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Build V17.6 is released. This is not beta (that will be V18), but includes several new features that take us another step closer. At present: The standalones have been uploaded to Desura and are available for download. The auto-updater version is uploaded and available for download. Linux versions are available as standalone downloads on Desura. Mac versions are available as standalone downloads on Desura. This post will be updated as we progress on this. For the Mac version, the sadly latest version of OSX is causing us compatibility issues. Our current build and even builds of the game that previously worked on Mac are no longer functioning. This is caused by a texture-loading issue in the game. We are working on fixing it, but we’re unsure of whether it will be viable. We’ll make a decision on this when we have had a chance to evaluate the issue fully. If we decide to abandon the Mac version, we’ll provide a full refund to anyone who wants one. This won’t be our preferred course of action – not only is it going to cost us money, but it’ll rob us of future sales and likely bar us from being in a Humble Bundle in future too. But we’ll keep you posted. - This is now resolved and V17.6 works fine on Mac. Anyways, here’s the details of the changes: AI Update: there has been an AI patch. This is not the long-awaited Deep Blue-esque master AI patch, but you should notice the difference (basically, the aliens now actually try and kill your guys). I know this has taken a long time to materialise but we should be making good progress on the AI now. The improved intelligence here is as a result of the aliens having their decision code in place, so they can and are analyse the battlefield situation and reacting to it. Their decisions are still crude; everything else now is just tweaking this and adding higher-level co-ordination so it works better. GJ’s writing an article on it too, which should explain in more detail what has been put in and what happens next. That'll be due some time this week. UFOs: Aaron has been working on the new UFO models, and we’ve put the wall-hiding system into operation. This is not perfect yet, but you can see it in action in this build. The Light Scout has been set for all maps with the final (landed) model and the final floor. There are still bugs in the system. There are visual issues with the doors and the props inside the UFO (it's an issue with multi-tile rendering basically)…but once those are ironed out, it should look awesome. You may see Middle East maps that contain the placeholder UFO models and layouts. These won’t work perfectly yet either. You might find the scale of some of the later UFOs fairly impressive though! We’ll have the UFOs sorted out by beta. We’re not that far away on that front. Research tree: I’ve been working on the Research Tree, on and off. I’ve written about 45 of the research project descriptions now, with another 30 or to go. The entire research tree should be in this build, but the mid-to-late game has not been balanced at all. A lot of the end-game equipment is actually worse than the stuff that came before it for that reason. Wait till beta before pushing too deep into the game. Logging: The automated data logging should now work, hopefully. The “disable logging” switch will be in the new launcher, which will be in the next build. Bugfixes: Hopefully V17.6 will be the most stable of the V17 series builds, with the Geoscape crash being fixed...but as always, we'll have to wait and see!

This is a further update for Build V17.5, (hopefully) fixing most of the crash bugs in the game. It is available on Desura both with the standalone and the auto-updater. This build is in the process of being ported to Mac and Linux too, as it's been a while since either of those two versions have had an update. In terms of new features, there aren't really very many to speak of as it is primarily a stability build. Unfortunately, I was a bit of a moron last time around and didn't save the folder structure for the archive files I generated, so I've had to re-generate them again. This means you'll have to redownload them all again, making this update 3.3gb (I have saved the folder structure this time though so there won't be any further issues with this). We have made some good progress this week but we've not locked it down into a new build yet. Also, as we're doing a bit more internal testing on the builds, it takes longer to release them - so expect the build I scheduled for this weekend to arrive some time next week instead. We'll keep you posted on how it is coming along, but there'll be some cool new stuff in it like our updated launcher and the like.

OK, we've just patched the Ferret-driving-through-the-wall crash bug and are updating the Desura auto-updater branches with V17.51. Dunno how long Desura will take to approve it, but I'm not uploading the standalones until I've confirmed it's fixed The update contains only a patched Xenonauts.exe, which can be downloaded direct here: http://www.xenonauts.com/devfiles/Xenonauts.exe Let me know how stable the game is with the update. The save game crash etc has not been patched, just the destruction of terrain crash.

Build V17.5 has been release, but this is a multi-step process so we'll keep you updated on it in this post. The standalones are available on Desura for download. Desura auto-updater versions are available for download. Mac and Linux ports have not yet been done; we'll port it across when it's confirmed there are no game-breaking bugs in it. This is mostly an infrastructure update, but the update is very large in terms of file size (hence why the multi-step process). The build is a total of 4.4gb as it is no longer sanitised at all - it contains all of the assets in the dev build. The new file compression system (full details below) means some are locked away in archives, but it also means that the new archives have to be downloaded even if you already have all of the contents on your computer from the last build. So, yeah, big download! Incidentally, the build hasn't been sanitised because we might use any of the aliens in the level testing that we started earlier this month and it means people will be able to take part in it much more easily if they already have all the files on their PC. These are the key features: Updated Level Editor: The entire level generation system has been updated. The sub-map / level distinction remains (with separate editors for each), but the Level Editor is now much upgraded. It now has a layer system, with Ground, Wall, Prop and Building layers, each of which can inherit ground tiles from the layer below them if they don't have them set. Previously if you wanted a map with a field with a tree in it, you had to create a sub-map with both of those in it and edit it if you want to move the trees - plus it wasn't visible in the level editor where the trees were, because the entire sub-map was one entity. Now the trees are on a separate layer you can move them direct in the level editor with a couple of clicks, or place new ones equally easily. We've also added colour coding so it's much clearer which tiles represent which sub-maps, so snow maps appear white and grass tiles green etc. This makes generating maps pretty easy, actually, maybe give it a try. GCLevelEditor.exe in the game directory. More Maps & Tiles: We've added some new maps, though not yet for the Middle East or Soviet Town tilesets. There'll be more for beta obviously, but the headlines are that the Base Defence missions should now work properly (if you can get far enough in the game for it to happen) and the Desert tiles are now all set up correctly, so the maps for them should work properly now. We've also added trees to the Arctic tilesets, which make the maps less empty. Also, animated water tiles for the Arctic tileset. Oh, and the Industrial tileset has had a bit of a facelift - some trains in that now. Quite a few tiles haven't yet been painted over in 2D, so they're just rendered tiles. The paintovers will happen in time. New UI: The new Geoscape UI topbar has been added on all of the management screens, and the new Ground Combat UI has been added. These is the final UI style, and we've made the images for the ground combat interface quite a bit sharper (the weapon images etc) as before there were issues with image scaling. This should no longer be the case, so unless you were lucky before and had a good resolution the images should be sharper than before. We've also made the Main Menu screen text scale with resolution, so having a big monitor no longer makes it totally unreadable. The entire UI will use that system when we finish implementing the new look, obviously. Desura file compression: This has compressed a bunch of game files into archives, which will reduce the file count for the game by about 75%. This means the Desura auto-updater should work properly again, and also means that moving or copying the game folders will be dramatically faster than before. The file compressed version will be only be used when the player is downloading from the Desura auto-updater client. Those downloading using the standalone will continue to have the full-size version with about 100,000 files in it. This is because the archive files can't be opened by programs like WinZip etc and thus the contents cannot be accessed by players - closing a lot of the game off to modders. Thus if you want to mod the game, get the standalone. This will not reduce the audience for mods, though, as the game will search the /assets/ directory for pre-existing files before loading them from an archive. Someone with a compressed version of the game will be able to use a mod if they are sent the modded files and put them in the correct directory structure. Slight Balancing: The starting UFOs (Light Scout, Scout) should have a few more aliens in them to make the early missions more challenging. The previous numbers didn't really factor in the fact that a lot of aliens died on impact. More Sprites: We've added sprites for an entire alien race to the game, plus the sprites for all of the Xenonaut vehicles are now done too (meaning all the Xenonaut units are now in the game). We've also redone the Light Drone so it doesn't look so much like a Tau gun drone, as I don't want to risk a lawsuit. It's now animated as well. We've also modelled and added the big brothers of the Light Drone (also animated) so the alien vehicles are complete. We might add some new ones in beta, but these are all we have planned for now. There's one more major alien race to add (currently rendering), plus some tileset-specific civilians and one minor sub-species of alien. Not far to go. Autohide Roof: Buildings now have roofs on by default. Going inside or behind a building will make the roof disappear so you can see your units. This works pretty well but there is some strange behaviour, which you should report on the forums so we can have it working as intended for the beta. Online Data: This build hopefully will contain code that passed anonymous information to our servers to let us know various information on the game balance - how many people use various weapons, how many people win a given mission etc. We don't know if this is working or not, but if your firewall tells you Xenonauts is trying to pass information to an external source, this is why. It'll be really useful to give us stats we can use to balance the game. We're working on a switch to turn it off if people don't want their games to do it, but that's not done yet. Should be in the beta as part of the new launcher. Actually, seems there is quite a lot of stuff in the new build! Report any crash bugs on the forums please, but if there's anything that makes the game unplayable it'd be good to post it in this thread too.

