Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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On 9/7/2024 at 3:05 PM, Emily_F said:
I can still see but not fire through the glass doors circled, though they can fire at me. This makes this mission super frustrating.
I'm not sure if it's been updated in Milestone 4, but in Milestone 5 those doors only have a 20% stopping chance.
Given you're saying the enemies can shoot through them, it sounds like this might already have been patched in?
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We've now released another small stability fix for Milestone 4 to the public branches while we continue to work on Milestone 5. Please do report any further bugs or stability issues as we will continue to release additional hotfixes if necessary.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that would occur if you selected the MARS / ARES Rangefinder item during a tactical combat mission, then pressed Ctrl.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you destroyed a Cyberdrone near an environmental item that would also explode (such a vehicle, or petrol station).
- Fixed the Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base not correctly playing their death animation when destroyed (this issue keeps reoccurring, so we've tried a new approach that will hopefully fix it for good).
- Fixed an issue where units could waste TUs performing an unneccessary rotation if their planned move+shoot action was interrupted by spotting a hostile alien.
- Fixed an issue where an interrupted grenade throw would prevent the soldier re-equipping their weapon, leaving the grenade selected but without the UI showing it.
- Fixed it being possible to walk out into the empty tile directly above a ladder, leaving a unit floating in mid-air.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that would occur if you selected the MARS / ARES Rangefinder item during a tactical combat mission, then pressed Ctrl.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you destroyed a Cyberdrone near an environmental item that would also explode (such a vehicle, or petrol station).
- Fixed the Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base not correctly playing their death animation when destroyed (this issue keeps reoccurring, so we've tried a new approach that will hopefully fix it for good).
- Fixed an issue where units could waste TUs performing an unneccessary rotation if their planned move+shoot action was interrupted by spotting a hostile alien.
- Fixed an issue where an interrupted grenade throw would prevent the soldier re-equipping their weapon, leaving the grenade selected but without the UI showing it.
- Fixed it being possible to walk out into the empty tile directly above a ladder, leaving a unit floating in mid-air.
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Hello everyone - hope you all had a good August. Here's our monthly update on what the team here at Goldhawk have been working on.
Programming:
This month our technical director spent much of his month on honeymoon, and the rest of it fixing the trickier bugs discovered in Milestone 4 by the community. Our other senior programmer split his time between bugfixes and working on our updated internal game editor (mentioned in last month's update), which meant we only had one programmer available to work on feature implementation.Aside from the weekly stability fixes we've released for Milestone 4 and various small usability changes / AI improvements, we added a few useful gameplay features to our upcoming Milestone 5 update. One was a much-requested update to the item sale price system, allowing sale prices to slowly regain lost value as time passes, and another was expanded options for "difficult terrain" which makes it more costly for soldiers (but not vehicles) to walk through and crush plants like hay. This may allow things such as shallow water that can be waded through on the Jungle maps, making the different biomes a bit more distinct from one another.
Invasion Phases:
I've spent a lot of time this month on the new "Invasion Phase" system. This divides the alien invasion into five escalating phases, with a narrative event and some artwork and a short conversation with the Operations Director and Chief Scientist at the start of each one.The goal here is to tie the lore together and explain how the invasion is escalating, what the aliens are doing differently and how the world is reacting to it. It also allows us to more clearly explain the shifting role of the Xenonauts thoughout the conflict, starting as an clandestine organisation fighting a secret war against an unknown enemy and ending as an elite military organisation leading the fight against a full-scale alien invasion.
This coming month I'll be experimenting with several mechanical changes that we're hoping to tie to the Phase System, making the Geoscape mechanics a bit less static throughout the campaign. I'm quite excited about these, but I also don't want to talk about them yet in case I disappoint someone - they're still at the prototype phase, and could be changed or abandoned entirely based on playtesting. Hopefully I'll have more to say about this next month!
