This is another small update, mostly containing bugfixes:
The invulnerable / untargetable alien bug should be gone again
Fixed an AI loop
Fixed a bug that corrupted save games and caused crashes once the "reveal map" function became active
Fixed a crash on the final mission that occurred as soon as you opened the first door if you were using the Valkyrie dropship
Fixed an issue to do with stun gas and teleporters that would occasionally cause a lock-up.
Landed UFOs no longer always use the Farm tileset
Reapers have been given 10 more TU to prevent them being so passive
Human interceptors no longer incorrectly receive a speed boost on Insane relative to Veteran
Praetor gun effects have been made a bit meatier
There's two more crash bugs for us to fix (the most common being a multi-level teleport crash), unless this build introduces any more bugs / crashes. Hopefully it will not and we'll be able to get ready for our official release on Monday!
Xenonauts V1.04 Released (Stability & Small Difficulty Update)
Xenonauts V1.04 has been released onto our main branch. This update fixes some more crashes and also tweaks the difficulty of the game on the lower difficulty settings. It will not break save games.
We had not been planning to make further balance changes to the game, but there was enough player feedback about the Easy / Normal difficulty settings being too hard that we decided to make an exception. More detail at the bottom of the post.
FIXES:
Soldier Equip screen crash bug is fixed.
Fixed some very slow loading times for ground missions.
Loss screen should actually display now when you lose the game, rather than freezing up (for real this time).
Final mission no longer crashes when your brave soldiers escape.
Fixed a crash associated with the Fury interceptor.
Fixed a crash with Heavy Drones exploding at the edge of a map.
Aliens should now attack secondary bases as well as primary bases.
Shock batons no longer show a tiny shotgun picture in the ammo slot.
Some mis-set tiles (impassible damaged doors etc) have been fixed
Some Xenopedia / strings typos fixed.
BALANCE CHANGES:
Funding damage caused by UFO activity now scales with difficulty - 0.5x on Easy and 0.75x on Normal.
New UFO types now appear at roughly the same speed on all difficulty settings.
Alien Bases now have a 100% chance to be discovered after 5 days, rather than a 20% chance every 5 days.
Air Superiority UFOs are back, so the funding damage caused by Ground Attack UFOs has been turned down.
Funding events now appear twice as often, but do half as much funding damage.
Airstrike values for UFOs have been increased somewhat.
Alien Alloys recovered from shot-down UFOs has been increased somewhat, but the funding received from a successful mission has been reduced.
The funding received from each national block has been reduced slightly.
The biggest balance change is to the strategic game on Easy / Normal difficulty - it is now harder to lose funding nations as the UFOs do less relations damage.
We've also set the times at which new UFO types appear to be relatively similar at all difficulty level - this didn't really make the game harder, it just made it longer and more tedious. We're hoping this change will improve the experience for newer players.
The other funding / airstrike changes are intended to roughly even out. We felt that the rewards between airstriking and a ground mission were too wide, forcing players to "grind" UFOs (this was also caused by a persistent shortage of alien alloys).
We think these tweaks will give the player a bit more choice on whether they really need to do yet another Scout crash site or can just airstrike it and move on.
Xenonauts V1.03 Released! (Stability Update)
Xenonauts V1.03 has been released onto our main branch, and should update automatically (this will not break your save games).
This includes all the fixes from the V1.03, V1.02 and V1.02 HF patches we've released on our Experimental branch over the past four days, addressing a number of the major bugs in the game and also making a couple of economy-related balance changes.
BUGFIXES:
Hidden Movement screen crash is fixed (the most frequent one at least)
Hidden Movement screen endless loop has been fixed.
Game over screen now appears correctly if you lose the game, rather than just locking up the game.
