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Author Topic: Storyline, tech tree, general content design  (Read 53915 times)

Offline BTAxis

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« Reply #30 on: May 01, 2006, 11:57:43 pm »
This isn't about realism here, XCOMTurcocalypse. It's just some nonsense we made up to act as the background setting for the game. Stop splitting hairs.

Also, mankind didn't colonize any other planets, because the game is set roughly 80 years from now. It's not Star Trek.

Offline XCOMTurcocalypse

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« Reply #31 on: May 02, 2006, 11:46:34 am »
You don't know what can happen in 80 years at this age,friend.But Fusion Reactor as an alternative energy source could at least enable us little guys to set up observation/exploration posts in Moon and Mars(some archaeology here too) which could be mysteriously disabled prior to invasion(that could be a new research topic-Reactivating the Outposts with the reward of Alien Athmospheric entry routes).that small sentence could add spice to the game.

In such games and times,some decent storyline along with a tasty screenshot could attract a potential sponsor.Who knows?

Always read new ideas.

Offline BTAxis

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« Reply #32 on: May 02, 2006, 11:59:13 am »
This is a free project, though. The people who make it aren't out to make money off it.

Offline XCOMTurcocalypse

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« Reply #33 on: May 02, 2006, 12:14:03 pm »
Heck,I was thinking about the success of the project.I think I'll be off posting this game to any forum about X-COM i see.

I meant it all in kindness.Sadly I don't know how to code stuff.

jagreen

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« Reply #34 on: July 14, 2006, 02:31:03 pm »
I see The Human Technology Stages in this way:

Human technology --> Actual human technology.
Pre-alien technology --> Alien based technology, bad imited. They have some limitations, more size, more weight, less precision, some lacks.
Alien technology --> Alien technology imited exactly. But disegned now for the human raze.
Arcane technology --> A more superior technology of another alien race. :o

Offline Bandobras

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« Reply #35 on: July 14, 2006, 03:42:48 pm »
What about using the alien weapons you find on the battlefield (after research). This is one the nice things in XCOM --- you don't have to buy nor to manufacture, just pick up and shoot.

Also, could you visit the Equipment/Obsoletable Equipment page on the wiki and compare you ideas to our actual progress and short-time plans?

Rei

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« Reply #36 on: August 08, 2006, 01:30:55 am »
I agree with the storyline critique: if the aliens are *overtly* attacking the world, then there won't be some tiny, secretive unit fighting them.  We need a *covert* attack that is receiving a *covert* response by governments.

So, why a covert response?  I, too, like the idea of it being fear of global economic chaos that leads them to hide this.  Another motive could possibly be fears that large-scale preparations to combat aliens would be taken as a "invade now!" sign, but having alien ships taken out by small squads could be interpreted as anomalous local military actions or perhaps even have the alien commanders doubt humans were involved in the loss of the crew.  I.e., the goal of humanity would be to recover enough alien technology and be able to mass-produce it *before* the aliens catch on that we're preparing.

One complication: you're tasked to *save* civilians, yet they're walking leaks.  I think this requires a "Men in Black" style memory wipe for it to be plausible.  Perhaps not a complete memory wipe, but more something like blurring/damaging their short-term memories so that they'll doubt what they think they saw and be more likely to believe what they were told (meanwhile, a cleanup crew tries to undo the damage).

Of course, you need a motive for the aliens -- and not that they're "evil"!  They need to see us as a long-term thread to their existence.  So, perhaps a machinma (acted out by 3d models in a gaming engine) opening of:

----

SCENE: Darkened science laboratory; computer screens and LEDs are the only things visible.  A sudden flash like a laser weapon illuminates the scene, then settles down into a soft blue glow; you can see some sort of strange reactor taking up most of a large room.

Voiceover: "It was our finest hour.  Who would have guessed, after the economic disaster trying to harness fusion at DEMO, that such a simple solution to powering our dreams was within reach: zero point energy, power from the fabric of space.  It was almost too good to be true.

SCENE: As the text proceeds, the reactor dims, turning the room back to blackness.  In from the blackness shine stars, and we see an alien spacecraft headed toward a strange planet.  On the surface of the planet, sickly column of flame rises beyond the atmosphere

Voiceover: "It was."

SCENE: The spaceship shown previously lands on the surface in a hellscape.  Alien bodies lie everywhere.  Buildings are torn apart.  Trees are snapped off and all aligned in one direction from a massive blastwave.  Heat shadows are burned into the surface from objects half-sheltering what was behind them -- bridge pillars, trees, bodies all burned into the ground like sick artwork.  In the distance, the columns of flame still shoot up from the ground as the aliens step out of their ship to survey the destruction.

Voiceover: "Our new technology was our godsend, and our economy grew addicted to it a heartbeat.  But our blessing was their hell.  The Arcturan's planet had the misfortune of orbitting through a mirror node to ours, and the disruption of the fabric of space that we bled power from ripped apart their world time and time again."

