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What's that twinkling in your eye, As you dare gaze up towards the sky; Is it something strange that can fly, And yet has no wings you can spy? Do you wish now upon a star, To bring what you hold dearest to where you are? It all seems so peaceful from afar, To the sound of chimes and a wistful guitar; But if you really know what's best, To measure up to the test, As soon as on the horizon you see anything crest, Be nice, let loose on those green gremlins and have a blast! -- Officially sanctioned Festive Handbook, Section AA, SC HQ

:: Xenonauts 2's latest dev update is here, going over what has been accomplished in the past month and shining some light into what lies ahead.

Here we go, crashing another party! As usual we like it loud, especially when we're the ones making the most noise and redoing some of the landscaping to our greater satisfaction. Some of those in attendance try to get us into a brawl by picking a fight around the wooded area but we too know how to pacify fools fast. What's a few shots exchanged among merrymakers anyway, right? A bit slim on the drinks front over here though, so I suppose we'll have to plow through to find where the real fun is at. Let's go mingle some more!

Two birds with one stone as an opener is a perfectly good way to show them thar interlopers we have a bone to pick. Illegally trying to take possession of civilian aircraft won't be tolerated either. Nook rectifies that, exemplifying how area denial can be creatively implemented. Luckily the suits have an automated noise cancellation system to counter sudden spikes in decibels or his ears would be ringing for quite a while. There are now some stiffer sorts amidst the bonesetter ranks, it seems, but we still know how to ventilate them nicely enough. Or, well, kill 'em with fire. It's fine, really, so Silencer and NKF go on to play peekaboo with some pRiders, but it's not always too healthy to stick one's nose into a (certain, infamous) room in a hurry, as the former realized. Pete comes to the rescue, near instantly delivering shocking retribution. You know how it is, push comes to shove and all. Let's move to clarify what happens when you make us cross...

Was that the turning of a page? How hath thou escaped so adeptly the passage of time? You notice not the going of an age, In your eye - all this - is mere pantomime, The clock can never be your cage, For you are always on your prime! :: Happy belated birthday, Zombie!

Festivities were fun, Mega C. Thanks for dropping by! Can't hear us, eh? Tsk, tsk... totally out of it. Shouldn't have come if unable to handle it, right, Pete? The remaining Megas seem to take issue at this unfortunate development and try to cause a ruckus. One appears to have had his fill too and it shows, given the poor aim. This is very much our party though and we'll tell you when to call it quits. Done and dusted. Well, the limo is waiting. Nightcap back at base, people!

Mega nuisances are not that mega in output, which is why we're the ones making the things go kaput! Then, coupled with a good dose of derring do and tech-enabled "blink" capability makes short work of the ominous heavy artillerly atop the UFO, another pair of interlopers soon following suit. TV and CG laugh at the sight of the smoking remains left behind, chanting in unison: "too slow, laid low!". Time to make the new arrival, the tin can's alien Commander, dance to our benefit and enjoyment. Better follow the tune, maggot!

One can't fault FullAuto for the showmanship upon arrival. Humbling the vile invaders is in his very nature. The enemy literally spews poison at us, so they deserve no less than lethal response with discharges of our own new projectile medicine. Not ones to sit on the sidelines, DragonHawk, Mouse Nightshirt and even Knan, all have a go at experimenting the potency of a good delivery with a complimentary grin on their faces. There's a disease to be rid of - one that doesn't belong on this planet. Let's expedite its removal; we're pushing onwards, so check your ammo counts! There are way more UFOs out there and I say any day of the calendar is a good one to take down those numbers, while our figures get ever bigger, in the bank and not only. Lead the way, Commander Z!!

Explosives, who can trust 'em, right? Damage was kind of all over the place but flatlining the opposition they still did. It's pretty to look at too. Leave it to Pete to buck the trend and shoot something the old fashioned way. One and done. Even blows the smoke off the business end of his weapon for extra style points. Short-lived fame being what it is efficacy required multiple tries right after to deliver the desired results and getting the all-clear to pack it back home. Speaking of acclaim, Mouse and MTR pony up for the celebratory refreshments this time around. Never underestimate the power of high spirits in team play, especially in our line of work!

The apparently barren, quietly hostile, chilly surroundings only seem to help us keep our cool. We do it all by the numbers and the numbers start to increasingly add up, without much of a hitch, even with the little jumpscare episodes NKF and then the Dragon Hawk / FA duo had with trigger-happy aliens. A process of unrelenting elimination follows, culminating with Gimli definitively restoring peace and signaling the return to the warmth of the shiny new transport vessel. Places like these always put him in the mood for a good sampling of Vodka for some reason... A good warmup afterwards and a trio of new chevrons bestowed to the upstarts, it's best to get on with it as the clock is already ticking for a real outing. Screw your heads on straight and be on your toes - we're going heavy duty!

