Kickstarter

Hello everyone. It's been over two months since our last update, but they've been a busy two months. The reason why this update has been a little delayed is that I've been holding off writing it until we hit a particular milestone, which happened this week.

Two big bits of news: Xenonauts has now hit beta, and we should be launching on Steam Early Access in the next 4-6 weeks.

I need to qualify that statement by saying that beta, to us, means this: you can now play the game from start to finish, and we've shifted our focus from adding new features to fixing up bugs, balance and generally improving the user experience of the game. It's NOT a beta in the AAA sense of the word, where it's basically a finished project being given an extended public demo.

Therefore if you want a polished experience, you'll still have to wait a little longer. The current game does still have bugs and crashes in it, it doesn't have great balance and there is still some placeholder art and research descriptions. We're working hard on fixing all of these up, but that will only be complete at the end of the beta.

If you want to check on our progress, a good time to do it may be when we launch on Steam Early Access. We've been speaking to Valve about this and we should be doing so in 4-6 weeks, at which point everyone who has ever purchased a copy of Xenonauts will receive an email from Desura containing your Steam key(s).

We'll be releasing a new demo of the game to celebrate the event, containing roughly 1/3 of the game. If you want a taster of our progress without spoiling the final game, you might want to give that a try (we're hoping to have the vast majority of the crash bugs fixed for then). Naturally, if you don't mind playing through a beta game, the full version will be available to play as well.

The largest remaining missing component of the game is the updated UI - though perfectly functional, the current UI is quite ugly. This is being worked on in a separate branch of code and will be merged after the Steam launch. The other things that were holding us up before (e.g. the AI) have largely been completed in the meantime.

As always, the latest and most detailed information is on our forums - but we'll be posting more updates here to keep backers updated on our Steam launch as it draws closer.

A quick update on our progress to keep everyone in the loop on what we're doing - as always, if you want full details then our forums can be found here (there are RSS links for the key sub-forums that you can subscribe to to make it easier).

The first thing to say is that we've released V17.52 on Desura, with Mac and Linux versions being ported / uploaded now (both should be available for download in the next 48 hours). This does still have the occasional crash in it, but it's the most stable that the game has been for quite a while, so if you want to have a bit of a play with the alpha, now's a good time.

Our recent work has been getting ready for beta. Our last updates have been big ones for two reasons - pretty much every unit is in the game now, plus we've implemented our long-awaited file archiving system. The latter means Desura now should work fine when downloading the game, because we've reduced the number of files in the game from about 130,000 to 30,000.

There's also a number of new maps for the early game, a couple for each tileset. For beta we're aiming to have 6 maps for each tileset, which is 2 for each of the Small, Medium and Large classes of UFO. This works out at over 50 maps in total, and hopefully we'll add more in the beta. Recent upgrades to our Level / Submap Editor make it MUCH faster to generate maps so hopefully this won't be a problem. Maybe even the community will help out with it.

One more thing that is pretty much done is our new game Launcher. It turns out our previous one was Windows-only, so those of you with the ported versions of the game had some major problems like not being able to change screen resolution. We've therefore coded a new launcher that is platform independent, a bit more visually appealing and more functional too (it has an RSS feed informing you of our latest developer forum updates too). That'll be arriving in the next build we release.

The stuff we're working on at the moment is the final touches before beta. I'm writing the research tree - there's about 80 project descriptions to write of which I've done about 40; it's taking quite a while (at 1-3 hours each) but I'm getting there. This also involves checking everything unlocks properly etc, but it's a big step towards a beta-ready state.

We're also working on the tiles. Most of the normal tilesets are almost finished, so we're now concentrating on the final UFOs and alien base tiles. There's 8 types of UFO you can attack on the ground missions and it's quite complex work to get the large multi-level ones working properly with the isometric camera and line of sight calculations. We're getting there though.

For the alien bases, we're currently working on the visual style and the spawn code (e.g. so the leader aliens spawn in the command rooms), but then we need to do a few special rooms so the bases reflect the type of alien living in them. The UFOs are taking priority over this but we have some test stuff set up for this in the dev build.

We're also still working hard on the AI. I can't give you too many specifics on this because I wouldn't know a finite state machine if one hit me in the face, but hopefully it should be finished in the near future (though I do know we're not using a finite state machine, we've got a more advanced / adaptable AI model than that). Anyway, having this working is a pre-requisite for any beta so we're doing everything possible to get it ready ASAP. It's dragged on a while, we know.

The final big thing we're working on is the new user interface. The ground combat already has the new UI in place, and we're now coding the new Geoscape UI screens. The first one is now done (the Stores screen) and we'll be starting the Research screen soon. These are on a totally different code branch so you won't see them until they're all done, but it looks pretty much exactly like our concepts. As the old UI is perfectly functional we won't delay beta to wait for the new one to be finished, but it'll be great when it's done.

