gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) I've put this together as a one-stop shop for the release history, because I got sick of trying to work out what was fixed when (if indeed it had been fixed!). So hopefully searching this thread first may answer some questions (i.e. "Have they fixed XXX yet?"): use the Search Thread option top right of this post, or CTRL-F......... Note #1: All content below has been sourced either from: Desura>Xenonauts>Changelog or The Announcements and Progress sub-forum and are therefore all Chris's words.... However, any mis-associations of content to the wrong version are likely mine! Note #2: This is NOT a bug reporting thread. Posts like "Air combat still not fixed in 14.1" or whatever belong in the Bug reports sub-forum Edited September 5, 2012 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V17.9 - March 14 2013 NEW FEATURES 1) Updated Launcher: We have put the new launcher in the game. This looks much more professional than our old one, and has a number of new features: Cross-Platform Compatible: All versions of the game will now have a launcher. Previously the poor Mac guys didn't get one (making it difficult to change resolutions). RSS Feed: You no longer have to keep checking our forums to see if a new release is out, as the launcher has an in-built RSS feed for this forum. Save Game Location: You can change the save game directory of the game using this button. Disable Stat Tracking: Xenonauts collates anonymous stats on all players so we can use it for balancing purposes. If you don't want it to do this, you can now opt-out with the tickbox. Crimson Dagger novella: Under the "Extras" tab, you can find Lee Stephen's prologue novella, Xenonauts: Crimson Dagger. AA disabled: Anti-aliasing used to be on by default in the old launcher, and it is now disabled. This has no real positive effect, but on small (laptop) screens it made the Geoscape look horrendous. If this affected you, it is now much sharper. Sweet Title Animation: The alien fleet orbiting menacingly above Earth is now animated. Feel the fear in real-time. 2) New UFOs: The game is still not fully balanced for you to play to late game, but we have final landed UFO graphics in place up to the sixth UFO type (although the hand-painted floor is not yet done for that one). The final UFO will follow in the next build, along with the first damaged versions. The later ones are seriously, seriously big. 3) Wall Transparency: There's now a 2-tile transparency aura around all Xenonauts and visible aliens, which should make it much easier to see enemies. It's not infallible as it doesn't work for props at the moment, but it should be much better than before. 4) Updated Research: There have been updates to the research tree: The Xenopedia is now a Geoscape pop-up rather than the full-screen thing it was before Jackal armour and Hunter armoured car are now researchable (Hunter at the same time as the MiG, Jackal from the Alien Plasma Pistol) A lot of the research descriptions have been updated. I think all the early-mid game projects have research descriptions now, the only ones that don't are those in danger of being merged. There's a number of new or updated Xenopedia images, including the first three autopsy images. These are proper guts everywhere stuff, just like the original. There's now a pop-up after each research project is completed, telling you about anything new unlocked and giving you a link to the research screen. There's also a pop-up when new workshop projects become available as a result of a research project finishing. 5) Improved AI: There's been some boost to the AI, so aliens should be better at taking cover now. We're not far from a big improvement, but GJ can't turn on the planning layer yet because there's a crash bug in it that he can't find. Hopefully in the next build the code will all be done and it'll just be ongoing behaviour tweaks. 6) Rendering: We've ripped out and replaced the previous rendering algorithm, which was struggling with multi-tile objects and would cause incorrect draw order in some cases. The new one should fix this. Took a while to sort that, sadly it's a sort of invisible thing but believe me when I say it's a big improvement. 7) New sprites: I've done a lot of rendering recently. We've added new civilians to the Soviet Town tileset, and added female civilians to both types of terror site. I've also re-rendered about 95% of all of the Caesans and put them in the game. Previously their sprites had inconsistent lighting from the different directions and had some setup issues; these should now be resolved. 8) Maps: Didn't make as much progress on this as I hoped, but I've added 2 new maps for the Light Scout to each tileset. There'll be many more in the next version / beta. Also, we've harmonised the dropship maps across all of the different tilesets. As a result, all the dropship maps are currently in a parking lot whatever the tileset. This is a temporary thing until we get some code in place to let us overlay the dropship shadows on whatever ground is underneath it, which will be in place in the next build. 9) Usability Improvements: We've made a lot of improvements to the usability of the game. This is not an exhaustive list, just what I can think of off the top of my head. Also, there will be plenty more of these before beta. Geoscape: Alien Invasion research is already in progress when you start the game Second tileset world mask in place, letting us have some randomisation of tileset even if UFOs are shot down in the same area each time "Go to XXXX" pop-up windows on completion of vehicles or aircraft Soldier Equip screen selects the dropship category rather than Unassigned by default The F-17, MiG-31 and Chinook aircraft have been renamed to their Condor, Foxtrot and Charlie designations respectively. This is consistent keeping with later technology designations. When an aircraft reaches a waypoint, the notification now also has a "Return To Base" button. Ground Combat: Reserved TUs can now be used to shoot with. This is an optional toggle in the options, but is set to allow shooting by default. The Alien Spotted graphics have been updated to look slightly better. Also, the icon for an alien that has been spotted by the team but is out of the current soldier's LOS is now orange, rather than 60% transparency red. This should make it clearer. Grenade Selector (right click on grenade quickslot) now closes correctly when you click on a grenade to select it, rather than having to right-click on the quickslot again to close it 10) Balance Changes: We've done quite a bit of balancing, though this is only limited to the first couple of months (there's been too many bugs or issues recently for me to get too far into it). More will follow next build. Geoscape: All difficulty settings are now identical. I don't want there to be any discrepancy in the game balance that could be caused by difficulty settings at this stage (we'll balance them later). Aforementioned Hunter / Jackal made researchable, so are no longer starting items. Starting cash reduced to $500,000 Starting soldier squad reduced to 10 men Monthly maintenance and salary costs reduced Starting monthly funding much reduced Workshop build costs and build times much reduced Workshops / Laboratories have 15 working space, Living Quarters now hold 35 people Bases are now 6x6 tiles instead of 7x7 Invasion / Air Combat: Longer between UFO waves Missiles achieve lock much faster, so they are effectively able to fire from longer range Cannons now correctly fire at anything that enters their fire arc, rather than having to achieve lock first Scout UFOs are now Small, while Light Scout UFOs are Very Small. Thus you can tell immediately whether to deploy a Condor or a Foxtrot against them. Foxtrot no longer made of glass. Cooldown reduced on evasive roll for both alien and human side, making alien fighters more adept at dodging missiles Scout UFOs slower than before, now the same speed as Condors (but a lone Condor will not defeat a Scout) Ground Combat: Accuracy penalty for moving and shooting with heavy weapons increased to 50% from 