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Build V8.62 is now available. This contains the Training System plus a bunch of bugfixes. Training System: This allows you to train new recruits. It takes 10 days during which they were unavailable for missions, costs $10,000 per recruit and at the end they should be promoted to Corporal and get +2 to all their stats. This also means that soldier promoted to Corporal through battlefield experience should also get +2 to all stats on promotion. Obviously you can't test this with your starting troops so you'll need to hire additional ones if you want to try it. BUGFIXES: Geoscape: - The game no longer crashes in the month of July. - Random crash fixed when buying interceptors. - Crash fixed after recruiting new soldiers to a secondary base. - Intercepting a UFO with your Chinook will no longer start a ground comba. - Random crash fixed when trying to intercept a Crash Site with your Chinook. - Maintenance cost for vehicles/soldiers/scientists are now displayed properly. - You can now reassign vehicles to a Chinook correctly. - When re-detecting an UFO will play the proper sound for the Pop-up window. - UFOs shot down over water will now correctly increase the funding score for the closest funding region. - Tooltips on the soldier equip screen are now updating properly. - UFO interception should be more successful on the highest time setting (there was a previously unknown bug associated with this) - The night overlay no longer migrates upwards with time, slowly obscuring the entire world in darkness. Ground Combat: - Finishing a mission shoud no longer cause a crash. - After loading a Ground Combat save game, the soldier information (name etc) is now displayed properly. - Destroyed Hunters no longer reappear back at base, safe and well. - Alien corpses are now displayed properly on the battlefield after loading a Ground Combat save. - Fixed crash after loading a Ground Combat save and then completing the mission. - Weapons can no longer be reloaded if they already have full ammo. - Selection arrow is now displayed at the edges of the map. Air Combat: - Random crash on completion of an air combat mission has been fixed. Menus: - Pressing Q on the Main Menu no longer opens the Launch Interceptors window. - Exiting to the Main Menu should now show the background image correctly.

Build V8.61 has been released on Desura. This is only a quick hotfix to sort out a couple of pervasive stability issues: - You should now be able to complete ground combat missions on 1280x1024 screen resolution. This was an issue with text sizes that prevented the mission completion screen from loading. - UFO fighters should no longer cause crashes when shot down. Unfortunately this will only affect new games - it was an issue with alien UFO squadron generation where one of the fighters was invisible in game terms and there being problems when half a squadron was shot down. - Sprites: We've corrected the Flare-equipped sprites for all armour types, the Injury animation for all armours, and the Machinegun-equipped Basic Armour soldiers should no longer appear in Wolf armour. - Hidden Movement screen should be back in. That is all. As mentioned elsewhere in the forums, we're working on a major update at the moment. Here is a sneak peek of it (much left to do on it still): http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/farm.jpg

An update to V8.5 has been uploaded to Desura and is now authorised. It has one new feature and a bunch of bugfixes that should smooth the experience a little more: NIGHT MISSIONS: These should sometimes be generated when you attack a crashsite at night, although I think it has to be right in the middle of night at the moment for some reason (I'm going to follow it up to work out why it's not happening all the time). Anyway, this basically just gives the maps reduced sight range - soldiers have 60% of the normal sight range as 'lit tiles' around them, and cannot see aliens that are not on lit tiles. To make things a bit easier, on a night mission all soldiers are automatically equipped with two flares each, which are thrown like grenades and will light up an area around them. Have a play, and see what you think. I imagine tweaks will be needed but it seems to be working OK. Also, night missions are HARD because the aliens still have unlimited sight range (unless blocked by walls etc), so they'll happily pick you off despite the darkness. Again, this'll change somewhat when the new AI model is done. BUGFIXES: - Alien fighter squadrons should no longer cause crashes when interceptors they are tracking return to base - The pop-up alert for attacking crashsite should no longer remain in ground combat missions - UFOs should no longer spawn with access doors on the edge of the map (and thus inaccessible) in ground combat missions - Lockups in the alien Hidden Movement phase should be less frequent now - Alien weapons will no longer cause a crash when equipped - Precision laser will no longer cause a crash when equipped - Machineguns now have a clip of 50 and each burst will consume 5 shots. - The basic armour with the machinegun should no longer display Wolf armour - Unarmed soldiers should display the correct sprites now. - Probably some other small fixes I've forgotten about I'm currently trying to set up these render servers that I bought. I might post some pics up on the forum at some point, because it's quite amusing. I assumed that they'd be relatively inoffensive things but they're a square metre or so each and weigh 30kgs, and sound like a tornado when they're switched on. No idea where I'm going to put them!

As I have working with the submap and level editors I have noticed that there are a number of pictures sets that do not have properly made spectres yet (barrels, warehouse doors, etc.). I have been thinking about setting the properties for the spectres on my own for some maps I have working on. Would it be helpful for the design team if I post some of the spectres as I set them up?

