May Development Update! So, the Kickstarter has been going for just over a couple of weeks and is going rather well. Obviously managing the Kickstarter has taken up quite a lot of my time (especially at first), but we’ve still been working on development. So, what’s the plan and how are things progressing development wise?
The plan is to release a build about a week after the Kickstarter closes, which will give us enough time to pass around all of the Desura codes etc that we need, and also to collect details from the people who have pledged to put their names in the game.
In development terms, progress has been slow relative to normal but we’re still getting stuff done. First thing that’s happened is we’ve implemented female soldiers. These operate in the same way to male soldiers, except they drawn from an entirely separate pool of names, faces and armour graphics. We’ve finished the updated Basic Armour (all other armour is the same) and we’re working on the portraits now. They should be done for the next build. Preview is here: www.xenonauts.com/devimages/female_basic.png www.xenonauts.com/devimages/female_jackal.png
Next up, the pre-generated soldiers. We’ve implemented the code for this, so it’ll just be a question of adding a line of code and a portrait / hands image for each pre-generated soldier in the game. We’ve also implemented the Force Soldier box, which is at the bottom of the options screen.
You can put up to 12 codes in this box, and each one overwrites one of the starting soldiers in every new game you create. If your name is in the game, you’ll receive a number to go in this box. That way, you can ensure that you appear in every single game you play – and you can share it with other people when they do Let’s Plays etc. I’ll probably put mine (1) in my forum signature so everyone can march me to their doom in their games if they feel the need; hopefully other people will do something similar. If you respond to the Kickstarter stuff quickly once it closes, we’ll put you in the next build.
On another note, we’ll probably allow people to pay $100 to put their names in the game after the Kickstarter ends - all the way up to release. The code is already in place so there’s not really any extra cost for us to do it, and it’s the sort of thing that people seem pretty keen on.
In the ground combat we’ve spent quite a while working on the multi-tile rendering. This involves getting the game to render sprites properly when they fill more than one tile. This has been a massive pain that took nearly two weeks, but we’ve got it solved now (or we certainly hope so). We’re now working on adding the accuracy reduction of smoke, and we’ve fixed up the issue with the Xenonaut soldiers not being able to reaction fire.
We’ve also added in the alien racial abilities, although we’re still testing them and the AI isn’t bright enough to use them yet. Passive abilities like Sebillian regeneration and Andron wall-breaching will hopefully make an appearance in the next build. As should Androns themselves, once I’ve worked out why they’re not spawning at the moment.
We’ve fixed a truckload of bugs on the Geoscape, as well as the female soldier and pre-generated soldier stuff. We’ve also done the Geoscape part of systems like the soldier medals, the research-linked damage bonus against specific alien species and we’ve laid the groundwork on the base defence batteries too.
The defence batteries are basically functional, but need some more work on how they display the information when a UFO attacks the base. They are more streamlined than in X-Com. Essentially now you just build a defence battery (initially a Missile Battery) and then when you research more advanced weapons, they are automatically and instantly upgraded to more powerful defence batteries. For instance, researching Heavy Lasers instantly upgrades all Batteries to Laser Batteries.
Also, partial damage to an attacking UFO will kill some of the invaders before they land. Each alien on a damaged UFO has a % chance to be killed by defensive fire that is = UFO % damage taken / 4. So there’s an incentive to have turrets even if they don’t quite manage to shoot down the attacking UFOs.
We’ve also done some tweaks to the invasion AI that allow us finer control over the pace at which it advances. That means we should be able to make the game a bit more fun – we can have more UFOs earlier on, and stop them appearing in such overwhelmingly large numbers later on.
As far as the Geoscape goes, it’s really only finishing the defence battery code and then adding the Final Mission stuff until it is feature complete (plus any new features from the Kickstarter). Then we’ll set about implementing the new UI. Once that is in, that part of the game is ready for beta.
There’s still more to do on the ground combat and we’re tidying up a few odds and ends for the next few days, but we’ll be starting on the height level stuff soon. That should let us put hills in the game, which means we can get cracking on the Desert and the icy Tundra tilesets.
Finally, I’m also doing a bit more rendering. Hopefully we’ll have all the animations for the third-tier weapons for the first three armours in the dev build shortly, as well as a few new alien types. There’s a couple of persistent rigging issues that have prevented us from adding the jetpack-enabled armours so far, and once they’re fixed we can put those two in too. I thought I had someone working on it, but they seem to have vanished without a trace. Such is indie development, though. We’ll find a replacement.
I’ve not been that active on the forums lately for obvious reasons. I’ll try to get back into the swing of things with the next build release. In the meantime, just talk amongst yourselves…
riassunto: sviluppo rallentato dal kickstarter (ormai a pochi spiccioli per i 100k dollari), ma in generale il gioco si sta per spostare sulla fase beta.
112k a sette giorni dalla fine. Se non annuncia che inserirà cmq alcuni degli obbiettivi dichiarati sarà una bella rottura di balle. Io m'ero fatto prendere dall'entusiasmo (come lui?), ma è evidente che siano stati inseriti (un pò troppo) alla cazzo.
allora, ho una buona notizia ed una cattiva... la buona è che si avvicina la data della beta e quindi del polish finale del gioco, la cattiva è che la data di questa, è quando esce x:com di fireaxis.
Spoiler
tutta la roba che vogliono mettere sembra veramente figa, speriamo in meglio!
Ormai è vicinissimo alla beta (doveva essere questa), si spera esca entro breve tempo (il gioco completo). Io aspetto quello. Per l'ia non preoccupatevi, il tizio che ci lavora sembra decisamente bravo.
