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Feedback from one more XCOM vet

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JohnC2008:
Hello all,
I am a 43-year-old historian and martial arts instructor in Atlanta who has done some professional consulting for the computer gaming industry. I absolutely adored the original X-Com games and I was ecstatic to find UFO for the Mac. Thank you to everyone involved in this! I have been thoroughly enjoying this game. I am grateful for this accomplishment. The game retains the excitement and mood of the original while adding so much more. The greater variety of maps and the greater detail of story and technical explanations are extremely welcome improvements over other versions. I cannot express my gratitude for the amount of extremely good work and talent that has gone into this project. My complements to all who have committed so much time and energy to what is clearly labor of love.

I hope in some way to be able to contribute something back in return, perhaps with some small voice acting talent I have, and hopefully through the following list below of observations and comments. My apologies if any of this has been mentioned previously by others. But the size of the online forums here and various other sites listing changes and To Do items (itself work an impressive achievement) is a bit overwhelming to a newcomer:

Bugs / Problems:

I have been playing a campaign for about two weeks now, and have completed some 30 missions.  I have kept a log of issues. I have noticed very few actual bugs with the game on my new Leopard iMac. The game has only crashed once or twice (while zooming in) and I only saw a missing or blank insert screen one time.  However, on one of the first missions, an alien stepped inside of a wooden crate and could not be targeted or spotted. At another time, strange purple triangle shapes appeared right on top of some soldiers or on the spaces they just moved from. Sorry to be vague but I did not record the details of the scenario at the time. Occasionally, sound affects are also missing for weapon firings and explosions. This happens especially when the view is zoomed to maximum.

- on the map called corrupt_cityp4n units became stuck walking up the ramps on alien ships when ever they stopped on the ramps.

- several times when soldier names are edited their changed names still remain the same when assigning them to ships.

- several times when selecting between different soldiers on a map, the new unit will be continue to be identified by the name of the previous soldier.

- several times when the Storage at a base became full the base was unable to buy or produce any more objects --- even several days later after having cleared out some 50% of the storage by selling and transferring items.

- Transferred items: several times in-between saved games transferred equipment would not decrease from the base when transferred. Instead the amount being transferred increased infinitely.

- on the left side of one of the big 4-story warehouses on one of the artic snow maps the stairs did not work and units could not climb to the higher levels (sorry I did not record the map name at the time).  While jumping down from an upper floor walkway in this same building a soldier got stuck on a concrete slab in the center of the room.

- on one artic map several civilians were dressed in tropical clothing (barefoot shorts with and tank tops)

- on the army convoy map 2 aliens appeared at the start placed floating above the ground on the side of a hill wall

Concerns / Comments / Requests:

- MIA or KIA? Currently when a soldier is killed their name disappears from the screen. Dead soldiers need to retain their names so they can be quickly identified as a loss during combat.  I need to know whom on my team I have lost and whom is still with me without having to select through my whole squad again after every KIA.

- KOd Aliens? Early in the game wounded and disarmed aliens are impossible to capture by any means since there are no non-lethal options (including the but end of a rifle???  Would not a few soldiers with knives grapple with an alien to subdue him if the of fate Earth hangs in the balance?)

- Alien death sounds and weapon sounds do not reflect their distance. They are identical whether they occur right next to my units in the open or several buildings and levels away inside of structures on the other end of the map. It would be nice if they were muffled when appropriate to convey their tactical range. The effect would enhance the mood and tension as well as influence my combat decisions.

- Stunned Units: as opposed to always just killing soldiers, I would love to see the aliens make attacks that only knock out soldiers or see them send out remote devices that just stun soldiers for later retrieval and kidnapping. This would make rescuing stunned units a tactical consideration for squads, especially if captured soldiers would provide the aliens with considerable intel.

- Geoscape: an option of scrolling and moving around the world map using keyboard arrow keys would be much more convenient than having to move the mouse over to the control every time

- Jet Pack: please get the jet pack or floating armor in the game asap. That was one of the most fun items to acquire and made a huge tactical difference later in the game.

- UAV: along with small tank, please consider adding in some UAVs --- small remote flying spotters with rocket launchers. We already have such things today.  Seems like the aliens would eventually unleash something similar against the humans as well.

- Smoke Rounds: I must strongly endorse the request others have made for smoke rounds for the grenade launcher (and eventually gas rounds as well). It seems silly that smoke rounds and tear gas are common for these weapons today, but we would not have them immediately available in the future?

- Gas Masks: Why deploy poisonous gas grenades in the field but not equip soldiers with simple gas masks as a defensive precaution?

- Moving: having to wait for one soldier to finish moving before a second can begin is irritating and inconvenient. It should be possible to order one while another is still moving.

- Soldier Variety: as someone else requested, there really needs to be greater differences in their physical builds and appearance.  Also, why are there no black or Asian soldiers?

- Soldier Names: names are far too redundant. It is bizarre to have three Rachels and two Elishas along with two Kennedys in the same 8 person squad.  There are also far to many female soldiers. It seems silly that in choosing the best and toughest fighters to defend the planet we are going to have some quota system of gender preference that makes 50-60 percent of available recruits female.

