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Xenonauts-2 Version 0.15.0 (Public Combat Test) Released!


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This 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. 

This is the first public build for slightly over four months. We had a decision to make about whether to release a somewhat rough build today or delay a week and release a much more polished build, and we decided to just release the rough build so you guys could give your thoughts help us find all the problems. We've spent the last four months running and playing the game in the Unity editor rather than in the built version of the game, so we discovered a week ago that our builds were pretty much entirely broken due to a bunch of bugs that do not appear when the game runs in the Editor. We've squished most of the ones we know about, but we'll need your help finding the rest of them!

We're expecting to release an updated build in one week, on Tuesday 12th December, because a bunch of our changes didn't make the build deadline and the fact we didn't have much time to playtest suggests that you guys are going to find plenty of issues :)

CHANGELOG:

  • New Logo & Icon - I got an actual artist to do some work on our branding, and he's done a much better job than I ever could. I've emailed GOG to ask for assistance on how to get the desktop icon appearing correctly, but you can see what ours looks like in the game directory executable itself.
  • Main Menu & Loading Screen - as above, we've updated the visual style of the main menu and the loading screen to look a bit more professional.
  • New Map & Tileset - we've rewritten the map editor and started creating new tilesets, so the build now contains a single new map in our new Military Base tileset. Hopefully the addition of buildings makes it feels a bit more like the old Xenonauts!
  • AI Spawn Control - like in X1, we can now control where different types of enemy spawn; e.g. alien command units can be set to spawn within certain buildings and not sprint out and fight you like they did before
  • New Cliffs - we've changed the way cliff edges work, so they're no longer made up of "walls" but instead fill a full tile ... which means they have more depth and look nicer (they're technically now props). Let us know if they act weirdly as a result.
  • Destructibility - support for better destructibility is in the game now, although only a few assets have it right now (give us a couple of weeks to add more). Try shooting the wire fences with the grenade launcher to see some in-progress destruction effects.
  • Climbing - you can climb on top of cliffs on special "ladder" cliffs. Use the mousewheel to move the tile selection UI up a level and then you can path up there as normal.
  • Dropship - the Xenonauts now arrive to battle in a (experimental) helicopter. Needs a bit more texture work on the interior but it's a nice addition.
  • Soldier Portraits - your soldiers are no longer eight identical clones, but eight real characters from the strategy layer! This is less amazing than it sounds though, because they've all got identical stats just like before ... but the code for loading soldiers from the strategy layer actually does work now.
  • Soldier Gender & Ethnicity - the gender and skin colour of a soldier model now matches their portrait, which makes them easier to tell apart. Hopefully in the next build the hair colour will also match their portrait.
  • Armour TU / HP Modfiers - armour now modifies the TU and HP of the soldier wearing it. At the moment light armour grants +10 TU and heavy armour grants +20 HP (as well as 20 Armour). 
  • Static Shot Costs - because armour now modifies TU totals, weapon shot costs for the different fire modes are now static costs rather than a % of max TU.
  • Debrief Screen Removed - the code for the mission-end debrief screen has been moved to the strategy layer, so it's no longer in the public build. Not much we can do about that, unfortunately!

There's probably a load of additional stuff I've forgotten to mention in the changelog, so just give the game a play and see what you think. A few things to mention on the negative side too:

  • Performance in the builds is still likely to be poor, because these are still "development" builds that allow you to send our error-reporting tool reports that tell us the specific line where bugs and crashes occur. Normal Unity builds have the code all smashed together, which runs much faster but doesn't allow us to pinpoint where problems are occurring. The performance of the game will be much better when we disable these "development" builds.
  • We know the grass etc is drawing over the move path; this is because we've temporarily had to move across to deferred lighting mode and the relevant UI shader only works with forward lighting. It'll be working again soon.
  • We know the AI is still pretty stupid. We needed the updated map editor with all the spawn meta data to be finished before we could even start work on it, and that only arrived relatively recently. It's one of our medium-term priorities so we'll likely start working on it properly in the new year.

Feel free to give the game a play and let us know what you think of the changes, and report any issues that you might be experiencing so we can fix them up for next week! :)

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don't know if i am supposed to reply here (probably not) but i would like to say that i personally am not a fan of the static TU to fire the gun change. because some guns will be able to be fired rediculous amounts of time while some will barely be able to fire at all.

i personally think people should simply be more aware of how the TU system works the moment get in. having a litteral hint saying: guns use a % of your soldiers TU. meaning TU lets your soldier move farther, but not shoot more often.

just to let you know though, still curious and interested to see the final product when it comes along.

Edited by jevry
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I gotta say, while I appreciated this update, there is one strange thing, the soldiers are shooting me!

I started, got my soldiers in position, I see a soldier and he shoots my soldier's leg, and I blow him the hell up after that, then, another soldier gets shot and game crashes.

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This is my 3rd game and I noticed that one of my soldiers, Bulldog, has brown hair in the portrait and yellow hair for the model, I also noticed that all of the xenonauts are the same for every game I guess, because it's my 3rd time playing and they aren't changing, although they do spawn in different places. I also noticed that the riflemen have more timeunits and the shotgunners, with jackal armor I guess, have a lot more health but have their time units decreased. I still have to go into the base, because I couldn't the other times

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2 hours ago, Fabevil said:

Well, this is the end of my third game, unfortunately I got shot by some kind of blaster and game crashed, I guess I'll never know

You might want to attach the "output.log" and "recording_X.rec"-files into your posts; this way tracking down the bugs is a lot easier to developers.
(( Yes, having the in-game crash / error-reporting tools enabled helps also. But more info is still better. ))


You should be able to find them via this path (if you're using Windows 10):

Libraries\Documents

Or alternatively you can use this path:

C:\Users\<you>\Documents\My Games\Xenonauts 2\Logs

(( I wasn't able to remember the exact "code" to automatically path to the current-user, so if someone remembers the "address", feel free to correct me. ))

 

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Anyways I too also got crashed after I got ambushed by second military-base-guard; the log-files can be found at bottom.

On a additional note, when I crashed, "Glasswire" (network-monitoring-tool I use) also notified that "Microsoft Windows Resource Leak Diagnostic" ("rdrleakdiag.exe") also made outbound internet-connection. Is this meant to happen, or was this crash simply that considerable?

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On a positive-note: I really like the "wall-scaling"-feature; it's something I (for one) rarely get to see, and it opens up a lot of possibilities (both level / prop-design and tactics-wise).

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output.log

recording_8.rec

Edited by Pave
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We'll look into those crashes then, sounds like that needs a hotfix. If they are as common as they sound then we should be able to reproduce them fairly easily at this end, particularly with the error reporting data coming in.

Fabevil, thanks for the feedback, there's a few things in there I can easily fix for the next update ... but perhaps limit yourself to one or two posts instead of seven next time :)

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