KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[*-*/\--/\~]

Looking forward to 2029 when I can actually play this.

 

[agris]

You can play it now. Shit I played it in 2019 I think.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

You can play it now. Shit I played it in 2019 I think.

Me too... all the missing stuff and two minute loading times quickly reminded me why I avoid early crapcess like plague. I liked the first one but these guys make Exanima development seem fast.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

when is this game going to be released? This year?

 

[Grotesque]

are there any screenshots with the new revamped air combat?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/538030/view/3050602862766386730

Xenonauts 2 April Update
Welcome to this month's update!

As we mentioned last time, Project Lead Chris took some personal leave recently - he's now back to full-time work. A quick shout-out to everyone in the community who posted supportive comments when we mentioned this - there can be a lot of negativity in game communities and it's great to hear from the majority of you who are continuing to support the project and make positive contributions! Thank you for this and for being patient as we work towards more public releases.

While progress has understandably been a little slower due to this, the team have used the opportunity to focus on some important back-end tasks....

Base Separation

The first of these is the final part of the change from a single-base Geoscape to a multi-base Geoscape, which is the final separation of the base stores so that each base is pulling from its own inventory just like in the first game (previously items, soldier equipment, etc were shared globally across all bases). This is now done and bases have been fully separated from one another - it's quite a significant change and it's almost certainly caused quite a few bugs which we'll need to catch, but it's good to get this in at this point.

Nested Tooltips

The second thing was adding "nested tooltips" that contain hyperlinks to other tooltips, similar to those seen in Crusader Kings 3. It's a little tricky to explain but you can see a quick example of it in action in CK3 here. This system allows us to prioritise helpful information given to the player while also providing links that lead to more detailed explanations.

Each tooltip ends up being shorter and more focused, but more overall information is available than before.

Localisation Support

The third major thing is setting the game up to support translation. This is actually a very big task, but we figured we'd tackle it now given we're going to have to write a lot of text into the tooltips. Essentially we have to find every piece of text in the game that is displayed to the player and reference it into a single giant file that can then be translated into other languages. This system is made more complex because this system also needs to combine with our planned modding system, so that new text added in mods could also be translated if needed.

Art Progress

In terms of art, we've started work on the final set of Xenonaut 3D models and we've been working on an updated design for the alien Gun Drone. We've also been working on the final designs for the two advanced dropships (up to this point we've just been using the old X1 designs as placeholders). There's also been some work done on the 2D art for the aircraft weapons and equipment, and further work on the new strategy UI concepts we've been working on for a while now.

Future Releases

The current plan is to start putting public builds out again in May - we hope to get the entire schedule back on track soon. I will obviously keep you updated as soon as the team is able to target a more specific release date for the Open Beta.

Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions.

 

[Norfleet]

Definitely is something I'd add. Rescue missions for downed pilots, etc.

Downed pilots probably wouldn't need rescuing THAT often: They crash in friendly territory, after all. They should thus be capable of just legging it to the nearest bus stop, phoning in, and catching the next bus back home. It would be a relative rarity to go down in territory that somehow happens to be xeno-infested since aliens have not physically overrun the Earth.

 

[Harthwain]

Downed pilots probably wouldn't need rescuing THAT often: They crash in friendly territory, after all. They should thus be capable of just legging it to the nearest bus stop, phoning in, and catching the next bus back home. It would be a relative rarity to go down in territory that somehow happens to be xeno-infested since aliens have not physically overrun the Earth.

While true, it would be a good excuse for more mission variety and add some stakes beyond just losing a plane (which are less valuable than experienced pilots).

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...gic-planetary-defence-simulator/posts/3206320

Xenonauts 2 - May Update

PaulMode7Collaborator
June 1, 2021
Your Xenonauts 2 update for May is finally here! Apologies for slight lateness on this one.

Chris is back on the case full-time now and has been focussed on getting the early game balanced and playable.

Rinse and Repeat
This has mostly involved repeatedly playing the campaign over and over again, making a series of gameplay changes and bugfixes each time. This isn't really something that can be done until relatively late in development, when all the key gameplay systems are in place. Chris is working on this earlier for the sequel because we've got new mechanics to implement / test, and we need a playable version of the campaign to do that testing. The upside of this is that the game is rapidly becoming much more fun and playable in totality.

There are still areas of the game which need significant attention - the AI and the repetitiveness of the maps, for example. Also, the research text is mostly absent, plus the UI and quite a few of the tactical combat assets still need visual improvement. This will all improve incrementally over time.


Chris' plans for June are to get all the UFOs and Xenonaut dropship tiles added to the tactical missions, and to be able to play a campaign all the way through to the final type of UFO without suffering any game-breaking bugs or ridiculous difficulty spikes.


This will be a major milestone, and will mark the point where Xenonauts 2 becomes a properly playable game in its own right. The rest of the team will probably spend most of their time fixing the various gameplay / usability issues encountered along the way but we're also going to be making some time to upgrade the AI.

AI
Last month Chris created a large number of test scenes for the AI so we could test whether it properly understood the different aspects of how to play the game. These were scenarios where there is a clearly optimal course of action (e.g. use the best weapon / fire mode for the situation, use clearly the best cover, etc), and this makes it much easier to identify exactly what the AI is doing wrong and why. We should have a number of AI fixes and updates in our next major build as a result.

