16
News:
New board
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
17
Offtopic / Arma Tactics
« on: January 31, 2013, 11:22:00 am »
Another entrant to the turn-based tactical combat market. Could be promising if it's not just a lazy spin-off of the Arma brand.
18
Announcements / New Issue Tracker for Bugs, Feature Requests and Patches
« on: January 28, 2013, 10:09:26 pm »
We are using new software to manage bugs, feature requests and patches. We've imported all the old tickets and soon will go public with the link. Any new tickets or modifications to existing tickets that you made on the Sourceforge tracker after 17:00 GMT on Monday, 28 January, will need to be remade in the new system.
User accounts have been imported, but we could not access authentication information. To reclaim control of the username attached to any tickets or comments you made, please send me a PM with your Sourceforge username (the short name) and the email address you would like to use on this account. I will send you back a temporary password.
I will post a link in this thread when we are live with the tracker.
User accounts have been imported, but we could not access authentication information. To reclaim control of the username attached to any tickets or comments you made, please send me a PM with your Sourceforge username (the short name) and the email address you would like to use on this account. I will send you back a temporary password.
I will post a link in this thread when we are live with the tracker.
19
Offtopic / Torque3D raising money to improve Linux development process
« on: January 10, 2013, 10:52:46 pm »
Newly open-sourced game engine Torque3D is raising money to improve its support for game development on Linux. The game engine already supports Linux, but this will raise money to allow developers to work on Linux rather than having to develop the game in Windows.
It's an interesting idea and I hope the general model of funding open-source development this way works.
It's an interesting idea and I hope the general model of funding open-source development this way works.
20
Bugs in stable version (2.5) / MOVED: [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Moon passes behind sun in geosphere
« on: January 02, 2013, 01:01:00 am »21
Bugs in stable version (2.5) / MOVED: UFOpaedia scrolling with mouse scroll-wheel doesn't work
« on: January 02, 2013, 12:56:28 am »22
Bugs in stable version (2.5) / MOVED: Grenade launcher, its ammo and article
« on: January 02, 2013, 12:56:10 am »23
Discussion / UFO: AI nominated for IndieDB's game of the year
« on: December 02, 2012, 11:33:25 pm »
Voting is now open for IndieDB's game of the year awards for 2012. Please go and vote for us (look for the banner under the summary).
And spread the word: tweet, post on Facebook, tell other websites, post on your favourite forums (but only if it's within that forum's posting guidelines). Let's drum up as much support as we can. Last year they did honourable mentions and a top-10 countdown, so we don't have to win to still get a lot of publicity out of this.
And spread the word: tweet, post on Facebook, tell other websites, post on your favourite forums (but only if it's within that forum's posting guidelines). Let's drum up as much support as we can. Last year they did honourable mentions and a top-10 countdown, so we don't have to win to still get a lot of publicity out of this.
24
Discussion / Changes for 2.5
« on: November 26, 2012, 12:42:04 pm »
UFO: Alien Invasion has undergone extensive changes during 2.5's development cycle. This includes a comprehensive re-balancing of the campaign and battlescape, as well as some important additions to the game mechanics. This post will try to outline a few of the most important for players transitioning from 2.4 to 2.5.
To avoid spoilers and allow players to explore the changes themselves, I will speak in general terms. Please do the same in your replies or they may be edited. Separate threads can be produced if you want to discuss a particular weapon balance or something.
Campaign Pace
The schedule of UFOs, aliens, research and disassembly, as well as the tech tree itself, has been changed significantly. Over the course of the campaign, the player will face fewer UFOs. There should be no large chunks of time with nothing to do like 2.4, and you had better get moving quickly on research and development.
Air Combat
The aircraft vs. UFO balance has been adjusted quite a bit. Be careful making assumptions based on your previous experience.
Laser Weapons
Handheld laser weapons are no longer available as soon as you research CWS at the start of the game. They will come later. This may be particularly disorienting for our long-term players.
Ground Combat Difficulty
Expect to face more aliens who are more difficult to kill. In general, you will likely find your soldiers dying more. You will also receive more recruits throughout the game to allow you to suffer more casualties. Do not expect to be able to play a zero-casualties game as easily as before.
