Xenonauts-2 March 2023 Update!

[Chris]

March is nearly over and it's time for our monthly update. We've still not nailed down a definite date for our Early Access launch but barring any major disaster we're planning to stick to our Q2 target window, so we're an absolute maximum of three months away from launch at this point.

Campaign Options:
One of the two big features we've worked on this month are campaign options, which take the form of a new panel alongside the New Campaign menu.

The values for these options update as you change difficulty settings, allowing players to better understand how each difficulty setting changes the game. However, you can also change the values manually and create your own custom difficulty setting - for example, if you found the strategy layer fairly easy but wanted to make the tactical combat harder.

We've also included new options (both on this panel and in the standard settings menu) that allow you to enable or disable several of the quality of life features or gameplay changes we've made in Xenonauts 2 - for example, some people like enemies displaying their heath values above their heads, whereas others do not. This also applies to things like the camera automatically focusing on newly detected enemies or whether soldier rotation when firing weapons should cost Time Units.

Regular beta players should note that we've now tied some of these usability changes to difficulty level. If you're playing on the harder difficulty settings then you'll no longer see the enemy healthbars (unless you manually choose to enable them) and rotation when firing weapons does now cost Time Units by default, etc. Please bear this in mind when reporting bugs in future!

Translation:
The other big feature we've worked on this month is the technical implementation of translation, which has involved finding literally every text string displayed in the game and exporting it into a massive spreadsheet so it can be translated.

There's many thousands of these (many of which are dynamic strings rather than static ones), so it's been a lot of work and has caused quite a few bugs. However we're now pretty close to being done with this, and we'll hopefully be doing a dry run of the tech next week with the localisation teams from our marketing partners. If that goes well then we'll be sending the text off to the professional translators afterwards.

This is the main reason why I've not been comfortable setting a date for Early Access quite yet - I really wouldn't be surprised if at least one unexpected problem arises from the translation testing that derails general development for a week or more, so I don't want to be working to a hard deadline until the dry run is complete and we've fixed any major problems that were identified as a result.

Other Work:
Another improvement that happened this month is the Aircraft screen and all associated panels being reskinned. This was the last of the strategy management screens that required a visual revamp, so now the only parts of the game that still need a UI pass are the Geoscape map itself and the Air Combat. Quite a nice mini-milestone for us!

More recently I've also been working hard on the strategy balance and trying to improve the air combat a bit. Now the campaign options are finished and hopefully translation is too, we're turning our attention back to V27 and hopefully we'll get that out about two weeks from now.

That's all I've got for now - see you all next month!

[Kamehamehayes]

That's good translation has gone mostly smoothly. Hopefully localization and translation has minor hiicups either.

I do have a few questions on the initial campaign options. 

-for all of the values that we can edit (like initial funding and soldier surivial rate), will we choose from a list of options or will be able to type in whatever value we want?

-for "project duration", will disabling it make it look like X1 or will it not show any information at all, or will there be three options for enabled, disabled, X1 style or something like that?

-what does "achievement difficulty" mean, and does it have a gameplay function?

-if the endgame laser event continues to be part of the game, will there be an option to disable it and/or reduce it?

-will we be able to change the missions types that appear in our playthroughs or their frequencies in our playthroughs, where people who likes faster paced missions can make them appear more often while people who want to take their time in an xcom game can reduce the prevalence of those missions or outright remove them? 

Good update, and am looking forward to testing v27. 

Edited April 1, 2023 by Kamehamehayes

[Alienkiller]

Thanks for the monthly Update Chris & Dev-Team. I like it with the Information on the difficulty Settings and the Custom-Settings for the ones, which find it to hard on the regular Difficulty settings. The news with the Translation and the Aircraft Screen is very cool too. Keep up the good work incl. refreshing the last 2 big Job-Sites with the Geoscape and Airfight-Screen.

