Some bugs

[Screet]

Hi,

I thought I should give the latest version a try, but for the last versions, I always stumbled into the same bugs and can't find a way to workaround. The latest test was with ufoai-2.4-dev-1301086950-Debug-pentium3-O1-sse-7z-full-win32.exe

OS: Vista 64
Graphics: nVidia GTX 295 with latest drivers (same problems also on previous versions of the game with previous graphics drivers)

So...let's go:
1) The Geoscape is always flickering in the beginning after starting the game/loading a saved game. A couple of switches to the menu and then back to the geoscape fixes this.
2) Although I win every battle without losses and sparsely losing a single civilian (IIRC 2 in total all over all those missions), the nations are not that extremely happy with my performance, right on from the beginning of the game. They're still not shown in any fashion that I would expect problems, but usually around beginning of May, after winning a battle (without loss of civilians) the game ends in total defeat, claiming that too many lives were lost. This happens both with 100% autoplay as well as with 100% manual play for the battles. Last time one nation went to neutral, but normally all nations are more happy than neutral, so I really don't get it why I get a total defeat.
3) When I go to the menu from a mission and select abort, the game hangs. I've got to use taskmanager to end it - every time. The only workaround: end the mission and reload.
4) When I approach a harvester, I usually get messages about entering and leaving the rescue zone close to the entry of that UFO.

Not really a bug: If I alt-tab to another program, the cursor is inoperative on the windows desktop. When I alt-tab back to the game, it's working again.

Bugs which I've found on the forum and can confirm:
1) For Autoplay, often a defeat screen shows up when all my soldiers survived and all civilians were rescued while all aliens were shot. Just reload, redo...
2) My OS is switched to english, but I am in germany. Even though I also switch the game to english, I get an almost entirely german game.

Translation: There were a few typos, but stupid me forgot to note everything At least with the message about the rescue zone I remember that it writes "Soldate" which is wrong. Either "Soldat" (soldier) or "Soldaten" (soldiers).

I packed the folder which I think contains all the info about the game. Hope it helps.

Well..aside from the sudden total "defeat" due to winning all missions, it's well playable and a massive improvement to the version I tried last year. It almost looks like an entirely new game! Great work!

[Mattn]

thanks a lot for the feedback

1) The Geoscape is always flickering in the beginning after starting the game/loading a saved game. A couple of switches to the menu and then back to the geoscape fixes this.

never heard of this before. is any other vista user suffering from this problem here?

2) Although I win every battle without losses and sparsely losing a single civilian (IIRC 2 in total all over all those missions), the nations are not that extremely happy with my performance, right on from the beginning of the game. They're still not shown in any fashion that I would expect problems, but usually around beginning of May, after winning a battle (without loss of civilians) the game ends in total defeat, claiming that too many lives were lost. This happens both with 100% autoplay as well as with 100% manual play for the battles. Last time one nation went to neutral, but normally all nations are more happy than neutral, so I really don't get it why I get a total defeat.

never heard of this one before, too - this is something for geever maybe. i've created a bug tracker item for this.

3) When I go to the menu from a mission and select abort, the game hangs. I've got to use taskmanager to end it - every time. The only workaround: end the mission and reload.

i think this should be fixed already, too - that was a threading issue (if that was the issue - please retry with a more recent build - either snapshots from tonight or muton's build)

4) When I approach a harvester, I usually get messages about entering and leaving the rescue zone close to the entry of that UFO.

this bug should already be fixed - see changelog for 2.4

1) For Autoplay, often a defeat screen shows up when all my soldiers survived and all civilians were rescued while all aliens were shot. Just reload, redo...

automission stuff wasn't really implemented in 2.3 and early 2.4 version - it will be part of 2.4 and is currently work-in-progress

2) My OS is switched to english, but I am in germany. Even though I also switch the game to english, I get an almost entirely german game.

we've fixed some i18n bugs a few days ago

Translation: There were a few typos, but stupid me forgot to note everything At least with the message about the rescue zone I remember that it writes "Soldate" which is wrong. Either "Soldat" (soldier) or "Soldaten" (soldiers).

thanks - i've fixed that bug in 0f8a0b8c1087570a7180c28b08e71a466c9eae4f

[Screet]

OK, the one with flickering is tracked down: I had to disable SLI for UFO. It works with SLI but then it requires the trick to go a few times to menu and back to geoscape. With SLI disabled, the problem is instantly gone.

About the version: Since it's from June 16th I thought it would be pretty up to date. Going to find a more recent build now.

Just wish I could fix the problem with the game so soon telling me I've been defeated. I really don't get what's wrong there. Is there anything I could try to track during gameplay to see what's going wrong and finally leading to this problem?

[Edi]

OK, the one with flickering is tracked down: I had to disable SLI for UFO. It works with SLI but then it requires the trick to go a few times to menu and back to geoscape. With SLI disabled, the problem is instantly gone.

About the version: Since it's from June 16th I thought it would be pretty up to date. Going to find a more recent build now.

Just wish I could fix the problem with the game so soon telling me I've been defeated. I really don't get what's wrong there. Is there anything I could try to track during gameplay to see what's going wrong and finally leading to this problem?

I added the following also to the tracker item:

Probably not a bug at all. If you play with too high difficulty, the aliens
will be active all over the world and that causes nations to be unhappy.
Once you build more bases and gets them online and destroy aliens in the
nations that are unhappy, the happiness will start rising.

I had this exact same problem in the exact same timeframe playing on hard
difficulty. No matter what I did, Asian Republic was not happy. I built a
base there and as soon as the radar went online, I was up to my eyebrows in
UFOs. Once I kept shooting them down and killing terror missions on the
ground, the AR went from unhappy to exuberant inside a couple of weeks.

UFO:AI is much faster paced in this regard than X-Com was, you need to
start building the second base at the end of the second month (or at the
very latest when someone starts staying unhappy) to get more coverage and
opportunities, if you play on hard or very hard difficulty.

[geever]

About the version: Since it's from June 16th I thought it would be pretty up to date. Going to find a more recent build now.

Is it? You said it is *-1301086950-* installer and 1301086950 == 2011. March. 25.

On which difficulty level you play?

-geever

[Screet]

It was from the Muton thread, his message from June 16th: http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=2830.660

I play on normal difficulty...and with the current nightly, I had the same problem again, after less than 2 months. By that time, I don't even have money for a second base (I did start one, but it wasn't finished and there was no money for buildings in it).

Stats: Won 13 / Lost 0
Nations:
Content, Happy, Pleased, Neutral, Content, Content, Neutral, Tolerant

That doesn't sound like "game over!" to me, but it happened few seconds after getting those stats - and happens every time with that saved game.

Maybe I'm too stupid and something really bad is going on which I don't get? On the earlier versions, I was always playing on normal but never had this happen to me, but then, so many things did change since then.

[DarkRain]

From Muton's post:

UfoAI 2.4.0 2011.03.25
Game, Radiant and sources

You need to download the updater (2nd link in Muton's post) to update your installation (that would be: ufoai-2.4-dev-Update-1301086950-to-1308233728-Debug-pentium3-O1-sse-7z-small-win32.exe)

[Screet]

Ahh...then I already was too blonde for downloading the proper files

But the big question with the defeat still stands. My previous post was about a game with yesterdays nightly build, running into the same problem. It has a save game attached and really, do those reports from the other nations sound like i'm failing the task?

Is that a bug or another stupidity of me?

Aside from that...on that build I noticed that the assault rifle usage sometimes does not lead to the movement points being updated. IIRC it happens with full auto. Workaround: Click on the button to preserve shots for reaction fire.