Our recent promotees are looking more buff alright. Maybe they'll be able to start pulling their own weight now. They might pass for actually competent members of the squad too for a moment longer, acting smug before the rookies realize we're all in the meatgrinder anyway and everybody needs their backs watched with little room left for posing. Meanwhile, others have been actually doing their jobs and shooting down the enemy from the skies. We're up - lock and load, people!

The lesson for today; grenades are always a good option... Must say I agree wholeheartily.

:: Video - Uber for Sandworms | Corridor YouTube channel

:: Video - Will this rental truck escape the 11foot8+8 bridge? | yovo68 YouTube channel

Alright! Should aliens ever invade, they better come in millions. Just asking - could you win the game right now? I mean, are you dragging the game for the stats but could win long ago?

:: Video - Saving video game history | Here's what we found (the first 100 videos) // Noclip

LOL@ my self 2 years ago.

:: Xenonauts 2's Milestone 3.8.0 patch has now been deployed in earnest, as announced here.

You're no longer a mere climber, Zombie - you've now graduated to mountaineer - soon to be among the top 30 in the world! ? It's only fitting the prize money should increase as well. This thing pays way better than golf, so stick with it.

Impossibles... errrrm, those things that are supposed to be, uh, fiction? Right. The problem with that is that reality tends to supercede and outdo fiction on a daily basis, namely in the most unpleasant side of the spectrum (the inhumane things humans very much do regardless of what they know). Unthinkable extremes? Oh, do think of them at least a little when making decisions about your future. To make things somewhat easier and less esoteric (the realms of chance and prediction being too nebulous): what is the one thing that governs the fates of the Earth and, consequently, all who live within it today? Greed. And what does it want? Moooooooore!! "Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies" - Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom And there you have it. ?

Feeling all blustery, MTR and NKF? Remember, rising up in the ranks are those that'll most often be found walking the planks, if you get my meaning, lads! As luck would have it, High Command has been doing its homework and chances are our increased air power and its proper use will be delivering the goods. Even Antarctica has some fangs now. Finances are solid too with another month in the green and a clear message is still being sent with the healthy, sustained investment in our forces, gear and weapons production facilities; and even by planting new roots in Africa - with this kind of leadership there can be no mistake: Earth will prevail! Our eggheads have now also arranged for more implements for us to play with going forward. Not that our spears are not long enough already, eh? Feeling fighting fit? You're going to need that edge, trust me. We've got incoming!

- Look, it's just so hot out there. The readings are crazy. - Fine by me. Let 'em come to us and do all the sweating. - Hey, Riders, do some riding way over here already. Hah! At some point weight had to be shifted of course. Bonesetters rarely off themselves after all. And we always do the heavy lifting anyway, but it was good to sort of shoot the breeze for a little bit. Engaging kill mode once again just came naturally and it was back to seeing who would rack up the most stiffs. Pete had a bit of a head start, FA had the unfair advantage of group obliteration but the others eventually chipped in. Setting things ablaze left and right in a spectacle of destruction we show the creatures the error of their ways - even the suffocating desert can't shield them from us. Feel free to try your mind tricks, play dirty or what have ye. You better flee as we're not stopping, you can't leave us behind. And when the so-called commander we find we put the thing down. Our world is not for your kind! ?

Take a moment to appreciate the mighty power of, shall we say, commanding from the rear exhibited by our very own Colonel Jman! Keeping danger at bay, let's hear it for the resident alien whisperer!! Did I mention we got nearly a cool 2 million from that little spawn-happy escapade? Oh yeah - eeeeeaasy money! As usual, there's no rest for the wicked though, and warming up to the second coming of MikeTheRed is done right away in a little raid for more supplies at a cool location. Talk about starting off with the right foot too with a fresh kill. Everyone pulls their own weight one way or the other here and it doesn't take much to show how well-oiled a machine of execution we are. The aliens did bring plenty of their poison to our planet but we're downing them with some viperine rapid fire of our own. All weapons hot; let's put the rest of these critters in the cooler for good!

Two decades is a remarkable milestone indeed, Zombie! As far as I'm concerned, it has been a privilege to time travel with you and all the others here at SC for at least some part of that way. To borrow a famed passage from a revered sci-fi TV series: These are our voyages. Our mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations (with generally disastrous and unintended consequences ). And, just enjoying the many wondrous things games of all kinds and gaming-related technology have offered - and continue to offer - us throughout the years. Where might the final frontier be? We shall endeavour to find out!

