1821

Losing the day/night cycle is pretty huge, in my opinion. Playing night maps was absolutely terrifying… and often very difficult. So much so that I would often plan around arriving at day time on the geoscape.

1822

I always just wondered why the elite X-Com organization couldn’t seem to get it’s hands on night vision goggles. :P

1823

What the f#@dk… I didn’t know that detail!

1824

I think nice handmade maps are almost always preferable to a randomly generated map. In a game with randomly generated scenarios, there needs to be enough hand crafted maps that the repetition doesn’t break immersion and the scenario objectives need to not conflict with the map design. The optimal situation would be to have enough maps in the hopper that a player doesn’t see a map more than once. Failing that, the amount of repetition will slide towards random maps for me.

The scale would look like this:

HM<------------X------------->RM

On one end is all handmade maps and on the other is all random maps. Somewhere in the middle is the point at which the handmade maps repeat enough to make me want random maps more. My main concern with X-Com at this point is that the game falls somewhere past the X already.

For example, Diablo III’s outside areas have very little randomization. The geography is set and Blizzard just randomized mob spawns and small landmarks. By my third playthrough with a new character it got old. Torchlight 2’s completely random outside areas works a lot better for me in this regard.

1825

Do you guys really feel X-Com’s random maps were so bad?
I think the building-block approach they took was pretty much the best of both worlds - especially considering what you could do now, with space limitations etc. hardly being an issue any more.

I only hope Firaxis will, at some point, release some modding tools allowing more levels to be added by enterprising modders.
The fact that the CivV SDK was never released doesn’t instill much confidence, though.

rezaf

1826

I agree with you, Telefrog.

I think they used the right choice of handcrafted-ness. Lots of hand crafted maps, but done with lots reusable “stock” objects to alleviate the time/money needed to make them.
In other words, make a ton of generic objects like trees, bushes, cars, streetlamps, rocks, cornfields, and also different sized buildings, and then make several dozens maps, handcrafted so the general layout is distinct enough but not really “unique” in the content, but using the common objects.

The only problem is not using different enough “themes” (urban, village, desert, artic, etc), lack of time variation (day, dusk, night), and not that many maps (80 is a big number, but not that huge, in the second replay you will start seeing maps for the second time).

edit:
Hell, if they were smart, they should have followed the Spore strategy.

Release a map editor before the game to help hype the game. Make it easy to use, Have a tool to place and rotate objects, pinch to create elevations/depressions and choose a size and theme, and that’s it.

So after two weeks, they have several hundreds maps to insert in the game.

1827

what is going on in here

1828

BRILLIANT. Assuming that they are married to hand-made rather than procedurally-generated this would’ve been the way to go.

Overall I’m a bit concerned about some things:

  • A or B on the Geoscape
  • Lack of night / day variation on maps
  • Lack of precedurally-generated maps
  • In light of the above, the small number of hand-made maps
  • Less destructibility than X-COM (no floors / ceilings)

On the other hand:

  • Turn-based in 2012, woooo!
  • I think the smaller squad size is a positive
  • Single base may end up being nice

I’ll probably get it on the 360 (no way I’m not supporting a large studio’s attempt at turn-based in 20-freakin’-12) and, if it ever allows modding to address some of the issues above, eventually the PC.

1829

JMJ8====================================================Dyourmom

1830

A or B on the Geoscape? If you are talking about when you have to chose a mission, that’s a gimmick only pulled by “Abduction” missions, much like how the gimmick for terror missions is the rescue civilians.

I also disagree with 80+ being a “small number” of hand made maps. And the maps I’ve seen (probably a dozen at this point, so I’ll get repeats faster just due to me watching so many videos pre-release, but I don’t mind) seem really well done and tactically intersting. I do hope we get more as time goes by of course, you can never have enough map variety in a game like this.

1831

Seesaws are cool.

1832

Copycats, that’s what’s happening!

1833

Ok, that’s not so bad. I was worried it was always a choice of two missions (sometimes of different types). So there can be multiple potential threats on the GeoScape at any one time that can potentially all be tackled (assuming that the player can deal with them in time)?

I hope I’m wrong about it being a small number. If a campaign is only thirty maps or so then it is fine. Especially if there is great variety in the initial positions.

1834

Hey man, you might wanna get this looked at -----------------------^

Is this stupid game out yet?

1835

I have a big problem with the handmade maps, the first time I see a map twice I’m really going to be irritated. It destroys my sense of the internal consistency of the game and turns the battle into an abstract “gamey” fight as opposed to something realistic in the game world. The aliens attacked the same gas station twice? That seems unlikely.

1836

This time you’ll be entering the map from the other direction!

1837

I think you already expect something this game is not.

It IS an abstract board game.
It IS NOT a combat simulation.

1838

That’s just like, your opinion man. The original X-Com was not abstract in the slightest, these are serious aliens coming to kill you and everyone you care about. Maybe you would make a better general than I because I want to care about this situation, not tick off a win/lose box.

1839

That’s not a very good example. Almost every gas station in the world looks the same now.

Maybe this game is a statement against neo liberal rubber stamp architectural colonialism.

1840

The original didn’t really have unique maps either, though. Instead it stitched together medium-sized map pieces … a particular house, a particular field, etc. – into a bigger map. In other words, the gas stations were all the same in the original, too. It’s just that the one gas station map piece could be surrounded by other map pieces.

(Which is not bad, mind you. The point is, it’s gamey.)

Somebody pointed out elsewhere that we Olde Tymers often misremember the “realism” of the original, which regularly featured rounds leaving gun barrels at 45-degree angles.