Xenonauts 2 - Development Update

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A new development update for Xenonauts 2:

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Xenonauts 2 Monthly Development Update!

Hello everyone - it's time for our monthly development update! Read on to see what we've been working on recently...

New Assets
I mentioned last month that the main focus of Milestone 6 was adding new content to the game, and we continued to add new assets to the game this month. The first of these is the new 3d model for the alien Heavy Servitor unit, which I think is a nice addition to the game and much more distinct from the basic Servitor than previously. This means we've now added unique 3d models for all of the new alien unit variants added in Milestone 5.

Various other new assets were added too:

• The illustrations for the final cinematic is now complete, and the cinematic is now being put together by the animation team that made the intro cinematic.
• We added a proper background to the UOO-1 Sabotage mission. The platforms that make up this level were previously floating in empty space, but are now contained within the (fairly elaborate) hull of an alien space station.
• Work has continued on the new Soviet Town terror biome, which we're hoping to have finished in the coming month.
• Inventory tile artwork was added for the Alien Bio-Rifle weapon given to the Mantids in Milestone 5.
• Corpse / stunned inventory art for the new Heavy Mentarch was also added.

Air Combat Refresh
The biggest code changes this month were to the air combat section of the game, which has had a major interface facelift and several usability improvements. We've only completed part of this visual refresh so far, but next month we'll be updating the background, the battlefield UI and the various combatants with sharper and more attractive replacement graphics to finish the job.

The gameplay changes so far have mostly involved adding extra information to the UI - for example, the Evasive Roll buttons now show a cooldown bar overlay so players no longer have to guess how long until the ability is available again. The weapon tiles also show a reload progress bar for similar reasons. We've also made minor tweaks to the control system so it's easier to select aircraft and give them orders.

Next month we'll be making some actual mechanical changes, like refining the way speed / acceleration work and switching the interceptor retreat mechanic back to how it used to work in older versions of the game (where aircraft had to reach the edge of the battlefield to retreat). Once all that is done, we'll finally be able to start implementing the air combat section of the tutorial.

Launch Aircraft Panel
Prior to starting on the air combat, we also made some quick improvements to the Launch Aircraft panel. Hovering over an aircraft in the list now shows a pop-up panel on the left that shows additional information on that aircraft, including its full loadout of weapons and equipment and exact values for HP / Armour / Fuel. If the aircraft is a dropship, it instead shows all the soldiers assigned to it.

We made some improvements to the aircraft selection logic here, too - previously this was a bit clunky, and potentially confusing for newer players.

Shroud Fixes
Community bug reports for Milestone 5 were much less frequent in June than in previous months, which allowed us to shift our attention towards some long-standing issues with the shroud system in tactical missions. Anyone who has played the game will have encountered these - ranging from objects like cursors / fire + smoke / weapon projectiles all incorrectly drawing underneath shrouded areas, to more subtle things like us being unable to reveal the rear side of doors in alien base maps.

We're hoping to have fixes for some of these issues in the next week or two. However, these are quite thorny problems and there's always a chance it'll take longer!

Modding Documentation
The updated Xenonauts 2 modding documentation can be found here.

Again, it's worth mentioning that the average player will struggle to mod the game until we finish the mod tools, which we'll probably start work on after Milestone 6 releases. The documentation will be most useful for C# coders want to do code injection, or intrepid pioneers with a very high tolerance for manually editing JSON files that were never intended to be readable by humans.

Milestone 6 Stability Test
Finally, we're planning a stability test for Milestone 6 on the Experimental branch this month - most likely between the 7th-11th July. There's still quite a bit of work to do before Milestone 6 is finished (both in terms of adding content and doing a balance pass), but we'd like to start finding and fixing any major crash bugs while we work towards a "proper" test build for Milestone 6.

Hooded Horse Summer Publisher Sale 2025
Xenonauts 2 is 35% off right now. Check it and other games out in the Hooded Horse Summer Sale.

As always, thanks for reading the update. We'll be back next month with another update!