so now I'll try to give you some good news to counter-balance that. So that's the bad news we need to at least finalise the UFO design language before we can properly announce the game. Xenonauts 2 has some way to go before we're at that stage, particularly because now we're working in 3D it takes more effort to make even good-quality art assets look good (in a 2D game you just stick the pretty art in the game and that's that, but in 3D you need to make sure all the materials, lighting and render settings are all done right to get maximum effect.) To be honest, Xenonauts only started looking presentable about 50-60% of the way through development and the real polishing didn't come in until it was 80-90% done. The other art issue is that of in-game screenshots we're not yet in a position where we can show off high-quality in-game art assets. but if we're not 100% certain what the UFOs will look like yet, it's a bit difficult to finish it.
It's going to be a really cool image and the captured UFO is a major plot point. We're therefore making sure we get things right with the UFO designs this time, but this is awkward from an art perspective because the "main promo image" (the X2 equivalent of the "command room" image from X1) features a captured UFO in an underground Xenonaut hangar, surrounded by the various Xenonaut staff etc. This negatively affected the gameplay too, as it forced us to make the UFO hulls indestructible (reducing tactical possibilities) and it led to situations where players found tiles around the edge of UFO hulls to be unexpectedly blocked for line of sight / fire purposes when the tile grid failed to cope with the curve of the hulls. What we want to avoid is a repeat of the UFO problems we had in X1, where we designed some cool-looking UFOs and then found putting them in the ground combat missions to be a rather painful experience. The artist who was working on them (the UFO artist from Xenonauts 1) has had to drop out because of the demands of his full-time role, and the work was already proving more difficult than we expected. The most obvious of these centers around the design of the UFOs, which we haven't yet finalised. That unveiling may be a little further away than we thought thanks to a few snags coming up with the promotional art. I hope everyone had a happy Easter, and I figured that I should probably post something up to explain what we've been working on lately with regards to Xenonauts 2 given the unveiling of the game has not yet happened. Like I said, I wonder if this is even possible. I guess that it may also need to do some reprogramming to the UFO behavior, so the UFOs go into "base attack" mode early and often, with a priority to target the "battery" bases over the "big" bases at first. Not to mention they would also help reduce the "terror index" of the area they are assigned to (although guess this would need some reprogramming so as to make the reduction of the bases vs the increase because of alien activity balanced (maybe have the aliens go for terror missions more often?)). Modifying the base creation system so it would be possible to create various small (and I guess cheap) "anti-aircraft battery" sites that could be peppered throughout the world map, which would give out small boosts to radar range (guess they may need to be very small) and will "intercept" UFOs that get on their area, trying to shoot them down.
Xenonauts 2 base defense mission mods#
Although I am not really capable of manufacturing the mods myself, there was one idea I had in my head that I wish to toss into the field, see if it's even viable.
0 kommentar(er)
