Chris

This is the proposed Steam stable build. The only updates that will be made to it are bugfixes and small balance changes or animation updates (made to the XML files). This code has been branched completely from the main trunk now and will also form the basis for the new demo that will come when we launch on Steam. For now it is only the standalone. Please give it a try, because I want to roll it out to the Desura branches quickly but just need confirmation it is stable first. Any bug reports would be much appreciated, particularly crash bugs or things that make the game unplayable. The Standalones are currently awaiting authorisation by Desura. CHANGELOG: The biggest change is that we've started using the texture atlases and file archives again. This should reduce ground combat load times by about 50%, and also reduce the file count of a full install of the game from about 140,000 files down to 38,000 (we can't get on Steam with 140k). I've given it a quick test and it seems to work, BUT it needs a proper check. If any images are not displaying, please tell me - this will be because of the file archiving. The UFO datacores should be working and should unlock technology correctly again. There's now a UFO Analysis research project for each type of crashed UFO - a bit like an autopsy for the alien races. This pops up automatically. We will add them for the UFOs that don't leave crash sites too, but not for this build. Various updated animations and fixed tiles. Also some newly-painted prop art for the Middle East and Town tilesets. When you click on an alien spotted icon in the ground combat, they are now highlighted in red for a second. Cover walls (i.e. waist high walls) are no longer turned invisible by a unit's transparency aura. Large props are now turned invisible by a unit's transparency aura. If a unit is crouching and fire their weapon, the projectile is offset downwards by 20px instead of coming out of their faces. Smoke and suppression no longer propagates through walls (but an open window will allow it to spread as if the wall were not there). Hypervelocity has been disabled for this build. There's an issue in the accuracy code where a hypervelocity weapon will always display 0% chance of shooting over a prop if it does not cause enough damage to shoot through it if it were to hit it (the calculation doesn't consider that the unit might shoot around it instead it). If a soldier is assigned a new role, he will automatically also be assigned the default loadout of that role. There is now a Comms Array in an alien base. Recovering it will allow you to build the equivalent of the Hyperwave Decoder. Light Scouts can now Evasive Roll and contain one more alien in crash sites. UFOs should no longer chain-lock a slower interceptor if you try to run away. Now they will lose interest after an interceptor has retreated once. There are more Xenopedia descriptions than there were before, and a few pieces of new art. Various other small bugfixes. Changes that will be made before the final build: The launcher video is going to be disabled, as it still causes some people issues with startup. The Buzzard Scatter Laser and Sebillian Elite sprites will be updated to fix Giganto Soldier and keep the Elite consistent with the other Sebillians. I am going to be working on the Xenopedia in the hopes of having that (provisionally) done for the Steam version. The only other thing that might make it into an update is an AI update to make the aliens a bit less passive.

I'll try to check these over the weekend. It's a bit busy at this end trying to put together the new build.

Yeah, the MAG rifle and carbine UI images were swopped in the file. I've updated this now. Thanks.

Weird. Thanks.

Yeah, this was a misunderstanding. We'll fix it up.

Thanks. I've fixed these tile issues.

Hmm. Interesting, let us know if it is due to the dropship being refuelled or airborne or something.

Yes, this is a known issue. We're working on it.

Yes, we need to slow down the game a bit. At present all difficulty settings are the same though. The alien craft being able to shoot down frontal missiles is an interesting idea (strikes me as a better idea for Fighters though). But tbh the major innovation on that front will be the auto-resolve front.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll look into the end of mission healing stuff; recovery time should be based only on the soldier's adjusted maximum health rather than their actual health. The accuracy stuff and the AI does still need some work. Perhaps a combat log would be a good idea. I'm surprised so many people struggle with medikits, given the right click aim for guns is generally seen as reasonably intuitive. Perhaps we'll look into that again too.

Banshee - hmm. Doesn't the contextual cursor still pop up if you mouseover the alien without a weapon selected? Everyone else - does setting all the grenades to have 99 range fix the range issues with them? I'm not sure it'll enable the soldiers to actually throw them further but should stop the suppression issues.

Trashman - you could get back the old game's ammo management by making ballistic weapon ammo manufacturable, but a proper market is a feature we don't have so it's a bit of a workaround.

I think we will want to slow down research and the invasion in general. It does feel a bit too rapid at the moment. I've just not got round to it yet.

