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19 Feb Development Update


Chris

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I can't believe February is nearly finished already, but apparently it is. Time for another development update. In short, we're really gearing up for beta now and V18 should be beta. As V17.6 seems mostly stable, I don't think we'll be releasing any more builds prior to V18.

Happily for Mac users, our porter David (ko2fan on the forums) has managed to get around the texture issue with the new version of OSX and it now seems that the game will remain natively compatible with Mac.

Anyway, we've already got some nice improvements in the dev version compared to the public version. Giovanni has merged his new launcher into the code and that seems to be working rather nicely, as well as being much more visually appealing and cross-platform capable.

There's also some further improvements to the level editor, which now has a pop-up level viewer window in it. You can see the map you're building appear in real-time now, so building new levels is really easy. We should have plenty of maps in the beta, although at the moment they're a little constrained by the UFOs.

The UFOs are coming along well. We've completed the first three, and are working on the fourth of the eight UFOs that appear in the combat map. "Completing" them involves testing the internal layout until we find something we are happy with, then doing the final textured UFO model and painting the ground tiles for the craft. It's a bit time consuming, but I think it's going to work really well with the final game.

You can see a couple of examples of final UFO models here:

Light Scout: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/UFO1.png

Scout: http://www.xenonauts.com/devimages/UFO2.png

This has been a lot of work, not only in art terms but in game terms. We've had to implement a system of swopping out ground tiles and changing the line of sight properties of tiles when troops go inside UFOs (which causes the walls to vanish). It's working pretty well now though, aside from ongoing rendering order issues that I'll discuss below. The only problem is that until the UFOs are finalised, we don't know how big they will be, which is why we can't make maps for the big UFOs until the UFOs in question are finalised.

Next up, game balancing. For the first time ever yesterday, I sat down and played the game as a game without using any developer cheats. As a result, I've drawn up a long list of balance changes and usability fixes to make the game more playable. Up to this point I've not really cared much about the gameplay because the focus has been actually building the systems, but I think having the game roughly balanced for beta is going to be important.

The changes are things like:

  • Major boost to alien accuracy
  • Alien non-combatants made significantly more dangerous
  • TU reserve toggle for whether it will allow you to spend reserved TUs on shooting (by default it will)
  • Better communication of KIA soldiers after battle (portraits greyed out if killed)
  • Chinook only carries 8 soldiers now, with the Hunter filling 2 slots if taken (squad size with final dropship still caps at 16)
  • Starting squad has better equipment selection
  • At start of game player only has $1m and one Hunter, but building / base construction cost reduced
  • There is longer between each UFO wave, so you should have time to get your MiGs built before the Scouts appear
  • Alien Invasion research is already in progress when you start the game
  • Adding a "Research Completed" pop-up with "Go to Research Screen" button and "New Projects Unlocked" list.

There is a massive list of changes to be made but once they're done there should be a quantum leap in playability. Lots of little things that together should make a big difference.

I've also continued my work on the research tree. There is a description in place for pretty much every research project that I'm confident will be in the final game (there's about 60 of them) and there's about 10-15 more liable to be shifted around. I've created images for about half of them, and we're starting work on the remaining stuff like the autopsy art for the aliens too.

The new UI is also proceeding, but slowly. The new Research screen is nearly done now. Once this done, the Workshop screen should be very easy to do (it's basically the same). Once those two screens are done, we'll look at the speed of progress on this and see if it's too slow.

Finally, there are a few problems we're looking into. One of the biggest is the multi-tile rendering, which is causing all of these rendering errors you can see in the game. We're looking into this and we'll fix it up as it's giving us major display issues with the new UFOs, as well as cropping up in random areas in the game. Hopefully it'll be resolved before beta.

There's also work to be done on the night mission LOS system and things like the Hidden Movement and shooting between different height levels. We've got plenty to be fixing up and improving...but I can't really think of much that hasn't been implemented yet. Turning Xenonauts into a fun and challenging game is now the order of the day, so I guess on reflection we've had a pretty good month!

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A question to Aleksi - are you working on some additional music tracks for beta/final game?

Any fancy "alert" sound effects upon UFO detection or Base Alert/Interceptor Launch?

Yes! I'm working on a new Geoscape music (maybe a second one coming as well). Ground combat music will also benefit from a new music. We decided to keep the air combat missions to one music though, so nothing new there.

I will also rework the older music tunes as well, to bring everything up to date, with a homogeneous sound.

No sound FX is planned, at least for me. I'm music only here. ;-)

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Hi Chris - I know I might sound like a broken record, if so I apologize ahead of time. Is there any chance that you will take another look at the spread on auto/burst fire and missed shots as part of the balancing? At least a few other people agree with me that the arc of fire is too wide to be believable. Gauddlike and I both believe that to compensate for increased accuracy of a tightened arc you could simply have some of the misses pass through the target tile without hitting whatever target creature is in there (similar to what you do for crouched soldiers now.) It would simply be "near miss." The miss could then carry on and hit something/someone behind or just exit the map. It could even hit just short of the target i.e. in the ground at it's "feet". It is worth noting that this would account for some of the shots going "high" or "low" which happens often in real life. Mathematically, you could easily make the average chance to hit work out the same as it does now, but have a much better "look" to auto fire and your soldiers and aliens wouldn't "look" as incompetent with their shooting.

Edited by StellarRat
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That was (imho) well worded, StellarRat. I agree with that, as it would have no change to the actual mechanics, breaking no balance, but it would make the soldiers not look like such horrible shots.

Also, David, thank you for fixing the Mac bug!!

Kind of along the same lines as raziel's post before mine, (and I'm not being impatient at all,)

Is there an ETA for the final game? Like, early next year, or late this year, by summer, etc?

I know it'd be really up in the air at this point, but if there is a tentative ETA...

I'm probably going to be leaving the country (and electronics for the most part, meaning I can't just take my lappy with me) in a few months, so I was just wondering if I'd be able to see the final product before I left.

Final thought: I've been thinking that the aliens were actually pretty easy, seeing as they would mostly run away, or fire and miss (in fact all of my injuries have been due to friendly fire). I've got the feeling that my men (and women) are in for a world of hurt come beta. This is good, makes for more challenging play.

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StellarRat - that's something we'll think about in beta, as it's not actually a bug or a usability issue. Let's get there first and then I'll sit down and think about it. That might be a good solution though, suggest it again when I open the beta forums.

Everyone else - I don't know exactly when beta will be. I'm thinking roughly a month, so late March.

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Chris you said there would be longer wait time between ship waves.

When you were playing was the fighter glitch taken care of? Is the fighter glitch an issue in our builds?

Suggestion (unrealated)

I feel like the ufos should attack inferior planes. Like a scout attacking your f1s. The skies feel less threatening knowing only fighters will activly try to break my toys.

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StellarRat - that's something we'll think about in beta, as it's not actually a bug or a usability issue. Let's get there first and then I'll sit down and think about it. That might be a good solution though, suggest it again when I open the beta forums.

Everyone else - I don't know exactly when beta will be. I'm thinking roughly a month, so late March.

Thank you for your consideration. BTW, I played 17.6 last night and I have to say the progress is stunning. I'm really getting excited about the beta and release. The AI has taken a huge leap forward along with a bunch of other stuff. Three "HUZZAHS" for your team!
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Fighters shouldn't glitch in the current build, and the air superiority missions have been set to spawn only once per wave now so they're not such a ridiculous problem as they were before.

The only actively aggressive missions are the air superiority ones, but I think that's actually a good thing because they are a pain in the ass and overuse of them is just going to be frustrating for the player.

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