Hello everyone, and thank you for making this great game !
I've had a lot of fun playing the campaign in standard mode few years ago, and although I encountered a few bugs and issues, I never took the time to write about this. This year I've decided I'd try to finish the campaign in hard mode and to add my own comment on the forums.
I'm sure most of the bugs I'm going to list are already well-known, and this is why I'm making a forum post instead of directly opening dozens of tickets on the bug tracker. For those who are already are familiar with the development, please let me know which bugs are already well-known, so I don't create another useless ticket
I'm playing on Debian GNU/Linux "buster" testing, on an AMD FX 8150 CPU and a Radeon R9 280X, although the first time I might have played the game on my other system, a Thinkpad T530 with an Intel i5-3320M CPU (and the OS must have been a jessie or a stretch).
Also, note that I've never played the version 2.5, which is available in Debian. When I saw the nice interface of the 2.6 I decided to stick to it
So, first of all, the game has perf issues. I remember that when I played the campaign the first time, the missions were getting laggier and laggier towards the end, and I remember missions on a very wide map with a lot of tunnels that were unplayable for me. I reported it on IRC at the time, indicating that the lag might have something to do with the AI or the AI's pathfinder. I believe the map was removed and some lag issues were fixed, and now I don't end up in situations where the game is unplayable, so thank you very much for that.
Some perf issues remain though :
* 1) Market : after a couple of hours, selling/buying at the market is very slow : the duration between the click and the moment the item is actually sold/bought is very long (and gets longer and longer over time), restarting the program and reloading the saved game fixes this, so I suspect a memory leak
* 2) Geoscape : after a couple of hours, unpausing the geoscape is also very slow (I especially noticed this when I was sending my aicrafts on interception missions), I suspect a memory leak here too.
* 3) Over the course of a very long game all of the geoscape interface will get laggy, with delays on every click, similarly to the Market interface.
* 4) The Alien AI becomes slower and slower. I think it's the AI decision making that takes time because I don't hear any footsteps or shots
Now, UI issues :
* 5) Camera
5.1) Concerning the camera effects when units are seeing each other :
Whenever a unit is seeing an other, or the gathering of TUs for a reaction shot starts, or the gathering of TUs for a reaction shot ends, or an opponent starts to shoot, the camera moves. But it doesn't just hop from one point to an other, it uses a travelling effect which is very annoying :
- this travelling effect starts with an acceleration of a second or two, ends with a deceleration of a second or two.
- the cruising speed of the camera is always the same, no matter the zoom, no matter the distance between the units it focuses on, you can't change it
- the camera position is often completely off the target it wants to show to the player
- sometimes the camera hits the border of the map before the end of its travelling. It ends up sliding stupidly against an invisible barrier (this can be the reason the camera is off sometimes, but I also suspect the zoom affects the camera accuracy)
- nothing happens when the camera moves, and the player can't perform any action, it's pure wasted time. Most actions of the player (like looking at the stats of a unit) during the camera travelling will force the camera to jump somewhere else, after which the camera will jump back to its point of origin, and will restart the whole process again
- this travelling effect alone can't be disabled, but it can be disabled if you totally disable the "center view" option, which I'm going to talk about now.
5.2) Concerning the camera moves when the units are seeing each other (aka "centered view"):
Whenever a unit is being spotted, or an opponent fires at us, the camera moves to show us the unit, its move, and/or its possible target. This happens very often during a turn, too often if you ask me.
- When an alien enters the fov of one of my soldiers, the camera focuses on the alien as it's being spotted, then on the soldier as it starts to accumulate TUs for a reaction shot, then on the alien again to show me which unit the soldier is aiming at, and when enough TUs have been gathered, the camera focuses on the soldier, and then the alien, and then the shot is taken. If the alien wants to take a shot while my soldier accumulate TUs, the camera will shift focus at least two more times. If the alien escapes the fov of my soldiers to enter it again, add an other round of camera focus changes on top of that. If the alien moves in an out of the fov many times in a row (like when it's walking in a building behind windows), it becomes very annoying.
- When civilians gather in a safe area, they will just stay there walking in circles until the area isn't safe anymore or the mission ends. If you happen to have a unit there, the camera will shift focus every time a civilian walks in or out of its fov.
