We've added a new build to the Alpha Branch and as we havn't changed the password it should update automatically (if you are indeed playing on the internal alpha branch) 

Also created a new version of the Editor, which I will update shortly. 

CHANGE LOG

Game Changes 0.5a8-6778 (22.08.2014)

Features

- New tactical view UI (More to come)
- New visibility system based on view cones
- Interrupt mode
- Stealth and hearing systems implemented
- Melee attacks are now possible
- Destructible environment now persisted in save games
- Containers implemented on the level
- Implemented quick slots
- Items capacity is now supported in the inventory
- Implemented squad inventory
- Multiple squads control added on strategic map
- Time buttons now work on the strategic map
- New save system makes it possible to save during the mission (still uses auto-save only for now)
- Audio settings can now be changed in the GameSettings.json
- Fire mode works now as toggle and persisted for the weapon

Bugfixes

- Fixed issue where bleeding Info showed even when the enemy was out of los
- Fixed issue where throwing a grenade on yourself sometimes resulted in unit hanging
- Fixed issue where female mercs was unable to use weapons
- Now uses significantly less video memory
- Balanced loading of sectors. In most cases loading is much faster and takes less cpu power
- Improved aiming animation
- Improved loading times
- Targeting bodyparts when proning and crouching now fixed
- Fixed changing weapon bug when proning and crouching
- Fixed units graying out bugs
- Turning now takes action points
- Fixed grenade bug, that lead to unit’s freeze when trying to throw grenade on yourself (don’t ask why you would do this)

TXEditor Changes 0.5.0

- Included the new “Reconnect Pink Assets” functionality
- Handles split up assetbundles from game
- Spawn zones (not used in the game yet)
- Various small fixes
- Now bakes dependability for destructables when exporting
- Added entityID (auto set on export and edit)
 

NOTE: All sectors have to be reexported in order to work in the new game build (version 0.5a7 and up)

Hopefully you sent the password to Shanga if he didn't receive alpha branch password last time (and possible to others mentioning about it).
PS. Wireless Headset arrived yesterday and I fetched it today. Thank you! I will try configuring headset soon.

HI,

just a small bug report:

In first sector after I killed the last enemy the winning sound occur and the interuption label. After clicking the next turn button I was stuck with my merc and couldnt do anything anymore. I could move on strategic map to next sector then I flew but I ended up loading the old/first sector endlessly.

Ouch sounds like a big one...will report it

Ahh glad to hear somethign arrived! Shanga and Grim hasn't received anything...maybe faster within the nordic region. 

New tactical view UI (More to come)
- New visibility system based on view cones (thya!)
- Interrupt mode (currious what you have chosen in the end)
- Stealth and hearing systems implemented
- Melee attacks are now possible
- Destructible environment now persisted in save games

Sounds goood! =) Can´t wait to see that in the public early access

The postman came in the afternoon, but the lazy b*****d didn't ring although i was there, and put the delivery ticket in my mail box. I'll get it at the post office tomorrow morning, no problem.

Hope Shanga will have it soon too. Thanks Andreas!

Downloaded and testing the new build now. Postman came today, had nothing for me but early next week I should be able to stream with my new ubercool headset :)

I also encountered a similar gamebreaking bug to julian's almost right away.
I had just killed the first 2 enemies and tried to reload the pistol that I had just made my secondary weapon (the quickslot at the right). When I pulled the magazine on top of the pistol, both were in the same slot (the symbol of the mag on top of the symbol of the pistol). After that, I couldn't do anything with my merc any more. I could drop the mag, hired new mercs and move them to different sectors, but couldn't move any of mercs afterwards. This bug is reproducible. Same goes for the first quickslot.

One minor annoyance - after moving to a different sector, the time runs on the top setting no matter how it was set up before. It would be great to have the time stopped after arriving in the new sector.

Something is strange about the resolution now. I have a 4:3 monitor, but usually play in 1280x720 since I want to record in that resolution and I'm used to it by now. With any of the last builds I could still run it in fullscreen in that format and had those black bars at the bottom and top. Now, it uses the full screen (no black bars), so that it looks like this:
http://de.tinypic.com/r/2yybdw3/8
Can I do something other than play windowed to play in 16:9 format?

Bug of the Year Award - B11 sector.

On entering sector, enemy is spotted, squad frozen (can't select any) but guess what. I AM CONTROLLING THE ENEMY! He moves around where i click! It cracked me up, honestly. Dunno how the heck that happens, but let me tell you, my mind is thinking "traitor scenario" right now ... 

Ok, you don't believe me? Here's the red guy, right in front of my mercs...where i told him to be. Of course, you can only see him when he's in your mercs view range. And/Or you can hear him when moving around (cool feature btw). But you can't order him to shoot or regain control of your mercs.