This is up on Desura now. It's been authorised for the standalones and on the branches. If it proves stable, we'll get it released on Mac and Linux too. Hopefully this is the last build we'll release for a while. It's just V17 with two fixes: 1) The _basebuilt.xml has been updated so you no longer start with too much technology, and the alien base no longer spawns at the start of the game. 2) The civilians and friendly AI soldiers have been disabled on the Farmyard map to prevent the crashes from occurring. I think we've fixed the code bug at our end now but I'm not willing to take any chances any more. THE LAUNCHER WILL STILL SAY V17 INSTEAD OF V17.1 - this is because I need to recompile the build to change the launcher background image, and doing so might add new bugs into the game. The .exes haven't changed since V17. If you already have V17, you can update it by using this simple patch (less than 100kb): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26290309/V17.1%20patch.exe

I really didn't want to have to do this, but I'm uploading a new build to Desura today. The dev version of the game is not having all the awful farm crashes the public version of the game is and I just can't seem to fix up the V16 assets to not crash all the time. Therefore, I've compiled a whole new build in the hope the game will now be stable. Build V17 is awaiting authorisation on Desura as we speak. There are no major changes except a whole load more alien sprites have been added to the game. These were cut out of previous versions to save file number and file size but it may be that some of these missing sprites were causing the crash. Thus, I've left them in this time around. There's also a few sprites for the Xenonauts with alien weapons now, but I'll discuss that in the next update. There are a few small amendments in the code for the overdamage mechanics but they've not been tested properly yet and may well not work, as they've not been fully implemented. This is why I don't like releasing builds like this, but the stability issues are forcing my hand. Proper update with beta plans etc will follow shortly, but I don't want to be chatting about that while the public build is still unplayable. Once you download it, let me know if you're still getting crashes. If it is stable, we'll port it across to Mac and Linux. EDIT - gah, more bugs. Right, patch here to bring the game up to V17.1. It disables AI and civilians on the Farm tileset and it fixes the starting tech and alien base bugs. That should leave the game stable. Please test it and let me know, and I'll update Desura to V17.1 if it works to fix the crashes. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26290309/V17.1%20patch.exe

OK, so there's a third patch for you to test. I'm going to name the next build V16.5 just to save confusion (though it won't help too much as the launcher text won't update from V16.1, so never mind). Before I release it on Desura, I want to test it here a bit more. I have produced a third patch in an attempt to fix the Farm crash bug. To apply it, you need the latest V16.1 standalone (or Desura client download), a clean copy if you've already been applying the earlier patches I've made. Then grab the patch here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26290309/V16.5%20update.exe Once you've got it, run the .exe and then start a fresh game (it won't cure existing crashing saved games) and report back if you get any CTDs. I've removed the two earlier patches from dropbox so everyone knows they're getting the right patch, but it's called V16.5 this time around.

Build V16.1 is approved by Desura for download via their client, and the standalones are currently undergoing the Desura approvals process. Build V16.1 is basically a large hotfix for V16, hopefully fixing several of the major issues with the game: 1) The Farm tileset crash should be fixed. This was happening at the end of the turn on the Farm tileset, and was caused when civilians moved and tried to vault over a wall. Their vault animations were missing, so the game crashed. I've updated their settings so hopefully this should no longer happen. 2) Invisible units: On the Desert, Arctic and Middle East tilesets, there were missing units. These were either civilian or friendly AI troop units where the sprites hadn't been rendered out yet. The updated sprites will be coming in V17, but I've added some placeholders there now so at least it's obvious what unit is meant to be what. There should be a lot more variation in the civilians by V17 though. 3) Middle East maps: The Middle East maps weren't done when we released V16, but they were still loading up. Therefore people would occasionally get unfinished maps, or maps where they couldn't get off the Chinook. I've put together a (basic) map for the Middle East now, so you can at least have a taster of how the tileset might look when the game is released. It will also prevent you getting completely flat and open / broken maps for the tileset (arguably more important).

