Xenonauts 2 News

We intend to post monthly updates on our progress on Xenonauts 2 to keep our community in the loop about what we've been working on here at Goldhawk Interactive.

Obviously the big news this month has been our Early Access launch two weeks ago, which has been a great success. Over 40,000 people have supported the project by purchasing a copy of the game, and we're hugely grateful to everyone who has done so.

[h3]Critical Bugs & Performance Fixes:[/h3]
We've spent almost all our time this month fixing "critical issues" with the game. Broadly speaking there's three categories of these issues - crashes, performance problems, and frustrating gameplay bugs.

We've been working a lot of hours recently and have made good headway with these fixes, releasing 1.28b last Friday which addressed many of the worst bugs and performance issues. The sheer number of helpful people in the community willing to provide detailed bug reports really helped with this, so thanks to anyone that did so!

We'll shortly be releasing 1.29 onto the Experimental branches which fixes the memory leak that tanks performance in long play sessions, as well as several other quite irritating gameplay bugs. It also contains a small balance patch to make the game a bit more forgiving on the easier difficulty settings. Assuming no stability issues are found, this should make its way onto the standard branches by the weekend.

[h3]Mission Timers & Loading Times:[/h3]
In the next few days we are planning to start work on adding a difficulty settings option that allows you to tweak the mission timers to your preference (this will include the option to disable the timers entirely).

At the same time we'll also be doing a first pass on optimising the loading times, as we know slow load times are an issue for a lot of players (although the memory leak being fixed in 1.29 will help with this too).

[h3]Milestone 2:[/h3]
We're then planning to spend the remainder of the month working on Milestone 2. This will be the first major update for the game and it will involve changes to the campaign, which unfortunately means it will break save games (although people can continue to play their Milestone 1 campaigns on the Legacy branches if they want).

We'll be focusing Milestone 2 on the air combat balance and the pacing issues in the existing campaign. This is likely to extend the playable time beyond 180 days but it will not yet introduce additional UFO types to the game - it's more likely that we'll be expanding the role of the Cleaners at the start of the game instead.

This should give us a chance to act upon the feedback that the community has provided over the past couple of weeks, while allowing the programmers to focus their time on bugfixes and usability improvements. If all goes well the first Milestone 2 build will arrive on the Experimental branch in the next two or three weeks.

[h3]Expanding the Team:[/h3]
The final thing to mention is that the income from our Early Access launch means we now have the opportunity to expand our team, which should speed up development and help us create a higher-quality game.

The first positions we're looking to fill are that of a Level Designer and a Gameplay Programmer. I've linked the posts below if anyone is potentially interested - we always look favourably on candidates who are familiar with our game!

• Level Designer (Remote)
• Gameplay Programmer (Remote)

Overall, July was a great month for the project. Although it has been a very intense few months for us, it's been great to see people playing and enjoying Xenonauts 2 and we're keen to keep improving the game!

This is an update for the default Steam branches that contains all the fixes from versions 1.26 to 1.28 that were being tested on the Experimental build over the past few days.

This patch contains performance fixes, stability fixes and also some gameplay tweaks. The combined changelogs are shown below:

Gameplay:

• Using shot preview move (Ctrl+Shift) no longer causes significant performance problems.
  
• Various smaller performance updates to both strategy and tactical layer (we'll be looking at load times shortly).
  
• Added a "mission briefing" button to the Geoscape info panel for a tactical mission, which allows you to see the tactical mission briefing on the strategy layer before you equip your troops.
  
• Cleaner SMGs and Cleaner Accelerated Rifles are now recoverable and usable (by popular demand).
  
• The intro cinematic and the game mechanic popups are now enabled at the start of each campaign, regardless of whether the tutorial is enabled or not.
  
• Xenonaut Sentry Guns can now open doors, but are unable to crush objects.
  
• Reduced the spawn rate of Cleaner anomalies at the start of the game.
  
• Tooltips have been added for the various stat columns on the Soldier Recruitment panel.
  
• Snowmobiles should now explode when destroyed.
  
• Stalker Stealth Armour now displays as Gas Immune in Xenopedia.
  
• When hovering the cursor over the base icons in the top right, the base name is now displayed instantly rather than after a short delay.
  
