Written by I’m in the process of creating some more alien concepts and I’d like to know what you guys would like to see in an alien horde that’s looking to wipe out every last human they can find.
Do you expect large(ish) hordes of swarming aliens? Perhaps a fewer high tech alien with a taste for vengeance is more your style? Stupid tanks? Brittle thinkers? Let me know what alien force you wouldn’t want to be knocking on your door..
And if you played X-Com, let us know what shocking experience you had with a new alien type that made you rethink your game. The introduction of Crysilids had me running..
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I always wanted some kind of cannon fodder type alien, active hunters that are easy to kill but nasty in numbers. Brittle thinkers that can control the swarms would be cool too, kill the thinkers and the swarm goes apeshit!
I’m intrigued by the possibilities of enemies interacting with the destructible terrain:
Say a stealth-cloaked guy, that is able to hide on undamaged walls or terrain, but can’t hide in rubble, forcing the player to demolish areas.
or a “Rhino” that charges in straight paths, destroying the environment, but has a weak spot in the back (perfect for preparing ambushes).
What about an alien that can be turn into a berserker, by a concussion or injury, attacking randomly other aliens?
Hmm, I do like the idea of having an alien that changes its behaviour when it’s hurt..
I’d even be tempted to go the opposite way with the destructible terrain as well where damaged walls let in more aliens so in some areas you’ll have to be a bit more careful.
There are too many candidates for me to recommend a particular flavor of alien. Not knowing too much, you may be able to consider mission packs or add-on content?
I will say that the moment that had the most impact for me in the original X-Com was early in the game when Grays first started showing up. First contact in a Nebraska barn at 2:00am (in game) still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Yeah, the best missions were the ones that could scare the crap out of you. The first time I sent a couple squaddies into a warehouse during a terror mission and watched them get eaten and assimilated by Cryssalids, only to come out and eat MORE of my guys… I knew this was the game for me.
Generally, there are a million ways you can go with aliens, but to keep it simple:
1) Missions that are scary are awesome.
2) Missions that are too easy get boring and repetitive. Once your guys could fly, psi-op and blasterbomb, UFO missions vs. things like Floaters got real easy, repetitive and boring. So, figuring out how to keep missions challenging while teching up is important.
3) The more alien types there are, the better. Add-on content sounds like a good way to go here.
So as long as an alien race/group/tactics fit the above, they’re gonna be a great addition imho.
Having a team deal with confusion was always the most thrilling situation. Like getting blasted with a heavy weapon explosion right off the ramp, two or three squaddies freaking out, and scrambling to salvage the situation in any way possible. I appreciated the potential and execution of chaos from X-Com.
Chrysalids… wow, yes, very intimidating! The best was that they would get knocked out by what would normally kill. I once had my squaddie pick up a Chrysalid, not really processing that the thing wasn’t dead. Then one turn, he basically popped out of the guy’s “backpack”, infected him and started a ruckus right under the wings of the Skyranger! Dumb move on my part, but very fun and memorable! Infectors should definitely come into play, for that wildcard factor.
Canon fodder “swarm” type enemies would be an interesting addition! it gives a little weight to that decision to use or save your action points.
Big part of the fun was figuring out the aliens and how they operated. Anything you can do to surprise us or complicate (not frustrate) situations could be really fresh.
Judging by your progress, I’m assuming you took my year-old advice and checked out “Rebelstar: Tactical Command” for the GBA. Looks like you’ve paid beau coups of homage to that title.
Huzzah!
Yeah, I checked it out and played it quite a bit. Decided not to use some of the elements of that game, but it still is a great game..
I would like whatever alien types will make the game ship sooner!
I think the important thing here is variety.
But, do it a little differently than X-Com did. The ‘progression’ of races you encountered was fairly fixed….
So make all sorts of races available, each requiring different tactics.
Have a lobster man style TFTD race where if you don’t have massive weapons you have to pound them super hard and hope for a knockout, a super frail psionics race, something in the middle as a standard alien soldier..
But I think what I’m getting at is don’t have a sliding, linear progression of races.
