Xenonauts 2 April 2024 Update!

[Chris]

Hello everyone! April is now over and it's time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 progress update.

Milestone 4:
We've now done the bulk of the work on Milestone 4 and we've started internal testing on the updated campaign. Assuming there's no major issues we'll probably be releasing an early version of the build to the public early next week to get feedback - but initially this will be on our Protoype branches, as the build is currently too rough even for the Experimental branches. After a couple of weeks of polish the build should migrate to the Experimental branches, and hopefully into full public release on the normal Steam / GOG / Epic branches by the end of the month.

Aside from the headline features for the build (Androns and the Harvester UFO for the aliens, the Colossus Battlesuit for the humans) we've got a long list of changes that should continue to improve the usability, balance, performance and stability of the game!

Sound Design:
Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important.

This month we've updated the strategy UI, creating nicer sounds for the standard click / hover / error actions and then adding new clips so give subtly different feedback for different actions a click can cause (like confirming an action, closing a window, opening a tooltip, etc). There's still a bit more work to be done on the UI sounds, but after that we'll be moving onto the tactical combat sounds and trying to give the different alien species a bit more character.

As a side-effect of this process, we've also noticed various places the game didn't have sound but needed it. Some of these are already fixed in Milestone 4, e.g. now Medikits and the Automed Unit play a sound when healing a unit, and melee weapons play a sound if they miss the target.

Levels & Environment Art:
As Milestone 4 contains over thirty new maps, we've also brought on a fulltime freelance environment artist to help us improve the variety and quality of our tactical environments.  We worked on an assortment of smaller tasks last month ranging from improving the ATLAS Base command room assets (wall screens and the command table) to fixing up some of the assets for the Alien Base maps, but once those were complete we began to focus on the Farm biome.

Our plan is to add some new terrain objects and update some of the ground textures for the Farm to try and make the maps feel a bit more like a real agricultural environment, and then we'll be moving onto the Tropical biome to do the same thing (as there's not really enough tiles to do the inhabited areas of the Tropical maps properly right now). Once that's done, we'll be able to move onto our final biome - the Soviet Town terror maps!

Alien Crews:
This month we updated the crews for all the various UFOs / alien ground missions to ensure there was a steady escalation of new enemies throughout the campaign. The addition of Androns means we now have enough units to group the alien races together, so each species now has a dedicated secondary support unit and a terror unit.

As part of this task we've added "heavy" variants of the Mentarch, Servitor and Cyberdrone that are tougher and have more powerful weapons, which start appearing towards the end of the campaign. We'll be adding new artwork and 3D models for these units in the next month or two.

General Improvements:
We've also made an assortment of improvements to other parts of the game. The air combat now supports weapons that are capable of shooting down missiles and we've added a new late-game escort UFO that provides an alternative to the alien Interceptor. We've added support for transferring scientists and engineers between bases. We've added a new soldier module that gives soldiers a 180-degree vision arc. We've made further improvements to the loading times, added many small usability features, and added various small new bits of content to the game.

So overall it's been a busy month for us, with lots of good progress made. Thanks for reading and we'll hopefully have Milestone 4 in your hands soon!

[FLIR]

14 hours ago, Chris said:

Hello everyone! April is now over and it's time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 progress update.

Sound Design:
Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important.

Thank you for polishing the audio! It is an often neglected aspect that has a huge impact not just on the presentation, but also on gameplay.

A particular example comes to my mind from the old days playing the 1st X-Com: an alien (and other combatants) would "scream" if being killed. If the alien was going down without a scream the player knew: it only became unconscious and might get up again after some time. This (and other sounds made it important for a player to be observant and oneself himself into the game. It is one of the many details that made X-Com such an atmospheric "immersive sim". I am glad that Xenonauts follows this approach!

Also love the brooding ambient music in night missions. Would love the other battlescape ambient music being more subtle, creepy and "low-key" too.

Edited May 3 by FLIR

[odizzido]

Sounds is, for me, pretty significant. I used to play a fair amount of the original Mirror's Edge as that had really nice sound. The more non-combat areas of the game were pretty peaceful and enjoyable to be in.

I look forward to the attention you're giving it. I thought the music in the original Xenonauts was pretty good. The original sound effects were fine but having them be excellent would be cool. I actually modded a lot of the combat sounds, even trying mixing/editing sounds in addition to straight replacing them with other ones I had access to.

Thanks for the update