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Xenonauts-2 Version 0.9.0 (Public Combat Test) Released!


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This new version of Xenonauts 2 is a free public test build, released free because it is still an early build and we don't yet think we can justify charging for it; full details on where to get the build can be found in this thread. The next update is due on Tuesday 9th May, although if necessary we will also release hotfixes for any game-breaking bugs encountered in this build.

You can see from the changelog below that we've had a fairly productive couple of weeks, and I've also written a May Development Update to accompany this release so people can get more information on the overall state of the project (including the strategy layer etc).

KEY FEATURES:

  • Secondary Weapon Controls: you previously had to do a complex keyboard shortcut to get the medikit and other secondary items to work, but now you can just click their picture to access them as you did in Xenonauts 1.
  • Damage Variance: weapons now do a random value between 50% - 150% of their base damage when they hit a target (as they did in Xenonauts 1).
  • Tutorial: a simple explanatory pop-up now appears once per build at the start of the mission, explaining the combat mechanics and the changes from X1 (you can also access this from the Esc menu). We'll try to keep this updated as we add new features.
  • Biome Visual Pass: we've done another visual pass on the different wilderness biomes, giving them a number of unique walls / fences / road barriers to differentiate them from one another a bit more. We've also tweaked some of the UV maps on things like rocks to make them respond to lighting in a more consistent manner.
  • Soldier Attributes / Promotions: support for soldier attribute level-ups and rank promotions has been added to the game and they will now appear on the debrief screen, although it's obviously of limited use until we start putting the strategy layer in the public builds!
  • Wall Transparency: this is much more robust than when it first appeared two weeks ago, making walls more transparent and having a radius of transparency around both the selected soldier and the cursor etc. You can see it in action once you get inside the UFO.
  • Misses Hitting Cover: the "miss" system has now been updated to properly account for the "cover save" - i.e. when a shot would have hit the target were it not for the intervening cover. These on-target misses now always hit that specific piece of cover that is providing this cover save, as previously miss shots were all treated the same and cover was not taking many hits (and thus rarely got destroyed).
  • Shoot Animation Rework: we've reworked a bunch of systems negatively affected by us adding the inverse kinematics (IK) system that makes the gun aim in the direction of the bullet shot path:
    • Alien shoot animations (particularly the Psyon Drone) were a mess last build but should be back to normal now.
    • We've removed an animation delay from the shoot animations, making things a bit snappier and more responsive.
    • We've also merged the "raise gun" animation and the IK aim, so units should no longer "raise gun - pause - aim - pause - shoot" and now just do it all as a single smooth action.
    • We also corrected a visual issue where soldiers firing a "hit" shot were not actually aiming in the correct place.
  • Light Probes: all our maps now contain light probes, which are a bit complex but basically allow units to be lit by the same light sources as light the terrain. Let us know if your soldiers turn too light / dark in particular tiles, as that suggests they are not working properly.

TWEAKS:

  • Maps now contain less cover so movement and shooting is a bit less restricted.
  • Doors have updated line-of-fire / line-of-sight so you can see / shoot through them from a wider angle than before.
  • Miss shots now have reduced vertical deviation and so more likely to hit something relevant to gameplay.
  • The short range hit bonus is now lower on diagonal tiles compared to lateral tiles, as the distance is greater.
  • Cycling weapon fire modes (i.e. adding accuracy with right click) can no longer trigger enemy overwatch.
  • Units can no longer end up with fractions of a HP when they suffer damage.
  • Alien plasma projectiles now look a bit nicer.

BUGFIXES:

  • Fixed various crashes.
  • Fixed an issue where the crosshair TU cost for a shot was not correctly including the rotation cost.
  • Fixed a bug where the TU Reserve slider was deleting TU rather than reserving them.
  • Fixed an issue where soldiers with insufficient TU to move got a free rotation when ordered to move.
  • TU is now calculated correctly when movement is interrupted by spotting an alien.
  • Crouched units that suffer a movement interrupt before they start moving no longer automatically uncrouch and then recrouch again, losing 8 TU in the process.
  • Units can no longer shoot themselves, and consequently are no longer able to crash the game by killing themselves with burst fire before the burst has actually finished firing.