Lastly, if you're one of our $200+ custom portrait backers and you've not sent your portraits in, please do so. There's a good thirty or so of you that never got around to doing it and, as we've finished almost everyone who has submitted photos, we'll need them soon. I'll send out individual emails in a few weeks so nobody misses out, but if you're reading this and know you're one of the culprits please send them in :)

Hello everybody. This is a long-overdue (and very long) update to all our backers, one which I'll begin with an apology for not having done an update since August. Sorry guys! As always, the freshest info is available on our forums, which has a specific Development Updates subforum. If you're ever wondering what is going on with the project, that's the place to check!

The first point to address is about the beta for our game. The original plan was to hit beta in September, but we didn't manage that. In the interests of brevity, I won't explain why here - but if you're interested in the reasons, there's a full post on our blog that covers them here. In short, we're working on it now and the next release (V18) will be "beta stage 1" where we unlock the entire tech tree. 

Despite our best efforts, the game will probably be horribly unbalanced and full of bugs when this happens (any time you dump a load of new content in a game, this tends to happen happen) so if you're not the adventurous type then I'd give us a few weeks after that to tighten things up again. If you're interested in the beta, though, the link above should give all the info you need.

Onto actual updates then! Quite a bit has changed since August. As a direct result of the money raised on Kickstarter, we're now renting a couple of desks in a bigger office as of October and I've also been joined by Aaron, our tile artist, full-time. Both of these have made a huge difference to our productivity! 

In terms of tile art, we've now finished all the buildings for all the tilesets we're planning to put in the game and are now working on the props to fill the levels. In the last few months we've added the Arctic, Desert, Middle East and Soviet Town tilesets, and are working our way through the Xenonaut Base one. We've also added significant numbers of new props to the Industrial and Farm tilesets, to the point they're basically unrecognisable from before. Further props are going to be needed to fully complete these tilesets, but it gives you an idea of amount of content we've generated in the last few months.

Here's a few examples of the Xenonaut Base tiles; these are used when the aliens attack your base and you fight a battle in an exact (and destructible) replica of the base you built on the strategic map: laboratory, workshop, hangar, missile battery (cutaway). Remember, these tiles need to be painted over in 2D still, so they're not finished - but they are the colour guide and in-game test tiles we use.

Also, if you're interested in the tile generation process, Aaron wrote an in-depth explanation of his work on our forums here, in which he also discusses how he got involved in the team.

Our AI coder, GJ, joined the team as a result of the Kickstarter some three months ago now. He's studying for an MSc in AI at a university in the Netherlands and is doing full-time work on our AI model as part of his course. We've made a lot of progress on this, too, although the results aren't as immediately obvious. If you're interested in what he's doing, he's started a blog on his work here which should be updated more in the coming weeks. 

Basically, we've managed to move the AI aliens from being stupid and cheating, to being stupid fully within the realms of the game (so they have proper shared sight / awareness and don't cheat with decision logic etc). Now the AI can understand the battlefield, we're pushing it towards actually being a challenge for the player. It might not sound like much, but it is actually progress!

Next, interfaces. We've almost finished implementing the updated Ground Combat UI, which is the same as the old one in terms of functionality but has had a graphical facelift - it should be the final version, barring a few possible small adjustments in the beta.

We’re also working on the final designs for the strategic UI, and have completed the concepts for seven of the ten strategic screens and have two more nearly finished. You can find previews of the new look in this thread, but it’s essentially a fusion of the existing ugly-but-usable black style and the pretty-but-not-very-navigable immersive style we revealed in our Kickstarter pitch, producing something that is much better to look at and also more functional than the current design. 

We've just started work on implementing it in the code, but this is a LOT of work so won’t be finished immediately. It is probably the largest remaining piece of work to be done on the strategic part of the game so it’s great to have it started. I think when it's implemented our game will suddenly seem vastly more professional; the existing style was great when we were adding new features all the time and changing things, but it was simply too ugly for the final game.

Finally - level / scenario testing. We've started community testing of some maps on our forums. So far only one has been posted up, but we’ll be posting more up over the next week and still more after that. After spending quite a bit of time analysing the new X-Com (my thoughts and lessons in a short essay here), we’ve realised that we probably weren't taking level design as seriously as we should, and Aaron's arrival finally gave us the chance to try iterating our levels a bit more. 

We are testing our levels for a lot of things; whether they are too big / too small for the number of aliens on them, whether they are too open or too convoluted, whether destructibility can be used for tactical purposes, whether they are visually coherent etc. Basically, we’re trialling a more realistic level design philosophy with larger, more open maps that are divided into smaller sections by larger obstacles that block line of sight (walls / hedgerows / buildings). We think this will make maps that are large but quick to explore, while still giving the player plenty of “what’s just around that corner?” X-Com moments. 

 The other facet of this is the scenario testing, where we send a squad of Xenonauts armed with specific equipment against specific aliens in a specific map type. This will allow us to test the pacing and difficulty of various scenarios – like various UFO or alien base attacks, or terror sites and base defence missions. We've changed the way UFOs are to be displayed in our battlefield missions, which has given us a chance to test all of their interior layouts (blocked out with placeholder art) before we update the final art.