Weapons
The weapons have been comprehensively re-balanced and have undergone significant changes. In general, weapons have been adjusted to better serve specific tactical purposes. That means the trade-offs between different weapons and different firemodes within weapons are more significant now. Without getting into specifics, I'll just say that you should pay special attention to all of a weapon's attributes and think about which tactical situations it might be most effective.
Wounds and Healing
The game now includes a proper wounding and healing mechanism. Soldiers will get wounded and bleed out each turn based on how wounded they are. A medikit is able to heal wounds, which will stop bleeding, but it will only be able to give a soldier back a very small amount of health. Soldiers are expected to recover in Hospital. Medikits are for keeping them alive until the battle ends.
Weight and Encumbrance
All soldier items now include a weight and soldiers can only carry as much as their Strength ability allows them. A soldier will be "encumbered" and will lose TUs when they are carrying more than 50% of their max weight. A soldier will be "light" and gain extra TUs when they are carrying less than 20% of their max weight.
Soldiers Stay Equipped
Soldiers will now stay equipped when they are not assigned to a dropship and can be equipped through the employees menu.
More Soldiers
You can now have up to 12 soldiers on the battlescape. The starting dropship, the Firebird, still only supports 8 soldiers, but base defense missions and later dropships will support more.
New Weapons
New weapons and equipment have been introduced for soldiers and aircraft. Most of these become available late in the game.
Soldier Stats
Rookies will now improve stats more quickly, and the overall stat growth throughout the course of a campaign will be much higher. Veterans will be more valuable, but even late in the game you will be able to improve rookies quickly enough to make them useful.
To avoid spoilers and allow players to explore the changes themselves, I will speak in general terms. Please do the same in your replies or they may be edited. Separate threads can be produced if you want to discuss a particular weapon balance or something.
Campaign Pace
The schedule of UFOs, aliens, research and disassembly, as well as the tech tree itself, has been changed significantly. Over the course of the campaign, the player will face fewer UFOs. There should be no large chunks of time with nothing to do like 2.4, and you had better get moving quickly on research and development.
Air Combat
The aircraft vs. UFO balance has been adjusted quite a bit. Be careful making assumptions based on your previous experience.
Laser Weapons
Handheld laser weapons are no longer available as soon as you research CWS at the start of the game. They will come later. This may be particularly disorienting for our long-term players.
Ground Combat Difficulty
Expect to face more aliens who are more difficult to kill. In general, you will likely find your soldiers dying more. You will also receive more recruits throughout the game to allow you to suffer more casualties. Do not expect to be able to play a zero-casualties game as easily as before.
Weapons
The weapons have been comprehensively re-balanced and have undergone significant changes. In general, weapons have been adjusted to better serve specific tactical purposes. That means the trade-offs between different weapons and different firemodes within weapons are more significant now. Without getting into specifics, I'll just say that you should pay special attention to all of a weapon's attributes and think about which tactical situations it might be most effective.
Wounds and Healing
The game now includes a proper wounding and healing mechanism. Soldiers will get wounded and bleed out each turn based on how wounded they are. A medikit is able to heal wounds, which will stop bleeding, but it will only be able to give a soldier back a very small amount of health. Soldiers are expected to recover in Hospital. Medikits are for keeping them alive until the battle ends.
Weight and Encumbrance
All soldier items now include a weight and soldiers can only carry as much as their Strength ability allows them. A soldier will be "encumbered" and will lose TUs when they are carrying more than 50% of their max weight. A soldier will be "light" and gain extra TUs when they are carrying less than 20% of their max weight.
Soldiers Stay Equipped
Soldiers will now stay equipped when they are not assigned to a dropship and can be equipped through the employees menu.
More Soldiers
You can now have up to 12 soldiers on the battlescape. The starting dropship, the Firebird, still only supports 8 soldiers, but base defense missions and later dropships will support more.
New Weapons
New weapons and equipment have been introduced for soldiers and aircraft. Most of these become available late in the game.
Soldier Stats
Rookies will now improve stats more quickly, and the overall stat growth throughout the course of a campaign will be much higher. Veterans will be more valuable, but even late in the game you will be able to improve rookies quickly enough to make them useful.