Yeah, there should be an element of randomisation already but maybe I need to check that it's actually working. Each map has about 20 alien spawn points and the aliens outside the UFO should be spawned at random in one of them. The AI should get another major update in the build after the next one. It needs more work than I thought it did; it doesn't really punish mistakes at the moment. The focus of the next update will be to make the aliens shoot at your soldiers in all the situations where it would obviously be preferable to do so (rather than just running away or reserving AP for reaction fire).

Skitso - the aliens outside the UFO pick a random spawn point from all the possible spawn points set. There should be plenty of randomisation there.

Yeah, they are much improved. You shouldn't set Alien Spawn Points (or any spawn point) inside the UFO though, there are already aliens set to spawn inside the UFO so no need to do it manually. I'd also remove all the props from the area where you've placed the UFO, to stop potential issues with props inside the UFO etc. Farm map in particular is much better and I like the idea behind it, though I'd swap the Chinook orientation around on that too - the soldiers shouldn't be unloading directly into the edge of the map (applies to middle east map too). Industrial map - I'd put a hole in the wall towards the top of the map, or the only way to get through is destroying it. This is another good one. I'd have to sit down and play the maps before I made a final decision on them, but I think some of them could be included in the game with a few little tweaks (which I'd do at my end). It's certainly the best community map pack I've seen so far - good work!

We're going to release a build this week, and the idea is that that will become the stable Steam release that we'll be launching with once the bugs are fixed (and we've got the Mac / Linux ports done). The exact timeline is still unknown, but the Steam launch is our main priority at the moment.

Fixed the XML now, thanks.

Yeah, after a bit of testing it's obvious that the datacores for crashed ships are misbehaving and not unlocking technology correctly. I'll sort them out today.

Hi - it's only the standalones that are beyond V18 at the moment, Desura client only has V18. If you've downloaded the Beta Candidate 2 standalone, that'll be V18.3. It sounds like you already have V18.3 from the standalone because that's when the laser ammo issue appeared. Try re-downloading Hotfix 2 from the Announcements sub-forum as I updated the files last night to fix the ammo issue in it, see if that works?

EDIT - these guidelines are deprecated since Aaron took over the official mapping duties from me. He plays by different rules. If you want to make maps that fit in with the official Goldhawk maps (and possibly have a chance of being included in the game), then please follow the guidelines below. Non-compliant maps won't be included in the game for obvious reasons. If you're just mapping for fun, though, feel free to do whatever you like. Goldhawk Mapping Guidelines - Crash Sites Crash Site maps use the following tilesets: Arctic, Farm, Desert, Middle East To function in the game, they must include both a dropship spawn point (Chinook / Shrike / Valkyrie) and a UFO spawn area. Map size is defined by the UFO in the map. Do not mix UFOs from different categories in a map (so don't put a Scout and Light Scout in the same map): Light Scout - Light Scout (~60x60) Small - Scout / Corvette (~60x60) Medium - Landing Ship / Cruiser (~70x70) Large - Carrier / Battleship (as required) [*]You should only place one UFO crash position for each UFO type in each map, and one dropship spawn position for each dropship type. This allows more intelligent placement of alien spawn points, as you know where both the dropship and UFO will be. [*]UFOs at present always face to the SE, which means that they should be placed on the upper edge or sides of the map rather than on the bottom edge. UFO hulls are not destructible (and often behave a bit strangely) so the doors should be immediately accessible. [*]Where possible, maps should be divided into at least three "sections" by objects that block line of sight through them (a wall, a building, a thick forest etc). Without this, units can see their full sight range so the maps are dominated by long range sniping, and there's no chance of those X-Com moment where you walk around a corner and find yourself face-to-face with an alien. If you're unsure, look at our maps for examples of how that can be done. Goldhawk Mapping Guidelines - Terror Sites Terror Sites use the following tilesets: Town, Soviet Town The map size is defined by the UFO that spawns the terror site, but the UFO itself does not actually appear on the terror map. The following UFOs spawn terror maps, and the map size to use is as follows: Corvette (60x60) Landing Ship (60x60) Cruiser (70x70) Carrier (70x70) Battleship (70x70) You can therefore share maps between the Corvette / Landingship and the Cruiser / Carrier / Battleship. [*]These maps do not need the "sections" like the crash sites. Rather, they are more about urban warfare. [*]The buildings should mostly be around the outside of the map, with a central open area (perhaps containing one building if needed) and roads dividing the areas. [*]These maps need a lot of cover. The flowerbeds are excellent for this. [*]The lamp posts and traffic lights are excellent for visually filling up open areas beside the road without actually filling it, which makes the maps less cramped. Cars, buses and newspaper stands are good for more meaningful cover.

