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Author Topic: Another X-Com's vet thoughts  (Read 7492 times)

Offline Pretend

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Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« on: March 31, 2008, 06:00:11 am »
First of all a brief introduction. I am 26 year old hardcore gamer from Finland, northern europe. One of the biggest game franchises for me has been the X-Com series and it's spinoffs. I bet I am one of the rare people who have not only completed X-Com, X-Com 2: Terror from the Deep and X-Com 3: Apocalypse but even the infamous X-Com: Interceptor. I have also played around with Altar's trilogy (UFO: Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight) which I thought was the closest thing to the original X-Com until I found this freeware project.

I played Alien Invasion to the point when it ended with a <to do> screen, so I guess you haven't quite finished it yet. However, while playing the game for several hours I noticed this and that, which things to improve. Here's a quick list (mostly just simple things):

Geoscape:
- When I had several bases I had problems keeping track on what's happening in which base. Instead of "Research on X finished" the announcements should always include the base name "Research on X finished in New York."
- Dog fight sequence needs some graphics. Even just a static videoclip like in X-Com. Better if you could raise this up to another level with some new idea.
- Maybe this is a thing in development, but I experienced 99,9% of UFOs to be harvesters. Only a couple of supply ships and no others if I remember correct. One fighter which was landed.
- Again maybe in development but the financial balance was really weird. After selling some alien equipment I had a constant 900 million or something ridiculous so that money didn't really play any role during the whole game.
- Then the big one. Imho the inventory and personnel management screens should be reworked. The interface for storage items is not good to use. It doesn't work well with the amount of different items available. And also there should be a page for hired soldiers to rename/equip/compare/hospitalize/transfer/train/cloth them. Now soldier management is spread on multiple pages.

Tactical:
- First of all I'd like to point out that some maps were brilliant, while some were way too dull and unimaginative (is that a word?). Also, about half of the maps were really small in size. And even the "big" maps were average size at best. Is this a design decision or engine limited?
- Civilians are a horrible drag. :) There could be armed police and/or soldiers on some missions helping the player out.
- Camera should focus on the source of a sound during the AI turn like in original X-Com. It's simple but great. As it is, you have no idea where that gun fire is happening if you don't have a direct visual. There could be a "?" icon moving around the map when sound fo movement is heard but no direct visual on the alien/civilian.
- After the red line when you spot an alien for the first time disappears, you have no quick way of knowing does your other soldiers see that same alien during that turn. Maybe those red lines should be toggle on/off or some other notifier if your soldier has a direct visual on alien(s).
- Line of sight in general is a bit of guessing and trying. Would the engine allow lighting the tiles/eg. fog of war (not complete pitch black) to show the soldiers visual range?
- There could be some noticeable effects between full health condition and dead. I didn't notice anything, but a wounded unit should aim poor, move slower etc. Or just collapses to the ground but stays alive (if mission is completed).
- I understand the engine has it's limitations but I missed even some miscellaneous destructive (tables and chairs), exploding (barrels) and flammable (cars) map items.

Equipment ideas:
- Landmines are a must.
- Homing eg. waypoint missile was a great fun in X-Com, but don't overpower it.
- Concussion grenade and crossbow with darts to catch some live aliens would be nice.
- Hi-tech riot shield would give new tactical opportunities. One soldier on the point would have a large shield to give a moving cover for others behind him.
- The landing craft could have a weapon which would fire reaction fire during missions.
- I would like to see later stage projectile weapons too. Lasers and plasmas are for girls.
- Jetpack (but maybe with a very limited energy). Just to get on that roof.

Other ideas:
- One of the biggest positive things to me was the great work on the ufopedia and research proposals and such. Someone has really written interesting and believeable reports there. It's the soul of this game. But make the techtree more interesting, tactical and suprising. Some techonology proposals could just be plain waste of time. And at some point you would have to decide A or B path, but not both.
- You could bring in another faction than just Phalanx and Aliens. Some big country/continent would ally/become servants with the aliens and that would bring human vs human fights too.
- Try to make the soldiers more unique. Maybe not as far as Jagged Alliance series go, but bigger differences to their stats, maybe some voice sets, different skin colors, taller and shorter ones etc etc
- Blood or whatever the aliens bleed. Acid? Anyways, this could leave blood trails to find that hiding alien you wounded already. And not to mention that gore is always good in games. :p


Well that's all I remember now. I'll be around looking if I could I help with something. I have no talent in coding, but I think I could learn the map editor fairly easy. If you need audio effects or music I might able to help. I also have talent in 2D-graphics/editing and plain ol writing.


