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This should be the place where you post missing sprites from the new build. You can tell a missing sprite if the normal animation changes to a Jackal (combat armour) wearing soldier with an assault rifle performing the action - this is the default sprite that is played if the one the game is looking for cannot be found. Known missing sprites: Unarmed soldiers - Basic and Jackal Shotgun-armed soldiers - Basic and Jackal, except for idle animations Stun baton soldiers - Basic and Jackal

Like the last thread, this is for all the minor things that aren't actual bugs. You can also suggest improvements here rather than have them scattered across the forums and hidden in various bug reports.

Lacking anywhere else to really put it, let's use this thread for various minor improvement suggestions for V8.0. Basically any minor niggle that isn't a bug, or likely to result in 8 pages of argument about different methods to do something. I'll start: -Loading a game by double-clicking on it. Saves time. -The button/checkbox to load a save is really tiny and almost out of the way. Make it bigger and/or more obvious? Or a signature line instead of a checkbox to keep with the theme. -Being able to save a game by pressing enter (as part of, or after pressing enter to set the name). -There doesn't seem to be a hotkey for kneeling anymore either...

So I finally got V8 out around the time of the (revised) deadline. It has now been authorised and is ready to download. So, first big news is this - V8.1 will be the one with the Research tree and manufacturing in. We'll be releasing that on Friday, assuming we can get the rendering done fast enough. There were a couple of bugs in the software and it was taking too long to render out all the weapon / armour combinations as we were adding new ones for both, so we delayed it. I figured you guys would rather be able to use the results of the research properly than just have an M16 than fired laser bolts... Other than that, V8 has come out alright. These are the main changes in it: Control improvements: (not an exhaustive list) 'Turn X' screen removed at the start of each turn, as lots of people thought it was a loading screen. Selecting a new troop while another one is in motion no longer cancels the movement of the first. This makes moving troops quicker. Double clicking the icon for a soldier should centre the camera on them, as should doublepressing their keyboard hoykey number. Fire mode for weapons now allows you to target specific parts of the battlefield. If you want to shoot at a wall, you can now shoot directly at it rather than just past it. This makes them easier to hit too, as the soldiers are trying to do so (previously they'd be trying to miss the target, if you see what I mean). Alien head icons for spotted aliens are displayed as normal if the selected soldier can see the alien in question. If they cannot, it it shown at reduced opacity. Soldiers can now vault over waist high walls at double movement cost for normal movement. In this map this is mostly the metal pipes. The line of sight mechanics have been completely rewritten and hopefully should behave much more predictably now. The old ones turned out to be surprisingly buggy. New Kneeling / Cover System: Previously kneeling into cover was done automatically, and did not cost AP. This was unwieldy when combined with soldiers vaulting waist high cover walls. Kneeling now costs 4AP and provides a reduced chance of being hit (60% as opposed to 100% for any shot passing through that tile) and also a shooting accuracy bonus. However, it should also increase the stopping value of all obstacles between the shooter and the target by 50% to compensate for his lower height. 'Leaning' has been entirely removed from the game. It was a pain in the ass. Cover now applies if you are standing in the tile, but is more effective if you are kneeling. Title Screen: There is now a title screen in the game when you first load it up. This has some nice art and music on it. The art is not finished, but is essentially what we want to go for with the 'new GUI style' some of you may have heard me refering to before. More details on that at a future date. The clipboard options allow you to Save the game, Load existing games or customise the options - sound volume, mouse sensitivity and key remapping. There are four difficulty settings that affect the speed of the alien invasion and the HP of the UFOs in battle. These settings have not been balanced yet and will also affect the alien unit stats and weapon damage in the final game. Save / Load: You can now save the game on the Geoscape. This feature needs some major testing. Please break it as comprehensively as you can. Save / Load is not yet active in the ground combat missions. We're working on that at the moment. Radar Changes: Previously the base radar was made up of long-range and short-range detection. Now radars have detection range and tracking range, and there is only one base radar building. The detection range is represented by the solid blue circle on the Geoscape and UFOs have a % chance per minute to be detected when within this. Radar detection chance is now linear with range (we need to tweak this as UFOs are still picked up far too fast). The tracking range is represented by the blue dotted circle beyond the detection range. Detected UFOs within this range will no longer be lost even if they leave detection range. This is to stop the continual detection / redetection issue that occurred when UFOs flew a random path on the edge of detection range. The inner circle (previously short-range radar) is now defunct and will be removed in the next build. This should reduce the Geoscape clutter. New Animations: We've added new animations for the basic soldier and Jackal soldier with most of the basic weapons, the shotgun and unarmed ones aside. I'll create a forum thread to point out broken animations (one where a blue rifle-armed soldier performs the animation). Battlefield Randomisation: The battlefield is now more random than before. There's a couple of variants of most of the sub-maps, although they're not drastically different (I didn't have the time to completely change them) it does illustrate how the randomisation does work. We'll add more different maps in V8.1 or V8.2 I think. The battlefields now have multiple UFO types - or or least, the technology is now there. I've put in 'maps' for both the Corvette and the Scout. These are variants of the Evil Alien Factory (so don't use real UFO tiles) but are differing sizes and layout. There is also some slight variation in the interior layout between the Scout maps to show that this is possible - it'll be much more obvious in the final version once the UFO tiles are done. There might be some more new features than that, but if so then I've forgotten them. Anyway, the build is now at 40% uploaded...

