Xenonauts Kickstarter Project Update #5, $66,000 and Counting
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Here's how the poll results look (image at the bottom of the page):
1) Hire Level Designer (10.56)
2) Indoor Missions (10.21)
3) Soviet Town tileset (9.31)
4) Military Base tileset (9.30)
5) Reaper Hive tileset (8.78)
6) Female Soldiers (8.44)
7) Tileset-specific NPC soldiers (8.08)
8) Motion Detector (6.95)
9) Soldier Memorial Screen (6.71)
10) Vehicle Combat Experience (6.45)
11) Pilot Portraits & Callsigns (6.15)
12) Proxy Grenades (6.10)
13) Tall Grass (5.94)
14) Human Psionics & Blaster Bombs mod (5.38)
15) Mac / Linux Porting (4.57)
I suppose this shows the value of asking people what they want more maps and tilesets, apparently! As mentioned in the previous Update, we were already planning to put more maps and tilesets in the game, but we probably underestimated quite how important they are to people. It's good to know that.
Ironically, the two features that had the most vocal supporters did not do very well - the female soldiers came 6th and Mac / Linux porting came dead last. A victory for the silent majority?
Actually, it's a victory for everyone. We'll also be putting female soldiers into the game, and providing a Mac and Linux version of the game too.
Though a fair amount of the debate on female soldiers consisted of needlessly aggressive and largely counter-productive internet rage, a few people made the reasoned argument that if we use the unisex sprites soldier solution, it'll only cost a few thousand dollars to female soldiers to the game. As we've put ethnic soldiers in the game to be more inclusive, should we not do the same for female soldiers?
Having mulled that over for a day or two, I'm inclined to agree. The final game will include 25 female portraits and modified Basic Armour art (the other armour types are too bulky for it to make a difference), though the sprites will remain unisex for all soldiers.
The Mac / Linux ports also suffered badly. They received a lot of votes for being extremely important and a lot of votes for being very unimportant, but not a great deal in-between. This is not entirely surprising you either use Linux / a Mac, or you don't.
Nevertheless, the level of interest suggests it would be worth porting it anyway. If the porter we are talking to is able to deliver the ports for the price we've just agreed, it should be worthwhile from our point of view.
These two items have therefore been taken out of the stretch goals. Unfortunately, we've also taken out the Reaper Hive tileset. This is because all the popular stretch goals concern tilesets and we already have another four to add to the game.
We could probably just about stretch that to a maximum of six, but any more than that and the amount of work remaining would be weighted so disproportionately towards the tilesets that it'll cause us major delays (we need to use the same artists for consistency reasons). As the Reaper Hive got the least votes of the three tilesets in the vote, that will not be included.
Therefore the stretch goals will be:
$75,000 Hire a Level Designer - we will hire a specialist map designer to add more variation and randomisation to the maps!
$100,000 Indoor missions these would be missions where combat squads are sent into large buildings or into underground bunkers to clear out an alien strike team.
$140,000 Soviet Town terror tileset the current terror tileset is an American town. To fit with the Cold War theme, we'll put in an alternate tileset for the Soviet bloc countries using Soviet-style architecture.
$180,000 - Military Base tileset - this tileset would allow us to put military terror sites in the game, where aliens have attacked a military base and you are sent in to deal with them.
$205,000 Tileset-Specific NPC Allies we do have friendly AI soldiers in the game, but only one type. This would add different variants police on the Industrial tileset, farmers with shotguns on the Farm tileset, mujahedeen with AK-47s on the Desert tileset etc.
$230,000 Motion Detector This would be a one-hand soldier item that, when equipped, will display a coloured overlay on the battlefield to show any AI movement in previous turn within range of the soldier holding it.
$255,000 Memorial Screen This would be a tab on the UI which allowed you to view a list of all your dead soldiers, including the location and time of death, their portrait and number of kills etc.
$280,000 Vehicle Combat Experience soldiers level up with experience, vehicles do not. This would allow vehicles to increase their stats (not armour / health) by a maximum of 15% with combat experience.
$305,000 - Pilot Portraits and Callsigns at the moment, the aircraft are just aircraft. This would give each aircraft a pilot portrait and a callsign, so they seem less expendable. These pilots will not level up with experience.
$330,000 - Proxy Grenades These are fun. This would add a secondary fire function to all advanced grenades (Alenium grenades upwards) that allows them to be used as proxy grenades.
$355,000 - Tall Grass There's waist-high grass in X-Com. This would put it in Xenonauts too, complete with the ridiculous (yet amusing) fire mechanics from the original.
$380,000 - Human Psionics and Blaster Bombs We've removed these from the game due to balance reasons, and we will not put them in Xenonauts. This stretch goal would bundle the game with a developer-made mod that allowed people to put them back in.