25%. This makes sniper rifles less overpowered as they are much less mobile than before. Machinegun ammo a lot heavier than before, 3kg instead of 1kg. Aliens have much better stats then before, with the Non-Combatants in particular getting a major boost. Should be more frequent spawning of aliens outside the UFOs now. BUGFIXES Game no longer crashes if you're not connected to the internet. Wages / maintenance no longer deducted before your new funding arrives at month-end. Reaction fire should no longer interrupt actions / animations (so reaction fire should not stop burst fire after one shot etc) Soldier Roles now remember armour correctly. Base defence turrets upgrading correctly again Clicking on the Xenopedia description text no longer makes it turn orange Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V17.6 - Feb 12 2013 NEW FEATURES AI Update: there has been an AI patch. This is not the long-awaited Deep Blue-esque master AI patch, but you should notice the difference (basically, the aliens now actually try and kill your guys).I know this has taken a long time to materialise but we should be making good progress on the AI now. The improved intelligence here is as a result of the aliens having their decision code in place, so they can and are analyse the battlefield situation and reacting to it. Their decisions are still crude; everything else now is just tweaking this and adding higher-level co-ordination so it works better.GJ’s writing an article on it too, which should explain in more detail what has been put in and what happens next. That'll be due some time this week. UFOs: Aaron has been working on the new UFO models, and we’ve put the wall-hiding system into operation. This is not perfect yet, but you can see it in action in this build. The Light Scout has been set for all maps with the final (landed) model and the final floor.There are still bugs in the system. There are visual issues with the doors and the props inside the UFO (it's an issue with multi-tile rendering basically)…but once those are ironed out, it should look awesome.You may see Middle East maps that contain the placeholder UFO models and layouts. These won’t work perfectly yet either. You might find the scale of some of the later UFOs fairly impressive though!We’ll have the UFOs sorted out by beta. We’re not that far away on that front. Research tree: I’ve been working on the Research Tree, on and off. I’ve written about 45 of the research project descriptions now, with another 30 or to go. The entire research tree should be in this build, but the mid-to-late game has not been balanced at all. A lot of the end-game equipment is actually worse than the stuff that came before it for that reason. Wait till beta before pushing too deep into the game. Logging: The automated data logging should now work, hopefully. The “disable logging” switch will be in the new launcher, which will be in the next build. BUGFIXES Hopefully V17.6 will be the most stable of the V17 series builds, with the Geoscape crash being fixed...but as always, we'll have to wait and see! V17.5.2 - Jan 21 2013 BUGFIXES This is a further update for Build V17.5, (hopefully) fixing most of the crash bugs in the game.V17.5.1 - Jan 4 2013 BUGFIXES Patched the Ferret-driving-through-the-wall crash bugV17.5 - Dec 30 2012 NEW FEATURES Updated Level Editor: The entire level generation system has been updated. The sub-map / level distinction remains (with separate editors for each), but the Level Editor is now much upgraded. It now has a layer system, with Ground, Wall, Prop and Building layers, each of which can inherit ground tiles from the layer below them if they don't have them set.Previously if you wanted a map with a field with a tree in it, you had to create a sub-map with both of those in it and edit it if you want to move the trees - plus it wasn't visible in the level editor where the trees were, because the entire sub-map was one entity. Now the trees are on a separate layer you can move them direct in the level editor with a couple of clicks, or place new ones equally easily.We've also added colour coding so it's much clearer which tiles represent which sub-maps, so snow maps appear white and grass tiles green etc. This makes generating maps pretty easy, actually, maybe give it a try. GCLevelEditor.exe in the game directory. More Maps & Tiles: We've added some new maps, though not yet for the Middle East or Soviet Town tilesets. There'll be more for beta obviously, but the headlines are that the Base Defence missions should now work properly (if you can get far enough in the game for it to happen) and the Desert tiles are now all set up correctly, so the maps for them should work properly now.We've also added trees to the Arctic tilesets, which make the maps less empty. Also, animated water tiles for the Arctic tileset. Oh, and the Industrial tileset has had a bit of a facelift - some trains in that now.Quite a few tiles haven't yet been painted over in 2D, so they're just rendered tiles. The paintovers will happen in time. New UI: The new Geoscape UI topbar has been added on all of the management screens, and the new Ground Combat UI has been added. These is the final UI style, and we've made the images for the ground combat interface quite a bit sharper (the weapon images etc) as before there were issues with image scaling. This should no longer be the case, so unless you were lucky before and had a good resolution the images should be sharper than before.We've also made the Main Menu screen text scale with resolution, so having a big monitor no longer makes it totally unreadable. The entire UI will use that system when we finish implementing the new look, obviously. Desura file compression: This has compressed a bunch of game files into archives, which will reduce the file count for the game by about 75%. This means the Desura auto-updater should work properly again, and also means that moving or copying the game folders will be dramatically faster than before.The file compressed version will be only be used when the player is downloading from the Desura auto-updater client. Those downloading using the standalone will continue to have the full-size version with about 100,000 files in it. This is because the archive files can't be opened by programs like WinZip etc and thus the contents cannot be accessed by players - closing a lot of the game off to modders. Thus if you want to mod the game, get the standalone.This will not reduce the audience for mods, though, as the game will search the /assets/ directory for pre-existing files before loading them from an archive. Someone with a compressed version of the game will be able to use a mod if they are sent the modded files and put them in the correct directory structure. Slight Balancing: The starting UFOs (Light Scout, Scout) should have a few more aliens in them to make the early missions more challenging. The previous numbers didn't really factor in the fact that a lot of aliens died on impact. More Sprites: We've added sprites for an entire alien race to the game, plus the sprites for all of the Xenonaut vehicles are now done too (meaning all the Xenonaut units are now in the game).We've also redone the Light Drone so it doesn't look so much like a Tau gun drone, as I don't want to risk a lawsuit. It's now animated as well. We've also modelled and added the big brothers of the Light Drone (also animated) so the alien vehicles are complete. We might add some new ones in beta, but these are all we have planned for now.There's one more major alien race to add (currently rendering), plus some tileset-specific civilians and one minor sub-species of alien. Not far to go. Autohide Roof: Buildings now have roofs on by default. Going inside or behind a building will make the roof disappear so you can see your units. This works pretty well but there is some strange behaviour, which you should report on the forums so we can have it working as intended for the beta. Online Data: This build hopefully will contain code that passed anonymous information to our servers to let us know various information on the game balance - how many people