Eye Candy

The visual upgrades are continuing but we are taking some time to work through the pipeline. We've got new Xenonaut early-game models that are ready to be rigged and animated, a new Light Drone model and an updated model for the X1 Praetor equivalents that also need rigging and animation. The 2D art for the aircraft weapons / equipment is nearly done now, and the final 3D model for the sentry guns is also nearing completion. The biggest ongoing project is the concept work on our updated strategy layer UI, which is progressing nicely but still isn't ready for implementation because there's so much UI that needs to be concepted up.

Onwards to Beta
Closed Beta Build V19 came out last week, and we will be releasing a hotfix early this week. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of changes we've made recently means that you may well not understand what's happening in the latest versions of the game - the gameplay changes are some way ahead of the tooltips and the research text, making the experience confusing / frustrating unless you've been following the patch notes closely. Chris will begin work on updating the tooltips / research text once it's possible to play the campaign all the way to the final UFO type, and once that work is done we should be able to commence the open beta.


Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Why couldn't they use the same engine and assets for the second game? Did anyone actually complain about the graphics? I thought they were spot on in Xenonauts. No frills, yet easy on the eye.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Who thought this was a good look for an alien? It's a like a parody of a generic modern enemy alien.

 

[Harthwain]

Why couldn't they use the same engine and assets for the second game? Did anyone actually complain about the graphics? I thought they were spot on in Xenonauts. No frills, yet easy on the eye.

The graphics as such weren't an issue (they were clean and simple), but the lack of idle animations made everything look unnaturally still/dead when you were deciding what to do next. In Xenonauts 2 the graphics are similar, but stuff like plants, helicopter blades, characters, etc. are animated even when there is no movement, so everything feels alive as a result.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Why couldn't they use the same engine and assets for the second game? Did anyone actually complain about the graphics? I thought they were spot on in Xenonauts. No frills, yet easy on the eye.

The graphics as such weren't an issue (they were clean and simple), but the lack of idle animations made everything look unnaturally still/dead when you were deciding what to do next. In Xenonauts 2 the graphics are similar, but stuff like plants, helicopter blades, characters, etc. are animated even when there is no movement, so everything feels alive as a result.

From what I've seen of the gameplay, it looks uglier and less inviting than the original.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

But then again, maybe there are a bunch of graphic whores out there complaining. They have to cater to them as well I suppose.

 

[Harthwain]

From what I've seen of the gameplay, it looks uglier and less inviting than the original.

You contradict yourself here. It can't be "uglier and less inviting", because the art style is near-identical (if it's not 1:1) to that of Xenonauts 1. You can see it in the videos. It was also confirmed by the developers to be one of their goals:

Our biggest concern regarding Xenonauts 2 is whether we can create a workable 3D art style - this not only has to look good in 3D but ideally will also reference the 2D sprite style of Xenonauts 1.

As for why they decided to go 3D:

Stability & Performance: Moving to Unity3D will give us a much more capable platform for development than our previous engine did, so expect fewer bugs and improved performance, but also the quality of life improvements enabled by a 3D engine (e.g. a rotateable battlefield camera).

 

[Curious_Tongue]

You contradict yourself here. It can't be "uglier and less inviting", because the art style is near-identical (if it's not 1:1)

It looks like Xenonauts, but with something "off".

That "off" look is always more prominent when you compare 3D games to their 2D predecessors.

 

[Harthwain]

It looks like Xenonauts, but with something "off".

That "off" look is always more prominent when you compare 3D games to their 2D predecessors.

It's funny you say that, because I was comparing X1 and X2 (both the screenshots and the videos) and my impression was (and is) "It is exactly like X1". Can point out what is supposedly "off" about it?

 

[Luka-boy]

Why couldn't they use the same engine and assets for the second game? Did anyone actually complain about the graphics? I thought they were spot on in Xenonauts. No frills, yet easy on the eye.

Not sure about the assets, but the engine change was justified.

If I remember correctly, X1's first programmer decided to use some engine that wasn´t even meant for strategy games and cobbled together some kind of unholy mess that barely worked for Xenonaut's needs. Then he left the project and it was too late to change engine, which meant making things quite difficult for the dev team during the rest of the game's development.

Starting from scratch (though I'm sure they can re-use parts of the code and they're definitely re-using some strategic layer assets) with an engine they can fully use for their needs sounds like a sensible idea.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Can point out what is supposedly "off" about it?

Keep in mind I've just finished playing 40 or so hours of the game, and looked up the gameplay of the sequel directly after. So the contrast is pretty glaring to me.

The switch to 3D looks "off". Maybe my brain just scrutinises 3D in ways it doesn't with 2D.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

X1's first programmer decided to use some engine that wasn´t even meant for strategy games

It's made on unity.

 

[Alienman]

Not the first game. It was made in some weird obscure engine that made developing the game a real pain in the ass.

 

[Endemic]

Not the first game. It was made in some weird obscure engine that made developing the game a real pain in the ass.

It was used for a restaurant manager game, I do remember that much.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Not the first game. It was made in some weird obscure engine that made developing the game a real pain in the ass.

Sorry. Google gave me the second game's engine.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Not the first game. It was made in some weird obscure engine that made developing the game a real pain in the ass.

It was used for a restaurant manager game, I do remember that much.

 

[Alienman]

Think you can read some of the pain Chris suffered in the devblog thing that follows with the game.