Other:
Other areas of the game continued to progress over the past month. We partnered up with a couple of new illustrators, one of whom painted the new "Funding Report" artwork at the top of the post, and the other is working on environment concepts for the tactical combat. We've also added lots of small things like some new 3D weapon models, some updated textures for certain alien combatants, and new tactical biome ambient sounds.That's everything for this month - thanks for reading!
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We're continuing to release weekly stability patches for Milestone 4 while we work on Milestone 5. This patch makes a couple of minor balance tweaks and fixes a few more gameplay issues reported by the community.
Balance Changes:
- Weight on Automed Unit reduced from 12 to 8.
- Deviation on missed HEVY shots now occurs within an arc of 50 degrees from the intended target, reduced from 80 degrees.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a tactical combat save when fighting inside late-game UFOs (this was caused by smoke tiles being spawned off the top of the map, usually caused by explosions in the upper levels of large UFOs).
- Fixed certain Harvester maps having unwalkable tiles inside the ground floor of the UFO.
- Fixed a (rare) missing move path tile.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Balance Changes:
- Weight on Automed Unit reduced from 12 to 8.
- Deviation on missed HEVY shots now occurs within a maximum arc of 50 degrees from the intended target (was previously 80 degrees).
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a tactical combat save when fighting inside late-game UFOs (this was caused by smoke tiles being spawned off the top of the map, usually caused by explosions in the upper levels of large UFOs).
- Fixed certain Harvester maps having unwalkable tiles inside the ground floor of the UFO.
- Fixed a (rare) missing move path tile.
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We've released another small patch onto the public branches for Xenonauts 2 that contains a few more fixes.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash on the Soldier Equip screen when changing equipment. It was previously possible to drag items using both left mouse and right mouse button, occasionally leading to situations where you could be dragging two items at the same time and one would be in an invalid state. We've fixed this by disabling right-click dragging, which we don't think should cause players any inconvenience - but please let us know if we're wrong!
- Fixed an issue where the upgraded Colossus Battlesuit would revert to the un-upgraded version after a battle.
- Fixed the Gauss / Plasma turret base defence buildings and upgrade projects so they have a consistent cost and completion time.
- Added a loading screen tip about how to use TU Reserve (right-click on the desired fire mode or crouch button).
- (Hopefully) fixed an issue where the interior walls of the Western Town restaurant buildings would not render on certain PCs.
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On 8/8/2024 at 9:05 PM, Xeferah said:
Second, I don't know if this is a bug or intended, but on Commander I cannot see how much damage I do with shots, but I can see how much stun and EMP damage I do. Is this a bug? If it's a feature, that makes Commander too easy and it should be removed.
This is a bug, we'll get it fixed.
On 8/9/2024 at 7:33 PM, Xeferah said:A suggestion: every month, add one more alien to the missions. ALL missions. So after day 180, there are +6 aliens to deal with, and +8 after day 240. We can even say that it starts only after 60 days or so, so we'll be at +5 after 180 days. But currently, something like 15 aliens spread out over a full map while I can bring 16 soldiers concentrated in one location? Of course that's not a challenge, not even on Commander.
This already happens. Not in exactly the way you've written, but the effect should be the same. It's probably just that we're not escalating Abduction missions fast enough to keep pace with the player's advancement.
On 8/14/2024 at 11:03 AM, Mistole said:*snip*
Thanks for the lengthy feedback, I appreciate it!
On 8/14/2024 at 10:45 PM, Rakiii said:I think 16 troops on the final ship is a bit too much. It takes too much time to control them.
I prefer lower amount of troops / enemies and shorter games.
I would nerf number of troops to 8-10-12.
Same for aliens. I prefer smaller amount of stronger enemies than plenty of weaker ones.
Yeah, reducing the number of soldiers in a dropship is possible. We originally increased the number because it gave another point of distinction from the smaller teams in Xenonauts 1, but ultimately there was a reason we settled on those numbers in the first game. We might end up reverting to 8-10-12 but then allowing 16 in the final mission. Might have to ask the wider community what they think about that though.