Build V16 has been uploaded to Desura now and should be approved. Sorry about the delay; I've had to clear out the 7 pages of posts in this thread because the delay was so long this thread basically wasn't about the build any more. The standalones should be up, and Linux / Mac versions are also being uploaded now. Hopefully all versions should be approved within the hour (I'll update this when they are, but my Desura contact is doing the approvals now). Build V16 contains the following: - AI model: This is the big improvement in V16. GJ's updated AI model now allows aliens to share information and LOS with each other. This means that aliens will now be able to fire on Xenonauts beyond the sight range of the shooting alien if it is in the LOS of another alien, and they will be harder to sneak up on without reaction fire if a Xenonaut unit has been spotted. They'll also try to avoid standing in each others' line of fire. There's also been some improvements with regard to psionics. The aliens should now use them (though you probably won't encounter psionic aliens in this build), but they're also limited to being used on humans in LOS of the alien team. General shooting priority for the aliens should be a bit more sensible now - they'll prioritise more dangerous units (Xenonauts) over harmless units like civilians etc. The AI model will continue to develop; we'll announce more about this in the coming days. - New tilesets: The way we're making our tilesets means that none of them are actually finished yet, but we have now made enough progress on the Arctic, Desert and Middle East tilesets that we can build basic maps out of them. I've not had time to add the maps for the Middle East tilesets yet, but I've put together a couple of maps for the Arctic and Desert tilesets. In both cases the tilesets are far from finished - they don't have their (waist high) cover props in place yet, and a lot of tiles haven't been painted over or fully set up in the game, and the UFO crash sites use the Industrial tileset art - but they should still be fun to spend a bit of time playing with. As I'll mention in our beta plans update in the next few days, I expect to make a lot of progress on the tilesets in the next month or so. - Soldier Role Badges: On the Soldier Equip screen, there are now some big red squares next to the soldier rank icons. These are placeholder icons for the soldier role badges, but the full functionality is there. Clicking (or maybe right-clicking) on the badge will let you equip a soldier with the default loadout for that role, or to change the default loadout for that role, or to change the soldier role. Please test this thoroughly; the coder thinks there's plenty of scope for it to be full of bugs. Unfortunately, there's a few things we were hoping to include that haven't made it into this build because of the wonders of time zones. We'll probably release V16.1 on Monday or Tuesday, which will include the following updates: - Overdamage: This system will set a HP threshold value for items. If it is ever exceeded from a single source of explosive or hypervelocity damage (it's all or nothing) to the alien carrying the items or the tile they are sitting on, the items will be destroyed. Basically, this means you can use tank cannons and missiles to kill aliens if you like, but there won't be much left to recover afterwards. Small arms fire shouldn't destroy any alien equipment. - Soldier Portraits: We should have 41 new soldier portraits to put in the game. They are the first 41 $200+ Kickstarter backers to send us their pictures. I think some of these are really cool, actually. - Improved Tilesets & Middle East Tileset: I'll put together a couple of maps for the Middle East tileset, and we'll have some updates and improvements on the Arctic and Desert tilesets too. - More animations: A bunch of things were rendered out when I was away, which are currently being processed. They should be done for the next build, which will have a load more civilian types for the Town tileset and should have sprites for the Xenonauts using the alien weapons too, with more to follow. Right, with that done, I'm going to go and try the new X-Com! Let me know if there's any critical bugs.

Build V15 has been uploaded to Desura authorised. The standalones are good to go as well; given the MCF errors with Desura they may actually be your best bet! Sorry about the delay on this; we had issues getting the civilians and friendly AI soldiers to spawn. As they're quite an important part of this build, I didn't want to release it without them. So, these are the new features: - Friendly AI troops: All friendly AI troops are now in the game for all tilesets except the Desert tileset. They have a variety of weapons, some unique, and many of them will level up as the game progresses and get their hands on laser weaponry. You can take the weapons off their bodies and use them in battle, but they disappear at the end of the battle. - AK47: The AK47 has been added to the game and there are also sprites for this for all of the Xenonaut armour types. Some people will want to loot this off the friendly soldiers and others may want to mod it in, so now there are the appropriate sprites there too. It's basically the same as the normal rifle, but with a bit less accuracy and a bit more power. It reloads using normal rifle mags. - Sprites: We've added the power armour Xenonaut sprites, so basically it's just a few alien weapons - Vehicles: The Ferret and future vehicles now have a shadow and explode when destroyed (cosmetic, no damage). If the shadows look misaligned, I'll be fixing that today. - Geoscape Selector: If you click several objects that are close to each other on the Geoscape, you now get a pop-up menu asking you to select which one you intended to target. Just like the original X-Com! - Shooting over crouched soldiers: You can now safely shoot over crouched friendly units in ADJACENT tiles the shooting soldier is standing. If the soldier is 1 tile away, you have 50% the normal chance of hitting him, so I think it's probably a net 20-30% chance of shooting him in the back of the head. - Draggable Windows: The pop-up windows on the Geoscape (the UFO detected or interception windows, for example) can now be dragged around the screen if they're obscuring something important. - Realistic Lightmap: The lightmap now changes with the seasons (it updates every 10 days). This means we've moved the start of the game forward to September so the lightmap starts pretty neutral. Not something I was overly bothered about myself, but Giovanni put it in for you guys - Burst Delay: There's now a seperate "burst delay" function for weapons in weapons_gc.xml. This controls the length of time between shots in a burst. The "burst" function controls the length of time before the first shot is fired, and is used to synch the soldier animations with the weapon projectiles appearing. Previously both attributes were controlled by "burst". - Chinook maps: There's now a NE / NW / SE / SW map for the Chinook for each tileset except the Terror Site town. - Linux Version: A Linux version of V14.11 is currently being set up on Desura. From when I get back, the Mac and Linux releases should be a bit more proven and we'll keep them synchronised better with the Windows versions. BUGFIXES: - Aliens no longer run inside solid objects. This was caused by a pathfinding bug that meant if the player couldn't see an obstacle, it didn't exist. That meant the AI was pathing through / into them and then getting stuck when the player revealed that part of the map. - Civilians and friendly AI troops now spawn again. - Ground combat saves should work correctly again. - Massive strength gain bug should be fixed. - Suppression system is per burst, rather than per bullet fired in the burst. - Lieutenant and Captain are no longer incorrectly switched in the soldier rank progression. - LOS bug where you could see on floors below where your soldier was standing are now fixed. Basically, on my return I want to have all of the Xenonaut sprites and lots of the civilians rendered out. Having plausible friendly AI troops on each map really adds to the realism, and having a variety of localised civilians for each tileset will be great too. In tileset terms, there's a few testmaps in place for the Arctic, Desert and Middle East tilesets that I've been using to test the friendly AI troops and the Chinook maps. Hopefully V16 will see all three tilesets introduced in a playable form; we're just working on the rock formations that will provide the higher ground and break up the flat terrain for all three tilesets. The buildings for them are done (thought not painted over yet) so we're close to having all three in the game. I think that'll make a huge difference to how fun the game is. For the UFOs themselves, please read this post. There's likely to be changes in the near future as to how they are handled. Then there's a less important discussion here on overdamage, which we should probably consider too. Finally - we're hoping to have half the custom portraits done by the next build too. So if you've bought one, that'd good for you. If you've not, at least there'll be a lot more variation in the soldier faces from next build onwards!

This has been uploaded to both the standalones and the Desura branches. It's basically just a hotfix - now the weapon impact animations (explosions, bullet plumes etc) should be playing properly. It should be authorised later, although there's a possible synch issue on the Premium Pre-order branch that I've emailed Desura about to get fixed up if it does exist. There's a known issue with the strength gain formula being too strong in this build, and also I've played with the alien plasma pistols and light drones a bit so they have more bullet-like projectiles to represent their lower power. EDIT - this synch bug is more serious than we thought. Bear with us, this might take longer than we thought. The standard pre-order branch has access to V14.1, but this is not fully complete, and the premium branch is still on V14. Until the two sets of files are synched with each other we can't finish the update.

