48 replies to this topic

[kafros]

http://blogs.msdn.co...-all-games.aspx

http://www.xcomufo.c...mp;#entry174156

You heard the man!
My time is tight on my neck at the moment so I'll just collect some information that will be helpful for now, will come back later:

--------

Subject: Project Xenocide
Description: http://docs.projectx..._is_Xenocide.3F
Team bio: http://docs.projectx...evelopment_Team (should we include the people that have been active sometime during the last 12 months? I'd love everyone to be included :/ )

3 screenshots huh?
* Planetview with day and night
* Morlock/Laser Rifle
* Research Facility

Footage:
http://www.projectxe...rt_weapons.html

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related
http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

A new video is definitely needed though

---------

Cmon cmon let's keep this rolling!!

[Darkhomb]

Shouldn't the screenshots be of ingame though? so for the research ss, Why not take it in Xnet

Attached Files

•  ss1.jpg   76.98K   34 downloads
•  ss2.jpg   92.13K   32 downloads

Edited by Darkhomb, 08 January 2008 - 05:16 PM.

[kafros]

Shouldn't the screenshots be of ingame though? so for the research ss, Why not take it in Xnet

These are wonderful

Edited by kafros, 08 January 2008 - 05:57 PM.

[Darkhomb]

Cool, now for the third screenshot do we want to do just a model? or do we want to do something ingame?

[dteviot]

Cool, now for the third screenshot do we want to do just a model? or do we want to do something ingame?

I think the problem with a 3rd screen shot is lack of screens that are as polished as those two.
The closest would be Equip Soldier, and it still needs some work. (In the area of equipment sprites.)

[Mad]

Guys, who actually owns the X-COM license nowadays? Is it still take two?

[Mad]

ok, this is a first draft. What do you think?

Dear xna developers,

we at "Project Xenocide" (http://www.projectxenocide.com) are using XNA to develop an open source strategy game called "Xenocide".
Xenocide is aimed to recreate the spirit and feel of Atari's (formerly Microprose) turn-based strategy classic: X-COM: UFO Defense in an entirely new game. The Player is finding himself in the position of the general commander of the X-Corps forces, an international agency determined to stop the beginning Alien invasion of Earth. His tasks are establishment and management of X-Corps bases, interception of UFOs, turn based Battles on the "Battleview" where he leads his squad against different types of Aliens, and finally, research of recovered as well as "terran" technology.
A high resolution Earth model is used to display a fabulous "Planetview"-screen including shader effects for illuminated cities at night time and shadow-drawing mountains at day time. The X-Net, displaying research results, is filled with high resolution models and long descriptive texts aimed at scientific correct (or at least probable) explanations and descriptions of researched items. And although the Baseview, and especially the Battleview still require a lot of work to be done, you can clearly see where we are going with our efforts.
The developing team of "Xenocide" is an international community, based in the US, South America, Europe, New Zealand and Russia. Project Xenocide is lead by Federico Lois, the initiator of the Project. Four senior members are coordinating the four departments: Artwork, Creative Text, Programming and Sound. A full listing of our active members can be obtained at: http://docs.projectx...ound_Department .
Attached you will find screenshots of our "Planetview", the "X-Net" and ????, as well as a video footage of the Gameplay.

Best regards

[Darkhomb]

I think the problem with a 3rd screen shot is lack of screens that are as polished as those two.
The closest would be Equip Soldier, and it still needs some work. (In the area of equipment sprites.)

I can put some more models in (grenades and maybe a weapon or 2) and maybe we can have a special build that doesnt show the ammo as we have nothing at all for any ammo right now. and includes the laser rifle and pistol.

ok, this is a first draft. What do you think?

Looks pretty good

Edited by Darkhomb, 09 January 2008 - 11:50 AM.

[dteviot]

I think the problem with a 3rd screen shot is lack of screens that are as polished as those two.
The closest would be Equip Soldier, and it still needs some work. (In the area of equipment sprites.)

I can put some more models in (grenades and maybe a weapon or 2) and maybe we can have a special build that doesnt show the ammo as we have nothing at all for any ammo right now. and includes the laser rifle and pistol.

Sounds good.
A small tip (which you're probably already aware of,

• You can modify startsettings.xml to control the starting inventory in your initial outpost. (i.e. remove ammo, add laser/plasma/stun weapons.)
• The equip solider screen will only show the items you've been granted access to, so to see the laser/plasma weapons, you'll need to modify research.xml, and put itemref entries into the RES_STARTING_TECHNOLOGY topicid.

Final couple of thoughts about equipment sprites.

