Build V9.31 Released!

[Dragonx]

the new release verison 9.31 has alot of bugs. I would perfer if goldhawk take their time to produce this game properly and test it internally piece by piece before releasing any of the alpha builds. I think the recent update ver 9.31 came with alot of new updates and additions and content but also alot of new bugs and crash bugs.

I wouldn't mind at all if Xenonauts release a year later than XCOM Enemy Unknown. I perfer a more stable and more content rich game later on. I would also enjoy the kickstarter for Xenonauts eventually being setup. I am ready to donate another $100 directly into Goldhawks pockets towards a better more stable, faithful verison to the original XCOM UFO Defense.

KickStarter donation level ideas:

$30 Same as before with special forum name.

$60 including boxed game and manual perhaps?

$100 Same above plus your first and last name as one of the random Xenonaut Soldiers.

$250 Same as above and name listed on credits screen as a valued donater.

$500 all of the previous plus your picture and name as one of the random Xenonauts soldiers.

$1000 All of the previous above plus can attend the final release party with Chris and his team in europe:)

$2500 All the above plus get to take a picture with Chris and his autograph:)

$5000 All the above plus get to add another new alien combatant type to be programmed intot he xenonauts final release.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Dragonx

[Jean-Luc]

I would perfer if goldhawk take their time to produce this game properly and test it internally piece by piece before releasing any of the alpha builds.

Testing and finding bugs is actually the main raison d'etre of these builds. By choosing to play these early releases you submit yourself to being a faux game tester.

[Gorlom]

KickStarter donation level ideas:

$30 Same as before with special forum name.

$60 including boxed game and manual perhaps?

$100 Same above plus your first and last name as one of the random Xenonaut Soldiers.

$250 Same as above and name listed on credits screen as a valued donater.

$500 all of the previous plus your picture and name as one of the random Xenonauts soldiers.

$1000 All of the previous above plus can attend the final release party with Chris and his team in europe:)

$2500 All the above plus get to take a picture with Chris and his autograph:)

$5000 All the above plus get to add another new alien combatant type to be programmed intot he xenonauts final release.

Compared to other projects reward tiers that seems well lacking. The scaleing seems off as well. You seem to have selected typical milestone numbers rather then what one would be willing to pay for such things.

I'm wondering how willing a small indie team is to provide a box version. Would be nice if goldhawk interactive could offer one but wouldn't it be a lot of work for selfpublishing? I know other kickstarter projects has said that they wouldn't do it because it's not worth/costeffective doing unless you produce copies in the numbers of 10 or 100 thousands. (which ever it was)

Listed in the credits usually come at a lower tier. I get that credits can become long with many people donateing to be credited but why set the reward as high as 250?

The 100 and 500 rewards are too expensive to be desirable and should probably have some kind of limitation on how many can get it.

I think Chris wil be able to come up with sufficient and satisfactory rewards to tempt people into donateing.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Gorlom

[Hellstormer]

I love testing stuff which is why I try to get into as many alpha/beta stage games that I can. While I don't have lots of time I do enjoy trying to break things. I have however with this update run into a wall known as the "Hidden Movement Freeze Bug". I did NOT have this bug in any version prior to the current build.

I think it's AI scripting related but I'm unsure if that's correct. I'll keep working at it and maybe just save after each of my turns so if the bug pops up I can at least (eventually) finish a battle

The new MiG research windows looked great! Though I think I find a typo in the text of the MiG research vs what the picture calls the MiG. Something about Foxbat in the text but it's Fox(something else can't remember what) on the image. On a final note yay an update!!! <3

[Yevgeniy]

Useful corrections. Thank you.

[Chris]

Yeah, that's an AI bug. I'll send an email to the AI coder to get it sorted out ASAP but he doesn't have the internet at the moment so I'm not sure it's something we can fix immediately. Obviously it's not a bug we can send out the press build with though. Hmm.

[Moonie]

Testing and finding bugs is actually the main raison d'etre of these builds. By choosing to play these early releases you submit yourself to being a faux game tester.

