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(This news article is copied directly from the News blog on www.xenonauts.com - check it out!)

It’s been nearly a month since Paypal shut us down, and the majority of those four weeks have been spent setting up the infrastructure required to take both Xenonauts and Goldhawk Interative forwards from this. The launch of the new Xenonauts website marks the end of this journey, allowing us to finally get back on track with development. Has the last month been wasted, then? I wouldn’t say so. It may seem that little progress has been made on the game, and to an extent it is true that we’ve probably been set back a couple of weeks of development thanks to this eating up all my time. However, there are several notable benefits that have arisen from our new infrastructure.

For the community, the most notable of them are the the new forums we have set up at GoldhawkInteractive.com, our corporate site. These forums are powered by vBulletin rather than the integrated Joomla Agora systems we were using before. Consequently they are MUCH sleeker and more usable than before – and they’ll serve us better in the future too, as you won’t have to move forums to keep tracking any games we start producing after Xenonauts is done.We’ve also set up an official Xenonauts wiki, which should provide a valuable resource for anyone interested in modding the game or even just looking for some help understanding what’s going on in the current development builds of the game.

The new Xenonauts site is here mostly just to sell the game – I don’t think the previous site did a good enough job of showing the world and the artwork of the game, and didn’t quite reflect the look the game is going for. We’re trying to make Xenonauts appealing to the mainstream as well as the strategy veterans, so the site has to reflect that. I think the previous one could be quite intimidating sometimes.

Of course, convincing people to buy the game is useless if they can’t actually buy it – and we’ve now successfully launched our Desura pre-orders, so you can buy the game again! We’ve made a few changes to the pre-order system to mark the move to Desura – firstly, the price of a standard pre-order has fallen from $29.99 to $19.99 and we expect the final game to retail at this price. We’ve also got a Premium pre-order pack available for $29.99, which gets you a custom forum title and some other small goodies, but is mostly for people who want to help the project out as much as they can. If you’ve already pre-ordered the game, we are putting a system in place that will either let you claim a Premium pre-order or take a Standard pre-order and a $10 refund (details on how this will be returned are TBC).

Finally, we’ve decided to open out the forums now that Desura are holding our pre-orders. This means the pre-orderers and normal community are no longer segregated, so everyone can participate in the discussions whether or not they’ve pre-ordered the game. I was never happy with effectively splitting the community in two, so now you should all be able to participate whether you’ve given us your money or not!

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Looks good Chris. Found a few typos and a couple of bugs/oversights but the new site should do a good job of "selling the game".

Bug1. The extraterrestrials menu title can't fit inside its box:

xnauts.jpg

Bug2. Identical Iceland Incident menu titles. No pt1/2 differentiation.

xnauts2.jpg

I have to admit I'm curious about the price change. An arguable 33% off is no small amount and it came sort of out of the blue. I know you're not too keen to talk about it but whatever the reason I hope it attracts more sales and pays off.

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Project Status is missing a link to the Pre-Order page, and the link in the sales pitch (a.k.a. "Why Pre-Order?") is broken.

Regardless, the new design looks neat!

From what I understand, the pre-orders won't be available until the near future so that's why there is no access to those features, yet.

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Hi there,

Just wondered if it was possible for you to set up an RSS feed on the news section of the new website. You had one before and that was how I kept an eye on any developments, I'm not always going to be browsing the forum for stuff so a feed would be useful.

Cheers, and keep it up!

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Happy to see that you got the pre-order problems sorted out and the game is going forward again. Was supposed to pre-order months ago, and I guess now it's the time to do it. Sadly, as an unemployed bum, I don't have a credit card. Guess I just have to give my old man a call and do it with his. :D

Got even more excited about the game after learning that the sounds will be made by Kaamos, who did an amazing job with Amnesia. Couldn't think of a better man for the job. Seeing as the sound effects (and music) were a big part of Enemy Unknown's atmosphere for me, I'm hoping that he can create something appropriately creepy for Xenonauts.

Best of luck with the game, looking forward to doing some alien autopsies next year (Too bad I'm not a small kid anymore, have some golden memories of shocking my nanny with those in the 90s. ;)).

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Hi Yevgeniy - if you go to your Paypal account email address there should be an email there explaining what's happened and letting you claim the Desura pre-order. It's a long story. If you haven't got the Desura invite email, drop me an email and I'll sort you out.

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