Cenega to publish UFO: Afterlight

[Slaughter]

Cenega Publishing announced today that they will publish the third game in the UFO series. You can find the full press release at their site.

 

UFO: Afterlight takes us to Mars, where a human colony has been built with the help of the Reticulans not long before the events of UFO: Aftershock took place. Mars base is selfsustainable and provides all the necessities for survival of humans on a foreign planet, mainly breathable air, water, food. Although the people inhabiting this colony have the technologies and knowledge required for their further development, basic survival is their major concern. Their only activity is the research of a nearby excavation site, which proves the existence of an ancient intelligent and highly developed alien civilization.

 

The player will enter the game when the research drastically affects all Mars inhabitants. New and unexpected enemies appear in the form of robots, built centuries ago by the unknown aliens for their protection, whose purpose is to eliminate any traces of other civilizations on Mars.

 

Humans on Mars now have a good reason for their own development, even though not knowing yet that the planetary self-defense mechanism might not be the worst awaiting them, and that their unintentional opening of hyperspace gates will bring an even bigger enemy right to their door. After all attempts to contact the Earth Laputa fail, the colonists are left with no other choice than to fight the enemies with their own means, or be annihilated.

 

Main features:

• combination of global strategy and tactical missions
   
  
• new strategic game with resource management and the possibility of terraforming in later stages of the game
   
  
• advanced tactical portion of the game with the possibility to enter buildings, different heights, destructible environment, thermo visions and more
   
  
• even stronger RPG elements, all of your subjects are known by name, complex training system, special equipment and more
   
  
• completely new story building on the events from UFO: Aftershock
   
  
• large number of new technologies, weapons and equipment to develop
   
  
• completely new environments on a different planet to Earth
   
  
• more complex diplomacy option which affects the story
   
  
• aliens, drones and robots in your team
   
  
• new enemies and new alien races with variable weapons and battle tactics
  

[Arghis]

Cenega Publishing announced today that they will publish the third game in the UFO series. You can find the full press release at their site.

 

Damn ! You found it. I was just preparing to submit it

 

Let's hope tha the IA will be better ...

[Slaughter]

Damn ! You found it. I was just preparing to submit it

 

Let's hope tha the IA will be better ...

It your face!

 

And yes, AI is VERY important. They did a better job with Aftershock than Aftermath, but still have ways to go.

[Accounting Troll]

One wonders if the Martian robots wrere originally built to protect Martian civilization from the Myrmecols. It would also be a nice twist if the Martians have become victims ogf their own security measures and forced to live in hidden underground colonies. Star Trek and Babylon 5 have both had stories in which an intelligent race gets wiped out when its robotic security systems get a bit overzealous.

 

I'm rather hoping that Cenega reconsider using Starforce in view of the controversy that decision caused. I really don't want to have to log on to another forum only to see that every thread on the first page is a variation on the theme of "I hate Starforce".

 

And I am REALLY hoping they don't bungle the North American distribution yet again.

[Gimli]

After all attempts to contact the Earth Laputa fail, the colonists are left with no other choice than to fight the enemies with their own means, or be annihilated.

 

I wonder if the failure to make contact with Laputa was something on their end, or the Laputians?

[Matri]

Star Trek and Babylon 5 have both had stories in which an intelligent race gets wiped out when its robotic security systems get a bit overzealous.

 

And let's not forget Terminator.

[Thorondor]

A hardly surprising announcement where the publisher is concerned (virtually reaffirming Cenega as the IP holder of the UFO_A series).

 

I can't say I'm terribly happy about it , but I'm nonetheless willing to overlook that "detail" given the nice people I know to be housed at ALTAR Games. I hope they hit it 'out of the park' this time around !

 

::

 

"New and unexpected enemies appear in the form of robots, built centuries ago by the unknown aliens for their protection, whose purpose is to eliminate any traces of other civilizations on Mars."

 

Hmm, yes... That sounds oddly familiar...

 

https://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/037/reviews/925349_20060207_screen002.jpg

 

[Accounting Troll]

I've had a thought earlier today. Aftermath and Aftershock both have geoscape screens, so hopefully Afterlight will have a nice Mars geoscape screen, however there are one or two pitfalls to doing a Mars geoscape screen that Altar may not have considered:

 

Most astronomical telescopes project an upside-down image of the object being viewed - correcting this would require having an extra lens which will reflect and absorb some of the light. Because of this, there is a convention for maps of the Moon and the planets to be drawn upside-down. It would look sloppy if Altar follow this convention and still have the daylit portion of the Martian globe moving from right to left.

