Jump to content

Build V12 Released!


Recommended Posts

I started the download after getting home from work this morning, poked through my e-mail, and was surprised that it wasn't done yet. Then I noticed that it's 1.14 GB. Over a gigabyte!!! Yes, this remake has better resolution art and music than X-Com, but not *that* much better. Weren't sound effects back then often .wav files, for crying out loud? Also, I imagine that this code isn't optimized since it's just an alpha. I'll wager, however, that the majority of this bloat is just the cost of programming in a modern paradigm and for a protected environment.

I knew code had grown, but seeing this download really drove the point home for me. It's been quite a while since I've programmed last; what does "hello, world" run nowadays? 3MB? :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In poking around the folders (and I'm not an expert, so I'm probably wrong) it does look like there are a lot of duplicate files in various locations. I imagine that'll get cleaned up later on, if it's not necessary to have redundancies for some reason.

Now, if someone could tell me where to find the bit that has the "include female soldiers" part set to "on" so I could modify that ....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd look at the modding section. (pinetrees mod specifically... or any that modifies solders experience or names). There should be a way to determine the chance that someone is recruited from somewhere (nation). I imagine that females have some tag related to that that would make it possible to reduce to 0.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The size of the game has nothing to do with the programming. The art assets are the vast vast majority of the size as they are on all modern games. I think it could be reduced some, but the most common ways to save space would make modding more difficult and I think most people prefer the ease of modding right now.

Edited by ko2fan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, it's shaping up nicely. Little details such the Andron's heavier footsteps clanking away on the hidden movement screen made me smile, reminding me of that moment at the start of a UFO:EU mission when you were listening out for audio cues as to who you're up against.

I also think that with some tweaking, suppression could be a really really nice feature. Once the AI's more intelligent of course, as at present it's a little redundant (although cutting out their constant reaction fire is nice for a change!) The machine gun is insane at the moment though, it still seems to get kills even when the chance to hit is shown as 15% or thereabouts. Once it's balanced though, I can see being an integral part of my squad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yesterday I tried to test the new release.

I started Desura and got a virus warning on an Desura library file.

So I checked the file on VirusTotal.com, as it seemed to me it was a false positive.

No other antivirus on VirusTotal.com found a virus on the file, so I submitted it to the AV vendor as a candidate false positive.

I had to postpone testing the new release, though. I wanted to be sure everything was normal before starting up Desura again.

In around 6 hours the AV vendor confirmed it was a false positive and updated the AV definition files. Now I can open Desura without virus warnings, and everything is back to normal.

I will resume testing this evening.

I want to stress out that no Xenonauts file was involved in the problem. The problem was related to a Desura generated library.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I was going to wait for the final release but had a spare hour last night so downloaded the alpha, I wish I hadn't, this game is going to soak up all my free time. Awesome job guys I'm so glad I backed this via kickstarter, you're on to a winner without a doubt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We've now uploaded Build V12 to Desura and it hasbeen approved.

This build is not a public demo - we've added a lot of code since the Kickstarter began and while we do have an internal testing process, the Kickstarter demo went through several iterations to reach the level of stability that it had. Therefore, expect to find more crashes, bugs and broken features in this (and future) builds until we hit beta. This is simply because we're concentrating on adding new things at the moment, rather than fixing existing bugs. If you do find a bug, post it up in our forums so we can log it and fix it up.

So, without further ado, here's the full details of the build. There's been quite a few changes!

NEW FEATURES:

  • Female Soldiers: Female soldiers now spawn in the game, with female portraits and names. We need to do a little more work on harmonising some of the female portraits with the male ones (different artist) but overall the system has been pretty successful.

  • Custom Soldiers: Pre-generated soldiers (from Kickstarter) have been partially implemented. In the standard build the two pre-generated soldiers are myself and Kris Thaler (one of our artists) but you can view 15 other test soldiers drawn from the ranks of the highest Kickstarter backers in the debug version of the game. Unfortunately, playing the normal version will lead to you seeing a lot of me / Kris for now, as we’re the only two options when a pregenerated soldier spawns (10% of the time)!

  • Base Defence modules: These are defensive turrets constructed as base structures in your base. They fire upon attacking UFOs when aliens perform base attack missions on that base. If the UFO is not destroyed, the damage dealt will reduce the size of the attacking force.

  • Androns: These alien units now spawn in their earliest two incarnations. We’ve put them in the Quick Battle too. Basically they don’t act that differently to normal troops at the moment, other than being very tough, but as the AI becomes more advanced they’ll behave in a fairly unique way compared to the other species. There’s a bit more variety there anyway.

  • Dropship Destruction: It’s no longer effectively game over when you have your dropship shot down, as your soldiers can now survive a crash and be rescued by local forces. Troops now have a better than average chance of surviving a crash, but are likely to suffer injury while doing so.

  • Alien Bases: The tiles for these aren’t in place yet, but the code is now tested and in place. Bases are created on the Geoscape by alien construction missions, and all bases (existing and future) grow in size at predetermined AI ticker levels to scale with the invasion. There are two victory conditions in the base missions, either killing all aliens in the base (captures all equipment) or destroying the base power cores and aborting the mission (captures only the equipment brought out with you). Either instance results in the destruction of the alien base.

  • Suppression: The suppression system has been added to the game for preliminary testing. A unit becomes suppressed when enough bullets have been fired at him, with burst fire causing more suppression than single shots. The values are preliminary at the moment, as is the “suppressed” icon (a blue triangle with an S on it). Let us know your thoughts on this system though.