Good news everybody! I’m pleased to announce that Build V8.5 has been released on Desura. This should be by far the most stable build of Xenonauts yet – I’ve sat down and played through the first two months of the game myself, up to the point where I’d researched the Wolf armour and laser weapons, and had no crashes. We’ve made a few changes to the autosave functionality, so it would help if you’d go to My Documents and clear your save files from the Xenonauts folder there before updating to stop any confusion or errors arising. I’ve attached the improvements and bugfix list below: Improvements: The ground combat save should (hopefully) now work. Please give that a test and see how it goes. Basic loading screen added to the ground combat. The Scout UFO map should now function a bit better. I’ve blocked out the walls in the terrain editor so now the aliens shouldn’t be able to spawn in them and your soldiers shouldn’t be able to walk through them. Let me know if things are still shooting through them. UFOs that ‘escape to space’ after being engaged by Xenonaut interceptors now have a 50% chance to return to Earth in the next UFO wave to attempt to finish their mission. A “Target Lost” or “Target Escaped to Space” alert should pop up if a UFO being intercepted by Xenonaut aircraft flies outside radar tracking range or finishes its mission and disappears from the map. We’ve made a variety of balance changes to make the game more fun (listed below). Balance changes: Aircraft monthly maintenance costs halved and initial purchase costs doubled. Sidewinder missiles now turn substantially faster and should be more effective against Scout UFOs. Shotguns and sniper rifles have had their damage increased to compensate for a lack of burst fire. Wolf armour now offers more protection than before. Damage randomisation has increased from 10% of base damage to 20%. Caesan Guards have received 5 extra points of armour. Bugfixes: Ground combat: Fixed crashbug associated with trying to use grenades. Fixed crashbug from opening soldier inventories on battlefield. Fixed crashbug from equipping a soldier with basic armour and a stun baton. Fixed “ghost” soldier bug where units were capable of moving through the “ghost” unit and it could not be clicked on. Fixed soldier inventory bug where a one-handed weapon equipped in the secondary weapon slot would disappear from the game if a two-handed weapon was equipped in the primary slot. Fixed bug where the Hunter armoured car could fire weapons without using any APs. Fixed bug where pressing “I” with the Hunter selected would open soldier inventories. [*]Geoscape: Wounded soldiers should be assigned armour correctly and therefore no longer crash the game when recovering from injury. Ghost crash sites should no longer appear when you load a game with a crash site in it. Some UFO types (fighter derivatives) no longer spawn crash sites when destroyed. This will stop crashes when trying to attack crash sites spawned by UFOs not intended to spawn crash sites. Autosave should now stick to three autosaves and continually overwrite itself, rather than creating dozens of autosaves in the save game folder. Save Games now display most recent first. Semi-transparent white line no longer appears through UFO / interceptor name text on the map. As always, report any bugs on the forums. However, be aware that at this point we've decided to draw a line in the sand and only fix the important bugs so we can concentrate on adding new features instead (it's been a while since we've added anything new and exciting to the game). The remainder of the bugs will be fixed in the beta. If you're going to post up a relatively minor bug, have a quick look at Sathra's master bug list to check if your bug is known already - but if in doubt, post it up anyway.

Because the 'hotfix' V8.3 didn't work very well and caused more bugs than it fixed, we've now released V8.4 which should fix all the new crashes. Really it should be caused V8.36 or something as there are no new features, but it's simpler for bugtracking if we just move to V8.4. So, here's the list of bugs that were meant to be fixed in V8.3 and are now fixed in V8.4: Improvements: - Added final difficulty level uniform images to the Main Menu screen. - Added a few items to the Scout UFO interior (rear saucer). There are still more to come but this should give a preview of the style. Bugfixes: - Basic Armour with pistol, rocket launcher, precision rifle etc no longer appear as Wolf-armoured troops. - Terror sites now have icons on the map, so troops can be sent to them after the initial warning. - Successful terror sites can now only be generated once a week. After this limit is reached UFOs will spawn with different missions instead. - Stun rockets have been removed from the rocket launcher-armed soldier's starting loadout. - It should no longer be possible to launch two simultaneous instances of air combat with a UFO by sending two interceptors in different squadrons at the same target simultaneously. - The Radar Array now displays its name correctly. - Menu tabs should now work properly on loading a saved game. - Resaerch projects should no longer disappear on loading a saved game. - UFO / Aircraft / Vehicle naming should work correctly on loading a save game and quitting then starting a new game from the title screen. - Ghost UFOs should no longer appear over crash sites on loading a saved game. - The Iron Man checkbox on the title screen should be clickable / mouseoverable on the text as well as the checkbox now. - Keybindings now include the crouch / uncrouch key shortcut (bound to 'C' by default), as well as Select Soldier 10 and Select Vehicle 2. - Keybinding options should now recognise keypresses on the Ground Combat. - Keybrinding options should no longer be displayed as black text on a black background on the in-game menu (text is now white). - Quitting from the Ground Combat should no longer cause a crash. - Quitting a game to the Main Menu should correctly cancel the existing music and start the Main Menu music. - Soldiers spin instantly on the spot now, instead of slowly rotating. They will stop-mid turn if they see an alien while rotating. - If a unit blocks the path of a bullet (fully or partially) it will have its selection circle highlighted. This should make it clearer what is blocking shots - particularly where vehicles are concerned. - Cursor on mouseover of aliens correctly displays red now. - Cursor on mouseover of civilians correctly displays black now. - The APs penalty (or lack of) is now correctly updated at the end of each turn. - If AP Reserve prevents a unit from performing an action, there is now a pop-up window explaining this. - AP Reserve cannot be activated for a weapon if the unit does not have enough AP to perform the desired fire mode - AP reserve settings prevent units from firing during their turn now. Unimplemented Features / Unfixed Bugs: - Ground combat save / load is still not functional. I think we're nearly there but we're suffering issues with the engine's windowing system. Hopefully it'll be sorted by next week. -If a UFO escapes to space after being engaged, there should be a 50% chance it reappears in the next UFO wave to try its mission again. - We need to implement "Target Tracking Lost" and "Target Escaped into Space" messages for when UFOs that are being intercepted by aircraft disappear from the Geoscape for either reason. - The soldier inventory disappearing secondary weapon (usually grenades) when a two-handed primary weapon is equipped bug is not yet fixed. - Post-mission two-handed weapon weight penalty doubled bug is still active. - If two research projects are finished at the same time, only one is shown in the Xenopedia.

