easily edit weapons. The russian guns were made with this so its in good condition even now.

total conversion support would be awesome! It will require tons of work to create all the art required as they are using 2d sprites for everything. I would prefer 3d models for actors and leave terrain as it is.

 

[Ulminati]

tossed 20 jewgold into the pot. Looks like the first worthy successor to UFO: Enemy unknown.
I'd give it a few more days before trusting kicktraqs estimate. They gotta get past the initial spike of donations to get an accurate estimate.

sgc_meltdown, 1) is almost ready, there is a guy on the forums making an app to easily edit weapons. The russian guns were made with this so its in good condition even now.

total conversion support would be awesome! It will require tons of work to create all the art required as they are using 2d sprites for everything. I would prefer 3d models for actors and leave terrain as it is.

Excellent! Speehz Mahreenz TC incoming!

 

[DwarvenFood]

hey notch why aren't you talking this up to your fans, this is the actual hardcore tactical shooter game you should have backed

:D

 

[Wise Emperor]

We're also thinking about stretch goals. The current thinking is that we'll do a Mac / Linux port of the game if we raise $100,000, and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000. We're still looking into the practicalities of both of these, so this is not yet confirmed.
(...)

For the female soldiers, these will appear on the Soldier Equip screens with female faces and more feminine Basic Armour art (all other armour is too bulky to show off the differences between the genders). In the ground combat, they will appear the same as the male soldiers, except for female sound effects (without going into too much detail, this is due to sprite issues).

The main problem with this is actually the portraits - our character artist is extremely overworked and doesn't have time to do the 20-30 new female portraits we'll need. We're doing some tests to see if other artists can match his style before we confirm this stretch goal. If one of them can do so convincingly, female soldiers will be go.

Whenever I read something like that on Kickstarter project I imagine guys at Obsidian telling to Atari CEO's during NW2 developing "If we double the budget we will add 3 new classes Ranger, Paladin & Warlock! Because new classes are such a huge drain on resources!"
I would rather want to hear something like "If we get additional 100k we will hire talented people to outsource the part of the game that we aren't exactly good at creating it" (i.e. coding, music, etc).

 

[Ulminati]

We're also thinking about stretch goals. The current thinking is that we'll do a Mac / Linux port of the game if we raise $100,000, and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000. We're still looking into the practicalities of both of these, so this is not yet confirmed.
(...)

For the female soldiers, these will appear on the Soldier Equip screens with female faces and more feminine Basic Armour art (all other armour is too bulky to show off the differences between the genders). In the ground combat, they will appear the same as the male soldiers, except for female sound effects (without going into too much detail, this is due to sprite issues).

The main problem with this is actually the portraits - our character artist is extremely overworked and doesn't have time to do the 20-30 new female portraits we'll need. We're doing some tests to see if other artists can match his style before we confirm this stretch goal. If one of them can do so convincingly, female soldiers will be go.

Whenever I read something like that on Kickstarter project I imagine guys at Obsidian telling to Atari CEO's during NW2 developing "If we double the budget we will add 3 new classes Ranger, Paladin & Warlock! Because new classes are such a huge drain on resources!"
I would rather want to hear something like "If we get additional 100k we will hire talented people to outsource the part of the game that we aren't exactly good at creating it" (i.e. coding, music, etc).

So will we get tranny soldiers at $300.000?

 

[Wise Emperor]

Special ability: Alien Confusion.

 

[Krash]

This looks fucking brilliant (except for the combat art style). Donated.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Trending toward 855% of goal

 

[oldmanpaco]

Donated as well. Already made it's goal in two days.

 

[Thane Solus]

Donate 20$ since the Emperor said so.

"it is known"

 

[mindx2]

They just posted their SurveyMonkey with stretch goals to vote on:

• • Mac / Linux port – The game will be ported onto Mac / Linux platforms for release, and hopefully for beta too.
  • Female soldiers – We’ll add female soldiers to the game, with 25-30 female portraits and modified Basic Armour soldier art. Battlefield sprites will remain unisex.
  • Soviet Town terror tileset ($40k) – the current terror tileset is an American town. To fit with the Cold War theme, we’ll put in an alternate tileset for the Soviet bloc countries using Soviet-style architecture.
  • Military Base tileset ($40k) – this tileset would allow us to put military terror sites in the game, where aliens have attacked a military base and you are sent in to deal with them.
  • Indoor missions – these would be missions where combat squads are sent into large buildings or into underground bunkers to clear out an alien strike team. We can mostly re-use the Xenonaut Base tiles for this, so this will be a $25k item.
  • Reaper (Chryssalid) Hive tileset ($40k) – in addition to the normal alien base missions, we will add Reaper (the Xenonaut equivalent of Chryssalids) Hive missions to the late-game. These would feature “nodes” that spawned infinite numbers of Reapers until destroyed. Yes, I have been playing Space Hulk.
  • Tileset-Specific NPC Allies – we do have friendly AI soldiers in the game, but only one type. This would add different variants – police on the Industrial tileset, farmers with shotguns on the Farm tileset, mujahedeen with AK-47s on the Desert tileset etc.
  • Vehicle Combat Experience – soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.
  • Pilot Portraits and Callsigns – at the moment, the aircraft are just aircraft. This would give each aircraft a pilot portrait and a callsign, so they seem less expendable. These pilots will not level up with experience.
  • Human Psionics and Blaster Bombs – We’ve removed these from the game due to balance reasons, and we will not put them in Xenonauts. This stretch goal would bundle the game with a developer-made mod that allowed people to put them back in.
  • Memorial Screen – This would be a tab on the UI which allowed you to view a list of all your dead soldiers, including the location and time of death, their portrait and number of kills etc.
  • Proxy Grenades – These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.
  • Motion Detector – This would be a one-hand soldier item that, when equipped, will display a coloured overlay on the battlefield to show any AI movement in previous turn within range of the soldier holding it.
  • Hire a Level Designer - we will add a lot more map variation to the game before release, but we don’t have a devoted level designer. This will let us hire one.
  • Tall Grass – There’s waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.