Thanks for doing this. I've had a look through the pack and I'll give some quick comments on the maps to bring them into line with how I make maps (if you're just doing this for fun, feel free to disregard them - but if you'd like some of them to maybe be included in the game then they should be useful): 1) All the UFOs face south east (bottom right of the screen). This means you can't put them on the bottom edge of the map, because it's difficult to get around the front of them that way. I prefer them against the top left edge of the map simply because it doesn't expose the player to the non-destructible sides and rear of the UFO, but you can put them against the other two sides if needed too. I think in beta we'll probably add a SW facing of all the UFOs up to Landing Ship size though, just to allow a bit more map variation. But until then, I'd design the maps around the SE facing UFOs. 2) Only have one possible UFO spawn point and one Chinook / Shrike / Valkyrie spawn point in each map, it'll make the map more structured and let you place aliens better if you know where the player will be coming from. 3) The map categories are Light Scout (60x60), then Scout / Corvette (60x60), then Landing Ship / Cruiser (70x70), then larger ships (as required). Don't mix from category to category if possible, so don't have Light Scouts and Scouts on the same map. 4) Think about LOS - there should be things that divide the map into "sections" by blocking LOS through it (like walls), so it's not just a sniper's paradise (and lets you end up face-to-face with aliens). Having little blocking LOS within a "section" is fine, but you shouldn't be able to see much from one sector to another. Arctic Light Scout - Generally looks decent, but there's too much water / impassable terrain for a map that size. I don't think the Ferret could navigate it. Also, I'd use more trees and less rocks - trees block LOS, rocks don't. Desert Light Scout - Very little wrong with this map, other than the multiple spawn points. The LOS ranges are very long, but the desert tileset doesn't really have much to block LOS with anyway. I wouldn't make too many empty maps like this one (use the base tileset for a more "urban" desert map), but this one is fine. Farm Lightscout 1 - There's not enough LOS blocking stuff here, only the horizontal hedge wall blocks LOS (concrete wall and hedgerows are both ideal for this in the farm map). Also, cover walls between fields don't generally have their open bits at either end, it's usually a single entry point somewhere near the middle. Not sure about the field of tree trunks either! Farm Lightscout 2 - This isn't going to be navigable by vehicles. There's also not really any "sections", and as those trees don't block LOS it's also going to be very open despite being packed with props. An area of the map like this could work, but not a whole map. Industrial Lightscout 1 - I like the basic layout of this one, but I think it'd benefit from you picking one dropship landing area and one crash site area (I'd replace one of the buildings with the crash site). The buildings need improving - I'd make some new sub-maps for them, ones without the attached concrete tiles on the ground. The map also needs more LOS blocking, which you can do by replacing some of the central fence with concrete wall and / or by adding more freight trains to the railway. Industrial Lightscout 2 - I don't think the idea here is going to work. Too crowded in gameplay terms and also doesn't look natural. Middle East Light scout - Not bad. I think it's a little too crowded with buildings and would benefit with one less, and more cover (those mixed wooden fence / ruined wall dividers I use in the middle east maps work quite well for that). I'm also not sold on the concrete ground around the office, doesn't really look that natural to me. The Middle East tileset is difficult to get right though, it might need some more tiles done still. Soviet Town - Those ground tiles and the wooden huts are going to be formed into a separate "Tundra" tileset. You should use the more urban ones instead. The map needs more cover too (flowerbeds are good for that on both Town tilesets). Admittedly this tileset still needs more work. Town - This is pretty good. Probably needs more green though, just a sea of grey at the moment. I'd probably move the shop and bank to the right edge of the map, then put a park or something in the upper central part of the map (so the buildings are around the edge). The road / concrete area in the top-right seems a bit superfluous at the moment. Overall, these maps are good for someone just starting out. A bit too cramped, probably (less can be more), but they're interesting. I'd start playing with adding new building submaps too.

You can't blow the datacore up. It's invulnerable and hidden in the walls.

Take a screenshot. I'd be interested to see if you've actually got a genuine laser beam effect working.

I've removed the actual items. The research projects should now unlock when you recover the datacore from the Landing Ship / Cruiser etc (i.e when you finish a mission where you capture one). Are they not unlocking correctly?