Chris

Sounds like a bug you need to report

I found the Ghost armour was better than the other stuff, simply because it gives a defence bonus, can move further and lets you go invisible at will. Pretty hard to lose people when they're wearing that...

Betuor - as Tornado has pointed out, if you want to inform yourself of what technology will be in the game, just have a poke around in the /assets/ folder. It'll somewhat spoil the surprise though!

Also, in game terms there's no real point having the Colossus and the other end-game heavy armour suit, which has taken on most of the role of the Colossus anyway. Yes, we could have put the Colossus in anyway - but it'd be similar to putting the AK-47 in alongside the M-16 rifle too. We've not done it because I don't see there being sufficient difference between the two, and going out of our way to create those differences just so we can include both doesn't really seem to be a good course of action.

Well, you don't seem to have got the message. Rather, you seem to be accusing people of trolling you by asking you to do so - obviously that's just going to inflame the situation. The OP in this thread says "I'm wondering what the design of the power armour will be like?" and it's perfectly possible to have a spoiler free discussion based on that topic. The human armour in the game has a heavy industrial design in contrast to the sleeker look of proper alien technology. That would have answered his question and would have been spoiler free for everyone reading the post, and some people might have been looking for that answer. If you want to post up pics or discuss tech that's not officially in the game, that's fine, just use the spoiler tags. That way people can choose whether they want to click it or not. I don't see what the problem is? Not bothering to use spoiler tags is basically someone asking "Is the twist at the end of the Sixth Sense good?" and you replying "Yeah, Bruce Willis is a ghost!". It's perfectly possible to ask about the end of the game in general terms without wanting specifics.

Updated patch up now!

Unfortunately the current version is really unstable (who'd have thought!) so I'm just fixing up the files and there'll be a new patch in a few hours that'll let you test it without the continual crashing.

Map 1 is now available for level testing in its own new sub-forum! Please read the Readme Post and then check it out if you're interested in helping out. It's our first attempt so there might be some teething issues though! The map uses quite a few placeholder graphics but is intended to let us test a few things: - Map sizes relative to the number of aliens in it - A more open style of map - The new UFO wall hiding mechanics - The size and interior layout of the proposed new Light Scout UFO Future maps are in the works, there'll probably be at least one more this week that will showcase the new style of the Farm maps with big LOS-blocking hedgerows. If you're lucky, we'll get the first test map for the alien bases out this week too. The Xenonaut base defence missions may appear in the next couple of weeks too, as Aaron's done a lot of new tiles for them. The intention is that we'll iterate the maps with community feedback until we know what size works best for each UFO type, what the best UFO layout is etc, and take on board specific comments on each map so we build up a decent library of hand-crafted and playtested maps for release that are fun to play through. In the next few weeks we'll be adding more functionality so we can test "scenarios" as well, which will involve setting a specific number of alien units and a specific number of Xenonauts with specific equipment on certain missions to see how easy / hard they are. This will require further amendments to the levelsetup.xml code and the AI code, but we're working on those. There's also a bunch more tiles in the updated version, as well as as updated Submap / Level editors for those who like making your own maps. Enjoy!

It is a little disrespectful not to use the spoiler tags, Tornado. Just because something is accessible doesn't mean people want to be told about it (it might just mean the dev team has better things to do than trim every bit of "secret" info out of the builds). The end of a movie is accessible enough too, but that doesn't mean people want it spoiled for them. Just use spoiler tags and all is well. The Colossus is the cut armour. It's been cut because the proportions of it are ridiculous given it's a tall design but can't be more than a tile tall in-game, which means it'll actually be thinner than the other power armours if modelled up. As to which armour "needed" to be cut, nobody beyond the dev team is in any position to speculate on that as you've not used any of them and it seems a bit strange to be complaining that something that was never actually in the game still isn't going to be in the final game. It's not good design to have a "best" armour, anyway. The other two power armour suits are both good, they're just useful for different things. That way you actually get to make decisions about what you want to do.

The UFOs may get a redesign based on the level testing we're going to be starting shortly, as our new system lets us be a bit more flexible with the design than we were before.

