Xenonauts - XCOM heavily-inspired project

orderoftheflame said:
Already did and loved the alpha. :)

Beta was supposed to be on the 9th, but there's been no mention of it on Kickstarter. :(
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The beta was delayed as it was due out on the same day as the Firaxis version and they thought the game would just get lost/forgotten in that. Also some RL/logistical/build status issues were involved I've quoted the relevant posts below, you should really follow this on their forums instead of on KS. They have just released build v16 which they are calling 'alpha-deluxe' the not-quite-ready-for-beta-but-more-than-alpha stage.

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3066-Holidays-V15-beta
I discovered a couple of weeks ago that the only space when my friends and I had a suitable time in our calendars to go off on holiday together for a couple of weeks was at the end of this month, specifically the 22nd September to 7th October. As the last time I took time off was December, I'm going to be in Thailand for those two weeks.

The observant among you will have noticed an issue - V15 / beta is due on 9th October. Hopefully work will not completely grind to a halt with me being away even if I'm not able (or willing) to make it to an internet cafe, but in any case that sort of time was going to be busy anyway. Aaron, currently our tile artist, joins Goldhawk full time on the 8th and we're also moving into a proper office on that day (or renting a couple of desks in someone else's office, to be exact). There's quite a few admin tasks required for both of those things, plus there's the small matter of the release of XCOM on October 9th. So lots going on.

The likelihood of V15 coming out on 9th October is therefore somewhat reduced - or certainly the likelihood of it actually being the full beta on 9th October is reduced, if it does come out then. Because of this, I'm happy to release a cut-down V15 next week - probably about Wednesday (giving me a day before my holidays to fix any massive crash bugs) with most of the progress we've made over the last couple of weeks in it, if people want.

The likely features would be:
- More sprites (all friendly AI soldier sprites and some more Xenonaut ones)
- Arctic, Desert and Middle East Tilesets added (though unfinished, so they're bsaically flat and open at the mo)
- Chinook spawn maps for all orientations been added to all tilesets
- Can shoot over crouched soldiers
- Armour degradation with damage
- Vehicles have shadows, plus an explosion when destroyed
- Pop-up windows on Geoscape (UFO detected etc) are now draggable
- Lightmap is realistic and changes with seasons rather than being static
- Burst delay tag for each weapon added, which allows you to set the time between each shot in a burst
- Psionic powers now fully implemented with animation and sound (just need the AI to start using them now)
- Autoclosing doors (at the end of the turn) have been implemented, which we'll use in UFOs / bases

Bugfixes:
- Aliens no longer run inside walls and objects, making them hard to find / kill
- Ground combat saves now work again
- Suppression system for burst fire is now per burst, rather than per bullet
- Civilians spawn again
- Massive strength gain after battle no longer occurring
- Lieutenant and Captain ranks no longer switched
- LOS bug caused by standing on a roof fixed up

We'd then probably put out V16 around about 9th October, which would be the aggregated progress made by the team while I was away, plus more sprite rendering work and GJ's first major AI release.

There's still some way to go before beta even if we hit these goals (which we probably will), but we're making good progress. It also occurs to me that what we initially advertised as "beta" - ie, it's possible to play the feature complete (if not asset complete) game from start to finish - probably wouldn't be a good thing to advertise too much.

I think we may need a couple of weeks of sort of alpha-deluxe before we hit beta, because the game will almost certainly be a bit of a broken, unbalanced, buggy mess for the first couple of weeks of "beta". You forumgoers are used to that, but the last thing I want to do is do a big publicity drive and get a load of new customers to try the game and conclude it's terrible. I imagine it'll be markedly better after a few weeks of tweaks and bugfixes.

So apologies for the delays, but I think the "Three Builds to Beta" schedule has got us pretty close to where we want to be even if we've not quite hit every milestone in it.
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http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3310-Beta-Delay
A few people have been asking me if the beta is arriving today as previously planned. Unfortunately, it is not. This has been known for some time, but unless you're a regular forum-goer and read the other announcement threads, perhaps this is not as obvious as it should be. This post is just a short announcement to ensure everyone is aware of this and can easily find the information if they come looking for it.

There will be a release either tomorrow or Friday which will contain some new features and the first proper incarnation of the AI model, but it will not be a full beta yet. We'll release a more accurate timeline and details of what still needs to be done (and a revised ETA) along with that build too!
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http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3329-Build-V16-Released!
Build V16 has been uploaded to Desura now and should be approved. Sorry about the delay; I've had to clear out the 7 pages of posts in this thread because the delay was so long this thread basically wasn't about the build any more.

The standalones should be up, and Linux / Mac versions are also being uploaded now. Hopefully all versions should be approved within the hour (I'll update this when they are, but my Desura contact is doing the approvals now).