V14 has been authorised and is ready for download on Desura (though the standalone downloads will be a bit longer yet) Apologies for the delay on the release - it took longer than expected and I need to find a new flat this week, so I've been a bit busy. I've also been trying to fix up an issue with some of the animations, but have failed. Some animations (explosion animations etc) are just not displaying at the moment for some reason, so I'll get that sorted in the next couple of days and release a hotfix. Changes: - Soldier Equip screen tooltips: There is now updated tooltips on the Soldier Equip screen. Previously mouseovering an item would just display its name, but now it gives some detail of the weapon and its battlefield role, then lists its important stats. This is intended to make the game easier to use, but also to allow us to streamline the research tree as less vital gameplay information has to be conveyed through research with this arrangement. - Researchable weapons with unlimited quantities: Previously any weapon set to Unlimited quantity would appear right from the start of the game. However, we've added a few tags to give control over this - we can now set items to be UnlimitedOnResearch, which means they appear in unlimited quantities once triggered by research projects. We can also disable items with research projects too. The reason we have done this is to let us make certain weapons such as the Stun Baton appear in infinite quantities once the required research has been completed, saving the player the need to manufacture relatively specialist and mundane items. It also allows us to do "upgrades", for example after researching a live Sebillian the player will recieve the Advanced Medpack in the place of the Medpack. This is also available in unlimited quantities, so disabling the normal Medpack is useful as it has no further use once the Advanced version arrives. - AI: GJ (our AI developer) has been hard at work on the AI. He's committed some of his work to this version of the game and the AI should be a bit better than it was before. Don't expect anything fantastic, but hopefully it won't be as spectacularly stupid as it previously was. - Air Combat changes: - We've made a few changes to the Air Combat code. First of all, the battlefields now scale with UFO size. The earlier UFOs now have smaller battlefields than before, and anything larger than a Corvette has a larger battlefield. We've also added proper hitboxes. These are limited to being circular, but they still give a much better representation of the size of the UFO once you reach Corvette / Landing Ship sized UFOs and upwards. Before missiles and cannon shells only counted as hitting the target when they reached the very centre of the UFO, but now they will cause damage on the edge. This means that cannons will fire at a longer range, and makes dogfighting a bit easier. - UFO Rebalancing: There's also been a couple of updates to the UFO weapon code, which has allowed us to add short-range defensive turrets to the UFOs. The Corvette now has some. The Landing Ship also has some defensive turrets, and has been made a bit less tough - but now it packs a bit of a surprise too. Fighters should once again be able to dodge missiles too. - New Maps: Adam, our level designer, has got back from his holiday and finished updating various spectres and started work on some new maps. His first three are in the game now, all of which are for the Industrial tileset. We've got a new map for the Light Scout, Scout and the Corvette. I think they're looking pretty good and hopefully the number will increase steadily from here on in. - Psionic Powers: The alien psionic powers have now been implemented. This won't be of much use until the AI is sufficiently intelligent to make use of them, but the code is now done. - Hypervelocity Projectiles & Windows Accuracy Calc: The "% to hit" calculation displayed on the cursor with a weapon selected has now been updated to take into account the penetration power of hypervelocity projectiles and the ability to shoot through windows. This means that if a weapon has enough power to shoot through a wall / window and hit the unit behind, the cursor will no longer display 0% to hit the target but will display the actual hit percentage. The random element of damage in the shot (+20% to -20%) means that occasionally this will not happen, but it should work most of the time. - Bleeding Wounds notification: Following feedback from the community, the duration of the "XXX Soldier has sustained a bleeding wound" notification at the start of the turn has been increased by about 50%. Let me know if it's still too short to read. - Geoscape Icons: Terror Sites now have a red Geoscape icon and alien bases have a pale blue icon, differentiating them a bit more clearly from the black crash site icons. - Friendly AI soldiers: We've got to work modelling up the various tileset-specific AI soldiers for the beta. You can see our progress here: Soviet Soldier: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/russian.png Arab Soldier: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/arab.png New National Guard: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/nationalguard.png We're currently working on a security guard for the Industrial tileset, and then we'll need some parka-clad chaps for the Arctic tileset and something for the US desert tileset. After that, we'll get the tileset-specific civilians done too. - Polar tiles: We've finished the two main buildings for the Arctic tileset, although they're not in the game yet. We've also got a nice animated sea tile done too. - Linux / Mac ports: Linux and Mac versions of V14 should be with us in a few days. It takes our porter a little time to get these done once I've finalised the assets package, which I've only just done. Missed Milestones: - Rendering: The plan was to have all the Xenonaut units rendered by V14, but it hasn't happened. Why? Because I didn't properly account for how long it takes to render out all the various combat shield / assault shield and offhand weapon combinations, and I completely forgot about rendering the Xenonaut units with the alien weapons (which needs to be done). Still, we're making good progress. I've added 70 new sprite / armour combos to the dev version since the last update, and there's another 17 rendered out and waiting to be processed by our data entry guy. We might overshoot our deadline by a month or so but it shouldn't really affect anything. - Height LOS issues: There's a bug where if you stand on the roof a building, you have LOS as if you were standing on all the floors below as well. This hasn't been fixed yet as we've just not got around to it. - All Xenopedia text written: This is a big task and when I started it, we ended up adding the UnlimitedOnResearch tag because I felt that the research tree still needs some finesse as to its structure. I might make much of this placeholder so we can test the layout and pacing of the research tree before I spend hours writing up projects that might be deleted or split out. For example, at the moment a single project (Laser Weaponry) will unlock 5 different weapons. Whether that's the best way to handle introducing them to the player, I'm not yet sure... - Melee Attack for All Weapons - This is on the to-do list for the next few days but I don't think it's been done yet. Anyway, there'll be a hotfix for the missing animation issue in the next few days. Please report any serious bugs quickly so we can fix them for that update too!