Of course, but you need to be able to play it to find those illusive bugs. Also it's does not make for good word-of-mouth recommendation. when all that you can say about the game, when asked, is that you don't know what the game is like because it always crashes or freezes.

[Gauddlike]

If I ask someone what an alpha is like then I pretty much expect them to say it crashes and freezes.

If someone asks me then I tend to focus on what the actual game is like not the problems it has as an alpha.

If the game was in late beta and still had issues that prevented playing then I would be more concerned.

Once Xenonauts hits beta you would expect to be playing for a while in order to track down bugs that are hard to spot.

I have tested alpha builds that would barely run at all, or crashed because they didn't like the mouse moving to the left.

This is buggy but I've seen worse.

It is just a couple of the bugs are annoyingly easy to find

[Moonie]

It is just a couple of the bugs are annoyingly easy to find

Okay, your employed. How soon before you can have a working version out?

I know that bugs are to be expected in a alpha, and I also know that a game like this is not a easy task to make.

What does niggle me is, all he has to do to prevent wasting everybody's time on a dud release is play it for 30 minutes himself, or get someone to play it for him for 30 minutes. That's all it takes 30 minutes to detect all of the show stoppers.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Moonie

[Chris]

And then spend a day or two getting those bugs fixed, while stopping all production on the game in the meantime to make sure that nobody else adds anything that might break the game while we fix the original bugs? With an important deadline coming up?

Most projects go into lockdown for several days before each major release where no features are added so they can fix all the bugs in a stable environment, but we don't have the full time staff available to make that a viable option. For obvious reasons, our main priority is to get the game finished rather than to make sure the builds we release are fully stable.

[Hellstormer]

With any development there is the way we all wished it could be and the way it is because of necessity. I think that you gents are doing a great job with the limited time and resources at your disposal. Being voluntary testers it's our job IMO to help you find and reproduce bugs so that they can be addressed when you have time for it. Being alpha however new features should be added on a pretty constant basis because that's the meat of the game! Once all the big features are in THEN it's time for a couple serious bug squashing weeks so the press releases run well. I mean that's my opinion of course but it seems to align with your overall plan Chris so I am assuming I'm not too weird in my opinion here hehe.

[Dragonx]

Of course, but you need to be able to play it to find those illusive bugs. Also it's does not make for good word-of-mouth recommendation. when all that you can say about the game, when asked, is that you don't know what the game is like because it always crashes or freezes.

This is exactly what i was trying to say. If Goldhawk release the Alpha builds with less new content to test but more updates then we can test and pinpoint bugs easier, since there will be less new content per release to watch over.

[Dragonx]

And then spend a day or two getting those bugs fixed, while stopping all production on the game in the meantime to make sure that nobody else adds anything that might break the game while we fix the original bugs? With an important deadline coming up?

Most projects go into lockdown for several days before each major release where no features are added so they can fix all the bugs in a stable environment, but we don't have the full time staff available to make that a viable option. For obvious reasons, our main priority is to get the game finished rather than to make sure the builds we release are fully stable.

I agree with you 100% Chris. I just hope Goldhawk takes their time with developing Xenonauts instead of trying to beat XCOM Enemy Unknown to release. I personally don't think Xcom EU will be true to the original, and the more people who play XCOM EU first will release just how different it is compared to the 1994 XCOM and will seek out Xenonauts. Xenonauts should be released when it is ready with the proper amount of content and stability and features.

What i hate about XCOM Enemy Unknown.

1. Only 1 base with soldiers and crew.

2. Unlimited Ammo? Sorry Firaxis but i like to count ammo.

3. No time units? Expect every Muton alien to run up to you and take 1 plasma shot at you every turn.

4. Only 4-6 soldiers per mission? so the whole xcom eu world comes down to 6 guys with guns to save?

[Gorlom]

I agree with you 100% Chris. I just hope Goldhawk takes their time with developing Xenonauts instead of trying to beat XCOM Enemy Unknown to release.