Sounds like we started drinking Friday beer too soon yesterday! We will get it looked at ASAP.

Just FYI - we are running a branching system while developing. So the coders and artist are approx 1.5 weeks ahead already of what you got to play with. We branched (took a copy into separate development and testing path) before Gamescom and then fixed up some of the known issues. Normally this branch is only 2-3-4 days delayed, but Gamescom and especially the new inventory UI has been error prone and delayed the release a little.

So this bug might already have been found or fixed - making it very easy to patch. We check Monday!

As a carrot this also means that in the update coming soon again, we have even more goodies for you ready to play and test before public release (currently next public update is planned for start of next month).

And have fun with that hardware!! We were rather envious looking at it :-D

Heheh, but I wasn't joking when I said I never even assumed you could control the bad guys in a map. Save that bug somewhere when you find it, please. Think about the it - JA2 had your mercs going to prison, but in JA:F you could in theory have a scenario where you can infiltrate the enemy troops! Flugente would take that code and build us a full-blown JA:F spy mod in two days! 

Looks like next week X-mas is coming in more ways than one. That hardware... you know... when you're a father with a kid that each year dreams on a new console or stuff like that... it's stuff you can only dream about. I mean, yea, I could've saved and bought it myself, but then my wife would've saved for chef knife and sliced me to pieces in return for blowing that kind of money on "toys". In a sense, you saved a life there, lol ...

 :)))

It is sounds cool. :D

What if something like this would happen like once / 100 gameplay (almost never and not for everybody). It's like winning the lottery ticket. Fighting in the jungle, then suddenly 1 guy betrays his team, shoots at them, and after the fight -if he survives- joins the mercenary team, and he (or she) explains the situation to the others about why he (or she) did it.

Is the new crosshair based combat in this new branch build? Can't test the game at the moment.

no it is not

Prepare for a monster post. You are probably already tired of them, but please bear with me.
A couple of the things I'm gonna note are quite obvious (missing/not working features), so I guess they are already well-known. Please note those in the future, so that we know that we don't have to mention them.

Bugs (from most to least pressing imho):
- On several occasions after accessing a container (mostly after trying to take an item, sometimes just from opening it or moving something inside the inventory while a container is open), the inventory is suddenly stuck on one merc and seems empty, despite the merc still having things equipped. It always shows the same empty inventory screen with the same merc face on top no matter who's inventory I try to open. From that same point on I can't open any containers any more with any of the mercs. Reloading the game solves the problem. However, when I try to pick something up from the same container, the same bug appears again. The bug reappears every time I try to pick something up from that same container, no matter which item I try to take or which merc tries to take it. This bug is happening quite often, in different sectors and is very annoying since it prevents you from obtaining certain loot and makes constant restarting of the game necessary. Please fix this bug as soon as possible.

- Still having the bug where certain tiles can't be moved on/over where it should be and was possible when entering the sector. This goes for both mercs and enemies and seems to only happen to tiles where a merc stood before (maybe enemy as well, but I haven't noticed that). Please fix this bug as soon as possible since it can make a fight impossible to win under the wrong circumstances.

- At one point suddenly none of the sectors would load. I waited several minutes, but the game was stuck at the loading screen no matter which sector. Closing the game and reloading several times did not help. I kept the save files (world.bin and gamelogic.json seem to be the only ones now) in case you can use them.
- After starting the next playthrough (and the one after that), I could not hire anyone (I selected a merc, clicked the hire button but nothing happened) and the sector did not load either. A couple of new games later, after verifying the game files (without downloading anything), it suddenly worked again. This is very annoying, but seems to be very rare.

- I sometimes can't seem to shoot with the Agent with at least one of his equipped weapons. Depending on where it is equipped, I always get an 'x', when trying to shoot. When I change the weapons in the quickslots around, I am able to shoot with both guns, when I switch them back, I can't again. It seems to be different in different playthroughs, though. In one, I could only shoot the pistol when it was in the top left quickslot, another time only when it was in the right quickslot. It was very annoying the first time it happened, but knowing that you just have to put the weapon in a different slot, this bug doesn't seems all that bad.

- The game is still going into real-time in the wrong moments with enemies just waiting to be shot at.
- Still can't change movement of a group of mercs before reaching their goal.
- The quick slot on the right shows items of different mercs when it is deactivated. These items can't be used in that case.
- Directly after a fight, it takes two presses of PgUp or PgDown to change the mercs stance.
- Mercs don't talk any more.

Misc:
- I am loving the ambient noices.
- Seeing how many enemies a merc can see is going to be very helpful.
- Being able to enlarge the minimap is great. It would be helpful to be able to move the mercs by clicking on it.
- Pistols and SMGs seem more viable now in terms of CTH.
- The LOS problems seem to be fixed. No longer is every enemy in the sector shooting at me once one of them has spotted me. Not sure whether the same is true for enemies that spawn looking into my direction.

