XENONAUTS-2 - June Update
Welcome to this month's Development Update - we hope everyone is safe and well out there.
[h2]Development and Testing[/h2]
We've been working on a variety of structural and behind-the-scenes things over the last three weeks, culminating in the release of Closed Beta V13 on the Experimental branch for our existing closed beta testers. This has already had a hotfix, and another is on the way.
We have some new (more exciting) screenshots up on the Steam store page as well
[h2]Narrative[/h2]
In other news, Chris has been working hard on writing for the game. Twenty-three in-game research reports have been completed over the past six weeks and quite a few more have been drafted. Much of the setting is already complete, so this is largely about fleshing out content and making sure that the progressive lore reveals throughout the campaign are coherent and compelling.
A couple of these research reports will be unlocked in the Xenopedia from the start of the game to set the scene - we gave you a sneak peek at some of this content in our previous development update.
Over the next month, one of our tasks will be tidying up the Xenopedia UI so that projects are organised nicely into category headings and the whole thing is much more readable.
[h2]Ground Missions[/h2]
Progress has been a little slow in this area but we're continuing to work on the new art style: we hope to have the first set of maps built with the new tiles very soon. We expect players will see this as a significant aesthetic improvement - it's certainly making levels a lot more readable. It's absolutely critical that enemies and cover objects are clearly delineated, so that's one of our main goals. This is all a work-in-progress but we hope to have something to show you very soon.
Here's a few other elements of ground missions that we're working on:
[h2]Early Access[/h2]
We're not ready to set a formal Early Access date just yet but, as you can see from the above, we are making progress in that direction.
Our objective is a release that contains a polished version of the first three months or so of the campaign, which in Xenonauts-1 terms would take you roughly up to Landing Ships. There will be further (less polished) content available from release as well, but we feel that focussing on the full experience for that first phase of the game will give the best impression of the final product.
The date will be announced once we've completed the following:
At that point, we'll announce the date 2 - 3 months in advance and polish up what we have in advance of release to make it as enjoyable as possible.
[h2]Mod Support[/h2]
We have also been spending some time on making preparations for mod support. This requires us to save data in editable text files rather than leaving it deep in the impenetrable recesses of the game's codebase. Since the last update, we've managed to externalise the base buildings and we'll be moving on to unit loadouts, UFO crews and UFO missions shortly.
Once this is done, almost everything the game will - in theory - be editable by modders. In practise, however, you're likely to need some editor tools…
On that front, we've been chatting to our long-term community hero Solver about general community involvement with this. Our internal tools are embedded within Unity and aren't particularly user-friendly, so Goldhawk is planning to do a bit of work to prepare the code interface so that external programmers are able to build mod tools which can easily read and write to these data files.
We can't make any promises here, as our priority is obviously completing the game for players, but we're continuing to explore the possibilities.
Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions.
We can't promise to get to everything but we'll do our best to answer things which come up frequently from the community.
[h2]Development and Testing[/h2]
We've been working on a variety of structural and behind-the-scenes things over the last three weeks, culminating in the release of Closed Beta V13 on the Experimental branch for our existing closed beta testers. This has already had a hotfix, and another is on the way.
We have some new (more exciting) screenshots up on the Steam store page as well[h2]Narrative[/h2]
In other news, Chris has been working hard on writing for the game. Twenty-three in-game research reports have been completed over the past six weeks and quite a few more have been drafted. Much of the setting is already complete, so this is largely about fleshing out content and making sure that the progressive lore reveals throughout the campaign are coherent and compelling.
A couple of these research reports will be unlocked in the Xenopedia from the start of the game to set the scene - we gave you a sneak peek at some of this content in our previous development update.
Over the next month, one of our tasks will be tidying up the Xenopedia UI so that projects are organised nicely into category headings and the whole thing is much more readable.
[h2]Ground Missions[/h2]
Progress has been a little slow in this area but we're continuing to work on the new art style: we hope to have the first set of maps built with the new tiles very soon. We expect players will see this as a significant aesthetic improvement - it's certainly making levels a lot more readable. It's absolutely critical that enemies and cover objects are clearly delineated, so that's one of our main goals. This is all a work-in-progress but we hope to have something to show you very soon.
Here's a few other elements of ground missions that we're working on:
- Getting the hull-hiding system for the UFOs working properly continues to be troublesome but we're nearly there now!
- Night missions are largely functional but need a few fixes and minor details, such as vehicle headlights, to be added
- If we have time, we'll be fixing a few rough edges - jerky camera movement, missing action during the alien turn and the lag on unit death animations are just a few of these
[h2]Early Access[/h2]
We're not ready to set a formal Early Access date just yet but, as you can see from the above, we are making progress in that direction.
Our objective is a release that contains a polished version of the first three months or so of the campaign, which in Xenonauts-1 terms would take you roughly up to Landing Ships. There will be further (less polished) content available from release as well, but we feel that focussing on the full experience for that first phase of the game will give the best impression of the final product.
The date will be announced once we've completed the following:
- All of the research reports which appear in this first chunk of the game - as you can see above, we're making good progress on this right now
- Three maps per biome for each of the UFO's / ground missions that appear in this section of the game (including night missions)
At that point, we'll announce the date 2 - 3 months in advance and polish up what we have in advance of release to make it as enjoyable as possible.
[h2]Mod Support[/h2]
We have also been spending some time on making preparations for mod support. This requires us to save data in editable text files rather than leaving it deep in the impenetrable recesses of the game's codebase. Since the last update, we've managed to externalise the base buildings and we'll be moving on to unit loadouts, UFO crews and UFO missions shortly.
Once this is done, almost everything the game will - in theory - be editable by modders. In practise, however, you're likely to need some editor tools…
On that front, we've been chatting to our long-term community hero Solver about general community involvement with this. Our internal tools are embedded within Unity and aren't particularly user-friendly, so Goldhawk is planning to do a bit of work to prepare the code interface so that external programmers are able to build mod tools which can easily read and write to these data files.
We can't make any promises here, as our priority is obviously completing the game for players, but we're continuing to explore the possibilities.
Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions.
We can't promise to get to everything but we'll do our best to answer things which come up frequently from the community.