OK, so the belated release of Build V13 is now upon us and the files have now been uploaded to Desura and is up on Desura. As always, the DRM-free download will take longer to become available than the version using the Desura client. This is the first of three steps along the Three Builds to Beta roadmap. Assuming no catastrophic bugs are discovered in the next 24 hours, I'll publicise the release tomorrow. The features due to be in the build are listed below, along with commentary as to whether we've hit the target or not: - Shooting over cover: When a unit fires a weapon, any cover in the adjacent tiles is disregarded for the purposes of the accuracy calculation (provided it does not have 100% stopping chance, which would mean it was a solid object such as a wall). This means that it is now far more advantageous to take cover, as your soldiers will no longer fire their weapons directly into objects only a few inches in front of them. - Bleeding wounds: There is now a 20% chance every time a soldier takes 10 HP of damage that he will suffer a bleeding wound (with one injury capable of causing multiple bleeding wounds if it does 20HP damage or more). The bleeding wounds will cause 2HP damage per turn until cured with a medikit. If a soldier has a bleeding wound, you will be informed at the start of the turn how many they have and how much HP damage it has caused. You can LMB click to skip this message if you don't care. - Three day delay: Now when you purchase equipment (vehicles / aircraft) or personnel, there is a 3 day delay before it arrives. For the vehicles / aircraft, they will fill a hangar or garage slot in the meantime and the game will show a counter until they arrive. For the personnel, any personnel in transit will appear in (brackets) after the number present at the base, and they will fill living quarter space while in transit too. - Collapsible buildings: These are now in place. If you shoot out a certain % of the structural walls on a particular level, all walls on that floor and floors above will be destroyed and units within killed. Only a couple of the buildings on the Town (quickbattle) map have been set up to use this, but it does work. It's the responsibility of the level designer to update this for all the tiles and he's currently on holiday, so they'll be updated for the next build. - Soldier Medal system: for soldiers has been added and is functional, so soldier qill be awarded medals after battles. However, until we update the Soldier Equip screen to the new UI we'll not be able to display the medals on the Geoscape. - Combat Shield: This seemed to be very popular on the forums and it's now in the game. The combat shield will block 80% of incoming fire from directly in front and 65% of fire from diagonal directions, and will block no shots from the side or rear. It has 120 HP and is destroyed when that reaches 0. The renders for this are in progress and are not yet in the game, so only the idle frames for the combat shield with the ballistic pistol are available for the basic and Jackal armour so you know it is there (more will follow in the future). Also, for some reason I can't make it appear in the Soldier Equip screen so it appears by default on the pistol soldier in the Quick Battles and on the Geoscape if you keep him armed with a pistol. It'll work normally in the next build hopefully. - Flashbang: This is in the game and is starting equipment. They're grenades that don't do any damage but have 60 suppression damage and can be used to suppress aliens if you want to approach them for some reason. - C4 Charge: This is in the game and is starting equipment. Probably needs a little more work in terms of graphics and UI but it should work. Let me know how you find it. - Customisable Soldier Advancement: The rate at which soldiers gain stats and ranks is now customisable in gameconfig.xml. I've increased the advancement rate by between 50%-100% in most cases, as I felt it was a bit slow. Also, we've changed strength gain so that soldiers gain it based on how many APs they spend when carrying more than 80% (this may increase to 90%) of their max carry weight rather than the somewhat overcomplex system we had before. - Alien Clip Conversion: Instead of selling alien clips after a battle, once Alenium is researched clips should automatically be broken down into 2 Alenium each. In future builds, alien grenades will also be worth Alenium too. - Middle East and US Desert tiles: these are in the game, but there's no maps for them yet. The ground tiles should be largely complete for them unless we decide that we need to add hills (which we may), but to an extent I'm going to let the level designer see what he can come up with. The Middle East tileset is an Arab-style desert, and the US Desert is a US / African style desert with a more red palette, using a sort of abandoned airbase theme. The buildings are done in tersm of 3D tiles, barring the hangar which we're currently working on, but the props will be done later and the 3D tiles still need to be painted over. - New Music: we've added a few new music songs to the ground combat and remixed the air combat music slightly too. - Power armour: this isn't in the beta, but the power armour now only uses designated weapons. Which is good for the beta, when you will get to play with it Other milestone reporting: - All renders for the Xenonaut non-power armours are done - this has been achieved other than for the combat shield and the assault shield, as they required some additional setup and animation tweaks which are now done. But it's still quite a bit of rendering. That and the power armour renders will all be done for the next build though. - Mac port should be available shortly. - We've recruited an AI programmer now. He's called GJ and is an MSc student in AI, and is working on Xenonauts full time as part of his studies. I'm confident he'll do a good job and not disappear. As a bonus for you guys, he's keen to get involved in the forum and discuss the AI model and how well it's working etc. Expect to see him soon. - I think we have the 3D modeller to work on tileset-specific civilians and AI soldiers recruited. I just need to confirm with him he is actually working on the models right now! - The Reaper Zombie model is modelled and textured. This is the last alien that needs to be modelled. - All the dropship tiles are done now. - The final mission can be launched from the Geoscape after the correct research is done, and loads a specific map with unique victory conditions. The map is placeholder right now though and isn't in the alpha. - Advanced buildings code (upgrades for some of the starting structures) is complete. We still have one building that is not a starting building that needs coding though. - A unique weapon that isn't in the alpha is added and functional All in all, good progress. Let's see if we can do similarly well with the next build in two or three weeks time.

Quick note from me to say we've released a hotfix on Desura. This disables the editor functions in the game and hopefully fixes the air combat retreat crash, but I also did it in the hope a fresh update would sort out the Desura MCF problems some people are having. Note - I forgot to update the launcher background "V13" text.

Build V12.1 has been uploaded to Desura and has been released. It is not yet uploaded to the Desura client-free download links though. It takes them a while to clone and upload it. The new build adds a variety of new features and does some balancing of the suppression system. It should also fix the CTDs from the last build. A couple of important things to note - Matthew has been having computer problems so this build has not been very well tested internally. It's possible it might be extremely unstable. Secondly, things have got to the point where I'm only making very cursory efforts to sanitise the builds as every time I remove something to keep it "secret" it runs the risk of causing more stability issues in the build. I've just taken most of the art and research / manufacturing out, but you may well still be able to encounter parts of the game that are beyond the scope of the alpha if you play long enough. Obviously these won't work very well for you. I'll post up a seperate development update later today. And without further ado, the update notes are below: New Features: Animated Tiles: We’ve added support for animated tiles in the ground combat maps. This will initially mostly be used for alien technology (it’ll be a visual representation that something is valuable and should not be destroyed) but we’ll roll it out as widely as possible before release. The UFO Power Source tile inside Scout and Corvette UFOs is now animated. Morale System: The morale system has been expanded a bit, so when troops suffer a “morale event” they will either panic and lose all their Aps, drop their weapon and flee, or go berserk and fire off their weapon. The system can now be customised by modders. It’s been tweaked so troops should be a bit braver too, hopefully it’s not gone too far the other way. Pre-generated soldiers: All the Kickstarter soldiers have been added to the game and can be accessed by anyone. Instructions on how to do so here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/2362-Pre-Generated-Soldier-List EMP Damage: We’ve added EMP damage to the game. This is a third type of damage (along with normal and stun damage) that can be set for weapons and it only affects robotic units and vehicles. The only early-game weapon that causes this is the stun baton but there will be dual stun / EMP grenades in the beta. Smoke Grenades: These have been added to the game. They are starting items and available in unlimited amounts, and when thrown they generate a cloud of smoke in the blast area. This smoke will reduce accuracy of anything firing through it. Smoke now only causes stun damage to a unit once per turn, instead of every tile they walk through causing a new stun damage attack. Hypervelocity Projectiles: if these projectiles strike an object, they will do enough damage to destroy it and will then continue down their flight path until their damage potential is exhausted (so you can potentially shoot through a building and out the other side). The first example of this is the AP rocket, which is a starting rocket launcher ammunition type, but more powerful weapons that use this will appear in the beta. Windows: There are now designated window tiles in the submap editor. Any projectile that strikes them is temporarily counted as a hypervelocity projectile, so it will do enough damage to shatter the window then keep flying along its flight path. So you can now shoot aliens through windows. Delete Save Button: There’s now a “Delete Save” button on the Load Game screen, so you don’t have to have old saves cluttering up your display! Female Soldier Spawn Rate: This is now customisable in gameconfig.xml (search “femaleSoldierChance” ) so if you want a team with more or less women you’re free to do so. Balance Tweaks: The suppression values for all the weapons have been tweaked so roughly 20% less suppression is caused by all weapons. We’ve added a check to the suppression formula to prevent friendly units close to the firing soldier getting suppressed (this “safe” radius around the shooter is the same width as suppression the radius of the weapon). Alien non-combatants have increased bravery to stop them getting suppressed far more easily than alien soldiers. Their lighter armour means they’ll still be a bit easier to suppress though. The Hunter / Ferret armoured car should now correctly cause suppression. The ballistic machinegun has a significantly higher burst fire cost now. Smoke and all gas types now only cause damage once per turn, either when the unit starts a turn in it or when they first enter it. Moving into further tiles of the same gas type will not cause additional damage. Moving into further tiles of a new gas type will apply damage from the new gas type though. Bugfixes: When shot, female soldiers should now have female injury / death sounds. Less CTDs, hopefully. Unfortunately Matthew is having computer problems so I don’t have a full bugfix list but I think we’ve fixed the major CTDs from the last build.

