Chris

And then spend a day or two getting those bugs fixed, while stopping all production on the game in the meantime to make sure that nobody else adds anything that might break the game while we fix the original bugs? With an important deadline coming up? Most projects go into lockdown for several days before each major release where no features are added so they can fix all the bugs in a stable environment, but we don't have the full time staff available to make that a viable option. For obvious reasons, our main priority is to get the game finished rather than to make sure the builds we release are fully stable.

Yeah, that's an AI bug. I'll send an email to the AI coder to get it sorted out ASAP but he doesn't have the internet at the moment so I'm not sure it's something we can fix immediately. Obviously it's not a bug we can send out the press build with though. Hmm.

Ah dammit. I should have removed that map before I made the build live. Whoops. It's an unfinished test map.

Really? Hmm. This is after pressing Toggle Roof, right?

RS311 - the key structures can't be damaged. This includes hangars, garages and living quarters. It'd cause no end of trouble in the code. Gorlom - there aren't any alien containment cells; it's not a distinct building. We've merged it with the lab, so the aliens won't appear on the map. Injured soldiers will fight in the base defence, wounded ones do not (they're assumed to be taken into the underground bunker with all the other personnel).

Yeah. AI coder moving house etc.

Right now it's the latter. In the final version it'll be the former.

It's authorised now. It's only a 7mb patch, V9.3 was 300mb. Shouldn't take long.

Eurogamer Expo was end of September so it's been about 6 months now. That wasn't freely downloadable though.

Pinetree - yes, there have been some I'm afraid. Drakhon, no, that's not normal. You've encountered a known bug I'm afraid, the game sometimes locks up in the Hidden Movement turn.

It’s now mid-April and the days are ticking by at an alarming rate. We’ve been extremely busy at our end, working on a variety of things. For the past week or so I’ve actually been the bottleneck, as I’ve demanded everyone work harder and they have. I’ve ended up being buried under the results. Our plans for the future are (as many of you already know) to do a Kickstarter. There’s been some discussion about how we can get around the US citizen requirement that Kickstarter has, and after exhausting a lot of possibilities over the past month I think we’ve finally hit on one that works. My thanks go out to our forumite Kilrathi, who is a corporate attorney over in the US and has helped us set up a US company and is in the process of setting up a corporate bank account for us. This, while costing us a few hundred dollars, is a safe option for us – I can have full control over the bank account and Kilrathi is therefore not on the hook taxwise at all. It has, naturally, involved a LOT of form filling for the both of us, but I’m about to run off to get the final forms signed before FedExing them across the world. I imagine it’ll still take a couple of weeks for everything to come together, but Kilrathi has been a fantastic help and it goes to show that where there is a will, there is a way! The plan is to release a public build of the game to accompany the Kickstarter, so anyone who is interested in pledging money is able to see what we have done so far before they make their call. I think the game is sufficiently complete for people to get a feel of what we are aiming to achieve with the final version, and I think this will dramatically increase the funding we receive. We will be sending this build out about a week early to the press so they can write previews on it. Most journalists don’t want to cover Kickstarters anymore, so letting them combining the Kickstarter with a preview should ensure we still get good coverage. There’s been quite a lot of interest from various sites in getting their hands on a playable version of the game too, which is good. The net effect of this is that we’re going to have to have the “final” version done relatively soon so we can have a couple of days of bugtesting on the forums before we get it out to the journalists. We’ll then have a week of extra bugtesting before public release of the build. This public build will be V10. It is likely to include the following features over V9.31: Enhanced launcher which will allow you to play the normal game or load a “Quick Game” (which launches straight into a terror site) for those who just want to try a quick battle. It will looks prettier, and also include direct links to our manual, bug reporting forums, and our preorder / Kickstarter page. The standalone builds will have an installer. The town tileset will be set up properly, though the art still won’t be entirely complete as not all the tiles have been painted over yet. We’ll hopefully have added an alien support drone to the game, which will appear in the Terror Site. UFO signals should display their proper size, rather than Medium. We should have a few more Xenopedia images, and we’ll finish formatting and scaling the text in it too. That’s what we’ll be working on for the next few days. You can see much of what we’ve been working on in the past couple of weeks in Build V9.31, but the one major thing that we’ve been working on and have not released is the base defence missions. I’m pleased to say that, from a code perspective, these are pretty much complete. We’ve now worked out a system where the walls and doors display correctly on each side of each room depending on whether or not there is another structure there (accounting correctly for the 2x1 buildings too). These are currently loading up blank grey placeholder rooms, but we’ll be moving onto those tiles as soon as the Town is done. The major innovation in the base defence missions is that there is a central command centre that must be protected at all costs, and that you can arrange your troops within it (it is a 2x2 building) freely before the start of the battle. We’re just tweaking the unit arrangement system a bit so it’s immediately obvious which tiles you can deploy units to for free, and then we’re largely complete. There is also a system where most rooms have “key props” in them, which can be destroyed in battle. At the end of the battle the number of surviving key props is totalled up to give a health % for each structure, and any damaged building is set back to that % construction completed. This means that most buildings can be knocked out of commission for a few days as a result of a base attack. This system has been implemented in the ground combat but not linked to the Geoscape yet. Unfortunately our AI coder is moving house this week so our progress on that front hasn’t been as fast as we’d like, but I’m going to make that a priority again after we get the Kickstarter build out. Overall, things are going well – but the next couple of weeks will be very important for us and we’re going to need to make them work.

