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Build V15 Released!


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Build V15 has been uploaded to Desura authorised. The standalones are good to go as well; given the MCF errors with Desura they may actually be your best bet!

Sorry about the delay on this; we had issues getting the civilians and friendly AI soldiers to spawn. As they're quite an important part of this build, I didn't want to release it without them.

So, these are the 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:

- 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.

Basically, on my return I want to have all of the Xenonaut sprites and lots of the civilians rendered out. Having plausible friendly AI troops on each map really adds to the realism, and having a variety of localised civilians for each tileset will be great too.

In tileset terms, there's a few testmaps in place for the Arctic, Desert and Middle East tilesets that I've been using to test the friendly AI troops and the Chinook maps. Hopefully V16 will see all three tilesets introduced in a playable form; we're just working on the rock formations that will provide the higher ground and break up the flat terrain for all three tilesets. The buildings for them are done (thought not painted over yet) so we're close to having all three in the game. I think that'll make a huge difference to how fun the game is.

For the UFOs themselves, please read this post. There's likely to be changes in the near future as to how they are handled. Then there's a less important discussion here on overdamage, which we should probably consider too.

Finally - we're hoping to have half the custom portraits done by the next build too. So if you've bought one, that'd good for you. If you've not, at least there'll be a lot more variation in the soldier faces from next build onwards!

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Hm, trying to work out if I should go to bed early tonight and try to get some playtime before school tomorrow, or if I should wait up and try it out tonight. How long does it usually take for Desura to authorize?

My guess is sometime 20 hours from now for the client version.

36-48 hours for the zip file.

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So far the only thing that bothers me about this game are the UFO's, I just hope in later releases that gets balanced/fixed.

Looking forward to this release, thanx Chris and team.

My only complaints about them is that they just overwhelm me.

I assume you are both referring to the 'swarming' of UFO fighters in 14.11?

Suggest posting it in the relevant thread here:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/2952-Lost-air-capability-let-alone-any-sort-of-superiority-Help!

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I like the idea of the AI troops' equipment scaling as the game goes on, but what about if their equipment scales based on what you readily manufacture and sell? Perhaps in addition to scaling normally, and maybe only for zones that support you. I feel like -someone- out there is buying all of this stuff, so why not it be the supporting governments who distribute it to their local forces for better protection? It gives a more realistic feel to it and would make me feel like my success in research is benefiting not just us, but the governments, too.

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Steam doesn't sell alphas/betas.

They do actually.

Endless Space was alpha funded on Steam. Company of Heroes 2 and Fallen Enchantress pre-orders get you the beta's. And there's a whole list of betas you can join here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2646885

It doesn't need greenlit though as it's already going on Steam. Perhaps just need to ask valve nicely to put it on early. :D

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