So that's a pretty big update - especially when you consider that grenades are 95% complete but missed the deadline because the explosion VFX are not playing nicely with the glow shader we use to highlight units behind solid objects.

There's quite a lot of behind-the-scenes coding work scheduled for the next build (e.g. editor or strategy layer work), but more details on that are available in the May Development Update. As always, please give the build a test and let us know if you experience any issues or have any thoughts!

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---
Well, hmm...

Seemingly this version is missing the "winning-condition", or at least the UFO-capturing does not trigger at all (I already send the bug-report via in-game-reporting-tool).
I also tried to reveal all the hidden / black-squares without finding any aliens, or any of them even trying to attack my troops.
Thankfully the record-files are seemingly written even when the battles don't end and I quit the software via the menu.
((Yeah, apparently there just aren't "recording_X"-files past "10", so it started from "1" again as I mentioned last time.))

Here are some other oddities and annoyances:

- The Time-unit-amount is somewhat too little to traverse through the map, or at least was this time since I got probably the biggest map in the game at the moment.
--Odd balancing: (all stats) 60 to shotgun-men / "Assaults" and 55 to rest of the troop
---Shotgun snap-fire uses 17 while sniper-rifle uses 16, rest of the guns (SMG, Assault-rifle, Pistols) use 15, expect the pistols the assault / shotgun-men can wield.

So these numbers might need some fixing, alongside maybe bump up the time units to compensate the large-maps (or at least maps larger than what we had before two/three-weeks ago.


- Not able to screenshot the Tutorial due the fading UI / HUD elements, at least I was not able to do that with "Greenshot" while using ALT+W"-button combination.
-- There generally seems to be some glitchiness in the windowed-mode: as seen in the following screenshot, you can see the "Activate Window"-text bottom-right -corner of the first screenshot. In this screenshot the the game-window is in the size of 1440x900 just like is has been said to be set in the "Xenonauts 2 confiqurations"-launcher-pop-up.
However, as soon as I open the options-menu to "apply" the audio-volume setting that always resets to max whenever the game launches (even if the slider is still at the minimum, "bottom-left"), the game-window suddenly pops / enlarges the window to fill the whole screen at maximum-resolution, ala like borderless-fullscreen, but with borders to move around the window obviously. 
After this happen, the "Greenshot" is once again able to screenshots only the content inside the window-borders without screenshotting teh borders or anything else "atop" (notice the missing "Activate Windows"-text and the missing "title-border").

2017-05-09 22_38_25-Xenonauts 2.png

2017-05-09 22_49_17-Xenonauts 2.png

 

Obviously this could only be a problem happening with "Greenshot"-alone
(I've occasionally considered to start using "FRAPS" again, but I am not certain how well it would work on "Windows 10", since last update was on very early 2013; I might just outright have to find an alternative that isn't tied to Steam-client perhaps (yes I also know the GOG-Galaxy is trying to get a screenshot-tool too).
More "FRAPS-like" and maybe less-money-costing it is, the better).

The sudden-automatic "screen-filling"-transition is rather bizarre too.


- I mean, I understand why, and I know I keep showing this "wonkiness" all the time. However, this time it just too funny to me not to showcase:

2017-05-09 22_50_44-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- The "move-path" especially when using the TU-reserving are a little too "shrouded" within the "line-of-sight-fog"

2017-05-09 22_51_25-Xenonauts 2.png

2017-05-09 22_51_31-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- A bit of an odd spotting and shooting angle

2017-05-09 22_52_27-Xenonauts 2.png

2017-05-09 22_54_15-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- Having had my machine-gunner / suppressor gunned down by an "out-of-sight" enemy, I believe the Alien Intelligence is still able to "reaction-fire" via sight of another of their team, or the "Sebillians" have increased sight range.
This seems to be similar "alien-intelligence-spotter-bug" I have reported here:
http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14432-xenonauts-2-version-060-public-combat-test-released/#comment-161213


2017-05-09 22_55_18-Xenonauts 2.png


2017-05-09 22_55_34-Xenonauts 2.png

2017-05-09 22_56_08-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- Maybe the arms of Sebillians are a bit too stiff...