• When hovering the cursor over a soldier in the vertical list on the dropship soldier arrangement screen, the popup showing their face / equipment is now show instantly rather than after a short delay.
  

Key Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the day 180 "Content Complete" popup was not being shown, and the game loss conditions were not triggering if you lost enough regions.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to begin a crash site mission when there was a wreckage site also present on the Geoscape.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause multiple popups to spawn when intercepting UFOs or sending a dropship to a tactical mission. In both cases this could cause crashes.
  
• Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur during the alien turn if the aliens were using hovering units like Servitors.
  
• Fixed two rare crashes that could occur in the Soldier Equip pool due to corrupted Kickstarter backer soldiers.
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you built over 50 planes.
  

General Fixes:

• It's no longer possible to find undiscovered Cleaner Cells / Bases / etc by clicking on a UFO or mission that has spawned near to where they are hidden.
  
• Fixed grenades / aircraft missiles not properly upgrading if you skip the Alenium project and go straight for Fusion (sadly I don't think this fixes existing campaigns though)
  
• Aircraft will now start to immediately repair Armour after being upgraded.
  
• Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly charging TU for you to pick an item up and then put it back in the same spot.
  
• Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly forgetting to charge TU if you moved the same item multiple times.
  
• TU costs for abilities are now rounded up rather than down. This fixed some odd situations where it was occasionally better to have fewer TU.
  
• It should no longer be possible to use a jetpack to fly between rooms in the Alien Base, or to jetpack through the roof of the Dragonfly dropship.
  
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to redirect a dropship in flight to a landed UFO site.
  
• MARS vehicles now correctly display their names in the tactical combat.
  
• Disabled the day 300 Orbital Bombardment research report (which wasn't supposed to be in the game).
  
• Psyon VIP on Cleaner Cell missions no longer reports recovering both a Stunned Psyon and a Cleaner VIP if captured alive.
  
• Stalker Stealth Armour no longer shows the hair of soldiers floating inside their helmet.
  
• Dead Cyberdrones should no longer appear to be alive again after loading a save.
  
• Fixed some terrain objects in the Xenonaut base showing a bright pink error texture when destroyed.
  
• Fixed the Boreal sawmill building roofs so they correctly disappear if destroyed.
  
• Fixed typos in the strategy tutorial, Frag Grenade tooltip, and Ballistic Weapons and Fighter Datacore research text.
  
• Fixed the Engineering recruit panel having tooltips referring to scientists instead of engineers.
  
• Fixed a text overflow issue in the soldier memorial screen.
  
• Cleaner ballistic rifles no longer have an additional 5-round burst.
  
• Bomber UFO no longer incorrectly referred to as "medum-size" in Xenopedia.
  
• HEVY now displays its damage type as Thermal on tooltips.
  
• Tactical Inventory no longer incorrectly refers to the Tactical Vest as the Belt.
  
• Rush replace on aircraft now correctly costs the listed amount of money.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could drag any type of ammo onto any weapon on the Soldier Equip screen and it would accept it.
  
• Fixed some Xenopedia / tooltip typos.
  

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!

Gameplay Changes:

• The intro cinematic and the game mechanic popups are now enabled at the start of each campaign, regardless of whether the tutorial is enabled or not.
  
• Cleaner SMGs and Cleaner Accelerated Rifles are now recoverable and usable (by popular demand).
  
• Xenonaut Sentry Guns can now open doors, but are unable to crush objects.
  
• TU costs for abilities are now rounded up rather than down. This fixed some odd situations where it was occasionally better to have fewer TU.
  
• Reduced the spawn rate of Cleaner anomalies at the start of the game.
  

Key Fixes:

• Fixed a pathfinding crash that had been introduced in 1.26, which usually crashed during the AI turn but also could affect the player.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause multiple popups to spawn when intercepting UFOs or sending a dropship to a tactical mission. In both cases this could cause crashes.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur on the Soldier Recruitment panel due to a corrupted Kickstarter backer soldier.
  
• Fixed a bug where the day 180 "Content Complete" popup was not being shown, and the game loss conditions were not triggering if you lost enough regions.
  