On 8/15/2024 at 10:15 AM, TrashMan said:Unfortunately Xenonauts2 suffers from the same problem as Xenonauts1 - stale progression. All weapons are mechanically the same. You'd think laser weapons would behave different than projectiles, but they don't. It's boring, predictable "Tier 2 is just tier1 weapon with + damage and a different icon". It's even worse that every tier has the same weapons.
How cool would it be if lasers acted like lasers (highly accurate and long ranged, but damage falls off with range, smoke greatly reducing damage) OR perhaps damage depending on TU's spent?
Have you played the game yet? Lasers have a scaling accuracy boost compared to ballistics, heavier weight, increased armour destruction but lower armour penetration, and lower capacity (but recharging) ammo magazines.
Obviously it's subjective if that makes them feel sufficiently different from the earlier tier of weapons for them to be interesting, but it's also not true that they're mechanically the same barring the damage number like they were in X1.
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Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I'm working on another balance pass at the moment so I'm reading through the last 2-3 pages at the moment, hence why I'm going to be quoting a lot of people in this post.
On 7/24/2024 at 2:17 PM, Xeferah said:Maybe it's not the aim that annoys me, but the damage range? I have seen the same shot from aliens (with reloads) do damage ranging from 8 to 64. I have no idea how exactly armour works, but I do think the range in damage might be my issue? I also think that armour before the second upgrade 'feels' kinda useless, most likely due to the big damage range. Only after getting pretty high armour my soldiers will reliably survive an alien shot.
On 7/24/2024 at 3:22 PM, Skitso said:Damage can be anything between 50% to 200% of the base damage. You can think of it as some kind of a damage location model. (Leg vs. Head for example)
@Chris, I think it would be a good idea to communicate these "critical hits" with unique hit sfx and particles (more blood etc) and maybe larger damage numbers to really drive home the fact that this shot really hit where it hurt.
Yes, one of the changes I'm thinking about making for Milestone 5 is reducing the damage variation from 50%-200% to 50%-150%, which is what it was in the original Xenonauts - and I think it's also what OpenXcom eventually settled on as the default settings. It just felt "fair" that damage should range from half damage to double damage, but I think it does result in damage being too spiky overall.
On 7/30/2024 at 1:02 PM, Skitso said:I agree, but as far as I know, only wraiths are currently able to throw grenades. I hope GH will add grenades later to other enemy types as well. Imagine cyberdrone spreading burst fire of grenades around it once a turn, sebillian burning it's surroundings with incendiary grenades etc.
Alien grenades are also currently a bit dull and too similar to human grenades. The game desperately needs something to push player to change tactics. So maybe slowly moving homing grenades, spreading poison gas etc.
Yes, poison grenades for certain aliens (likely Sebillians) are planned for Milestone 5.
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I'm going to try reducing the possible miss arc from 80 degrees total (40 on each side) down to 50 degrees. I'm very reluctant to reduce it further than that because there needs to be enough scatter that miss shots actually miss most of the time, otherwise the HEVY is going to be hugely overpowered.
There are still some bugs with the HEVY we need to fix, but they're not particularly simple and they'll be done in Milestone 5 hopefully. Those include the grenade sometimes scattering behind the shooter at short range, and the bug where if you're corner-peeking with the HEVY that miss shots can sometimes hit the corner (which is why most of those "soldier blowing themselves up" situations occur).
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3 hours ago, jackbou said:
Will the production team delay the progress of milestone 5 because of playing Black Myth: Wukong?
Nope. I don't think any of us have bought it.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash on the Soldier Equip screen when changing equipment. It was previously possible to drag items using both left mouse and right mouse button, occasionally leading to situations where you could be dragging two items at the same time and one would be in an invalid state. We've fixed this by disabling right-click dragging, which we don't think should cause players any inconvenience - but please let us know if we're wrong!
- Fixed an issue where the upgraded Colossus Battlesuit would revert to the un-upgraded version after a battle.
