Xenonauts 2 News

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

This is a small patch for 1.33 that fixes a couple more minor bugs related to the C4, and should (finally) have all our achievements working properly.

[h3]Changelog:[/h3]

• Fixed issues with the following achievements, which should now be possible to earn:
  • First Contact
    
  • Counterfire
    
  • Unfriendly Fire
    
  • Future Warfare
• You should now be able to place C4 freely. In the previous version you could not place it until you had moved a soldier.
  
• C4 should no longer show 0/0 ammo.
  

August was a busy month for us here at Goldhawk, and we've spent it hard at work improving Xenonauts 2! Here's what we've been up to over the past four weeks.

[h3]New Versions:[/h3]
Last month we continued to patch and improve our existing build (Milestone 1), culminating in us releasing v1.32 onto the standard Steam branches and v1.33 onto the Experimental branch today. We've fixed a lot of crashes and other bugs in that time, but also addressed wider issues like adding options to change the duration of timed missions and fixing the memory leaks affecting performance.

We've also begun working on our next major update, Milestone 2. A very early build of this is available on our new "Prototype" branch, and if you want to give thoughts on our changes then please read this (long) post which explains what we're trying to achieve and how you can access the build. Early feedback is always appreciated!

Finally, I want to talk briefly about loading times. We did investigate these last month but any substantial improvement to load times would involve changing the format of the save, which would break existing saved games. We'll therefore be working on load times this month as part of our work on Milestone 2 (as saves from Milestone 1 will be incompatible with Milestone 2 anyway).

[h3]Expanding the Team:[/h3]
Part of the reason for our relatively slow progress on Milestone 2 has been the expansion of our team over the past couple of weeks. Our small team size has left us in a situation where we've collected a lot of useful gameplay improvements / suggestions and bug reports from the community since release, but we've only been able to tackle the most urgent of these.

Given we already work long hours, the only way to make a serious dent in the task lists was to get more manpower. We've therefore hired another full-time programmer (an old friend that worked with us on the original Xenonauts) plus two highly experienced part-time programmers to help out. Many thanks to anyone that applied for the position after reading our last update - we really appreciated so many enthusiastic people reaching out!

Furthermore, we've also brought on some new people to help with QA, game design and level design. You should start to see new maps appearing this month, and we are now aiming to reply to all community bug reports on a daily basis.

Overall, this should dramatically increase the speed of our work over the coming months. However, the hiring process sucking time away from other tasks is why Milestone 2 has ended up a bit behind schedule.

[h3]Modding Tools:[/h3]
Another thing we worked on last month is the mod loader and Steam Workshop integration for Xenonauts 2, which is now nearly complete. However, to make modding viable we also need a standalone tool to allow users to easily edit the game files.

We've already done the backend work for this tool, so the remaining task is to create a GUI that hooks into this and displays the information in a sensible way - but as the dev team is focused on the game itself right now, it'll probably be a few months before we could start work on that.

However, it seems like there is some interest among our playerbase for creating an open-source community mod tool that does exactly this, and we're looking at how we as developers might be able to support that (as it would be a win-win for everyone). If you're potentially interested in contributing, there is more information in this thread.

That's everything for this development update. As always, thanks for reading and we'll be writing another update once September is over!

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

[h3]Changelog:[/h3]

• Fixed a crash that would occur if you try to detonate C4 that had been placed in a saved game.
  
• Fixed an issue in the tutorial where a soldier did not have enough TU to fire their shotgun a second time.
  
• Fixed an issue where missiles would sometimes not fire in air combat if you had activated the Afterburner at the start of the battle.
  
• Game no longer creates an Iron Man save when exiting the game (even if you're not playing Iron Man).
  
• Swapping weapons on the Soldier Equip screen now also swaps out the associated ammo for these weapons.
  
• Tooltips are now dismissed when you start dragging an item (e.g. on the soldier equip screen).
  
• Camera now correctly moves up / down when watching an AI unit climbing a ladder during the alien turn.
  
• Quantum Array now correctly shows the additional information on visible UFOs immediately after loading a save.
  
• Units attempting to shoot adjacent walls should no longer contort themselves like a pretzel to do so.
  
• Cleaner Accelerated Rifle no longer drops to 0% Accuracy as soon as it goes beyond maximum range, unlike other weapons.
  

I'll shortly be posting our development update for last month in which we explain our plans for Milestone 2, but we're continuing to patch and improve the existing version of the game while we work on our next update!

This update contains all the fixes from the 1.32 versions we've been testing on the Experimental branch over the past week or so.

[h3]Usability Improvements:[/h3]

• Quantity buttons in various parts of the game (Base Stores, Engineering, etc) now increase in quantity automatically if you press and hold them, rather than you having to click them every time.
  
• Clicking the soldier minitabs at the top of the screen now correctly shows the position of the unit, even if they are unconscious.
  

[h3]Balance Changes:[/h3]

• Melee weapons no longer ignore combat shields.
  
• Alenium Generator upgrade project now costs $200k instead of $500k
  
• The construction time of all upgraded base structures is now the same as the basic version of the structure.
  
• Updated the move cost of several types of movement so soldiers choose more logical paths through the map:
  
  • Opening doors now costs 4TU rather than 3TU
    
  • Vaulting costs 5TU rather than 4TU
    
  • All jetpack movement costs +1TU per tile, so units will land and walk rather than flying along at ground level

[h3]Bugfixes / Other Changes:[/h3]

• Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you tried to overwrite an existing save game.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when rebinding keys in a non-English language.
  
• Fixed another crash that could occur when you tried to initiate air combat if you had merged two airborne squadrons together using the Launch Aircraft panel.
  
• Fixed Flashbangs (and other types of grenade) sometimes incorrectly causing suppression through floors / ceilings.
  
• Fixed an issue we introduced recently where Ctrl "force fire" for weapons would frequently not respond to mouse clicks.
  
• Fixed rotating when shooting incorrectly not costing TU on Veteran and Commander difficulties.
  
• Fixed soldiers not training Strength in the Training Room.
  
• Fixed upgrading a building reseting the construction time of any buildings of that type currently under construction.
  
• Fixed soldier inventory Time Unit move costs not working properly. This system has now been rewritten so it should now always provide the correct cost (let us know if not).
  
• Fixed an ordering issue when tabbing through soldiers in the tactical combat which would place soldier 10 at the very end of the soldier list.
  
• Fixed the "stores full" check that blocks engineering work not triggering correctly if you built or demolished a Storeroom. It will now detect both of these actions correctly.
  
• Fixed interactive consoles on Cleaner missions showing the gold interactive shader after loading a save, even if they'd already been interacted with.
  
• Destroyed bases no longer count towards the base limit, which means players are no longer inexplicably blocked from building a sixth base if they lose one during a campaign.
  

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

[h3]Changelog:[/h3]

• Fixed combat shields not offering any protection due to an error in our last patch.
  
• Fixed flashbangs sometimes causing suppression through floors / ceilings.