New tactical view UI:
- Having a lot of the UI still as a placeholder makes it a bit difficult to judge usability wise. I did post a more in-depth post in the "New UI" thread.
- The reload button only works in turn-based mode.
- It took me a while to get that the symbols on the right are bullets (I guess) and the buttons are for fire modes and reload respectively. Maybe this could be made a bit more obvious.
- Switching from one character to the other with open inventory is still impossible.

New visibility system based on view cones:
- Great new feature
- I would prefer the view cones to appear on the press of a button instead of when hovering over a character. I don't need them while shooting an enemy for example, but they would be useful when trying to sneak up to an enemy without having to hover over him all the time.
- Turning my merc doesn't always quite produce the expected result. Sometimes it is way off. More subtle changes would be welcome here (the point I'm aiming at should be as much in the centre of the view cone as possible).
- Can't shoot at enemies outside of the view cone even when my merc is going to have LOS after turning.

Interrupt mode:
- I would prefer an automatic solution, but having it as a toggle option should work as well. In this case, it should imho however be possible to toggle it back off without moving the merc.
- Sometimes seems to require too much movement/actions to activate.
- It needs to be obvious who's interrupt is being activated. At the moment you have to try out who you can select.
- It seems kinda random at the moment.
- The farm seems pretty much unbeatable now without knowing what's gonna happen since the enemies immediately start shooting at me. In most (or at least a lot of) cases this leads to severe wounds from the start and with very few medical equipment at the start, this seems proned to lead to a quite high rate of losses.
- Without moving enemies in real-time, there is not much use for it yet and seems way more helpful to the enemy than to me.

Stealth and hearing systems:
- Loving the sound indicators
- Stealth seems impossible. One reason might be that the enemies are still mostly stationary, therefore all very close to each other and therefore always have a spotter, but also when trying to approach the last enemy I didn't have any luck. However, due to their high price, I haven't had a chance to test out the mercs with a higher stealth skill yet, so my mercs might just be too bad at it.

Melee attacks:
- I didn't find any melee weapons yet. Are they even included yet?
- Because of the difficult stealth, it might not have much of a purpose yet.

Containers:
- Items can't always be moved from the inventory into the containers, they sometimes have to be dropped to appear there.
- The picture next to the container always shows the Agent (probably rather the first merc of the squad).
- Buttons don't work (move to squad inventory / move to backpack)
- Typing error in "move to backpack" - button
- A way to combine all the containers in the sector into one at the end of the battle would be welcome.

quick slots:
- Moving items directly into the quick slot is not possible. Items you drop into the inventory get automatically moved into the first quick slot whether it is wanted or not. More control would be welcome. Same goes for equiped items (vest/helmet).
- It isn't possible to exchange items in the quick slot from outside of it without removing what is in it first.

Items capacity is now supported in the inventory:
- doesn't seem included yet

Implemented squad inventory:
- doesn't seem included yet

Multiple squads control added on strategic map
- This feature is obviously far from complete. At the moment it doesn't seem to add anything to the game which almost makes it an annoyance instead of a feature right now.
- You can add several squads, but you can only move the first one. The newly created squads are moved to A1, then A2 etc., where they are stuck.
- Moving a merc from other squads to the first one works, but not the other way around (at least when the 2nd squad is empty).
- Removing an empty squad is not possible.
- Custom sorting of the mercs inside a squad would be great (who is going to be selected first, 2nd etc).

Time buttons now work on the strategic map
- (already mentioned before) Time should stop after moving a squad to a new sector.
-  When loading a save, time should start stopped as well.
- Shortcuts would be great, especially one for stopping time.

New save system during the mission:
- I haven't found a way to manually save.
- No load button. This makes a save option a lot less valuable since you have to restart the game to load the save which should make it too much of a hassle to be worth it most of the time.

Fire mode toggle and persistent for the weapon:
- Great feature
- A shortcut to toggle quickly would be welcome.
- The shown amount of AP necessary to shoot in the UI at the bottom stay the same (the one for single fire) no matter which fire mode you use.

Since this post is already huge and I am growing tired of the container bug, I am going to stop testing for now in hopes of a build next week where at least the more annoying bugs are fixed.

Oh, I didn't even notice the interruption system button..

I don't think the interruption system is working very well, will play some more next week but right now I'm not thrilled about it at all.

Had this situation:

Enemy and merc locked down in firefight. First turn passes, shots are fired from both sides. Second turn begins, I shoot twice at the same enemy I was shooting with the same merc and suddenly interruption ensues - the enemy has spent all of his AP last round and the turn goes back to me.