Kamehamehayes from what we can see here I will try to give an Answer:

- Values we can Edit: There are the down Arrows on the right side. I think you will have limits there like in similar Games, which can´t undercut. Means you have an choose from 10% to 200% or so, where you can choose from.

- Project Duration: That´s an Feature we Beta-Testers mentioned about the 360 Day-Limiter in the Tests from beginning on. Now you have more flexibility with that Feature. What it contains we don´t know, but the 2 (720 Days) or 3 (1080 Days) Time-Upgrade about the 360 Days-Limiter or something similar it will have.

An 08/15-Boring-Step Back like in the Predecessor the Devs will avoid. That was something which makes the Game toatly unflexible and for 90% of the Players (incl. me) totaly borring.

- Archivement Difficulty: That´s for the Steam, GoG-Archivements of your Profile. Something else make no Sense.

- Endgame Laser-Event: I don´t see such an Option. Then there won´t come such an Option in, which is very good. Something picancy every Game of that Gerne need and that´s the Picancy, which beginns to show you after the 2 / 3 Years of Defence to come to an End (like in the UFO-ET-Series, Phoenix Point with the Nebula, UFO After-Series or Terra Invicta with the Alien-Terraforming etc.)

- Mission Types: The Devs will make an UI Update on the Geoscape, so it could be possible that we will get more Mission Types earlyer or later [Defense Outposts etc.] to the existing ones [Crash Sites, Terror, Abduction, Bases, Cleaners] and the new ones which get integrated for the V.27 / V,28-Versions [Secure VIPs, Eleminate enemy VIPs, Evac someone etc.]. You will get a lot of new Missions in the Game.

And don´t forgett 2 important Things: 1. The Player have to adjust his / her playstile to the Game, not the Game to the Player. That was since Games up and won´t change.  2. Missions can´t be removed and changed. If you do that you Cheat and Cheating will have Consequences. That´s why the Developers hardcode the Missions or similar in that Games.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Alienkiller

[odizzido]

I love the idea of custom settings for difficulty If it's easy, could you have an option to just turn achievements off? For whatever reason I've come to highly dislike them as they are really intrusive. If it's not easy I can live with them on, I just prefer to never see them. Maybe just making it so you need to kill 1,000,000,000 aliens instead of killing 2 for example would be good enough.

It's exciting to have the game getting close. I played it a little to give feedback and report some bugs but really I am just waiting for it to be finished before I play properly. I know this is still just early access so I will be waiting for a while yet but still, it's a mile marker.

[Alienkiller]

ofizzido, I know what you mean. It´s not the only Game which get adjusted to have Achivements. All Games from the last 1 Decade have them, so we have to life with it, wether we like it or not.

Time has Changed and without such Features you don´t sell an Game anymore. Dosen´t matter if they are an 6 Month programmed 08/15-Scrap-Game or an 8 Years programmed excellent Game.

Where I give you right is, that the Game get adjusted for the Early Access Status. Esp. the fully tested Beginning-Part and Middle-Part will be from the Public in that Phase playable, if the Infos are correct as well as the rework from the Plane-Screen, Geoscape and Airfight-Screen to the new UI-Standard works like it should.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Alienkiller

[Jakub]

Hi Everyone, Does anyone know when the v27 will be live for backers? I was about to jump into my experimental build and wanted to try to go through the majority of the game but don't want to be stopped by an update later on. As I see it is again about two weeks from the announcement so maybe any day? Any better information? 

 

Thank you so much. Hopefully, it will not be delayed again. 

 

Have a great day,

Jakub

[Alienkiller]

No ones knows that exactly Jakub. If I remember me correctly then Chris and the Dev-Team have estimated End of this Week if all goes well.

But I would more expect somewere at the End of April (next or overnext Week) if you wanna have it more stable.

[Jakub]

I was afraid of it... In an update, there is a note about two weeks' time till v27, and the update was live on March 31. So I just hoped... 

We will see then. Actually, again started to eagerly await this game (lost some hope year ago) so hopefully, it will stay that way.