V20 Experimental Build 5 Available!

[Aaron]

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.

This new build doesn't have quite as many new things in it as usual, but we are releasing it early so as to fix a few important issues, before we start integrating some big AI changes - during which we won't be able to do a new release for a week or so. The major fix is to aliens shooting through UFO walls - note that the aliens are still able to shoot through UFO floors; we know this is annoying but it will be fixed, the cause is just different from the shooting through walls bug.

Chris and our Geoscape programmers have also been doing lots of work cleaning up the new UI, which had quite a few rough edges - I should warn you this is still a bit of a work in progress, so you may see glitches; it's OK to report these as bugs though, just to make sure we catch them.

Also worth noting that I have now finished all the maps for the "crash site" style missions - so any feedback on them in the beta forum would be much appreciated. The only maps left to do now are terror mission and alien base attack mission maps.

Here are the changes:

Fixes:

- Fixed two issues that could allow weapons to penetrate through UFO hulls (does not fix shooting through floors!)

-- First was an issue to do with blocking shots that travel between diagonal tiles

-- Second was an issue with the updated accuracy formula where a wall would reduce the chance to hit to zero, but then the close range bonus would override that

- Fixed the way jetpack animations are displayed (they now display the full take-off/land animation before moving)

- Removed the blue tint from "stunned" units - this was a debug tool, your are meant to find out by checking their corpse

- Enabled an animation for healing soldiers

- Jetpacks now display their take-off/land animations correctly, completing them before moving

- Fixed various minor issues with props such as fences and concrete barriers

- Fixed missing shotgun death animation for the basic armour type

- Buildings can now be demolished while still under construction

- Tiles which are flat on the ground and passable no longer go transparent when a unit stands behind them

- Stunned units are no longer blue tinted

- Colour corrected desert rock sprites to match mesas

- Fixed bug where saving the game during the "deployment" phase of a mission could grant the player a free turn

Additions

- All the maps for the Desert tileset have been overhauled, with multiple new maps added to each

-- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types

-- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement

-- A number of new building submaps have also been added for additional level variety

-- Please give feedback on how you find them!

- An animation now plays to indicate when a unit is healed

- Reworked Geoscape popup alerts to match new UI style

- Many adjustments and improvements to the main menu UI

- Soldiers will now no longer take reaction shots that have a greater than 10% chance of hitting their comrades

Balance

- Continent maps adjusted so fewer Desert and more Middle East style missions spawn (previously there was too much Desert)

- Alien grenades have been updated with stats more in line with other grenades, they also no longer deal stun damage

Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

[Chris]

I’m currently working on the game UI, trying to take it from placeholder to finished. This process is still ongoing so I’d probably expect some unusual behaviour in this version, for example invisible buttons or incorrectly-styled pop-up windows. If you encounter them in the game then please just post them up in this thread and I’ll try and correct from for the next build – there’s a lot of pop-ups in the game and it’s hard to check them all.

The reskinning work is primarily concerned with making the pop-ups more attractive, changing them from their old grey boxes to a style that matches the new UI (the UFO Detected pop-up is an example of a finished pop-up window if you are curious about what I am trying to achieve).

However, I am also attempting to make the windows read more easily. I’ve noticed a number of comments on the board to the effect of “I wasn’t sure how to use the new UI tabbed windows at first” and so I’ve taken a few steps to make it obvious what is clickable on our new UI.

The largest change is that the selected tab is now displayed in white with a black outline and the other tabs are displayed in black, rather than the selected tab being displayed in black and the other tabs “greyed out”. Hopefully this will help navigation a bit.

I’ve also been working on the Main Menu. This is still a work in progress, but I’ve added outlined text to make selections clearer (replacing the old underline effect). I’ve also made the other interactive text light up on mouseover, and fixed up the difficulty uniform images so they display correctly now (making them far sharper). I’m also going to be getting rid of the previous checkboxes entirely for the various game options and replacing them with on / off toggles. You’ll have to wait until the next version of that though.

In the build after this one, there will also be improved text scaling in the Xenopedia – I’ve made the text scaling formulaic, rather than linear. This should make it bigger at smaller sizes but not much smaller at large sizes. This won’t be possible on the rest of the GUI though, unfortunately, as that gives me much less freedom to change the length of text strings without wrecking the elements around it. Still, the majority of complaints come from the Xenopedia so hopefully it’ll address that.

TL;DR: I'm finally getting the UI ready for release. It'll take some time though, so bear with me.

[superbob]

Awesome, a new build for the upcoming weekend!

[Chris]

Actually, you know what - don't report windows that are incorrectly skinned unless there are game-breaking problems with them.

There's too many of them and I've already corrected a bunch more of them in the dev version that aren't in this build.

