Chris

Mmmmm, it's possible. I was in contact with them about 9 months ago but they turned us down. Admittedly the game looked rather different in those days though. However, I suspect they'd want too much of a cut of the profits to make it worthwhile for us to do it...

That bit's not finished. There'll be the existing person graphics for the dropship bit in there, except they'll be black rather than white.

Fair point, actually. The debug version has a 'lose mission' button so it's more that we've just not bound it to a button / menu option yet. Probably should do that.

OK I've attached a quick preview of how the updated Soldier Equip screen could look with the bars. It's probably an improvement, I think. I imagine we'll add a photo outline around the soldier portait in the top left and display it a bit bigger too.

There's a weapon in the secondary slot in that first image, Tnoyce, though why it's not displayed in the primary slot as normal I don't know. I have actually seen this happen occasionally too, I'm just not sure what's causing it - possibly it's people dragging weapons into the hands of soldiers and putting them in the secondary slot instead of the primary? I don't really know.

Or a wider number of people donating money by buying the game, ideally.

Thanks. Hadn't noticed that before.

Damaged walls? Hmmm. It's possible that they might have their tile properties set incorrectly I suppose. A screenshot would be really helpful here.

Yeah, we've had similar issues. Once a save game crashes, it's not loadable any more until I restart my PC. We've done some work on the save feature and hopefully it'll be a bit better come next build.

Hmm, no, it's not intended to work that way. It's a relatively low priority fix but we'll get it fixed up eventually.

If possible, try and remember exactly what you did to cause the bug and post it up here. It's difficult for us to work out what's causing it otherwise because it doesn't normally happen

Well I think the idea about UFO analysis might still be the strongest candidate. It makes sense from a lore point of view because there's lots of UFOs popping up everywhere instead of just one that appeared 20 years ago. That means there'll be a lot more tracking data to play and experiment with. This would quite easily lead into a way to refine the radar signals in order to get an idea of the size of the UFOs (and whether they have escorts or not). This would also be a good scene-setting project from the lore point of view - the basic premise is that the UFOs are vastly superior to human interceptors but are poorly suited to aerodynamic flight, which makes them vulnerable. If we explain that early then it plugs a bit plot hole right from the opening. So that's one possible research project. Ideally we'd want another two.

I think the problem is making an instantly clear representation of the ability of the soldier - at the moment it's hard to see if the soldier is good or bad because everything is represented numerically at the moment.

How do you mean broken walls? I don't quite get what you're driving at here.

Hmm, obviously we never got around to updating this.

Test this in the next build to see if it's still happening. I hope not.

So it goes Geoscape >>> Combat >>> Combat Briefing screen? Or no combat briefing screen? If the latter, are you clicking the mouse? I think that cancels the combat briefing screen.

Yeah the idea is that they keep going until they expend all their damage. Not implemented yet but it's on the to-do list before the beta.

Not quite sure I follow your logic, Nemeo - the idea's just an extension of the current pre-order structure, which is you pay now and the game will be better for it. This is just providing specific instances of how the game will be better if sufficient numbers of people buy it and we can raise that amount of money. And giving people the option to donate extra if they want to. If the funding thermometer gets hit, everyone gets all of the features in the intial release of the game and I imagine the majority of there revenue would come from people buying the game by donating either $20 / $30.

There are railguns in the game, they're just more advanced technology. Mostly because projectiles that go through walls and then keep going are fun, but not something you put in the early game.

I think I played F-15 Strike Eagle and I seem to remember the Wing Commanders had something a bit like it - but in many ways it's just extrapolating from X-Com and XCOM. X-Com had art in the background of the menu, mostly to stop it looking like a horrible spreadsheet. The new X-Com is trying to look like a strategy game by having a base you walk around in and talk to the rest of the team, and I imagine it'll all change visually as you go through the game and unlock new technology. I thought that was a good idea, so I stole it. That and the previous GUI style (the one currently in the game) seems to have gone as far as we can take it. I've tried on numerous occasions to make it look prettier, but I can't seem to make it work. Hand-painted art can look so much more colourful and attractive while also being more immersive. The challenge is just integrating all the information into it and keeping it intuitive. Plus, it's just good to be different sometimes. Gives the game a lot more of a wow factor if you do something unusual.

This bug is fixed up the the dev version so should work fine in the next update.

Yup, I probably forgot to update the front page - if you were playing V8.3, you wouldn't have been playing it for very long before it dumped you to your desktop. I'll be releasing another update over this weekend and hopefully I'll remember to name it correctly this time!

Thanks Crow, I'll have a look at that. The Grenade bug is fixed at our end now. We'll be releasing another update over the weekend that should fix the vast majority of the reported crash bugs.

Aha, those saved games should be useful. Thanks to both of you.