General Fixes:

• Fixed grenades / aircraft missiles not properly upgrading if you skip the Alenium project and go straight for Fusion.
  
• Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly charging TU for you to pick an item up and then put it back in the same spot.
  
• Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly forgetting to charge TU if you moved the same item multiple times.
  
• It should no longer be possible to use a jetpack to fly between rooms in the Alien Base, or to jetpack through the roof of the Dragonfly dropship.
  
• MARS vehicles now correctly display their names in the tactical combat.
  
• Disabled the day 300 Orbital Bombardment research report (which wasn't supposed to be in the game).
  
• Psyon VIP on Cleaner Cell missions no longer reports recovering both a Stunned Psyon and a Cleaner VIP if captured alive.
  
• Stalker Stealth Armour no longer shows the hair of soldiers floating inside their helmet.
  
• Dead Cyberdrones should no longer appear to be alive again after loading a save.
  
• Fixed some terrain objects in the Xenonaut base showing a bright pink error texture when destroyed.
  
• Fixed the Boreal sawmill building roofs so they correctly disappear if destroyed.
  
• Fixed typos in the strategy tutorial, Frag Grenade tooltip, and Ballistic Weapons and Fighter Datacore research text.
  
• Fixed the Engineering recruit panel having tooltips referring to scientists instead of engineers.
  

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!

Gameplay:

• Using shot preview move (Ctrl+Shift) no longer causes significant performance problems.
  
• Various smaller performance updates to both strategy and tactical layer (although these are unlikely to be noticable in an Experimental build due to the extra logging reducing overall performance)
  
• Aircraft will now start to immediately repair Armour after being upgraded.
  
• Rush replace on aircraft now correctly costs the listed amount of money.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could drag any type of ammo onto any weapon on the Soldier Equip screen and it would accept it.
  
• MARS now correctly displays its name in the tactical combat.
  
• Fixed some Xenopedia / tooltip typos.
  

Crash Fixes:

• Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to begin a crash site mission when there was a wreckage site also present on the Geoscape.
  
• Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur during the alien turn if the aliens were using hovering units like Servitors.
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur in the Soldier Equip pool.
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you built over 50 planes.
  

We've now released V1.25 off our Experimental branches onto our main branches for everyone to play. We want to say a big thanks to everyone that tested on our Experimental branches over the past couple of days!

As the current version on the standard branches was 1.23b, this changelog includes the fixes from both 1.24 and 1.25.

Gameplay Changes:

• Item sell prices now increase / decrease correctly per item sold even if you sell in a stack, meaning there is no longer any benefit to hoarding items in your stores to sell all at once.
  
• The items on escort UFOs are now also recovered if you win the crash site. This means you can now get the bonus Alloys and the Fighter Datacore items when you shoot down a UFO that has alien Fighter escorts.
  
• Added a new settings option to disable Camera Edge Scrolling in the tactical combat (i.e. the camera moving if you put the mouse near the edge of the screen).
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed an issue where the game would fail to load up at all if the /My Documents/ directory was inaccessible for some reason.
  
• Added support for command line override of the default save path:    -gameSaveFolder=""
  
• Fixed a bug where the Cleaner Cell missions would not register when a unit carrying the VIP steps into a dropship for the first time, and did not automatically end the mission with victory like it should (although it did register if that soldier moved a second time within the dropship).
  
• Fixed an issue where you could stack Extra Armour modules on the MARS if you were playing in a non-English version of the game.
  
• Fixed an AI hang that could occur during the alien turn.
  
• Attempted to fix the lockups some people were experiencing in the strategy section of the tutorial.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when holding Shift or Ctrl when triggering a C4 detonator, as well as various other crashes related to using similar items with one or both of those keys held.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur if achievements were mis-set on Steam or GOG.
  
• Fixed a couple of Kickstarter backers with invalid portraits who could crash the game if sent into tactical combat.
  

EDIT - we temporarily reverted back to 1.23b after releasing this version due to an issue with the save path, which caused the game not to find existing save games (see my comment below). This has now been resolved.

If you have any missing save games, please move the contents of the /Xenonauts 2 Editor/ folder into /Xenonauts 2/ in the directory "/My Documents/My Games/!