• We have a 3D model of the stun launcher (it shows up in X-Net)
• I think there's a number of images in the ART threads of stuff that was under development. Maybe we can grab some of them?
• A collection of free 3D models of ammo.
  http://www.turbosqui...m...&Submit.y=8

ok, this is a first draft. What do you think?

Looks pretty good

Looks excellent, only a couple of points.

• They ask for LINKs to video footage, rather than the footage itself. (I assume they don't want their mailbox overflowing with 100Meg files).
• Add links to the downloadable 0.2 executable (with notes that it's a couple of months old) in case they want to try the game for themselves.
• Add link to the SVN repository, if they want to get the latest version.

[Darkhomb]

We could always throw out a new unstable build?

[dteviot]

We could always throw out a new unstable build?

I guess we've added enough for it to be worth the effort.
1. Equip Soldier.
2. Assign Soldier to Craft
3. New Statistics screen.

If you do a release build, the "Unit Test" and "Battlescape" buttons should be stripped from the start screen.
And I don't think it would be unstable. The only bit I'm aware of that crashes is the battlescape, in test mode, which should not be accessible in a release build.

[Darkhomb]

And I don't think it would be unstable. The only bit I'm aware of that crashes is the battlescape, in test mode, which should not be accessible in a release build.

and the equip screen problem that i have that we dont know if effects anyone else yet

[Darkhomb]

screen shot 3?

Attached Files

•  ss3.jpg   65.84K   46 downloads

[Darkhomb]

I had a really good video but it crashed, i saved it but its a 30 meg flash and was going to make it a 8 meg divx I will redo it tomorrow.

[kafros]

1) Screenshot #3
nice

2) Darkhomb's equip screen bug
It hasn't happened to me

3)
I've compiled "Release build 0.3.1783.0" and it works like a charm for me

Edited by kafros, 24 June 2008 - 04:51 AM.

[dteviot]

2) Darkhomb's equip screen bug
It hasn't happened to me, it's a rather strange bug really :\

Minor comments

• On the Geoscape screen, the time is missing the month. Does it show on a debug build, or is it always missing? How about if you change the Windows regional settings to English?
• You might want to load the OCR-A font into windows, that should give the "sci-fi" looking font on buttons. At least I think it's OCR-A
• Final question, what graphic card are you running. (We're trying to build a list of the cards we know work/don't work.)

Edited by dteviot, 09 January 2008 - 10:47 PM.

[Darkhomb]

Ok guys we have 1 week to finish this. I will make the video tomorrow and post it for comments.

[kafros]

Dear xna developers,

We at "Project Xenocide" (http://www.projectxenocide.com) are using XNA to develop an open source strategy game called "Xenocide".

Xenocide is aimed to recreate the spirit and feel of Atari's (formerly Microprose) turn-based strategy classic "X-COM: UFO Defense" in an entirely new game. The Player is finding himself in the position of the general commander of the X-Corps forces, an international agency determined to stop the beginning Alien invasion of Earth. His tasks are establishment and management of X-Corps bases, interception of UFOs, turn based Battles on the "Battleview" where he leads his squad against different types of Aliens, and finally, R&D of human as well as recovered alien technology.

A high-resolution Earth model is used to display a fabulous "Planetview"-screen including shader effects for illuminated cities at nighttime and shadow-drawing mountains at daytime. The X-Net, displaying research results, is filled with high-resolution models and long descriptive texts aimed at scientific correct (or at least probable) explanations and descriptions of researched items. Even though the Baseview, and especially the Battleview, still require a lot of work to be done, you can clearly see where we are going with our efforts.

The developing team of "Xenocide" is an international community, based in the US, South America, Europe, New Zealand and Russia. Project Xenocide is lead by Federico Lois, the initiator of the Project. Four senior members are coordinating the four departments: Artwork, Creative Text, Programming, and Sound. A full listing of our active members can be obtained at our Wiki page. Attached you will find screenshots of our "Planetview", the "X-Net" and the "Equip Screen", and links to video and other footage are also provided.

XNA has provided us a framework that speeds up development and increases the quality of our work.

Best regards,
The Xenocide team

Dark, do you still have a higher resolution globe texture? We should definitely provide one for day and night. The planetview is the main attraction atm!

The last sentence can be removed, but I think it wouldn't hurt to be included :O.

Edited by kafros, 12 January 2008 - 12:01 PM.

[Mad]

Last sentence is a good addition kafros! Ok, so now we just need a build and video footage. The equip screen is wonderful!
Let's hurry!

[Darkhomb]

Wasn't feeling good last night, will work on video today. Thought... Should we put the screenshots as pngs? or atleast highest qualtity jpegs? Just for that extra detail.

