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Xenonauts-2 Version 0.21.0 (Public Combat Test) Released!


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This version of Xenonauts 2 is a free public test build only available on GOG Galaxy, 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.  We're expecting to release an updated build in two weeks, on Tuesday 24th April. If you're interested in following the progress of the game please sign up for our mailing list here: http://eepurl.com/4FKe9

I've written a longer update on what we've currently been working on and our plans for the future (including our upcoming Kickstarter) in this thread, but we've mostly been concentrating on the strategy layer and other maps this week and thus the changelog is shorter than it has been in previous weeks.

CHANGELOG:

  • Performance Improvement: the previous build had some errant lights in it that we've since removed, which should boost FPS.
  • Destroyed States: Most objects now have a destroyed art asset, so they leave something behind when destroyed rather than disappearing entirely. Let us know if you see anywhere where this is missing or otherwise misbehaving!
  • Shooting Mechanics Updates:
    • The spread on "miss" shots has been effectively halved, causing miss shots to pass closer to the target. This means suppression is more effective and intervening units get hit significantly more often than before (and your soldiers look more competent).
    • Windows should now allow wider firing angles through them.
    • The block chance displayed on the shot path now does not display duplicate stopping chances if multiple objects fill the same slot (e.g. it won't display 40% three times if there's three different items with a 40% block chance in the same slot, it'll just do it once)
    • The shot path now highlights all blocking objects, but with the highest one in a brighter shade of red. This is an experiment and we may revert this change if it makes the screen seem too cluttered.
  • Stop Barrier: There's a new road barrier model floating around near the checkpoint on the right-hand side of the map.
  • Bugfixes:
    • Doors now open correctly again.
    • Fire is now appearing correctly in the build (although it looks pretty bad) - previously both fire and smoke looked identical.
    • Dead units are no longer highlighted, for real this time - this was fixed in our development builds but a shader issue meant the fix didn't actually make it into the public builds last week.

There's still some known issues that we haven't yet resolved in the builds - most notably all the aliens acting aggressively and rushing you at the start of the mission and some general shonkiness with regards to shot paths etc - but I think the build are continuing to improve and the addition of "destroyed" states for most of the objects in the map makes things feel much more realistic once things start blowing up.

For the next build cycle we're going to prioritise the AI aggressiveness fix and see if we can get the shot path stuff tidied up, and then maybe we'll look into the AI turn being kinda boring. If you experience any other bugs please let us know as we've only got two more builds left before our planned Kickstarter date and it'd help to identify any problems as early as possible!

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This development build was the first one I gave a proper play in several months and with my new gaming system (i5 7400, GTX 1070, 16gb RAM, SSD) and I must say I'm rather impressed! Go team!

The visuals look super professional and polished. I love how the environment breaks apart and small details like how the buildings' walls are made of two layers (interior and exterior). The new soldier portraits are looking really good. I hope you'll manage to do a proper random generator for those or at least make so many of them taht there won't be too many duplicates in one play through. Sound effects are a nice improvement over the first Xenonauts. The old music is still ok, but I'd love to have some new dark and ominous ambient tracks instead.

The map is great and a huge step up from the sterile look X1 had. The has this lived-in feel with lot's of nice little details. Prop selection makes me want to start mapping right NAO. :)

 

What needs to be improved (in random order):

 

-Switching weapons doesn't cost TU's. Is this intended?

-My sniper stayed invisible (just a shadow) for a while after jumping down from a roof.

-Kristina Petrova's portrait has a minor alpha bug in the left side of her hair (just nit picking, you know me :D)

-I absolutely need to have the old system back, where I can redirect soldiers as they are moving. (This is important!)

-Aiming should use the same cool and modern looking line as moving and not those old school squares.

-I'd like to have a number of each unit included in their quick selection bars to help selecting a correct one when using number keys.

-My guys should be able to shoot through a window when standing in an adjacent tile. Now they just unload their clips to the wall next to the window.

-Shotgunners might need a tiny close combat buff

-Grenadier feels maybe a bit OP but super fun to use.