Seems like I forgot to add one more bug:
Reloading manually doesn't work anymore. Pulling a magazine over a weapon in a quickslot leads to the following: The gun doesn't reload (I think) and the icon of the magazine is on top of the icon of the weapon. After that, it is impossible to move any of your mercs. It is possible to remove the icon by dropping it, but that doesn't fix the problem of not being able to move (no idea about shooting, didn't get that chance). This bug is reproducible.
Manual reload needs to stay in the game despite the practical reload button (shortcut please). We will need it for different ammo types later on (we will get those, won't we?)

One more thing about interrupts: I don't like at all being interrupted in the middle of my shot (I shoot and before the bullet leaves the chamber, I get interrupted). This feels very unrealistic.

The UI looks too modern on the screenshot. Doesnt fit to the time the game plays (80's) I think.

Pls make it more old fashioned and dirty.

While I agree with the UI being modern and would prefer a more natural look, I understand that making a video game is art and it's creators have their own visions and ideas regarding the game and where it should go. So if you have some grand scheme how this should all come together feel wise (music, UI, colors etc) then I'm just eager to see. 

Thanks for all the feedbakc here...I'll collect it and take it to the team. 

In other news, the headset and mouse arrived today in the mail. Big thanks to FC, these toys are stuff geek dreams are made of :))

Now all I need is a game to stream, so looking forward to that EA release.

Sure but I never get it why the UI artworks from the beginning at kickstarter looked so good and cool but they changed it totally and now it doesn´t fit the timesetting.

I liked this paper dossier style from the beginning so I backed this game. I would understand if it was the other way round. Modern to Retro. But this modern "look" makes no sense.

Why where these paper dossier artworks in the kickstarter? They only have to put them into the game and the look would be much much better.

I am just talking about the look and artstyle the functionallity is another topic.

It's still not very hard to add a dossier backgroud to the menu and build around that. Yea, i know, it's very 90s gaming to have dossiers, but that's where we're going right? 

And makes perfect sense, gamewise. If JA2 was 2000 game and it had basic laptop and web, a prequel should work with paper dossiers! It's corny and all... spot on!

Personel file? - Dossier!

Weapon details/schematics? - Dossier!

Campaign map and story? - Dossier!

Misc logs and letters/messages? - Dossier!

THE DOSSIER - THE ANSWER THAT FITS ALL. 

Just write 42 on its cover.

Yeah you say it! The dossier/file look fits the timesetting and makes sense gameplaywise. One element in the contact screen could be a letter in a file and the whole merc informations can be placed in dossiers. So its good for the atmosphere and makes sense.

agree with you that it is too futuristic atm. If you would have made a game in this time it would be ok with touchpads etc. but in the 80's dossiers are the thing to have :P

When will the following alpha branch update come out?

1 week+ I think. 

Depends how many reported issues the coders ned to fix

Still I wish me more and different ZOOM OUT LEVELS. One big difference to JA2 is that you had a much better overview in the distance. In JAF at the moment I always wish I could see more in the distance while combat.

The actual zoom out level is ok but its more in the height and there is not a really good overview over the whole combat. So please implement more zoom out levels that give us a better view in the distance. 

Should be fairly easy to implement...also for modders, but remember that zooming out also means there's a heavier load on CPU/GPU. Optimizations of the performance of the game would come before this I suppose. 

Yes you are right that could influence the games performance but it would also bring the gameplay much further when you can see the whole combat area (Not the whole map but the combat area in the distance to the enemy). I just compared JA2 with JAF and thought why is the gameplay of JA2 still better at the moment, because you have a wider view angle so all enemies are in a good view in the distance.

You can see the whole time whats going on on the battlefield. You have everything in sight and you can place your mercs better. Hopefully there will be one or two new view angles/zoom out levels in the final game. I think it would be a good help in combat.

I wholeheartedly agree. I have a decent (only decent, not great) CPU, but a pretty old GPU (7 years or so, 512MB) and I can run the game even while recording it at the highest quality mostly without any problems. Rarely did I run into any lag, just sometimes some slight lag that might as well have different reasons since I sometimes get them without running any games. The game can probably afford a bit more load on them and this would enhance both the combat and the feel of the game immensly imho.

It may be running smoothly for some, while others experience 8 FPS...espcially during pathfinding. 

I can only take your feedback to the team and then it's up for them to decide

@Chris

Don't know about the whole reolution thing..I guess they made some changes, but I have noted it down as a bug 

Thanks.
In case it stays that way and you have to play in windowed mode for resolutions in other formats (4:3 vs 16:9), there is a big problem - you can't move the camera by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. Especially if additional zoom levels aren't added, this makes the game a lot less fun to play since you have to scroll a lot atm and having to do that with the keyboard is kinda annoying.
This is of course the case in windowed mode in general, so if possible this should be changed anyway imho. However, if the resolution problem can be fixed, this is not such a huge deal since you can always play in full screen mode where you don't have those issues.

