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Development Update - 23 October 2012


Chris

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Welcome to the new development update forum. I've decided to split this forum off from the Announcements forum, which is talking about actual build releases, so I can use this one to talk about development progress on the project that is not always strictly relevant to the next update.

So, development. My main concern right now is getting to a basic beta. I think we're in range of a quick sprint there, but if we're going to do that it's more than likely we're going to be spending three or four weeks with the current public build with no updates before we reach beta. This is why I'm finding the Farm crash bug so annoying; we can't leave the game unplayable for three or four weeks at a time.

We've also taken quite a bit of money in recent weeks thanks to the Firaxis X-Com raising interest in the genre and not quite nailing the job of following up the original X-Com, at least in the eyes of the hardcore fans. I find it a bit concerning that their first experience of the game is probably massive Desura issues and then a game full of crash bugs. People have suggested I talk more on the News page about what's going on, but I'm loathe to do it until we've got the crash bug fixed. I don't want to attract a load of people, only for them to have a crap first experience of the game.

V17 is released today and hopefully should be stable. If so it means we can gear up for the sprint to beta (I'll post a separate thread for our beta plans shortly) and it means I can start to talk a bit more, maybe do some PR work too. But really, stability is my priority.

Incidentally, the Desura issues are being caused by the massive number of files in the game (the dev version has close to 120,000 now). This also causes ludicrous install times and the like. Happily, it would appear we've found a solution to the issue despite not having access to the source code of the engine. We can pack the files into an archive and the game can read them from there.

We're still assessing how this will affect our workflow and limit the ability of modders to change the game, but at the very least we're going to archive the /units/ and the ground tile folders. This should reduce the file quantity in the game by about 2/3 and should fix the Desura issues and generally make the game more manageable. If it is problematic for our workflow, it may be that this has to be a gradual process (the first batch should reduce the file quantity by 50% or so, then we'll archive assets after we've stopped actively developing that area).

I really hope this improves the quality of the experience for our players, and gets people of Desura's back a bit too. They're not perfect, but they do try their best and they are helpful guys - the standalone download feature was implemented specifically for us, for instance. The next biggest game on their servers in terms of file quantity was 10,000 apparently, compared to our massive 60-70k files. I'm not entirely surprised their systems broke - but hopefully we can put all that behind us soon!

In wider development terms, the biggest change in the last few weeks is that we've moved into this new office. This took the best part of a week to get set up and working but it's been an amazing boost to my productivity (and sanity). Development is really rattling along these days, to the point I can barely keep up. I foolishly decided to not work for one of the days this weekend and my inbox was stuffed full on Monday. It's been a while since development was going at this pace and it's a good place to be, though it does mean I've got even less time for PR than usual.

The chief reason for this massive speed boost is we've taken on our first full-time employee, Aaron. He's been working with us for about a year as our 3d tile artist, so he produces the basic 3D models for all the buildings and props that you see in the game (they are then painted over by a 2D artist before they are "finished"). He's now joined us in a full-time role and will be helping out on the design work going forward too. He'll be posting up something himself shortly, but basically he's been working on finishing the remaining buildings for all the tilesets in the game and is now starting on the props for all the tilesets so our missions are less open.

This has led to us being able to put our new tilesets in the game - we've put our Arctic, Middle East and Desert tilesets in the game over the past month and we're adding cover and unique civilians to them at the moment to make them more playable. We've also got working concepts for the Alien Base going, and we'll be getting the Xenonaut base set up properly in the near future too. We've also done a bunch of the ground tiles and all the building tiles for the Soviet Town tileset, but I've not been able to test them all out yet. Basically, the lack of map variation in the game will cease to be a problem soon.

The sprite rendering is going OK too - we're working on getting all the civvies and friendly AI units in the game, then we'll be rendering all the aliens out. Again, I think having the local unit variations has really added a lot to the game and once all the enemies are in the game it'll feel that much more complete for it.

Finally, I guess I should quickly chat about coding. We've got a few odds-and-ends going on, such as adding base breaches so aliens no longer attack Xenonaut bases through the hangars all the time, but the biggest things are the file archiving mentioned above and the AI. GJ is busy with exams this week but in general progress is good. I'll get him to post some updates here so you lot stay in the loop, but I'm sure you can see that we're moving in the right direction there. The final piece of the puzzle is the new UI - that'll appear in the early beta I think.