Force us to adjust our tactics on the fly to meet new threats. Maybe give us some indication, IE, terror site or UFO landing/crash from lobster face race… so we know we need to grab the AP guns which do a bit less overall damage but are really good for the lobsters, etc…
I’ve always been partial to a few other ideas though. The Psilons from Orion were neat, maybe have something like them. A psionic race with bodies so atrophied they can barely move/move by telekinetic hovering.
Perhaps a quadruped race of some sort?
The sky is the limit!
Just…. what I said about progression. :p
Like, just an addendum to what I said above… X-Com tried to do this by making different stuff vulnerable to different weapons, but they didn’t make it important enough.
ooh, ooh, one more idea then I’ll stop spamming.
What about something that is chameleon, to go farther with what you said? So it changes into a rock, a tree, etc, and tries to play on too much going on for you to notice? As it gets closer to your people it even changes into one of them as it works it’s way into melee?
So it basically preys on the player’s ability to notice something out of place
I really like the chameleon idea. Each turn the alien has a random appearance of one of the objects on the field of battle. So you press turn, and then all of a sudden there’s now a tree next to those two guys you had walking down the street.
Could make for some very silly situations when its obvious, but could also be very cool if the trickery pays off for the bad guys.
Yeah, something like that could work – and it’s the kind of addition that doesn’t add weeks to the dev time.
I think it’d be a lot of fun.
Maybe have it check the tiles within X distance and turn into a feature of one of them….
The thing that might be amusing though, is a small part of the time, have them choose to stay put instead of moving…. so it’s like…
The player moves some guys.
WTF, was that tree there before?
Oh, heh, it didn’t move. K.
Aww, damn it, my guy got eaten
I think a cool race to actually do that would be some sort of protoplasmic race. Amoeba style things. Naturally, their attack is melee only.
I’d totally write up a ufopedia article for them too
I’ll totally keep that in mind
X-COM 1 is still the best overall game, in my opinion, but I loved the variation of alien types in Apocalypse. Had two faves:
One was the sluggish worm-like alien that popped out little wriggling worm larve when killed. You then either ate the cost and tossed a grenade to wipe out the little buggers, or spent ten to fifteen minutes searching the area for every last one after they scattered.
My second was the tiny running bomb. I remember audibly groaning when one of them appeared around a corner, mashing on the spacebar, switching all my rifles to full-auto and assigning the target, then closing my eyes before unpausing and waiting to hear the inevitable screams. (It was a great moment in the game the first time I managed to stun and contain one for reasearch after the mission.)
Sorry for the double post, but: brainstorm.
What about an alien that infiltrates your bases using subterfuge. You’ll see a sudden financial loss or an unexplainable decrease in production/research. (This “error” could be introduced to the player via a quick message, for instance.)
The player then needs to look at graphs of finance/prod/research base by base to determine which base and which facility was the culprit.
The player sends a team and must conduct a live fire mission in their own base. Worst case scenario: the alien disappears before the team can corner it. Best case: the team catches it and receives a special research option or something.
Any damage to base facilities or personnel during the mission would be permanent (requiring facilities to be rebuilt, new personnel hired, etc..) I think this could be a pretty tense type of opponent.
Yeah, I really like the idea of adding little ‘bonus’ missions that don’t mean a whole heap in the scheme of things, but keep the game from becoming too monotonous.
What would be cool is to have different mission types as well. Like the terrorsites that would be full of dumb animal type creatures – smarter enemies that invade bases or cities trying to steal equipment or research.
Then you could special ops type aliens that are sent in to assisinate leaders and you have to hunt them down with your own spec ops guys.
Oooh, a line predator style alien in an assassination mission.. sounds good, but probably a bit out of the scope of this first project. Maybe in the sequel
Stealth Aliens: I love the chameleon idea. Very promising indeed! Exploring a site or a ship and constantly thinking “hey, hasn’t there been a statue the last time I passed here” would add a lot to the overall experience. players would have to look at the scenery much more carefully.
Earthworm: Another quite fascinating idea and at the same time simpler, springing from the chameleon phenomena, would be an enemy type that has the ability of burrying itself in the ground. The clou would be that your troopers still could shoot at it if aiming at the right place, but nothing else would point to the alien’s presence (maybe a device for localizing this type of enemy could be achieved later on). Maybe those types of enemies even are vulnerable to oxygene and therefore move and attack from below earth surface. And again there might be special types of weaponry involving high concentration of oxygene.