That armour has been cut from the game. It's the least awesome of the three power armour suits and it never actually got animated up. The other two are much nicer.

I suggested this might begin last week, but that didn't work out. It's possible this might happen this weekend, but it's more likely it'll happen at the start of next week instead. For those unfamiliar, this will take the form of one or more maps that the player can download and play through to give us feedback on how much they like them and how they can be improved. I've sat down and over the last few days I've blocked out a layout for all but the final UFO type and a basic layout for the first alien base type. Testing these internally has demonstrated a number of issues we've been working on fixing before public release - multi-tile doors not working, aliens spawning inside solid walls rather than in rooms etc - and we've also been busy ironing out the obvious bugs in the code that hides the UFO walls, but that's all pretty much done now and I think we're good to start testing them out. Unfortunately, there's still a few more things holding up the level testing as a whole. Firstly, the levelsetup.xml functionality that lets us set the number and equipment of the Xenonaut troops in a mission isn't in place yet because we've been busy with the UFO stuff. That'll be done shortly. Also, the new GC UI has just been implemented (just updated graphics really) but that has a few issues we're still working through as well. So ideally we need to iron out those problems before we can release the map-pack too, as we'll need to provide an updated .exe with the map-pack so the UFO stuff works properly. So yeah, we've been busy this week and hopefully the end is in sight and the level testing can begin soon. It'll be very useful to hear people's thoughts on the scale of the later UFOs, as we're at a stage where we can still quickly change and adapt the layouts if they're not well-received.

I'm pretty sure you're in the batch that the artist is currently working on.

That stuff was meant to be under embargo, so I'm fairly unimpressed he's posted that. But as beta isn't far away I guess I won't send him a rude email. The vehicle art he did isn't going in the game because it's not up to scratch, but the aircraft art is the Xenopedia art.

We've not done enough playtesting to see what is the most fun, but the current idea is that the final UFO type will be more powerful than any fighter craft you have. You can kill it relatively easily using missiles built with recovered alien materials, but you'll run out of them pretty quickly and the super-UFOs will only become more and more frequent. So basically you have to launch the final mission before the invasion overwhelms you.

We're past 50%, but only about 70% of people have actually sent in their pictures. Hopefully everyone who put their portraits in promptly after the KS will be done in the next couple of weeks.

That picture of the Andron is very nice!

GJ may have had his tongue in his cheek when he made the comments, but it is possible to write an AI that can always perform the most mathematically perfect way to achieve an objective like killing the most vulnerable Xenonaut unit in fire range, and it can do that better than any human could. I'm sure it could be exploited, but that's why it'll be interesting to see how well people do against the AI on the hardest settings and what exploits they end up using.

GJ just does the AI actions and tactics, so their stats aren't affected by his coding.

Ah, unfortunately I "cleaned" the wiki yesterday so any edits made since November have been lost (along with an entire wiki full of spam). You might need to check the pages, Gauddlike!

Does Desura not let you use that? If not then I'm afraid we can't help you as we only sell through them at the moment. If you really want it, just pirate it and buy it when it comes out on Steam and everywhere else at release

Oh; we'd be doing a load of testing of the various levels and balance before the levels were used for public testing too. In their current state they wouldn't reflect very well on the game!