- Fixed the Gauss / Plasma turret base defence buildings and upgrade projects so they have a consistent cost and completion time.
- Added a loading screen tip about how to use TU Reserve (right-click on the desired fire mode or crouch button).
- (Hopefully) fixed an issue where the interior walls of the Western Town restaurant buildings would not render on certain PCs.
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13 hours ago, zardoz2206 said:
is this as intended ? it never worked like this in other xcom type game. (usually the control would last 1/2 turns, or be cancelled when the alien who launched the mental attack dies.
The intention is that you get control of your soldier back if the mind controlling unit is killed. We'll look into it.
What unit mind controlled your soldier?
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On 8/15/2024 at 8:00 PM, Skitso said:
Now that I look at that image again, it seems it's the yellow part of the line of fire that is black if it's behind something.
Yeah, the obscured yellow tiles are drawing black for some reason. I can't reproduce it though. Can you?
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On 8/16/2024 at 12:07 AM, Captain Cranium said:
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply. To your questions:
1. You mean in the Xenonauts 2 folder in the Documents/My Games folder I assume? Mostly there are only folders - BugReports, Mods, Saves, and Settings - and all are empty save for settings, which contains a number of .json files. If you meant the folder within the GOG/games/Xenonauts 2 folder then yes of course, the executable and all the appropriate looking libraries and such are there.
2. This answer is slightly more complicated - Windows Defender, as I am running Windows 11, but I have tried turning it off briefly, and also have added Xenonauts 2 as an exclusion to its exclusion list (both its folders and its processes), and controlled folder access is off. The only complication is that I am running Windows 11 inside of Parallels - so technically there is also Bitdefender running on the parent OS for Parallels (MacOS in this case) - but this has never prevented a Windows installed program from being able to form save files in the past. Before you ask, I have shut off Bitdefender's active protection - it's easy to temporarily turn it off for a time, but even when I do, the saves do not form.
EDIT: Also, I just looked into Windows Defender more deeply, and it shows no recent activity in terms of having identified and/or removed and/or quarantined threats. It's all green arrows stating that everything is under control and there are no threats.
Thanks for the reply. That's interesting to hear. So this is a strange situation because the game is clearly capable of writing to that directory given it created the settings files.
It's possible to change the install directory by adding
-gameSaveFolder=<X>to the startup path in Steam / GOG / whatever. I'm not 100% sure how Parallels works but perhaps moving it might fix things?If not, we'll have another think about what could be causing it. However it sounds like you've already checked most of the things we'd suggest - it's Windows Defender and controlled folder access in Windows that have caused problems for other users historically. I'm not a Mac user but it sounds like you've already tried disabling the equivalents.
EDIT - actually, one thing that would be useful is to make a bug report using F11 after trying to make a save. Hopefully that'll create a zip file in the /bugreports/ folder that will have some data we might be able to use to debug the issue.
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If we've made a bad change, we'll get feedback about it and it'll be adjusted accordingly in the next batch of fixes. Bernie's feedback has been noted just the same as everyone else's, and there being a potential issue with the Automed Unit (likely due to it being too heavy now it has reduced function) is on our radar.
However we've only got one data point so far, and I don't generally make balance changes based on such little information. If anyone has feedback about how the new Automed Unit feels then feel free to chip in, otherwise let's end this here.
I'm always grateful to anyone who posts feedback on any topic on our forums, this one included.
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On 8/16/2024 at 2:57 AM, Bernie22405 said:
You're putting a spin on this that is not at all what I said, Chris. But that's okay, your game, your forums, your rules and I didn't expect it would be otherwise.
My complaint was never anything but that you reduced the effectiveness by too huge an amount all at once. 80%, Chris, you reduced it by 80% and my complaint was that this was too much, that maybe 40% would be better and that fine-tuning could happen from there. That would give players an easier choice between having to carry both or having to give up the effects of one in favor of the other. Since the player is already very limited in what space they have and how much weight they can carry (a system that really needs some going over if you want something else to fiddle around with since it's pointless to hire any soldier with under 50-55 strength) carrying both is generally out of the question. IMHO, this 80% reduction borked the whole healing system and it's pointless to continue playing.