:: Move over 2023 - as 2024 comes into play we're partying all the way!

@SV: actually, I remember reading an article on the subject a while back somewhere claiming 9 months is your average optimal waiting time for a good value purchase. See how it is? With half a year you are in truth keeping a generous stance towards developers! Getting back to the news: :: Video - Blasphemous II | Dev diary 10: "Tales from Cvstodia"

:: Xenonauts 2's latest development sitrep is here.

FA pisses off the Queens with his deadly, loud delivery of explosive ordnance and it's Zombie that gets repeatedly zapped, then Gimli. Misplaced rage. Happens all the time out here. Fortunately, as a team, we've got our own ways of dealing with such a royal pain in the behind, even without specialized gear. We could sure use some sludge grenades though, as resorting to sludge bombs just seems wastefully costly. But I've heard there are more visitors in need of a warm reception. Let's not disappoint them!

I'm sure this was balanced out at some point, when the enemies are TOO GOOD it can ruin the game - especially a game that revolves around soldier progression. Good call on skipping ahead.

Yeah yeah, I have a reputation to uphold, Space "The Cheapskate" Voyager, the man who demanded a refund for a free game.

I found out. The game uses the colors of "agentequip.pcx". There are 2 of them. 1 for city, 1 for tactical combat. They use different colors, though. Means colors of items in PEQUIP.PCK will look different in each part of the game. The colors can be used by taking the PCX as baseline and import any artwork into that file. Then cut and export as indexed PCX. XED has no problem to import these newly created indexed PCX.

@Zombie: Pretty great overview of the pros and cons of those door types and vans. With real use cases thrown in for good measure. Now _that_'s a good review! To quickly touch upon something you spoke of before, I do think skimping on the cargo light in the back is a little lame on the manufacturer's part, what with the sort of LED tech we have these days, which isn't that big on power draw and really delivers on the brightness. Customers of such cargo vans having to deal with both early day and evening/night deliveries is such a common use case that it boggles the mind that they don't properly satisfy such a base requirement. There are some people (example) that do all sorts of custom work on vans (including installing rear HVAC systems), but their services do tend to be quite costly. Well, leave it to Zombie Customs I guess!

A poisonous reception deserves a viperine reaction. How much of a sting it really had is debatable of course. We know how to be cold as well, dispassionately dispatching our attackers with lead, deep freezing them for good or burning them to the ground. We're versatile and we slap back a heck of a lot harder. So, keep it up, you alien cheats. We'll show you which side is the best at staying frosty when all is said and done!

I did notice how cramped it looked on the demoed van and the too-low clearance on the lower shelf but I was aiming to simply showcase a rack system that might help with the steadying, loading and unloading of your precious cargo. As you say, this would be best used on a full size cargo van like a Mercedes Sprinter and probably not occupying the full width of it even. That would leave room for a driver to look back when manoeuvring and allow you to go into the van's back to hand-pick something and having sliding trays that weren't full length either but split into, say, two parts of lenghts compatible with larger and smaller arrangements as per the known size standards. Just an idea of course, and I imagine it has been well implemented already somewhere. Installing it with some sort of latch system to put it in, fix and then easily remove everything later if/as needed. p.s.: fixed your video embed. There's not much art in its use, but a reliance on the built-in "smart" auto-embed of the post editor is advised, so here's how I suggest you do it: - first, have your video open on a web browser (doesn't need to be playing) - on your post, place a letter (say, Z) in the spot where you'll want the video to show and highlight/select the letter (using shift and arrow keys or your mouse) - go to the browser tab where the video is and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L to select the video's adress/link and then Ctrl + C to copy it to the clipboard - go back to your post, use Ctrl + V to paste that link (so instantly replacing the letter Z) and wait a second or two for it to render the video in place

LOL, the teddybear is a great find!

So, BB, are you ready to check out some of the other bombshells we've got over here? FA, looks like you need to bulk up, man; you'll be carrying a real deal weapon from now on. We're counting on you to have our backs! But just in the off chance things might go south with a snappy UFO cannon or whatnot, our brainiacs have put their heads together to devise a new and improved combat medikit that will do away with the sting pronto. Of course, we'll be the ones bringing on the hurt time and again, starting right up in the sky, as we've got a nasty new interceptor on the drawing board. Can't wait to see what those beauties will be capable of. Meanwhile, let's seek some more thrills and rack up the kills! ?