Probably time for another update here. This week I've mostly been working on the level design stuff in preparation to start iterating the maps with the community. I've got three main maps in production with their layout mostly done - one Industrial and one Farm map that can be used for Light Scouts, Scouts and Corvettes plus a small alien base map. These will be the first few maps we'll be iterating. There's a few things holding up their release. Firstly, there's a few annoying issues with the Level Editor we'll need to resolve (should be done today and tomorrow) but will vastly increase the usability of the program when they're finished. Then we need to set levelsetup.xml to control the starting equipment of the Xenonaut troops in the mission too, as this'll be necessary for the small alien base mission. I figure the player should have laser weapons and Wolf armour by the time they encounter bases. Thirdly, we're being held up by the AI. It's not strictly necessary to play the maps, but would add a lot. GJ has been having a few issues with the way the game mechanics work. Apparently it's unusual for a game to have random outcomes in the AI turn; for example in the new XCOM if you save the game and press "End Turn", exactly the same series of events should happen if you loaded the game up a second time and pressed "End Turn" again. The downside of this is that the AI knows in advance whether it is going to kill one of your men or not, and can plan around it. In our system, the AI has to react to whether its own shots get lucky or not, which is difficult. So he's busy with that at the moment. Oh, and I'm playing with the layouts of the new UFOs using the new UFO interior / exterior system that was discussed on the forum. These layouts will be in the new maps for community iteration, but they're blocked out using soil blocks and generic ground tiles. The implementation of this is nearly done. I'll talk about the plans for our iterative testing at the bottom of this post. Next up, our ground combat coder has been working on the Desura file packing stuff. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that it works, and will reduce the Desura files down to a workable level. The bad news is that the game engine is once again causing problems. Essentially, it can only ever support 1.3gb of packed files, so we're not going to be able to pack up all of our spritesheets so we'll still have tens of thousands of files. Our ground combat coder has therefore been working on a tool that lets us filter which files go into the archive and which folders they are drawn from. Basically this just lets us stick the .XML files associated with every spreadsheet and all the ground tiles and associated XML files in the archive, which comes to about 250mb and reduces the files number of the dev version from 120,000 files to about 40,000. We can reduce that still further just by packing up more files into the remaining 1gb of archive space we have, so I think our Desura issues may be a thing of the past. The only complication with this is that you'll likely have to download the standalone if you want access to all the game files for modding purposes, as that won't be packed up. But that's a relatively niche thing, so it shouldn't affect too many people (installing mods is still easy even with the files packed up, don't worry). Excitingly, I also implemented the company's accounting system on Monday. This is basically because I had to do a load of admin to get the payroll set up now Aaron is here and has a salary (I don't have a salary), which means both he and the employer have to a pay a variety of taxes on it. We've also sat down and had a bit more of a think about the new UI for the game. Giovanni is on holiday this week but is in the process of implementing the the new GC UI background, so that should be in the next version. We're also getting the topbar of the current Geoscape UI redone by the same guy to be prettier and easier to use, which will be a prelude to the final upgrades of all of the screen. Next week I'll probably be looking at the research tree in a bit more detail to make sure all the required items for the research tree spawn in the UFOs, and blocking out the sizes and interiors of the larger ones. This should allow the game to be played right the way through. I'll also be finishing up the level design, which neatly leads me onto the iterative testing. Initially I just wanted to do this for the levels, but the more we've thought about it, the more applications it will have. GJ has done some work implementing a server that records gameplay stats, which I'm very interested in. The long game we're working towards is releasing a few ground combat scenarios for public consumption, say 4-5 in all. The purpose of this would be to get some really wide-ranging feedback on the game balance, all of which would be collected automatically. How many aliens were killed and how many soldiers lost in each mission on each difficulty setting would be automatically collected, as well as loads of other stuff we can use to get a picture of whether the missions are too hard or too easy or too long or if some weapons are not properly balanced etc. The most valuable information, though, would be on the AI itself. It's a bit difficult relying just on you forum guys for testing because you're all X-Com (and usually Xenonauts) vets and therefore you'll be better than average at the game. Discovering if an inexperienced player can beat a mission on Normal (and if so, how many troops they generally lose) would be incredibly valuable for us. We're looking into this stuff at the moment. Also, GJ has a few concerns that he might end up making an AI that is just too good at the game to beat, despite them not cheating. I'd be very interested in seeing if that is the case - though I think you underestimate gamers at your peril. It'd be good publicity if they are indeed that good though!

Thanks for the feedback. I assume you have a large monitor? The game was designed to work at 1680x1050 and having recent got an enormous monitor of my own I appreciate why a lot of people moan about the UI. We're about to start updating it though, so maybe come back and do this again in 3 months Also, you've described a number of bugs in the ground combat. They'll be fixed up over time, I think they're all already known.

Haha. I'd not seen this before today, but that's awesome.