use various weapons, how many people win a given mission etc. We don't know if this is working or not, but if your firewall tells you Xenonauts is trying to pass information to an external source, this is why. It'll be really useful to give us stats we can use to balance the game. V17.1 - Oct 24 2012 BUGFIXES The _basebuilt.xml has been updated so you no longer start with too much technology, and the alien base no longer spawns at the start of the game. The civilians and friendly AI soldiers have been disabled on the Farmyard map to prevent the crashes from occurring. I think we've fixed the code bug at our end now but I'm not willing to take any chances any more. V17 - Oct 23 2012 BUGFIXES HOPEFULLY fixed the Farm map crash bugNEW FEATURES There are no major changes except a whole load more alien sprites have been added to the game. These were cut out of previous versions to save file number and file size but it may be that some of these missing sprites were causing the crash. Thus, I've left them in this time around. There's also a few sprites for the Xenonauts with alien weapons now, but I'll discuss that in the next update. There are a few small amendments in the code for the overdamage mechanics but they've not been tested properly yet and may well not work, as they've not been fully implemented. This is why I don't like releasing builds like this, but the stability issues are forcing my hand. V16.1 - Oct 17 2012 BUGFIXES The Farm tileset crash should be fixed. This was happening at the end of the turn on the Farm tileset, and was caused when civilians moved and tried to vault over a wall. Their vault animations were missing, so the game crashed. I've updated their settings so hopefully this should no longer happen. Invisible units: On the Desert, Arctic and Middle East tilesets, there were missing units. These were either civilian or friendly AI troop units where the sprites hadn't been rendered out yet. The updated sprites will be coming in V17, but I've added some placeholders there now so at least it's obvious what unit is meant to be what. There should be a lot more variation in the civilians by V17 though. Middle East maps: The Middle East maps weren't done when we released V16, but they were still loading up. Therefore people would occasionally get unfinished maps, or maps where they couldn't get off the Chinook. I've put together a (basic) map for the Middle East now, so you can at least have a taster of how the tileset might look when the game is released. It will also prevent you getting completely flat and open / broken maps for the tileset (arguably more important). V16 - Oct 13 2012 NEW FEATURES AI model: This is the big improvement in V16. GJ's updated AI model now allows aliens to share information and LOS with each other. This means that aliens will now be able to fire on Xenonauts beyond the sight range of the shooting alien if it is in the LOS of another alien, and they will be harder to sneak up on without reaction fire if a Xenonaut unit has been spotted. They'll also try to avoid standing in each others' line of fire. Psionics: There's also been some improvements with regard to psionics. The aliens should now use them (though you probably won't encounter psionic aliens in this build), but they're also limited to being used on humans in LOS of the alien team. General shooting priority for the aliens should be a bit more sensible now - they'll prioritise more dangerous units (Xenonauts) over harmless units like civilians etc. New tilesets: The way we're making our tilesets means that none of them are actually finished yet, but we have now made enough progress on the Arctic, Desert and Middle East tilesets that we can build basic maps out of them. I've not had time to add the maps for the Middle East tilesets yet, but I've put together a couple of maps for the Arctic and Desert tilesets. In both cases the tilesets are far from finished - they don't have their (waist high) cover props in place yet, and a lot of tiles haven't been painted over or fully set up in the game, and the UFO crash sites use the Industrial tileset art - but they should still be fun to spend a bit of time playing with. As I'll mention in our beta plans update in the next few days, I expect to make a lot of progress on the tilesets in the next month or so. Soldier Role Badges: On the Soldier Equip screen, there are now some big red squares next to the soldier rank icons. These are placeholder icons for the soldier role badges, but the full functionality is there. Clicking (or maybe right-clicking) on the badge will let you equip a soldier with the default loadout for that role, or to change the default loadout for that role, or to change the soldier role. Please test this thoroughly; the coder thinks there's plenty of scope for it to be full of bugs. BUGFIXES Critical Time progression won't work after savegame loading Ground combat loaded from savegame did crash during first alien turn Advanced medipack disappeared when entering ground combat Loading savegames from October 1st shouldn't crash anymore (This is a "not sure if really gone" one, but for now it seems to be fine) Farm maps loading is fine nowMinor ones Dead soldiers could resurrect if dropship was shot down the way home Soldier were counted wrong in base management screen & techincians count incremented on hiring new soldiers Recovery time prediction for wounded soldiers in the after mission screen was usually wrong, should be more accurate now Soldiers disappearing while moving to base floor of a building Choice menu for near targets on geoscape did left the game paused if closed pressing escape Then, a lot of invisible work that should reduce occasional crashes, particularly in ground combat. Not to mention that a lot of mis-set/broken tiles and sprites have been corrected, so we should see less misplaced objects in ground combat. V15.1 - Sep 22 2012 BUGFIXES Issue on some of the Chinook maps where you can't disembark the vehicles from the front entrance as there are invisible spacer tiles in the wayV15 - Sep 21 2012 NEW FEATURES Friendly AI troops: All friendly AI troops are now in the game for all tilesets except the Desert tileset. They have a variety of weapons, some unique, and many of them will level up as the game progresses and get their hands on laser weaponry. You can take the weapons off their bodies and use them in battle, but they disappear at the end of the battle. AK47: The AK47 has been added to the game and there are also sprites for this for all of the Xenonaut armour types. Some people will want to loot this off the friendly soldiers and others may want to mod it in, so now there are the appropriate sprites there too. It's basically the same as the normal rifle, but with a bit less accuracy and a bit more power. It reloads using normal rifle mags. Sprites: We've added the power armour Xenonaut sprites, so basically it's just a few alien weapons Vehicles: The Ferret and future vehicles now have a shadow and explode when destroyed (cosmetic, no damage). If the shadows look misaligned, I'll be fixing that today. Geoscape Selector: If you click several objects that are close to each other on the Geoscape, you now get a pop-up menu asking you to select which one you intended to target. Just like the original X-Com! Shooting over crouched soldiers: You can now safely shoot over crouched friendly units in ADJACENT tiles the shooting soldier is standing. If the soldier is 1 tile away, you have 50% the normal chance of hitting him, so I think it's probably a net 20-30% chance of shooting him in the back of the head. Draggable Windows: The pop-up windows on the Geoscape (the UFO detected or interception windows, for example) can now be dragged around the screen if they're obscuring something important. Realistic Lightmap: The lightmap now changes with the seasons (it updates every 10 days). This means we've moved the start of the game forward to September so the lightmap starts pretty neutral. Not something I was overly bothered about myself, but Giovanni put it in for you guys Burst Delay: There's now a seperate "burst delay" function for weapons in weapons_gc.xml. This