About the zoom levels:
Of course systems are different, but if such a rather crappy one can easily do it, that should be some indications that it's not that bad with systems in general.
If the costs are too high to optimize it, then it is just not possible, but if it is, I think it would enhance the game a lot in terms of playability and feeling and I read a lot of comments that state something similar, so I think that I'm far from alone in feeling this way.

View distance and angle have been discussed already. Someone from the team mentionned that the game were built around that view distance, that point of view. The models, the maps, the textures, all that art is supposed to look ok from that angle/distance, but if you change that, they may look bad or out of place.

From my experience of working with the map editor, i noticed several issues of this kind. As an example, i can mention the map borders. They are of a certain length, and look ok ingame when to move the camera on the edges of the map, but if you can move the camera further, you will notice the decoration and then the void past it.

You can already mod the camera distance (i'm almost sure about this), and i guess it will be possible in the final build, but i would be surprised if they allow more freedom with it in game. It would go against polish for an official build.

About the game performance, i have to say the game runs fine, except when pathfinding is calculated, yes Andreas! I have huge fps drops when moving the cursor on the map, the more difficult the pathfinding is, the more the fps drop. Maybe some optimisations will make things better, but it may be useful to disable the pathfinding when movement is not especially intended.

I discussed this topic in another thread. Yes, the viewing distance is not comparable to JA2. You see too less to plan and react to different enemies spread on the map.

So they told me it is a performance problem and later on a problem with textures and borders or the map. But there is a corridor, I hope so, where the user can decide and have a high power pc to zoom out more. 

The Camera we use in JAF is perspective (with a relatively low Field of View (FoV) of 30 by default. This gives a near isometric feel to the camera. When you scroll out with the mousewheel we both move the actual camera position an increase the Field of View to 35 on the default setting. 

By editing/modding the GameSettings.json, you can change the FoV, but not the actual movement of the camera (as it is animation based right now). 

And yes, 

a too far camera distance will cause problems with performance & Z-fighting, se we restrict the maximum distance - in the same way, a too close camera will look weird for stylistic reasons, as our models (& their polycount) are made for a specific minimum distance of the camera to the playing field.

First - I don't understand why we need to change the camera position when we change to 35 FOV. Does this change the angle too?

Still I hope, that from a tactical point of view, you have to zoom out more, so there should be a way to tweak performance things like pathfinding and get a higher viewing distance until release!?

I stopped testing after a very short time. Ok, we are beta testers. But seeing that the animations are still off, bugs reported a while ago:

• switching between characters in inventory (UI)
• animations
• Viewing direction outside the walking range (click outside the white border does not work)
• no moving enemies in realtime

Also interrupt needs some changes. Now I played it, I know a compromise one could live with:

EDIT:

Only a merc with APs left can get an interrupt. In JA2 you could have interrupts with mercs with 2 APs. So when I toggle the button, my left APs are reserverved for interruption. But that can be possible all the time. I think the button is just here, because it would be complicated to write a program, which calculates interrupts all the time. So the JA2 system wasn't so bad?

As I concluded out of the pictures of the UI, the things bother me a lot:

• space under the combat UI -> why is there space? Wasted, as it should be directly on the lower border of the screen
• pistol tooo huge and no reason for me to do anything here. Quickslots are something we need, but the rest is wasted space. End of turn button completely out of range with no connection to the rest ui.
• now moral bar
• no item description with right click on a weapon/ammo (ja2 style)
• no new crosshair

I wonder how much the current branch has progressed from this build on.

Hey Archo,

thanks for your Feedback! Just wanted to give you a status on some of your points.

- Animations are improved in the current build, and we will continue to improve them in the future

- switching of Inventory by pressing the enemy portraits will be fixed for the Update

- Regarding Interrupts: Interrupt changes your Viewcone, you cannot access your Inventory and it will effect your Energy/Breath regeneration (once implemented) - so there is a tradeoff for going into Interrupt mode, or a choice for the player to do so - hence, it is an "action", or conscious decision to go into Interrupt, and not an automated system like in JA2

- As mentioned, new Aim cursor will be implemented in the future, right now I cannot say wether it will be ready for the Update 2

- Item description is part of the Inventory Screen

- Turning, and in general the right-click Menu will be removed in the future (based on Feedback from our Backers!) - so, turning will be handled in a different way

Thanks, Roman, for giving us a quick update.
Looking forward especially to the changes to the curser and the removal of the right-click menu. I think it will feel a lot more like a JA game after that.