SCENE: The lead alien surveying the scene raises an arm to the air and screams in an otherworldly voice.  The image fades out and fades in, looking up at a 3d hologram of a human woman standing at a podium.  She continues, in the same voice as the voiceover.

Woman: "This was our doing.  They have every reason in the world to want to destroy us, or worse, and God help us, they're getting ready to."

SCENE: The view changes and you can see that the woman is speaking before some sort of futuristic teleconference with two dozen attendees; all but one person is holographic.  The non-holographic person wears a PHALANX military uniform and sits at a separate table by her side.  Everyone else appears to be a high ranking official of some sort from all over the world and is gathered around an oval-shaped table.  On a screen behind the woman, you see a blurry image of a spacecraft headed over earth.

Woman: "SIGUR-8 captured this image of an unknown craft entering earth's atmosphere last Thursday at 14:21 GMT."

SCENE: The crowd murmurs.  The woman makes a hand gesture at the screen and the image.  Behind her, you can see a scene of dead civilians scattered around a damaged building.   The murmurs fall to dead silence.

Woman: "This is Selengee, Mongolia, the following day.  There were no survivors."

SCENE: The camera changes again.  The woman gestures repeatedly, flipping through pictures.

Woman: "Notice the entrance wound here.  From what we understand, this was done by plasma, fired in a beam at chest level."  (Waves)  "We're not sure what caused this, but whatever it is, it makes our best weapons seem like toys by comparison."

Holographic Politician Man: "What was the point of this?  Terror?"

Woman: "They only recovered the bodies of twelve individuals.  Three are missing and presumed to have been abducted."

SCENE: The crowd has trouble taking in the scene.  A holographic politician leans foward.

Holographic Politician Man: "They're studying us.  They know nothing about us, who, we are, what we can do."

Military Man: "Most probably."

Woman: "However, they will, soon."

SCENE: Camera changes to a holographic woman wearing politician clothes.

Holographic Politician Woman: "Then we need all of our forces on high alert.  We need to collectively deploy everything we have in order. . ."

Military Man: "Yes, make them think that they have to act now?  Destroy the economy with worldwide terror?  Is that the plan?"

Holographic Politicial Woman: (beat) "Then what?  Do we just let them kill us?"

Holographic Political Man 2: "We can try to negotiate.  If we learn to live without power, yes it will take years to rebuild,"

Holographic Political Woman 2: "Negotiate? We incinerated their homeworld!"

Holographic Political Man 2: "You want to fight a losing. . ."

Woman: "Everyone!  With your blessing, and your funding, we will combat them with their own technology.  We will avoid leaking what is going on by cleaning up attacked sites and suppressing the memories of witnesses.  In short, we hope to prepare for war without letting the Arcturans know that we are preparing."

SCENE: Camera changes to the man sitting next to her.  He rises and gestures at the screen.  A 3d "PHALANX" logo appears.

Military Man: "Allow me to introduce the Greater European Union's planetary defense proposal. . . PHALANX."

SCENE: The camera flies over his head and moves toward the screen until the PHALANX logo takes up the entire scene.  Light flashes behind it, and the camera "lands" atop the 3d shape so that it spreads out in front of the camera like ground, beneath a starry sky.  With a flash, a pillar of fire rises in the distance with a sickly red glow.  The words "UFO: Alien Invasion" appear and hover in the sky as, from the horizon, angry aliens race in, guns drawn, charging the camera.  They attack it and the image disappears.  The game begins.

----

Modelling work needed for the intro:

With only a few scenes, it should be relatively simple.  

First scene: Energy laboratory
Needed: Computers, scientists (we already have models), reactor, miscellaneous equipment (mostly just texture work, as lab equipment tends to be made of geometric shapes)

Second scene: Burning alien planet
Needed: Alien spacecraft (already have), planet (many ways to create; doesn't even actually need to be 3d since it's so big), "devastation" effects (animated columns of flame, reddish clouds and smoke, etc)

Third scene: Alien planet surface
Needed: Aliens (already have), Landed spacecraft (already have), planet surface, dead aliens (already have), planet surface debris of all kinds, "devestation" effects from the previous scene.

Fourth scene: Conference
Needed: Conference room (simple and high-tech looking).  Podium.  Table.  Seats (already have).  People (have models, but need clothes).  Empty screen.  Misc room decor, but not much.
Picture1: Satellite image of earth (3d not needed), alien spacecraft, airbrushed reentry flames.
Picture2: Dead civilian model (have), airbrushed to have wounds and hide 3d flaws; broken building in background.
Picture 3: Like picture 2.
Picture 4, 5, etc: Possible, but not necessary, more pictures of the same scene to flip through.
PHALANX Logo: 3d model.
UFO AI Text: Preferably 3d, made from a font.
Last scene: All components created previously.