25
Discussion / Vote for us at SourceForge
« on: November 11, 2012, 12:23:41 pm »
Some of you may have already seen the item on the news page about SourceForge putting us in the running to be December's Project of the Month. If you haven't already, please take a moment to vote for us. You've got to have a Twitter account to vote, which is pretty annoying. But we're not far behind the leader. We're only 11% (23 votes) behind and the poll will close in just one day.
If you can, please go and vote. Little accolades like this help us gain attention and notoriety, which we might be able to leverage into more widespread publicity when we release 2.5.
If you can, please go and vote. Little accolades like this help us gain attention and notoriety, which we might be able to leverage into more widespread publicity when we release 2.5.
26
Artwork / Help us out: faces for soldier heads
« on: November 10, 2012, 01:11:37 pm »
Isen is working on making some more faces for our soldiers, but he needs good, properly licensed, source material. You can do this for us by proving some simple photos of your face. Please provide a photo from straight in front, one from a slight angle (like the attached image) and one from the side, and Isen can turn your face into a soldier.
It won't look exactly like you, as the pieces have to be adjusted to fit onto the mode.
When you post, please license your photos under GNU GPL 2 or later.
Another way you can help us is by finding good source photos for black, asian, latino or arab men, or any women since us gamers tend to be overwhelmingly male. These photos have to be licensed properly for use in derivative commercial works, which makes this task very hard. Deviantart.com's stock photo section is one place to look, but because people often fail to declare specific licenses, we have to ask the person to license it under an appropriate license. Two that work well for this are GNU GPL 2 or Later and CC-BY-SA 3.0. If you have a DeviantArt account, try putting in an hour going through their stock photo section to see if you can find useful material and sending messages to the authors to ask if they'll license under these licenses for this purpose.
It won't look exactly like you, as the pieces have to be adjusted to fit onto the mode.
When you post, please license your photos under GNU GPL 2 or later.
Another way you can help us is by finding good source photos for black, asian, latino or arab men, or any women since us gamers tend to be overwhelmingly male. These photos have to be licensed properly for use in derivative commercial works, which makes this task very hard. Deviantart.com's stock photo section is one place to look, but because people often fail to declare specific licenses, we have to ask the person to license it under an appropriate license. Two that work well for this are GNU GPL 2 or Later and CC-BY-SA 3.0. If you have a DeviantArt account, try putting in an hour going through their stock photo section to see if you can find useful material and sending messages to the authors to ask if they'll license under these licenses for this purpose.
27
Discussion / Help us out: how many scientists do you have?
« on: October 30, 2012, 11:50:36 pm »
I'd very much appreciate it if those who are playing 2.5-dev would take the time to answer the following question.
What difficulty are you playing at?
What is the current date in-game?
How many scientists do you have?
Please, only those playing 2.5-dev. I'm trying to adjust research times to fit our new campaign schedule.
What difficulty are you playing at?
What is the current date in-game?
How many scientists do you have?
Please, only those playing 2.5-dev. I'm trying to adjust research times to fit our new campaign schedule.
28
Offtopic / XCOM is kicked out of Nigeria
« on: October 20, 2012, 11:16:40 am »Quote
For all of Africa there is only one jet fighter plane from XCOM to stop UFOs. Nobody has even bothered installing a laser beam or anything on it. When a UFO appears they do not even launch the plane.
hehe
29
Coding / Xenonauts AI programmer discussion
« on: September 24, 2012, 11:51:42 am »
The AI programmer for Xenonauts is setting out his concepts and methods at his blog. There are just two posts so far:
Introduction
Knowledge Systems
Makes for some interesting reading and maybe it will inspire someone to work on our AI.
Introduction
Knowledge Systems
Makes for some interesting reading and maybe it will inspire someone to work on our AI.
30
Artwork / How to start contributing as an artist
« on: September 06, 2012, 12:51:14 pm »
If you've been thinking about contributing some artwork but aren't sure where to start, I've just written a wiki article to help you out. The article tries to match what you can do or want to do with the information to help you get started with UFO:AI.