[p]Hello everyone - welcome to our consolidated development update for July and August, which we've rolled together because I was away on holiday at the start of last month.[/p][h3]
Milestone 6[/h3][p]Let's start with the biggest news first. The initial version of Milestone 6 arrived on the Experimental branch a couple of weeks ago, and since then we've been working hard on patching and improving it in response to community bug reports / feedback. Milestone 6 is another major update for the game, and will be the penultimate update for Xenonauts 2 before we leave Early Access.[/p][p]Progress has generally been good since the initial Experimental build. We're continuing to release a steady stream of new content and bugfixes for Milestone 6, but there's still quite a few gameplay issues to work through before we can release it onto the standard branches for everyone to play. We're therefore expecting a late October release.[/p][p]If anyone is interested in trying out the new content and giving us feedback (particularly if you play the highest or lowest difficulty settings), please feel free to hop over to the Experimental branch and give the new update a play, However, please be aware that Experimental builds haven't been tested as thoroughly as the public versions of the game and tend to contain more bugs![/p][h3]
Game Assets / Content[/h3][p]The final public release of Milestone 6 will contain all the remaining content in our roadmap, except the Mod Tools (which are slated for Milestone 7). Most of this work is now either completed, or very close to it. In addition to everything covered in our previous monthly updates, we now have:[/p]
- [p]All the research art and research text in the game.[/p]
- [p]The updated Air Combat UI fully implemented (barring a few last polishing tweaks).[/p]
- [p]The ending cinematic completed in video form (so we just need to implement it in the game).[/p]
[p]There's two major tasks left to finish before Milestone 6 is done. The first is the Air Combat tutorial, which has been fully written and designed and is currently being hooked up in the code. The other is the new Soviet Town biome - progress here has been a little slower, but we still have five draft maps set up. I'll be switching my focus to this once our current balance pass is complete, so we're hoping to have it in the game by the end of the month.[/p][h3]
Balance / Gameplay Pass[/h3][p]I devoted a lot of time this month to playing Milestone 6. There's been two reasons for this - firstly, it's been quite a while since we last did a proper balance pass on the game, and secondly because I need to properly understand the current player experience to plan Milestone 7.[/p][p]This has been useful, and I've enjoyed it. However, it can be time consuming - Xenonauts 2 is a long game, and every mission played usually ends in us seeing a dozen small improvements that need to be made (bugs, visual issues, tweaks to specific maps or terrain objects, changes to particular enemies, adjustments to the number of aliens in a particular mission, etc). Frequently I'll spend an entire morning fixing issues we spotted in a mission I only spent twenty minutes playing.[/p][p]However, this is time well spent - as we approach the end of our development roadmap, Xenonauts 2 will benefit far more from time spent polishing the moment-to-moment gameplay experience than by adding further content (although we do still have a few cool new additions planned for Milestone 7). Coupled with the feedback we receive from players, we should be able to address many of the things that frustrate or disappoint players who would otherwise enjoy the game. That'll be our main focus for the remainder of the Early Access period.[/p][p]OK, I think that wraps up everything we've been working on recently. Thanks for reading and, as always, an especially big thanks to all the community members who have been testing the game and reporting bugs. See you next month![/p]