controls the length of time between shots in a burst. The "burst" function controls the length of time before the first shot is fired, and is used to synch the soldier animations with the weapon projectiles appearing. Previously both attributes were controlled by "burst". Chinook maps: There's now a NE / NW / SE / SW map for the Chinook for each tileset except the Terror Site town. Linux Version: A Linux version of V14.11 is currently being set up on Desura. From when I get back, the Mac and Linux releases should be a bit more proven and we'll keep them synchronised better with the Windows versions. BUGFIXES Strength gain bug Aliens no longer run inside solid objects. This was caused by a pathfinding bug that meant if the player couldn't see an obstacle, it didn't exist. That meant the AI was pathing through / into them and then getting stuck when the player revealed that part of the map. Civilians and friendly AI troops now spawn again. Ground combat saves should work correctly again. Massive strength gain bug should be fixed. Suppression system is per burst, rather than per bullet fired in the burst. Lieutenant and Captain are no longer incorrectly switched in the soldier rank progression. LOS bug where you could see on floors below where your soldier was standing are now fixed. Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V14.11 - Sep 7 2012 BUGFIXES Strength gain bugV14.1 - Sep 4 2012, 9:43am BUGFIXES Now the weapon impact animations (explosions, bullet plumes etc) should be playing properly.V14 - Aug 28 2012, 1:10am NEW FEATURES: Soldier Equip screen tooltips: There is now updated tooltips on the Soldier Equip screen. Previously mouseovering an item would just display its name, but now it gives some detail of the weapon and its battlefield role, then lists its important stats. This is intended to make the game easier to use, but also to allow us to streamline the research tree as less vital gameplay information has to be conveyed through research with this arrangement. Researchable weapons with unlimited quantities: Previously any weapon set to Unlimited quantity would appear right from the start of the game. However, we've added a few tags to give control over this - we can now set items to be UnlimitedOnResearch, which means they appear in unlimited quantities once triggered by research projects. We can also disable items with research projects too.The reason we have done this is to let us make certain weapons such as the Stun Baton appear in infinite quantities once the required research has been completed, saving the player the need to manufacture relatively specialist and mundane items. It also allows us to do "upgrades", for example after researching a live Sebillian the player will recieve the Advanced Medpack in the place of the Medpack. This is also available in unlimited quantities, so disabling the normal Medpack is useful as it has no further use once the Advanced version arrives. AI: GJ (our AI developer) has been hard at work on the AI. He's committed some of his work to this version of the game and the AI should be a bit better than it was before. Don't expect anything fantastic, but hopefully it won't be as spectacularly stupid as it previously was. Air Combat changes: We've made a few changes to the Air Combat code. First of all, the battlefields now scale with UFO size. The earlier UFOs now have smaller battlefields than before, and anything larger than a Corvette has a larger battlefield.We've also added proper hitboxes. These are limited to being circular, but they still give a much better representation of the size of the UFO once you reach Corvette / Landing Ship sized UFOs and upwards. Before missiles and cannon shells only counted as hitting the target when they reached the very centre of the UFO, but now they will cause damage on the edge. This means that cannons will fire at a longer range, and makes dogfighting a bit easier. UFO Rebalancing: There's also been a couple of updates to the UFO weapon code, which has allowed us to add short-range defensive turrets to the UFOs. The Corvette now has some. The Landing Ship also has some defensive turrets, and has been made a bit less tough - but now it packs a bit of a surprise too. Fighters should once again be able to dodge missiles too. New Maps: Adam, our level designer, has got back from his holiday and finished updating various spectres and started work on some new maps. His first three are in the game now, all of which are for the Industrial tileset. We've got a new map for the Light Scout, Scout and the Corvette. I think they're looking pretty good and hopefully the number will increase steadily from here on in. Psionic Powers: The alien psionic powers have now been implemented. This won't be of much use until the AI is sufficiently intelligent to make use of them, but the code is now done. Hypervelocity Projectiles & Windows Accuracy Calc: The "% to hit" calculation displayed on the cursor with a weapon selected has now been updated to take into account the penetration power of hypervelocity projectiles and the ability to shoot through windows. This means that if a weapon has enough power to shoot through a wall / window and hit the unit behind, the cursor will no longer display 0% to hit the target but will display the actual hit percentage. The random element of damage in the shot (+20% to -20%) means that occasionally this will not happen, but it should work most of the time. Bleeding Wounds notification: Following feedback from the community, the duration of the "XXX Soldier has sustained a bleeding wound" notification at the start of the turn has been increased by about 50%. Let me know if it's still too short to read. Geoscape Icons: Terror Sites now have a red Geoscape icon and alien bases have a pale blue icon, differentiating them a bit more clearly from the black crash site icons. V13.2 - Aug 10 2012, 11:11pm BUGFIXES This disables the editor functions in the game Hopefully fixes the air combat retreat crash May also sort out the Desura MCF problems some people are having . V13.01 - Aug 2 2012, 6:42am BUGFIXES CTD on ground combat loadV13 - Aug 1 2012, 6:47am NEW FEATURES: Shooting over cover: When a unit fires a weapon, any cover in the adjacent tiles is disregarded for the purposes of the accuracy calculation (provided it does not have 100% stopping chance, which would mean it was a solid object such as a wall). This means that it is now far more advantageous to take cover, as your soldiers will no longer fire their weapons directly into objects only a few inches in front of them. Bleeding wounds: There is now a 20% chance every time a soldier takes 10 HP of damage that he will suffer a bleeding wound (with one injury capable of causing multiple bleeding wounds if it does 20HP damage or more). The bleeding wounds will cause 2HP damage per turn until cured with a medikit. If a soldier has a bleeding wound, you will be informed at the start of the turn how many they have and how much HP damage it has caused. You can LMB click to skip this message if you don't care. Three day delay: Now when you purchase equipment (vehicles / aircraft) or personnel, there is a 3 day delay before it arrives. For the vehicles / aircraft, they will fill a hangar or garage slot in the meantime and the game will show a counter until they arrive. For the personnel, any personnel in transit will appear in (brackets) after the number present at the base, and they will fill living quarter space while in transit too. Collapsible buildings: These are now in place. If you shoot out a certain % of the structural walls on a particular level, all walls on that floor and floors above will be destroyed and units within killed. Only a couple of the buildings on the Town (quickbattle) map have been set up to use this, but it does work. It's the responsibility of the level designer to update this for all the tiles and he's currently on holiday, so they'll be updated for the next build. Soldier Medal system: for soldiers has been added and is functional, so soldier qill be awarded medals after battles. However, until we update the Soldier Equip screen to the new