Chris is Goldhawk Interactive. =P Pronoun should probably be "your" instead of "their" =)

PS. I thought I spotted a missunderstanding and just aim to clear it up. I'm not trying to be a nitpick or attack anyone. (NN has put me on edge)

[jamoecw]

What i hate about the new xcom (the xcom one not the fps one) hype.

1. that they say that when playing that their troops were getting shot as that disembarked, giving a D-Day feel to the missions, yet decided to cut such a thing while saying they are keeping everything that made xcom, xcom.

2. 4-6 soldiers to a mission, if there are only 4 soldiers in the beginning, does that mean we will take no losses if we have a clue what we are doing?

3. permadeath, WTF does permadeath mean to an xcom game? is there a xcom like game were your soldiers didn't die?

4. only 1 base, does this mean that the entire world has lost to the aliens and we are the only military installation left, or is it just another gamey thing done to limit us like altair did?

well i have my fingers crossed, as i like xcom, i like fraxis, and i like rpgs (which is were most of the 'ideas' seem to be coming from), though my hopes are still on xenonaughts for a modern xcom. don't worry about bugs at this stage, the hidden movement bug is the first major bug i encountered, which is not bad at all for an alpha release.

[Chris]

Gorlom - I'm far from the only member of Goldhawk! There's a team of about 10-15 people working on the game at any time, although only three of us are full time. I'm just the head / face of the company.

[Clamp]

Hi

9.31 is looking really promising. Aside from the "hidden movement" bug it also seems fairly stable for an alpha build. One quick question I have is that all my missions seem to be almost identical. There are only slight variations on each map all using the farm tiles. Is this the only completed set of tiles so far?

The only other thing I have noticed is that the save game function only seems to work if you retype the name and not on a double click. Minot point but important for usability.

Thanks for the great progress and also just want to add that many big games publishers could learn from the way you keep your customers informed on developments and progress.

[Moonie]

Hi

9.31 is looking really promising.

Oh yes, it looks bloody fantastic, and one day I will get to play the farm map, one day.

I was so close I could smell the hay, and then a bloody alien had to go and use its bloody AI didn't it? *&%£*ard

[Gorlom]

Gorlom - I'm far from the only member of Goldhawk! There's a team of about 10-15 people working on the game at any time, although only three of us are full time. I'm just the head / face of the company.

I know that there are more people. But thank you for clearing up the missunderstanding I caused =P

3. permadeath, WTF does permadeath mean to an xcom game? is there a xcom like game were your soldiers didn't die?

Yes, I believe that would be Afterlight. I know I've played one game without permadeath and Afterlight seems most likely since you can't acctually hire people in that game according to wikipedia. ( I believe all the characters are presets colonists rather then randomly generated adn the new guys that come along are children that finally come of age)

I'm not sure about the other AfterX games.

I thought Extraterrestrials was without it too and that permadeath was includable by adding a mod, but now that I think about it I'm probably confuseing it with a mod that removed permadeath rather then adding it...

Edited April 18, 2012 by Gorlom

[dcc1464]

anyone found a work around for the hidden movement bug? i'm unable to complete a single mission, tried reloading and trying a later mission and reinstalling the game. nothing works for me

[Gorlom]

Apart from savescumming no. You will have to wait for the next build I believe. It sems to be an AI issue and the AI coder is temporarily unavailable as he is moveing form one house to another.

But if there does come a workaround (as opposed to a new build) it would most likely show up in the workaround thread in the bugg report forum.

[Chris]

The AI coder is trying to get it fixed now, despite not having the internet. Give him a day or two.

[winterwolves]

Great to hear Chris! You guys are awesome!

[jimbobfury]

That is indeed awesome news. Not quite sure how you're achieving that (how did humanity cope before the internet?? ) but nice one for trying to get a fix in place.

[iamkyon]

Not quite sure how you're achieving that (how did humanity cope before the internet?? ) but nice one for trying to get a fix in place.

Carrier pigeons and floppy disks.