[Mad]

Wasn't feeling good last night, will work on video today. Thought... Should we put the screenshots as pngs? or atleast highest qualtity jpegs? Just for that extra detail.

hope you're better now!
screenshots maybe as high quality jpegs. With pngs, we might not keep the 1MB border for all three screenshots together...

[Darkhomb]

While I would like to use higher resolution textures, It takes way to long to change to the geoscape screen and I have to change back several times. I will use a little higher but not crazy high. It took five minutes to load the biggest texture I had (I did look nice though ) Also I think I like the new night map I am putting in. You will see in a couple hours.

[Darkhomb]

Hmm the camtasia studio I was using crashes when i make a xvid file and sound is very messed up if I make a shockwave. Need to use something else.

[Mad]

Hmm the camtasia studio I was using crashes when i make a xvid file and sound is very messed up if I make a shockwave. Need to use something else.

What type of files can you export? Maybe we can convert?

[Darkhomb]

Yeah let me find different ones, I don't want to keep reconverting so I do not want to lose what quality we have.

Edited by Darkhomb, 13 January 2008 - 01:14 PM.

[dteviot]

My suggestion:

Dear XNA developers,

We at "Project Xenocide" (http://www.projectxenocide.com) are using XNA to develop an open source strategy game called "Xenocide".

Xenocide is aimed to recreate the spirit and feel of Microprose's turn-based strategy classic "X-COM: UFO Defense" (copyrights currently owned by Take Two Interactive) in an entirely new game. The Player is finding himself in the position of the general commander of the X-Corps forces, an international agency determined to stop an Alien invasion of Earth. His tasks are establishment and management of X-Corps bases, interception of UFOs, turn based Battles on the "Battleview" where he leads his squad against different types of Aliens, and finally, R&D of human as well as recovered alien technology.

A high-resolution Earth model is used to display a fabulous "Planetview"-screen including shader effects for illuminated cities at nighttime and shadow-drawing mountains at daytime. The X-Net, displaying research results, is filled with high-resolution models and long descriptive texts aimed at scientific correct (or at least probable) explanations and descriptions of researched items. Even though the Baseview, and especially the Battleview, still require a lot of work to be done, you can clearly see where we are going with our efforts.

The development team of "Xenocide" is an international community, based in the US, South America, Europe, New Zealand and Russia. Project Xenocide is lead by Federico Lois. Four senior members are coordinating the four departments: Artwork, Creative Text, Programming, and Sound. A full listing of our active members can be obtained at our Wiki page. Attached you will find screenshots of our "Planetview", the "X-Net" and the "Equip Screen".

A video of the program is at: http://www.projectxe.....cide 2007.avi
This web page has instructions for downloading the most recent executable we've released: http://www.projectxe.../downloads.html
And if you'd like to see the absolute latest developments, the full source code for Xenocide can be downloaded from http://svn.projectxe...om/xenocide/xna.

Or, you can just visit the Xenocide home page, http://www.projectxenocide.com, and follow your nose:

<obligatory groveling>
Thanks for your great product.
In the 13 months we've been using it (we started using XNA in late December 2006) we've made more progress on Xenocide than we did in the four years prior. (And had fewer bugs as well.) Although, to be honest, that might be partly because we were able to utilize much of the content and ideas we'd already discovered.
</obligatory groveling>

Best regards,
The Xenocide team

[Darkhomb]

reply does not work so I am making this thread, please merge when able to. i finally got fraps working on my system so I will be redoing the videos again and then converting to xvid. Should be up in an hour.

[Darkhomb]

you will find the Xenocide video here.

Went from a 5.1 gig file to 16 meg at 640x480. However in that directory is a 37 gig 800x600 detailed video. So shall we give them that one and let everyone else see the 16 meg one? this is unedited so I can edit parts if need be.

[DavidT] Quick edit seems to work. So I'm adding my comment this way. The 16 meg file looks good, however I'd suggest that we only need to show equipping one soldier, likewise, for X-Net only show one or two items. And I'd suggest showing the Statistics screen. I would not send the XNA people the 5 gig file. If they want to see Xenocide in more detail, they can download and compile it.

edit 2. I did not upload the 5 gig file, thats raw video, if you go to the /public/video folder and theres a 37 meg 800x600 video of the same as the 16, also the 37 video is 25 fps vs the 20 fps on the 16.

I can edit the soldier and xnet parts when I get home.

Edited by Darkhomb, 15 January 2008 - 01:40 PM.

[Darkhomb]

test

edit looks like its working again

Edited by Darkhomb, 15 January 2008 - 05:14 PM.

