Chris

All this means to me is that I've gotta update the site banners

Yeah, I'm gonna be getting a proper PR guy next week so this is going to be his first major task I think - along with the Facebook and Twitter stuff.

Build V9.1 has been finalised and is released on Desura! This is only available with the Desura client download (it should give you an update icon on the Play page) - downloading without the client as a .rar file will take a day or two to update yet. Full update notes are below, but the big news is that AI is back in and now the aliens are moving and shooting. It's not particularly refined and hopefully we'll make big improvements on it over the next month or so, but at least the game is playable once again. Sorry for the delay on this front - I know it's been painful. Two other major things to talk about quickly: Firstly, I've put new tiles in for the Scout and Light Scout (new UFO type) and there will be more UFO tiles coming, as well as the Chinook tiles being added to the game now. Generally this is great, but right now there's no UFO interiors so there's a couple of things missing that are needed for the tech tree to reach lasers / Wolf armour. We'll patch them back in next week, likely next weekend, when we add the interiors for the various craft. Secondly, as part of a much wider revamp of the research / manufacturing in the game that I did in the last week, we've made the MiG interceptor researchable instead of purchaseable. Unfortunately, there's a complication - it turns out the functionality to manufacture aircraft is not yet in place so you can unlock the manufacture but it doesn't work. Again, we'll get this fixed and patch this in next weekend. As the F-17s are now all you need in the early game, you're not missing out - just be aware of it. We're working on some features arriving in the next few weeks that I'm looking forward to showing off, but this update should keep you ticking over until next weekend. As always, if there's any bugs then post them up on our forums...but hopefully this should be a pretty stable build. Features: - AI is back in. - A new UFO has been added, the Light Scout. This is slower than weaker than previous UFOs and can be shot down by a single F-17 (it is set up to be shot down after two Sidewinder hits). As such, the MiG-32 is now researchable (although for the reasons mentioned above, not yet manufacturable). -The research project Alien Invasion has been added to the start of the game. This is the trigger for the MiG research becoming available. - New ground combat tile have been added for the Light Scout that has landed or crashed on the Farm tileset, and the Scout crashed on the Farm and the Industrial tileset. - The new Chinook tiles have also been added. -New ground combat UI has been added. This is still a WIP but includes an improved AP Reserve slider which shows the shot costs next to it, a Quick Reload and Quick Grenade throw button. Tooltips are also partially implemented. - Units in the Chinook will now automatically re-arrange themselves to accommodate vehicles instead of simply blocking the vehicle assignment if there is no 3x3 space present. - An extra copy of the select circle now appears above the head of units on mouseover, making it easier to select and identify units behind walls. - Weapons now have reload sounds. - Soldier portraits will repeat less frequently. - We have added new tiles for the Chinook and new tiles for the crashed Scout, although this is currently only present on the Farmyard tileset. We will roll out additional UFOs in the next few weeks. - Buildings now display roofs until you have a unit inside them, irrespective of camera level. There’s still some teething issues with this system but we’re working through it. - You can now modify the construction times and maintenance costs of buildings in /assets/buildings.xml, and building maintainance costs have been significantly reduced. - The alien invasion AI can now be balanced – the AM_ file in /assets/ allow you to specify which alien UFO types will appear flying the mission at what points. - UFOs are now less likely to immediately flee from combat when attacked with superior numbers of human craft. Bugfixes (amongst others): Ground Combat: - The camera is no longer restrained by the edges of the map on the Farm tileset. - The random crash associated with reaction fire has been fixed Air Combat: - Interceptors now move at correct speed when fightning against corvettes - The ”Invisible Fighter” issue (where the icon sometimes did not display) should be fixed. Geoscape: - Undetected UFOs will no longer spam the game with UFO Detected notifications if they attack Xenonaut craft. - Interceptors will now detect alien bases as soon as the base enters radar range of the craft. - Selling items on the store screen no longer results in an extra item being sold. - The Intercept window will no longer appear in duplicate if you intercept a UFO using the Intercept button Miscellaneous: - Pressing the ESC button will now correctly take you to a higher level of the menu

A quick update - there is now AI in the game. It does need some more polish (some animations are not displaying properly) but alien units are now moving and shooting. We are obviously looking to dramatically increase the standard of the AI in the future but we're finally moving forwards on this front!