 

Also, the Martian day is around 24.5 hours, and the Martian year is almost twice as long as the Earth year. If the human colonists on Mars still use Earth time, perhaps out of inertia or a feeling of loyalty to the mother world, the procession of Martian day and night will have to be out of sync with the in-game clock.

[Praetoris]

Robots becoming smarter than their creators is an intresting concept, although it's been around alot in games and movies allready. Hopefully altar' can give it a unique twist or perspective to it

[Slaughter]

Yeah, it will be interesting to see how they approach the robot scenario!

 

@Troll: Yeah, good observations. Maybe we can get a little information out of them on the subject soon. Time to gather questions for an interview I say!

[Stefan100]

And is some other news (taken from the UFO boards):

 

Hi everyone,

 

I'll try to comment and answer your questions about UFO: Afterlight at times.

Understand - my task is to manage our project (as I mailed to Slaughter), so don't be annoyed if my response won't come immediately.

 

Some comments about company:

We won't release any other patch of Aftershock, Cenega won't pay for it. We offer a support to actual extent and we can't do more.

What does IDEA, which member we are, you can see here https://www.idea-games.com/

IDEA sold our project to Cenega so we can continue with brand UFO: After...

 

Some comments about Afterlight: I shouldn't spoil too many

Humans really don't know there is another race or collony on Mars.

At one of the end of the game there will be atmosphere and scant flora on the surface. Before that your stuff need to wear appropriate protective suit.

We focused on story and its character. It means not to have many generated missions but less specially prepared ones.

 

(I hope my English is understandable enough )

 

::

 

Thats it, Cenega prepare to get boycotted.

[Accounting Troll]

Thanks for posting that, Stefan.

 

I'm dissapointed, but not surprised, about Cenega's decision not to give us another Aftershock patch. This does not leave me feeling too confident about the amount of support we can expect when Afterlight is released.

[Stefan100]

My bet is that that will make one to AL. Why? See:

 

AM 4 patches

AS 2 patches

AL 1 patch

[Slaughter]

Thanks for the heads up Stefan!

 

Regarding Cenega, it's important to hear both sides of the story. Not saying that anything in the post is wrong, but Cenega has done a lot of good as well. I'm not going to go further into it unless you guys are interested, but remember where our prizes come from for instance.

[Azrael Strife]

That didn't come out of the goodness in their hearts, that's promotional, three or four Aftershock copies are nothing to them, not even worth taking into account when doing the math about their profit / losses.

I think releasing patches to correct errors in THEIR software is their complete and ineludible responsibility. People spend money on it, at least provide some service.

[Accounting Troll]

Under European Union consumer law, a product has to be fit for the purpose for which it is sold. If it isn't, then the customer can choose between getting a refund or a free replacement. A buggy piece of software is no different to any other faulty consumer goods.

 

Sooner or later, there will be an EU court ruling on the subject, and it is almost certainaly going to be that consumers have a legal right to either a patch that fixes all the bugs in the software or their money back. This will shake up the industry for the better in my view. Why should we be expected to spend up to £50 on a buggy game and then have the developer/publisher say "tough excrement, we aren't going to support this game, and there's nothing you can do about it"? I would be happy to spend a litle bit more on a game if I knew that it would be supported.

 

To be fair to Cenega, they did extend the deadline for the development of Aftershock and we did get two patches that solved many of the issues. That's a lot more than what some companies would have done...

[Slaughter]

That didn't come out of the goodness in their hearts, that's promotional, three or four Aftershock copies are nothing to them, not even worth taking into account when doing the math about their profit / losses.

That's not fair. Ever since Cenega came onboard for the first UFO game, they have been very supportive of the community. They provided us with a lot of "inside information" through the development of Aftermath and Aftershock (that I provided the community when suitable), and attended the official chats we had. They made sure I had 20+ SIGNED Aftermath posters and 10+ SIGNED Aftermath 10 shirts, and has since provided signed games and props for Aftershock. Even if they can't always do what we wish for, they do their best. Might be that the Cenega owners do not care for the gamers (1C at this point), but the people working there are very service minded.

 

Regarding patches, you have to see it from both sides. With the short time the developer has to do a lot of things, it's hard to get everything right. On the other hand, the publishers do not sign bugged games. They hire the developers to provide a finished game by a given date. If the developer said he can do it, it's his responsibility to provide just that. It's hard, because the development cycles are killer, but it's still so. After the game is released, and 4 / 2 patches STILL hasn't fixed what was supposed to be working in the first place, it's understandable that they say no.

 

Anyway, there sure are things both could and should have done better. But it's wrong to solely blame one or the other, as both has a certain responsibility. Knowing all the trouble both ALTAR and Cenega had, it's amazing that the games has been released at all. And in their defence, a lot of bugs has been fixed in both games.