It's going to be very interesting, how the interrupt system is going to work once it's complete. Will this be in this update already?
"Interrupt changes your viewcone" That will probably be basically like readying your weapon in 1.13?
I wonder whether this will affect other mercs as well. (Will there be a reason to maybe keep one merc out of interrupt mode to give the others a better chance to get one?) The real-life correlation to this would be a merc calling out to his collegues ("watch out!" adding a real shout would be really cool!) I think that would add a nice additional layer to the system.

Thank you for your post. The line of communication is not always clear. We know you all read our (mostly to long) posts but what gets in and out, hard to follow up.

Turning and crosshair: I'm confident you made the right decision to hear your backers. I think with the UI and animations we have a long way ahead, some feedback already given must be implemented.

Animation: I am not the only one who misses a lot of animations. And hear again what you backers seem to love in JA2. What we complain here are the basic animations we need in the game. The core animations are still missing (death animations+situational animations) and I never got a clear answer on if they will come. Investing in something that makes each and every fight more interesting, cruel and surprising benefits the whole game experience and distingues from the more cartoon look of the game now, which should it make easier to implement death animations - as they are exaggerated.

Interruption: You are absolutely right. The trade off will is worth the risk that somebody can fall in your flank. What I don't like is how I get feedback on which merc is in interrupt mode. So I asked myself, could the weapon and body not swing between the to ends of the viewing cone, like you would do if you  sit duck and secure a corridor? This animation has been standard to JA2 but not in JA:F. Or when you click on a merc who is in interrupt, he doens't reply with "yeah" but he gasps slowly and quiet, because he is in interrupt and needs breath to be concentrated. So no symbol or color on the merc. Therefore we have the gui where the symbol of interrupt could be shanged and made prominent (toggles border shine).

Also will it be possible to tell a merc, he should be in interrupt as long he has energy? So there will be no more interrupts in real time mode, when enemies come nearby?

I also like the "watch out" shout =)

UI: We given a lot of feedback in the UI thread. Still, the first thing I wanna have explained is this decision of floating UI containers not docked on the bottom border of the screen. We already complained about the LOW FOV and that is why we need to save real estate on the screen with adjustable UI, without wasting space at the bottom. So please explain if this will be changed or is their a technical (resolution) hurdle, I don't think of?

New Feedback: (Summary)

- The new UI can be placed at the bottom of the screen and should be a little bit smaller. Weapon pictures can be a little bit smaller too and everything should be more compressed. (Smaller UI but at the same time more combat informations and quickslots to improve combat)

- UI should fit the timesetting. We need an 80´s touch. Paper dossier/millitary artwork should be good.

- Interupt hint can be smaller. Sometimes it overlaids the quest hint (screen)

- Still more zoom out levels are wishful to see more of the combat area. A better overview is necessary.

- Grabbing hand cursor for picking up loot (animated)

- Loot should be better visualized on the ground.

- Different font type for the text is necessary so that everything is easier to read. Not just big letters for the whole text.

- Faster reaction of the mercs necessary. They should react faster when they shoot at the enemy.

- Reloading sound effect necessary.

- Reloading icon (mouse) in the actual build is good but don´t work. By a mouse click the merc should automatically reload and a reloading sound is necessary here.

- Mission Objective/Mission Goal (waypoint) should be visualized on the map. Maybe one Missionicon that shows where to go in the sector.

- When going to a new sector the game often don´t loads the new sector. I have to restart so many times. Please fix that.

- combat animations should be improved (firing animations, merc should turn to the enemy direction while firing, crawling, grenade should hit the ground several times before exploding)

- Still questlog / mercscreen (hire, mercinformations) and economy-screen necessary. 

- Still no crosshair based combat in the actual build

- Still no animated merc-portraits and commentaries

Having some inventory issues here as well making the game unplayable

Working on branching today, so hopefully we'll have a new build ready for the alpha branch this evening, but ofc if we encounter gamebreaking bugs it could be postponed. 

Cool nice to hear that. Hopefully we can play some new stuff this evening. :-)

Damn you for causing me sleepless nights. Well, I guess reading my feedback posts is punishment enough. ;-)
Very cool. Is this going to be the version that's going to be released if we don't encounter any gamebreaking bugs or can we expect further changes until then?
One of the gamescom interviews said that the combat system in the upcoming update is going to be complete. The strategic level is obviously still missing and the save system is going to change, but can we expect the other features mentioned in this change log to be mostly complete (tweaking, new items etc. aside) or are some bigger changes to them planned?

Hmm I guess the update won´t come today? Or can we expect the update later this evening?

We couldn't update as we encountered a big memory bug with the implementation of some new audio system. Simply made the memory usage rise continously, which ended up crashing the game...for some reason it reloaded the audio files over and over. 

