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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!