- This can be disabled by unchecking the "center view" option. This way, most missions become much more enjoyable. On base defense missions, however, one can be tempted to check the option back, because in this kind of mission you have cameras, and it's very useful to track aliens, to count how many of them are remaining, and to know where a particular alien was wandering last. As an alien can pass in front of a camera for just a split second, and as the map is too big to be viewed entirely when zooming out, centering the view in this case is helpful. Also, the "center view" option is useful when you select your own units, because sometimes the halo effect on the selection ring is not enough to spot the selected unit quickly.
Anyway, if you add that horrible camera travelling effect on top of centered view, the missions can quickly drive you mad.
5.3) What I suggest for camera travelling :
a) give a way to customize the camera travelling effect : changing its speed, removing the acceleration/deceleration parts.
b) fix the camera position problem
c) make the camera stop against the border of the map when it hits it, rather than sliding against it
d) more importantly and above all : give a way to *DISABLE* that camera travelling effect
5.4) What I suggest for camera moves :
a) reduce the number of camera moves. In the scenario above, there's no need to show us the soldier who has spotted the alien and/or is gathering TUs for a reaction shot. Just saying who it is is enough. For the TU gathering process there's a tooltip with the face of the soldier, if it's not enough you can add his name and/or highlight him on the map. If he's off-screen the player can simply zoom out to see him.
b) perhaps even disable the camera moves when the map is zoomed out enough to see all the involved actors. Simply highlight them to show to the player where the action is happening. The UI should be pointing stuff out, not grabbing your head and putting your face in it.
c) give a way to disable the camera moves for a certain category of unit (or player). I know those civilians are safe in that garage, I don't want to anybody to remind me that they are walking in circles in there because they have nothing better to do.
* 6) Geoscape : add an other speed between 5s and 5min, that would be useful for air combat :
Here is the ratio between all the speeds that are proposed in the geoscape interface :
5s -> 5m -> 20m -> 1h -> 12h -> 1d -> 5d
x60 x4 x3 x12 x2 x5
* 7) Base view : arrows in the lists are useless (too slow), same for the scroll wheel
* 8 ) Battlescape : the green icon doesn't always mean the unit is not bleeding
* 9) Battlescape : the absence of bleeding doesn't always mean the unit can't be healed once more
* 10) restarting a mission is laggier at every restart (leak in the mission generation ?). It's much easier to do Alt+F4 and reload.
* 11) Battlescape : the smoke on the tiles without soldiers sometimes disappear when alien turn starts (only visually, it can reappear later next turn)
* 12) Battlescape (base) : the hole in the power plant's wall appears and disappear depending on camera position
* 13) Battlescape : dead bodies tend to flicker between two positions
* 14) Battlescape : the radar is very annoying : it show only a tiny portion of the map, and you have to move the radar window to see other portions of the map, which is quite counter-intuitive. The radar should follow at least camera position and zoom (and if possible, camera orientation in the xy plane).
* 15) Battlescape : Hovernets' shape is confusing : you don't know in which direction they're looking unless you use the radar. Is this intended ?
* 16) Battlescape : Civilians scream twice when killed : once because they're hurt, a second time because they're dead (I guess that's the mechanism). Is it possible to play just the death sound when they die ?
* 17) Battlescape : Civilian women's scream sound (the loud, pitchy one) is quite annoying.
* 18) Battlescape : The screams of human soldiers seem to be the same as the ones in xonotic. But contrarily to xonotic, they are played at random and do not reflect the level of helth remaining on the unit. For all those who are used to xonotic, this is confusing sometimes
* 19) Battlescape : The Hovernet death animation could be reworked : now it just looks like the hovernet becomes flat and flips over.
* 20) Battlescape : When a hovernet dies, the death animation replays for all dead hovernets on the map
* 20) Battlescape : Whenever the main hand of a soldier is empty, one has to manually move the main weapon from the second hand to the first in order to be able to shoot, although this doesn't consume any TUs. switchin the weapon to the main hand when it's empty should be automatic.