The same is true with the alien bases; we want to test their layouts so we know they’re not too sprawling before we get all the final props done. We've completed all the code so we can start this type of testing very shortly, although we’re still reliant on further refinement of the AI before the missions will be genuinely challenging. We've got high hopes for this level testing though; we're serious about getting the feel of the missions right and this seems a really good way to help us do that. 

As for the beta – we’re still working on it! We’ll post up some more updates as we get closer to it being finished. The scenario testing is part of this, and it will also include advanced Xenonaut equipment and aliens in it – so if you’re bored of the current build then maybe check our forums out in a week or two to try out some of those missions!

I'll try to make the next few updates a bit more frequent than the previous ones!

It’s been a while coming, but Xenonauts is now on the (short) road to beta! We unveiled our “Three Builds to Beta” plan on the forums a few weeks back, and have been working towards it ever since. In fact, we’ve been so bad at keeping this news feed updated that we’re almost halfway through this programme already – the second of the three builds is due out within the next two weeks!

The idea of the plan is to reach beta by 9th October – beta being a feature-complete state where the game could feasibly be released as a finished game. It won’t initially be a very good game, but we’ll be turning our attention from developing new features and content to bugfixing, polishing and balancing our existing content once we are there. From a pre-orderer point of view, the main improvement will be that we’ll stop cutting out all of the high-end tech and enemies. You’ll be able to play the game from start to finish with the full research tree and all the toys.

There are naturally some provisos – the game won’t be 100% finished in asset terms. As an example, not all the battlefield tiles will be finished in six weeks time, so there’ll be plenty of maps with low numbers of props or rendered 3D building tiles that have not yet recieved their final 2D paintover. There might be missing animations, or some missing sounds. But there shoud be plenty of major improvements over the current builds too - there should be a workable AI, for example, which is one of the major issues with the existing game. There will be more than two maps in the game, and all the tilesets should be present in some form too.

And for those who haven’t been following on the forums, the major additions in the last build (V13) were:

• Three day delay before puchased equipment / hired personnel arrive
• Bleeding wounds system for soldiers
• Buildings collapse if sufficient numbers of walls are shot out
• C4 charge and Flashbang added to the game
• Combat Shield code added
• Alien clips converted to Alenium after battle instead of sold
• New tilesets added to the game (though no maps for them yet)
• Various smaller things

The date of the 9th October has been chosen because it is the release date of the new Firaxis X-Com game. Not only will I be busy for a couple of days playing it after the 9th, it’ll cause anther surge of interest in our game (as X-Com will cause a surge of interest in the genre) so it makes sense for us to be looking our best when it does arrive.

Of course, there may be snags along the way and we can’t promise we’ll hit the deadlines (the rendering is looking a bit tight at the moment), but we’ve got something to aim for now and we’ll do our best!

NOTE - the next few builds will be much less stable than you are used to. This is because we're busy adding content rather than fixing bugs.

Just a quick update to keep everyone in the loop as to what is happening - I've just sent out all the extra keys that people have requested (or are entitled to) as Kickstarter rewards. Instructions on how to send them to friends are on the keys themselves (using this Desura page).

This leaves us with only physical rewards left to dispatch. We need to send physical goods to somewhere in the region of 500 people. This is going to be quite a logistical challenge - for an idea of how ridiculous it can end up being, the Banner Saga team have posted up this mildly horrifying video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nEaY4JYooJk

Thankfully, they're sending out about 10x as many things as we are so we don't have the deal with quite that quantity of items. Unfortunately, British houses tend to be smaller than American ones and central London is especially bad for this; I don't have a garage or anything to store large quantities of rewards in.

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics, but we were originally going to order the T-shirts and posters this weekend and ship them to everyone, then do the DVD copies and Art Books together post-release.

Having mused on it for a bit, I'm not sure that's a good idea. The real killer here is going to be the postage, and mailing out the T-shirts and Art Books / DVD copies at different times doesn't seem a good idea given they can share the same box (otherwise we'll be paying double postage).

I also considered just sending out the T-shirts to those who only want to recieve a T-shirt and no other physical goods, but this is less than half of the total people who want a T-shirt. This means I'd have to find the space for about 150 t-shirts, and there's not a lot of room for that.

It's more than likely we'll just send out all the physical rewards once the DVD copies have been produced (i.e. once the game has been released). The only exception might be the posters, as they're such an awkward shape that we won't be able to fit them in the normal packing and will probably have to send them seperately. If that is the case, we may as well get them sent out ASAP. We'll let you know what the plan is soon in any case.

There's another build coming out this weekend, which will include fixes for the major crash bugs in the last version and will add a few new features. It'll also include all the custom pre-generated soldiers, so if you've paid to have your name in the game you'll be in the next build. I'll post another update with full details when the build is released.

The Linux porting is coming along, and we're currently testing the port with a few pre-orderers who use Linux. It's not done yet but hopefully it'll make an appearance soon. The Mac port will follow after that.

Finally, the Kickstarter money has finally made it all the way from Amazon Payments over to the safety our corporate bank account (for those interested, the final amount recieved after Kickstarter fees, Amazon fees and backers not paying up is $139,000). Now we can start to spend it on developing Xenonauts! Expect a more detailed progress report with the new build this weekend.