Version 1.23 “The Rebeaconing” is now live on Steam! Yes, this will erase your existing save.
At long last, the Mac version is ready to play! Native Linux is next; we have one major bug related to save/restore that needs fixing first. XO runs well under Steam Proton for Linux.
CHANGELOG:
Mines and minefields were given a thorough polishing. Multiple mines no longer attack the same target. Recovering minefields now works as designed. Minefields are restricted to the playfield, and a mine-equipped ship no longer fires minefields in self defense. You can now lay a minefield while paused. Range and minefield size were finalized, although the ore cost is likely to increase. And a few bugs related to saving and restoring minefields were cleaned up. If you can find a Blockader, they’re pretty groovy now!
You can no longer rescue or crew transfer ships that have been latched by the Harvesters. You /can/ order an abandon ship, however.
Attempting to rescue a ship that later becomes harvested now cancels the rescue action.
The mouse pointer is now constrained to the game window. If you have dual/triple monitors let us know if you are still experiencing issues.
Scanning abandoned ships now shows the faction crew required in the crew box.
I made some abandoned ship events have less abandonment issues.
The tanker was given an angry hail for when it is angry.
I made quite a lot of adjustments to the end game. It’s becoming quite the little challenge. Heru added a couple of tweaks and bug fixes as well, and fixed a long standing bug related to placement of certain… items.
Those brutally nasty devastators now occur much less frequently and only according to certain conditions towards the end game. They were a little too devastating.
Scouts no longer display on the galactic map when in jump.
The speed selector width was increased.
Missions now should no longer push you back the way you came, but ever foward.
The feedback form was improved: you can now use the enter key, word wrap is enabled, and a thank you message (or an oopsie message) is delivered on success. Text is now erased (but not the email address) on a successful send. We’ll add a tab key for switching fields in v1.24.
BUGS:
We really hope we solved the aksoundengine.dll bug.
We solved an issue with the Mac version that was wacking out the starmap and galacting map.
I fixed The Forsaken. Best not to ask. They’re forsaken.
A bug related to end game tags was corrected.
A bug related to Rover ships will hopefully no longer occur.
The death jingle now gives way to main menu music instead of whatever was previously playing.
Music and sound effects now default to 50%.
Starmap music now only plays when you are paused in starmap and not jumping, giving an audible clue that the game is or is not paused.
Conditions were expanded to flesh out a number of events that had a certain flow.
A minor bug with disabled trade ships was fixed.
The scout lost warning text was adjusted to make it clearer.
Ships with mining lasers that are disabled under shield now display the correct tooltip and hover text.
Game over now resets music to the ambient state. Mellow.
An issue with the arrow keys conflicting with the mouse pointer was caught and grilled before release.
The rendezvous beacon in the starmap now displays more or less when it should.
Quite a number of other minor errors were cleaned up.
Known issues:
There's an issue related to scouting that makes it impossible to use the starmap. If this happens, save and exit, the game should be playable on restore. We will have this fixed soon.
If you’re having trouble clicking, try unplugging controllers, rudder pedals, joysticks and the like. This is a temporary workaround.
Beta 1.22 "The Speed of Harvestation"
XO's latest update is now live on Steam. Turn the music back on, play with game speed and tell us what you think!
CHANGELOG:
You can now speed up and slow down the game with a handy speed slider. Try combat at half-speed! Yes, we will be hotkeying this and other actions soon.
We now have interactive music as designed! Music that had no business in the start of the game no longer appears, hooray. The death jingle now plays, and starmap and main menu music play.
In the starmap, a beacon now appears showing the direction of the rendezvous when you hover your current location. There’s a known bug that only shows the beacon while Harvesters are present which will be fixed in 1.23.
Arrow keys and enter now work for most actions. We’ll continue to add keyboard functionality into the game.
Shields now fully and properly block lasers from firing if the firing ship is under them. Ships that are blocked now display a message in their hover state. Attack is greyed out when this is occuring, and a mouse tooltip appears explaining why.
I experimented with a ‘Harvester delay’ mechanic: if you jump before the Harvesters show up, you gain one additional full day of Harvester-free time. It works, but I need to weigh whether or not it adds or detracts from the game. Let me know what you think!
