Xenonauts 2 May 2024 Update!

[Chris]

May has been another month of progress for Xenonauts 2. We released the first experimental version of Milestone 4 a couple of weeks ago, an update which brings a lot of new improvements and features to the game. You can read the initial (very long) changelog here, but our work isn't complete yet - we'll be continuing to add new content and fix bugs until we feel the update is ready for general release on the standard Steam / GOG / Epic branches.

As always, we greatly appreciate the feedback from members of our community who have played the new version. This help has been invaluable in finding and fixing bugs, and ironing out problems with the game balance. We've got most of the stability issues under control now, which means it's a good time for anyone interested in playing the Experimental build to dive in - and please let us know any thoughts or issues with the game balance in the dedicated Milestone 4 Balance thread!

Campaign Balance & Stability:
Over the last month we spent a great deal of time playing the campaign in an attempt to get the game balance into reasonable shape before the Experimental release. This seems to have paid off, with the update getting a positive reaction from the community so far. There's not really space to go into specifics about what we've changed (we've tweaked the numbers in a LOT of different places), but the overall difficulty progression and campaign pacing should feel smoother than in previous versions.

We've also spent a lot of time fixing bugs. Most of the crash bugs in Milestone 4 have now been fixed, and we're continuing to work through fixes for the other bugs introduced by the new content. In addition to this, we've been working through our backlog of historical bugs (some of which date back to the original Early Access launch), and we've now fixed quite a few of the more serious historical issues too.

New Content:
We added new content in a few areas last month. Our new sound designer provided a number of new sounds for various parts of the game, such as the soldier equip screen where moving weapons and equipment in soldier inventories previously played no sound. There's now unique sounds for picking up and putting down all sorts of items (also played when switching weapons in the tactical combat), which makes the screen feel much more satisfying to use.

We've also added some new 3D models for certain alien variants, some of the human Fusion weapons, and some new terrain pieces for the Farm and Tropical biomes (although these won't appear in the game until Milestone 5). Our level designer has also continued to create new maps for the game; I think we're getting to a pretty good place in terms of map variety now.

As per usual, we've added a number of small usability features too - but there's too many of those to list, and individually they're not that exciting. Hopefully you'll notice one or two when you next play the game though!

Finally, there's a new bug reporting tool in Milestone 4 that makes it easier for players to report bugs, which can by accessed by pressing F11 and appears automatically after a crash. This just provides a handy zip file of all the files we need to track down bugs, which should make squashing the remaining bugs in the game more straightforward!

Conclusion:
Our priority for this month is to finish up Milestone 4 and push it out for general release - although we're exactly sure when this will happen, because a lot depends on what feedback we get from our testers and how many bugs we need to fix. However, we'll let everyone know as soon as we're able to set a launch date!

[CaptainSPrice]

On 6/4/2024 at 6:31 PM, Chris said:

@Chris I feel like after release of Regular Xenonauts-2 i think you guys should create a DLC where you add Soldier Speach with every action like in XCOM + more maps and maybe some new UFO's. Also dont forget to give aliens more types of weapons, because when aliens runs with same type of weapons it kinda creates a question like: Advanced civilizations running with single type of weapon all the time. I also would expand Every weapon type research like in X1. More story = more fun. When you guys finish Xenonauts-2, i gonna be recording No Damage Run + Highest Difficulty + Ironman.

 

[Chris]

1 hour ago, CaptainSPrice said:

 

Thanks. We'll worry about what happens after release once we get there though

[Jazza]

@Chris these monthly posts are something I very much look forward to reading as they come out and as I haven't commented prior to this, I thought it best to reach out and give you my gratitude.
I just wanted to say massive thank you for all the hard work and everything you guys are constantly putting into the game, it shows that it's a real labour of love.
I'm a massive fan of the UFO Defence & Terror From The Deep, although I don't have many hours logged into the games themselves, I have watched streamers play them from hundreds of hours (mainly Lewis & Ben from the Yogscast) and I can't wait for them to play your game once its fully released.

Now you have reached Milestone 4, I have decided to start playing myself and I'm absolutely loving it. Both my wife & I play it co-operative making all the decisions together and find we just lose track of time playing!

I do have a couple of question if I may?

Firstly, will there ever be an option for controller support?
I know lots of people will instantly say that I don't deserve to play these types of games by mentioning the dreaded 'C' word, but as my wife & I play this our living room connected to the TV and viewed/played from the sofa, it makes for using a keyboard and mouse slightly tricky. Obviously I know this is probably unlikely, as I'm sure the majority of your target audience is playing at a desk, but it's worth an ask!

Lastly, due to playing this from the sofa (about 2~3m away from the TV) it is very hard for us to read the dialog/information boxes. Would you consider adding an option for a larger sized text?

Thank you so much for your time and I eagerly await to see the progress as it rolls out every month, keep up the fantastic work!


All the best,
Jay & Elz

[Chris]

On 6/23/2024 at 4:15 PM, Jazza said:

@Chris these monthly posts are something I very much look forward to reading as they come out and as I haven't commented prior to this, I thought it best to reach out and give you my gratitude.
I just wanted to say massive thank you for all the hard work and everything you guys are constantly putting into the game, it shows that it's a real labour of love.
I'm a massive fan of the UFO Defence & Terror From The Deep, although I don't have many hours logged into the games themselves, I have watched streamers play them from hundreds of hours (mainly Lewis & Ben from the Yogscast) and I can't wait for them to play your game once its fully released.

Now you have reached Milestone 4, I have decided to start playing myself and I'm absolutely loving it. Both my wife & I play it co-operative making all the decisions together and find we just lose track of time playing!

I do have a couple of question if I may?

Firstly, will there ever be an option for controller support?
I know lots of people will instantly say that I don't deserve to play these types of games by mentioning the dreaded 'C' word, but as my wife & I play this our living room connected to the TV and viewed/played from the sofa, it makes for using a keyboard and mouse slightly tricky. Obviously I know this is probably unlikely, as I'm sure the majority of your target audience is playing at a desk, but it's worth an ask!

Lastly, due to playing this from the sofa (about 2~3m away from the TV) it is very hard for us to read the dialog/information boxes. Would you consider adding an option for a larger sized text?

Thank you so much for your time and I eagerly await to see the progress as it rolls out every month, keep up the fantastic work!


All the best,
Jay & Elz

Sorry for the slow reply, and thanks for your kind words. To answer your questions:

We might add controller support; we'll probably make an effort to better support the Steam Deck in the future and we'll probably take a look at it then. Problem is the UI is designed for a mouse so I'm not sure it'll be workable (the Steam Deck has a touchscreen at least).

Can you highlight the spots where the text is particularly hard to read? Or is it just everything? It's hard to add a general option for increasing text size because there's not enough UI space for it, but if there's particular problem areas then we might be able to address at least some of them.