Game News Xenonauts to be released on Steam Early Access

[IDtenT]

Tags: Xenonauts

Apart from being stuck in developmental hell for who knows how long, Xenonauts is going to arrive on Steam later today.

We've now heard back from Steam and we've pencilled in a release date for Early Access of the 31st May.

Build V18.51 will form the basis of the Steam stable release, with a few updates that we will test out via hotfix or on Steam itself if we get on there in advance. The likely additions will be:
- Bugfixes
- Xenopedia descriptions will be completed (but subject to future tweaks)
- More maps (I'll look at the community ones as my first port of call)
- Balance patch (Aaron has got a balance patch to smooth the combat progression we'll probably put in)​

More here.

My understanding is that it still wouldn't be the beta that they have been promising since last August. It's not their first development hiccup either.

Did anyone here pre-order the game? What's your feelings so far? Is there any justifiable way to be optimistic about the management of this project?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

This project was taking so long I almost forgot about it, then suddenly they release it today.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Been following the game but i was reticent to pre-order or back it due to how long they have been working on it without reaching a beta milestone.

Anyways, it looks better than the new xcom and hopefully it plays better.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Anyways, it looks better than the new xcom and hopefully it plays better.

That's not an achievement really.

 

[MicoSelva]

We need someone who preordered (or who will preorder now) to play this and share impressions, asap.

 

[tuluse]

I backed the kickstarter. In April they released a "beta candidate". It's possible to play the game all the way through right now. The AI has received several substantial updates, and I think it's in a near releasable state right now. They need to get map generation working, right now you play like 6 maps over and over and over. It gets boring.

Some stuff that you would think would be done after all these years, but it's not. Like descriptions of the technologies.

They seem to be making steady progress since the kickstarter, so I'm happy.

 

[Ulminati]

Poopy. I kickstarted but didn't bother with the desura builds (wanted the game to be mostly done before diving in). So now I can't haz my steam key just yet.

Oh well. I got Expiditions Conquistador to keep me amused. And gunpoint is out on monday. :3

 

[Grunker]

Only game I've regretted Kickstarting, this. Hopefully it gets to a playable state at some point.

 

[Haba]

You little shits.

How many games have you armchair project managers and game designers managed to release?

I tell you this, one of three Americans die of cancer, you know?

Assholes. You're gonna be one of those.

Crepa, pezzo di merda, e vai a sucare cazzi su un aereo!

 

[Eyeball]

I have released zero games. None of the games that I've released have been fairly unnecessary reskins of ancient games that did not add anything significant gameplay-wise and messed up the spectacular atmosphere of the original games.

Advantage: me.

 

[Haba]

Then it seems you know as much about releasing games as you do about this particular title.

 

[felipepepe]

Played it for around an hour... it's full of missing text and descriptions, especially on research and engineering, there's almost no sounds and the combat balance feels somewhat off, but overall it looks & play good. In this unfinished state it obviously doesn'thave the same feeling of the classic ones, and may never have, but it's already a great upgrade from the new X-COM. Most of my popamole friends wound't stand 5 minutes with the original X-COM graphics & UI, but they'll probably like this, and I think those new gamers are the target here...

The UI is functional, the combat pacing is good and the maps have that eerie ambience of aliens hiding everywhere, sometimes even behind your dropship in ambush. The aerial combat is dull with just one fighter, but having two jets outmanuevering a alien shit is quite fun. They have the groundwork ready, now it remains to be seen if they'll manage to make this shine...

 

[IDtenT]

My problem with this game is the coding. Seemingly everything was shoehorned into game logic, rather than any sort of physical system. That's good and all, but it makes placement of objects ridiculously difficult and extremely prone to bugs. I really think they could have done with somebody who has had experience, any experience at all, in actually managing, designing and programming a project - because its clear that no such person is involved.

 

[bonescraper]

I hate how their aliens look. For fuck's sake, greys look just like old people, and almost everything else looks like D&D's lizardmen with plasma rifles. Fucking scary, oooh. It's a shame, because i like the art style for pretty much everything else.

 

[OSK]

Poopy. I kickstarted but didn't bother with the desura builds (wanted the game to be mostly done before diving in). So now I can't haz my steam key just yet.

I did the same thing. You can quickly create an account by signing into Desura with your Steam account. Then hunt down your old email and click the link to add the game to your Desura account. Then follow the steps in the Kickstarter update to get your Steam key.

 

[Niektory]

My problem with this game is the coding. Seemingly everything was shoehorned into game logic, rather than any sort of physical system. That's good and all, but it makes placement of objects ridiculously difficult and extremely prone to bugs.

Hmm, could you elaborate? What do you mean by 'everything'?

 

[Misconnected]

Hmm, could you elaborate? What do you mean by 'everything'?

I know fuck-all about programming, but I've repeatedly gotten the same impression - seemingly simple stuff just couldn't be done, then after much trial and error maybe could, and then after much longer than anticipated finally sort of half-worked.

I still haven't regretted backing this. Going in I was about 80% sure Xenonauts would never see a proper release. Because at the time it was abundantly clear that it was an insanely ambitious hobby project by amateurs with zero past experience. That's changed a great deal, and I now have complete confidence Xenonauts will see a proper release at some point. But I'm really not the least bit surprised at the delays, and expect many more.

More though, I've gone from pre-ordering way-back-when mostly to try to encourage more people to try to make a really damn good X-Com clone, to fully expecting Xenonauts to be that clone. It still has a long way to go, but it really could be quite brilliant.

 

[Trash]

It's called Stockholm Syndrome, mang. Check out the Grimoire threads for more examples of it.

 

[Misconnected]

It's called Stockholm Syndrome, mang. Check out the Grimoire threads for more examples of it.

I guess time will tell.

 

[Haba]

Bullshit.

Unlike Grimoire, the Xenonauts guy has bee open about the development progress throughout this whole time. From the beginning he laid it out flatly that he is simply an amateur who wanted to see a proper X-Com -like game. 'dex is pretty much the only place where I see this sort of whining.

The man went in with his personal savings and took a giant risk. The Kickstarter came late to the party and things have sped up considerably thanks to it.

What else do you expect, seriously?

 

[IDtenT]

More ridicule than whining. The game engine is inherently broken and will continue to be broken no matter how much they tinker with the stuff on top of it. That's not to say that he can't polish the game to become a really neat title in theory. It is clearly an amateur attempt and I'm more looking forward to what we can expect from the studio's second game - hopefully with some more experienced people involved. Just up to now the game is just so technically deficient that I am convinced that bugs will be prevalent in the final patched copy of the game.

 

[Haba]

We're still getting X-Com's bugs fixed today. Master of Magic as well.

Maybe there is something in that...?

 

[Niektory]

http://www.xenonauts.com/faq/

The Mac port should work natively, but the Linux port will function through an in-built Wine wrapper due to our engine (Playground SDK 5.0) not supporting Linux and us not having access to the engine source code.

I have no more questions.

 

[Ulminati]

Fucking WINE wrapper instead of native release!?