Shapeshifter: There was another idea I had turning around an enemy that consists of three (?) parts. When this enemy turns up, there is some kind of an undistructable “egg” somewhere, that is bound to one single spawn. The spawn, aka. the Shapeshifter, splits itself apart and can attack the player’s troopers as three single smaller lifeforms all acting independently. Or it also can “assemble itself” to a more mighty shape and attack “in one piece”.
Players do well in trying to prevent themselves from being attacked by the “super” form, since it’s very hard to beat. This creature can be killed be killing all three smaller forms separately before they respawn from the spwan egg (in a specific numer of rounds / time), or killing the “super form”. If only two of the three smaller forms are killed, the remaining smaller form will try to reach the egg in order to regenerate the two other “pieces of the puzzle”. This enemy could add a nice sense of tactical play, since players would have to hunt down all the smaller forms, and prevent them from becoming the “Big Momma” aka. the super form.
Intelligencer: I see these as some kind of bonus enemies, turning up randomly before or during missions every once in a while. Players are notified of the fact that there is an Intelligencer in the area to be found. If Players find and kill these spy like, rather inconspicuous beings, they are rewarded with a special item, weapon or technology. To hunt down these creatures is fully voluntary. Maybe they exist in three different levels of significance, so a level 3 Intelligencer would look different, would be even harder to find, but would also grant a big advantage if found and killed.
Infested: Idea originally coming from StarCraft 2. These enemies make the impression of a regular civilian, and show their true identity either through attacking the players troopers or through applying some kind of a scanner. In order to use the scanner on the “civilians”, the player needs to get close with the troopers, creating some additional suspense through tactical play: Players need to avoid civilian casualties, and at the same time never now if the person in fron of the trooper turns into an ugly monster from one second the other.
btw: Forgot to say, I also like the Cannon Fodder type of aliens (see first post), not too intelligent and big, but dangerous in hordes.
Another idea that just went through my mind ar the
Agents: A type of enemy that is not an alien, but part of a mysterious human organisation, some kind of conspiracy, maybe cooperating with the aliens. A mighty group of relegious freaks maybe, lead by greedy corporate board directors, believing in salvation brought to them by the extraterrestrians. Agents only turn up every once in a while, and might be handled similarly to the Intelligencer.
Its gonna be amazing – I cant wait.
Are the aliens going to be able to possess our teams like Sectoids and Ethreals?? That’s a must.
To take a cue from current affairs, how about get some exploding aliens on terror missions?? They could be a cloned/farmed alien breed fitted with high explosives running up to our squads and detonating themselves. Perhaps the aliens had been observing our war zones and emulated our tactics….
But then psi ability would mean our possessed squaddies could do this anyway so maybe it’s not such a good idea.
I like the chameleon idea too, mostly because it echoes one of the all time greatest alien hunters – the Predator. Perhaps you could take this further and rather than set our guys against and equal number of aliens, we could take on a elite team of two or three super-hunter aliens….
Just throwing it out there – looking forward to getting some idea about when we are gonna try this!! Go Jseuss!!!!
if there was a like button on this blog, this is where I would put it.
If the predator style alien was brought in on a terror mission where you come flying in and everyone is freaking but you don’t find a horde of greys running around blasting every last civilian in the level. and realize that your really the one getting hunted… got a nice tingly feeling about that once you hop off the plane to find out its just an ambush waiting to snag you up for a trophy. thats wicked and then to have to decide after fighting these guys a few times if they are worth trying to kill for tech or if its time to book it out there before you loose your more experience troops, who will certainly be the target of our trohpy hunting predator aliens
Stay close to the original X-Com. Be creative and be original but don’t stray too far. The WORLD has been waiting for another X-Com game. And the original creators of the game don’t seem to understand how much money they could make if they’d just bring it back. Make your game just different enough to avoid lawsuits, but similar enough to win over the GIANT X-Com fanbase. I wish I knew how to program, because there is a lot of money to be made in an X-Com clone.
