2013 and Beyond
by Kyzrati on 20131223 , under
2013 started out extremely strong with six months of heavy development, probably the number one highlight of the year being SOUND. We expanded beyond UI sound effects to gunfire, impacts, explosions, destruction, screams, ambiance and much more (850 sounds in all). It's definitely the most extensive use of sound in any ASCII roguelike to date, and it's only the beginning.
If you haven't checked any out yet, I highly recommend testing one of the full sound-enabled mods. My own mod, Ground Zero, has a lot of special content if you're looking for a unique X-COM experience. Farm and Terror are what you'll want for the traditional game plus X@COM sound effects. And for something completely new (mech warfare!), try out Union.
The past six months have been less active, though I have been working behind the scenes in several capacities including providing support and development builds for mods, as well updating the engine with features that can be shared by Cogmind and X@COM. So while we haven't had any major releases, the internal change log is still chugging along. Even so, the blog still attracts a lot of visitors and many downloads daily.
Once again it's time for the Roguelike of the Year poll, so if you enjoy the game and all the new features added please consider throwing in a vote for X@COM. You can vote for more than one game, so be sure to pick all the roguelikes you support (or check out some that you've probably never heard of!).
Showing your support for X@COM will help maintain the game's popularity and build more latent potential for when development picks up steam again, hopefully in 2015. I'm sure looking forward to getting back to X@COM, but 2014 will be the Year of Cogmind, and a wonderfully destructive robot-filled year it will be!
I was hoping to release a new mod by Aves Dominari by this month, but it's a rather big one being worked on in spurts so I guess it'll be done some time next year (no pressure, dude!).
1/13/2014: As usual X@COM fared well in the poll, again beating the previous year's record by accumulating 172 votes this time, coming in 14th out of several hundred. This year didn't feature any categorical breakdowns (of which X@COM is likely to top several), but you can check out the overall list here.
6 comments
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Kyzrati
December 23, 2013 at 7:13 PM
Thanks DarkGod! While I can't say my games would ever be as popular as T4 since they stick so closely to the ASCII niche, I do hope they'll gain enough support one day to maintain full-time development. For now I'm content to run my full-time dev on savings ;)
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Brian Jeffears
December 23, 2013 at 8:56 PM
Stay the course---heaps of potential still there alongside the accomplishments thus far.
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Unknown
January 5, 2014 at 11:50 AM
Son of a bitch I missed the poll :c
I would have voted for you if I could. That counts for something, right? ;p
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JM
January 5, 2014 at 12:01 PM
Missed the poll too. Now awaiting for a full year of robot bashing, followed by a year of alien zapping ^_^
How, and a late Merry Christmas (it ends this Sunday) amd hope you started the new year well ;)
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Kyzrati
January 5, 2014 at 12:30 PM
Dudes! How could you?!
Just kidding, it's the thought that counts, and X@COM actually did quite well (WITHOUT YOU BUMS ;) ...now how did you both show up late and at precisely the same time, haha.
We got 172 votes and were pretty high up there, I'm just waiting until Jo or someone else does the final categorical tallies to link to the results from here. Was considering doing it myself this year, but I'm kinda busy with Cogmind and all...
2014 will be the year of robot blasting, for sure. Happy holidays, guys. Being the holidays I've recently gotten less done than usual, but progress is picking up now. This morning I even opened up X@COM and finally got rid of that annoying Windows system beep caused by Alt-key commands. Yay!
December 23, 2013 at 5:15 PM
I for one like what you're doing :)