With September over it's once again time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 development update. Here's a quick rundown of the things we've been busy with this month!
Milestone 5
Although we've continued to release hotfixes for Milestone 4 this month, our focus has been Milestone 5. If all goes well, we should (hopefully) have an early prototype of this update ready for testers later this month.
Milestone 5 is taking a long time because we're making quite a few changes. Aside from the Phase system mentioned in the last update, we're also going to be testing a "strategic operations" system that gives the player more control over the Geoscape and opens up a greater number of strategic gameplay options.
Essentially, the player gets a certain amount of "operation points" each day that can be spent on one-off missions to provide benefits (e.g. lowering Panic in a region, gaining an immediate cash injection, etc) or can be used to recruit Supporters in Geoscape regions who provide passive bonuses (e.g. increased monthly funding, reduced research / engineering times, etc). If you recruit all the Supporters in a region, you also gain a powerful Region Bonus for your organisation.
Our goal for this system is to add a bit more strategic depth to the Geoscape, and provide players a way to reduce Panic in regions where they do not have aircraft or radar coverage. Choosing which types of Supporter and / or Region Bonuses players want to pursue should hopefully provide players some interesting strategic choices - we're looking forward to seeing what people think when they get to play it!
New Missions / Terrain Tiles
Milestone 5 is intended to include the complete sequence of story missions, allowing players to play the entire campaign from start to finish. We've therefore been working on the final mission, creating some unique terrain tiles to reflect the setting in which it takes place. Similarly, we've also created some unique tiles for the areas where the player will encounter the alien leader species, the Eternals (the bridges of Battleship UFOs, and the command centers of the largest alien bases).
We're also attempting to address feedback about mission variety becoming a bit stale towards the end of the game by adding two new story missions into the later stages of the campaign. These center around an orbital station the aliens have constructed high above Earth. This gives us an isolated environment where aliens outnumber humans, which is helpful because the presence of large numbers of enemy reinforcements means we can once again make use of some mission types that stopped making sense after the defeat of the Cleaners.
We're still experimenting with these missions, but again we're hoping to have a basic version of them in the Milestone 5 prototype.
Other Updates
We've also added various smaller systems to the game this month. Firstly, Xenonaut bases now cost varying amounts ($500k - $1.5m) depending on where they are placed. This means there's fewer places where placing a base is objectively a bad decision; the locations with optimal radar coverage are now also more expensive. It's worth bearing in mind this also affects the first base, meaning you'll have more starting funds available if you choose a cheaper location.
In the tactical combat, we've added support for alien weapons capable of spawning clouds of (poison) gas on impact. This should allow us to equip certain alien species (probably Mantids) with weapons that behave a little differently from other alien units, while also making items such as the Rebreather a bit more useful.
As you can see at the top of the screen, we've also continued to add new artwork to the game - the image above being tied to the Phase system and the updated storyline.
Updated Game Editor
Over the last couple of updates I've mentioned our Game Editor upgrade, which is the first step towards having working modding tools for Xenonauts 2. Although work on the final modding tools won't start until after Milestone 5 is complete, this editor upgrade is now largely complete and will act as the foundation for our mod tools.
That's it for now, I think - I had a few more smaller things I wanted to talk about, but this update has run long already so I'll leave it here. We'll post another development update once the Milestone 5 prototype is ready to play!
Until October 10th, lead your troops against an alien invasion in Xenonauts 2 at a 35% discount.
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Xenonauts 2 is a tactical strategy game where you command an elite military organization tasked with defending Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Check out the latest Milestone 4 update!
From Today Until October 10th
Enjoy discounts on Xenonauts 2 and all Hooded Horse games through October 10th, a great opportunity to elevate your Fall gaming experience. We look forward to seeing the worlds you create and the adventures you embark on.
Happy gaming!
Milestone 4.26.0 Released!
We've now released another small stability fix for Milestone 4 to the public branches while we continue to work on Milestone 5. Please do report any further bugs or stability issues as we will continue to release additional hotfixes if necessary.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a rare crash that could occur if a unit was killed during the enemy turn.
Mesmerise will no longer trigger if a shot from the HEVY Launcher misses the target Psyon, but the blast kills the target anyway.
Milestone 4.26.0 Released! (Experimental)
This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
Fixed a rare crash that could occur if a unit was killed during the enemy turn.
Mesmerise will no longer trigger if a shot from the HEVY Launcher misses the target Psyon, but the blast kills the target anyway.
Milestone 4.25.0 Released!
We've now released another small stability fix for Milestone 4 to the public branches while we continue to work on Milestone 5. Please do report any further bugs or stability issues as we will continue to release additional hotfixes if necessary.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash that would occur if you selected the MARS / ARES Rangefinder item during a tactical combat mission, then pressed Ctrl.
Fixed a crash that could occur if you destroyed a Cyberdrone near an environmental item that would also explode (such a vehicle, or petrol station).
Fixed the Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base not correctly playing their death animation when destroyed (this issue keeps reoccurring, so we've tried a new approach that will hopefully fix it for good).
Fixed an issue where units could waste TUs performing an unneccessary rotation if their planned move+shoot action was interrupted by spotting a hostile alien.
Fixed an issue where an interrupted grenade throw would prevent the soldier re-equipping their weapon, leaving the grenade selected but without the UI showing it.