Invulnerable / totally untargetable aliens (not even with force-fire mode) should no longer appear
Soldier Equip screen crash hopefully occurs less often
Fixed a hang in the game if you attempted to Reduce Quantity on a workshop project that had already completed some items
Soldiers should no longer be listed as KIA after a mission if injured but not actually killed by an explosive weapon
You can no longer end up with the Base UI screens as a background for the ground combat
Fixed an issue where Light Drones occasionally turned invisible
Combat Shields now correctly block frontal shots 100% of the time
Xenonauts no longer lose 3TU when their move is interrupted by sighting an alien
CHANGES:
Quickstart Guide now has more information for new players
Xenopedia now contains (basic) entries about all of the starting base structures, explaining their function
Building a base now costs $500k instead of $1m, but Radar Arrays now cost $250k instead of $100k. The net cost of a fully-upgraded interceptor base is the same, but you now have more flexibility about getting there (and slightly more funding in month 1).
Air Superiority UFO missions are temporarily disabled, as we think they may be causing some of the Soldier Equip crashes.
Ground Attack UFO missions are now causing funding damage again.
Attempted Terror missions will now happen twice a month, rather than just once.
Flashbangs no longer trigger C4 that is on corpses or on the ground
This is a small update for Xenonauts V1.0, intended to fix some of the stability issues (it also corrects a couple of very minor things in the game). It should not break save games.
We know that this patch does not address the most problematic bugs in the game - most notably the invulnerable alien bug and the Soldier Equip screen crash. Those bugs are proving difficult to track down, but we do know about them and we ARE actively trying to fix them.
Expect further stability updates this week. They will arrive on the Experimental branch first to ensure they do not cause more problems than they fix!
CHANGELOG:
Autosave at the start of a mission has been re-enabled.
The bug where you could not click on certain unrevealed tiles to path units there has now been fixed.
The vehicle hitboxes are no longer "left behind" when a vehicle sights an alien.
Receiving items simultaneously to two separate bases no longer stops the UI responding.
The Quick Throw UI panel in the ground combat (i.e. the grenade slot) no longer shows the incorrect TU amount.
A couple of Xenopedia typos fixed.
We've put a new (user-created) door cursor in the game that matches the graphics style more closely than before.
A couple of door sprites that were impassable when destroyed have now been fixed too.
Xenonauts V1.0 Released!
We have now released Xenonauts V1.0 on the Stable branch, which marks the end of formal development for Xenonauts. This is effectively the final version of the game, minus any stability patches that may be required.
Official release and leaving Early Access for the game is in about two weeks (tentatively pencilled in as 16th June), but the remaining time is mostly going to be spent on sending out review copies, the PR around the launch, porting to Mac / Linux and getting the Kickstarter rewards sorted out etc.
We will continue to work on fixing any crashes / hangs encountered in the game, and any non-crash bugs that render the game unplayable in other ways.
We've fixed all the worst issues that appeared over the past few days of community testing, but as the game is 10-15+ hours for a playthrough we've obviously not been able to fully test the game internally after the last bunch of fixes. So there may still be some issues in the game - but if so, they'll be addressed in the next two weeks before the official release.
There have been a lot of changes made since the previous Stable version. The game has a much smoother difficulty curve, more information for new players, new line of sight mechanics, much improved AI and all sorts of finer polish.
The choice is therefore up to you whether you want to play the "final" version of the game now or whether you'd prefer to wait a couple of weeks to make sure any stability kinks have been ironed out. We'll make more of a song and dance about the release when it comes to the 16th, but I thought it was best to explain this update and make it available to anyone who did not want to wait that long!
Thanks for your patience and support over the past five years of development, it's been a long and difficult journey and I doubt we could have got so far without the all help from our community!
PS - if the update has broken your save games, you can access the legacy branch to continue your playthrough in the previous version. The instructions on how to do so can be found here.
V21 Stable Released (& how to recover saves)!
We've just released a major update for Xenonauts, V21 Stable, which contains all of the changes made on our Experimental branch in the past three months.
This will break all existing save games. If you want to continue your existing V20 playthrough, please follow the instructions in this thread.
As you might imagine, a very large number of changes have been made to the game. You can find them all in this thread on our forums, but a few key changes have been highlighted below:
Lots of bugfixes
New loading screen added to the game
Updated mission debrief screen added
Lots of new maps added for aliens bases / terror sites
Spangly new UFO interior graphics
Load / hidden movement waiting times improved
TU costs for moving and shooting lowered
Firing weapons now uses % of max TU, rather than static costs as before
Weapon types have been rebalanced to act more differently from one another
AI now improved, particularly regarding psionics
Aliens now have access to a plasma shotgun
Updated final mission
New Singularity Cannon end-game weapon added
We are now planning to spend the next ten weeks purely on fixing bugs, polishing and optimising the game and improving usability. If you want more details of that, then feel free to drop in on our official forums!