This is a small patch for Build V9.3 because for some reason I forgot to re-compile the .exe files before I released the build, so they are a bit out of date. This should: - Fix the game starting in a window and skipping the launcher. - Fix a bug where the game crashes if you open your inventory above an alien corpse (as the alien plasma clip images were incorrectly set) - Add a new image for the Alien Alloys research.

We're planning to make it so that Chinooks shot down don't kill all the crew automatically, but each person has a % chance of survival depending on whether shot down over land / water.

Not legally you couldn't, unless you had the official license (like Firaxis do).

Ah damn, I forgot to update that .exe. I'll release another patch quickly.

Drakhon, I think what you need is here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/145-How-to-claim-your-Pre-Order-forum-badge!

I'm going to bed now. If it's not authoriseded when I wake up I'll get on Desura's case.

Grr. Seems the Desura people are asleep. Silly southern hemisphere types...probably all that walking around on their hands they have to do. Makes it hard to authorise games.

OK, so Build V9.3 is uploading to Desura and will be available as soon as it is authorised. I expect it to hit in about an hour, asuming the Desura guys are still online when the uplaod finishes. The following improvements have been made: - We have implemented a new Xenopedia screen that pops up when a research project is completed. This still needs a bit of work in terms of text scaling etc, but we'll have it done for the weekend. It is also not currently displaying the full research text (about 80% of it) so they end a bit abruptly at the moment. - The tech tree has been fixed so you can once again access Wolf Armour and Laser Weapons, and it has been expanded to include Alenium Missiles and Alenium Torpedos for your aircraft. The Alenium Grenade has also been added but I've not set it up in the game so it'll still be identical to a normal grenade until the weekend. Autopsies have also been added but don't give the +10% damage bonus yet. - The air combat now has a contextual menu that can be activated by right-clicking on any interceptor. This pauses the game and allows you to issue them commands without using the sidebar. - The air combat has been made marginally more balanced. Expect Corvettes to cause you some headaches when you encounter them. - Aircraft and vehicles now fill hangar / garage slots when construction begins have a WIP construction image. In the next build there will be three images that the game cycles through that shows the progression of the construction. - You now have to go through the Soldier Development screen at the end of a ground combat mission, as a lot of people didn't seem to know it existed. This now displays the Wounded / Injured days correctly after combat too. - The game now has an Alt-Tab icon. - A terror site is generate at 475 on the ticker. This is still incomplete but will hopefully be complete by the weekend. - The game ends at 550 on the ticker and shows a congratulatory screen. It also asks you to buy the game - this is just a test for the public release of this build. Bugfixes: Ground Combat: - Ground Combat can now start fter loading the auto save. - Weapon reload sounds added to the game. - Correct recovery time for injured / wounded soldiers will appear on the soldier development screen after ground combat missions. - Climbing stairs will work properly in the barn. AI: - AI is no longer ignoring vehicles on ground combat missions. Geoscape: - Equiping different rockets to your MiG will no longer cause the game to crash. - The notification can now be cancelled if large numbers of buildings were completed at the same time. - Fighters above ground will no longer "crash to the sea". - An alert window will appear if you cannot manufacture a plane due to not having a free hangar slot. - The game will no longer crash if you attack a landed UFO that has taken off again. - The game will no longer crash when tailing targets on the geoscape. - The chinook will no longer float above the target crash site after loading the auto-save.

We'll see if it actually materialises tonight. I'm most of the way through adding the new Xenopedia to the game so there's a decent chance but it might end up coming tomorrow morning instead if there's a delay. It's pretty close to being ready anyway.

We're going to put in some more detailed financial information on the Base screen in the new UI screen. In terms of graphs, if we do implement them it'll probably be through map overlays.

You can make manufactures available at the start of the game using the /scripts/_basebuilt.lua, details on our wiki here: http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Basebuilt.lua If you do discover stuff that isn't in the wiki, please add it. I don't have the time to keep it up to date myself.

Maybe one for the future. This was on my "Ideas to Consider In Beta" list before my harddrive gave up the ghost.

Yes, this is something we'd consider in the beta. But not something I'll think about before all the core gameplay is in place. Maybe suggest it again once we hit beta?

Yeah this was written off a long time ago because it's a lot of work and we're too small a team to do it, really.