Unfortunately, all you guys waiting for Build V8 will have to wait an extra day. There's not enough man hours in the weekend to get all the updated animations in the game and also redo the terrain maps to cate for multiple possible spawn points (plus come up with at least one alternate version of each sub-map to show how the level can be randomised). This means I'll upload V8 tomorrow. We've got all the basic rendering done but just need to add it into the game. Unfortunately, V8 will not contain a research tree. As is frequently the way, my internal testing revealed a couple of issues with the way the Research works (such as it doesn't automatically open the Xenopedia page when a research project is finished) and we need to fix them. Another problem is that the stores are not recognising manufactured armour correctly either, so as soon as is is researched it is available in unlimited quantities. We need to fix these up. There's also sprite problems, as the previous builds only featured the two starting armour types using the starting weapons. The new research tree contains laser weapons and the first manufactured armour, so the available weapon types goes up by 5 and there's an extra armour type. This actually means about 20-25 new spritesheets need to be added, and my PC isn't fast enough to render all the sprites out in time. Hopefully it'll be done by Friday and we can release V8.1 with the research tree on Friday. Even if a couple of weapon / sprite combinations are missing, it won't be the end of the world. So yeah, sorry about that. Can't be helped though unfortunately.

So, it's been a long time since we released a new build. This is mostly down to Paypal, I'm afraid, but we have Build V8 due out next weekend (12th / 13th Nov) to make up for it and to dovetail into our full Desura-powered relaunch. Build V7.5 was our first playable 'mission', and Build V8 is meant to be the first playable game of Xenonauts. It probably won't be particularly well balanced, but it will contain all the elements of the final game in at least basic form. It will be iterated several times, as it is intended to These are the improvements over Build V7.5 that will be in Build V8: - Geoscape Save / Load: You are now able to save and load the game on the Geoscape (not yet functional in the ground combat though). Small feature, big usability change. - Title Screen: We've also added the title screen to the game. This gives you 4 difficulty setting options when starting a new game, and also allows key remapping if you so desire. - Research: This has been in the development build for a while, but the next game will contain the first hour or two of the research tree for you to play with. - Interface fixes: largely related to ground combat. A lot of people have commented on V7.5 both online and at the Expo that some things were a bit clunky when controlling your soldiers. We've tried to address them all - there's a few too many to list here. - Fire Control system: If you were not shooting at terrain in an attempt to destroy it, it was previously very difficult to target a specific prop or cover wall because the game wouldn't let you aim at them. Now you can (and you get an accuracy boost because you're specifically shooting at them, not trying to shoot past them). - Vaulting / Mantling: Waist-high walls are no longer the impenetrable barrier they once were! Your soldiers can now vault / mantle over them. - New Cover System: there's been extensive debate on the forums over the merits of the previous cover system versus manual kneeling, as the two were not compatible. Long story short, we've updated the combat system so all kneeling is now manual (as in X-Com) and cover automatically provides a defence bonus when you are in a tile that offers cover. Kneeling increases that bonus, and both makes soldiers harder to hit and gives them an accuracy bonus. However it now also has an AP cost. - Level Editor updates: We've also updated the level editor to better reflect the fact that a crash site can have different types of UFO on it, and different types of dropship too. Essentially these are handled on seperate layers and there is better randomisation of start location. These are the improvements that will appear in build V8.x before it is sent to the press (ie, the stuff we'll be focusing all our development on over the next couple of weeks): - Ground Combat Save / Loading: Important feature for a lot of people. - Ground Combat Difficulty Setting: Currently the difficulty setting only affects the Geoscape. It should also affect the stats of the aliens and their weaponry in the ground combat too. - Correct map loading: With the changes to the level editor, I want to change the game so it correctly loads the UFO type shot down to initiate the map (so you can run both Scout and Corvette crash site missions). - New Animations: We've had to start rendering every single unit in the game again thanks to the changes to the cover system. We'll need all the basic troop animations for the basic weapons in the game before it goes to the press though. - Mission Map randomisation: While the game will still only support one map (the testmap in the Industrial tileset) at this point, I want to improve the map so it shows off the randomisation capacities of the engine. So the buildings won't be the same every time, and hopefully we can show off the UFO / dropship location randomisation too. - UFO tiles (hopefully): This one is still up in the air, but I'd like to get the UFO tiles in the game if possible. We've got a new tile artist who might be able to turn them around quite quickly - it's a bit strange capturing the Evil Alien Shed at the moment... There may be other things that I've forgotten about, but in short there's been some pretty major updates and hopefully the gameplay will be considerably better than before.