UI we'll not be able to display the medals on the Geoscape. Combat Shield: This seemed to be very popular on the forums and it's now in the game. The combat shield will block 80% of incoming fire from directly in front and 65% of fire from diagonal directions, and will block no shots from the side or rear. It has 120 HP and is destroyed when that reaches 0.The renders for this are in progress and are not yet in the game, so only the idle frames for the combat shield with the ballistic pistol are available for the basic and Jackal armour so you know it is there (more will follow in the future). Also, for some reason I can't make it appear in the Soldier Equip screen so it appears by default on the pistol soldier in the Quick Battles and on the Geoscape if you keep him armed with a pistol. It'll work normally in the next build hopefully. Flashbang: This is in the game and is starting equipment. They're grenades that don't do any damage but have 60 suppression damage and can be used to suppress aliens if you want to approach them for some reason. C4 Charge: This is in the game and is starting equipment. Probably needs a little more work in terms of graphics and UI but it should work. Let me know how you find it. Customisable Soldier Advancement: The rate at which soldiers gain stats and ranks is now customisable in gameconfig.xml. I've increased the advancement rate by between 50%-100% in most cases, as I felt it was a bit slow. Also, we've changed strength gain so that soldiers gain it based on how many APs they spend when carrying more than 80% (this may increase to 90%) of their max carry weight rather than the somewhat overcomplex system we had before. Alien Clip Conversion: Instead of selling alien clips after a battle, once Alenium is researched clips should automatically be broken down into 2 Alenium each. In future builds, alien grenades will also be worth Alenium too. Middle East and US Desert tiles: these are in the game, but there's no maps for them yet. The ground tiles should be largely complete for them unless we decide that we need to add hills (which we may), but to an extent I'm going to let the level designer see what he can come up with.The Middle East tileset is an Arab-style desert, and the US Desert is a US / African style desert with a more red palette, using a sort of abandoned airbase theme. The buildings are done in tersm of 3D tiles, barring the hangar which we're currently working on, but the props will be done later and the 3D tiles still need to be painted over. New Music: we've added a few new music songs to the ground combat and remixed the air combat music slightly too. Power armour: this isn't in the beta, but the power armour now only uses designated weapons. Which is good for the beta, when you will get to play with it V12.11 - Jul 3 2012, 8:25am BUGFIXES MAPS spawn correctly.V12.1 - Jul 2 2012, 10:01am NEW FEATURES: Animated Tiles: We’ve added support for animated tiles in the ground combat maps. This will initially mostly be used for alien technology (it’ll be a visual representation that something is valuable and should not be destroyed) but we’ll roll it out as widely as possible before release. The UFO Power Source tile inside Scout and Corvette UFOs is now animated. Morale System: The morale system has been expanded a bit, so when troops suffer a “morale event” they will either panic and lose all their Aps, drop their weapon and flee, or go berserk and fire off their weapon. The system can now be customised by modders. It’s been tweaked so troops should be a bit braver too, hopefully it’s not gone too far the other way. Pre-generated soldiers: All the Kickstarter soldiers have been added to the game and can be accessed by anyone. Instructions on how to do so here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/f...d-Soldier-List EMP Damage: We’ve added EMP damage to the game. This is a third type of damage (along with normal and stun damage) that can be set for weapons and it only affects robotic units and vehicles. The only early-game weapon that causes this is the stun baton but there will be dual stun / EMP grenades in the beta. Smoke Grenades: These have been added to the game. They are starting items and available in unlimited amounts, and when thrown they generate a cloud of smoke in the blast area. This smoke will reduce accuracy of anything firing through it. Smoke now only causes stun damage to a unit once per turn, instead of every tile they walk through causing a new stun damage attack. Hypervelocity Projectiles: if these projectiles strike an object, they will do enough damage to destroy it and will then continue down their flight path until their damage potential is exhausted (so you can potentially shoot through a building and out the other side). The first example of this is the AP rocket, which is a starting rocket launcher ammunition type, but more powerful weapons that use this will appear in the beta. Windows: There are now designated window tiles in the submap editor. Any projectile that strikes them is temporarily counted as a hypervelocity projectile, so it will do enough damage to shatter the window then keep flying along its flight path. So you can now shoot aliens through windows. Delete Save Button: There’s now a “Delete Save” button on the Load Game screen, so you don’t have to have old saves cluttering up your display! Female Soldier Spawn Rate: This is now customisable in gameconfig.xml (search “femaleSoldierChance” ) so if you want a team with more or less women you’re free to do so. BALANCE TWEAKS: The suppression values for all the weapons have been tweaked so roughly 20% less suppression is caused by all weapons. We’ve added a check to the suppression formula to prevent friendly units close to the firing soldier getting suppressed (this “safe” radius around the shooter is the same width as suppression the radius of the weapon). Alien non-combatants have increased bravery to stop them getting suppressed far more easily than alien soldiers. Their lighter armour means they’ll still be a bit easier to suppress though. The Hunter / Ferret armoured car should now correctly cause suppression. The ballistic machinegun has a significantly higher burst fire cost now. Smoke and all gas types now only cause damage once per turn, either when the unit starts a turn in it or when they first enter it. Moving into further tiles of the same gas type will not cause additional damage. Moving into further tiles of a new gas type will apply damage from the new gas type though. BUGFIXES When shot, female soldiers should now have female injury / death sounds. Less CTDs, hopefully. Unfortunately Matthew is having computer problems so I don’t have a full bugfix list but I think we’ve fixed the major CTDs from the last build. V12 - Jun 18 2012, 10:41am 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. Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V10.21 - May 8 2012, 2:00am BUGFIXES UFOS should fight back (fix up the bug of alien UFOs retreating every time they appear in the air combat). V10.2- May 7 2012, 10:29am BUGFIXES Loading a saved game should no longer screw up the Research tree The double-weight bug after missions should now be fixed The Hidden Movement camerawork has now been improved. AI controlled units should be displayed for the full duration of their move when they are in the LOS of the Xenonauts, and the camera should no longer cut away before Xenonaut units die if they are killed by enemy fire. There's still a few tweaks to make on this front but it is dramatically better than before already. AI units don't spin on the spot quite as much any more Alien Power Source research now has an image associated with it. The Chinook now has 50% more speed and 12% more range than before. The Industrial tileset new props (the outdoor crates etc) now have damaged and destroyed graphics too. V10.1 - May 4 2012, 4:15pm NEW FEATURES: Aircraft Scatter Laser has been put in the game. It is unlocked after you complete the Heavy Laser research and is an upgrade on the standard Cannon. Terror sites should no longer appear as vast open expanses of grassland. They should use