Ships that are attacked but are outside of their own weapon range attempt to get close enough to fire, unless they have a hold fire ROE or are in a player’s formation.
Nukes and mines now show their ore cost to fire. Weapons are now sorted in trade views.
Minefields can now be deployed while paused. Minefield spacing and mine range were also adjusted.
When ore is zero, fix and repair commands are now greyed out and appear with an appropriate mouse tooltip.
BUGS:
Thanks to some solid bug reports, I fixed dozens of minor issues with events, made some nice tweaks, and expanded out some others. Some timers were fixed or adjusted as well.
I discovered that pirate events weren’t spawning in v1.21 so I fixed that. I also improved some of the logic in those events. The pirates - they are back and worse than ever!
There were a wicked couple of bugs that locked a ship into an attack state when it was attacked (or ROE changed to weapons free) (erasing it’s existing order), and Heru nuked those.
We believe we took care of a sound-related bug and aksoundengine.dll errors.
Relationship changes as a result of event choices now show earlier, giving better feedback through the color change in faction captains.
The maroon command now works as designed, helping to make it clear that you can put the wrong faction aboard some ships, but they’ll be left behind if you do.
Several cases related to crew transfers were cleaned up and tooltipped to make it very clear what can and cannot be done in a given context.
When jumping while paused, seized ships now stay with the seizing ship instead of appearing randomly on the tactical playfield.
Scouting with a formation leader no longer throws an error.
When we erase an old save game we show a message. We also cleaned up the game reset when that happened.
A couple of fresh nasty bugs were caught before deployment.
Known issues:
The starmap rendezvous beacon does not display unless the Harvesters are present at your current destination.
If you’re having trouble clicking, try unplugging controllers, rudder pedals, joysticks and the like. This is a temporary workaround.
Beta 1.21 is live
Version 1.21 “How many gigawatts does it take to fix a fixer” is now live on Steam! This will erase your existing save.
If XO confused you, try the tutorial again. It has been worked, reworked, expanded and polished.
CHANGELOG:
A new advanced start option that eliminates all tips was added. The intermediate start that skips the tutorial but still presents tips as the game unfolds remains.
Fuel use for weapons now says ‘efficiency’ making it clearer that more pips = better.
All harvested planet types now show up much clearer in the starmap.
A new command ‘maroon’ was added. This helps reinforce when attempting to crew abandoned ships with a non-compatible crew, and suggests a rather Machiavellian strategy for averting an upcoming water riot. Some tweaks were made to ensure this works properly.
You can no longer issue a crew command from the battleship on an abandoned ship unless you have passengers and a tooltip is shown if this is tried. On all other ships this is possible to allow for swaps.
I’m actively testing the end game, although it is still not turned on in 1.21, saving/restoring also now works. It is currently both way too hard and way too easy, so more work will be needed before it is ready for testing. A couple of minor functional pieces are being added to end game as well.
Mac and Linux versions are looking promising. We’ll release Mac first, possibly as soon as a week or two, and then Linux.
BUGS:
Turns out trade and repair events were not spawning correctly (huge oopsie), they are now.
We added several new event conditions to support the tutorial, and these had to be tested and debugged. It should now be running smoothly and as expected.
A bug was fixed where a battleship in formation under repairs would cause other ships in the formation to behave strangely after emerging from jump.
You can now properly attack a reaper with the mining laser.
Fixers can now fix in all conditions where they should be able to fix.
The icons for transmogrify now show correctly.
Hovering a ship during a water riot no longer displays an upside down portrait of a character.
I added additional lore to explain other game functions and rules. More to come.
A lot of polish was done with the events, catching loopholes and correcting minor issues. I also cleaned up some tags with missing text.
A few variations of a hard crash bug were hopefully once and for all eliminated.
A dialog bug with some Harvester intro events was dispatched.
A time-related bug that was cropping up from time to time was summarily dispatched.
Several automatically submitted bugs were confirmed and removed, including an annoying non-issue that will now stop flooding our bug reporting system.
Known issues:
If you’re having trouble clicking, try unplugging controllers, rudder pedals, joysticks and the like. This is a temporary workaround.
We think Windows 7 users might have a problem running the game. Do you run Windows 7? Let us know!