I agree, this is going to be huge when it’s out there. But it really has to be done properly. There are so many half baked clones out there..
I’ve been saving up resources and getting ready for the final push. I’m really hoping that the sales of Lost Company will give me the resources to finally make this ship.
Well that all depends on how far from source you want to get.
I agree the Crysilids had me going the first few times I saw them, as did all the night missions. (Until I figured out there were flares. Durh)
So I have a few suggestions all a bit removed from the original source.
1. “Ambush” aliens. These would be like the Xenomorphs from the Alien movies and the Lichtors from Warhammer 40K. A stealthy, hide in the shadows, leaping/clinging type alien. It would have to be able to be “attached” to walls. (Not sure if the engine supports this, or be faked into allowing it) It would hide above doors, the walls of alleys, and roofs and then pounce or shoot hooks with retrative muscles on it to pull enemies to it. Very mean and Melee only (minus those grabbers if it has em)
2. “Piniata Aliens.” Aliens that when they die create more aliens. This can be done in several ways, biologicals could have “babies” inside. That burst out when they’re killed. Mechanicals could be made up of smaller machines that could rove around on their own when the main body is destroyed. These enemies would create the problem of “how to kill them all at once.”
3. “Mechanicals” I enjoy all the biological aliens, but why not some mechanical monsters? Heck even a cyborg faction would be a nice change of pace. An enemy with NO moral would be something to worry about, add in self-healing or adaption and it’d force you to throw all sorts of things at those guys.
4. “Spawners” I don’t remember any aliens that created aliens in Xcom, but in Laser Squad Nemesis the queen can lay eggs that create more aliens, why not have those for Isochron?
Although having aliens that try to flank or ambush you is nice, please don’t add aliens that actively try to hide from you. One of the worst experiences in X-com was having to find that one sectoid hiding somewhere on a base defense mission, finally killing him in some storeroom after 10 minutes, then realize that the commander you stunned had woken up and disappeared.
What did you think of the XCom-Apocalypse style of letting the aliens escape from a mission?
Yeah, I like the idea of the last few remaining aliens escaping, rather then having to track them down.
So, if the mission starts with 20-30 of them, when they are down to 5 you get a message saying they are pulling back, do you want to persue or not. Something like that.
It might be a good idea to restrict aliens with abilities vastly different from the player’s soldiers to terror units. The regular units should, like in X-Com, have the same basic capabilities as the player’s soldier, with each race with unique statistics. Although fighting terror units occasionally is fun, fighting them all the time would get boring, since you’d forced to only use tactics that exploit their gimmick. For example, if you fought melee only aliens you’ll end up spending most of your time staying back and sniping and reaction firing. By contrast, aliens that behave like humans allow you have a lot more tactical variety.
That being said, it would be nice if later in the game, aliens of different races would fight together, with each race getting unique loadouts or classes that matches with its abilities. For example, you might fight a squad led by an Ethereal, with Mutons with heavy weapons, floaters as scouts, sectoids as medics, and snakemen as riflemen.
I agree about the escape of remaining aliens if they are outnumbered. It used to be kind of painful having to search for the last remaining enemy for quite an ammount of time.
One thing that kind of always boggled me in the original was that you could use the Medi-Kit to heal different body parts, but that you couldn’t aim for them. This could tie into the enemy’s behavior changing when its hurt. For instance, if you had a spider-like enemy, while normally it would rush and melee attack, after you shot off a few of its legs, it would snipe while hanging from the ceiling.
Another thought: money-making missions. You couldn’t really rely on funding to get you through the game, so you had to manufacture heavy lasers etc to make money. If there were somehow mini-missions whose sole purpose was to make money, that’d be a nice change of pace. You could even call them *cringe* mini-games, but you know, not so AWFUL.
Very exited about this. Alone would justify my iPad purchase. I know the hard core gamers are excited about this too, but make sure that on this “casual” platform, you also take into account the more casual gamer. An “easy” mode that presents some challenges, preserves atmosphere, but also allows for doing some serious blasting without getting totally decimated in the process. For me building up my soldiers is one of the really addictive parts of the game, and loosing one is a real emotional blow. Make sure that he gamer has every opportunity to save that Colonel hat he’s raised and nourished from a raw recruit. Make sure that the gamer knows the strengths and weakness of each enemy type and that there are obvious as well as clever and obscure ways to deal with each type, either through armor or weapons or tactics. Good documentation and in game hints might be the way to go with that?