We've now uploaded Build V12 to Desura and it hasbeen approved. This build is not a public demo - we've added a lot of code since the Kickstarter began and while we do have an internal testing process, the Kickstarter demo went through several iterations to reach the level of stability that it had. Therefore, expect to find more crashes, bugs and broken features in this (and future) builds until we hit beta. This is simply because we're concentrating on adding new things at the moment, rather than fixing existing bugs. If you do find a bug, post it up in our forums so we can log it and fix it up. So, without further ado, here's the full details of the build. There's been quite a few changes! NEW FEATURES: Female Soldiers: Female soldiers now spawn in the game, with female portraits and names. We need to do a little more work on harmonising some of the female portraits with the male ones (different artist) but overall the system has been pretty successful. Custom Soldiers: Pre-generated soldiers (from Kickstarter) have been partially implemented. In the standard build the two pre-generated soldiers are myself and Kris Thaler (one of our artists) but you can view 15 other test soldiers drawn from the ranks of the highest Kickstarter backers in the debug version of the game. Unfortunately, playing the normal version will lead to you seeing a lot of me / Kris for now, as we’re the only two options when a pregenerated soldier spawns (10% of the time)! Base Defence modules: These are defensive turrets constructed as base structures in your base. They fire upon attacking UFOs when aliens perform base attack missions on that base. If the UFO is not destroyed, the damage dealt will reduce the size of the attacking force. Androns: These alien units now spawn in their earliest two incarnations. We’ve put them in the Quick Battle too. Basically they don’t act that differently to normal troops at the moment, other than being very tough, but as the AI becomes more advanced they’ll behave in a fairly unique way compared to the other species. There’s a bit more variety there anyway. Dropship Destruction: It’s no longer effectively game over when you have your dropship shot down, as your soldiers can now survive a crash and be rescued by local forces. Troops now have a better than average chance of surviving a crash, but are likely to suffer injury while doing so. Alien Bases: The tiles for these aren’t in place yet, but the code is now tested and in place. Bases are created on the Geoscape by alien construction missions, and all bases (existing and future) grow in size at predetermined AI ticker levels to scale with the invasion. There are two victory conditions in the base missions, either killing all aliens in the base (captures all equipment) or destroying the base power cores and aborting the mission (captures only the equipment brought out with you). Either instance results in the destruction of the alien base. Suppression: The suppression system has been added to the game for preliminary testing. A unit becomes suppressed when enough bullets have been fired at him, with burst fire causing more suppression than single shots. The values are preliminary at the moment, as is the “suppressed” icon (a blue triangle with an S on it). Let us know your thoughts on this system though. Heavy weapons: These have a 30% accuracy reduction if you move and shoot in the same turn (turning does not count as moving). The machinegun, rocket launcher and sniper rifle are the starting “heavy” weapons. Mission Scoring: The mission-end scoring system has been updated. It now has different scoring for different mission types and different outcomes (victory / loss /abort) along with some tweaked values. This means the score awarded at the end of a mission should better reflect the actual outcome. Soldier Hire: When you hire a soldier, you can now pick from a pool of 12 possible soldiers which is refreshed as you hire troops. This allows you to pick a soldier that suits the role you are hiring them for - though fired troops go back in the soldier pool to prevent mass hire / fire soldier cherry picking. Manufacturing Materials: Most manufacturable items will consume either Alenium or Alien Alloys when built now. There’s no UI element that shows these requirements at present (that’ll be in the redesigned UI) but it’ll give you a pop-up if you don’t have enough. Dropship Vehicle Icon: Vehicles on a dropship now have an icon on the Soldier Equip screen to show that they’re filling soldier slots. New tiles: The Town tileset has had some new tiles added to it. There is now a set of tiles for a bank /office building that will be the first thing we get our dedicated level designer to play with, and the house walls have now been painted over, along with the house props and the shop interior props. This means they look nicer and have the visible destructibility in place now too as they have damaged / destroyed variants. Launcher: This has been changed so it no longer has a Pre-Order link or refers to the game as a “Demo” (this was only to test the Kickstarter build). This should stop any future confusion arising where people buy the game and think they only have the demo version! Reapers: These are the Xenonaut equivalent of Chryssalids. You won’t see them until the beta, but they are fully rendered, animated and I saw one zombify my troops for the first time a few days ago. Thought you might want to know! BALANCE TWEAKS: Overkill Percentage: The overkill percentage for UFOs (i.e how much damage they can take beyond 100% and still leave a crash site) has been increased to 130% from 115%. UFO Behaviours: UFOs now fly in a straight line for longer before changing direction. This means they are both easier to intercept and look a bit more intelligent. Geoscape Invasion Escalation: This has been smoothed out. There should be more UFOs at the start of the game, but their numbers should increase more slowly than before. There should also be less fighters relative to before. Scout UFOs: These are now more dangerous at close range, but their weapons have a shorter overall range. The counter is intended to be a MiG with 4 Sidewinders, which will kill them from beyond their range and only take minor damage in the process. Hidden Movement Camera: The Hidden Movement camera now focuses correctly on events during the alien turn. You shouldn’t have your units killed by enemy fire without seeing it now. It should also track long range shot impacts better than before. Wounded Soldiers: The Soldier Development screen now correctly shows the HP of wounded soldiers at the end of the battle, rather than their modified maximum HP (after the damage) as it did before. It should also differentiate between Injured (can still participate in missions) and Wounded (confined to bed) soldiers. BUGFIXES: Geoscape: The “Abort Mission” menu option is no longer incorrectly called “Abort Game”. Funding money now comes in before wages and maintenance go out at the end of each month. Alenium and other manufactured missiles should now be consumed when fired in combat. UFOs now despawn correctly if they create a terror site. Grounded UFOs will no longer be named “Crashsite-XX”. Wounded soldiers will be moved to the Unassigned category on the Soldier Equip screen after recovering above 50% health. Aircraft destroyed in transfer from base to base will no longer block hangars up after their destruction. The Xenopedia is no longer visible in the background on other base screens in some circumstances. The base selector icons should now be visible in all circumstances. Ground combat: Xenonaut reaction fire is now functional again. Machineguns now reaction fire with burst fire. Turning on the spot no longer triggers alien reaction fire. Aliens are no longer able to reaction fire in directions that they are not facing. Crouching soldiers now use a crouched injury animation rather than playing the standing injury animation. The “Alien Spotted” icon will appear when viewing any camera level, rather than only on the level of the alien. Destroying the vans on the industrial tileset will no longer crash the game. Swapping weapons no longer reloads the clip in the weapon. The neutral AI will no longer just spin on the spot several times per turn. The crash caused by destroying a window and killing a unit at the same time has been fixed. THINGS THAT NEARLY MADE IT: (and will arrive next build) Smoke grenades: These are largely in the game but need a few more tweaks. They’ll be available in unlimited amounts and the smoke will reduce the accuracy of any units firing through it. Custom Soldiers: These will be fully implemented in the next build, with all the Kickstarter data loaded in and a list of the soldiers so you can load yourself up in the game and check out how you’re looking!