the same map as in the Quick Battle. Corvettes now have floors. These are Farm floors and won't suit the Industrial maps much, but it'll look better than before. Flares should now have 0 weight. Missions should use the Industrial tileset as well as the Farm one now. Research times have been reduced a bit. Scouts now replace Light Scouts a little earlier. The weighting of Air Superiority missions (fighters) to Research missions (Scouts) has been increased in favour of the Research missions. New bases now cost $1m to build instead of $1.8m. Building maintenance costs for Command Centre and Hangar have been reduced. Soldier, Engineer and Scientist wage costs have been reduced. Alenium missiles are cheaper and quicker to construct than before, as are Alenium torpedoes. Alien Alloys are now worth $3,000 each and Alenium is worth $5,000 each. Corvettes now contain Alien Alloys. BUGFIXES Aliens should no longer spawn in the walls of the UFOs. Crashed UFOs should spawn as well as undamaged Landed ones (this will only apply to the Light Scout, as that's the only UFO with both tilesets for now). Actually, this is largely moot as I've disabled landing in the public build because it was causing bugs. It's fixed anyway. V10 - May 2 2012, 7:58am (Kickstarter Press Build)! BUGFIXES & TWEAKS Alien Light Drones (we need to come up with a better name for them than that) now have a less powerful weapon, so they can't one-shot your Ferret any more Ferrets now have better ballistic armour and are less vulnerable to damage to Xenonaut small arms (friendly) fire Hidden movement loop should be stopped. It was caused by aliens running out of ammo and then trying to fire their weapons anyway. The Alenium grenade sprites should be displayed correctly Basic Armour troops with Shotguns should vault walls correctly Ferret should now have its LOS returned to normal. New props for the Industrial tileset have now been painted over in their undamaged forms. Toggle Roof now defaults to being off rather than on, which should reduce confusion Tooltips in the Air Combat now have appropriate line breaks so are a more reasonable size Typos and errors in the Xenopedia have been updated Various mis-set tiles have been updated V9.5.1 - Apr 29 2012, 10:04pm BUGFIXES Various mis-set tiles have been updated The manufacturing projects should now be set up so they are categorised correctly and no longer all have the laser pistol image The Alenium grenade should now be equippable and should display its name correctly in the manufacturing Bombers and Heavy Fighters now have weapons, so should actually fight you. Try to avoid letting the bomber hit your aircraft with its main cannon (there won't be much left afterwards)! The Light Drone in the terror missions now explodes properly rather than turning into a Caesan. It looks pretty cool actually, I'm quite pleased with it. Still need to add an injury animation for it though. Ferret should be a bit more resistant to ballistic weapons. Frag rockets and Alenium grenades should now use nice explosion graphics rather than the old placeholders. V9.5 - Apr 27 2012, 9:35am BUGFIXES Hidden Movement AI loop fixed (we think) The new grenade explosion is now accompanied with new (thinner) smoke, and grenades no longer cause fire I've added the basic tiles for Corvette UFO maps, though these are not complete. We need to update the ground tiles. Attacking a Corvette crash site should no longer cause crashes though. A whole bunch of sprite animations have been added. The Wolf Precision Laser should no longer cause crashes, the Caesan Soldiers are aligned correctly in their tile now, grenade throw animations should display correctly now, as should the animations for units hopping over fences. Machinegun-equipped troops should have their correct sprites now too. Equipping an alien weapon should no longer cause a crash, though the soldier will appear as unarmed Various tile updates to fix problems where you could walk through walls etc. If I've missed any, please report them. UFO fighters should no longer "crash into sea" whereever they are, instead they should be "destroyed" (they don't spawn crash sites). In /assets/weapons/ballistic there are a bunch of alternate weapon tiles. These include Soviet variations on the starting weapons, and unused Cold War weapons we drew up before deciding on the starting weapons we currently use. If you're a budding modder, you may find them useful. Xenopedia display bug fixed, so images should always appear for research projects where they exist (which is for most of them). Xenopedia typos corrected. Town civilians are no longer invisible. The "Full Demo" now lasts slightly longer before expiring and the Scout craft spawn a little bit earlier. V9.4 - Apr 23 2012, 12:09pm NEW FEATURES: We've added a new launcher window to the game. This is a bit ugly, but in terms of functionality it is a big improvement. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, the game will remember your screen resolution from game to game, so starting up is less of a pain in the ass (resolution can be set in the Options screen). Secondly, we've added the Quick Battle function, which will load up a Terror Site immediately after you place your base. This is basically for people who want to try the combat but don't want to go through the early game to get there, but hopefully you guys will enjoy it too. This feature will not be in the final version of the game. A new alien type has been added to the build, a light combat drone that appears on the Terror Site. The animations are not yet all there for it (nor are the SFX) but they will be before the game comes out. In terms of role I think these drones will come into their own a lot more once we implement supression, plus the AI to go with them. They're intended to harass the player at long range with inaccurate long-range rapid fire weapons, but without suppression they don't really have their own niche yet. Still, I like them. They're kinda cute in their own way. We're working on a nice death animation for them too, which should arrive this week. The Xenopedia has several new research images in it, and should display better than before. The only major issue with it is that the text is still being cut off prematurely. I need to look into that in a bit more detail, as it's a problem with the game engine rather than anything that our programmers can do anything about. I've spent a little time on the Title Screen, scaling up the text and formatting it better to make it easier to read. There's still a problem with the text scaling here though so on a large monitor it'll still be largely unreadable (though better than before). I've added some new maps to the game, and I'll try to expand them a bit so there's more variation. The Light Scout maps are smaller than before now, though the Scout maps are the same size. Should be better than before though. Obviously you can check out the (still WIP) Town tileset too by clicking on the Quick Battle. There's some new props floating around on the Industrial maps though, and I've designed them to have fewer buildings than before. The MiG construction images should be working well now. There's three images that show the progress of the construction. There's a new grenade explosion, so now it's a bit smaller than the massive explosion we use for the rockets and explosive scenery. There's also a new plasma-type explosion for the alien grenades, but they aren't throwing them yet so you're unlikely to see it. BUGFIXES We've put various bugfixes in place. These include fixes for building the MiG causing your engineers to disappear, or your money to vanish. Also, UFOs should display their size correctly now. Previously they were always displaying as Medium irrespective of their actual size. There's also been a pretty major fix to the accuracy formulas. Previously shots were missing targets, but not scattering properly and so not deviating from their original shot path. This led to shots "missing" but frequent still striking their intended targets, effectively making weapons much more accurate than intended. Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V9.31 - Apr 17 2012 BUGFIXES Fix the game starting in a window and skipping the launcher. Fix a bug where the game crashes if you open your inventory above an alien corpse (as the alien plasma clip images were incorrectly set) Add a new image for the Alien Alloys research. V9.3 - Apr 16 2012 NEW FEATURES: We have implemented a new Xenopedia screen that pops up when a research project is completed. This still needs a bit of work in terms of text scaling etc, but we'll have it done for the weekend. It is also not currently displaying the full research text (about 80% of it) so they end a bit abruptly at the moment. The tech tree has been fixed so you can once again access Wolf Armour and Laser Weapons, and it has been expanded to include Alenium Missiles and Alenium Torpedos for your aircraft. The Alenium Grenade has also been added but I've not set it up in the game so it'll still be identical to a normal grenade until the weekend. Autopsies have also been added but don't give the +10% damage bonus yet. The air combat now has a contextual menu that can be activated by right-clicking on any interceptor. This pauses the game and allows you to issue them commands without using the sidebar. The air combat has been made marginally more balanced. Expect Corvettes to cause you some headaches when you encounter them. Aircraft and vehicles now fill hangar / garage slots when construction begins have a WIP construction image. In the next build there will be three images that the game cycles through that shows the progression of the construction. You now have to go through the Soldier Development screen at the end of a ground combat mission, as a lot of people didn't seem to know it existed. This now displays the Wounded / Injured days correctly after combat too. The game now has an Alt-Tab icon. A terror site is generate at 475 on the ticker. This is still incomplete but will hopefully be complete by the weekend. The game ends at 550 on the ticker and shows a congratulatory screen. It also asks you to buy the game - this is just a test for the public release of this build. BUGFIXES Ground Combat: Ground Combat can now start fter loading the auto save. Weapon reload sounds added to the game. Correct recovery time for injured / wounded soldiers will appear on the soldier development screen after ground combat missions. Climbing stairs will work properly in the barn. AI: AI is no longer ignoring vehicles on ground combat missions.Geoscape: Equiping different rockets to your MiG will no longer cause the game to crash. The notification can now be cancelled if large numbers of buildings were completed at the same time. Fighters above ground will no longer "crash to the sea". An alert window will appear if you cannot manufacture a plane due to not having a free hangar slot. The game will no longer crash if you attack a landed UFO that has taken off again. The game will no longer crash when tailing targets on the geoscape. The chinook will no longer float above the target crash site after loading the auto-save. V9.2 - March 26 2012 NEW FEATURES: There's a new air combat GUI that has been (mostly) implemented. We still need to do a few more tweaks on it, both in terms of visual and code issues, but it's nearly done. Key new features are: spanky new visuals, a throttle control that allows you to speed up / slow down aircraft, tooltips and more visual feedback on which weapons are ready to fire and when. We've added a Toggle Roof button on the ground combat UI which you can use to display buildings at ground level, which should be useful if your soldiers are behind a wall and you can't see that. We'll look at getting this turning on and off automatically but you'll have to do it manually for now. You can now manufacture the MiG-32 once it has been researched. You need an empty hangar slot to do this. You can move soldiers, vehicles and aircraft from base to base using the new "Relocate" button on the Soldier / Vehicle / Aircraft Equip screens. UFOs should now contain the correct research materials for you to be able to construct laser weapons and wolf armour again. Friendly AI soldiers will now appear on the Industrial tileset. They don't do anything yet. We'll plug them into the AI for the next update. BUGFIXES The crash in June has been fixed up. V9.1 - March 12 2012 NEW FEATURES: AI is back in. A new UFO has been added, the Light Scout. This is slower than weaker than previous UFOs and can be shot down by a single F-17 (it is set up to be shot down after two Sidewinder hits). As such, the MiG-32 is now researchable (although for the reasons mentioned above, not yet manufacturable). The research project Alien Invasion has been added to the start of the game. This is the trigger for the MiG research becoming available. New ground combat tile have been added for the Light Scout that has landed or crashed on the Farm tileset, and the Scout crashed on the Farm and the Industrial tileset. The new Chinook tiles have also been added. New ground combat UI has been added. This is still a WIP but includes an improved AP Reserve slider which shows the shot costs next to it, a Quick Reload and Quick Grenade throw button. Tooltips are also partially implemented. Units in the Chinook will now automatically re-arrange themselves to accommodate vehicles instead of simply blocking the vehicle assignment if there is no 3x3 space present. An extra copy of the select circle now appears above the head of units on mouseover, making it easier to select and identify units behind walls. Weapons now have reload sounds. Soldier portraits will repeat less frequently. We have added new tiles for the Chinook and new tiles for the crashed Scout, although this is currently only present on the Farmyard tileset. We will roll out additional UFOs in the next few weeks. Buildings now display roofs until you have a unit inside them, irrespective of camera level. There’s still some teething issues with this system but we’re working through it. You can now modify the construction times and maintenance costs of buildings in /assets/buildings.xml, and building maintainance costs have been significantly reduced. The alien invasion AI can now be balanced – the AM_ file in /assets/ allow you to specify which alien UFO types will appear flying the mission at what points. UFOs are now less likely to immediately flee from combat when attacked with superior numbers of human craft. BUGFIXES Ground Combat: The camera is no longer restrained by the edges of the map on the Farm tileset. The random crash associated with reaction fire has been fixed Air Combat: Interceptors now move at correct speed when fightning against corvettes The ”Invisible Fighter” issue (where the icon sometimes did not display) should be fixed. Geoscape: Undetected UFOs will no longer spam the game with UFO Detected notifications if they attack Xenonaut craft. Interceptors will now detect alien bases as soon as the base enters radar range of the craft. Selling items on the store screen no longer results in an extra item being sold. The Intercept window will no longer appear in duplicate if you intercept a UFO using the Intercept button Miscellaneous: Pressing the ESC button will now correctly take you to a higher level of the menu Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 5, 2012 Author Share Posted September 5, 2012 (edited) V9.3 - Apr 16 2012 NEW FEATURES: GEOSCAPE: Launch menu: We've implemented a new launch menu when you attack UFOs / Crash Sites. It'll look better with the new GUI, but essentially now you have to select a destination before the window appears, and then the interceptors are sorted by proximity of bases and an ETA is provided to the target as well as various information on the craft readiness levels. Interceptor Engagement window: We've implemented a new window that appears prior to attacking an enemy craft. This gives you the information on your interceptors, including the amount of time (in seconds) they will have in combat before they have to disengage due to low fuel. It will also show an image for each UFO taking part in combat, so you have a better idea of what enemy types you are taking on