Chris

Nixacalo - you make some good points, but I don't think sales of Xenonauts are going to triple if we translate it into Spanish. The English-speaking market is by far the biggest (except possibly for Chinese, which will be bigger in raw numbers but smaller in revenues) and is also the one in which we have the most contact with journalists and distributors. The number of Steam clients in Spanish is tiny compared to English, German or Russian, for example, so I'm not sure our game is ever going to penetrate too deeply into Venezuela even if we do have a good translation. So it's not quite that straightforward!

It had a weird setting previously (was set to be a rocket instead of a cannon), I've updated it now. See if it works better in V18 when it's released.

No problem, I thought we'd fixed this bug. Looks like it still needs more work!

Put this file in the Xenonauts directory and run it, see if this fixes the issue: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26290309/LauncherFix.bat

It was a mis-set sprite. I've fixed this now, thanks for the report.

They should be working. What's the specific problem?

The money stuff is certainly not balanced at the moment. We'll have a full discussion on it in beta I think.

Ah yes, this does need to be addressed. It won't be in the upcoming release, but maybe the one after it.

Oh - re: translation, we've had various offers for translations but I've not really committed to any of them yet, barring a Spanish translator that has agreed to work for free for his name on the translated version title screen (so he'll get the first go at translating it to Spanish). My stance on the translation is that I'd like it to be done, but I don't want to spend much money on it and I don't want it to eat up too much development time. The stuff I'd be willing to make time for to support translations: 1) Coming up with some generals guidelines for the translations - ie. should the aliens have the same names, or should they have the localised equivalents of their name? 2) Sorting out strings.xml and moving hardcoded text strings to places where they can be edited, and providing the images where text is baked into the background etc. 3) Happy to put translator names on the Main Menu screen of their translated version. The major problem that I see is simply that I can't read any foreign languages, so I can't verify how good the translation actually is. We'll need some system of community verification I think, so we know the translator is getting the feeling of the game right. I'm very much open to community translations if people want to do it, but we'll probably need to set up a specific sub-forum for it or something. Also, at this stage I am still chopping and changing the research tree so I'd wait another month or so until it all settles down before you try to translate any of the Xenopedia. Also, strings.xml is a mess at the moment...I'll have to sort that out at some point too.

You should be able to fire any weapon at anything, just by holding Ctrl or clicking on the weapon.

a_beorning - I'm impressed you managed to complete it, well done! Glad you like it. It should get a lot better and more stable in beta. Thanks for reporting all the bugs too. For the UFOs - yes, strike cruisers are upgrades on bombers so they always explode when destroyed. Destroyers and now Dreadnoughts have been removed from the game (more details when I release the beta), but Battleships will be a lot more common. And yeah, the Reaper and accuracy problems are both bugs that hopefully should be fixed in the next build.

Cool. Well it's good to see it starting anyway. There's quite a few strings that are in the UI /scripts/ folder rather than in strings, but we'll look at moving them towards the end of beta so there's an easy way for people to translate the game if they want to. And even if you don't take the translation too far, at least it'll be a good starting point for other people to work from!

You did make it just in time for beta, so the Chris is perfectly happy with it

I noticed this myself, thanks. We'll hopefully have it fixed soon.

I did indeed post an ETA in the previous post. I'm hoping for it coming out tomorrow. What we're going to do is branch the code when the final mission fixes are made and release it, then we'll continue to update this version of the game (as well as the main development branch) with fixes over the next week or so to get it up to scratch. Assonasitis - well played. We'll see what we can do, if those bugs aren't fixed in the first release of this build they'll be in the second as they're on our to-fix list.

Nice, thanks for this. Did you use the updated Xenopedia / Xenonauts font that has added German characters in it? If you haven't, it'll be in the next build.

Assoonasitis, I'm currently only willing to entertain bugfix requests from you if they're in the form of poetry. A general update: I've been busy today generally balancing things and fixing them, and I've identified enough issues with the final mission that the beta probably won't make it out until Tuesday as the ground combat coder will need to fix them up - hopefully he'll get them done tomorrow. Happy Easter everyone!

You're meant to use the Foxtrot against the Scouts, it's faster than them.

Are all walls not stopping shots, or just alien walls?

There'll be an update on Steam soon. It seems likely we'll be launching on Early Access in the next six weeks, but nothing is confirmed yet. The update for today is that I've had to go back into the office because my code commit didn't go through last night and I can't work from home. *grumble grumble*

Not yet. I don't think "Beta isn't here yet because I was writing Xenonauts-themed haikus" is a valid excuse in most people's eyes.

You hereby have my permission to use the IP if such a thing were to occur, but "Dont. Don't Do That" sounds more like the title of a rap than a poem.

Ah, Sathra. Welcome back. I'm afraid you and Gauddlike will now have to duel to the death to see who is the one true moderator. Svidangel - yup, that already works.

We've been fairly busy this week (when I say "fairly busy" I mean I've been working till 10 every day) working on the beta candidate build - i.e. the build that will become our first beta when the bugs and obvious flaws in it are ironed out. I was hoping to release it today, but that's not going to happen. Hopefully I'll finish it up over the weekend as it's now mostly balancing and testing work rather than adding more content, but either way it is unlikely Desura will be authorising stuff over Easter. I've posted this thread to let everyone know what is going on, as I've been hinting at beta arriving this weekend so I felt I should let people know for definite what was going on. I'll keep everyone posted with my progress over the weekend; I'm off to see my family next weekend and as I'll be working half-days for just over a week when I do that, I'm not too bothered about working through Easter. In short, we've done quite a bit this week. Aaron has now finished all the landed UFO tiles and we're a few days off getting the interior art for them all done, and we're halfway through doing all the damaged art. The final mission is blocked out and we're testing the special functionality of that at the moment, and I've made a lot of new maps (added another 17 this week) and balance changes and Giovanni has fixed a lot of bugs. Even when stable, our beta will not be super well balanced, will still have some placeholder art it in and it probably won't be brilliant fun at first - but you should be able to play the game from start to finish. That should be in the next few days, and things will only improve from there! Have a good Easter, everyone!

Yup, this will be fixed in the next version. Forgot to update a file correctly!