Xenonauts, or, "We got your X-COM remake right here!"

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Stolen shamelessly from RPS.

In the wake of the x-compocalypse, Rock-Paper-Shotgun said it best:

"A secondary question is “why is everyone so upset that it’s using the X-COM IP?” The IP is not what’s important about X-COM. In terms of fiction, X-COM has only ever been about killing aliens. The important thing is having a game that plays as X-COM did, with its sublime multi-genre cleverness."

Well, apparently some people are doing just that, and have made their annoucement with impeccable timing.

From their press release:

Xenonauts is a planetary defence simulator, putting the player in command of a global organisation tasked with defending the planet against extraterrestrial invasion. Battle alien craft with your interceptors in the skies above Earth, and attack them on the ground in tense turn-based squad combat with your elite strike teams. Construct your bases and manage your budget carefully to keep your forces well-equipped and the aliens at bay, buying yourself enough time to unlock the secrets of extraterrestrial technology and turn it against its masters.

Xenonauts is neither a sequel to X-Com, nor a remake of it. While it shares the same core mechanics that made the original so compelling, Xenonauts has been reinvented and re-imagined from the ground up to fit modern times. The result is a game with a fresh setting and story, a streamlined interface and updated game mechanics with countless new features.

I'm definitely more excited about this than I am about the XCOM FPS, but can happily live in a world with both. Lets just hope it's the Torchlight to X-COM's Diablo.

More here.

Here's the most relevant feature, I think:

RPS wrote:

Name your soldiers after your friends and march them to certain death!

I'm now kicking myself for not saying in the X-Com thread that some indie developer would doubtless step up to the plate to make a truer update to X-Com with a new IP. Good for them.

Gotta keep my eye on this one

Indie developers have come out with a lot of X-Com remakes. It's just that none have been particularly good, from what I hear.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Indie developers have come out with a lot of X-Com remakes. It's just that none have been particularly good, from what I hear.

Depends on what you define as good, though. From what I've gathered and played, the UFO series isn't bad, it was just lacking in certain areas (destructible environments) or didn't have the same depth or sense of dread of X-Com. Decent to good games but not up to par with X-Com. Unfortunately I think any indie developed game will be up to the same level of meticulous scrutiny.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Indie developers have come out with a lot of X-Com remakes. It's just that none have been particularly good, from what I hear.

Agreed. I haven't found one yet that I prefer to the original. From what I've read on the Xenonauts site, almost everything they're adding sounds like a logical improvement on the original. I'm not sure about the air combat, but you can set those to auto-resolve. Here's hoping they succeed.

I just hope they keep the little things the same. Like the fact that you buy engineers. And they take time to show up. I'd hate it if you had to go into manufacturing screen and just rolled the number higher when you needed more bodies.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Indie developers have come out with a lot of X-Com remakes. It's just that none have been particularly good, from what I hear.

Really? Interesting. I'd be curious to know what the best of the bunch is.

While we're at it, I'd like to note that this baby is still around and being worked on.

I like the look of this game..... UFO: Aftermath is still on my top 5 games ever list...

Very interesting. Loved X-com. They have a very lofty bar to measure up to..

Klaatu barrada nicto

Game dev diary up at pcgamer
I'm in the middle of reading it, but it looks really nice in its retro, revival way.

Wow!! That's amazing work! I've been a die-hard fan of the first two X-Com games, and I welcome this "re-invention". Can't wait to see more. Sucks though that they can't really use the old aliens due to copyright infringement. I would've loved seeing Sectoids, Ethereals and Chryssalids in special, making it back in this one. Hated those Chryssalids. They were my main reason for tech-rushing float armor.

Sadly there's much "this isn't ready, ignore this and that for now". It felt more like an entry on Tamren's X-com missions debriefing with excuses for missing chunks of art than a regular developer diary. Still, the 3x3 armored tank seemed bad ass.

Woohoo, some actual screenshots!

I`d hit it.

*tagging*

Never played X-COM but like the idea of it.

I've been jaded. I'll call it a success when it's my grubby little hands and it's actually any good. The indie dev means not a lot of resources, and this is likely to result in a limited game with balance issues. I've seen the screenshots and I'm already wondering at who their art director could possibly be - cause they should fire him.

Tagging so the internet can watch this for me.

LarryC wrote:

I've been jaded. I'll call it a success when it's my grubby little hands and it's actually any good. The indie dev means not a lot of resources, and this is likely to result in a limited game with balance issues. I've seen the screenshots and I'm already wondering at who their art director could possibly be - cause they should fire him.

Coming from you that's almost an endorsement

Everybody who tries to make a spiritual successor to X-Com just don't really get it. All whoever owns the actual IP has to do is update the graphics, modernize the interface, and it'll sell like hotcakes.

