Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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Nah, I think it just means most people don't log in after the first week. It's probably tied into to people having to create an account to choose a legacy pre-order option and not actually getting involved in the community.
It's to be expected, really.
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Formatting updated now. I've set the forums up so they autopost from the main blog's RSS feed, hence the screwed up formatting.
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It’s been about six weeks since our launch on Desura and I last posted here. In general, things have been positive at this end. We’ve sold about 750 units since we went live on Desura, so we’re sitting at 2,650 pre-orders or so at the moment. However, the amount we receive per copy sold has fallen drastically since we moved to Desura for several reasons – firstly, we’ve dropped the price $10 with a corresponding fall in revenue. We also only receive 70% or 85% of the revenue of our sales (depending on whether we drive the sales from our site or whether Desura makes the sale themselves) and we’re now obliged to pay VAT. All this has created a situation where we make roughly half as much per copy as we used to, but I think we’ve made the right choice. Though initially more lucrative, Paypal was never going to be the final solution for us.
The big news with Xenonauts is the release of build V8, which is currently on iteration V8.2 (the third iteration). The idea here is that Build V8 will become our long-awaited press preview build when complete, so we’ve been working hard to polish the game up in a similar manner to how we did with Build V7 for the Eurogamer Expo. These little bursts of work are useful because they force us to stop the background system development work and concentrate on improving the actual playability and polish of the game, which is important for the people who have actually paid to pre-order the game and want to play it (which in turn helps us because it encourages community feedback).
We’re currently working on fixing the bugs and improving the stability of the build, which has suffered a little since we implemented Save / Load. V8.3 is due out this weekend and will include fixes for most of the bugs and usability problems reported so far. The major improvements are the addition of the early stages of the research tree, including laser weapons, and the first appearance of a UFO on the battlefield. There are also a LOT of other improvements over V7.5 (the Expo build), but if you want full details it’s best to check the release threads on the forum which are available here for V8.0, V8.1 and V8.2. Build V8.3 is due out this weekend and contains fixes for a lot of the bugs reported, as well as a few smaller updates.
As the name implies, the press preview build will be sent to everyone on our press list as a sort of ‘first preview’ of the game, a proof of concept build to show everybody that we’re a serious project that has all the foundations in place to make something really good. We’ve been doing it with a select few sympathetic magazines already – PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun etc – but this will be the first time we’ll let journalists have a free play of the game. It’s a bit scary, but as long as we’re clear that this is just a proof of concept I think a lot of people will be impressed! Hopefully it’ll translate into a lot more traffic and interest in the game.
We should also mention here the IndieDB have started their annual Indie of The Year competition, and you can vote for Xenonauts here. While there’s no concrete reward for winning the competition given we’re already on Desura, it’s always good to put in a strong showing as it helps raise the profile of the project and doing well in a category increases the likelihood that people who aren’t normally that interested in this particular genre might take a second look at us. It doesn’t take long to vote (just a couple of clicks), so if you guys could help us out with your votes then that would be appreciated.
In terms of the background progress on the game and how the team is faring, there’s a long forum post from a few weeks back that is available here which should fill you in on most of the happenings behind the scenes. In short, things are going rather well. We’ve got a complete list of all work that needs to be done coding wise until the game is feature complete, and I’m working that into milestone builds at the moment to give us a bit more structure. The terrain tiles still remain our biggest timesink but we’re starting to get somewhere with them now.
Finally, the other thing I want to highlight is the Xenonauts Wiki. We implemented this when we launched, but the takeup in it has been pretty poor. This is mostly my fault because I’ve written all of about two articles in it, but I’m going to update it a lot more regularly over the next couple of weeks to make sure that it has most of the core mechanics on it so people can understand how things in the game should be behaving. Because the wiki had been colonised by spambots, I had to spend a few hours exterminating them and now only accounts over 24 hours old can edit or create pages in the wiki. This is a pain, but it’s stopped the spam dead so I’m afraid you’ll just have to live with it. Still, I hope this will turn into a really useful resource for the game so if people think they have time to contribute to the wiki in any way, please do so.
That’s it for now. I imagine you’ll hear more once we get Build V8.x finished and start sending it out to all of the journalists on our press list!
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The text of the latest update on the Xenonauts website. Nothing too interesting, just need to keep the news blog there updated at least once a month!
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This site launched just over a month ago, and we've had a very busy month! Our launch on Desura was successful and so we are taking pre-orders for the game again, and progress has been good. You can read more about the wider business elements of our work on the Goldhawk news blog, as this entry will focus predominantly on Xenonauts itself.
Firstly, the annual IndieDB Indie of the Year competition has opened - so if you're a fan of Xenonauts, please vote for us on the Indie DB site. This only takes a few seconds and helps raise the profile of the game, so your support in this would be appreciated.
Onto the game itself - last weekend we released Build V8.2 to the pre-order community. This represents another milestone for us, as it contains a functional Research tree including the first tier of researchable weapons (lasers) and body armour, as well as the first iteration of an in-game UFO model. Up until this point players had been attacking what has been jokingly referred to as an Evil Alien Shed, which was basically a recoloured factory that acted as a spawn point for the aliens. Needless to say, the addition of the UFO makes the missions much more atmospheric, even if it's not yet complete. The tiles currently in the game are the 3D rendered tiles, and they are now being painted over by our 2D artist to create a finished appearence for the UFO. We're also working on the interior prop tiles, which are also looking very cool. Expect the finished Scout UFO to be in the game in V8.3 or V8.4 - basically within a couple of weeks. Then we'll start rolling out the remaining UFOs.
