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Xenonauts-2 Version 0.3.2 (Public Combat Test) Released!


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This new version of Xenonauts 2 is a hotfix for our previous build released a week ago; we still have another build due in one week on the 28th Feb. This is a free public test build, released free because it is still an early build and we don't yet think we can justify charging for it; full details on where to get the build can be found in this thread.

Despite being a "hotfix", this is actually a mini-release in its own right. This is because the only way we could include a key fix for missing crosshair in the previous build was to include some new code that was, in turn, integrated with other new code. Not really the way we wanted to do things, but we're keen to start promoting the build and therefore we've bent our rules a bit to do so.

Please give the build a test and see if you can find any issues with it - if there's nothing game-breaking in the build we will start openly promoting the game on Friday!

CHANGELOG:

  • Mission End Screen: The mission debrief screen from X1 has been partially implemented, however we won't implement proper tracking for stat-ups / recovered items / etc for another build or two so it doesn't display that much useful information yet.
  • Death Animations: Xenonauts (not yet aliens) now have a proper death animation rather than a ragdoll. We may also experiment with adding a ragdoll at the end to let the corpse lay in a more realistic manner.
  • Bugfixes:
    • We've fixed the issue where the crosshair would randomly disappear when you moused over an alien.
    • Damage text should now consistently appear when units take damage.
    • Weapons no longer fall to zero accuracy beyond the soldier's visual range (i.e. squadsight is now working correctly)
    • Sounds like footsteps, death sounds, music etc should now randomise correctly where there are multiple variations.
    • Ctrl no longer clears the move path, so you can Ctrl+Shift with a move path drawn out to plan shots to any target now.
    • Fixed an issue where clicks were being blocked by the upper (hidden) parts of trees, preventing units moving to certain tiles on the map.
  • Visual Fixes:
    • Cliffs are now 50% wider, which should somewhat reduce the "blockiness" of the cliffs.
    • Fixed up the thin black lines between tiles on the roads.
    • Boreal biome tree trunks are no longer square when cut-through by the camera.
    • Disabled the outline shader on dead aliens.
    • Loading screen has a sharper alien head image, and text is now rendered in-game (so scales correctly with screen resolution).
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Had one battle just now.

Is there a ranking for the aliens to shoot certain soldiers first?
As far as I have seen with all versions of this demo, the machine gunner will always be killed first, even if he did not shoot at all yet. One of the next targets will be the sniper, maybe not the direct second though.

Shotgunners are pretty useles as their range is so short. Before they get in range they are dead or near that. And they don't hit either. Suppression is rare.
But ok, one battle only up to now....

Ths soldiers can't shot over rocks:
Impenetrable rocks.jpg

Corpses can still groan when hit.
And they are HIT while lying on the ground, although the target is behind the rock formation which has to be shot OVER, behind the tree over THE STREET...damnit.
Groaning corpse.jpg

Seems to be the sweet spot here that these two always seek out.
prefered cover.jpg

Hero alien no other words...because we got soldiers who are trained to shoot right?
hero Alien.jpg

Edited by thixotrop
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Thanks, Thixotrop - the screenshots do help. It's pretty funny that the corpses still groan when they get shot. I'll add that to the bug tracker.

The AI is still very primitive at this point ... it's basically the minimum that we could write and still have the aliens actually do something slightly playable. I wouldn't be surprised if they focus on the Xenonauts that have the highest chance of injuring them, so that might be the sniper and the machinegunner. Similarly, those aliens will always go to the same tiles because they spawn on the same tile every time and the map is always the same - so those are probably the tiles that offer the best cover close by. The AI will be improved over time but I guess in future we need to be adding more spawn points to the map than there are aliens, so they don't always spawn in the same area every time.

Maybe we also need some kind of debug information to be printed to the screen or a log somewhere so we can figure out if those misses / hits going on are just the RNG or an actual error in the game mechanics. It's impossible to know if you've got a problem or if you're just unlucky otherwise.

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11 hours ago, Chris said:

Maybe we also need some kind of debug information to be printed to the screen or a log somewhere so we can figure out if those misses / hits going on are just the RNG or an actual error in the game mechanics. It's impossible to know if you've got a problem or if you're just unlucky otherwise.

I agree, it shouldn't be too much work to create an ingame log.

As an aside; if you submit a bug report it will contain a recording of the orders given to soldiers and aliens.
That way we can inspect if its an actual bug or not. 
You can also attach the recording to your forum post, it resides in: "My Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2\Logs"
No need to worry as the recording only contains the orders given to soldiers/aliens and no identifiable information. :-)
(For those curious, it's a zipped JSON-encoded serialization of the Actions.)

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9 hours ago, Gijs-Jan said:

If you submit a bug report it will contain a recording of the orders given to soldiers and aliens.
That way we can inspect if its an actual bug or not. 
You can also attach the recording to your forum post, it resides in: "My Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2\Logs"

Just to be sure: This means you'd have to have the "Error Reporting" enabled in order to allow the game to make these "record"-files to begin with, right?