For the first time in a while, we're actually releasing a patch on time! It's also been authorised on Desura already, so that's good too. V8.3 is mostly a stability fix for V8.2, fixing a whole bunch of issues - largely with the Save / Load. There's one or two issues (well, mostly things that are technically new features rather than fixes). Those are also listed below; we'll be working on them from tomorrow and they should be in V8.4 next weekend. Also, we've (possibly unsurprisingly) made it into the IndieDB Indie of the Year Top 100. This means all the votes are cancelled and the count starts again. It'd be good to make it into the top 10 this year, so if you all could vote again that would be awesome - it only takes 5 seconds. Link below: http://www.indiedb.com/events/2011-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100#vote12696 Final thing to mention - it's just occurred to me that we can probably rent a render farm to do all our sprite rendering rather than using my PC to do it. This would reduce the render time from something like a year to a couple of weeks. I'll keep everybody posted on that. Improvements: - Added final difficulty level uniform images to the Main Menu screen. - Added a few items to the Scout UFO interior (rear saucer). There are still more to come but this should give a preview of the style. Bugfixes: - Basic Armour with pistol, rocket launcher, precision rifle etc no longer appear as Wolf-armoured troops. - Terror sites now have icons on the map, so troops can be sent to them after the initial warning. - Successful terror sites can now only be generated once a week. After this limit is reached UFOs will spawn with different missions instead. - Stun rockets have been removed from the rocket launcher-armed soldier's starting loadout. - It should no longer be possible to launch two simultaneous instances of air combat with a UFO by sending two interceptors in different squadrons at the same target simultaneously. - The Radar Array now displays its name correctly. - Menu tabs should now work properly on loading a saved game. - Resaerch projects should no longer disappear on loading a saved game. - UFO / Aircraft / Vehicle naming should work correctly on loading a save game and quitting then starting a new game from the title screen. - Ghost UFOs should no longer appear over crash sites on loading a saved game. - The Iron Man checkbox on the title screen should be clickable / mouseoverable on the text as well as the checkbox now. - Keybindings now include the crouch / uncrouch key shortcut (bound to 'C' by default), as well as Select Soldier 10 and Select Vehicle 2. - Keybinding options should now recognise keypresses on the Ground Combat. - Keybrinding options should no longer be displayed as black text on a black background on the in-game menu (text is now white). - Quitting from the Ground Combat should no longer cause a crash. - Quitting a game to the Main Menu should correctly cancel the existing music and start the Main Menu music. - Soldiers spin instantly on the spot now, instead of slowly rotating. They will stop-mid turn if they see an alien while rotating. - If a unit blocks the path of a bullet (fully or partially) it will have its selection circle highlighted. This should make it clearer what is blocking shots - particularly where vehicles are concerned. - Cursor on mouseover of aliens correctly displays red now. - Cursor on mouseover of civilians correctly displays black now. - The APs penalty (or lack of) is now correctly updated at the end of each turn. - If AP Reserve prevents a unit from performing an action, there is now a pop-up window explaining this. - AP Reserve cannot be activated for a weapon if the unit does not have enough AP to perform the desired fire mode - AP reserve settings prevent units from firing during their turn now. Unimplemented Features / Unfixed Bugs: - Ground combat save / load is still not functional. I think we're nearly there but we're suffering issues with the engine's windowing system. Hopefully it'll be sorted by next week. -If a UFO escapes to space after being engaged, there should be a 50% chance it reappears in the next UFO wave to try its mission again. - We need to implement "Target Tracking Lost" and "Target Escaped into Space" messages for when UFOs that are being intercepted by aircraft disappear from the Geoscape for either reason. - The soldier inventory disappearing secondary weapon (usually grenades) when a two-handed primary weapon is equipped bug is not yet fixed. - Post-mission two-handed weapon weight penalty doubled bug is still active. - If two research projects are finished at the same time, only one is shown in the Xenopedia. EDIT - V8.35 released which fixes the rather critical "dropships not being able to attack landing sites bug".