Build V16 contains the following:

- AI model: This is the big improvement in V16. GJ's updated AI model now allows aliens to share information and LOS with each other. This means that aliens will now be able to fire on Xenonauts beyond the sight range of the shooting alien if it is in the LOS of another alien, and they will be harder to sneak up on without reaction fire if a Xenonaut unit has been spotted. They'll also try to avoid standing in each others' line of fire.

There's also been some improvements with regard to psionics. The aliens should now use them (though you probably won't encounter psionic aliens in this build), but they're also limited to being used on humans in LOS of the alien team. General shooting priority for the aliens should be a bit more sensible now - they'll prioritise more dangerous units (Xenonauts) over harmless units like civilians etc.

The AI model will continue to develop; we'll announce more about this in the coming days.

- New tilesets: The way we're making our tilesets means that none of them are actually finished yet, but we have now made enough progress on the Arctic, Desert and Middle East tilesets that we can build basic maps out of them. I've not had time to add the maps for the Middle East tilesets yet, but I've put together a couple of maps for the Arctic and Desert tilesets. In both cases the tilesets are far from finished - they don't have their (waist high) cover props in place yet, and a lot of tiles haven't been painted over or fully set up in the game, and the UFO crash sites use the Industrial tileset art - but they should still be fun to spend a bit of time playing with. As I'll mention in our beta plans update in the next few days, I expect to make a lot of progress on the tilesets in the next month or so.

- Soldier Role Badges: On the Soldier Equip screen, there are now some big red squares next to the soldier rank icons. These are placeholder icons for the soldier role badges, but the full functionality is there. Clicking (or maybe right-clicking) on the badge will let you equip a soldier with the default loadout for that role, or to change the default loadout for that role, or to change the soldier role. Please test this thoroughly; the coder thinks there's plenty of scope for it to be full of bugs.


Unfortunately, there's a few things we were hoping to include that haven't made it into this build because of the wonders of time zones. We'll probably release V16.1 on Monday or Tuesday, which will include the following updates:

- Overdamage: This system will set a HP threshold value for items. If it is ever exceeded from a single source of explosive or hypervelocity damage (it's all or nothing) to the alien carrying the items or the tile they are sitting on, the items will be destroyed. Basically, this means you can use tank cannons and missiles to kill aliens if you like, but there won't be much left to recover afterwards. Small arms fire shouldn't destroy any alien equipment.

- Soldier Portraits: We should have 41 new soldier portraits to put in the game. They are the first 41 $200+ Kickstarter backers to send us their pictures. I think some of these are really cool, actually.

- Improved Tilesets & Middle East Tileset: I'll put together a couple of maps for the Middle East tileset, and we'll have some updates and improvements on the Arctic and Desert tilesets too.

- More animations: A bunch of things were rendered out when I was away, which are currently being processed. They should be done for the next build, which will have a load more civilian types for the Town tileset and should have sprites for the Xenonauts using the alien weapons too, with more to follow.

Right, with that done, I'm going to go and try the new X-Com! Let me know if there's any critical bugs.
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Bought it a while back and occasionally download the builds to see how it is getting on. A bit too rough for me to get into at the moment - too many bugs and too few maps - but that's to be expected from an alpha. Looking forward to maybe playing the beta and definitely the final version, whenever that may be.
 
I had kickstartered it but stuck my head in the sand until today, downlaoding it with the key they've given me now..

For kickstarter users..

We now have everything working and good to go. All Kickstarter backers are entitled to a Steam Early Access key, so to claim and activate your Steam key:

Go to https://secure.desura.com/cart/cdkeys
Log into your Desura account
Go to https://secure.desura.com/cart/cdkeys
Click the "Request Key" button next to Xenonauts
Load Steam and go to Games > Activate A Product On Steam in the topbar
Copy the key into Steam
Viewable in picture form here http://www.xenonauts.com/images/claimguide.jpg

Download size is around 4.1Gb
 
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Steviepunk said:
I'd seen this and it sounds really interesting, has anyone actually played it? Is so, how does it compare to the recent XCom release?
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It's been playable in some form for a while now.

It's very different to the recent Xcom, it's a faithful rebuilding of the original with improved controls and UI and tweaked mechanics.
 
Great game. I would strongly recommend purchasing when it's complete though. I've racked up a fair few hours and the deeper you get into the game, the more incomplete it is.

Aside from being woefully unbalanced, I spent nearly 2 hours trying to kill the last alien in my base that did nothing but continually teleport from one random room to another. ****er!
 
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I'm desperate to play this, but it's not with £20, it needs a 50% off sale.
Scott Manley videos on youtube have more than sold it to me.
 
I succumbed and got it, good enough game, but to simplistic, especially on soldier promotion, lack of training etc.
It is worth buying, but still think it's only worth it at £10
 
I'm playing the hell out of this at the moment, and enjoying everything about it.
As I never played the original DOS version, can anyone tell me what the main gameplay (not graphical) differences are?
 
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