Fixed it being possible to walk out into the empty tile directly above a ladder, leaving a unit floating in mid-air.
Milestone 4.25.0 Released! (Experimental)
This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash that would occur if you selected the MARS / ARES Rangefinder item during a tactical combat mission, then pressed Ctrl.
Fixed a crash that could occur if you destroyed a Cyberdrone near an environmental item that would also explode (such a vehicle, or petrol station).
Fixed the Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base not correctly playing their death animation when destroyed (this issue keeps reoccurring, so we've tried a new approach that will hopefully fix it for good).
Fixed an issue where units could waste TUs performing an unneccessary rotation if their planned move+shoot action was interrupted by spotting a hostile alien.
Fixed an issue where an interrupted grenade throw would prevent the soldier re-equipping their weapon, leaving the grenade selected but without the UI showing it.
Fixed it being possible to walk out into the empty tile directly above a ladder, leaving a unit floating in mid-air.
Xenonauts 2 Monthly Development Update!
Hello everyone - hope you all had a good August. Here's our monthly update on what the team here at Goldhawk have been working on.
Programming
This month our technical director spent much of his month on honeymoon, and the rest of it fixing the trickier bugs discovered in Milestone 4 by the community. Our other senior programmer split his time between bugfixes and working on our updated internal game editor (mentioned in last month's update), which meant we only had one programmer available to work on feature implementation.
Aside from the weekly stability fixes we've released for Milestone 4 and various small usability changes / AI improvements, we added a few useful gameplay features to our upcoming Milestone 5 update. One was a much-requested update to the item sale price system, allowing sale prices to slowly regain lost value as time passes, and another was expanded options for "difficult terrain" which makes it more costly for soldiers (but not vehicles) to walk through and crush plants like hay. This may allow things such as shallow water that can be waded through on the Jungle maps, making the different biomes a bit more distinct from one another.
Invasion Phases
I've spent a lot of time this month on the new "Invasion Phase" system. This divides the alien invasion into five escalating phases, with a narrative event and some artwork and a short conversation with the Operations Director and Chief Scientist at the start of each one.
The goal here is to tie the lore together and explain how the invasion is escalating, what the aliens are doing differently and how the world is reacting to it. It also allows us to more clearly explain the shifting role of the Xenonauts throughout the conflict, starting as an clandestine organisation fighting a secret war against an unknown enemy and ending as an elite military organisation leading the fight against a full-scale alien invasion.
This coming month I'll be experimenting with several mechanical changes that we're hoping to tie to the Phase System, making the Geoscape mechanics a bit less static throughout the campaign. I'm quite excited about these, but I also don't want to talk about them yet in case I disappoint someone - they're still at the prototype phase, and could be changed or abandoned entirely based on playtesting. Hopefully I'll have more to say about this next month!
Other
Other areas of the game continued to progress over the past month. We partnered up with a couple of new illustrators, one of whom painted the new "Funding Report" artwork we've used as the cover art for this post, and the other is working on environment concepts for the tactical combat. We've also added lots of small things like some new 3D weapon models, some updated textures for certain alien combatants, and new tactical biome ambient sounds.
That's everything for this month - thanks for reading!
Milestone 4.24.0 STABLE Released!
We're continuing to release weekly stability patches for Milestone 4 while we work on Milestone 5. This patch makes a couple of minor balance tweaks and fixes a few more gameplay issues reported by the community.
Balance Changes:
Weight on Automed Unit reduced from 12 to 8.
Deviation on missed HEVY shots now occurs within an arc of 50 degrees from the intended target, reduced from 80 degrees.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a tactical combat save when fighting inside late-game UFOs (this was caused by smoke tiles being spawned off the top of the map, usually caused by explosions in the upper levels of large UFOs).
Fixed certain Harvester maps having unwalkable tiles inside the ground floor of the UFO.
Fixed a (rare) missing move path tile.
Milestone 4.24.0 Released! (Experimental)
This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Balance Changes:
Weight on Automed Unit reduced from 12 to 8.
Deviation on missed HEVY shots now occurs within an arc of 50 degrees from the intended target, reduced from 80 degrees.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a tactical combat save when fighting inside late-game UFOs (this was caused by smoke tiles being spawned off the top of the map, usually caused by explosions in the upper levels of large UFOs).
Fixed certain Harvester maps having unwalkable tiles inside the ground floor of the UFO.
Fixed a (rare) missing move path tile.
Milestone 4.23.0 STABLE Released!
We've released another small patch onto the public branches for Xenonauts 2 that contains a few more important stability fixes.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash on the Soldier Equip screen when changing equipment. It was previously possible to drag items using both left mouse and right mouse button, occasionally leading to situations where you could be dragging two items at the same time and one would be in an invalid state. We've fixed this by disabling right-click dragging, which we don't think should cause players any inconvenience - but please let us know if we're wrong!
Fixed an issue where the upgraded Colossus Battlesuit would revert to the un-upgraded version after a battle.
Fixed the Gauss / Plasma turret base defence buildings and upgrade projects so they have a consistent cost and completion time.
Added a loading screen tip about how to use TU Reserve (right-click on the desired fire mode or crouch button).
(Hopefully) fixed an issue where the interior walls of the Western Town restaurant buildings would not render on certain PCs.
