Chris

Can you post the V20.5 save game file where the game has corrupted? We're struggling to reproduce the issues. I'm glad you like the game. I'm not sure I agree that we should make the game bigger simply for the sake of it being bigger though (it's actually been slimmed down from the original design). The purpose of the waves is to ensure the player has more aircraft - you only need a couple of interceptors in the original game. Here you need several times that. Having more random UFO classes spawning is something we'll think about, but really it's not linked to the wave system at all. It'd work just as well with waves as it would with UFOs appearing in smaller numbers like in the original game.

Why don't you just download the Mac version from Desura? http://www.desura.com/games/xenonauts - log in, and download it from the rightbar on the page.

Condors are being nerfed primarily by making them slower and reducing their range enough that using them against later UFOs is quite difficult, and by making cannons weaker. So it's not a nerf to their HP. Yeah, the auto-resolve is going to be rebalanced again although possibly not for the very next build.

Possibly quite an astute observation. I'll note it down and think about it when I start my detailed playtesting.

I've read this a second time and there's some valuable stuff in there. Condors are being beaten with the nerf stick in the next build and interceptor spam in general should be a bit less viable as a strategy. Once the remaining maps are done (Aaron) and the UI stuff is done (me) we'll probably do some finer balancing on the game. The final mission is only half done tbh so that should improve dramatically once it has graphics and some more playtesting.

Glad you like the game. I doubt 2 would be necessary if 1 was implemented, so we'll have a think to see if it's possible to do that elegantly as it is a feature that gets mentioned a lot.

We're going to add a generic "in-construction" room map to the base before release (otherwise structures under construction could pose problems in a base attack).

It won't be a Christmas release either way. Actual release will take place a month or so after the game is finished, as print magazines need a lead time and we'll want to do a marketing push.

We didn't ditch the Valkyrie I'll read your comments in more detail tomorrow, thanks for posting them.

Yup. We're definitely going to be using a 3D engine in future projects and that means we'd be able to test globes and things out right from the start. To be honest, I do think the game is worse for having a 2D map instead of a globe like the original EU. But we can't do anything about it now so I'll just consider it a lesson learned and move on.

I think it’s time to give a quick update on what we’re working on at the moment and our future plans. As we've mentioned before, we're aiming to have the game completed for the end of December. We're still unsure if we'll hit that deadline, to be honest. Delays to any part of the game, or even complications due to Christmas holidays 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 correctly and balancing what is already there. GJ is working hard on the AI at the moment and just today put in a big update. Most interesting is tweakable AI variables for each AI race and rank, accessible (and documented) in a text file anyone can edit. 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 floors) are quite major, 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. Aaron is balancing the AI and plugging away at the maps at the moment, leaving only the Terror missions (Soviet and Western) left to do now. General game balance seems in a good place, but there are still things for us to fix up there too. We’re still hoping to add some Tundra tileset maps to the game, and some Abduction missions too, but we’ll see. It's probably unlikely to happen unless we're delayed into January. 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, and there’s still a number of usability issues with the new UI. A lot are to do with screen resolution 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. If the game isn't finished by the end of the year, we won't be far away!

It's basically just the stats of the aliens in ground combat at present. Also, on Easy the alien weapons do less damage. I'll tweak it now so the invasion escalates faster on higher difficulty settings, and that UFOs have 25% less HP on Easy mode. I'm not going to properly tweak the UFO stats for difficulty settings much at this point though, as I don't want to wreck the balancing Aaron has done on the air combat thus far.

It theoretically would be fairly easy to implement, but I can't really see much value in adding it. I think the number of players confused by them being there would outweigh the numbers who found them useful.

Thanks.

Thanks for the feedback. Point 2) is a known bug we're working on fixing. Yes, it seems there are some issues with the non-widescreen code at the moment that I'm looking into at the moment now you've pointed them out.

Be careful of being shot through the floor and clicking on soldier role buttons

Yes, but you can't see the entire world at once if you show a globe. You have less awareness of what's going on. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. Anyway, the discussion is moot - a globe is also a 3D object and the game uses a 2D engine. A globe was never going to be possible.

Gromitek - yes, we'll be moving the long term funding gain from completing missions to shooting the UFO down in the first place. Not in this build though.

Defence turrets only have an 80% chance to hit. What I'm actually going to do is double their power and reduce their chance to hit down to 60%. This gives them an average boost in power of 50%, but if they all land hits then they'll be much more powerful than before. Regarding excessive base expansion - maybe we'll increase the upkeep of the Command Center significantly. It's currently $25,000 per month but if that was increased to $250k or $500k then expansion becomes much more expensive.

They do get repaired, you just have to wait a couple of weeks. This needs to be communicated better in-game, though. I'll add some form of notification on the Aircraft Equip for the planes in question.

I think I'll buff the defensive turrets a bit - I'll try increasing their strength by 50%. If they fail to destroy the UFO, the attacking force is reduced by half of the damage taken. So a UFO that takes 60% damage loses 30% of its crew (this prevents there being attacking missions with only a handful of aliens in it). Ideally, the player shouldn't need more than 4 defence batteries in their bases to defend them. Five if they're behind in tech. I guess the turrets might need a strength boost of more like 100% instead of 50%, actually...

Nah, it's pretty fundamental to the game so changing the way it is represented would break god knows how many systems. If you want a simple idea of why we're using a flat map, try to work out what the circular radar range of a base looks like on a rectangular map if you're trying to accurately represent the curvature of the Earth.

Actually, you know what - don't report windows that are incorrectly skinned unless there are game-breaking problems with them. There's too many of them and I've already corrected a bunch more of them in the dev version that aren't in this build.

I’m currently working on the game UI, trying to take it from placeholder to finished. This process is still ongoing so I’d probably expect some unusual behaviour in this version, for example invisible buttons or incorrectly-styled pop-up windows. If you encounter them in the game then please just post them up in this thread and I’ll try and correct from for the next build – there’s a lot of pop-ups in the game and it’s hard to check them all. The reskinning work is primarily concerned with making the pop-ups more attractive, changing them from their old grey boxes to a style that matches the new UI (the UFO Detected pop-up is an example of a finished pop-up window if you are curious about what I am trying to achieve). However, I am also attempting to make the windows read more easily. I’ve noticed a number of comments on the board to the effect of “I wasn’t sure how to use the new UI tabbed windows at first” and so I’ve taken a few steps to make it obvious what is clickable on our new UI. The largest change is that the selected tab is now displayed in white with a black outline and the other tabs are displayed in black, rather than the selected tab being displayed in black and the other tabs “greyed out”. Hopefully this will help navigation a bit. I’ve also been working on the Main Menu. This is still a work in progress, but I’ve added outlined text to make selections clearer (replacing the old underline effect). I’ve also made the other interactive text light up on mouseover, and fixed up the difficulty uniform images so they display correctly now (making them far sharper). I’m also going to be getting rid of the previous checkboxes entirely for the various game options and replacing them with on / off toggles. You’ll have to wait until the next version of that though. In the build after this one, there will also be improved text scaling in the Xenopedia – I’ve made the text scaling formulaic, rather than linear. This should make it bigger at smaller sizes but not much smaller at large sizes. This won’t be possible on the rest of the GUI though, unfortunately, as that gives me much less freedom to change the length of text strings without wrecking the elements around it. Still, the majority of complaints come from the Xenopedia so hopefully it’ll address that. TL;DR: I'm finally getting the UI ready for release. It'll take some time though, so bear with me.

Thanks. This is a known bug though, we're working on fixing it in the next week or two as it's quite a big issue.