2017-05-09 23_13_30-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- The aliens simply refused to interact with the door.
(( Or maybe only the Reapers have enough "smarts" to open the doors? ))

2017-05-09 23_22_29-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- The Reapers seemingly just were stuck on this square; when one was killed, another simply step on  the square as a replacement while never moving anywhere
( I didn't test this time if they'd even bother to try punching any of my token if they'd stand next to them ).

2017-05-09 23_31_04-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- Here is some more melee / stun-baton wonkiness:
In reality the hit-accuracy is affected by the "angle": 40% for diagonal-strikes, and 60% for "next-to-squares".
Regardless the number, the miss-chances seem to be "heavily-weighted" considering that this time over 60% of swings missed (just an assumption, but still the hits-missing is too much).

2017-05-09 23_21_41-Xenonauts 2.png

2017-05-09 23_26_49-Xenonauts 2.png

 

-- I still ended up "batoning" the other reaper down though (18+34-stun-damage)

2017-05-09 23_33_41-Xenonauts 2.png

 

- And here is the whole UFO, while I was trying to look for the suppose "stray-one"

2017-05-09 23_40_10-Xenonauts 2.png

 

 

On the positive:
- The initial version of "inventory" / "quick-slots" worked as intended; using tools (med-pack, stun-baton) simply worked.

 

---

And this is all for now.
Here is to hope for a hotfix to make capturing alien-ships (in five (5) turns) possible again.

The "gun-fight" seems to be working good and maybe better than on 0.8.0, but the lack of winning kinda made me too distracted to allow form further opinions or otherwise notice some more "subtle"-improvements from the previous version (well aside for the bug-fixes obviously).


Oh, actually: Try to make a solider to shoot himself / his feet for some extra hilarity, especially with burst-fire-mode activated!
I know how funny looking it is, because I tried to shoot one of the stunned Reapers, just in case.

---
---
---

 

recording_2.rec

Edited by Pave
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@Pave If you are on Win 10, you can press Win+G to open the game bar, which let you take a screenshot (Win+Alt+PrintScreen) or record the game.  I prefer using OBS to records my games, though, which gives me much more control.

I get the victory screen, with aliens at 11/12 which reflect that I stunned one of them, so it's working for me.

Things I like:

  1. Big, random map.  Random damage.  UI improvements.  UFO layouts.
  2. Tutorial given my Chief of Staff.
  3. Free rotation.  How about zoom and pitch?  The soldiers are so small.  I can't see the fine details you have in the gif thread, like those eyeballs.

Things that bothers me:

  1. LoF at wall corners still unintuitive.  For example soldiers next to an open door cannot shot the alien right behind the door.  Same for rock walls.
  2. Soldiers can be hard to see on greener maps.  Since we have officially labelled it a remote command interface, can we show AP bar close to each soldier?  And may be class/weapon icon and HP bar.
  3. How do I know where my soldiers are facing?
  4. Ever since cover radar is gone, it feels harder to tell which grid is passable.  I miss the radar.
  5. The leaves of tree spreading into surrounding grid make it more difficult to see the terrain.  Can we hide the leaves and show only the trunk?
  6. Wish I have some way to see what is on the floor.