[Gromitek]

What about "more funds from airstrike" balance?

[Avid]

Got as far as January 5th on the Geoscape before the game hangs and crashes. One bit of feedback.

[irongamer]

Heck, I'm already loving some of the UI changes. A number of the buttons are now much more obviously buttons, especially on rollover.

[Chris]

Gromitek - yes, we'll be moving the long term funding gain from completing missions to shooting the UFO down in the first place. Not in this build though.

[Elsayal]

Hi,

does the 'changed role' issue is solved with this build ?

thanks for answering

[Mordobb]

BAh, old feature of seeing soldier weapon not returned in the transport tab, since this is a game stopper for me..nothing to see there.

[ls35a]

I haven't played this game in a long time. I'm amazed at how polished it is now. HUGE improvements!!!!

Can't wait for the release version.

This game is really wonderful - finally a decent modern X-Com.

[igorian]

i dont know where to ask this, but hey:

whats up with stun grenades!? normal difficulty, threw 6 grenades in a sebillian, he didnt care at all.

Why did you guys make them so ineffective? 5 battles and i can't catch anyone. I dont see stun progress bar on my soldiers when they go into the fog of stun grenade.

[igorian]

by the way when you look at the stun grenade technical stats, it says stun damage: 0

why!? and same with baton

[StellarRat]

There have been a lot of complaints about how useless stun grenades and rockets are now. I haven't been able to knock out anything with them in the last two versions no matter how many I throw.

[Ol' Stinky]

by the way when you look at the stun grenade technical stats, it says stun damage: 0

why!? and same with baton

The stun grenade's explosion doesn't cause any stun damage itself, but it does have a 90% chance to create stun gas clouds. Gas_gc.xml contains the info for those (they do 20 stun damage).

The stun baton does have correct entries for damage, unless I've loaded up an outdated version of weapons_gc.xml or something. Here's line 662:

      <Ammo name="ammo.ballistic.shockbaton" type="energy" damage="5" stunDamage="80" empDamage="50" mitigation="0">

[Avid]

I haven't played this game in a long time. I'm amazed at how polished it is now. HUGE improvements!!!!

Can't wait for the release version.

This game is really wonderful - finally a decent modern X-Com.

I second that sentiment. Keep up the good work guys!

[igorian]

stun baton works but its technical stats shows stun damage: 0

please correct it in the next version.

But grenades are still ineffective. I think that when the cloud is being dispersed from the grenade on the initial detonation it has to deal that 20 damage, but it doesn't somehow.

[Ol' Stinky]

stun baton works but its technical stats shows stun damage: 0

please correct it in the next version.

But grenades are still ineffective. I think that when the cloud is being dispersed from the grenade on the initial detonation it has to deal that 20 damage, but it doesn't somehow.

Are you looking at weapons.xml or weapons_gc.xml? I think in this case weapons_gc.xml is the one to look at. (With some variables, like the amount of shots a weapon holds, the two have to be in sync. It's a bit erratic.) Although you're right that weapons.xml should read 5 damage to be consistant with weapons_gc.xml, and not 0.

[igorian]

Are you looking at weapons.xml or weapons_gc.xml? I think in this case weapons_gc.xml is the one to look at. (With some variables' date=' like the amount of shots a weapon holds, the two have to be in sync. It's a bit erratic.) Although you're right that weapons.xml should read 5 damage to be consistant with weapons_gc.xml, and not 0.[/quote']

i'm looking in game while in soldier inventory fitting screen.

[Chris]

The tooltips don't read from the game files, so sadly they need to be updated manually every time there is a change. We'll do a final update of them all just before the game releases - it's too much work to keep them up to date given how much the balance is changing at the moment.

[Skitso]

Is there a way to tell the effects of base facilities? I feel I could use some help in what to build and why. For example what are the benefits of building a sick bay? Yeah, I'm sure it helps my troops to heal faster, but it'd be nice to know the effects precisely. Does it help in healing troops that are assigned in action, will troops heal at all without it, or do I need to manually take them out of chinook to go to sick bay? Btw, seeing troops health in equipment screen would be also nice. Atm if I understand correctly, you can only see injuries in the personnel screen?

[Elsayal]

Hi,

does the 'changed role' issue is solved with this build ?

thanks for answering

pease ?

[igorian]

and dont forget to make small trees transparent and walls/other objects forget to go transparent for my soldiers and also for enemies.

[Chris]

Elysal - which specific bug do you mean? This build should allow you to change role and create new roles for your soldiers without any issues.

Skitso - no, there isn't. Good point.

All - we're planning to put out a new build tomorrow, which includes the long-awaited "shooting through the floor" fix, among others.

[Duke]

nice