in combat. Training System: This was actually released in V8.9 but that's only because we'd already coded it when we did some emergency bugfixes. Basically it allows you to send new recruits away for a week or so in order to give them a small stat boost and promote them to Coporal (where they don't cause a morale penalty to the troops around them as newly-recruited Privates do). Alien Bases: The basic code for these has been added. I don't think you'll be able to play long enough to be able to get to them yet, but they are there. I think attacking them causes a crash because we're still working on linking them with the ground combat, but if you see a little house icon appear on the Geoscape then you've found an alien base. Obviously development on them will continue over the next couple of months. AIR COMBAT: Relative Positioning: We've added code so the UFOs and Interceptors will now appear in the air combat in the position and headings that they had on the Geoscape when the combat was launched. This may mean it's a bit tricky to shoot down Scouts now, so we might have to do some more balancing with this. But it should make air combat a bit less predictable than it was previously.GROUND COMBAT: Farm Tileset: We've added the Farm tileset to the game with a couple of maps. This is actually the default tileset used when another tileset can't be found, so you'll probably see quite a bit of it. It's still a work in progress, but it looks quite nice. The barn tiles haven't yet been painted over and are in their bare 3D form, but they'll be updated shortly with prettier versions (if you see Mechanicus floating around the forums, he made them). Also, there's not really any props in the maps yet besides walls, fences and hedges. They'll come with time, but we're concentrating on getting the foundations for the different tilesets done first as they are the hard bit. Industrial Tileset Visual Update: We've also redone the ground tiles in the Industrial tileset. It's still the same map you've collectively played thousands of times, but it looks quite a lot prettier now. I've set the game up so any combat in the northern hemisphere uses the Farm tileset, and any in the southern hemisphere uses the Industrial. Sebillians: We've added the Sebillain aliens to the game too. You should be able to encounter Sebillian Noncoms and Guards in missions - UFOs will either contain them or Caesans early game. All UFOs are now generated with their crews on the Geoscape, so if you play later in the game you'll likely encounter UFOs full of what appear to be Caesan non-combatants. These are the default sprites for aliens not added to the game yet. If you start seeing them, you've played too far into the build... Loading Times: The ground combat loading times used to be pretty extensive - it didn't affect me too badly as I had a solid state hard drive but I think they were pretty shocking if you didn't have one of them. We've significantly sped up loading times by tidying up the code required, putting a texture atlas in place for each tileset, and stopping the game pre-loading all possible unit animations. This has reduced loading times to about a quarter of what they were previously. The only tradeoff is if you see a very slight pause before the game plays an animation - this may happen if it is the first time the animation is played. It shouldn't be noticeable, but that's the price you pay for not spending 3 minutes looking at the load screen. Tileset-specific Civilians: We've now got three different civilian types for both the Farm and Industrial tilesets, instead of the single office worker spawning everywhere. Each tileset has its own library of civilians to ensure consistency. The number of civilians will expand as development continues. Fire System: There is now support in the game and terrain editor for flammable items. As yet we don't have waist-high grass in the game, so there's no massive firestorms caused by detonating a rocket in a field of hay, but the code is there for it. A unit will take 30 damage on entering a tile with fire in it, and 30 damage if he starts a turn in a tile that is on fire. This is mitigated by armour's incendiary resistance. I'm not sure the pathfinding has been updated for this though - please post up bug reports if you see troops merrily strolling through an inferno and getting injured as a result. Soldier Sight Ranges: These have been increased by about 50-60% to be more in line with X-Com. Lots of complaints about how short they were previously, and I think you guys were right. The game is a bit more enjoyable this way. Shadows: Units now have them. We'll probably implement different shadows for the aliens and civilians though, as these have been made to suit the Xenonaut units and their stances. They don't necessarily match the other units in the game properly. MISC: Modding: You can now mod the game and be confident the Desura autoupdater will not wipe out your changes. The game will now preferentially read files from a folder in your documents (same place as your save games) rather than its own file structure if told to do so. Therefore if you want to change the stats of a weapon, you'd keep weapons_gc.xml in that folder and the game will give you the option load that instead of the one in its own files. There's a couple of options at the bottom of the launcher that are linked to this - if you're not interested in modding the game, just ignore them.BUGFIXES Ground Combat: Night combat maps should no longer appear when it is not night-time. Pressing "I" in the inventory screen will now close the inventory view. Menus are once again accessable on the Ground Combat maps (just press Esc). Hotkeys can now be used after making a save game. Crash caused by rearranging items on the inventory screen is now fixed The unclickable soldier / 'ghost soldier' issue is fixed Sending a soldier to battle armed with a Precision Laser and Wolf armour will no longer cause a crash. Geoscape: Extra scientists no longer appear if you load a save game when a research is in progress. Notifications about crashsites escaping to space will no longer appear On the equip screen the hotkey for fast equipping / un-equpping is changed to Mouse 2 / Right-click. On the Soldier Equip screen the Infinity mark for human weapons no longer changes to "-" Multiple Xenopedia notifications will appear for multiple researches completed at the same time. Callsign length is limited for vehicles and soldiers to stop overlong names being used. Hunters will no longer disappear when loading a save game containing an airborne Chinook. Reassigning the engineers to a different project will no longer result in crash. Loading a save game will no longer remove parts of the tech tree. Air Combat: The destroyed UFO notification will display properly (eg: "crashed into the sea", "crash-landed", "destroyed") Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 21, 2012 Author Share Posted September 21, 2012 (edited) ...... Edited March 21, 2013 by gnarly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted September 23, 2012 Author Share Posted September 23, 2012 15.1 update added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted October 14, 2012 Author Share Posted October 14, 2012 v16 update added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted October 22, 2012 Author Share Posted October 22, 2012 v16.1 update added (apologies, I've been busily fending of the Muton Hordes with my Double-Tapping ArchAngel armoured sniper... Oops, wrong game! ;P) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted October 27, 2012 Author Share Posted October 27, 2012 v17 and 17.1 updates added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted January 21, 2013 Author Share Posted January 21, 2013 v17.5.2 update Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted February 13, 2013 Author Share Posted February 13, 2013 v17.6 update added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnarly Posted March 21, 2013 Author Share Posted March 21, 2013 v17.9 added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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