Storyline Questions

[eleazar]

The corpses may not actually be dead actors, but rather dummy dead body models.

I know.  But if dead actors disappear, it will be weird to find bodies laying around.

[Winter]

I'd rather that dead actors show permanently, rather than disappearing. We'll see if we can make that happen.

Regards,
Winter

[Neko]

I have to say, I agree with eleazar in that the Aliens feel very covert and "sneaky" in the first stages of the game. Now, this might be influenced by old feelings from UFO and XCOM, where the attacks began in a similar way.

The problem is that the story at the beginning does not match the beginning very well. Mumbai (and Bonn etc) are huge events. It really makes no sense to start out so big and splashy for the aliens if they want to act sneakily afterwards. There is no recognizable "motive". Now, logically they're alien, and so are their thoughts, so they don't technically need a motive. But in storytelling, things should be causally justified or they run the risk of looking random. So, why after so many huge attacks in so much time, are they stopping and doing things slowly for months? The intro delivers a great sense of immediacy, of "now or never" feeling. This is of course great to capture the player right at the start, and it does. Problem is, it's not really delivering afterwards, as things move much more slowly once the actual game starts.

In addition, any reaction to something as big as Mumbai would be much bigger than the starting PHALANX.

I think it really is important to have a feeling to capture the player with right away, to draw people into the story immediately. And the Mumbai incident is greatly written as well, but it seems "thrown out there" on the intro. Maybe the game could start with more of a feeling of cold dread, you know, the "great unknown", things happening with no one knowing what's going on, feelings of powerlessness without overt hostile actions. You know, cows disappearing, local sheriff acting weird, and then maybe proof of some-thing extraterrestial involved somehow. That would be reason enough to covertly recreate PHALANX and might be a good starting point for the game. Mumbai could be a new stage of the story, for example end of the first month or something like that, where the alien threat gets out into the public, and therefore all nations start financing and supplying soldiers, scientists etc. That would be a more natural flow of the story. 

Hope it helps!

[nemchenk]

I second Neko on this, and the various other forum users who have expressed the same feeling.

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I guess the justification for the alien behaviour is that the hive mind does not consider the last planet in the galaxy to be a threat, so they just go in there guns blazing, then retire to process the data.
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However, that does not change the fact that quite a few players find this point... just feels wrong! They feel it is the storyteller saying "Hush now! Suspend your disbelief -- all will be revealed later!"

Now, the devs have every right to implement what they think is best, what is true to their vision. What I would suggest however is a spinoff project. UFO: Alien Conspiracy (it's just an idea for a name! ), which would follow more closely in the "feel" of the UFO:EU/XCOM1 game. Namely, a covert Phalanx, covert alien activity etc.

This spinoff would not impinge on the main project, and would in fact contribute bugfixes and new features useful to the core dev team. It would not be a better story, just different.

What would the dev team feel about such an idea? I do not wish to offend, but instead help with the development of UFO:AI, while retaining a bit more of the feel of the old games.


Yours Respectfully,

nemchenk

[eleazar]

What I would suggest however is a spinoff project. UFO: Alien Conspiracy (it's just an idea for a name! ), which would follow more closely in the "feel" of the UFO:EU/XCOM1 game. Namely, a covert Phalanx, covert alien activity etc.

This spinoff would not impinge on the main project, and would in fact contribute bugfixes and new features useful to the core dev team. It would not be a better story, just different.

What would the dev team feel about such an idea? I do not wish to offend, but instead help with the development of UFO:AI, while retaining a bit more of the feel of the old games.

This is an open source project.  Anyone who wishes to has every right to branch the project and change it however they want (as long as they keep it under the GPL).  Your best bet is to consider your project a mod of UFO:AI, that simply replaces some of the scripts and dialog.

I don't speak for the devs, but at worst they would ask you to get your own forums to work on this project.

However, don't expect to quickly generate a lot of support.  If you are willing to do most of the work yourself to bring your idea to a polished state... then you might get somewhere.

[nemchenk]

eleazar, what I am proposing would actually *help* UFO:AI. It would give you more users who report more bugs, and I am certainly going to continue to submit bugfixes to the main code.

What I am proposing to address is users who come to this game, are told off for desiring features the devs do not find worthwhile, and then vanish into the cold night air. Surely as an open source project, UFO:AI want to attract as many users as possible?

[BTAxis]

Surely as an open source project, UFO:AI want to attract as many users as possible?

Not if it means making design decisions we don't like, no.

[nemchenk]

Yes, I read a similar reply in another thread. Lets leave the "force us to do things we do not want to do" issue aside for now.

More users means more bugs reported, if nothing else. There is also the larger pool of skills, not just coding but also design, artwork, etc. More users means a project is alive.

Now, I totally agree that the dev team should be free to stick to its own design. However, what I am proposing in no way forces you to do so. You get to make UFO:AI as you see fit.

UFO:AI avoids the duplication of effort and split of the userbase that a fork entails -- on the contrary, you get an even bigger playerbase. And you get to continue making your own decisions -- no "peanut gallery" is forcing you to do anything.

The only thing you have to do is make sure features that go into UFO:AI are open-ended, so that a player can use them or not use them. Set something the UFO:AI team do not want to use to "disabled", and it is as if it is not there.

[BTAxis]

On the subject of "more users", I'd like to point out that right now, we get so many forum posts that no dev has the time to read them all. You will notice that most of us only post in some sections of the forum.

[nemchenk]

Ok, so you need more devs More players -> more devs

Like I said, I am not just wasting time with hot air -- I will continue submitting patches for bugfixes regardless. It seems to me that is the best way to help the game in the short-term.

Yours,

nemchenk

[BTAxis]

Ok, so you need more devs More players -> more devs

If only it worked that way. Unfortunately, more players only means more players. Fact is that the amount people posting on the forums has exploded, while the amount of contributors hasn't.

[nemchenk]

Sorry to drone on At least this will be up for posterity...

More players means more people know about the game. This leads to the possibility of more devs contributing. Come on, BTAxis! If the game only has 5 players, that is at most how many developers it will have. If it has 500, there will probably be more. Not surely, but you can't deny that it would be probable!

I know what you are saying -- I used to lead a big open-source game for a short while. I had the attitude then, as I do now, that while a lot of forum activity may be dross, it leads to some pearls too. The trick is to harness that energy.

I really do agree with the theories put forward in The Cathedral and the Bazaar -- don't you?


Yours,

nemchenk

[BTAxis]

No, I know what you're saying, and of course you're right. But you're making it sound like the increase in devs as a result of the increase in players is somehow proportional. Which is isn't.

[Silveressa]

I otherwise we'll end up with an alien forcefield wall as an explanation for tactical map limits (this one was really used in some UFO fan-fiction!).

Actually it's  used in more than just fan fiction. A really excellent sci-fi horror novel Stinger by Robert R Mccammon 
( http://www.robertmccammon.com/novels/stinger.html ) has alien invaders set up a force field around a small Texas town before proceeding to twist the hell out of it. (there's more to it than that in the plot but I'm not about to ruin the book for everyone)

Over all though I have to agree with the points made in favor of changing it from an all out invasion to a more stealthy incursion, as it does lend more of an air of mystery to the alien menace, and meshes better with some of the mails you receive about weapons research; especially the ones that mention how "with their weapons technology they could easily decimate our planet, yet they don;t why remains a mystery etc.."

Still, aside from the back story, the in game mails really stand out as a nice mixture of believable science theory and tension building premonition.