Will try to figure out how to help. I’m a fair writer and would be happy to help with documentation when it comes time for that.
Cheers and good luck and … Hurry!!!!!!!
k
Well, if you’re coding an enemy a la chrysalids please make it so they don’t just vibrate uselessly at the edge of the fog of war. Hiding behind doors, bumrushing down hallways, retreating to regenerate when wounded– cool predator behaviors would be nice
If anyone has a jailbroken 3rd generation device or above, there’s an Iphone port of dosbox called dospad that’s just been released. X-com works great on it, a little slow, but completely playable. It even supports Xcomutil, as long as you disable prompting. There’s some occasional freezing on the Battlescape, but most of the time it goes away if you right click.
A great thing about x-com was that the races weren’t one dimensional;
grays might have been somewhat weak, without psi skills and others, but had no problem carrying enough heavy plasma, and in enough numbers and enough hiding places to keep things even enough.
Mutons were strong; they were encountered late enough in the game that you didn’t really need to worry so much about capturing them either. The fact they weren’t overused is to X-com’s credit.
Chryssalids are Chryssalids, I wouldn’t change them at all, but having them paired alongside those big hairy terror monsters was a nice combination of threats. You can take out the big monsters with huge range via incendiary and hopefully buy yourself some time.
In short, I wouldn’t get too carried away on singular defining characteristics. The function will shape the experience as much as anything – hence why no one is scared of Mutons depite looking like super soldiers.
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If I would add one thing, I would like to have more abductions/soldiers taken alive. Have Alien reinforcements arrive during a routine grey mession, with ethereals looking to take your best and brightest.
Oooh, abductions. More painful than going down fighting.. Maybe those units would be back to fight against you one day… I like it!
That would be so cool. And annoying!
Please mention how you got xcomutil working in ipad – it just doesn’t work for me.
Also the latest dospad lets you run the cpu at maximum cycles and it is like running xcom on a 486.
It actually runs superfast now.
I am looking forward to isochron. I think it is good design practice to work on a perfect battlescape first, before
working on the other facets of the game as I read elsewhere. This game really does look like a labour of love and I think it is going to be a classic….
Thanks! It really is a labour of love. It’s getting there day by day but it’s frustrating how much work is needed to make something actually good. While I still have money and time I’ll be pouring it into Isochron so it’ll be done before long. And hopefully Lost Company can generate some cash sooner than Isochron can so I can quit the day job and work a lot more on Isochron
To run xcomutil on dospad
1. Install xcomutil using dosbox. It doesnt have to be dospad, you can also use dosbox on your computer.
2. Disable any options that causes the xcomutil to pop up into the foreground, such as the map randomizer prompt. or the end of mission prompt.
3. after copying the xcom directory over to your iphone, make sure to set the permissions of all files using winscp to 0777.
4. Run xcom using runxcom.bat.
Hi,
I guess I need the detail is point “2″.
Can you please describe what you mean? I understand everything else except disabling prompts.
What file do you edit, and where?
Thanks…..
When you run Xcusetup, so no when it asks you “Do you want to see XcomUtil messages after combat?” and “Do you want to be prompted before every ship attack?”. You might also need to say no to “Do you want to get research help from captured aliens?”, though I’m not sure about that one.
Hmmm,I tried but it does not seem to work for me, must be something to do with versions or something.
But I did get sound working properly, if just slightly laggy.
But back onto Isochron, which is probably going to be a big deal in about six months!
I wouldn’t mind seeing aliens that change their stance, much like the soldier kneeling or standing, but
also able to move like this – imagine something like a Kzin (a ten foot tall space cat) that when it is upright, is quite tall
when standing erect, but they can run on all fours. A creature like this is very fast and hard to hit, has high reactions and can use a melee weapon as well (a kind of sword with a vibrating molecule strand in a stasis field) and they have telepaths ( rare) who make humans get migraines when they are probed. I don’t know how they would work in the game,
but it would be cool to see them do a cameo appearance….