There's already 7 or 8 ranks of Caesan and they all look different, so this isn't required

I think I've done a pretty good job of dealing with the malware, but I'm still getting occasional reports of people encountering warnings from the site (even though I've scanned the whole thing for the problem script and found nothing). The vulnerability only affects IE and people have mentioned encountering it on the Screenshot and Pre-Order pages so far (I've had some problems with script errors on the screenshot page when I open a screenshot). If anyone knows anything about web security, would they mind having a look at that page to see if they can replicate the malware warnings? I can't seem to do it myself so I don't really know what to look for...

I'm not sure this idea appeals to me. We've already made a big step in terms of ammo management by letting all manufactured weapons of a certain tier use common / interchangeable ammo clips, which should make things nice and easy compared to the original. Also, as others have pointed out, in the final game manufactured ammo will use varying amounts of Alenium to construct. In this case, Gazz, the choice you're looking for is whether you use a more energy-efficient lesser tier of weaponry or take the big guns along to a battle.

Welcome everybody! Nice to have you on the forums.

All UFOs will face either SW or SE as the doors are on the front. Undamaged ones can face in either direction, but crashed ones will only ever face in one direction per tileset (although they'll face in different directions on different tilesets). It's not possible to do it any other way without massive duplication of art assets.

I'm not sure this is really viable as we don't have the facial images in carved up form at this end either. It's no easier for us to do it than the community, and we've got other things to be getting on with

Just thought I'd post an update here on what our plans are with V9.1 - we're planning to release it this weekend, probably Sunday evening (UK time). Sorry for the radio silence, we're still working through a few problems and I can't definitely confirm which features will be in it yet. Fingers crossed it'll be everything planned but we'll see how it all pans out.

It's odd, I'm not sure exactly what's happening with regards to the 404s and everything too - but I don't think it's linked to the Xenonauts website injection because this is a seperate site. But I don't really want to start tinkering with the forum in case I completely break something! There is at least one workaround for autosign-in though. Just type your password in wrong and it'll load up a new page that has a "Remember Me" tickbox on it, which will keep you automatically signed in.

I've just tried the tool out properly with a bunch of new tiles and, other than the selection issues mentioned above, this is a great piece of work. Saved me a couple of hours! Thanks.

Yup this bug will be fixed in the next update, which isn't far away now.

Yeah this should be rebalanced in an upcoming patch so it's a bit more straightforward. You're not the only person who has struggled with it.

Yeah we'll be looking at this in the future. I'm going to be upgrading my monitor soon and I imagine it'll be very urgent then

Files such as weapons_gc.xml are actually XML code rather than Excel tables, so there is coding to be done. It's no different to coding CSS, for example. Sure. it's very basic coding but adding new weapons is still coding. At the moment, no, it's not possible to mod the starting level of the soldier stats. There might be a mod value somewhere in gameconfig.xml or config.xml that sets the stat bonus for the starting soldiers though. You may find this wiki page useful in terms of modding: http://xenowiki.goldhawkinteractive.com/index.php?title=Master_list_of_what_each_file_controls

Someone who loves spiders, presumably. A pun on "sticky threads".

Yup, doing it in a code manner is actually quite a lot harder than just getting the artist to do a different variant for each of the tilesets, so we'll be doing that for simplicity's sake. We might have some maps where the UFO has hit a building, but they have to be pre-designed in advance otherwise the damage to the building won't look realistic (as custom damaged tiles would be required for realism purposes).

Me, I guess - but it's really not my biggest concern right now so maybe wait until Xeno is out

Nope, just the basic rockets I'm afraid. For the smoke recolouring, once we add the gas grenade functionality it'll be easy enough to add various types of gas explosions to all kinds of weapons so modding in poison / stun rockets to the Ferret would not be difficult.

Yeah they increase with combat experience. It's shown on the Soldier Development tab after each ground combat mission. Possibly increase is too slow right now but the numbers have not been balanced yet...

Yes, it appears this is a bug and should be reported.