There has been a lack of updates over the last week or so, this is because we are planning to provide on significant big update this month. So resources are all at this update, you can take guesses what it will be about, but for now stay tuned and expect something big soon!

-J45PER

Hey guys! This isn’t Jamie! It’s Steve! I’m back again! There’s a lot of exclamation marks in this sentence! EXCITING!

Anyways, Are you ready? It’s Behind the scenes time. I’m going to give you an inside look at 3 of our maps, along with some of these secrets that have been mentioned in past posts!

Disclaimer!

This is all WIP. All is subject to change. Hopefully for the better! If you have any questions, feel free to comment on the post, I’ll answer the best I can!

Okay First Map!

One of the maps we have barely shown or even talked about, is Crater! This map kind of a joint effort between Ankash, our foliage modeler, and myself. The name is pretty self explanatory, There’s a giant crater in the middle of the map, but there is also four operations bases to take control of on opposite corners. It’s a decently big map, with a lot of grassland and foresty areas. Originally the map was in the shape of a giant X, but it felt really enclosed. So, I opened it up!

Note, this is an early planning picture. A lot has changed, I’ll be updating this post tomorrow with two more pictures of the map. Ran into a few technical difficulties today with getting the other images I wanted to show off set up.

The map is now expanded over the top, and with plans to expand across the bottom aswell. Kind of in the shape of a giant 8, exposing the bases front and back. I’m considering experimenting with automated defense systems that can be built, but we’ll have to wait and see how balanced that will be.

If everything goes right, it should feel decently balanced and open, and should be oodles of fun! I chose to have the bases on the corners of the X because it keeps them from being too close together, and not easily accessed by just going straight into them, planning will be needed, and you will need to leave parts of your team behind at each base to defend.

The map still needs a lot of work before it’s anywhere near complete, but hey. This is why it’s called behind the scenes!

Don’t go anywhere! There’s more!

What, you thought that would be it? You couldn’t be more wrong. As I mentioned above, we still have TWO MORE MAPS to go over! Islands and Frostfall!

Since you know most about Frostfall already from my previous BTS(here), I’ll go with islands next!

This was the first map I worked on here. I’ve went through probably 6 or 7 different lighting variations and layouts of inside the buildings, and now I’m just waiting on some new base models to make it look nicer! Islands is going to be a fairly open yet small map, suited for 8 to 10 players. KRA and UEGA go head to head fighting off eachother until the end. Because this map is so small, our sniper class is definitely going to need to be limited to prevent some balance issues.

Since the game takes place on an alien planet, not all of the vegetation is going to be normal! Those purple trees and grass and odd looking plants? Alien vegetation. The ground is contaminated in certain areas, taking over any vegetation that may have been planted in certain areas by humans. You’ll see more variations of this in some of the maps Trevor is working on, our other level designer.

This is probably the most complete map, just waiting on a few meshes to complete it and make it ready for playtesting.

Last, but not least!

And now, for Frostfall! I’ve been making some smaller changes moving it closer to completion, mostly working on the waterfall and surrounding areas(Unsure if I’ve even shown that ever, but I will now!), as well as the lighting.

If you haven’t been around long enough to see any of the past posts about frostfall, It’s another large map with many different environments, ranging from the top of a snowy hill and stretching down a mountain into a more dense forest. Vehicles will be available to make getting around a little quicker.

Also, the forest areas are becoming a bit more dense, and I’m adding a few more bases to keep action up in the map and hopefully keeping it fun.

I’ve also never released a top down of it either, but I feel obligated because I did with the other two maps, There’s still a lot of work to be done in some areas.

I want to add a lot more paths off to the side of the map to expand it further and make it less of just a straight open forest battle, so we’ll see how it turns out.

Okay, one more thing!

In one of our earlier builds of the game, I was doing some testing and came across a ragdoll bug. It’s fixed now, but it was hilarious at the time. I filmed it, and put it up here for you guys to enjoy!