I remember when I played the first X-com games, that after a while I really enjoyed fighting humanoïd alien shooters, the green guys with Laser Riffles.
The tactic is more challenging with long range fighters than with big beasty aliens who can only fight with teeth and claws.
Indeed, they force you to adopt a “move slowly to cover and cover your friends”. If they do the same (it means good A.I.) it is really challenging.
Alien with psy power are very important too : I can remember the panic I could feel every turn : Will my soldier with explosives in each hand get crazy in the middle of my unit?!!!
Fear and long distance tactics is what I wait from my opponents. For me, it is the most important.
Hmm… What about something a little different than everything else out there? I love X-Com, but you also want a game that will have some flavor of it’s own. So I’d be thinking of a few units that will add some unique gameplay elements to Isochron. A few ideas:
Sentient Machine Master: An advanced creation of alien robotics matched with highly intelligent, self-aware AI. It is a large machine that is fairly robust, can possess several forms of locomotion (treads [good land-movement], legs[less terrain penalty], hover[the most advanced]), but isn’t very well-armed. Rather than direct combat, it creates it’s own war-machines depending on the situation. It would only be able to do this every so often. It tries to remain out of sight/in the rear ranks, letting it’s machine spawn do their work and will only fight if pressed or otherwise presented with favorable odds. It will launch combat bots depending largely on the situation. If you have a large squad of soldiers, it may mostly launch anti-personnel bots. If you have 1 or more HWP-type units, it may launch bots to deal with that threat first. If desperate, it may launch suicide bots.
Anti-Personnel War Machine: This could be called something fittingly deadly, like “Sapien Hunter” or whatever. Movement-wise, they’d need to be able to follow foot soldiers so they would probably be multi-legged buggers that are resistant to small arms fire, are quick and do tons of damage to soft targets.
Anti-Armor War Machine: A rugged contraption that is perfect for cracking the armor of a Heavy Weapons Platform. Though not possessing the firepower of an HWP singly, they would easily take it out should they outnumber it. Their speed and accuracy isn’t as great as the Anti-Personnel machines, so they aren’t as well-suited to taking out infantry.
Suicide Bot: Perhaps most dreadful of them all… A small, fast-moving machine that detonates upon contact with an enemy, doing high explosive damage over a reasonably wide area. The Master Machine doesn’t normally deploy these unless up against overwhelming odds/last resort.
Another idea – I thought it odd in X-Com that the various ships didn’t have weapons systems of their own (at least once they’ve landed). I’d imagine that many alien craft would have anti-personnel weaponry built onto the craft. One of my favorite tactics in X-Com would be to take my HWP, blow a hole in the downed craft and then fire off a couple of missiles into the interior if I thought I was up against nasty odds. One thing I always wanted to see is this having some appreciable impact on the enemy ship itself (besides the gaping holes)… Knocking out defense emplacements. Disabling power to the doors. Or even just knocking out the interior lighting. Sorry, guess that’s a little off-topic.
Ethereals …nothing more frightening than attack a very large ship full of mind controllers Ethereals ! You MUST have something like that in your game…
Ok I didn’t read everyones previous posting but after a few cliche tosses out there I had to say something. X-com was one of a kind, hands down and it was because it was a game that brought a whole new level of firefighting to videogames. It added Terror with sacrifice sometimes and when you cranked the difficulty up it was dog eat dog literally trashing a downed ship to grab some alien tech then book it out of there before the pyschic attacks wasted your team. The Game Was Not Easy, and when it was it wasnt fun.
So I challenge you this, not make a bunch of fat weak grunts from halo
dont make a bunch of cliche musclehead chargers that look like miniature t-rex’s. Make an enemy that every iphone gamer will learn to hate. x-com wasnt exactly a kids game, so there shouldnt be any pulled punches for yours. dont shoot to make enemies that have played out weaknesses. build an enemy that will drive you mad to find some way to stop them.
What about some kind of mitosis alien, like every 5 turns, it splits into two, and then those two split or something, might not work but itd be interesting.