(( I originally thought this was to allow submitting "crash-reports"-automatically. ))

Also, this is a semi-recent addition, since I've had the setting allowed since the first time I tested the demo (around January 2017), so far I only have couple of recordings.
If is the folder automatically purged after each "majour non hot-fix"-update?

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A test record-file: recording_2.rec
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On a side note, could this mean we might possibly get a replay-feature similar to seen in "Frozen Synapse" for example?
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Another day, another play :)
Ok two actually.

  • Now I tried and hide my machine gunner and sniper a bit, or rather did not used them as the very first to shoot and did not shoot always. And yes, they lived a bit longer.
  • It is not possible to move, crouch or rotate another soldier while the other moves. Will that be changed to X1 performance?
    This includes that soldiers can be commanded to move while others still move.
  • Sometimes: Soldier stops where he should, I command to crouch, then rotate him. All good. Then the soldiers stands up and crouches again. No TU spent, but strange.
  • Sniper shoots Alien with 17% hit chance and hits (hooray). Can shoot again and hit chance is now 35% with same TU-invest. Why? ...by the way he missed now.
  • Some bullets comming from the soldiers that hit rocks and other things have the same explosion animation like the alien weapons.

Soldier could move into a rock. The rock got scared by this so much that it turned solid forever afterwards:
run into darkness and into a rock.jpg

This rock was not so scared, tried to play hologram and had a resounding success with it.
hologram rock.jpg

This was new to me as the rotation did not work before: The trees leave a sort of light shade in the air, which is best seen when rotating the map. Dunno if that is intended, but looks cool.
tree shades 1.jpg

A strange blocked hit and another WTF moment that nonetheless was quite funny.
(Why is this text here underlined now?)
wrong blocking.jpg

And here is the .rec file of this: recording_7.rec

 

Edited by thixotrop
Forgot my other non-picture points, sorry.
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Can reproduce the tree shade bug above.
Can reproduce the "visible but not targettable enemy at edge of vision cone" at exact same location as ver 0.3.0.
Can reproduce "can't fire around wall corner" problem.
Crouching does not seem to increase accuracy or save my man.
Movement TU estimation seems to be off, now it over report instead of under.  A bit busy so didn't have time to find out what is wrong.
Damage display is consistent.
Like the mission end summary.

The officer also somehow made a far, far snipe on my sniper, after the first drone is down and before other drones are in place, which means it shouldn't be able to see him.
It then proceed to one shot kill the machine gunner the next turn, so I'm left with the boring rifles and the shotgun.
Edit: I mean, losing soldiers is part of X-COM.  But consistently losing soldier with a unique weapon means the player don't get to play with them much.

snipe.q30.jpg

Edited by Sheepy
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3 hours ago, Sheepy said:

The officer also somehow made a far, far snipe on my sniper, after the first drone is down and before other drones are in place, which means it shouldn't be able to see him.
It then proceed to one shot kill the machine gunner the next turn.

On 22/02/2017 at 0:49 AM, Chris said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they focus on the Xenonauts that have the highest chance of injuring them, so that might be the sniper and the machinegunner.

 

I'd say these two comments are relatable: It's as if this "officer"-units has a hard-coded "insta-kill" ability because no matter where you place your Sniper and Machinegunner (in this same order), this unit will try and kill these first, unless there is several riflemen or shotgunners, and even then "the officer" might completely ignore them.

In other words, this specific unit is "biased magic bullet"-wielder (of "Der Freischütz / The Marksman / The Freeshooter"-fame).

First an image showing where the officer is / was, alongside the obstacles in between (notice the dead sniper at the bottom of the screen).

2017-02-23 11_23_59-Xenonauts 2.png


2017-02-23 11_23_47-Xenonauts 2.png

Image above same but without trajectory / bullet-travel-lines.

Here is a replay-file in which I more or less reproduced this: recording_4.rec

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Tried 800x600 and noticed a glitch immediately (quote clipped off)

loading.q70.jpg

In addition, some number is lost in downscale (see TU slider), and found a new position that result in can see but cannot shot.

800x600.q60.jpg

A pity that the game seems to crash mid way, when I thought I may win without losing any guy this time with a new strategy.

I'm also pleased to report that the pixelated resolution has that old school X-COM feel in it.  Would miss it if you decide not to support low resolution.  :rolleyes:

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Heh yeah the purple lights are a missing particle, it'll be fixed in the update on Tuesday.

Sheepy - there's some problems with changing resolution because you have to do it on the launcher AND in the game options. If the two get out of sync, bad things happen with the graphics!

Thanks for the ongoing feedback.

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Thanks everyone, we're going through these bugs now and testing and logging them. Some will be fixed in the next build.

@Kirill Selivanov - we'll actually be giving the ragdolls another pass at some point in the next few builds; if we can get them working in a more realistic and controlled fashion then they'll be better than a canned death animation.

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