-the old UI ,while good enough, looks a bit dated (still a place holder?)

-Even with my new rig, the game seemed a bit shuggy in places. I'm sure you've not optimized it to perfection yet, but at least opening doors and explosions made the game stop for a split second. Small thing, but annoying as otherwise the game was running quite smoothly. (I was running in 1440p and fantastic settings)

-AI is clearly a WIP so I'll let that pass, but I'd really wish they will come more unpredicable than in X1. (flanking, retreating, grouping, using higher grounds, and some times doing something that isn't part of their species normals scripting)

-A small personal gripe: The new Xenonaut logotype seems a "bit" over designed: you have the alien head as an "O", you have a yellow "2", you have a glow, you have a slanted hyphen AND you have the odd curved edges in the font. Just add some 3D effect, lens flare, color gradient and and it's perfect! ;) J/K, of course, but I would really drop the curved edges and maybe the alien head at least.

-Speaking of the logotype, it looks oddly low resolution/compressed in the menus and loading screen. Otherwise, everything looks top notch.

 

 

 

Edited by Skitso
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8 hours ago, Shoes said:

I think your links are messed up in your first paragraphs. The first link leads to the " Xenonauts-2 April & Kickstarter Update " thread, while the second thread is dead. 

Good spot, I've fixed those now.

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21 minutes ago, Skitso said:

<snip>

Glad to hear you liked it. I've definitely been noticing the slowdown on opening doors (LOS update) and on explosion (which I assume is the damage calculation) myself and we'll be looking into those. Your other stuff is helpful feedback too, thanks.

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3 minutes ago, Chris said:

Glad to hear you liked it. I've definitely been noticing the slowdown on opening doors (LOS update) and on explosion (which I assume is the damage calculation) myself and we'll be looking into those. Your other stuff is helpful feedback too, thanks.

I was just editing my post to add few things so please read it again as you probably missed a couple of important points.

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I realise now that after moaning last time that I couldn't jump down from the higher level, I didn't even do that this time. Sigh. Although I did check the pathing for that action so I feel okay. 

First time I played it, seemed to be fine but it crashed, the last thing I saw were some damage/stun numbers appearing above an alien corpse that was under some smoke (it had just been grenaded). I think I had the report log enabled but other than that I can't help.

Second time, no crashes. I pick up on a few bugs:

  • At one point I could target and hit an alien who was several tiles deep into the unrevealed map
  • Another alien I grenaded to death didn't have the death motion and remained in a standing position for the rest of the game

I've got screen shots of those but they not particularly informative.

Third play, I started messing around with the settings. I found that if you up the gamma you can see the unrevealed map in something akin to 8bit colour. Also you can set the contrast so low everything is grey - I mean, it is not a bug or anything but that is a niche audience you're looking after there. After playing with the settings some more, I pressed enter to confirm changes but instead it ended my turn i.e. the hotkey was still affecting the game outside of the menu. Then, when I was done being silly with the graphics and carried on playing, all of the character portraits had turned to low resolution images.

That is about it for bugs, the rest that follow are just observations:

  • The top tile of the floodlights can be seen from far away so that block sits in the unrevealed map looking a bit odd
  • You can't move your soldiers diagonally between friendly units, can make things a bit awkward - a 'switch places' option would be great!
  • In previous games, if clicked to turn round without enough TU it would turn you as far as possible, just makes a clunk noise now
  • The eye option to show fog of war also makes some walls dark
  • No image for medkits on the soldier
  • In the optional overwatch screen, you don't have any info about the soldier firing, e.g. what gun they have etc. I grenaded myself.
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File was 543K bytes not the usual 1+ gigabytes.  My opening screen still says version 20...not 21....but the gate appears so it must be the new one.  The guard shacks roof remains up even when ALL the walls have been destroyed.  Had most of the problems (the first time crash and the bugs) that Ninothree reported.   But I did not mess with the settings.  Never seen the entire map because the game ends before I get that far.  Hopefully the all out attack by the aliens will end soon so I can explore the whole map.