[kafros]

I would suggest cutting the soldier equip part to just the last (or at most the last two) and keep the most interesting parts of the XNet, otherwise the video makes you lose some interest

[Mad]

Whatever you do, do it quickly, we'Re running out of time!

[kafros]

All submissions must be received by January 18, 2008 in order to be considered (inbox date stamp will be used GMT-8)

[Darkhomb]

Don't worry It will be edited tonight (6-7 pm EST) I only ask you watch it and tell me what you think, I will prob redo the xnet part instead of just cutting it out.

[Mad]

Sorry, I only now got time to view the video.
Very good stuff! But I've got some comments: If possible maybe try to:

• shorten the first buying/selling part, you do it again later anyway
• shorten the engineering stuff
• shorten the soldier equip part, three soldiers are enough I guess
• minimize the "uh I don't know, what should I do next"mouse movement
• maybe it is better to klick ok in the battlescape window. Or would it actually trigger the battlescape?
• xnet is long, but I think it stays within reasonable margins; removing one to three items should do the trick.
• maybe visit fewer items in the xnet, but instead always zoom in on the model. Especially on the X-CAPs and the facilities.
• can you rotate the models with the keyboard (don't know if it is implemented)?
• I agree with david, stats screen would be nice.

Again, very good work.

Edited by Mad, 16 January 2008 - 10:45 AM.

[Darkhomb]

Didn't know if we want to show battlescape yet, it just shows the model and blank cells.

Keyboard can't rotate model (unless theres different keys)

I'll take care of this tonight.

[Mad]

Didn't know if we want to show battlescape yet, it just shows the model and blank cells.

No, I guess we don't want. But until now there was a box saying "Battlescape would be drawn now, but it is not implemented; the game assumes the battle was victorious." Don't know if this would be better though...

[dteviot]

I'm going to say that the video, as it stands, is perfectly acceptable. Nice job Darkhomb.
Yes, it's a bit long in the area of equip solider and x-net, and it doesn't show the statistics screen and battlescape.
However, its purpose is a "teaser" to show the XNA developers the best bits of XNA, and it does that job well. (Geoscape, X-Net, Equip soldier)
I would expect that, as I'm providing a link to the source code, the XNA team will download the code and give the latest build a whirl. So including or not including the statistics and battlescape screens is unimportant, they're going to find them anyway.
(Hmm, which makes me think I should add a note along the lines of "For purposes of the video, we adjusted the set of items that a player initially has access to, to just the ones we had artwork for.")

At any rate, My plan is I'll e-mail our submission off to XNA in 9 hours. Using the updated video, if it's ready by then, or what we have now, if it's not.

[Mad]

In this case, please allow me to make a few suggestions to your text (do you want to send the email as html email or as text? - I'm asking because of the links):

My suggestion:

Dear XNA developers,

We at "Project Xenocide" (http://www.projectxenocide.com) are using XNA to develop an open source strategy game called "Xenocide".

Xenocide is aimed to recreate the spirit and feel of Microprose's turn-based strategy classic "X-COM: UFO Defense" (copyrights currently owned by Take Two Interactive) in an entirely new game. The Player is finding himself in the position of the general commander of the X-Corps forces, an international agency determined to stop an Alien invasion of Earth. His tasks are establishment and management of X-Corps bases, interception of UFOs, turn based Battles on the "Battleview" where he leads his squad against different types of Aliens, and finally, R&D of human as well as recovered alien technology.

A high-resolution Earth model is used to display a fabulous "Planetview"-screen including shader effects for illuminated cities at nighttime and shadow-drawing mountains at daytime. The X-Net, displaying research results, is filled with high-resolution models and long descriptive texts aimed at scientific correct (or at least probable) explanations and descriptions of researched items. Even though the Baseview, and especially the Battleview, still require a lot of work to be done, you can clearly see where we are going with our efforts.

The development team of "Xenocide" is an international community, based in the US, South America, Europe, New Zealand and Russia. Project Xenocide is lead by Federico Lois. Four senior members are coordinating the four departments: Artwork, Creative Text, Programming, and Sound. A full listing of our active members can be obtained at our Project Wiki. Attached you will find screenshots of our "Planetview", the "X-Net" and the "Equip Screen".

A gameplay video of the program is at can be found at: http://www.projectxe.....ocide 2007.av
This web page has instructions for downloading the most recent executable we've released: The Xenocide Builds can be obtained from our download page at http://www.projectxe.../downloads.html
Should you like to see the absolute latest developments, the full source code for "Xenocide" can be downloaded from http://svn.projectxe...om/xenocide/xna.