Build V10.2 has been uploaded to Desura and has been released. Again, this is an incremental improvement on V10.1 but we've made a couple of significant bugfixes that should improve the gameplay experience a lot. - Loading a saved game should no longer screw up the Research tree - The double-weight bug after missions should now be fixed - The Hidden Movement camerawork has now been improved. AI controlled units should be displayed for the full duration of their move when they are in the LOS of the Xenonauts, and the camera should no longer cut away before Xenonaut units die if they are killed by enemy fire. There's still a few tweaks to make on this front but it is dramatically better than before already. - AI units don't spin on the spot quite as much any more - Alien Power Source research now has an image associated with it. - The Chinook now has 50% more speed and 12% more range than before. - The Industrial tileset new props (the outdoor crates etc) now have damaged and destroyed graphics too. This may be the last update prior to the public build, assuming no more major bugs appear. However, hopefully we'll add some "injury" (i.e. bullet impact) noises for the Ferret armoured car before then too, and we'll probably have a quick look at Xenonaut reaction fire as I'm not sure that's currently working as intended either. It remains to seen whether we can get those features in and properly tested before Wednesday though... EDIT - we've released a hotfix up to V10.21 to fix up the bug of alien UFOs retreating every time they appear in the air combat.

Build V10.1 has been released. This is just bugfixes and balance updates for Build V10 that need testing before the public build becomes available. It has been uploaded to Desura but I imagine it might be a while until it gets authorised, but I've got a busy afternoon today and I'm out tomorrow so I'll post this up now. - Aircraft Scatter Laser has been put in the game. It is unlocked after you complete the Heavy Laser research and is an upgrade on the standard Cannon. - Terror sites should no longer appear as vast open expanses of grassland. They should use the same map as in the Quick Battle. - Corvettes now have floors. These are Farm floors and won't suit the Industrial maps much, but it'll look better than before. - Aliens should no longer spawn in the walls of the UFOs. - Crashed UFOs should spawn as well as undamaged Landed ones (this will only apply to the Light Scout, as that's the only UFO with both tilesets for now). Actually, this is largely moot as I've disabled landing in the public build because it was causing bugs. It's fixed anyway. - Flares should now have 0 weight. - Missions should use the Industrial tileset as well as the Farm one now. - Research times have been reduced a bit. - Scouts now replace Light Scouts a little earlier. - The weighting of Air Superiority missions (fighters) to Research missions (Scouts) has been increased in favour of the Research missions. - New bases now cost $1m to build instead of $1.8m. - Building maintenance costs for Command Centre and Hangar have been reduced. - Soldier, Engineer and Scientist wage costs have been reduced. - Alenium missiles are cheaper and quicker to construct than before, as are Alenium torpedoes. - Alien Alloys are now worth $3,000 each and Alenium is worth $5,000 each. - Corvettes now contain Alien Alloys.

I'm currently uploading Build V9.5.1 to Desura now. This contains only bugfixes. - Various mis-set tiles have been updated - The manufacturing projects should now be set up so they are categorised correctly and no longer all have the laser pistol image - The Alenium grenade should now be equippable and should display its name correctly in the manufacturing - Bombers and Heavy Fighters now have weapons, so should actually fight you. Try to avoid letting the bomber hit your aircraft with its main cannon (there won't be much left afterwards)! - The Light Drone in the terror missions now explodes properly rather than turning into a Caesan. It looks pretty cool actually, I'm quite pleased with it. Still need to add an injury animation for it though. - Ferret should be a bit more resistant to ballistic weapons. - Frag rockets and Alenium grenades should now use nice explosion graphics rather than the old placeholders. Hopefully the Corvettes will also spawn with crews when attacked now, but I'm not sure. I'm having difficulty testing it in the dev build due to the way the AI works. If anyone reaches the Corvettes, please let me know either way. Please give it a play. It'll be going out to the press tomorrow if there's no frequent crashes in it.

EDIT - Updated the build on Desura to include some new fixes. I've reuploaded it and dropped Scott an email as I'm heading to bed now. Hopefully it'll be authorised in a few hours. Build V9.5 has been uploaded to Desura and is awaiting release. When Scott from Desura comes on I'll get him to authorise it and clone it over to the standalone downloads too. We're going to try not to add any more features to the V9.x after this, and instead concentrate on fixing the major bugs. This build has been fully sanitised - ie, I've gone through the files and tried to remove all references and art related to the end-game technology where possible. I pay less attention to doing this for pre-order builds, but I'd rather have a relatively clean public build. This process often causes extra crashes, so if the build is less stable then that's likely why. Post up the bugs and I'll hopefully be able to fix them up. Here's a basic changelog: - Hidden Movement AI loop fixed (we think) - The new grenade explosion is now accompanied with new (thinner) smoke, and grenades no longer cause fire - I've added the basic tiles for Corvette UFO maps, though these are not complete. We need to update the ground tiles. Attacking a Corvette crash site should no longer cause crashes though. - A whole bunch of sprite animations have been added. The Wolf Precision Laser should no longer cause crashes, the Caesan Soldiers are aligned correctly in their tile now, grenade throw animations should display correctly now, as should the animations for units hopping over fences. Machinegun-equipped troops should have their correct sprites now too. - Equipping an alien weapon should no longer cause a crash, though the soldier will appear as unarmed - Various tile updates to fix problems where you could walk through walls etc. If I've missed any, please report them. - UFO fighters should no longer "crash into sea" whereever they are, instead they should be "destroyed" (they don't spawn crash sites). - In /assets/weapons/ballistic there are a bunch of alternate weapon tiles. These include Soviet variations on the starting weapons, and unused Cold War weapons we drew up before deciding on the starting weapons we currently use. If you're a budding modder, you may find them useful. - Xenopedia display bug fixed, so images should always appear for research projects where they exist (which is for most of them). - Xenopedia typos corrected. - Town civilians are no longer invisible. - The "Full Demo" now lasts slightly longer before expiring and the Scout craft spawn a little bit earlier. Known bugs: - Loading a save game will tend to screw up any research projects in progress at time of save. I'm now starting to focus my attention more on the actual Kickstarter stuff than on the build, although we will still be adding new art to the build.