Our squad is giving the concept of 'blind fire' renewed and improved practical uses. Then moving on to some more 'smoking them out' manoeuvers. It's round after round of no-damage slapping contests but with bullets and guess who's left standing. We never back down from a fight. Colonels Tammy and Blade - it is now your solemn duty to attempt to drink everyone under the table - and fail miserably of course. Bottoms up! Well, to the victors go the spoils and all that, but somebody's gotta be out there doing the heavy lifting, so you're up again, FA and Crazy Gringo. Just in time too, as there are some fresh alien wares to rifle through. Load up!

:: Video - Toxicity (System of a Down) 2023 Halloween light and fire show | Tom BetGeorge YouTube channel

The bastard, he gets vacation with nurses... I miss those times...

All that swag couldn't be in finer hands. We know how to use it better, aliens! It would be interesting (though perhaps expecting a bit much) if the market actually reacted to the hoarding or flooding of certain items by making sale prices fluctuate accordingly. I suppose you can never reach a point when you have too much alien junk on our planet. Makes sense then that we're getting even better equipped to bring down more flying gold. Alright, it appears it's time to go out to collect again. Let's get cracking people!

Look at that - 'The Man' Jman outright saying to the critter: "Gimme your best shot, punk!" and living to tell the story. Flexing his pecs, JFG goes for a little bout of one-upmanship with some close range blasting of his own, with explosive ammo no less. Then the whole team invests itself in getting in the aliens' business again by steamrolling into the UFO, hot and bothered and looking for trouble. There's a little splash damage to deal with in response from the otherworlders but there's no way they're keeping us down and we end it all with a stunner move from Hobbes. Remember that, maggots: when there's a push we're the ones that push back hardest. Give it up for Alpha Team! ?

Playing grenade roulette and seeing what numbers one gets is a fine art. Trying it against a craft's Canon is elevating the stakes of the whole affair to walking a fine line between daring and recklessness. But that's just how we roll. Head-on we sweep the perimeter of the creatures' lair - every nook and cranny - for those maggots unwilling to take a gamble before. Now it's going to get even dicier. Might this can of worms somehow be one of the spicier?

What do my eyes contemplate? A new kind of deathtrap at dusk. The aliens dabbling with terraforming perhaps and it all looks fittingly bleak. Digging ever more greedly into the bowels of mother Earth is our exclusive privilege - you shall be made to repent, in explosive fashion for starters! We follow up with a healthy serving of lead to sprinkle the unwary on our path. Brothers, we shall cleanse this land of the foul xeno scum that has descended upon it and crept within. Close ranks; we go deeper!

Hello, TheArchitect! Glad to see someone still enthusiastic about Sword of the Stars! I do have to point out that this is a 13 years old thread... And that the bastards at Photobucket deleted all my pics, so these AAR threads now look like a plucked chicken. That said, should I ever reinstall the game and go for an AAR here, there will be a CnC ship called TheArchitect in all three sizes, dammit!

Making an entrance with a bang, we're going all out to defang the opposition. It's a no-fly zone, dummies, it's about time you comply. I guess you'll have to be further pounded until you realize over here you're grounded. Your wanton pursuit of slaughter is what turns you into fodder. But you're not the only ones with a thrill for the kill. We've got skills and such in the smarts department, which means you won't last much, alien dreck. All hands on deck - hop to - let's mop this up!

We've rattled their cage so out they pour; we're happy to greet them at the door. We come bearing gifts of all flavours, the kind we bring for bad neighbours. After some labours the cocktail leaves them lying nicely on the floor. Oh, look, they wanted more. ? Leave it to us to chip away at such a reckless tide. Having come to play you can't stare us down or hide, look, we're wearing no frown, get down! At this stage we sort of hate everything about you, but don't feel blue - we'll go after your friends next too. Well done, everyone. Now let's rotate outta here.

Thank you, Thorondor! Love the Bradbury quote!

Such early stage hullabaloo caused NKF & Pete II to have some performance anxiety is all. The aliens get enthused, our forces verbally abused but their ammo got misused and what happens when your chance is missed? Nope, you don't just get bruised, it's a whole different dance, our veterans simply don't get dissed. You can bring out the big guns - we've got our own ones - and they've got the reach to teach you some good manners. No need to preach. Get in formation. We're going in!

Time's a thief; he steals away Many blossoms of to-day. Joys he steals and also tears, Pilfers hopes and filches fears. May the rascal steal from you Only what you want him to! Time's a giver and he brings Sometimes weights and sometimes wings; Now his gifts are lasting fair, Now they vanish in the air. May the rascal give to you Only what you want him to! - Thief and Giver poem by Amos Russel Wells :: Happy birthday, Zombie!

A belated HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! May 2023 bring some good news on all fronts.