  • Heavy weapons: These have a 30% accuracy reduction if you move and shoot in the same turn (turning does not count as moving). The machinegun, rocket launcher and sniper rifle are the starting “heavy” weapons.

  • Mission Scoring: The mission-end scoring system has been updated. It now has different scoring for different mission types and different outcomes (victory / loss /abort) along with some tweaked values. This means the score awarded at the end of a mission should better reflect the actual outcome.

  • Soldier Hire: When you hire a soldier, you can now pick from a pool of 12 possible soldiers which is refreshed as you hire troops. This allows you to pick a soldier that suits the role you are hiring them for - though fired troops go back in the soldier pool to prevent mass hire / fire soldier cherry picking.

  • Manufacturing Materials: Most manufacturable items will consume either Alenium or Alien Alloys when built now. There’s no UI element that shows these requirements at present (that’ll be in the redesigned UI) but it’ll give you a pop-up if you don’t have enough.

  • Dropship Vehicle Icon: Vehicles on a dropship now have an icon on the Soldier Equip screen to show that they’re filling soldier slots.

  • New tiles: The Town tileset has had some new tiles added to it. There is now a set of tiles for a bank /office building that will be the first thing we get our dedicated level designer to play with, and the house walls have now been painted over, along with the house props and the shop interior props. This means they look nicer and have the visible destructibility in place now too as they have damaged / destroyed variants.

  • Launcher: This has been changed so it no longer has a Pre-Order link or refers to the game as a “Demo” (this was only to test the Kickstarter build). This should stop any future confusion arising where people buy the game and think they only have the demo version!

  • Reapers: These are the Xenonaut equivalent of Chryssalids. You won’t see them until the beta, but they are fully rendered, animated and I saw one zombify my troops for the first time a few days ago. Thought you might want to know!

BALANCE TWEAKS:

  • Overkill Percentage: The overkill percentage for UFOs (i.e how much damage they can take beyond 100% and still leave a crash site) has been increased to 130% from 115%.

  • UFO Behaviours: UFOs now fly in a straight line for longer before changing direction. This means they are both easier to intercept and look a bit more intelligent.

  • Geoscape Invasion Escalation: This has been smoothed out. There should be more UFOs at the start of the game, but their numbers should increase more slowly than before. There should also be less fighters relative to before.

  • Scout UFOs: These are now more dangerous at close range, but their weapons have a shorter overall range. The counter is intended to be a MiG with 4 Sidewinders, which will kill them from beyond their range and only take minor damage in the process.

  • Hidden Movement Camera: The Hidden Movement camera now focuses correctly on events during the alien turn. You shouldn’t have your units killed by enemy fire without seeing it now. It should also track long range shot impacts better than before.

  • Wounded Soldiers: The Soldier Development screen now correctly shows the HP of wounded soldiers at the end of the battle, rather than their modified maximum HP (after the damage) as it did before. It should also differentiate between Injured (can still participate in missions) and Wounded (confined to bed) soldiers.

BUGFIXES:

Geoscape:

  • The “Abort Mission” menu option is no longer incorrectly called “Abort Game”.

  • Funding money now comes in before wages and maintenance go out at the end of each month.

  • Alenium and other manufactured missiles should now be consumed when fired in combat.

  • UFOs now despawn correctly if they create a terror site.

  • Grounded UFOs will no longer be named “Crashsite-XX”.

  • Wounded soldiers will be moved to the Unassigned category on the Soldier Equip screen after recovering above 50% health.

  • Aircraft destroyed in transfer from base to base will no longer block hangars up after their destruction.

  • The Xenopedia is no longer visible in the background on other base screens in some circumstances.

  • The base selector icons should now be visible in all circumstances.

Ground combat:

  • Xenonaut reaction fire is now functional again.

  • Machineguns now reaction fire with burst fire.

  • Turning on the spot no longer triggers alien reaction fire.

  • Aliens are no longer able to reaction fire in directions that they are not facing.

  • Crouching soldiers now use a crouched injury animation rather than playing the standing injury animation.

  • The “Alien Spotted” icon will appear when viewing any camera level, rather than only on the level of the alien.

  • Destroying the vans on the industrial tileset will no longer crash the game.

  • Swapping weapons no longer reloads the clip in the weapon.

  • The neutral AI will no longer just spin on the spot several times per turn.

  • The crash caused by destroying a window and killing a unit at the same time has been fixed.

THINGS THAT NEARLY MADE IT: (and will arrive next build)

  • Smoke grenades: These are largely in the game but need a few more tweaks. They’ll be available in unlimited amounts and the smoke will reduce the accuracy of any units firing through it.

  • Custom Soldiers: These will be fully implemented in the next build, with all the Kickstarter data loaded in and a list of the soldiers so you can load yourself up in the game and check out how you’re looking!

___________________________

What about that ? -

Some ideas for engine -

1f76a57272c77dbf585a3c75f4d60b89.jpeg 4f570ac659ab64770c74ed23b2c26965.jpeg 10f032fb587abb547ba3aef248c60fa0.jpeg 3f8cd3db04ac806c6d862784a846d8fb.jpeg 77af26a819ad9561ade1f92e46d1fef6.jpeg 2c4fbe697a41ddb9f1ddc1f29b22e152.jpeg a9453ed9a25c1ce9e879ae90eb9d531b.jpeg a534c475c3cb3eb0ef5f192dc3ddd8dd.jpeg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...