Should be a new build up to test today unless they encounter similar issues.

Is there still hope for a new update today? Or have you already encountered big bugs?

Looks like it will be tomorrow morning instead unfortunately.

Coders fixed the game breaking bugs, but want to test them before they make a new build, so tomorrow morning is what I'm told.

Sorry if i missed that info, but when is the next beta (not alpha) build planned?

In the other thread I heared it will come on friday for the public?

Will see if we can't get it out this week...Some game breaking bugs keep popping up, delaying the alpha build..ultimately also the new update

Didn't think about that sometimes to move the launch of the game on a different date? In my opinion, the final edition game this year is not realistic.

I am also a little bit worried about the games progress. In the next update there should be the features from milestone 2 included. So Stealth (Concealment, Skill, Hearing), Melee combat, Conquering Sectors & Militia and I guess the better UI. We are in september and there are two milestones open with features like...

Milestone Update 3 

Advanced Characters (Perks, Morale, Breath, Medial & Mechanics) 
Doors (Lockpicking, Breaching, Interaction) 
Mercenary tasks out of combat (Train militia, repair, healing,...) 

Milestone Update 4 

Advanced Enemies (Classes, Grenades, AI) 
Additional Equipment (Attachments, Goggles,...) 
Sector Upgrades 

And on top of that there is the advanced crosshair based combat, animated portraits, merc dialogues, better animations and maybe some visually and functionally changes to the UI that need to be implemented.

All of this plus a small testing phase for the alpha backers in two month is really lean. I know you work hard so I hope it will work in the end. 

Maybe many parts of the game are finished and just need to be implemented than it is possible but what the alpha backers have now is so far away from JA2. 

I don't want to be sceptical but in that short time that is left half of the games features still need to be implemented. 

agree with shadow.

Just back. Looks like the coming week-end will be rather busy to catch up :-)

I'm also a bit worried about release date considering the pending amount of work.

Just uploaded a new build to the alpha branch. (the internal branch for alpha backers).

Yes tehre is still a lot to be done, but most of the design is there, so it's mainly "just" on the coders to get their fingers in overdrive. JA games are really code heavy games, so there's a lot that need to be hooked in, tested and also rewritten, we're pushing forward as good as we can. 

Any release notes beside the initial ones? Something we should look for to test in particular?

There should be an even newer build up now. Roman said. 

Multiple Squads..what happens if you lose 1 squad entirely---

Militia Training...very much Work in Progress 

Overall issues with the Strategic View. 

Only played about 30 minutes, but still the same inventory bug, still is most of the new UI consistent of placeholders and most of the issues I mentioned in my huge post last week stil seem to be there. I really hope you were not planning on releasing this exact version.

Also the bug reappeared (or maybe I just didn't encounter it in the last version) where you have to reopen a container to see everything that's inside because suddenly some of it isn't visible on screen any more.
Also since the small update no sound at all (it worked in the release before).

Is the squad inventory only usable on the strategic map on purpose?

Taking a break for a while and gonna continue testing later.

Hmm the mercs firing direction seems to be better now and even a new zoom out level is in? Nice. Also the melee attack is working now. But sadly there is no sound in the game. Hopefully you push forward with more improvements like that than I am happy ;-)

Edit: The new zoom out level helps sooo much! Now there is a good overview and the gameplay works way better. Maybe you can put one more zoom out level in the game than there is everything in a perfect view. But right now a really good improvement. That takes the game much further. Sounds cheap but the right overview over the battlefield is very important in a strategic game like JA.

Now put the new UI at the bottom of the screen and make it a little bit smaller than there is enough space to see whats going on on the battlefield. ;-)

Some of the levels are using an old version apparently e..g soza fortress is blue and a piece of wood in the bear's pit. 

Also some selection icons that carry over from the last sectors...looking into that now

Sound missing as well

We never got an answer to our beloved death animations which are seriously important, as every merc is hard to kill later, so you get some non random thing back, like Pawlows Dog =) Is the animator still correcting the basic animation or will we get at least what JA2 offered? Seriously it is time to let us know.

Hmm I am also missing rocket launchers, shotguns, explosions and therefor death animations and of course the crosshair based combat. But maybe only for the merc posture the right click menu is still good.

Death animations are nothing we can mod. Crosshair is for sure. So Nice rocket lauchers (miss too!) can be put in at anytime. No, they can't, if you need proper animations to hold them on the shoulders! Think we have a bottleneck in terms of animations overall.

Played the new build, new features:

• sound indicator (nice!)
• new item pics
• weapons lie on ground, not only backpack
• tutorial
• indicator that show enemy, which is in view of fellow mercs
• ivan, magic, etc. new mercs, new weapons
• knives (can't do melee atacks)
• switch from crosshair to small reload icon (but not functional, need to use reload button!)
   