* 21) Battlescape : Sometimes I get a hit chance percentage when the line of fire is red on 90% of the way. Sometimes I get a small hit chance percentage when the line of fire is red 1 tile before the target, and usually this is right and I actually get a small chance of hitting the target. But I've already had some hit chance percentage above 50% when the shooter is behind a small obstacle (lets say, a wall corner), and the line of fire barely hits the wall corner, being red on most of the way. Despite the hit chance percentage, I never have a chance to hit the target in such a case. In other terms : when the line of fire is mostly red, a non-null hit chance percentage doesn't mean anything.
* 22) Base view : Clicking on an aircraft's silhouette leads you to the aircrafts window, but doesn't select the appropriate aircraft
* 23) Geoscape : the "path-to-target" line of interceptors tends to flicker between two interception points.
* 24) Geoscape : AA51 missile launchers don't disappear from storage when equipped on a SAM site : one AA51 launcher is enough to fill all SAM sites (I don't complain though)
* 25) Base view : It would be nice if the EP magazines had that blue line also when equipped on a weapon, at least in the soldiers equipment view. I like to know at first sight what a soldier will fire with, without having to hover on the weapon each time.
* 26) Battlescape : Snow maps are a bit agressive for the eyes, and the visibility of the semi-transparent selectors isn't optimal.
* 27) Base view : Soldiers view doesn't display health, and even in the dropship view, the health of soldiers is not always displayed
* 28) Battlescape : When there are particles (rain, snow falling...) you can see them even when you're underground.
* 29) Battlescape : Misclicks can be so.goddam.freaking.annoying. And they happen so easily. Sometimes you want to click in the interface to select a firing order or to disable reaction shot, you misclick and your soldier ends up moving on the map. I suggest to either have a keyboard shortcut for each possible hud action, or to have "Ctrl+left click" instead of "left click" to move a soldier on the map.
* 30) Battlescape : Misclicks also happen easily when you want to select a guy. So maybe have a keyboard shortcut for everything in the hud, and Ctrl+left click when you want to select someone ?
* 31) Base view : when you drag on a soldier an item that is too heavy for him, there is a pop up telling you you won't be able to perform certain actions, but then when you decide to remove a few small items from him, the message pops up for every item you drag off him. I think there should be a message displaying next to the soldier instead of an annoying popup.
* 32) Base view : It would be good to have a 3D preview of a building before you build it. This way you could now the obstruction size of the building above the ground in base defense missions, and if there's an external entry point. Having a preview of what the cameras would see when placing the building could be cool, too.
* 33) Base view : Choosing the best soldiers/pilots to recruit when plenty are available can be quickly annoying. This is due to A) the interface lag, B) the slowness of the scroll wheel/arrows, which forces you to use the slider, C) the fact that you have to click every soldier and remember the values to be able to compare it with an other. I suggest to treat the list of soldiers as a table where you could sort them and select them on certain values.
* 34) Battlescape : some Firebird dropships have a different obstruction size than others (some allow you to place soldiers in some corners, some don't). Is this intended or not ?
This is pretty much what I can remember of after playing this campaign twice
I will create a ticket for each one of those bugs unless you tell me it's already known.
There are plenty of other bugs which, knowing the game is still in development, I'm sure you already know of : abrupt campaign ending, unbalanced/useless weapons/tech/aircrafts, unpleasant air combat mechanics, old fashioned late-game aircraft models, etc.
Now for the good stuff :
It's a very enjoyable game, and one of the most beautiful in the libre game world, especially for the battlescape views : I like the look of the aliens bodies and armours, the human armours and weapons, I also like the lights and ambients in the alien ships and alien bases. The general atmosphere is very good, with this very dark look and that stressing music. Speaking of music, the main menu theme is one of the most beautiful in the libre game world and is my second favourite after the theme of annex:ctw. I also like the weapon sounds, the firing sounds, the reloading sounds, and that little "beepbeep" when reloading the RL. I like the little sound at the beginning of a new turn that almost sounds like a robot saying "hurry up"
But what I prefer overall, I think, is the campaign text. I like the "epistolary novel" style that is used by the campaign and I love the way your advisors write to you : always focusing on what you need to know while giving you realistic details about how the technologies are supposed to work.