Another major feature of build V8.x is the Main Menu screen, which is indicative of the immersive direction we want to take our GUI screens. Essentially the screen is a painted background that we will animate, and the text and options are contained on a clipboard at the bottom of the screen. Click on the clipboard heading and the camera 'looks' down at the clipboard, which contains all of the required information. It looks great, and I think it works really well. It's certainly worth trying out yourself if you've pre-ordered the game!
We've also added Saving / Loading functionality to the game, although currently this only works on the strategic map rather than in the ground combat. If you don't know much about software development, you may well not know how major an issue Save / Load can be codewise, but it's a pretty major undertaking. As a result it's taking some time to complete and is not fully stable yet, but we're ironing out the bugs reasonably quickly. V8.3 is due out this weekend and that should have most of the bugs in the save functionality fixed up.
There are also LOTS of small changes and fixes that can be found in the update notes for builds V8.0, V8.1 and V8.2 on our community forums. This will give anyone who is interested full details of what's changed since V7.5 (our Expo build).
In closing, I'll just mention that V8.x will become our press preview build when it is finished - we're expecting this is around two weeks. We're not adding that many major new features over the next two weeks, but instead we're working on fixing bugs and polishing the existing experience. There will be further posts when V8.x is finished, so expect to see more then - but it should be the most complete and most polished version of Xenonauts we've yet developed. If you want to experience the game so far, that'll be the time to do it!
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1) Maybe we should add code so that you can automatically shoot over a friendly soldier crouched in an adjacent tile. Right now you have a 60% chance of shooting him in the back of the head. Or possibly there should be an increase in the chance of hitting the soldier with distance from the player in regards to friendly fire.
2) This is pretty much intentional. Cancel the move if you need to reissue it.
3) This is a bug I spotted myself earlier and it's on our fix list for V8.3.
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The stun / smoke grenades have been removed as they're not implemented yet. They'll be in V9 I imagine. Stun Rockets are also a researchable technology so they shouldn't be a starting technology. In V8.3 the starting rocket soldier won't have any of them.
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All starting equipment is available in unlimited amounts so won't appear in the stores, and you've actually got to capture some alien artefacts in a mission before you can research and build anything.
Perhaps I should include some starting research projects so that people don't get confused by this.
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Ah, I'd misconfigured a sprite. Thanks. In future though, please name the reports correctly - it's important to know what build you're using so we can track the bug properly.
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Hmmm. Any reproduction steps? I tried destroying mine in my last mission but it didn't rise from the dead afterwards.
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Yes, but surely if you did move an operative into the area the area that it would ordinarily fill and then the player attempted to turn the Hunter, it would just show a RED movement path, telling the player it is impossible for the Hunter to turn it in that direction.
Wouldn't be very intuitive, unfortunately.
I think in the case of the two screenshots you just posted up, the LOS block in place should only be 50% even if the Hunter fills its tile completely. The soldier can still see half of the alien.
I do wonder if it'd be possible to set the stopping chance for each of the hunter tiles seperately, so maybe the edge tiles would only have a 50-60% stopping chance while the middle tiles would have 100%. That would further ease the issue too - although you'd end up hitting your own tank more often with that system.
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Yeah they're not implemented fully so give it until V8.3 / V8.4.
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Yeah, plus his (and Windex's) complaints were valid anyway. It's not common knowledge that legacy pre-orderers are in the standard pre-order group on Desura so what he was proposing is common sense - it just didn't apply in this situation. But he paid for the game so he's entitled to voice his opinions on the way the issue was handled even if they are negative.
I do appreciate the support given our our behalf by Joeneren et al, of course - I just don't want people to feel they're not allowed to complain on these boards without getting bashed by the rest of the community,
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There are wrappers some people have tried that seem to work, but I wouldn't pre-order the game based on those. Maybe wait until a demo and test that. We'll look into a port after release.
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Yeah you need to capture something to research first. If you use debug mode you can press 'V' to win a mission automatically if you can't be bothered to finish a mission yourself (or the game's not stable enough for you to do it).
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The turret idea would be awesome if the vehicles weren't also able to move in the offending directions, but sadly they can.
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Hmm might be best to wait for the next release for this as I've compiled a big list at my end already. There should be quite a few less next time around too. But up to you really, Sathra - it's your time
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Maybe they were only badly wounded and are then dying from their wounds rather than being killed instantly?
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It'd cause issues because people would walk troops into those spaces and then turn it or something.
Perhaps the selection tile on the ground should light up if it's blocking LOS for a shot. That'd at least suggest what was going on.
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Yes, just logged that too.
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I suspect this is caused by the ghost UFO load bug, but we'll see. Thanks for reporting it.
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Yeah we'll get this fixed up.
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For the sideways display, I think I read somewhere you need to set the game and your monitor's native resolution to be exactly the same. Let me know if that helps.
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Having spoken with the coder in more detail about this, it's really an engine problem we can't fix. We'll probably try harder when beta arrives as it's an issue it seems multiple people are experiencing, but I think it's going to be a massive pain in the ass unless Playfirst actually start to acknowledge our existance and fix the bug at their end.
However, if you do find any way to fix it, like Viik has, please share it on this thread as there may be workarounds to it.
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Reproduced this. Oddly enough I think both my fighters were fighting the same UFO simulatenously because my single F-17 took it down with two missiles, which I don't think it should be able to do. I think the other interceptor in the other combat also hit it with the missiles too.
Anyway, we'll lock down air combat so only one instance can occur at once. Thanks.
Progress Update & Indie of the Year!
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted
Was that really only six months ago? Wow, maybe we're moving faster than I thought. The PC Gamer build was horrendously basic....