Rei

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Storyline, tech tree, general content design
« Reply #37 on: August 08, 2006, 01:50:07 am »
Oh, one more thing:

Can we have a poll?  There seem to be several story ideas, so can we have a poll to see which one people like most, so we can finally settle on it?

boveele

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Storyline, tech tree, general content design
« Reply #38 on: January 12, 2007, 01:01:51 pm »
hmmm....

 Design ideas.


 ... well.... ... to be honest... their are some tiny things id like to see. If even ever possible.

 The addition of attacking intercepted Alien supply ships, and gaining LOTS of materials from it, rare to have happen, but happen.

 When the Phalanx team laves the base, you hear a little quiet jet engine take off. And if its the newer engines, you hear the buzzing crackling sound of a high powered transformer as it moves to the target. After the ship leaves the base, the noise from the launch would decrease in decibel.

 When you are looking at the base, you are able to see little animations of the laboratory as they tinker with the technologies selected. Or something showing that kind of animation, or picture in the background while looking at the Scientists.

 The ability to send out the interceptor to a part of the world to hover and search for an alien base to show up. As if following bees back to their nest. Once you follow one and loose track, another will pass right by you as that bee returns to the hive.

 In regards to destroying stuff in game.... can we have incindiary rockets for the rocket launchers? Some times I feel like a nut... some times I want to feel like a Pyromaniac on the Phalanx team....

 When it comes time for the end of the month funding if we do more activity over a country that had sided with the aliens, can we earn back their funding by removing the alien entities on their land?

 Possibility of getting a tech tree visibly in game in the research window, it does not show the future, but it shows what you have researched. Not exactly fancy or anything, more just a branch by branch expansion of what you discover.

 Just some things I think would be neat to see. I dunno what is possible, but... surely it would be neat little stuff to see.

 As usual.. I have no ability to code, but... if I was ever able to write code I surely would try to help. In the instance of Map making... I am giving it a shot!

Respectfully,
H0Z3R

Dim4uk

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« Reply #39 on: February 01, 2007, 03:29:27 pm »
First I want to support the team and wish luck :wink:

It's kinda strange to give ideas to a demo that looks more perfect than eny other demo i seen on the market today but anyway i have one:

Aliens and Humans can jump from roof of 4 or even 8 level house? i see the difference between game and reality but this is something realy beyound that  even considering the fun factor so what i am sujesting is to add special jum-jet suit for humans to do that. the rest of humans should jump at heigth no bigger than 2 levels and same the weaker aliens while the Warmonks don't need that.

the suit itself can be medium armor, something better than kevlars.

Trig

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« Reply #40 on: June 14, 2007, 10:57:34 pm »
Sorry to bump an old topic with my first post.

I would like to say I like how UFO AI has dumped the player into the start of the war.. its very much XCOM: UFO EU/Defense.

However I do have a few observations I may:


1) I feel that the alien activity starts too heavy and linear, I know you guys aint aiming for an exact 'revamp' but in the UFO EU the missions were generated randomly from a list of locations and then a random map picked and usually a very small/small UFO with 1-3 occupants. After looking through the source code I can see this would require quite a few changes though, so I wont hold my breath.

2) The alien AI is actually pretty good, however it often feels like the aliens have too many AP (action points), maybe your AI is too good ;) I've also noted the alien spawns appear to be random positions and they kill civilians in a different order. (I envy the AI coder who was able to do some pretty sweet LOS (line of sight) calculations - math that I would probably struggle with !)

3) I found there to be quite a few more terror missions and not a lot of cattle mutilation missions. The sectoids love their cow blood!

4) The music is very good there are some great tracks in there, however I feel it could do with a few more sinister tracks like the Wom-wom-wom midi 'evil terror'. Earth being infiltrated/invaded is quite a scary concept to me.

5) I noticed a few errors on the World Map, for me Bristol appeared in France. I found it nice however that the list of cities included my hometown :D The world map could also benefit from an overhaul in its resolution, i'm curious to whether it could be mapped onto a sphere (with the base texture being a higher resolution).

I am so passionate about this game because UFO Enemy Unknown was my favourite TBS of all time. My observations are not criticisms just my point of view and I don't wish to challenge any conceptions that may already be in the developers minds.

Thanks :D

Offline BTAxis

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« Reply #41 on: June 15, 2007, 12:33:28 am »
A lot of those issues will be addressed if/when the campaign system gets revamped.

ender101

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« Reply #42 on: June 15, 2007, 02:36:28 am »
I made a suggestion on how to improve the overall Intro story. The story now combines elements of the original back story proposed and the final one. It introduces a few more implied elements that can play out later in the game, giving the intro some actual meaning through gameplay.

Lots of game intros miss the chance to tie in actual game story elements with intro story. Makes the whole game experince a little more fun. :)