Oh, and we should have a Steam page up shortly too. That'll be nice to raise project awareness (though it won't support pre-ordering yet). Right, time to write up the beta plans..

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Sounds great, Chris! As a fellow developer I cannot understate how helpful this kind of communication is to fostering excitement and trust with everyone here. Being on the outside of development is tough, especially when you're really excited about the product coming down the pipeline.

Everything sounds great, though!

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That's an important point you make about xen noobs shelling out their hard-earned only to play a game that takes ages to DL then crashes every 5 minutes. What you are doing should put their minds at rest. The rest of us know things will be ok in the end and are prepared to wait - but it's the former you need to get on side!

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We've also taken quite a bit of money in recent weeks thanks to the Firaxis X-Com raising interest in the genre and not quite nailing the job of following up the original X-Com, at least in the eyes of the hardcore fans. .

Can't help it but to find this hilarious and comforting hhahahah yes it was bound to happen and we all knew Firaxis was going to do a TERRIBLE job with such an awesome genre.

By the way, my brother is one of those who bought the game, he did after I let it play the beta and he's realised how was supposed to be a game like this in the 21st century. Then he proceeded to show me Path of Exile and now I hate Blizzard for D3... Indie developers are the new renaissance artists.

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Can't help it but to find this hilarious and comforting hhahahah yes it was bound to happen and we all knew Firaxis was going to do a TERRIBLE job with such an awesome genre.
I wouldn't have thought that at all. Firaxis (Sid Meier) has developed some of the best games ever created. Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Silent Service, Gettysburg, Pirates! and many others. For XCom to be so messed up is actually shocking to me. Of all the larger studios I would have thought Firaxis would do the best job.
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Incidentally, the Desura issues are being caused by the massive number of files in the game (the dev version has close to 120,000 now). This also causes ludicrous install times and the like. Happily, it would appear we've found a solution to the issue despite not having access to the source code of the engine. We can pack the files into an archive and the game can read them from there.

We're still assessing how this will affect our workflow and limit the ability of modders to change the game, but at the very least we're going to archive the /units/ and the ground tile folders. This should reduce the file quantity in the game by about 2/3 and should fix the Desura issues and generally make the game more manageable. If it is problematic for our workflow, it may be that this has to be a gradual process (the first batch should reduce the file quantity by 50% or so, then we'll archive assets after we've stopped actively developing that area).

Sweet, glad to hear it was straightforward.

On modding - shouldn't be an issue as long as the archive file is able to be read and modified by 7zip/winRAR per games like Sword of the Stars 1 or sufficient documentation is provided for the community to build a suitable archive tool, such as with Egosoft's X games.

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I wouldn't have thought that at all. Firaxis (Sid Meier) has developed some of the best games ever created. Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Silent Service, Gettysburg, Pirates! and many others. For XCom to be so messed up is actually shocking to me. Of all the larger studios I would have thought Firaxis would do the best job.

It's not a bad game, it's just that for a lot of people, it's not what they came to know and love as X-COM.

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Awesome update, and fully agree you will have to manage the expectations of newcomers to Xenonauts by having something stable and working on Desura, rather than scaring them off, before going into beta PR mode (and I guess have a new accessible demo to go with it, as the old one is both very out of date, and also very difficult to find?).

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I wouldn't have thought that at all. Firaxis (Sid Meier) has developed some of the best games ever created. Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Silent Service, Gettysburg, Pirates! and many others. For XCom to be so messed up is actually shocking to me. Of all the larger studios I would have thought Firaxis would do the best job.

that piece of shit and jake piece of shit jr promised deep strategy and high re-playability in the campaign. they made the game for mp since campaign is only fun only a few times. i beat once but i won't play it again. theyre adding more dlc tho, stupid shit abt sleeping dogs triads too hahahaha morons.

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Thanks for the update.

Good to hear that progress is being made. I was one of those directed here because of the new XCOM game by Firaxis, but feeling that it was not quite up my street (sounds too 'dumbed down' for me).

The farm crashing has prevented me from really progressing though and I hope you've got that sorted once and for all. But I do understand that it is still in Alpha development and so such things are to be expected.

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