Build V9.4 has now been released through the Desura client (though I don't think it is yet active for those doing the standalone download). Barring a couple of small new features and some bugfixes, this is basically the build that will be released to the general public along with the Kickstarter build (we'll also add new art as and when it becomes available). Please test it as much as you can. If there's any major bugs in the build, we need to squish them before public release for obvious reasons. The key new features are as follows: - We've added a new launcher window to the game. This is a bit ugly, but in terms of functionality it is a big improvement. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, the game will remember your screen resolution from game to game, so starting up is less of a pain in the ass (resolution can be set in the Options screen). Secondly, we've added the Quick Battle function, which will load up a Terror Site immediately after you place your base. This is basically for people who want to try the combat but don't want to go through the early game to get there, but hopefully you guys will enjoy it too. This feature will not be in the final version of the game. - A new alien type has been added to the build, a light combat drone that appears on the Terror Site. The animations are not yet all there for it (nor are the SFX) but they will be before the game comes out. In terms of role I think these drones will come into their own a lot more once we implement supression, plus the AI to go with them. They're intended to harass the player at long range with inaccurate long-range rapid fire weapons, but without suppression they don't really have their own niche yet. Still, I like them. They're kinda cute in their own way. We're working on a nice death animation for them too, which should arrive this week. - The Xenopedia has several new research images in it, and should display better than before. The only major issue with it is that the text is still being cut off prematurely. I need to look into that in a bit more detail, as it's a problem with the game engine rather than anything that our programmers can do anything about. - I've spent a little time on the Title Screen, scaling up the text and formatting it better to make it easier to read. There's still a problem with the text scaling here though so on a large monitor it'll still be largely unreadable (though better than before). - I've added some new maps to the game, and I'll try to expand them a bit so there's more variation. The Light Scout maps are smaller than before now, though the Scout maps are the same size. Should be better than before though. Obviously you can check out the (still WIP) Town tileset too by clicking on the Quick Battle. There's some new props floating around on the Industrial maps though, and I've designed them to have fewer buildings than before. - The MiG construction images should be working well now. There's three images that show the progress of the construction. - There's a new grenade explosion, so now it's a bit smaller than the massive explosion we use for the rockets and explosive scenery. There's also a new plasma-type explosion for the alien grenades, but they aren't throwing them yet so you're unlikely to see it. - We've put various bugfixes in place. These include fixes for building the MiG causing your engineers to disappear, or your money to vanish. Also, UFOs should display their size correctly now. Previously they were always displaying as Medium irrespective of their actual size. - There's also been a pretty major fix to the accuracy formulas. Previously shots were missing targets, but not scattering properly and so not deviating from their original shot path. This led to shots "missing" but frequent still striking their intended targets, effectively making weapons much more accurate than intended. The AI bug has not been fixed yet unfortunately, so I imagine you'll still encounter hangs in the ground combat. We'll release a hotfix for that when it arrives and we'll also fix any major issues you guys encounter in the testing pronto. We want to be sending this build out soon, so hopefully you'll see a flurry of activity from us over the next few days. The features we want to add to this build before it is complete are: 1) Adding Smoke and Nerve Gas grenades 2) Updated smoke / fire for the existing Frag grenade to couple with the new explosion animation. These will no longer generate fire, and the smoke will be thinner than the real thick stuff you get in the larger explosion. 3) There's a problem with the multi-tile rendering so multi-tile objects appear on the wrong layer and sometimes below things they should be (you can occasionally see this with the Chinook walls). 4) Extra art: - Light drone injury and death animations - Updated tiles (painted over versions) for the Town tileset and the new Industrial props, as many of the tiles are still currently 3D guides. 5) We'll add some civilians for the terror map. They're currently there, but don't have sprites so are invisible. 6) If possible, auto-toggle roof off toggle when a unit is behind a building I'm pretty tired now so I'm heading to bed, but give it a try and let us know what you think.

This is a small patch for Build V9.3 because for some reason I forgot to re-compile the .exe files before I released the build, so they are a bit out of date. This should: - Fix the game starting in a window and skipping the launcher. - Fix a bug where the game crashes if you open your inventory above an alien corpse (as the alien plasma clip images were incorrectly set) - Add a new image for the Alien Alloys research.

OK, so Build V9.3 is uploading to Desura and will be available as soon as it is authorised. I expect it to hit in about an hour, asuming the Desura guys are still online when the uplaod finishes. The following improvements have been made: - We have implemented a new Xenopedia screen that pops up when a research project is completed. This still needs a bit of work in terms of text scaling etc, but we'll have it done for the weekend. It is also not currently displaying the full research text (about 80% of it) so they end a bit abruptly at the moment. - The tech tree has been fixed so you can once again access Wolf Armour and Laser Weapons, and it has been expanded to include Alenium Missiles and Alenium Torpedos for your aircraft. The Alenium Grenade has also been added but I've not set it up in the game so it'll still be identical to a normal grenade until the weekend. Autopsies have also been added but don't give the +10% damage bonus yet. - The air combat now has a contextual menu that can be activated by right-clicking on any interceptor. This pauses the game and allows you to issue them commands without using the sidebar. - The air combat has been made marginally more balanced. Expect Corvettes to cause you some headaches when you encounter them. - Aircraft and vehicles now fill hangar / garage slots when construction begins have a WIP construction image. In the next build there will be three images that the game cycles through that shows the progression of the construction. - You now have to go through the Soldier Development screen at the end of a ground combat mission, as a lot of people didn't seem to know it existed. This now displays the Wounded / Injured days correctly after combat too. - The game now has an Alt-Tab icon. - A terror site is generate at 475 on the ticker. This is still incomplete but will hopefully be complete by the weekend. - The game ends at 550 on the ticker and shows a congratulatory screen. It also asks you to buy the game - this is just a test for the public release of this build. Bugfixes: Ground Combat: - Ground Combat can now start fter loading the auto save. - Weapon reload sounds added to the game. - Correct recovery time for injured / wounded soldiers will appear on the soldier development screen after ground combat missions. - Climbing stairs will work properly in the barn. AI: - AI is no longer ignoring vehicles on ground combat missions. Geoscape: - Equiping different rockets to your MiG will no longer cause the game to crash. - The notification can now be cancelled if large numbers of buildings were completed at the same time. - Fighters above ground will no longer "crash to the sea". - An alert window will appear if you cannot manufacture a plane due to not having a free hangar slot. - The game will no longer crash if you attack a landed UFO that has taken off again. - The game will no longer crash when tailing targets on the geoscape. - The chinook will no longer float above the target crash site after loading the auto-save.

Build V9.2 is released on Desura. This is mostly a stability / usability fix build, though it does have some new features: New features: - There's a new air combat GUI that has been (mostly) implemented. We still need to do a few more tweaks on it, both in terms of visual and code issues, but it's nearly done. Key new features are: spanky new visuals, a throttle control that allows you to speed up / slow down aircraft, tooltips and more visual feedback on which weapons are ready to fire and when. - We've added a Toggle Roof button on the ground combat UI which you can use to display buildings at ground level, which should be useful if your soldiers are behind a wall and you can't see that. We'll look at getting this turning on and off automatically but you'll have to do it manually for now. - You can now manufacture the MiG-32 once it has been researched. You need an empty hangar slot to do this. - You can move soldiers, vehicles and aircraft from base to base using the new "Relocate" button on the Soldier / Vehicle / Aircraft Equip screens. - UFOs should now contain the correct research materials for you to be able to construct laser weapons and wolf armour again. - Friendly AI soldiers will now appear on the Industrial tileset. They don't do anything yet. We'll plug them into the AI for the next update. Bugfixes: - The crash in June has been fixed up. For the remaining bugs, I think we've fixed quite a few but I don't actually know - I'll get Matthew to give me an update next week on what should be fixed. Essentially he's doing crunch in his real job at the moment so he's not about, and he compiles the changelog as far as bugs are concerned. I think this should be much more playable than before though. It'll be worth reading this post on what our plans are for the next couple of weeks. Should be exciting times for the project!

This is just a quick update for the game, designed to fix the issues with all the civilians being hostile and all the aliens spawning as Androns (which meant they didn't have the correct sprites and didn't drop Plasma Pistols, which are an important part of the tech tree). Both these were effectively making the game unplayable. Changelog: Civilians will no longer appear as aliens on ground combat missions. Pressing the hotkey for crouching will no longer execute the action twice The combat GUI is raised from the bottom of the screen, allowing it to be used as scroll area. Xenonaut soldiers can now be healed even when standing on alien corpses