Xenonauts Build 6 released

[Sitra Achara]

http://www.xenonauts.com/

I was hoping to be able to announce the completion of the Press build today, but progress has been slower than anticipated and the optimistic timelines originally suggested have proved exactly that. However, it’s been two months since our last release and we’ve still made considerable progress in those two months, so we’ve released an updated build (V6) anyway. It’s not as polished as we’d have hoped, but there’s plenty of new things to play with!

Main features:
- Numerous ground combat usability changes based on community feedback; camera tracking, soldier control etc.
- Geoscape now includes Country Relations system (including month-end funding), the escalating alien invasion AI, and the Events system (which is a sort of ‘news feed’ of events and alien attacks occurring around the world based on your performance).
- Painted tiles are now 90% in place for the Industrial tileset. This means all but a handful of tiles have painted ‘Damaged’ and ‘Destroyed’ variants as well as their default 'Undamaged' state, so you can really go to town on the destructible terrain.
- The ground combat sound effects have been significantly upgraded.
- We've added civilians to the ground combat.
- The healing (via medikit) and melee stun (via stun baton) systems have been revised and improved.

If you're a pre-orderer, you can find it in our Early Access forums. If not, think about pre-ordering! This is only intended to be a quick post, and the above an interim build - we're going to be working very hard to get a more polished version out in the next few weeks. If you find any bugs, do let us know - we don't want any in the press build!

While Tactical Combat isn't new (existed since June), it was very rudimentary and buggy in the previous builds. It's better now, slowly edging towards beta status I'd say, but it still lacks some features (like enemy AI...) and needs more polishing.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Build 7 is out, and it has already undergone 3 rapid revisions, resulting in build 7.4.

This is just a very quick update - we're working on finalising the build for the Eurogamer Expo (see post below for full details), and we've released a work-in-progress build on the pre-order forums for you guys to have a quick play and make suggestions on. Obviously we want to make the build as stable as possible and as enjoyable to play as we can, so your thoughts on easy things we can do in the next 24 hours or so to improve the build would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT - V7.1 now available for download on pre-order forums. This contains fixes to most of the bugs / weaknesses highlighted in V7. Again, your feedback is welcome on this!

EDIT - V7.2 out now.

We'll post up something a bit more substantial in the coming days explaining what's changed (quite a lot), but the general gist of it is that we've added a lot of polish to the appearance of the ground combat, fixed a LOT of bugs and generally made the combat missions a lot more playable.

It's starting to take shape - more stable, less buggy, snappier animations, reaction fire is in... I'd say it's the first reasonably playable build.

Also, the Dev Diary at PC Gamer has been updated:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/12/xenon ... v-diary-2/

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Sounds great i will have to look into it more when i have cash and time, but it is good to see that it is going forward.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Here's a video from the presentation at Eurogamer Expo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc7IVbY3UYg

 

[Burning Bridges]

Are you involved in the development and able to answer questions?

 

[Destroid]

Looking nice, much better than some of the earlier screens. Hopefully there will be a high speed animation option?

 

[Sitra Achara]

Are you involved in the development and able to answer questions?

I'm an ordinary pre-orderer. I can answer questions about the builds released to the pre-orderers, if you'd like...

 

[Lightknight]

Fuck, its this Totalbiscuit shit again. Can someone nail him to a wall or something ?

 

[Roderick]

well this seems great. looks like this has potential to even improve on x-com

 

[MetalCraze]

TotalBiscuit is a cool dude, shut up.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Good video. The graphics look sweet and the gameplay apparently not sucks. The guy even mentioned that they added the aiming system frm Jagged Alliance, although it was not clear what he meant.

I'm an ordinary pre-orderer. I can answer questions about the builds released to the pre-orderers, if you'd like...

I see that they have an engine now, but how far is the game in terms of content?
Do you think this game will be released in the next 6-12 months?
To which extent is the preorder build already playable?
How is the AI?
Was there ever talk of adding animation?

 

[Destroid]

From jagged alliance they took the multiple levels of aiming as opposed to just snap or aimed shots from UFO.

 

[Haba]

I see that they have an engine now, but how far is the game in terms of content?
Do you think this game will be released in the next 6-12 months?
To which extent is the preorder build already playable?
How is the AI?
Was there ever talk of adding animation?

-There is a lot of content, but they haven't obviously shown much of it. Obviously in a game like this it doesn't matter even if you have all the assets finished, since the majority of the development is fine tuning and balancing
-Was slated for Christmas release, will probably be delayed (more pre-orders, more polish)
-Pre-order build(s) are demos, they show certain areas of the game where they want feedback, but they are not "playable" in the strict sense
-Can't talk much about AI yet, veeeery early
-Adding animation? There are animations already, not sure what you mean. The game is completely 2D, so further animations would mean much more effort.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Good video. The graphics look sweet and the gameplay apparently not sucks. The guy even mentioned that they added the aiming system frm Jagged Alliance, although it was not clear what he meant.

I see that they have an engine now, but how far is the game in terms of content?

Not much I can add beyond what's publically available on the website + the video.

Do you think this game will be released in the next 6-12 months?

My humble opinion:
6 months - unlikely. 12 months - maaaaybe, I'd guess 30% chance now that the lead's working on it full time. I'm hoping the multitude of pre-orderers can shorten the testing. (the flip side of that is feature creep, but the lead guy seems to know how to draw the line for the most part)

To which extent is the preorder build already playable?

I'd say there's enough there to dick around for a couple of hours: intercept some UFOs, watch the global events / death toll counter, build a base, complete the ground mission a couple of times...

How is the AI?

Quite rudimentary at this point.

Was there ever talk of adding animation?

Talk is cheap But it was vaguely mentioned:
http://www.xenonauts.com/component/cont ... ture-plans