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Build V17.91 Released!


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Build V17.91 has been released. This post will be updated as things progress. At present:

  • The auto-updater versions are available for Premium Pre-Orderers. There's a glitch affecting the Standard branch which I'm trying to resolve.
  • The standalone versions are available on Desura (probably best to download these).
  • The Mac / Linux versions will be ported if the build proves stable (V17.9 did not)

This is mostly a stability update, rather than one that adds a bunch of new features. I'm not convinced the auto-updater is working properly so please try the standalone if possible, or in your bug reports at least mark which version you are using. Here's the changelist:

BUGFIXES:

  • Launcher load-up crash should be fixed. If it is still crashing on loadup, you can use the -novideo tag as a workaround (we'll see if we can put together a batch file for you guys to use).
  • You can now save / load the game on the Geoscape.
  • You can now save / load the game on the Ground Combat.
  • When you load a Ground Combat save game, all the men and aliens are no longer crammed in the top left corner of the map.
  • When you load a Geoscape game, you no longer get the "new technology available" popup.
  • Hidden Movement should correctly show projectiles now, so your troops will no longer be gunned down without you being able to see it.
  • Corvettes and other large UFOs no longer give ludicrous amounts of alloys when captured.
  • You can no longer place base buildings outside the base grid area.
  • The Sebillian Light Scouts still aren't spawning crew, despite my best efforts to fix it. As a result, I've disabled all Sebillian Light Scouts, so all Light Scouts will have Caesan crew (none of which should be empty).

UPDATES / BALANCING:

  • Overlay tiles are now supported. This means the car parks around all of the drosphips have been removed and their shadows will overlay onto whatever terrain they are placed on.
  • There are a few new maps. The Western Town terror site has been updated significantly, and the Soviet Town terror site now has a work in progress map. Alien bases also have a map now.
  • There's a new Corsair interceptor Xenopedia image.
  • The rocket sprite has been replaced with a smaller and better version.
  • The sight ranges of Caesan aliens have been reduced by 1 to 19. This is one greater than a soldier wearing Basic Armour, but 1 less than a Hunter armoured car.
  • All alien weapons have received a 10 point accuracy deduction.
  • The Alien Plasma Rifle has been reduced to 0 mitigation, so it will usually not 1-shot a soldier wearing Jackal combat armour (though it should still instakill a soldier with Basic armour).
  • The Jackal has been reduced in cost to $40,000.
  • Shotgun range reduced by 1 to 7, damage increased to 65 and mitigation reduced to 0. This is a net increase to its close-range firepower.
  • The "kinetic" resistance of Hunter and Jackal armour has been boosted significantly. This makes your armoured car and Jackal-armoured troops much less vulnerable to early-game friendly fire damage, but still just as vulnerable to alien plasma fire (which uses "energy" resistance).

Finally, it should be noted that this build does not use any kind of compression so is about 135,000 files. I'm pretty sure that either our file archiving system or or tile atlases have caused a lot of the texture issues in the last build, and I'm wondering if they may also be behind our invisible civilian bug. Therefore this build is uncompressed and we'll see how that affects these issues.

In terms of balancing, I've not done too much of that this week. So once the Corvettes start arriving, my current balancing runs out and you're on your own.

From what I understand, the Desura guys are at GDC so I don't know if authorisation is going to be particularly quick.

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Good update, is this bug resolved as that was a semi-game breaker. Previous builds never showed this problem btw! I wondered if Nvidia was at fault with their latest drivers but I have not rolled back to older drivers yet. If this new version does the same I will try a driver roll back.

Cheers

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Yes, it is (.rar downlaod) because between the server and my virtually useless DSL internet it's almost impossible for me to download these standalones; though as for Desura's updater it is impossible

Thanks again,

Chris

I will start the standalone, download as soon as I'm able (usually works better at night for me here in the US.)

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I'm 99% sure the auto-updater from Desura isn't working. It says I have 17.91, but there was an error when I first installed it. If I try to verify the install, I consistently get stuck on the downloading files part (it says I don't have an internet connection). Then I get a message saying an error prevents Desura from running correctly, and I can either restart or force an update of my Desura stall. Neither makes any real difference.

I guess we'll just have to wait until they come back from the weekend and fix their stuff.

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There's not a problem with what's on Desura, mine updated fine. There's just a problem with Desura's ability to handle this many files which is what the compression thing mentioned in post 1, but currently disabled, is to counter. You pretty much want Xenonauts on an SSD (to quickly handle the 100,000s of small files) and to be updating it when Desuras servers are quiet or you're going to have a nightmare time updating it via the client.

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The whole Desura auto-updater stuff is weird, though. I have a local copy on my machine that I upload to Desura - with the standalone it's fine, I just .rar it up and upload it to their servers and you have a 1:1 copy of what I have in that local copy.

With the auto-updater, I run their auto-updater software and it scans it and uploads the changed files. But then the auto-updater version appears to be a different size (according to their dev tools, at least). When the updater again, even on exactly the same copy, it gave me a 5mb update to upload even though nothing had changed. Doesn't fill me with confidence it's not missing some important files somewhere along the line.

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We were discussing on the Steam forum the other day how Desura appear to have pretty much abandoned their software. Their last client update was back in 2011. I hadn't even started using them until after they'd given up on development! Their solution to any client issue appears to be to use the standalone versions rather than the client. I haven't personally had any client issue, apart from MCF errors (which are generally resolved by trying another day and so are presumably server issues), but it's a bit worrying for the future!

It's a shame because I really like their concept of a DRM free client. Gives you the best of both worlds, organising/updating your games and the fact that it's entirely optional if you have network issues.

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Yes its a problem, I can only assume they are not updating things to match ease of use similar to steam due to financial reasons! Ironically if they updated their client to fix all the limits etc they probably generate more customers. Something is definitely going on with the Desura co.

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