[Commercial GLOOME] Xenomia (Now with Single Player!)

[Captain Ventris]

Pre-alpha version 5 is out! Last version before the con!

Full changelog is here.

[Captain Ventris]

Whew! It's sure been a crazy day! Tiny Tuttle Studios is set up here at San Japan, presenting the game to the public in person for the first time! Impressions have been good, people have enjoyed it a lot, and we're really proud of our hard work. Due to the odd internet arrangement we've got going on here, we're going to try and release the latest build of the game, but are isolated here and so will not necessarily be able to show up at the regular testing session. If anything solid pops up I'll let everyone know here!

[Captain Ventris]

The latest update for Xenomia is now up! The changelog is here.

In addition, we have opened up forums for Xenomia! The forum can be found at, fittingly, http://forums.xenomia.com

[Someone64]

Link is broken due to the unnecessary "www." for the forums.

[Captain Ventris]

Link is broken due to the unnecessary "www." for the forums.

Wowzers, fixed!

[Captain Ventris]

Pre-Alpha 6 of Xenomia is available for download off the site now! The changelog for it is here.

[Captain Ventris]

Pre-Alpha 0.0.7 is out and available on the site! The big feature is the addition of Defense Orders, which tell units around you to stay and guard your location, so you can task them to capture points, hold passes, etc.

EDIT: The changelog is available for viewing on the official Xenomia forum!

[Captain Ventris]

Pre Alpha 0.0.8 is out and available to download from Xenomia.com ! Major changes include a progress bar on your HUD for capture points, and indicators for when a unit can be unlocked and/or upgraded.

[Captain Ventris]

Have had an insane couple weeks, but Xenomia is now at pre-alpha version 0.0.11! Changelog is at the top of the page at forums.xenomia.com !

[Dancso]

I'm planning on giving this a try soon-ish, wish you good luck in the game dev business!

Please tell me you're gonna have a version of Valley (07) and/or try to make a licensing deal with the author of 'Glorious Morning', that combo really sold the mod to me back in the day!
I know some people dislike the map because it's gigantic and monsters get stuck easily, but I loved it
Or for that matter, can we expect any of the ZDW maps to return in some form?

[Captain Ventris]

I'm planning on giving this a try soon-ish, wish you good luck in the game dev business!

Please tell me you're gonna have a version of Valley (07) and/or try to make a licensing deal with the author of 'Glorious Morning', that combo really sold the mod to me back in the day!
I know some people dislike the map because it's gigantic and monsters get stuck easily, but I loved it
Or for that matter, can we expect any of the ZDW maps to return in some form?

There will almost certainly be some Valley equivalent map. In fact most maps will be Valley sized or much larger given the siege weapons and special abilities in the game. Xenomia is vastly, almost laughably more stable and smoother than ZDWars, and the ability to issue move and defense orders makes it a breeze to advance a several-hundred unit army. On top of that pathfinding alterations/new forms of pathfinding for ranged flying and hovering units will make everything work better. For reference the current 2 maps are considered 1v1 maps. Not only is the scale much bigger, but the relative difference between unit sizes will be substantially bigger. When Heroes and other super elites hit the field, they will be super impressive. Multi-part(actor) units will be a fixture of the late game, so yeah.

As such I'm not seeing a specific return of existing ZDWars maps due to the scale difference, the fact that this will be a commercial project, and the control point gameplay of Xenomia. Valley was always my favorite out of all ZDoom Wars maps and always most embodied what I most wanted out of ZDWars. In Xenomia, that's going to be a reality. Faction themes and gameplay are being taken to their absolute ideal extremes, battles will be gargantuan, and genuine organic battlefield tactics will carry the day even among the monsters and laser beams yet to come (with certain units yet to be added it would be completely possible to fairly accurately recreate the Battle of Gaugamela, for example).

[Arctangent]

I wonder how long it'll take for someone to make a "Xenowars" mod that'll take a lot of the improved pathfinding and stuff from the engine side but swaps out a lot of the new mechanics for old ZDoom Wars ones.

[Dancso]

One question crossed my mind just now, do you plan/have any mechanics to affect the length of game sessions?
I can imagine various scenarios where
- A game goes on for hours because the players can't get the upper hand over one-another, whether that's due to their lack of strategic sense (to try something different that might work) or unit balance and/or map situations where it's difficult to achieve decisive victories is yet another can of worms (though I guess preventable through good balancing and mapping)
- If games would theoretically take like 30 minutes to finish on average, some might feel like it's daunting because they're more suited to shorter sessions. I actually had a friend who died 3 minutes into his first game of ZDWars and then lost all interest because of how long he had to wait to try again. (to be fair he wasn't really into the concept either, which is shocking given that he likes RTS games)

Some unit-stat scaling, changing the speed of resource gains/captures, perhaps sudden death mechanics that slowly turn things absolutely chaotic on the map to make death inevitable but still allow the window of opportunity to avoid a draw game?
Do you have any goal of how long a typical session should take?

[Captain Ventris]

Arc: Probably not long, but even now I find Xenomia's mechanics more fun, exciting, varied, and balanced!

The control point mechanic of the game means that if you lose control points, you lose resources, giving an aggressor an advantage. Simultaneously the player's inability to research upgrades or unlock new units without using a console at an allied capture point can grant a defender's advantage in the short term. Commander abilities, deployable siege units, customizable heroes (note that Heroes will have a much bigger battlefield impact in this game than in ZDWars), fear effects, disruption effects, defensive structures, and various forms of unit hard-counter (including alternate upgrades that alter a unit's behavior and capabilities) will all result in ways to break stalemates. Moreover we are soon going to make it so that when you lose your last point your health begins to degenerate, so you cannot run to troll your opponent for long.

Xenomia has more aggressive, responsive, and higher damage units (compared to their health) than ZDoom Wars, meaning an uneven battle will resolve more quickly out in the field. Even a slightly more astute use of movement and defend commands will alter a battle. An inferior commander WILL get outplayed, period. With full game content, a long stalemate will only be because the game is being played spectacularly and will be such a feast for the senses no one will complain.

As it stands, most 1v1 or even 2v2 games resolve themselves in less than 20 minutes, and that's just with the basic (T1 and T2) units currently in the game that are inefficient at killing players. With all content in game I expect that number to remain stable, since the increasing variables will keep things difficult to stall for long.

That said, you don't have to sit waiting for a game like that. You do not join servers in Xenomia. All online players in the world log in to a general lobby and can chat. Anyone can hit the button to create a game with whatever player count and map they desire. The net data is routed through our host servers, so the players' net connections and relative ping matter little if at all (and will matter less as our infrastructure improves) The game appears in the lobby where anyone can join and start the game session. If there are players, you can all play games simultaneously.

[wildweasel]

That said, you don't have to sit waiting for a game like that. You do not join servers in Xenomia. All online players in the world log in to a general lobby and can chat. Anyone can hit the button to create a game with whatever player count and map they desire. The net data is routed through our host servers, so the players' net connections and relative ping matter little if at all (and will matter less as our infrastructure improves) The game appears in the lobby where anyone can join and start the game session. If there are players, you can all play games simultaneously.

Is there still an option to direct-connect, in case the servers are down or inaccessible for any reason?