Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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Right, I've just published the premium pre-order changes. Really I should have done them first but I tend to upload to the standard pre-order branch first because so many more people are in that group. Sadly once the upload was done I went to the pub and forgot about publishing the changes from my smartphone, which was the plan - so that's only just happened now. Hopefully it won't be too long till it's authorised.
In the meantime I'm going to go back to bed because I'm nursing a colossal hangover
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Build V8.2 has been released. This is a relatively large update in game terms, so I expect it will be full of bugs. There will be another iteration next week focused specifically at fixing the bugs and adding any small things that didn't quite make it into this build.
Here's a list of changes:
- Research Tree: This is the biggie. The game now contains a basic research tree, including one researchable and manufacturable infantry body armour type and the first tier of researchable infantry weapons (lasers). There was a few reasons for the delays here - we had to add the code that opened the appropriate Xenopedia page on research completion, we had an issue with the base stores and infantry armour, and we had to actually render the sprites too. All of these have now been corrected so the basic research tree is good to go. No images for the research tree yet, as we want it to be semi-final before we start commissioning art for projects that might not be in the final game.
- Scout UFO: This is another of the big ones. Sick of attacking the Evil Alien Shed? Well, now there's an actual UFO for you to attack instead. It's not finished yet for two reasons; firstly it's not been painted over by the tile artist so these are just the underlying 3D tiles and secondly because the doors and interior objects haven't yet been modelled up, so they don't work. We're working on them already so they'll come in the next update, I hope. There’s some weird behavior with the tiles too, again we’ll try and sort this for the upcoming build.
- New Terrain Maps: These didn’t make it, I’m afraid. Hopefully in the next build.
- Sub-Map Editor: The Sub-Map Editor is now a standalone file rather than having to be launched through the ground combat part of the game. You can find it in the game install directory and is called "GCSubmapEditor.exe".
- Sound: I've added all the weapon SFX and alien / xenonaut injury and death screams to the game. We've actually had them lying around for the best part of 6 months but it was only when someone pointed out the missing sounds that I referenced the files up correctly. We'll be adding a little more code soon to support reload sounds for each weapon and specific footstep types for different alien races, as we have SFX made for these too.
- Sprites: We've been continuing with the weapon / armour renders. Most of these have been to support the new researchable armour type and laser weaponry, but the shotgun animations should be in there now. Also, we're rendering the unarmed and stun baton sprites now, so they should be ready for V8.3.
- GC Difficulty Settings: The difficulty setting set on the main menu will now carry over to the Ground Combat. It affects the alien unit stats and their weapon damage.
The Save / Load for the Ground Combat is turning out to be a huge undertaking, so that's not finished yet. Apparently Save / Load is a massive feature that's one of the most difficult things to implement in any game, so that's the reason behind the delay on that front.
As a result of the sanitation you will find the game will eventually just crash – this is when the invasion spawns UFOs that I’ve removed from the game. You should get a good couple of months of play though, more if you play well and slow down the invasion. There’s also an issue with terror sites spawning WAAY too often once they get unlocked, and we’ll fix that in the next build – probably we’ll put a limit in where once a terror site is generated another one can be generated for a week. We also need to add an icon for terror sites.
For the next build V8.3 (due next week), we’ll be including the following:
- Any urgent bugfixes relating to V8.2.
- Terror site fixes mentioned above.
- More maps?
Build V8.4 will be feature-locked – basically any future V8 builds will just be bugfixes for the feature and content set in V8.3. The features will be:
- Painted UFO tiles and UFO interior tiles.
- More maps.
- All animations for the three armour sets.
- The final soldier uniform art on the difficulty setting screen
- Any urgent bugfixes relating to V8.2.
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Yeah, you guys should do that. I'll make a news post over the weekend about this too I think...
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Sathra - the number of UFOs in each wave that spawn is set by the alien ticker. The higher it is, the more UFOs spawn. If a UFO escapes to space during combat there should be something like a 75% chance it will reappear in the next wave and try to complete its mission. I need to check if that's implemented, actually...I'm not sure it is.
For a Target Lost alert, I guess it would make sense for one to appear if an interceptor is targeting a UFO and it flies outside detection range. I think currently if the UFO goes beyond detection range the interceptors will continue to track it using their amazing psychic powers, but it's better we add an alert here. If the UFO disappears into space that should also be mentioned. I've sent a feature request to the coder and hopefully it'll be in for V8.3 or V8.4 as it'd be best to have this in place for the press build.
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Sectoid's avatar did make me smile when I realised it was pixelated a few days back.
Yes, you're right, we do need to add transit times for newly-hired personnel, aircraft and vehicles. I'd forgotten about that. On the to-do list it goes.
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Starting the upload now. It'll probably take a while - the game's up to 500mb now because of the extra sprites we've added.
