Here we are again with another monthly update - more behind-the-scenes stuff for you this time so stay tuned if you're interested in that sort of detail. Let's kick things off with a little bit of art, though - here's some new advanced armour…
Code Progress
Base Defence
The most significant new feature implemented this month was the Base Defence missions, which are now fully functional on the strategy layer.
We've now added base defence turret structures that can be upgraded. UFOs spawn and attack your bases, the defence turrets attempt to destroy them, and casualties are inflicted on the alien ground forces based on how much damage you do to the UFO.
Additionally, the alien base attacks now operate on a "threat" system that triggers attacks based on how proactive you are about shooting down UFOs. The system also takes into account which bases the interceptors are flying from, so the aliens will tend to strike back against bases that have lots of interceptor activity and ignore more research or manufacturing-oriented bases.
Thanks to our work on the dynamic map loading last month, we were also able to implement the tricky bit of the ground combat code - the part that creates the tactical map dynamically based on the layout of your base. We now need to create the ground combat assets for each room and then base defence missions should be fully functional. That'll happen in a few months, but in the meantime it just loads in a generic "under construction" room for each building if your base gets attacked.
Alien Patrol Routes
We've also added the basic movement system for the new AI, which allows us to set patrol routes for aliens. This will be most useful within UFOs: in X1 the aliens would usually be in the same positions (mostly camping in a corner) because the AI had calculated they were the "best" positions.
Our new system is much more dynamic, and we expect the aliens to move around a lot more and potentially catch players off guard. Note also that aliens go into "combat mode" as soon as they sight an enemy unit and are allowed to move freely, so this doesn't constrain the AI - it just encourages it to move around more when not in combat.
We're now starting work on the last remaining parts of the Geoscape base separation, as a few things are still shared between bases that should not be - specifically personnel, items and the engineering project queue - and we're now starting to split those out so each base is fully independent from the others, as well as implementing the UI to allow you to transfer items and staff between them. This task is quite a bit of work relative to how much it affects gameplay, but ultimately it's necessary to maintain immersion. If we don't do it, weird stuff happens like all your soldiers being present at base defence missions no matter which base gets attacked.
There's also been more work ironing out issues with the night missions, the UFO hull hiding system and the ground destruction systems, which are still continuing to cause problems. Hopefully we'll have them fixed up fairly soon too.
Content Progress
Our content work this month has mostly been on level design and assets related to the ground combat environments. The first UFO has made the jump from being a temporary test blockout to having final assets in place, which has allowed us to properly test the dynamic loading of the crashed / landed variants for the first time (thankfully it's working fine).
We've now started work on the final art for the second UFO too, and we've made some progress on 2D design for the next UFO (which is an early-game transport craft somewhat akin to a more compact version of the X1 Landing Ship).
Level design and art work continues on the tactical maps. The layouts for most of these maps across all the existing biomes are complete and we're now splitting them out into small randomisable sections and adding spawn points, etc.
The visuals are a bit of a weird mix of old and new right now but that'll naturally change as we work through the remaining art assets. These maps should be complete by the end of the week, however.
Finally, we've brought a new artist on to paint the background art for the various strategic screens. We've unfortunately had several artists unsuccessfully attempt this job in the past, but the work produced by the new artist is looking good so far.
Beta Update
We are currently shaping up for a major beta milestone which will include pretty much all of the fundamental game mechanics, as night missions, base defence missions, dynamic map loading, ufo hull hiding and full separation of the bases will now be in place.
There is a fair amount of balancing work to be done as well in advance of this but we're continuing to head in the right direction.
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. We can't promise to get to everything but we'll do our best to answer things which come up frequently from the community.