Xitol Day is Here news

At Last

Xitol day is here for the 4th time ever and this year it marks the start of the countdown to the finishing of Zone: Commando our first ever game as a development team. Over the last year and a bit we have started work on an ambitious project and now we can at last revile some details and see the end of the tunnel. The vast majority of our team hd never worked together before the start of their project or even been a part of Xitol but after the time we have spent on a vary ambitious indie project with limited funding we have made something we are proud of so far and we look to completing this project and getting to show it off in the progress.

The First Commando Details

Here are some early details of Zone: Commando that will interest you all Zone: Commando is split into The Battleground an all multiplayer arena composed of Custom Games, Instant Action and Online. Custom Games is the place to set up games with your friends and play for fun without the added competition of rivals online. Instant Action is where you can jump into random 6v6 games on your own online and compete in random game modes and maps. Online is where you can set up a party of friends and choose your playlist of choice as well as vote for the map and game mode choice you want best. The other half of Zone: commando is Operations operations is our co-operative survival mode were teams of up to 6 can fight against waves of KRA and alien lifeforms with different objectives and modes.Community involvement will be supported with the chance for the community to make maps for the game to be included in custom games and we may even have the chance for the best maps to be used online and we will be having competitions as well for map designers. As for mods we are still keeping an openness to them but at this point our focus is more on finishing our content. Other community involvement will include special competitions for exclusive content as well as a few other unique rewards.

This Kickstarter Thing

Like a lot of dev teams lately we will look to Kickstarter to help gain some substantial funding for development and we have a clear target set out for how much we would need to finish the game as well as a few other scales to allow us to get more done and reach more platforms. We will be offering a range of reward tiers and rewards including some physical content in some cases we of course have a bit of a way to go and we are waiting until Kickstarter allows people in the UK to set up projects (Which is coming soon) we are also involved with a lot of discussions that we can't talk about. Kickstarter will be a big thing for us as it isn't just about funding but also getting people involved and interested in Zone and helping shape our universe we want people to get involved and help shape the story create characters and the world.We are keeping our costs down but we are in the last stages of getting Zone: Commando sorted and ready for Alpha and Beta testing this means that not much longer after that comes the expensive part of getting ready to ship,We will be opening up Zone: commando to have public testing but not until post Kickstarter.

Maps Announcement

We will be slowly revealing our initial maps for Zone: Commando for those who have seen Glacial under our code name of Zone: The Battleground it has now changed and we will be showing it off in all its new glory in a special feature post. Zone will consist of 7 maps at the start 2 specialised for Operations mode and 5 set for multiplayer we set out to include space battle maps and one of our multiplayer maps is a reflection on that although it isn't one of our out and out ship to ship battle maps (but they are still on the cards for the future). Frostfall as some people pointed out seemed to large for Multiplayer and that is true as it is one of our 2 Operations maps we will announce our other maps in due time and with special posts.The map list is as follows:Glacial - BattlegroundSnowstorm - BattlegroundUnderground - BattlegroundIslands - BattlegroundFortitude - BattlegroundFrostfall- OperationsCrater - OperationsLike most games we will be adding in extra maps to Zone: Commando to extend the amount of battlefields but we haven't planned or started any of them and some will come with no cost attached at all as we don't want to limit who can have an expanded experience fully but some DLC will come at a cost but we are planning to keep everything at a fair cost and we don't think £5 upwards should be the cost of DLC, I can't say actual figures yet for several reasons one because nothing is planned and also because we don't know our circumstances for when we ship Zone.

Back to Xitol Day

Back onto Xitol day it is our buildup to Gamescom 2012 too and for that we are lining up content to share and show off from now through to after the show after the show we'll launch our first 2 Behind The Scenes videos as well as a few other key posts we will show off. Now it is time to reveal feature images we put out earlier on Indie DB and Facebook which are images of Frostfall and Glacial.

For the full gallery please visit Indie DB here to get to see those images as well as older images we have shared with everyone.Besides reviling these maps Xitol day has been about us staying around as a development team and promoting some of our work as well as setting the table to launch other news and info from. The original plan was to get some videos out for today but we decided to work more instead getting our game together is more vital for us at this point in time.

MOAR ZONE!

Back to Zone and more about what to expect from us, we are trying to keep everything that makes a FPS great such as the fast pace and action but we are including our own takes on classes and loadouts, keeping everything balanced by keeping power weapons away for any set class but by still giving each class a unique ability which we will talk about in the future.Character wise we will be allowing players to choose their character as well as offering exclusive ones as rewards from Kickstarter we will also take the chance to add in extra characters with Title updates and such to widen the look of your model, players will be able to choose their character for both factions from a set amount and others will be available as they progress in rank or other requirements are met.

More to Come

Expect much more to come over the next few months if you are at Gamescom you may see us about during the show and after the show we look forward to getting into the media as well as as getting more images out there!

- J45PER