UFO: Alien Invasion Changelog

What's new in UFO: Alien Invasion 2.4

Apr 26, 2012
  • 3D engine:
  • Increased framerate at large maps
  • Added simplified shaders to support low-end hardware
  • Many minor improvements
  • Ports:
  • Windows: Fixed freeze at the end of a game if server threads were activated
  • Mac OS X: Fixed package bug - ensure that the used frameworks are part of the dmg
  • Rescue zone:
  • Rescue zone for dropships where soldiers will survive at mission abort
  • Character statistics and Actor skin descriptions are now scriptable
  • Added cgame (client side modding) support - and converted skirmish and multiplayer. It is now possible to add new new client side shared objects to add new gametypes.
  • Support for game modding via fs_gamedir cvar.
  • Improved and faster renderer.
  • Rewritten RMA-algoritm. Now it is faster and does not hang up the game for some assemblies.
  • Added a simple campaign cgame type with a fixed number of missions and in a fixed order.
  • Campaign:
  • Production requirements support
  • Rescue missions: Rescue soldiers of your downed dropships!
  • Support for more than 64 aircraft
  • Ensure base connectivity
  • Support for bigger base buildings (2x2, 3x1, etc.)
  • Allow production costs independent from market prices
  • Extend building event trigger support (to run events on constructing/destructing/enabling/disabling)
  • Allow switching the base not only from the main base menu, but also from any of the base's submenus
  • if available and functional the same submenu of the base switched to will automatically open, otherwise the main base menu will be shown
  • Sort the aircraft list for interception and mission popups by distance to the target
  • Show 2 different aircraft models depending on aircraft status (en-route/landed)
  • Implemented better auto-mission handling
  • Select soldiers to fight in base defense
  • Implemented transfers between UFO Yards
  • Distance penalty for disassemblies. Disassembling a UFO stored far from the base will take longer.
  • Implemented listing of actual cargo transfers
  • Exit Confirmation pop-up for the campaign mode
  • New alien base map
  • New, higher quality basemapshots
  • Battlescape:
  • Added support for armour penalty. Heavy armour decreases available TUs now.
  • New battle mode: Alien rush (endless-alien-respawn-feature).
  • World entity interaction with the mouse is now possible (e.g. open doors)
  • Improved camera behaviour accessible via middle mousebutton
  • Highlight entities that can be used by an actor (e.g. doors)
  • Implemented smoke grenades
  • Implemented fire fields for incendiary grenades and rockets
  • Reworked and enhanced civilian teams (nations)
  • Added possibility to use "special civilian teams" on certain maps
  • New civilian teams (scientists, workers, miners, soldiers)
  • Randomspawn of the enemy is now enabled on many maps
  • Skirmish:
  • Allow to edit, load and save your skirmish teams
  • New (map) entities:
  • trigger_rescue
  • trigger_nextmap
  • misc_fire
  • misc_smoke
  • New maps
  • alien base
  • +beach
  • bungalow
  • bungalow2
  • +city2
  • city_industrial
  • gate
  • +harbour2 RMA theme
  • +hills RMA theme
  • +mansion
  • neighbourhood
  • small_house
  • Improved and added new tiles for some RMAs:
  • +forest
  • +oriental
  • Other improvements on various maps
  • added a lot of new func_breakables on many maps
  • rescaled low-resolution textures on the maps
  • added many new alien spawnpoints and enabled randomspawn on various maps
  • UFORadiant
  • Implemented texture overview
  • Implemented skip-common-texture feature
  • Implemented cut feature
  • UI:
  • Many key-configuration enhancements and improvements
  • New keyinfo menu accessible from anywhere via F4 key
  • Support for creating custom HUDs
  • New battlescape HUD: Minimal HUD aka MiniHUD
  • Upgrades for all existing battlescape HUDs
  • Upgrade for the Options menu
  • Upgrade for the Skirmish menu
  • Upgrade for the UFOPedia
  • Upgrade for the Research menu
  • Upgrade for the Aliencontainment menu
  • General:
  • Complete new sounds
  • New particle effects and special-fx textures and particle animation frames (explosions, weapons, etc.)
  • New and improved, transparent blood-textures
  • New music, revised tracklist
  • New cursor images for the battlescape
  • Loads of new models (civilians, rocketlauncher, static models on maps)
  • New diffuse textures, new glowmaps, new normalmaps, new specularmaps
  • Higher resolution textures for existing models
  • Upgraded alien races with additional skins, glowmaps and normalmaps
  • Removed unused parts of model textures to optimize filesizes
  • Increased texture resolution for existing map textures
  • Replaced textures without proper license
  • Replaced many .jpg textures with .png textures without artifacts
  • Optimized and recompressed all png textures for optimum performance
  • A lot of new UI graphics and effects
  • New, high-quality renderings of rank pictures and other graphics
  • Improved tech pictures
  • First glowmap animations
  • More flares & new light animations
  • Automatic crashdump upload
  • Fixed bugs

New in UFO: Alien Invasion 2.3 (Jul 19, 2010)

  • Complete overhaul of the campaign system, so that alien activity changes depending on the player's actions
  • New capabilities for the rendering engine, including bumpmapping, specular lighting, glowmapping, flare support, texture blending and more
  • A new tactical overhead map
  • Alien bases have been added and the player can mount an assault on them
  • Support for crashed UFO missions
  • Overhauls of the map editor
  • Loads of new maps and new tiles for existing maps that are randomly generated
  • New weapons
  • New music and sound effects
  • And loads of behind-the-scenes optimizations and tweaks for everything from the pathfinding to the user interface

New in UFO: Alien Invasion 2.2.1 (Nov 6, 2009)

  • Battlescape fixes, including fixes for autofire and visibility being updated immediately after breakable object is destroyed.
  • Geoscape fixes, including fixes for installation destroying, aircraft destroying, basedefence usage, base attacking and antimatter storage destroying.
  • New models, sounds and textures.
  • Map fixes.
  • Radiant fixes, including fixes for pathfinding overlay, segfaults and memleaks.
  • In Radiant, pathfinding only for the current level can be rendered, and it can be displayed also in 2D views.
  • More translatable strings in Radiant.
  • Work on Radiant sound support.
  • Improvements and fixes to the new pathfinding.
  • Further attempts to deal with "actor still moving" bug.
  • Build process improvements and fixes, including MacOSX updates.
  • Port can now be passed to the multiplayer 'connect' command.
  • Harvester UFO tiles for more maps.
  • Campaign fixes and updates, including no maintenance fees on unfinished buildings, particle beam ammo dependency changes, new events and savegame loading fixes.
  • Added new research mails.
  • UI fixes, including research screen and aircraft equipment fixes.
  • Improved random map assembly performance.
  • New random map assembly tiles.
  • A long ago lost map resurrected and cleaned up.
  • Introduced particle browser in Radiant.
  • Door and rotating object related fixes in random map assembly.
  • New Radiant prefabs.
  • Updated translations and tips of the day.
  • Introduced ability to do parallel random map assembly and to timeout assembly.
  • Radiant now depends on gtksourceview-2.0, introduced material editor.
  • Radiant icons converted from bmp to png.
  • Aircraft can now be renamed.
  • New debugging commands.
  • Fix for loading new map if loading previous one failed.
  • General fixes, including fixes for segfaults amd memleaks.