I've been keeping up with the news updates for Xenonauts and I learned some interesting things.

The game uses the Playground SDK5 engine and that means it must be entirely sprite based. They use 3d models to make the art, but they convert them into sprites by taking many different pictures of each model from a different rotation. Apparently there are programs that can automate this. One difficulty with using sprites like this is that you need tons of iterations to support each piece of equipment visible on the sprites. They said they wouldn't have support for female soldiers in the game because having even two different soldier models would add over 500000 more sprites.

From what the dev says they might have used an engine like Unity instead. Only the coders they had in the early days were not very experienced and picked Playground, which may have been a poor decision.

I hope they made a better remake than UFO:ET . I got the game early but it wasn't as playable as I wanted but I haven't patched it. They later released a gold edition which I don't know if to buy or if I deserve a copy.

As an XCOM who have bought every single XCOM game and finished the first 4 I'd rather wait for release than pay 30$ now. I'll have to look at some media before I make out my mind. I've bean burnt in the past so I'm very suspicious ;). Their preorder price is a little excessive considering their reputation . I hope they put in some innovations and improvement rather than just copy the original game. I can play the original game just fine to this day. There are also great alternatives like JA2 1.13mod .

I really like the Silent Storm engine except for its slow AI. I think it's a great starting point for some great games if some AI improvement were put in. The silent storm game mechanics were also very solid.

TotalBiscuit's WTF is Xenonauts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc7IV...

This is pretty recent and was filmed at Eurogamers.

I am pretty excited about this upcoming game. I have to admit, the price does kind of disappoint me. I realize I may be a bit entitled, but most indie games I purchase are quite a bit cheaper than $30. I've been a rather big fan of the Humble Bundle where I can get like, five games for $30.

It'll be nice to get a good old fashioned turn-based game again. For a while, about the only place I've been able to play these sorts of games is the rare release of a NIS title like Disgaea, or a re-release of an old title from the late 1990s such as Tactics Ogre. Any chance there's eventually going to be an iPhone release? I just feel this sort of game would translate *extremely* well to a touch device.

chocolatemuffins wrote:

I am pretty excited about this upcoming game. I have to admit, the price does kind of disappoint me. I realize I may be a bit entitled, but most indie games I purchase are quite a bit cheaper than $30. I've been a rather big fan of the Humble Bundle where I can get like, five games for $30.

I'm also discouraged at the price, especially when they mention it'll be more than $30 at release. There must be a lot of content there because at the surface I don't see a $35 product. As someone who's never played X-COM, this puts me in the 'wait for a sale' and 'ignore this title until release' category.

I think this is one of the bad things Steam has done (among lots of good thingummies) - depreciating indie games. Just like AppStore by selling games for a buck. It automagically makes everything that is not published by handful of giants worth only couple of bucks.
In basically every other industry it'd actually be the other way around - a niche product most of the time is priced MORE. But with games, if it's indie, it's five, maximum ten bucks for some reason. You have to move quite a lot of units to make it worthwhile. Which basically means, get published on Steam or bust.

cyrax wrote:

As someone who's never played X-COM

And right there is your problem. If they can manage a worthy remake with this, it is well worth $50-60.

Most wrote:

I think this is one of the bad things Steam has done (among lots of good thingummies) - depreciating indie games. Just like AppStore by selling games for a buck. It automagically makes everything that is not published by handful of giants worth only couple of bucks.
In basically every other industry it'd actually be the other way around - a niche product most of the time is priced MORE. But with games, if it's indie, it's five, maximum ten bucks for some reason. You have to move quite a lot of units to make it worthwhile. Which basically means, get published on Steam or bust.

"Why" would be a good discussion, but I disagree with your first point. Maybe Steam has lowered the indie MSRP, but honestly before ~'05 I wasn't aware of any indie titles. Maybe the $10 shelf at Wal-mart that was casual and game-clone focused? Anyway, my main point is that when I see indie titles on Steam, most of the time I think the price point is accurate. I'll pay $20 for Torchlight 2 and $35 for Red Orchestra 2 (which admittedly I haven't done because of bad timing) because those are quality experiences I care about.

MisterStatic wrote:
cyrax wrote:

As someone who's never played X-COM

And right there is your problem. If they can manage a worthy remake with this, it is well worth $50-60.

Don't get me wrong, Tactics Ogre was easily worth $40, and $12 for the strategy guide. Xenonauts hasn't been shown much and I don't see a high dollar product there.

Let me preface this by saying that I love X-Com. I only started playing it about two years ago or so, and even in that context I still think it's a great game.
I'm very tempted here, but the $30 does seem a little steep for an x-com clone with updated graphics and an updated UI. I'll be keeping my eye on this closely however. They're going to have to show one really special improvement over x-com before I'll bite.

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