Anyway, I only stopped in to see how distorted my comments would be portrayed here. Not too badly to be honest, but not great either.
Have a great one and, no, I have no intention of ever playing the game again, nor any others from this company that you've had a hand in. I think you're too quick to see something that you think is having a negative effect on gameplay and then go in not with a scalpel to make the fine adjustments needed, but with a machete in a jungle clearing operation. You're probably a fine person though, someone I'd share a coffee and an afternoon with discussing software projects we've each worked on and part company with a handshake.
There isn't any middle ground between carrying one item or carrying two items, though, as it's not possible to carry 1.5 items. You either carry one or two items. That's pretty much the crux of my point - you're asking me to pull the wrong design lever here by increasing the regeneration amount.
The reason why I'm trying to drill down into why you want the Automed Unit to have the functionality of two items is because I suspect the actual fix for this issue (if this actually does end up being an issue) is to reduce the weight of the Automed Unit now it has reduced functionality, making it easier to carry the two items if you do want both bits of functionality. Not going back to having one item that fills two roles really well and one item that is totally irrelevant, as that setup doesn't actually give the player a choice to make.
However, you seem very much against the idea of having to carry two items, and I was trying to understand whether it was an issue with not having the capacity to carry two items or whether it's because you just genuinely found the concept of there being two items ridiculous on a fundamental level. From your previous posts, it largely seemed like the latter.
Best of luck in future anyway.
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3 hours ago, intuition said:
Thanks for that advice, it seems to have fixed it!!
I started a new campaign in english language and already played three ground missions without any crash! Until now no crashes at all!
It seems that my first playthrough was somehow corrupted. It was initialized in german language. When language is set to english, this old campaign still keeps crashing. But the new campaign initially created in english language doesn't. Maybe the bug in my first playthrough overlapped with the bug regarding crashes when creating new campaigns in different languages, because it was created before the fix and got corrupted somehow.
Also I noticed something when I switched to english and loaded my old playthrough.
Even if the language is set to english, there are still german texts occurring. See attached screenshot of my first (corrupted) campaign.
So texts are messed up between languages. I hope that helps to identify the bug.
But for now my problem is fixed and finally I can play and enjoy the game
Thank you.
Ah, great - I'm glad you've got it fixed. Out of interest, if you start a new campaign in German and start playing it, does the game still crash?
It'd be great to know if there's bugs we need to fix in the German game!
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21 hours ago, Captain Cranium said:
As the topic says - no matter where I am in the game, on the Geoscape or the Tactical mode, saving games appears to work, but whenever I go to load anything I always get nothing but a blank page. Checking my '...\Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2\saves folder also always shows an empty folder. I have edited permissions to the folder as much as I possibly can, and I always start the game as administrator. Autosaves are not forming either, despite messages displaying that they are.
My questions are twofold -
(1) the obviously implied one (why is this happening/how do I fix it/etc), and
(2) is there some way to change the save game location entirely? Perhaps if I'm able to choose a different folder it will work.
Hi there - so this is quite an interesting issue. My suspicion is that this is something to do with your antivirus software, but this bug does affect people occasionally so it'd be great for us to try and figure out what's going on.
First question: if your \saves\ folder is empty, are there files in the rest of the \Xenonauts 2\ directory? I'm guessing there are, otherwise the game would have crashed on startup.
Second question: what antivirus software are you running? Is it quarantining or automatically deleting the save files? Although our save games are just text files, they do contain some elements that resemble a .zip file so they might be getting wiped out while the other files are considered fine.