PS. I have always hated the PSI/psionic skills and weapons which every X-Com style game throws in. Why not just skip that whole cliche and invent something different for the aliens. Maybe they could just cause fear and panic to your unexperienced soldiers if caught pants down. No psionictonydanza needed.



Keep up the excellent work!
-Pretend

Offline blondandy

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2008, 10:03:26 am »
this answers many of your points.

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/TODO/2.3

glad you are enjoying the game.

The maps need work, why not contribute?

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping

Jagger

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2008, 10:22:18 am »
Blast, I was going to reply first. I'll make some points anyway.

Geoscape, I agree, more detail, where was it, it's only a mild annoyance to me, but it would help a bit and shouldn't be too hard to implement (I'm not a coder, so I may be wrong)
I do believe they want to put something in, I think it's too hard to take them down, but it's being worked on afaik
When I've been playing there's been a reasonable amount of supply ships and scouts, it does make sense to have more harvesters than others i think though.
Change difficulty level if you find it easy. I know we all say it, but yeah.
IIRC there are sopme changes in the TODO, not sure about specifics, but it should be better than the current.

Tactical
I found some maps to be a bit big for my ply style, maybe that's a personal thing, also, maps are made by the players, you want something better, make it (I hear the map editor is not too hard to use, I haven't myself, probably for the same reasons you haven't)
I HATE the civs, that's always how I lose, some are just too hard to save, and if you leave a site, you're going to lose dozens of civs.
I don't have too much of an opinion on this, there should be some minor tweaks I think, but it's ok.
I recall there being a number in a box for each char, I think that's waht should be implemented, or something similar, your idea sounds ok.
I think this would be a bit much (personal preference), I've gotten used to the system they have, but if it was upgradfed, there'll be no complaints from me.
This one only makes the hurt die faster, I like that there's no real performance issues, if any, I think they should be minor, blame training or something.
Yeas, this one is a major engine issue, very hard to implement from my understanding.

Equipment
On the TODO
Will have to be careful with that one, I prefer the idea of robots under your control (Underpowered) which would make this not too necessary
Flashbang and run up with a stun, I think it's a bit more real, tranq darts would have to be for specific species, and only ones that you'ev biopsied, if you want to be realistic, too much craziness.
Equippable sheild, I see issues implementing that into the game, also don't think it would add enough for waht it'd take. Maybe when someone's not got enough to do, which wont be for ages (Or is someone working on this?)
This has been discussed, I think the general concensus is no, the guns are made for long range only, should not be used in tacticals.
MOre guns are on the way, needs coding, artwork, etc.
Floater armour, there's an idea in the works, wont be too many releases away (I hope)

Misc.
Needs coders, and artists. I'm sure everyone wants something along these lines (Maybe not the A OR B, but make specialising important, and harder to switch out of)
Some places will be converted as such by aliens, I think that's what the virus does, otherwise how they did it in XCOM
Needs more artists, you willing?
Some aliens don't even have blood, just air tubes that everything zooms through. Could be done, I would say no to trails though, if it came to a vote.


I know my opinion doesn't often mean much, but I'm seeing what I can do to working towards what I want from the game (When appropriate)


tl;dr  Some good points, most need contribution, do you have some skills you could put towards it? We'd loooove it, kthx :)

Aarontu

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2008, 03:39:23 pm »
Tactical:
- First of all I'd like to point out that some maps were brilliant, while some were way too dull and unimaginative (is that a word?). Also, about half of the maps were really small in size. And even the "big" maps were average size at best. Is this a design decision or engine limited?
- Civilians are a horrible drag. :) There could be armed police and/or soldiers on some missions helping the player out.
- Camera should focus on the source of a sound during the AI turn like in original X-Com. It's simple but great. As it is, you have no idea where that gun fire is happening if you don't have a direct visual. There could be a "?" icon moving around the map when sound fo movement is heard but no direct visual on the alien/civilian.
- After the red line when you spot an alien for the first time disappears, you have no quick way of knowing does your other soldiers see that same alien during that turn. Maybe those red lines should be toggle on/off or some other notifier if your soldier has a direct visual on alien(s).
- Line of sight in general is a bit of guessing and trying. Would the engine allow lighting the tiles/eg. fog of war (not complete pitch black) to show the soldiers visual range?
- There could be some noticeable effects between full health condition and dead. I didn't notice anything, but a wounded unit should aim poor, move slower etc. Or just collapses to the ground but stays alive (if mission is completed).
- I understand the engine has it's limitations but I missed even some miscellaneous destructive (tables and chairs), exploding (barrels) and flammable (cars) map items.
I would like some of these, too, though in the original X-Com, the camera did not show you where a sound was coming from.  You only heard the plasma shots while staring at the "ALIEN MOVEMENT" screen. Only a visual of some kind would make the camera show you something.