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33 minutes ago, Larry Burstyn said:

File was 543K bytes not the usual 1+ gigabytes.  My opening screen still says version 20...not 21....but the gate appears so it must be the new one.  The guard shacks roof remains up even when ALL the walls have been destroyed.  Had most of the problems (the first time crash and the bugs) that Ninothree reported.   But I did not mess with the settings.  Never seen the entire map because the game ends before I get that far.  Hopefully the all out attack by the aliens will end soon so I can explore the whole map.

Oh damn, looks like I forgot to update the version number. Knew I'd forgotten something!

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BUG

notdead.jpg

The alien above is dead. I cannot remember if it was a GL explosion or a rifle shot that killed it. One of the two. It had already taken some damage and was suppressed. As you can see, it's still standing!

BALANCE SUGGESTIONS

The SMG carried as an alternative for heavy weapon and sniper troops is a better CQC weapon than the shotgun mostly because it is much, much more accurate. I have tried a variety of things to bring the shotgun up to scratch without making it a duplicate of the SMG, but the only things I have found so far that made the shotgun more of a viable weapon was to increase the number of pellets from 3 to 5, and the suppression damage to 20.

The sniper rifle does not feel like a sniper rifle. The defining aspect of a sniper rifle is its accuracy, and in terms of that, it feels similar to the basic ballistic rifle, even when using scoped. I put aimed from 105 to 165, and scoped from 165 to 200 and it felt much more like a sniper rifle after those changes. 

Finally, combat armour feels like all risk, no reward as it's coupled with the shotgun. I increased the HP bonus to 35 as that felt a better balance.

 

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Tested the V 0.21 and here is my impression of it.

Overall i like it

TehLike's:

  • The 3d space is actually really well done, it gives the X1 feels a lot, with much added details
  • Menu is really cool in 3D space
  • Camera rotation is extremely good vs X1 :cool: (since X1 had no camera rotation duh :p)
  • Xenonauts logo in menu, i like the design, simple and effective

Encounters:

  • I've been able to throw a grenade across the map by aiming at the tile the alien was standing on
  • I've been able to shoot at aliens with 0% hit chance by aiming at the tile they are on, the LOS was clear its only that they were far away
  • Reloading triggers overwatch (I'm assuming its intentional)
  • Crash when civilian entered helicopter
  • Aliens were quite accurate even with obstacles like fences
  • Shooting LOS line is kinda outdated as someone mentioned (those squares man)
  • Using stun baton on alien made him disappear (hit the blue alien he disappeared so i had to shoot the tile he was on and he died and reappeared)
  • Alien shot his own buddy that way in the LOS between him and my own soldier

The don't like's:

  • Aliens look extremely muscular and bulky, that design doesn't really look terrifying inducing, and they look to humanlike
  • Those fences are hard to deal with, they give me the feeling like im shooting through walls rather than fences

Dem general thoughts and suggestion's:

  • High ground could give a slight accuracy bonus and cover bonus when climbing on roofs (because everyone knows that high ground gives +3 ;))
  • Maybe make the fence's behave a bit differently, currently they absorb too much shots, thats how i feel at least
  • Grenades throwing could have added bonus if throwing over fences and walls (accuracy or ignore block of walls and fences etc.), since their range is limited (blue alien ate 2 grenades to the face and lived)
  • Mainly speaking for the older country map, it felt mostly flat due to the terrain being BLOCKY, sharp cornering or no actual gradual elevation, it would be great if a similar elevation would be possible like Xcom terror from the deep, but only for those country maps, and not city maps
  • Xcom 1, i remember that UFO CRASH TILES were a No/Go due to complications when discussed in the forums way back, since now we have 3D space would it be possible to implement that now, can CRASH tiles be implemented, maybe even have UFO's crash into houses, barns etc. ?
  • I miss the Vehicle a lot actually, its an asset that we who defend the planet could really use (Would be interesting if the vehicle had to be manned by actual soldiers from your pool, since tanks cant climb ladders you'd have the crew exit vehicle and climb ladders and help other soldiers with medpacks and such if necessary ;))
  • For variety sake and cool factor, maybe think of a way to let the crew come in by APC (armored personal carrier) example LAV-25, maybe in terror missions where its extremely dangerous from alien weapon's fire (you come in by helicopter at the edge of City with APC attached to helicopter, crew exits helicopter and drives in the APC from edge of city to the terror location)
  • Is it possible for the LOS fog to have a gradient ? its not a night map so i don't know :D
  • If there is a set amount pool of recruits that are unique, would it be possible to have a MODE (like ironman mode) that randomizes your recruit pool, stats and everything ?
  • When moving, it might be helpful to have a transparent overlay around your soldier that displays where you can move if you're standing to weird terrain or props on the map, something akin to the "grenade explosion tile overlay"
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2 hours ago, Dragosh said:

<snip>

 

16 hours ago, Max_Caine said:

<snip>

 

On 4/11/2018 at 6:51 PM, Ninothree said:

<snip>

Thanks for the detailed feedback guys, I'll have a look through it and try and pick out any stuff we easily can fix up for the next release. I don't really want to talk too much about new mechanics right now because we're about to reveal a whole load of new stuff in the next couple of weeks, so it'd be best to do it after that.

Max, I think you get an award for being the first guy to mod Xenonauts-2 :)

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4 hours ago, Chris said:

Max, I think you get an award for being the first guy to mod Xenonauts-2 :)

It's a credit to the team that the .json files I can get my hands on in /template/ are intuitive and well-written.(So long as you know how OO works, anyway). I wish I were savvy enough to know how to unpack the generated files in /assetbundle/. Looking at the manifest files makes me drool. :)  

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Hi,

just few issues I ran into with the current version:

- mission doesn't end after last alien killed by reaction fire from friendlies - remains in friendly phase, no interaction possible

- agents supposedly in cover (next to window or door) are hit repeatedly by aliens from fields in straight lines behind the cover, but cannot hit them from their standpoint - need to move into window or door tile. 

- soldiers are hit inside doors when aliens are in straight line of wall with door around corner of house ?!

Otherwise I  really appreciate the progress with the test versions.

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Eventually I was able to play a public release again.

Fullscreen: 1280 x 800, Quality: Fastest
Not yet dared to play on higher resolution...

In general:
- Aliens are incredible acurate and tough.
- Sniper is not really good at higher ranges.
- Grenades by hand and launcher are much better now, the soldiers are able to throw even over fences (occasional not but that is ok) and hit the targetted spot rather nicely.
- The camera rotation is back to 90° steps. Why? I want the free rotation angle back!
- Changing the path of a moving soldier would be really good again (as Sisko mentioned above). Although "space" stops the movement, but still want it.
- Large light posts are not covered by the fog of war in Hidden Movement phase, looks odd.
- Sniper on the roof, view on ground, sniper moved and is half-invisible until the move ended.
- The random number and start positiones of the aliens is good.

- Had a crash once a shotgunner got on the roof of the large building in the north of the map and Hidden Movement started (I think it was recording-7, enclosed below).

Pictures:
Smoke looks really good, also the illumination effect on it. A praise to the animator who did that.
But why is metal and glass smoking so long, feels too hollywood to me.
(Yes a bit nitpicking here, I know)
smoke.jpg.e36ddf6ae4500184d08c540f4a008320.jpg

Something good here: The wall is destroyed and has holes. You can see through it and see the things behind it, great. Even better is that the same holes are there from the inside and you can look through them as well, fantastic.
Hope once the alien walls are inside, the holes will go through them in the same way.
wall1.jpg.918d9f3a366282ca3c3ef794d0e0a3ca.jpgwall2.jpg.e2eb0ede437b6c7186cd54db3b84dfcf.jpg

Now the annoying issue of soldiers not able to hit with their trained weapon:
1) Alien in fron of the shotgunner. Best TU option used twice but he can't hit it. Alien kills him with one shot.