It is possible to change the save game directory file but I doubt that'll help much in this situation. I'll let you know how if this antivirus stuff doesn't fix the problem
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On 8/13/2024 at 9:53 PM, intuition said:
Here is another one on the same enemy.
bug_report_2024-08-13-22h51_gc_4.22.0_unhandled_exception.zip
Thanks for providing the crash dumps. This is a really strange issue - it looks like a crash in the AI pathfinding, but it's not in an area we'd normally expect to see a crash. I also can't reproduce it at this end at all - I've loaded up version 4.22.0 on the Experimental branches and loaded the saves from both the .zip files you've provided, and I just don't get any crashes even if I do four or five End Turns while playing in German.
The programmer who would normally look into this is away on his honeymoon at the moment. We do have someone else who could potentially look into it, but before I get them involved I want to be totally sure this isn't a result of corruption on your machine.
Sorry for the hassle, but can you please try following the instructions in this thread, and then start a new campaign? If you get any crashes at all, then please try switching the language to English (US) and see if that fixes the crash. Maybe there's a translation bug in the game somewhere.
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23 minutes ago, mark321 said:
Now I understand. It seems there is another translation of this grenade into Polish.
As for the difficulty level, I think the lowest level would be good for players who want to learn the storyline of the game and not have too many challenges in the tactical layer.
Thanks for your help. I'll try to get back into the game.
No problem. I'll flag your issue with the flashbang grenade to the Polish translators then, and see if they can improve that.
You're right that the easiest difficulty level shouldn't be too difficult, so I will be looking into that in Milestone 5 too. I've got some ideas about what might be causing the problem already.
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30 minutes ago, mark321 said:
I uninstalled the game and I don't have any save games. My soldiers had the first armor I could produce. I also marked heavy armor. The damage they took from the aliens was 70. They weren't recruits.
I tried stunning in another mission with flashbang grenades. In a ship with a teleporter. There was only one alien left at the top. I teleported up and threw a grenade. It said he was stunned. I went down and ended my turn. The next turn I teleported with another soldier and the alien was standing without stun. I threw a grenade again, stunned him and went down. The next turn I went up and shot him. Then the mission ended.
Thanks. OK, I'll bear in mind your feedback about the Terror mission.
As for the units not being stunned - it sounds like the issue is that you're using the Flashbang, which suppresses enemies (removing all their TU and giving them reduced TU next turn), rather than a weapon that stuns them. Suppressing them is good and makes them easier to stun, but you do need to use a Stun Baton or Stun Gun on the enemy unit to actually knock them unconscious afterwards.
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39 minutes ago, mark321 said:
I have a few days off and I thought I'd play Xenonauts for fun. I played a lot of X-Com 2 a long time ago and this type of gameplay is very familiar to me. I chose the lowest difficulty level and it was quite enjoyable until around day 150 of the game when I got the Terror in the City mission. My soldiers die after one alien shot. Armor and hiding behind covers do nothing. I can't throw a grenade because it's too far away. These covers are a mistake. A soldier kneels behind them and dies after one alien shot, while the cover stands still. Something is wrong here. I also have reservations about the movement of soldiers. There is no possibility of reserving movement points for kneeling and shooting. Also, stunning all the aliens should end the mission, but it doesn't.
Stunning all the aliens should end the mission. If it doesn't, please attach a save game so we can check if there's a bug.
You can reserve TU for firing / crouching by right-clicking on the buttons for the fire mode / crouch. We'll eventually add this to the tutorial.
Do you have a save game from the Terror Mission you had trouble with? Ideally a save from the very start of the mission. I'd like to test it and see if we've made the mission too difficult, but as part of the test I need to know the type of weapons and armour you're using, and how experienced your soldiers are etc - so a save game would be great.
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We've now released a small patch onto the public branches for Xenonauts 2 that contains a few more important stability fixes.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a translation bug that could cause frequent crashes for people playing the game in non-English languages.
- Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when the player opens an abduction tube.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if a berserking unit kills another unit that was about to go berserk.
M4 v25 - Mesmerise bug
in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports
Posted
Thanks, we'll take a look at this.