Milestone 5.25.1 STABLE Released!

[Chris]

This hotfix for Milestone 5 fixes a serious issue in the game considered urgent, so we're launching it straight onto the normal branches without letting people test it for a few days on the Experimental branches first. There's therefore a higher chance of stability issues than normal - we'll be watching the bug report forums closely over the weekend, so please let us know if you encounter any issues!

The critical bug we're fixing can cause soldiers to suffer permanent stat loss if you're saving / loading during combat, as well as potentially getting stuck in the wounded state on the strategy layer. However, we're also toning down Mind Control and fixing an issue with night missions getting out of sync with the Geoscape night shadow.

Changes:

• Mind Control for Psyons no longer uses squad sight, so Psyons need to get direct vision on a Xenonaut before they can cast the ability (Eternals can still cast Mind Control using squad sight).
• Added new art for the Alien Antigravity Unit research project.
• Added new injury / death sounds for the Eternal.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where soldiers could permanently lose stats if a player loaded a tactical save in which their units had temporary debuffs from being Suppressed (Reflexes) or taking HP damage (Accuracy), as this caused the temporary debuffs to incorrectly become permanent. Unfortunately it's not possible for us to fix soldiers that have suffered from this issue - sorry about that!
• Fixed the day / night status of a mission on the Geoscape being set when it first spawns, rather than the time when the player actually begins the mission.
• Fixed a bug where smoke tiles and doors would sometimes appear invisible to the player, but still be present in gameplay terms.
• (Hopefully) fixed combat shields sometimes not disappearing when destroyed by enemy fire.
• Fixed the UOO Bridge Assault mission not allowing you to attempt it a second time if you abort the mission.
• Fixed soldiers getting stuck in the "airborne" state if you abort the Bridge Assault mission.
• Fixed the Geoscape objective text going off the edge of the screen on non-16:9 screens.

[skaianDestiny]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but does the Alien Antigravity Unit research project art have elements of genAI images used in the background? There's small bits of inconsistency that have never been present in any other Xenopedia illustration that are hallmarks of genAI images. Which would be a real shame, given the Xenopedia art has always been some of my favorite parts of the game given how well made they are and their quality.

I'd very much prefer to be jumping at shadows, but the background still would be way too rough compared to every other illustration once I started scrutinizing it that I would suggest another go at refining it.

Edited April 12 by skaianDestiny

[Skitso]

4 hours ago, skaianDestiny said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but does the Alien Antigravity Unit research project art have elements of genAI images used in the background? There's small bits of inconsistency that have never been present in any other Xenopedia illustration that are hallmarks of genAI images. Which would be a real shame, given the Xenopedia art has always been some of my favorite parts of the game given how well made they are and their quality.

I'd very much prefer to be jumping at shadows, but the background still would be way too rough compared to every other illustration once I started scrutinizing it that I would suggest another go at refining it.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of evidence of AI generated elements in the more recent art. 

[Chris]

18 hours ago, skaianDestiny said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but does the Alien Antigravity Unit research project art have elements of genAI images used in the background? There's small bits of inconsistency that have never been present in any other Xenopedia illustration that are hallmarks of genAI images. Which would be a real shame, given the Xenopedia art has always been some of my favorite parts of the game given how well made they are and their quality.

I'd very much prefer to be jumping at shadows, but the background still would be way too rough compared to every other illustration once I started scrutinizing it that I would suggest another go at refining it.

It's not AI-generated. The artist has just painted over a 3d render of the in-game prop and placed it in front of the updated research UI background.

13 hours ago, Skitso said:

Yeah, I've seen a lot of evidence of AI generated elements in the more recent art. 

No, you haven't. You're just making assumptions.

[Skitso]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

No, you haven't. You're just making assumptions.

Ok, it just has to be one of your artists' style that looks odd then.

Edited April 12 by Skitso

[Chris]

That's an entirely different artist to the ones you've complained about previously, though, and that specific piece of art was painted two years ago (prior to the Early Access launch), back when AI image generation was very primitive.

Which kinda illustrates the point I'm making - not every issue you see with a piece of art is because it's been generated by AI. Sometimes artists cut corners, sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they just aren't technically capable enough to get everything in a scene perfect. In this case that's just the artist's style, which you can also see on all the interrogation art. He's a very talented artist (especially with biological creatures) but he's not great at industrial design, which is why the computer stuff at the top looks a bit weird.