Jump to content

Xenonauts-2 October 2022 Update


Chris

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone - time for the monthly progress update. The big news this month has been the release of V24, which is now coming to the end of its testing period and should be released onto the default Steam branches in the next week or two (rather than being on the Experimental branches).

General Progress:
V24 seems to have been received well by our community. It's the first time the community has seen large chunks of our new UI and some of our improved combat environments, and the game has generally been tightened up in a lot of ways. It's now feeling increasingly solid - although there's still a lot of balancing and polishing left to do to make it a genuinely good strategy game that really rewards the time you put into it!

However, as the first public release we've put out in about five months, V24 had some stability issues and we've spent much of the month fixing them up. Although this is obviously very important work, it means we've not really been working on big new features on the coding side of things. However here's some of the things we managed to get in anyway:

  • The Research screen has now been skinned in the final UI style. The Engineering screen is next and I've spent quite a bit of time this month with our UI artist trying to finalise the design for that screen. We're pretty close to that being done.
  • Most of the tiles for the Arid biome for the tactical combat are now largely done, so the only remaining work on the environment art is the remainder of the Soviet Town biome and then a final visual pass on the dropships and UFOs. I'm working on the level design for the Arid biome at the moment so hopefully it'll be in V25.
  • I've written another ~8 research projects or so.
  • We've added a system so that the sell value of items can gradually decline as you sell more and more of them. I'm going to be using this as soft pressure to discourage players from grinding too many crash sites (doing so makes the game very repetitive), as the returns will eventually fall below the Airstrike / Bounty value of the crashsite.
  • We're working on smoothing the loading process so the game doesn't keep throwing the annoying "This game isn't responding" messages in Windows if you are playing in a window.

We're planning to start work on V25 relatively soon after V24 is released onto the standard Steam branches. The main feature I'm hoping to include will be the racial abilities for the various types of alien in the tactical combat, but beyond that we'll just be focusing on content and general balancing / polish.

Playtest / Open Beta:
As we want to expand the number of people playing the game and giving feedback / reporting bugs in preparation for our Early Access launch next year, we're going to be launching our Playtest branches when we release V25. These Playtest branches will be using the Steam Playtest function, which allows us to give users access to a free temporary version of Xenonauts 2 that will be deleted once the game enters Early Access.

This isn't going to be a proper open beta, as we'll only be inviting a few hundred people to join the Playtest with each update. We want a mix of fresh players and experienced players giving feedback on each update (as they tend to look for different things), and we know a lot of players will only want to play once and give some quick impressions / feedback and then come back and play properly when the game is done.

Unfortunately this means it's unlikely everyone who applies will get into the Playtest, as we've had quite a lot of signups already. However the picking is done randomly by Steam so if you're signed up you've got as much chance as anyone else - and if you're not signed up already, I've reenabled the signup button for the next two weeks. Just click the green button on the Xenonauts 2 Steam store page!

(I will however be making special exceptions for forum regulars. If you're someone who posts here semi-often and you'd like access to the Playtest, just post in this thread and I'll send you a Steam key when we do the first batch.)

That's everything from me until next month - thanks for reading!

Just to be clear - if you want to get into the playtest, please just post something here saying that you're interested.

Please don't post any of your personal details up, as I'll be DMing you a Steam key here on the forums when the time comes!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to be clear - if you want to get into the playtest, please just post something here saying that you're interested.

Please don't post any of your personal details up, as I'll be DMing you a Steam key here on the forums when the time comes. Wouldn't want anyone to get hacked!

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks. Sry about that. Nice catch. 

I have a few questions about the sell price curve. Will there be a minimum value that each individual item will sell at or will the value of those items eventually approach 0 if you would keep selling them? Also, will the value of those items eventually rise to their original value over several months of not selling?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a minimum value for each item, which I'll probably set at 30% of the initial price. And no, it won't rise back up over time.

But selling stacks of items sells the whole stack for the current price, so there is an advantage to stockpiling.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am very interested in playtest access.

I haven't posted before as I missed the Kickstarter campaign and haven't had access to early releases but I've been very consistently keeping up with development updates/release announcements, am very excited about the upcoming game and would love to contribute as a tester.

Thanks, CF

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hate to ask this, but it seems that the GOG contributors are sort of being left out. It not that I dislike steam, but I do love GOG. Fron what you have posted here I have to use steam to participate. Since I believe GOG cannot use the same testing process Can you address this please, 

Thanks

Glenn A Nicholson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I only just created this account a few days ago, but I am a (on and off) long time lurker.
I've played a lot of Xenonauts 1, the demo for 2, and lots of old and new XCOM; and would love to be able to playtest Xenonauts 2's playtest.
This is just in time since my annual itch to play Xenonauts has swung around.



 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello! I would love to be able to play test Xenonauts 2! I have played Xenonauts for a while and have been a long-time lurker on discord. I wasn't in time for the earlier play test but I'm willing and eager now!

Thank you for all the hard work you're doing!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello!
I've been itching for a looooong time to get going with Xenonauts 2, and I would have spent the money to do so willingly, but I think I missed the Kickstarter opportunity way back then. In the meantime, the only thing I could play was the combat demo that was up on gog.com.

I'm a long-term veteran player (veteran in the sense of "spent lots of time", not "has actual tactical wisdom") of the X-COM series. For me, it started with X-COM: UFO Defense that a mate from school introduced me to with a pirated bootleg version.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm a NuCom Veteran (around 1000 Hours in both XCOM EW and XCOM 2) and have played played both xenonauts and X-Division on the highest difficulty. I'm Interested in the beta, please invite me if you want an experienced player's feedback.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to participate in v25 open beta. Played a lot of Xenonauts, very new to this type of games but i very like it. Maybe i am not a veteran of xcom or something, but i guess to you maybe need someone  with new or fresh perspective. I do not like the new XCOM games because you nave no control over what's gonna happen ( everyone know the new games have hidden chances no matter what you do, like 80% hit chance is not always actual 80%). But Xenonauts is honest to the player and i like it. I know how to properly bug report. 

Thank you for what you do. Your games are amazing.

Edited by flaingfaer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chris locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...