missed shotgun.jpg

2) The shotgunner below missed two times after that alien came out and killed the one soldier (dead on the floor), alien was suppressed though. Rifleman got to him and shot with best TU option, missed. Then with second best TU option and missed again.

cant hit.jpg

3) Two times the machine gunner has the chance to kill this alien, but legendary fails. *sigh*

5adb4d10cb61e_canthitatall.jpg.fa8729600e878fa83d091eece4122767.jpg5adb4d17b5afa_canthitnever.jpg.4e84cb0098c3671fc7d6c5fe619e112b.jpg

Here the recordings:

recording_6.rec

recording_7.rec

recording_8.rec

Edited by thixotrop
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This update is a really good one, finished the mission. It was a challenge but overall a much better experience.

The good:

- The new shooting mechanics are an unbelievably great change.

- I do not know why, but the mission feels slightly more forgiving now.

- The performance bug (or whatever you might call it) with the rotor blades is barely noticable severe.

- The bullet holes left now after firing makes the battlefield look quite awesome, now that the soldiers hit in the general proximity of their target.

The bad:

- Shotgun is still quite bad, it's useful inside buildings, but that's the extent of it. As someone else said above, the SMG is a better choice at every junction except perhaps point blank range and even then...

- The Sniper has a somewhat short range it feels like, and it's not too accurate either.

- Those darn fences with their block chance really mess my day up, I can only suggest lowering their block chance a bit :)

The ugly(?):

- Every time you destroy an object, especially bushes there's a short freeze.

- The end turn button is very red, it's hard to even see the hourglass on it. If I tab out and tab in again, I can see how the button is supposed to look but then it gets red again, maybe an issue with my screen?  Almost looks like a sort of eye adaptation effect when you tab back in again.

- Smoke effects created from destroying objects can be highlighted by the same effect that highlights an object blocking your line of fire. Minor bug as the smoke disappears and you have to be fast in order to see the bug. I can post a screenshot of it if need be.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Giving the sniper slightly longer range and higher accuracy will help it become more effective than the normal assault rifle. The shotguns could get more pellets or they could get their "normal" mode as their snap shot mode and a second mode where they fire two shells instead of one. That would make you have to reload more often but increase the short range deadlyness quite much. Here's a clip demonstrating what made me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3GNMH7hdU4

Another neat thing would be different sounds for the guns, though I'm guessing it's already thought of, it's just not a priority in these public tests since they're just a combat test.

Looking forward to the AI fix next patch. Good progress so far, especially with the trajectory changes. The soldiers definitely look like they'll slightly less moronic before dying!

 

When Max said he changed a few files to fiddle around with the accuracy, damage and such I thought I'd try doing the same. I changed the sniper like he did, and it did indeed feel more like a sniper. Though I think the TU cost could be changed. I tried making the new two-shot mode for the shotguns as well, putting the TU cost at 24, accuracy at 45, shot delay at 0.5 and I tried using the higher pellet count as well with 5 pellets. I lowered damage to 18 though but changed the long range modifier to 0.3 (higher value = better right?). Quite fun to tweak the numbers a bit just to see how it looks and feels. I definitely think that the more pellets part would be great, it looks more shotgun-y! :) Just need to be careful to not make it overpowered.

Edited by DaReaperZ
Some spelling
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On 4/21/2018 at 8:16 AM, DaReaperZ said:

The bad:

- Shotgun is still quite bad, it's useful inside buildings, but that's the extent of it. As someone else said above, the SMG is a better choice at every junction except perhaps point blank range and even then...

 

I've advocated for either increased shotgun damage, an SMG, or a machine pistol since the first Xenonauts.  That said, the shotgun should be great inside buildings and devastating at really close range.   00 shot from a shotgun has the same hitting power as a 9mm round and a single shotgun shell holds nine of them.  So, going strictly by "reality" it should be like unloading an entire pistol at the target instantly.   The other two weapons are basically just fully automatic pistols with the SMG having the advantage of being easier to control and having a larger clip.   The machine pistol does have the advantage of being a one handed weapon, but would nearly useless at anything beyond very short range.

Edited by StellarRat
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