Bugs:

  1. Game "died" as I am assaulting the UFO.  It appears to stop to respond, but the game is actually still running.  If I Alt+Tab out and back in, I see the game's title bar in top left corner, and I can hear clicking and shoting sound when I clicks.  But I don't see the game screen.
  2. Whenever a soldier self-heal, he turns to the North.  Or whatever the starting direction is.
  3. Soldiers sometimes cannot move to neighbouring grid, something I have reported since the first build.  Unfortunately I accidentally overwrote the screenshots when I tried to compress them, but I have reported one of them with the report bug feature.
  4. The purple blood becomes white at certain angle.  Again sorry I lost the screenshots.
  5. I once shot an alien from the back and suppress it and badly hurt it, and it won't even turn back to look who shot it in its turn.  Do they get a free standup from suppression by the way?
  6. The UFO aliens also won't open the door and won't come out, so it's easy to abuse their behaviour by opening the door, burst burst, close door, end turn, repeat.
Edited by Sheepy
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Hi everyone  , have problem with the game - game have freeze , in this video game crash in first round.


Crash is terrible because i dont have control in the game.  Only ctrl+alt+delete Help me :)


When i paly again , game crashed too , this same problem Freeze.

Ps. Sorry for my english people... :)


667.jpg

Edited by baryla
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Thanks for the bug reports, all - we're actually going to release a hotfix tomorrow for some of the random crashes. If you've experienced major issues like crashes or hangs then please ensure you've opted in to our automatic bug reports as they give us information on where specifically in the code the error is occurring.

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6 hours ago, Chris said:

If you've experienced major issues like crashes or hangs then please ensure you've opted in to our automatic bug reports as they give us information on where specifically in the code the error is occurring.

By auto bug reports, do you mean the first option which says "Error Reporting: Enable/Disable"?

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Great. Yes, I do mean the "error reporting" feature. The hotfix coming out today will include an upgrade for this feature that should give us the specific line number of any error so it should work even better soon.

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Given the latest thread is about a hotfix, I thought it would he useful to comment here rather than in the hotfix thread about the current build. As other have done sterling work in commenting on the bugs, I thought I might talk a a little about other elements.

I really don't like the death animation for the Sebillian. The way both arms stretch out at 90 degrees as if it's been crucified and the way the whole body goes rigid prior to falling over gives a comical air to a beast that's by no means comical. Is there something that could be done with the arms to give them a more natural seeming pose? There's a great youtube video with shows a lot of GTA death animations that I think some of which might be applicable to the Sebillian

 

 

I've noticed that that the AI seems to follow the same kind of weighting mechanism for scoring tiles as it did in X-1. While I'm not as technically competent as Sheepy, I could work out what most of the weights meant so I had a fiddle with the aggressive AI as it didn't seem aggressive enough. I've attached the changes I've made along with a few other changes that I made to some of the weapons,especially the baton as it's very difficult to get in range of using a baton and the payoff for using it seems to be quite small. I also notice there doesn't seem to be an armour value for armour - is that something yet to come? 

MaxChanges.zip

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23 hours ago, Max_Caine said:

I really don't like the death animation for the Sebillian. The way both arms stretch out at 90 degrees as if it's been crucified and the way the whole body goes rigid prior to falling over gives a comical air to a beast that's by no means comical. Is there something that could be done with the arms to give them a more natural seeming pose? There's a great youtube video with shows a lot of GTA death animations that I think some of which might be applicable to the Sebillian...

I've noticed that that the AI seems to follow the same kind of weighting mechanism for scoring tiles as it did in X-1. While I'm not as technically competent as Sheepy, I could work out what most of the weights meant so I had a fiddle with the aggressive AI as it didn't seem aggressive enough. I've attached the changes I've made along with a few other changes that I made to some of the weapons,especially the baton as it's very difficult to get in range of using a baton and the payoff for using it seems to be quite small. I also notice there doesn't seem to be an armour value for armour - is that something yet to come? 

Thanks for the feedback, but the Sebillian doesn't actually have a death animation at the moment (hence the comedy ragdoll) and similarly the AI is just a placeholder that does the bare minimum required to make the game playable right now :)

Expect us to start work on the "proper" AI in the next six weeks or so - it's just important we have all the core systems and weapons in place before we start on that.

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