Xenonauts 2 July 2024 Update!

[Chris]

Hello everyone - with July finished, it's time for us to give our monthly developer update on what we've all been working on here at Goldhawk.

Milestone 4
Although we released Milestone 4 last month, we've continued to patch it with bugfixes and balance updates. As many players found the game too punishing, we've been making the lower difficulty settings a bit more forgiving - and there's another update incoming (it's currently being tested on the Experimental branch) that will reduce the accuracy of enemies. Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback, and we'll continue to monitor it while we work on Milestone 5.

Fixing bugs has also been relatively time-consuming this month. With many new players coming from both Tacticon and the recent Steam sale, we've been received a lot more bug reports than normal and we've made fixing them our priority (we released our 21st patch for Milestone 4 today). Some of these were obscure stability bugs, but many were small gameplay issues - e.g. yesterday we were fixing a bug where soldiers could lose 1 or 2 TU when their rotation was interrupted by spotting an enemy. Continuing to iron out these sort of small annoyances should improve the experience for everyone.

Unfortunately, a large influx of new players combined with Milestone 4 being overly difficult and having some stability issues when first released means our Recent Reviews on Steam aren't as positive as they were previously. If you are enjoying the game and haven't left a review, please think about doing so - and if you've left a negative review, just know we're working hard on improving the game and we hope you'll give Xenonauts 2 another shot once it leaves Early Access!

Air Combat UI
One of the parts of the game we're working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat, with a particular focus on the visuals and the tutorial. This month we've done some initial work conceptingthe final UI style for the air combat, and even though we're still exploring the visuals (so please don't read too much into the information in the concept!) we thought we'd share it with you.

The other area of the air combat that we'll be working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat section of the tutorial, as a lot of players bounce off the interception minigame because the game currently doesn't even explain the controls. Hopefully a better tutorial and improved visuals will allow more users to enjoy that section of the game.

It's probably also worth mentioning that the Geoscape UI is also not yet final (which is why it still looks so similar to the first Xenonauts), and we'll be tackling that once the Air Combat is done.

Rescue Civilians
Another system we implemented in Milestone 5 this month was the ability to order civilians off the battlefield, as many members of our community have been requesting this since our Early Access launch. The system is simple - soldiers can order adjacent civilians to evacuate with a right-click, which causes the civilian to run back towards the player's dropship where they can flee off the map edge.

By default civilians will skulk around the map and avoid enemies, but once they have been ordered to evacuate they will simply sprint as quickly as possible towards their evacuation zone. Make sure you have cleared a path for them if you want them to live!

 Game Editor / Modding Tools
The final major system we've been working on this month is our internal game editor. Our Unity 2022 update means we've now got access to much more powerful plugins, which means we can replace our creaky old game editor with something that has better performance and more functionality.

Why are we mentioning this? Not only will this allow us to work faster, but the game editor is also going to serve as the foundation for our mod tools.  Once the work on our internal tools is complete we'll hopefully have taken a significant step towards having a working community mod editor.

That's everything for this dev diary. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next month!

[Skitso]

Air combat UI concept looks hot!

[gG-Unknown]

When  air combat is paused it should go by 1/10 speed of time. Similar to Cyberpunk 2077 quickhack menu.

[Tchey]

The new GUI looks nice.

However i never liked this part of the game and gameplay, so one of the first mod i’ll install will be "auto-win air combat" as i did in first Xenonauts.

[Alienkiller]

@gG-Unknown: I know what you mean, like in XCOM: Bureau and some other Games. That was an Feature 99% of the Strategy-Gamers don´t like and if it´s like in F1 Manager 2024 or Hearts of Iron 4 or Stellaris where nothing moves it´s much better. Then you can think about the next Step without having an high Stresslevel (like you have the full day with the Family, Work etc.). As an Alternative for Gamers, which wanna have this light Stresslvel, it could be implemented as an Option.

@Tchey: That´s cheating and not allowed. Don´t make yourself problems with that. Use Game-Upgrade-Mods if you whish, but don´t get the highest penalty for that Cheating from the Publisher, Developers and much more the fair playing Community. Therefore you have the official Option with the Auto-Mode or you play manually.

[odizzido]

Rescuing civilians sounds cool. It's almost certain to be better than fraxcom where they just have a chance to die for no reason every turn.

[Citation_Needed]

So does this mean we are getting map editor?

[Skitso]

On 8/1/2024 at 6:09 PM, Chris said:

It's probably also worth mentioning that the Geoscape UI is also not yet final (which is why it still looks so similar to the first Xenonauts), and we'll be tackling that once the Air Combat is done.

Any hope for 3D geoscape still?

[Dren608]

So This probably not on the to do list, but I think it should be.

Have any thoughts gone into having our Erstwhile Scientist be voice acted? The Mountains of text he generates would be really nice if we had someone reciting it to us, Especially if they can deliver the sort of condescending tone he seems to have to those not in the "Genius" category.

As a secondary we could have a Female voice actor do the few lines our operations officer offer through out the game.

It's not like they have to match up to animations or anything, but it might be a nice upside to have that small voice acting input.

I know they (Voice Actors) are on Strike as of the writing of this message, 

Would GH consider that as something to add to the game?

[ih8california]

disagree on the need for voice acting. keep it simple and focus on gameplay

[odizzido]

If they were to add voice acting for things, let it be played in a little popup window that can be closed any time so that we can do other things while listening. This is what I learned from Path of Exile.

[Pyroblaster]

Really looking forward to the new combat UI it looks great.

[Tchey]

On 8/6/2024 at 11:07 PM, Alienkiller said:

@Tchey: That´s cheating and not allowed. Don´t make yourself problems with that. Use Game-Upgrade-Mods if you whish, but don´t get the highest penalty for that Cheating from the Publisher, Developers and much more the fair playing Community. Therefore you have the official Option with the Auto-Mode or you play manually.

What do you mean it’s not allowed ? It was a simple mod from Steam i think. I actually don’t remember exactly how it worked, but i remember i didn’t have to do the air combat part of the gameplay. Now you talk about the "auto" resolve, i’m not sure if it was auto, or auto-win, but i’m pretty certain i didn’t care i just sent a fighter to then engage on the ground. It’s possible i’m forging souvenir because it’s been a while and i play many games, but i don’t think so.

Also, in any solo offline games, if i can tune the gameplay more to my taste, i do, and i trust myself not to nag about cheating, balance, bug etc if things happen.