V20 Stable Hotfix Released!
Just a quick note to say we've pushed V20 Stable Hotfix to the Stable branch. There were a few issues in V20 Stable that needed fixing such as occasional crashes related to alien bases and the overly passive AI, but we've made those fixes and given them a good test now.
This update will not break save games, and if you've been experiencing crashes it may allow you to continue playing games that were previously crashing.
The extended changelog is here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8651-V20-Stable-Hotfix-1-Released%21
V20 Stable Released!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas! V20 Stable was released on Steam on Christmas Eve, and it is a new version of the game that contains all the changes from the past three months of Experimental builds. There's still a couple of relatively rare or minor bugs in the game we will patch out in the next week or two, but it contains a LOT of new features and is a pretty stable experience.
The biggest news is the new UI for the strategic part of the game, which looks better and functions better than the old one. It also changes as the game progresses, reflecting your increasing tech level. Well worth a look at!
I've highlighted some of the other important changes below, but it is by no means an exhaustive list (exhaustive list here). Firing the game up is really the best way to see what's changed!
Highlighted Changes:
New UI: Every Geoscape management screen has been revamped with new graphics and usually a new layout. This a massive change and completely alters the feel of the game.
Improved Balance: There has been a LOT of work done on the game balance, far too much to list.
Aerial Terror Sites: These have been added to the Geoscape, and represent the aliens bombing infrastructure.
Game Size: The game has been reduced in size from 5gb to 2gb with some image compression magic.
New Art: There's a lot of new art in the game, particularly in the Xenopedia (captured alien art etc). Almost all the ground tiles have been painted over now as well.
New Maps: There's quite a lot of new maps that have been added to the game, as well as more randomisation of them.
AI Improvements: The AI is more advanced than before and now capable of using grenades.
New Animations: There are new animations for gibs, healing, jetpacks, Reaper attacks and some types of explosion. The gib one is particularly nice!
Accuracy System: This has been revamped to make friendly fire less frequent and misses look less ridiculous.
Explanatory Tooltips: If this menu option is selected, some explanation screens appear the first time you access the Geoscape, Air Combat and Ground Combat. These provide basic instruction on how to play the game.
Known Issues: (to be patched, please do not report)
There's an occasional hidden movement screen hang, caused by an AI loop.
The end-of-mission screen has 0s for everything. This is because it is going to be replaced with an upgraded screen and scoring system shortly.
Soldiers sometimes come back from battle with 98% health when they have taken no damage.
Some of the early aliens can be rather passive at times due to an AI quirk we're working on.
November Development Update
V20 Experimental build 1 was released about a month ago now, and V20 Experimental 5 came out yesterday. These include a lot of new features (changelogs here), the biggest of which is the addition of our new “immersive” UI to replace the old spreadsheets. It’s still a little buggy in places, but visually the game has taken a huge leap forwards for the management parts of the game.
It was also the last major feature we had remaining to implement. We are aiming to have the game completed for the end of December at the moment, but we're unsure if we'll hit that deadline. Delays to any part of the game (or festive complications) mean that we could miss it. Ultimately it is an internal deadline that we can move if we have to…we just think it’d be nice to have the game done this year!
You can probably see from the changelogs that we’re making fairly rapid progress these days. The artwork is progressing well and is likely to be finished for the end of the year, as the tiles are nearly all done and we’re working on the alien analysis / interrogation images at the moment that are the only remaining part of the Xenopedia.
On the coding front, there’s not really any massive features left to implement. It’s mostly bugfixes, cleaning up systems that aren’t working entirely correctly or balancing what is already there.
We’re working hard on the AI at the moment. Most interesting is tweakable (by anyone) AI variables for each AI race and rank, which allows us to have rather different behaviour for different alien races. We’ve also partially implemented AI grenades, which they should now be using to trash your base in Base Defence missions. Provided we don’t encounter any major bugs in it, that’ll all be in V20 Ex.6.