The only other thing I think would be nice is the two buttons like in X-Com that switch between soldiers. As it is, you move people around and then you have to check through everyone to see if you missed anyone's turn. Maybe the "go to next soldier and don't select this one again" button is a hotkey I haven't found yet, though.

Anyway, I think this game is awesome and y'all are doing a great job!

Offline blondandy

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2008, 04:55:49 pm »
I use the alternative HUD, then you can see which soldiers have a lot of TU left.

Offline TroubleMaker

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2008, 05:05:02 pm »
I would like some of these, too, though in the original X-Com, the camera did not show you where a sound was coming from.  You only heard the plasma shots while staring at the "ALIEN MOVEMENT" screen. Only a visual of some kind would make the camera show you something.
In real world most of people can determine the direction from where was the sound emitted. May be coders could implement a substitute for "stereo hearing" and put temporary markers on a landscape.
The markers may disappear after first soldier's movement: they will simulate "short-term" memory of real human - "I do remember that the footstep noise was heard from that passage's direction. May be someone walked there?"
And it is for player's consideration - to remember and to use or to ignore these signals.

BTW, markers may stop appearing after injury of soldier (temporary or permanent deafness).

Offline Falion

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #6 on: April 08, 2008, 04:10:09 am »
I've just started playing recently so I can't comment to heavily on the game. I do think in regards to camera views...the tilt up and down F & R range of motion are pretty limited. Perhaps in a future version, it can be increased somewhat so as to not have to look quite so much from a downward angle...when your not wanting to :) Would be very nice, to be able to look almost from behind the unit ( over the shoulder almost ) that you have selected, at times to get more of that type of perspective. I know that you Developers have "tons" of stuff to implement and this is probably of not great concern to you, but I would think it wouldn't be all too difficult to increase the camera's ROM would it?
« Last Edit: April 08, 2008, 04:19:39 am by Falion »

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #7 on: April 08, 2008, 09:52:26 am »
There is a first person view, actually (v key). It's mostly useless, though. The faces that can't normally be seen with the normal camera aren't being drawn (a measure that increases performance), so it looks like shit.

Offline Falion

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #8 on: April 08, 2008, 03:27:26 pm »
BTAxis,  yes I know about the "v" key, I looked at all the key mappings, but I highly appreciate your feedback. I was just hoping that in the next version, perhaps the camera could be tilted with the F key downwards a little bit more...maybe another 10% or so. Would probably make it easier to see more of what your selected unit's LOS is seeing, so-to-speak. Maybe, it's not possible to code this, I know zero about such things, I just think it would be nice if it could be done.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2008, 03:30:40 pm by Falion »

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #9 on: April 08, 2008, 04:07:52 pm »
Oh, it's possible. ALmost everything is possible. It's just that it's not necessarily desirable.

Offline Falion

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #10 on: April 09, 2008, 04:02:42 am »
Fair enough Sir, fair enough...still think it would be nice though.

Offline blondandy

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2008, 08:59:05 am »
No coding required. Go to the console
<http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Console> and type

set cl_campitchmin 25

Note: the cvar's advice is "Min camera pitch - under 35 presents
difficulty positioning cursor"

There is no reason you should not change this is you want to. If you
like it, I think you could make it happen each time UFO:AI starts by
editing config.cfg.

Offline razor436

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Re: Another X-Com's vet thoughts
« Reply #12 on: April 04, 2010, 06:37:34 pm »
- Line of sight in general is a bit of guessing and trying. Would the engine allow lighting the tiles/eg. fog of war (not complete pitch black) to show the soldiers visual range?

My favorite part of the game is the tactical battles, of course. The most frustrating thing about them is the line of sight (LOS). What Pretend suggested would help immensely in determining what parts of the battlefield are covered by soldiers' vision. Also, I'm not sure if this was changed in 2.3, but in 2.2.1 every time a soldier walks into a room, I make him turn left and right to make sure an alien isn't standing next to the door. I wish the LOS would cover those locations.