• Why use ammo box pics instead of the clips? We are used to that like in JA2 and don't like paper boxes of ammo, but ammo boxes or clips which I can drag&drop on the weapons. Pls don't change those details that worked in JA2. These items are very small. A JA2 nato ammo has distinct small clip dimensions and color which together I can recognize. But the same ammo box for each ammo type, rectangles paper boxes in different colors - all look identical to me.
• JA: Nato, red = armor-piercing, 7.62mm
• That is how in JA2 form was used to distinguish different functions. 

I still don't understand why my mercs can see around the corner. Use one merc, place him on the corner (the last tile you can). In JA2 you couldn't see anything that is behind the wall. Now (the view cone indicates that) you see a lot of stuff. That is why I alsways get shot in JA:F, as the enemy sees me too. This is wrong design, isn't it? I mean you can argue as how much the head is aligned with the last piece of the wall.

You have to move right in front of an enemy than you can attack with a knife. But in the future I hope we can tell the merc that he has to do the melee attack from his actual position. So moving and killing by knife need to be implemented in the next update.

Edit: (Zoom out level)

Haha sorry guys I compared the old version with the new alpha branch and there was no new zoom out level in the new build I guess? I don´t know but in the first moment it felt like the new alpha build had one more zoom out level. So I guess I was wrong. Hmm I don´t know :D

But please implement more zoom out levels. The more the better. There can´t be enough overview in combat ;-)

Really? Please change that. I have to see the knife symbol like in JA2 and if I click on the enemy, my merc should walk to him and start melee attack. Otherwise it is unusable.

Zoom:

I tested it again and think, the highest zoom level is enough. What I still don't get is why we change you change to another camera angle (30 to 35 degrees) when zooming out. This makes it less comfortable (and feels non isometric) .#

Can we change this 35 to 30 in one file that it fits our needs? Maybe I just wanna try it out, if it looks better. 

Roman said he would pop in and comment, so I'll just leave this Work in progress shot of the crosshair here. 

Hey all,

just to give a quick reply to some remarks. 

- Ofc you will be able to automatically run to an enemy, containers, doors and so on to execute your actions after moving there. It is on our list to fix!

- Ammo Icons: it is also still work in progress. The idea is that the Weapon Box that you see indicates your Caliber (5.556 NATO / 9mm .45 ACP and so on). Then, we will show Icons on top of those ammo boxes to indicate which type of clip (i.e.: rifle/handgun) and, by color, which type of ammo it is (i.e. HP, AP etc.). 

- making the Ammo icon reload on click is also on our fix list

- @Archo: IIRC, you can adjust the zoom setting in the GameSettings.json file by simply replacing it with a different value. Thanks for the feedback, will think/test the Camera FOV/Tilt and see what feels better - it should not be difficult to adjust.

- I will see what we can do in regards to death animations, or gibbing (blown off limbs). As it is a cosmetical change mostly, we are at the moment prioritizing other features (such as Perks, or Doors) higher on our to-do list. But we might re-visit the death animations at a later point, unfortunately I cannot promise anything right now.

Looks good so far. So the crosshair wents fluently from big circle (small chance to hit - like 20%) to middle (50% chance to hit) to smallest circle (highest chance to hit - 75%) by using the right mouse button and firing bullets with the left mouse button? That would be great.

- Please remember that the crosshair in JA2 had this special sound effect while aiming. So please give the new crosshair also its unique (special) sound while you change between the different aiming levels.

- It would be cool when the circle would also flicker (animated) a little bit so that it is a little bit more dynamic. So that it looks like dynamic aiming, just like when you hold a rifle and you aim your hand and the weapon is shaking a little bit.

- Maybe the circles "look" can be tweaked so that they also look like crosshairs but not absolutely necessary. (Just like in JA2 1.13)

@Roman

Nice to see that you covered everything. Sometimes we overload the threads not knowing that you have everything under control =) We should send the coders some energy drinks so they code the finished design asap into the game ;)

I played with the FOV/tilt and still not sure if it needs tweaking. Also one can tweak it by using the json-file. So what I will do next is do a screenshot of different angles and compare them. Problem is, the FOV/tilt doesn't feel quite like the view of JA2, but we get more overview now. Need to figure out why =)

death animations: As JA2 doesn't provide gibbing, I think it is not important. The few death animations that were cool in JA2 should find the way back into the game. Press and we will love it. Nice for screenshots and videos!

crosshair Shadow86, you so right. The sound, the flickering, also the design was special. Would be nice to tweak the design itself, the rest and the additional information and layout is fine. Need to see how it plays.

Could you add a button combination to zoom out and in?