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V8.2 is due out tonight - in a few hours. The UFO map is taking SO LONG to do but we've pretty much got it nailed now. There's still some peculiar tile behaviours with it but we'll sort that out in V8.3 which will be a bugfix update to fix all the inevitable issues that are going to arise with everything!
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To an extent the problems with this are beyond our control. The display settings are drawn from the engine and the engine owners have never responded to any emails I sent them (I sent another one last week). I might pop into my work, where I'm technically still employed, and give them a ring at some point - it's an international phone call so it's not going to be cheap...
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There's nothing like this in the current system. It's a nice idea but I think the time spent on getting the balance right would be better spent elsewhere. At the moment I've not fully decided whether to pair off the core races with auxilliary units or not - probably the vehicles will be, but there'll be an element of crossover with the core races and the actual auxilliary races which might support more than one core race in battle. But yeah, not finalised yet. That's what the beta is for.
That having been said, I imagine we could add functionality so others can mod in what you've been discussing.
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We don't know exactly how the AI will work quite yet. We'll need to get a specialist AI programmer in to do it as I wouldn't even know where to begin. It's quite high on my list of priorities right now if I'm honest.
Hopefully the AI won't cheat too much or too obviously though! There's no reason why it shouldn't be able to use cover reasonably intelligently at least, which is the bare minimum of what I'd expect from the AI system.
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I saw one in Belfast when I was there a couple of weeks back. There were literally about a dozen people there, and it was bloody freezing. Clearly very devoted to their cause (or possibly just homeless)!
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Good news, everybody! Well, for you guys at least...
Most of the UK is on strike today, including the airport border guards, so I had to cut my holiday short and fly back a day early as all the flights with my airline were cancelled for today. So the good news is that instead of chilling out and enjoying myself in Istanbul I'm back at home today and working on V8.2. I've added all the new sprites to the game and I'm working on getting the basic UFO map in the game now - the latter is proving harder than expected but we're making progress.
Istanbul was great though. It was (unexpectedly) colder than London but it was a really interesting trip. Could have done with a few more hours there to finish it off but I enjoyed myself. Leventalpsal, we had a stroll down Istiklal avenue and went to some of the bars on the side streets there on our last evening and had a great time. Food and atmosphere there was much better than in the standard touristy areas around the hostel so it was worth the trek!
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Right, just doing a final check before I leave. Yes, expect V8.2 on Thursday. Sorry about the delays.
If you want to make a video, I'm fine with that. I think the game is sufficiently polished to start showing off now as long as people adequately flag that the game is just an alpha and is still a work in progress.
That's me over and out for now. Have a good few days, guys!
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It probably sounds like I've been away an awful lot recently, but I've got a proper holiday booked this time. I'm over in Istanbul from Sunday to Wednesday evening to check out a bit of Turkey, so I won't be around during that period.
I was hoping to release Build V8.2 today but neither the guy carving up the UFO into sections and the guy doing the spritesheet processing for all of the renders has got back to me, so I can't. It's a bit of a shame as it's not far from being done (in both cases it'd only take an hour or so to put the files in game) but I'm not going to release the new build without its two crown jewels. I did spend all day assembling the Research tree and writing Xenopedia entries though, so at least that's all done now!
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What iamkyon said, basically. It's not happening in the development version so it looks like I removed something important (probably some weapon images) when I was stripping out all of the sensitive data. I'll be fixed in the next version.
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Yup the ground combat save games aren't working yet. Hopefully they'll be done in a week or so.
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We're not actively recruiting but you can mail your portfolio to me at chris@xenonauts.com if you want. If it's good we might have some work for you, but we've got a strong team already so please don't be offended if we're not interested.
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It's something I'll consider in beta as an optional extra (it's already on that list). Right now it's not a huge concern for me
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All the names and text strings are stored in strings.xml and can very easily be translated. Unfortunately, right now we haven't made much consideration for translation changing the length of the word...I'm reliably informed that everything in German is about twice the length as it is in English, for example.
I might see if we can bump the font sizes up a bit in the new GUI, and make frames longer as you suggest. No guarantees but it's something I'm aware of.
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Thanks for the feedback, it's useful stuff to get a fresh pair of eyes on the game every now and then.
For the pre-order badge, see this topic: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?145-How-to-claim-your-Pre-Order-forum-badge!
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V8.2 is planned for either today or tommorrow. We're processing and loading the new sprites now, and the UFO is being carved into tiles at the moment. The save / load on the Ground Combat has turned out to be a ridiculous amount of work so that's unlikely to make it in. I'll keep you all posted anyway.
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Welcome to all the people who have joined since I last said welcome in this thread
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Yes on release you'll get either Steam or Desura depending on your preference.
The door is on the front, but it's got a sliding protector that you can see on the front if you look closely at the image and covers over the entrance passageway when the craft is in flight.
Build V8.2 Released!
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted
Sent an email to the head guy requesting authorisation. Can't really do more than that - he's not on Skype right now. Sorry about the delays...