We’re working on clearing up the bugs in the rest of the game. There’s quite a few of them and some of them (aliens shooting through UFO floors springs to mind) are quite major. Most have arisen as a result of the changes we made to the accuracy system over the past month or two, but our ground combat coder has been busy writing his end of the AI interface recently so he’s not been able to fix them all yet.
There’s quite a few little features or tweaks to make in the combat still, including testing out a sight system that only reveals what is currently in a unit’s line of sight - so if a unit turns or is killed, vision is immediately lost on those tiles. I suspect this will make the missions feel a bit more claustrophobic and reduce the effectiveness of long-range sniping (both good things) but we’ll see how it works in practice. If we don’t like it, we can just revert to the old model.
We’re also balancing the AI and plugging away at the maps at the moment, leaving only the Terror mission maps (Soviet and Western town types) left to do now. General game balance seems in a good place, but there are still things for us to fix up there too.
At my end, I’m mostly working on the new UI at the moment. There’s a lot of pop-up windows to reskin in our nicer style – although I have done most of them now - and there’s still a number of usability issues with the new UI. A lot are to do with non-16:9 screen resolutions and we’re looking into fixing them.
I’m also working on the 48-page Xenonauts Art Book for the Kickstarter backers. Unsurprisingly it is proving to be a lot of work, but it needs to be done. It’ll make a nice memento for the project for the team, and also we’ll probably make it available for sale to anyone that wants to buy one once they’ve been sent out to the Kickstarter backers.
Overall, progress remains good and I expect us to get another three weeks of solid work in before the team starts to dissipate for the festive season and things become patchier. But even if we do run over into next year, we'll be pretty close to having a release build of the game ready!
October Development Update
It's been a few weeks since we brought V19 Stable out and as there's no sign of a new experimental release, I thought I'd write a development update to explain what's happening.
Sadly, while we have been making progress, we've been making progress on some rather boring things. We've rewritten the night mission lighting code, as that was very performance intensive and was causing noticeable slowdown particularly on slower machines. The new code is roughly 1,000 times faster so has fixed the slowdown, but ironing all the bugs and unusual behaviors out of it took the best part of a week.
Similarly, we spent a week rewriting the accuracy code to make it behave a bit better. Previously it suffered from a problem where shots would ALWAYS hit a (standing) unit if they passed through that tile, which caused issues when shots missed. For example, at close range units would have to turn 45 degrees to not hit the target. There was also an exploit where firing at the ground tile directly behind a target would pretty much guarantee a hit on them. If you'd spent any amount of time with the game, you'd probably have noticed the peculiarities.
The new formula allows shots to pass through units. Missed shots can now hit behind the target, or even the ground tile they are standing on, without injuring the target. Additionally, all shots are 50% less likely to hit a unit unless you are specifically aiming at that unit. This fixes a lot of the exploits and should cut down on accidental hits and friendly fire by about 50%.
This is a big improvement to the game, but it has been a *lot* of work and that's why we waited for V19 Stable to be complete before we started work on it. We're now working on smaller things like getting the new jetpack animations in the game etc.
GJ is back at work on the AI. His most recent fix is that aliens now target vehicles correctly, but he's also working on fixing a number of other issues with the AI.
Aaron's done new maps and increased the randomisation for the Industrial and Arctic tilesets significantly, and he'll do the remaining tilesets when he gets back. The new Tundra tileset, Abduction missions and indoor Terror Missions are also still planned, though the latter two may be rolled together. Tile paintovers continue and the Alien Base tiles are now all done (and look awesome), so we're on the Xenonaut base - the final tileset left to paint over.
The new UI is coming along too. We're discussing the final changes to the last few screens - the big merge of the new UI code and our normal dev branch will probably start next week. The "progression" art for the various screen backgrounds is also on track to be completed for a Christmas release and I'm busy getting the new base tiles done to replace the existing base structure artwork. It's in a blueprint style that I think works much better than what we had before.
That's about all there is to report, I think. We'll start work on putting together build V20 Experimental 1 that contains all these changes in just over two weeks, as both Aaron and I will be back in the office then. Expect something around the end of the month!
