Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta V14.2 Stable Released!

[Chris]

After having released Closed Beta V14 on the Experimental branch and then doing two hotfixes on it, we're now pushing it out onto the default Steam / GOG branches as it has been a LONG time since we updated those! The changelogs for the three updates are pasted below.

We're expecting to release V15 in the next two weeks - if all goes well, it'll be arriving on Tuesday 17th November.

V14 Changelog Highlights: (Because there's been so many small changes, this post is just going to highlight some of the high-level changes that have happened since the last build!)

• Night Missions: the game now supports night missions, which work the same way as in X1 except the aliens now have differering view ranges at night. Psyons can see just as well at night than they can during the day, whereas Wraiths literally glow in the dark and are therefore quite easy to fight at night.
• Base Defence Missions: this system is now implemented and functional, but the assets for the individual rooms aren't set up (so you'll fight in a base with the correct layout but largely empty rooms). Base attack missions are now spawned by "threat", which accumulates based on the number of UFOs you have shot down. Defence turrets have now been added to the base and they can be upgraded via a workshop project when you unlock the appropriate weapon tier.
• New UFOs & Hull Hiding: we've moved away from the previous "grey box" UFOs and returned to the more visually interesting X1-style UFOs. The first five UFOs are in the game now, the first three being textured models and the two after that being blockouts. The hull-hiding system that we used in X1 where the floorplan of the UFO appears as soon as you see the interior space has also been implemented (and it proved *really* complex to do in 3d).
• AI Move Nodes: it's now possible for us to paint waypoints for the aliens that control their movement and facing. Currently these are only used inside UFOs and I haven't had a proper chance to test them yet, but they should ensure aliens are (usually) facing in intelligent directions to allow them reaction fire when you enter rooms. The system should also encourage the aliens to move around more within UFOs, so there should be more instances of aliens bursting into rooms or popping outside the front door than there was in X1.
• New Maps: as we've made some changes to the way maps load, I had to create a fresh set of maps. Each of the six crashsite biomes now has three different maps for the smaller UFOs and two maps for the medium-sized UFOs, plus there's three alien base maps and a raid map for each biome. This is the bare minimum number of maps to be able to play the game; we'll be steadily increasing the number of maps as development continues.
• Map Selection System: we've also implemented a system that tracks the maps the player has encountered and tries to select maps they haven't seen before, picking alternate Biomes where possible (based on the location of the mission). This should make the map selection less repetitive than in X1 and it should become steadily more effective as we add more maps (and possibly biomes) to the game.
• Combat - Level Height & Shroud: each height level in the ground combat is now 2.25m tall instead of 3m tall, as we found the taller walls were getting in the way of the camera. Objects in the shroud are now hidden too, rather than their black silhouettes visibily encroaching on the play area. Together these two changes make the maps feel less cluttered.
• New Art: there's some new art on both the strategy and the ground combat. There's a couple of new aircraft and UFO paintings on the Geoscape and we've found a new artist to paint the UI screen backgrounds; you can see a finished example of his art on the Soldier Equip screen and the other management screens are using layout sketches at the moment - but we're expecting to finish them in the next 6-8 weeks. You'll see a mix of old and new artstyles in the ground combat missions now as there's a lot of assets for us to work through, but now the game is becoming properly playable we're going to start spending more time polishing that up in future builds.
• New functionality:
  • Personnel are now unique per base, and in V15 bases will have their own engineering queues. It's now only items that are shared between bases (which we'll eventually get round to updating).
  • The first advanced dropship is now in the game and functional. This is currently using the Shrike design from X1 but we're planning to rework it to a new design.
  • The Quantum Decoder (i.e. Hyperwave Decoder) is now in the game and functional.
  • The Medical Room now improves the survival chance of your soldiers when built, and in V15 it will correctly improve their healing rate too.

V14.1 Hotfix Changelog:

• Fixed a crash when you clicked on an aircraft in a Hangar on the Base management screen.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when a MARS with a non-weapon secondary would attempt to reaction fire with it.
• Fixed a crash when you tried to initiate air combat with an Abductor UFO.
• Soldiers now display a HP bar above their head on the Soldier Equip screen if they are injured.
• Wounded soldiers no longer have their item loadout cleared once they return to base and begin healing.
• Made the boundaries of the air combat map a little more obvious.
• Soldier night vision on night missions no longer reveals the shroud beyond the  visually fades out in the same way that other light sources do.
• The Warden armour has been recoloured a light grey to make it stand out more, and it now has a 3d model (which is a recoloured version of the combat armour model) instead of displaying a pink error texture.
• The bomb on Alien Raid missions and the shadows of the MARS vehicles no longer display as pink error textures.
• Fixed the Boreal Raid map sometimes turning up as a UFO crashsite map.
• Ballistic LMG no longer shows the Ballistic Rifle preview tile below the soldier portraits.
• Bomber UFOs no longer spawn useless empty Wreckage sites when they are shot down.
• Light missiles travel faster in the air combat, making them more effective.
• Basic Tactical armour now grants no protection, Kevlar gives 20HP of armour and the Warden gives 35HP of armour.
• Alien magnetic weapons are now single shot instead of burst fire weapons, but each shot does more damage.
• Shotguns now fire 3 pellets instead of 4.

V14.2 Hotfix Changelog:

• Fixed a crash when upgrading the weapons on your aircraft in some circumstances.
• Fixed a crash where AI units with jetpacks (e.g. Gun Drones) can end up under the world and get stuck.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when destroying objects with explosives after loading a save game.
• Fixed a crash where shooting several aliens with a HEVY launcher could cause a crash.
• Fixed a crash when attempting to access the Soldier Equip screen on a secondary base that has no soldiers.
• Fixed an issue where the AI could get stuck in a loop when moving through a teleporter.
• Fixed an issue where MARS / ARES vehicles would be built without any armour after the player had run the armour upgrade workshop project (which would cause a crash if you tried to take it into battle).
• Icelandic outpost mission can no longer be a night mission.
• The Reaper cocoons in the Icelandic Outpost missions are no longer invisible.
• Fixed a technical issue that was preventing the dev team from being able to open save games provided by the community if the game contained a soldier with a Kickstarter backer custom portrait.

 

 

[Alienkiller]

Nice Chris. I´m Curious about Beta 15 with more improvementes and atm missing Things which were there in the older Betas, but not useable in them.