However, their survey doesn't include the indoor option to vote on. Edit: They fixed the survey. Hiring a level designer will be my number one choice.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Hiring a level designer will be my number one choice.

I'm for that as well

then indoor mission tileset, soviet bloc tilesets, base tilesets, female soldiers and specific allies in that order

most of the others don't even look big enough to warrant a stretch goal to themselves

 

[eklektyk]

Now we are left with painful waiting period before it finally alllow us once again to save earth from *alien scum*. In Turns<as it ought to be with Xcom>

 

[OSK]

Level designer better become the first stretch goal!

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Goldhawk Interactive about 1 hour ago

By popular request, the first update on the poll results (183 votes cast) will be done in horse racing commentary style:

"Level Designer rounded the first corner in the lead but has stumbled at the first hedge and Indoor Missions is practically alongside him into the second corner. Soviet Town in third is a couple of lengths behind, just a nose in front of Military Base. Still in touch but trailing a little behind the front four is Female Soldiers, fighting it out with Reaper Hive in sixth.

Blaster Bombs / Human Psionics has taken a tumble at the first and is limping badly. His owner didn't want to him to race; judging from the noise from the crowd it seems like they don't either... "

 

[hiver]

Would donate but im out of donation sentiments totally.
Will buy, most probably if i dont get some new kwa credits while this is going on.

 

[hiver]

Would donate but im out of donation sentiments totally.
Will buy, most probably if i dont get some new kwa credits while this is going on.

 

[mindx2]

Their stretch goals are in and this is how it breaks down:

$75,000 – Hire a Level Designer - we will hire a dedicated map designer to add more variation and randomisation to the maps!
$100,000 – Indoor missions – these would be missions where combat squads are sent into large buildings or into underground bunkers to clear out an alien strike team.
$140,000 – Soviet Town terror tileset – the current terror tileset is an American town. To fit with the Cold War theme, we’ll put in an alternate tileset for the Soviet bloc countries using Soviet-style architecture.
$180,000 - Military Base tileset - this tileset would allow us to put military terror sites in the game, where aliens have attacked a military base and you are sent in to deal with them.
$205,000 – Tileset-Specific NPC Allies – we do have friendly AI soldiers in the game, but only one type. This would add different variants – police on the Industrial tileset, farmers with shotguns on the Farm tileset, mujahedeen with AK-47s on the Desert tileset etc.
$230,000 – Motion Detector – This would be a one-hand soldier item that, when equipped, will display a coloured overlay on the battlefield to show any AI movement in previous turn within range of the soldier holding it.
$255,000 – Memorial Screen – This would be a tab on the UI which allowed you to view a list of all your dead soldiers, including the location and time of death, their portrait and number of kills etc.
$280,000 – Vehicle Combat Experience – soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.
$305,000 - Pilot Portraits and Callsigns – at the moment, the aircraft are just aircraft. This would give each aircraft a pilot portrait and a callsign, so they seem less expendable. These pilots will not level up with experience.
$330,000 - Proxy Grenades – These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.
$355,000 - Tall Grass – There’s waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.
$380,000 - Human Psionics and Blaster Bombs – We’ve removed these from the game due to balance reasons, and we will not put them in Xenonauts. This stretch goal would bundle the game with a developer-made mod that allowed people to put them back in.

Link to their update and the poll results. I guess LINUX/ Mac users aren't so numerous as we were lead to beleive?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/posts/226254?ref=activity

Yeah! Level designer won the poll.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Since kicktraq is trending this shit to 385,753 this should be quite the feature rich release
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/


it deserves twice that though

if kicktraq's estimation is off I hope it'll be down to 230,000
in any case it'll be nearly a decade's worth of preorder revenue for them and help enough to get this in fine shape

 

[joeydohn]

$330,000 - Proxy Grenades – These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.
$355,000 - Tall Grass – There’s waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.

$25k for tall, flammable grass.