It has been another busy weekend. We’ve implemented some more stuff. This news’ screens will feature explosions on a crashlanded ufo. Also some graphics comparison between original game and ufotts (since we’ve been asked for this type of screens 
.
First old:
Now new:
Here I would like to clear up one thing. I’ve seen many people reffering to ufo the two sides as a “faithful remake of the original game”. It’s not quite true. Semi-faithful might be a better description. We never intended for this to become a higer resolution version of the original game. We haven’t even considered this to be ufo deluxe with added keyboard shortucts and bugfixes. However, many people seem to think of this game as such. Sure, many mechanics are quite close or even identical to the original game, but on the other hand, a lot of them are also different.
This game was intented for multiplayer only at first. Our goal is to recreate gameplay experiance of ufo 1 for multiplayer, not a faithful remake of the game. Singleplayer was added later. Therefore, everything revolves around multiplayer version of the game, which includes for example economy for the alien side. Adding economy changes the game. It’s not a simple upgrade, since the original’s version had its merits too and there can be situations where the old version might be better. Ofcourse we are trying not to deviate too much from the predecessor. But we are not making perfect copies of the previous mechanics either.
Some newly implemented mechanics are intentiounally different from the original ones.
For example: the first game simulated crashed ufo’s damage with engines explosions. Ufotts on the other hand will have more explossions on a smaller scale, which simulates damage from interceptor’s fire rather than internal engine failure.
Another difference is how motion scanner works. In ufo 1 you had to use 25% of your soldiers tus to see a map with dots indicating moved soldiers. Fun gadget, but its usefulness was not great. In ufotts you pick up motion scanner into your hand, press activate (one time action), and from now on motion scanner will work all the time. A bit more like motion detector in the movie “Aliens” and in “AvP” games. Your soldier doesnt waste so much time just looking at the monitor anymore. You still get some handicaps, like lower accuracy for using 2 handed weapon when holding the motion scanner, and there is a constant but very small drain of TUs each turn (unless you deactivate the scanner) which simulates your soldier’s peeking onto the monitor. Those couple of precious seconds could save his life, but in most cases won’t matter much.
6 Responses.
As to the “fateful vs semi-fateful remake”, here’s a suggestion: maybe you could add an option to play using the original’s gameplay, but with the more recent graphics? Maybe a checklist full of
“feature: v original x ufotts”
options. It would be really nice to be able to enjoy the upgraded graphics and engine while keeping the original gameplay.
As for the smoke, I appreciate that it looks slightly more like real smoke instead of the confusing dithering of the original, but I don’t think it looks like smoke much. The obvious tiling kind of spoils the illusion.
Maybe it would look better to take a large smoke sprite, cut it to fit the whole area to draw on (instead of drawing on a per-tile basis), and apply it (as can be seen currently done in FPS, such as COD4). Alpha intensity would be lowered in tiles with lower smoke density to make it appear as faded.
The new motion scanner idea sounds great
Again i must say: GREAT JOB!
It’s most important project for me this year. Even including every commercial games announced for 2010.
As ti PJ’s suggestion, the effect of it being “tiled” looking might be more easily offset by simply applying the effect randomized as to each tile’s timing, so that they’re not all billowing at the same time. Same goes for fire. Not tough, and helps cut down on the “oh brother” factor of all the smoke and fire doing the same thing at the same time.
It is already randomized. Each fire and smoke frame starts at random number. Some of them perhaps got randomly selected to be the same, but if you look closely you will see its not the same for all tiles.
This is a tile based game. It should be easy to visually tell which tile has fire/smoke and which doesnt. A large sprite would look more like smoke, but it would be harder to tell where the smoke really is. I dislike this kind of aproach in tile or hex based games.
I must agree with NeFuRii. Especially when you concider that in a tile based game tactical squad type game, the positioning of your guys is critical. Especially when the smoke actually does something of a negative nature to people standing in it.
(Slowly applied stun damage from the smoke on soldier standing in it for example.)
By the way I love the smoke. Really brilliant work.
Scanner idea sounds pretty nifty too, very much like how they treated motion scanners in xcom 3 bar the slight TU penalty.
I LOVE YOU GUYS <3… this project is one of the best news I had this year.
You have all my support. AT LEAST X-COM is getting the successor it deserves.
About Smoke: It would make more sense if it formed an + shaped figure instead of a box, can that be done? Also, smoke should provide some cover bonus (if it doesn't).