Wrap up

That just about does it, Not all of the pictures are going to look the greatest, but it’s meant to be more of a look through the eyes of one of us. I hope you enjoyed! In the screenshots I ran into some last minute issues with lighting, I’m working on them as you read it, if you even notice. But yeah, bye for now!

- Steve

Friday Update

BTS Making Maps

We’e keeping this Friday update schedule rolling out with another Friday Update in a row, this update brings you the second part of Steve Ruk’s interview as well as a recap of this weeks events, oh and a few other things.

Steve Ruk Interview (Part 2)

So the second half of the interview with Steve Ruk is here if you didn’t catch the last half catch up here first!

What is your favourite faction?

I like all of them really, but I really like the look of the KRA.

What map do you think will be most popular?

Probably Frostfall or Crater, as they are bigger maps. Glacial could prove to be pretty popular as well, but we’ll know soon enough.

Which region would you like to develop next?

I’d like to give a try at an urban environment, with lots of indoor areas. When teaching myself how to design maps, that’s mostly what I practiced with.

What is your favourite piece of concept art? (That you’re allowed to talk about)

Probably this one here!

What is your community/forum name?

Zombie112, pretty much everywhere on the interwebz.

Where can we see images of maps you’ve developed?

On our site, IndieDB, and I may end up starting a portfolio site pretty soon, just to show some work. We’ll have some updated screenshots soon in the next week or two.

First Feature

This week we had our first feature with the KRA as the focus, these features lead up to and will continue through the Kickstarter event that we are going to talk about later on (in this post). We decided to feature one of the main antagonists first and so the KRA won the battle to be shown off first along with a short story and description about the faction.

You can catch up with the KRA feature here, and expect more features over the coming weeks as well as Behind The Scenes posts (BTS Updates, with one coming next week).

Kickstarter

We couldn’t get away without talking about Kickstarter due to a delay it was meant to be announced to start today but we are now pushing it to the middle of May so we can provide more content and also make sure that the press get information that will be more suited to more gamers finding out about Zone: Commando and Xitol as well as pushing more people to our site to catch all the updates we push out!

Thats all for this week check out Xitol.net Monday for the schedule for the coming week!

-J45PER

So this is the first of the Pre-Kickstarter feature posts, kicking things off with the second largest antagonist group in the universe the KRA. The KRA are a splinter of the AFA (who in-turn were a splinter of the UEG), the KRA find themselves controlling the Jungle regions of Arcasion mainly but they do have urban control in some areas too, on the other planets they control they have access to more regions and control 2 whole planets within the system.

Visuals

The KRA uses very distinct colours of Green Camouflage and Crimson for all of their basic troops and lower ranks, with higher ranks featuring slight colour variations to their armour and apparel, most KRA ranks are in hoods and cloaks over power assisted armour shells. Some specialist KRA only wear armour or use special coloured outfits such as carbon and black such as KRA special ops units.

The KRA Trooper is the most basic of the KRA forces utilising the basic assault and close quarters weapons, Troopers are the most common KRA seen on Arcasion because they are the main assault force for the region and are suited for all environments with their more robust apparel and various items of equipment. The Trooper armour is also used for higher ranking field officers the KRA Officer, KRA Commander and the KRA Brigadier each featuring distinct features to set them apart from the basic KRA forces.

The KRA Heavy Trooper is another KRA class commonly seen on Arcasion making use of heavier weapons and much more strategic deployment Heavy Troopers work in small groups of 3 and are usually sent in for demolition or clearing operations. KRA Heavy Troopers don’t feature a rank structure as they are special use only although the UEGA is encountering them more frequently than they’d like as Heavy Troopers have much stronger armour than basic KRA.

The last KRA to be shown today is the KRA Scout, another specialist making use of stealth equipment and long ranged weapons including sniper rifles and long range rifles. KRA Scouts are divided into 3 the basic Scouts, Scout Commanders and Infiltrators that wear all black and also feature a active camouflage system making them near invisible to the naked eye.

