Search the Community

What BIG changes are planned for good ole Xenonauts?

Hi guys - been a few weeks since I posted an update (though the V17.5 changelog gives you an idea of what we've been working on recently). I'm just going to make a quick post on what we're working on at the moment: Firstly, we're working on stability. As always, releasing a build ends up in us getting sidetracked for ages trying to get it stable again, and sure enough that has happened with V17.5(1). V17.52 will come out in the near future and should fix up the crash bugs, so the game will be stable enough to play again. Once that is done, we'll be working towards beta again. This involves a few key things: The Geoscape is basically done. The remaining work is largely implementing the new UI, which we've now started work on, but that's on a branch on the code so you won't see the results of the work until it is done. Perhaps we'll drip-feed the new screens into the beta as they are done, or perhaps we'll release them all at once, we'll see. The other thing we may do is add in an autoresolve for the air combat. If we do so, it'll be during the beta. Other than those two things, I think the strategic stuff is largely complete where functionality is concerned. For the ground combat, we're working on a few things: GJ is working on the AI We're generating new maps; in the final game we plan to have six maps per tileset (two for small UFOs, two for medium UFOs and two for large UFOs), giving us a total of over fifty. Hopefully they'll be done for the beta. We can see how it affects replayability at that point. We need to add some code to specify "command rooms" where the elite aliens spawn; once that's complete all the code should be in place for big UFOs and alien bases. We're rendering out the last 5-6 alien weapon / armour combinations, so the aliens are nearly all done (it'll be done this week). I've just realised we don't have enough female civilians in the game so we're getting some of them modelled up too, but they're the last thing we need done (though I'm considering re-rendering the Caesans due to inconsistent lighting for the existing ones). Giovanni is working on our new launcher, which uses a library that can be ported to Mac. When we have our stability fix up, I'll release some new test levels for the Scout and Corvette UFOs. I'd like to start locking down some of the layouts so we can get the final art in place for them. I did a runthrough of the game before Christmas to check the tech tree is working properly and you can correctly unlock all of the research items and workshop projects. I'm going to try and repeat that this week - it's a big prerequisite for getting the game balanced up! So that's what we'll be working on in the next couple of weeks. I hope in about two weeks we'll be able to give you an ETA on the beta.

Hi Everyone, To start, I want to confess that I know almost nothing about the original X-com game and am completely new to the series. I am an avid video game player and have spent hundreds of hours playing games across multiple platforms and genres...but unfortunately, I never played X-com. When I heard about this game I was very excited and interested, and i wanted to support the devs by paying for a copy up front. I downloaded the game yesterday and have spent about 6 hours with it. Usually, after about 6 hours, I can get pretty far in a game and can see the variety it offers as well as the depth it contains. This leads me to my main question - over the last 6 hours I'm not sure why, but the variety and pacing seem to be completely lacking in the game. I seem to be doing the same things over and over. I intercept spaceships using the same 3 planes and in the same combat scenario (i.e. the alien craft always come at me in the same pattern and I always use the same combat technique to beat them). Afterwards, I go and retrieve the alien crew using the same map tiles and pretty much the same strategy. My soldiers use the same weapons and my vehicles (or rather my single vehicle) just does the same thing over and over. I thought there would be more variety in the game and I just wanted to ask why it might be missing. Is it because: 1. This game is still in Alpha and the final game will have a lot more mission types, a richer story, a lot more items and a lot more options? 2. Is it because i need more patience and a game like Xenonauts takes 20+ hours to really open up and show me variety? 3. Is this just a tech demo of the game and the real actual gameplay is mostly 90% absent? I feel very bad to say this, but I'm finding myself getting a little bored with the repetitive nature of the game. However, it seems like such an interesting game with so much to offer that I'm just trying to figure out how to get to "the good stuff" where i have a lot of options and interesting weapons and fun missions, etc. I'm sorry for my comments - which may seem a bit immature to the more experienced X-com players - but if anyone can help me to understand what i'm missing, that would really help. Maybe I just need to give the game 6 months more to develop before coming back to it? Thanks p.s. despite my comments above, this really is a great start and what I have played so far seems to point to a very good game in the end.