Or, you can just visit the Xenocide home page, http://www.projectxenocide.com, and follow your nose:

<obligatory groveling>
Thanks for your great product. I think that is a bit too much Maybe keep "XNA has provided us a framework that speeds up development and increases the quality of our work"
In the 13 months we've been using it (we started using XNA in late December 2006) we've made more progress on Xenocide than we did in the four years prior. (And had fewer bugs as well.) Although, to be honest, that might be partly because we were able to utilize much of the content and ideas we'd already discovered.
</obligatory groveling>

Best regards,
The Xenocide team

[dteviot]

Good suggestions, thanks.
I agree that the thanks at the end are a bit over the top, that's why they're enclosed in <obligatory groveling>

In this case, please allow me to make a few suggestions to your text (do you want to send the email as html email or as text? - I'm asking because of the links):

My suggestion:

Dear XNA developers,

We at "Project Xenocide" (http://www.projectxenocide.com) are using XNA to develop an open source strategy game called "Xenocide".

Xenocide is aimed to recreate the spirit and feel of Microprose's turn-based strategy classic "X-COM: UFO Defense" (copyrights currently owned by Take Two Interactive) in an entirely new game. The Player is finding himself in the position of the general commander of the X-Corps forces, an international agency determined to stop an Alien invasion of Earth. His tasks are establishment and management of X-Corps bases, interception of UFOs, turn based Battles on the "Battleview" where he leads his squad against different types of Aliens, and finally, R&D of human as well as recovered alien technology.

A high-resolution Earth model is used to display a fabulous "Planetview"-screen including shader effects for illuminated cities at nighttime and shadow-drawing mountains at daytime. The X-Net, displaying research results, is filled with high-resolution models and long descriptive texts aimed at scientific correct (or at least probable) explanations and descriptions of researched items. Even though the Baseview, and especially the Battleview, still require a lot of work to be done, you can clearly see where we are going with our efforts.

The development team of "Xenocide" is an international community, based in the US, South America, Europe, New Zealand and Russia. Project Xenocide is lead by Federico Lois. Four senior members are coordinating the four departments: Artwork, Creative Text, Programming, and Sound. A full listing of our active members can be obtained at our Project Wiki. Attached you will find screenshots of our "Planetview", the "X-Net" and the "Equip Screen".

A gameplay video of the program is at can be found at: http://www.projectxe.....ocide 2007.av
This web page has instructions for downloading the most recent executable we've released: The Xenocide Builds can be obtained from our download page at http://www.projectxe.../downloads.html
Should you like to see the absolute latest developments, the full source code for "Xenocide" can be downloaded from http://svn.projectxe...om/xenocide/xna.

Or, you can just visit the Xenocide home page, http://www.projectxenocide.com, and follow your nose:

<obligatory groveling>
Thanks for your great product. I think that is a bit too much Maybe keep "XNA has provided us a framework that speeds up development and increases the quality of our work"
In the 13 months we've been using it (we started using XNA in late December 2006) we've made more progress on Xenocide than we did in the four years prior. (And had fewer bugs as well.) Although, to be honest, that might be partly because we were able to utilize much of the content and ideas we'd already discovered.
</obligatory groveling>

Best regards,
The Xenocide team

[Mad]

Good suggestions, thanks.
I agree that the thanks at the end are a bit over the top, that's why they're enclosed in <obligatory groveling>

So you won't send them at all, or enclosed in "<obligatory groveling>" or what?

[dteviot]

Good suggestions, thanks.
I agree that the thanks at the end are a bit over the top, that's why they're enclosed in <obligatory groveling>

So you won't send them at all, or enclosed in "<obligatory groveling>" or what?

I'll send them enclosed in the tag. With a :-) which should get the point across.

Edited by dteviot, 16 January 2008 - 01:44 PM.

[Mad]

Good suggestions, thanks.
I agree that the thanks at the end are a bit over the top, that's why they're enclosed in <obligatory groveling>

So you won't send them at all, or enclosed in "<obligatory groveling>" or what?

I'll send them enclosed in the tag. With a :-) which should get the point across.

hope the guys at MS share your sense of humor.

[Darkhomb]

I didn't redo the video didn't have time, I only edited it, so shorter xnet, shorter equip and took out beginning buy

Xenocide Jan 16 2008

[dteviot]

I didn't redo the video didn't have time, I only edited it, so shorter xnet, shorter equip and took out beginning buy

Xenocide Jan 16 2008

And the application has been e-mailed off to Microsoft.
Now the waiting begins.

Edit, and of course, thanks to everyone for your help.

Edited by dteviot, 16 January 2008 - 07:13 PM.

[kafros]

Good job friends

And many thanks to dteviot for sharing this opportunity with us!