- Body Counts: Is there some way to track how many aliens have been killed on a map? It is sometimes impossible to determine any death toll (and how many might possibly still remain) when some were entirely disintegrated by an attack or several were grouped together in the dark when struck.

- Grenades: grenades are not made of rubber. They will at times bounce back toward the thrower IF they are thrown too close to an obstruction or up an incline. But they will NOT bounce right back off of soft snow or grass and especially not when thrown at an angle at a wall that is also angled away from the soldier.  Common sense self-evidence reveals they bounce forward at a diagonal. This really needs to be addressed. (I do not expect super realistic physics in this kind of game but the algorithm or whatever that currently controls how thrown and rolled grenades behave is insanely frustrating.)

- grenades seem incapable of being thrown with any degree of accuracy whatsoever around corners or through 2nd floor windows directly in front of a soldier?  Grenades also cannot be rolled under cars or large trucks, but they can be thrown onto 3rd floor roofs?

- Firing Lines: Have it possible for units out of time to still check their lines of fire.  There is no way for a unit to spot an enemy position and determine without wasting movement whether or not he can take a shot next turn. A yellow aiming line of sight would help solve this.

- Destruction: as has been requested by others, there really needs to be something that is destroyable. Al these explosions and weapons firing and even wooden crates, fences, and cabinets as well as windows stay intact despite rockets, grenade impacts, and particle beam hits.  There is not even flame or smoke around as in the other versions.  This takes away from the overall experience and definitely needs to be addressed somehow asap despite whatever the limitations of the engine are.

- A tone should sound on the earth map whenever an event occurs. Currently only a small text message appear.

- The silent radar images on the earth map during UFO intercepts are fine. It actually adds tension and the feel of observing events far away as if in a command center. No additional graphics are really necessary. However, it would be more exciting and dramatic to hear the sounds of the pilots as they close in, report the UFO behavior, respond to commands from ground control, launch weapons, react to be fired upon, etc. [I would be happy to offer some voice acting audio clips for this]

Questions:

- After some 30 missions in the current game no more UFOs are appearing for me to track or shoot down. Instead, they are crashing on their own or continuing minor terror strikes.  Additionally, I still cannot research any alien ship technology ---- despite having 8 bases with some 15 labs full of unoccupied scientists and having captured several intact scout and harvester ships stored in hangers. It tells me I am still missing material or information.  Is this a result of some error on my part or the game being incomplete? 

- Unit Rank? After completing 25+ missions and having killed more than 30 aliens my soldier is still ranked as a mere rifleman??? 

- Music: is there a way to easily change out the default music? I have a good collection of creepy sci-fi mood music that would be ideal and after playing the game for hours on end the current music become monotonous and distracting so that I just turn it off.

To Do help?

- Footsteps? sound effects for soldiers walking on various terrains and floors (soft and hard ground), and for movement of different alien species or civilians. I would be happy to contribute audio samples to this if they are still needed.

- Voices? Exactly what kind of voice acting is still needing for the game? Alien voices communicating? Alien death screams? Alien attack cries?  Soldier commands or reactions? Soldier and civilian screams and cries? Again, I would be happy to contribute audio sample to this if they are still needed.

Again, I salute everyone involved in this and offer my sincerest thanks for a so far satisfying and entertaining game. I am astonished something of this quality is freeware. Thanks.

John C.
Atlanta

knightsubzero:
i think most of the stuff you speak of is being considered already, with some stuff tipped for the next release.

there is already ways to capture aliens, you need to research alien breathing aparatus, then you get the stun gun.

some of the bugs will surely be addressed, but im sure reporting them is a great help.

destructable environments is tipped for a future release, it requires a large change in the game engine, so it may be in a future (but not the next) release.

there is a new geoscape in the next version (i am pretty sure).

all the black soldiers got killed first, so there are none left...

i definately aggree on the female thing, i tried to find male soldiers (cause i wanted to name them like band of brothers  ;D) but it was difficult.  Its good to have the girl soldiers, dont get me wrong, but maybe not so many.

i hate it how your troops names dissapear after death.

your grenade physics sounds like a great set of ideas.

i think the game kinda wraps up around the 30 missions mark (cause its still in development)

ranks are getting a review in the next release  :P

im sure your sound skills will be put to good use.

p.s. by next release i mean the next major release, there may be a small bug fix release.

JohnC2008:
Thanks. Good to know about the future plans.

I knew about stun guns, but in the earliest missions there were times when injured aliens would get disarmed and roam about but there was no way to just try to knock them in the head or throw a net over them, so we had to shoot them.

Btw, I forgot to include another thought: there are several sci fi films in which aliens use mind control on humans (Invaders From Mars, or Puppet Masters, for instance) would be cool if at some point aliens closed with soldiers or civilians and instead of killing them slapped some sort of pod thing on their back to turn them into mindless automatons, that then had to be killed or captured. The original game used psionics at one point but it was less interesting.

Any idea how far along the current game goes along?

JC

knightsubzero:
there is consideration for rifle butt bashing, there is a topic about mellee weapons.

i am not in the dev team so im not sure about how long it will take.

Pretend:
Good points from JohnC2008, I would agree on most of them. Especially those which are "easy" to make happen.

btw, what martial art do you teach?
I prefer shotokan karate myself. :)

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