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Author Topic: Minor flaws in this otherwise outstanding game  (Read 2428 times)

Offline sebtob

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Minor flaws in this otherwise outstanding game
« on: October 21, 2012, 05:00:58 pm »
Hey Guys

I've been playing UFO AI now since I think 2009 or 2010. And I still love to play it. I think you guys are doing an amazing job! The quality of this non-commercial(!) game is unbelievable!
I just want to say a big fat THANK YOU for creating this wonderful game!

But there are still some minor flaws that bother since the first time I played UFO, that I would like to discuss here. And I am curious if others are having the same experiences as me. And I am hoping someone might have some advice for me.

1. Repeating maps
Some maps are just beeing repeated way to often. I find myself quiting and reloading whenever a mission appears with the same map that I already played ten times that day. For example the map with the crashed scout next to the wooden house with the garage in front. It's really exhausting playing one and the same procedure again and again. And this whilest other maps barely ever occur. E.g. the gas station map. Havent seen this one in a half year (game play time). The game would be even more fun, if there was a little bit more variation.

2. Aliens do not get out of their UFO
Thats another thing that often makes me tired of playing the game. There are some maps where the whole tactic consists of spending round after round, walking up to the back of the UFO to invade it. On some maps this is always the sampe procedure because the UFO is obviously "parked" in a way that the aliens aren's mart enough to find the exit in the back. This is specially frustrating when this occurs on heavily repeated maps, like the map with the japanese stype houses.

3. Campaign content
This is now the 3rd or 4th campaign I play. And with every new patch I am hoping that there are new items available in the campaign. Like e.g. new armor. Mostly I am a little disappointed. There are several items that are available in skirmish mode, but not in campaign mode. Why?

4. Mouse behaviour
I found some threads about this in the forum. But so far no solution. My mouse movement is horrible. It feels like my cursor is slipping on ice. Very very imprecise. Specially when I am in world view mode. I think the graphic resolution affects this effect. The higher the resolution, the worse gets the control of the cursor. I also wasn't able to find a setting in the game options to fix this.


Please don't understand this post as nagging about the game. I will remain a big fan. With or without this flaws ;)
And I am also well aware of the effort that needs to be spent for such a project. I understand that adding new content to the game is not an easy task.

Those are just a few things I wanted to address here. And I am looking forward to what others have to say to this :)

Best regards
sebtob



Offline geever

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Re: Minor flaws in this otherwise outstanding game
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2012, 07:39:36 pm »
Hello,

Probably you are playing with older versions as some issues you mention are already solved, or at least improved. I suggest trying the bleeding-edge (2.5-dev) and following the Monthly reports on the News page.

1. Repeating maps

We improved the variability. Some maps which were not used in campaign, now in the game. If it is still too boring, you can contribute by creating new maps.

Also number of missions per day has been reduced.

2. Aliens do not get out of their UFO

This is an AI bug. The AI is too dumb to think ahead for several turns. As far as I know guys tried to help on this with some patches but I'm sure it's still not perfect. You know, it is a hard thing to code an AI - even a "simple one" for a game. If you or a friend good in coding AI, get involved! :)

3. Campaign content

Previous releases focused mostly on features, 2.5 moved forward on content. We have completely new soldier armour models (which was a hard thing, much modelling and animating work), continued the campaign events.

4. Mouse behaviour

It can be hardware related, dunno. I have no problems with mouse in game (I play on Linux, windowed mode, with a standard no-name USB optical mouse)

-geever

Offline H-Hour

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Re: Minor flaws in this otherwise outstanding game
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2012, 08:13:53 pm »
The mouse behaviour sounds like when the game is just running a bit slow. Try turning shaders off in the video settings and you'll probably have much better performance -- and thus reduced mouse lag.

Offline Triaxx2

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Re: Minor flaws in this otherwise outstanding game
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2012, 03:52:26 am »
There's a topic floating around, which I can't find right off-hand, mentioning there was an issue with map choice, causing some repetitiveness. Apparently ShipIt fixed the issue somehow, but the fix didn't make it into 2.4.

Try fighting the aliens in a different place. North and South America both produce different maps than the European ones.