Aims

The KRA have one aim which is to control the Arcasion system and the 6 hospitable planets in that sector free from UEG and AFA influence, it is unknown who is financially backing their campaign but more and more soldiers that don’t truly believe in the UEG’s plans for one human central government (Earth) are starting to defect to the KRA in that area prompting the UEG to bring non-localised troops into the sector to combat the insurrection and rebellion, the KRA unlike the AFA have no allies against the UEG but they are strong enough in number to make re-securing the Arcasion system extremely hard without the AFA also being at war in the same sector.

Summary

The KRA are one of the bigger threats in the UEGA and UEGN’s battle for control and stability and as they make use of the vast jungle and forest regions to make camps and operational bases it is harder for the UEG to deal with them as a threat, KRA spacecraft are rarely seen as they are only used for orbital deployment and the rare supply and troop drops, the UEGN has taken out only 2 KRA Frigates to date compared to the larger numbers of AFA ships taken out in the same war.

Feature – KRA

Friday 26th April

Friday Update (Including Steve Ruk Interview Part 2)

There has been a change to what content come out this week, some of it was planned and some wasn’t so I’m going to do a quick run-down on what has been moved and why. The second part of the interview with Steve Ruk will be postponed to next week, also the AFA gallery and AFA feature will be combined and there will be an other special announcement planned next week besides the one we are announcing today.

A Special Announcement

Today Xitol Softworks has just officially opened Two-16 Games a subsidiary studio consisting of a 5 man team of Developers, Artists and Production focused on 2D games for Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Apple iOS, Apple Mac, PC, Android and Linux the first game is under pre-preduction now and the website for Two-16is set to launch at the end of May when production starts for the first project.

As Two-16 is smaller and localised expect a game to be released/in late development at a similar point to Zone: Commando is scheduled to release, Two-16 also doesn’t impact upon the Zone: Commando development team and doesn’t slow the release of Zone: commando or the planned Kickstarter event.

 Shortest Update

Thats it for this TGI sorry that it is so short but we’ll try to make it up to you next week

- J45PER

Special Announcement

Thursday 18th April

Zone Feature: AFA

Gallery Post: AFA

Friday 19th April

Friday Update and Steve Ruk interview part 2 of 2

This Friday…

This Friday features part 1 of an interview with Level Designer and Assistant Project Manager; Steve Ruk, as well as a flashback to some feature levels. Compared to last week this is quite a short update as we have a lot on our plate and Kickstarter is literally round the corner.

The Interview: Part 1

Who are you and what do you do at Xitol?

My name is Steve, I’m a level designer and play a role in Management team here at Xitol.

How long have you been at Xitol, and what’s the biggest thing you’ve worked on so far?

Almost two years at Xitol and considering our main project of Zone: Commando, that would have to be the biggest. Map wise, the biggest is Frostfall, which had a post a few months back. (Click here to read that post)

What would you say has been the most enjoyable part of Xitol?

Probably how friendly and motivating everyone else is on the team. We’re are all have different skills and have different techniques and help each other out as we go along. Everyone always appreciates the work being put in, no matter how big or how small.

What are you looking forward to in the coming months?

Kickstarter, and getting Zone: Commando out as soon as we can. Also, some nice weather finally after having what seems to be an extended winter.

Can you go into what we will see from you in the Kickstarter?

Map Flythroughs and Screenshots, mainly, with brief overviews of each one.

Is there anything you are working on currently that can’t be spoken about? And can you hint what?

There may or may not be another project in planning stages that I’m pretty excited about. That’s probably all I’m allowed to say about it right now.

Maps Flashback

We are also going to this week flash back to talk about some of the first maps you will see in Zone: Commando:

 Islands: The beach-side medium sized map focusing on base to base action between coms relay towers.

Glacial: The small asymmetric map set in a tundra ravine.

Frostfall: The massive vehicle focused outskirts map set on the side of the glacial areas.

Complex: The small desert base facilities and cave systems.

Crater: The Medium-Large open forest and jungle map supporting co-op and multiplayer.

We Out!

Thats all for this short update this friday.

- J45PER