UFO:Alien Invasion
Technical support => FAQ => Topic started by: Don_Greuel on January 18, 2008, 02:21:30 pm
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Hi Guys,
first at all: great project! I really appreciate the work that you' ve done - i am a big fan of the old ufo games i really enjoy to test the version of yours.
There's just one sad thing about it:
I really HATE to play against time in such a nice game, where i want to explore every alien technology, want to research every weapon, plan my missions in every detail etc.
So i am really annoyed that the game will end after 40 civilans met hades, my old mate.
i think it is impossible to finish a mission without 1 civilian being killed by the aliens - they are just too stupid, regardless of the fact that my troops do their best to eliminate every alien as quickly as possible.
I am really in the mood to stop playing this lovely !!!! game, because i know that time is running up, and i have to focus research on the origin of the aliens to be able to finish the game.
That kills the fun of everything in this game.
So PLEASE:
if there is any way to compensate the dead civilians (maybe a special technology?), please tell me quickly.
Besides this point, the game is fantastic and better than any game available at the market in the moment.
Best greetings from Germany,
yours, Uncle Greuel
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There is no such method. We get a lot of complaints about the civilians, though, so it's clear something has to be done. For the time being, you can relax the civilian casualties restriction yourself by unpacking your 0ufos.pk3 file and editing campaign.ufo.
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Thx for your answer BT,
but how can i "unpacking your 0ufos.pk3 file and editing campaign.ufo" ?
Please tell me what kind of programs i need to accomplish the above, i really want to edit this file ;)
Besten Gru
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Good question that.
Also what would be a good number? I don't want to "cheat" but judging from what people are complaining against, the default 40 is too low. So what's a good middle ground between 40 and a cakewalk?
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To unpack the PK3, just use a zip-capable unpacker, like winzip. Make sure to extract the "ufos" directory with it. The script files themselves are just plain text, so use any editor you like.
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To unpack the PK3, just use a zip-capable unpacker, like winzip. Make sure to extract the "ufos" directory with it. The script files themselves are just plain text, so use any editor you like.
I'm not sure, but I think you also need to remove afterwards the 0ufos.pk3 file if you want the game to use the *.ufo modified files instead of 0ufos.pk3.
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One more inconsistency, quote from intro:
"Twenty thousand innocent civilians and three battalions of elite troops are massacred over the course of twelve brutal hours"
12000 peoples in 12 hours, and only 40 in months of game?
I propose to drop this counter as condition of defeat, and make it only affected to nations relation to PHALANX
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I'm not sure, but I think you also need to remove afterwards the 0ufos.pk3 file if you want the game to use the *.ufo modified files instead of 0ufos.pk3.
Developers, what's the deal? We should delete the original? (Store it away in another directory would be safer I think.)
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Dead civs should only affect mission score. Imagine this: a number of civilians die in NYC so the NYPD is disbanded?
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I'm not sure, but I think you also need to remove afterwards the 0ufos.pk3 file if you want the game to use the *.ufo modified files instead of 0ufos.pk3.
No, mattn changed this a good while back. The game prefers the unpacked files over the packed ones.
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To unpack the PK3, just use a zip-capable unpacker, like winzip. Make sure to extract the "ufos" directory with it. The script files themselves are just plain text, so use any editor you like.
I have another question: I found the file, was able to unpack it and now i am about to change some stuff for my own use (especially weapon stats and aircraft stats). Once i finish the changes: how to repack the new stuff? I use 7zip, and this does not offer to create a .pk3 file...
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As stated, PK3 is just zip (note: zip is not the same as 7-zip).
You don't have to repack the files to make it work. As long as you preserve the directory structure, the game will use your modified files.
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There is no such method. We get a lot of complaints about the civilians, though, so it's clear something has to be done. For the time being, you can relax the civilian casualties restriction yourself by unpacking your 0ufos.pk3 file and editing campaign.ufo.
Thank you for listening. I replied to the other threads and took me a bit to get here. The game is a great effort and it would be a terrible thing to have it go to waste on this one tiny issue that unfortunately affects so much of the game play. Your efforts are extremely appreciated.
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As stated, PK3 is just zip (note: zip is not the same as 7-zip).
You don't have to repack the files to make it work. As long as you preserve the directory structure, the game will use your modified files.
I just took a closer look at the directory structure and i realised, that i am not sure where to extract the "new" files to...is it sufficient to extract the .pk3 files into the same folder (base-directory)?
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Yes, but preserve the directory structure in the zip file, so the files end up in base/ufos/.
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Yes, but preserve the directory structure in the zip file, so the files end up in base/ufos/.
I really appreciate your help! Thx!
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@BTAxis: Thanks.
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This thread was moved to FAQ, because it is a recurring problem for people.
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I agree that this aspect of the game is difficult to adapt to. It's hard to avoid civlian casualties, and although I don't pretend to be an expert on collateral damage, I'm sure that history suggests that civilian casualities are a hard reality of warfare.
However, the game addresses a crucial problem with past games in the genre: a lack of real consequences for civilian deaths. In the real world, there would first be a highly psychological quotient to be considered as agents see civilians die. There's a strong moral imperative for agents to save civilians, and the game does attempt to address this through harsh defeat conditions. Second, there's an even stronger political significance of civilian deaths. Although it's not necessarily practical, the real world assigns a profound value to civilian deaths. Therefore, I think there needs to be a way to make the preservation of civilian deaths paramount, without crippling the overall playability of the game.
I feel so incredibly indebted to the developers that I am humbled by the idea of offering my own suggestions, lest anything I say be construed as criticism. Let me then only suggest that the developers may find another way to employ rates of civilian casualties to penalize or reward the player. I do believe that friendly fire is indeed a serious problem politically, and could be punished with game defeat for excessive friendly-fire deaths. Beyond that, perhaps there's a way to apply a percentage to determine game defeat, such as if the percentage of civilians lost vs. saved reaches a certain level and does not go down within a probationary period, the PHALANX unit is suspended. This seems to mirror historical treatments of the issue. My compliments to the developers, and my sincere wishes that my comments here are a contribution to, not a detraction from, the most exciting game development I've seen in a decade.
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Theres many alternitives.
1. massive drop in morale to soldiers that watch a civilian die.
2. lowers mission score for each death of a civvie
3. enough lost civ's in PHALANX missions in the same country lowers their funding a certain amount.
Thats forty limit is a tad low. and there is a serious point that its pretty hard to not lose atleast one civ in a battle. Itst he main reason i always automission if i can.
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At the risk of drifting off the topic, i will point out that automatically completed missions don't generate experience for your soldiers. Do you want to go into the final battle with skills in the 50 point range, or skills in the 20 point range? I thought so.
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Its mainly the fear of losing too many civilians.
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That's why this topic exists! Look up earlier it tells you how to unpack and find the campaign.ufo file. Search for the campaign you're currently playing [probably standard_campaign, since that's the one with the limit of 40]. The main or standard campaign is just over halfway down the length of the file. Change the 'killedcivilians' variable to some larger number like 80. Restart the game. I'm not sure at this point if the change will be applied to savegames or only to starting a new campaign...
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Ok, after a bit of teeth pulling i figured it out.
(Heres a quick guide so people looking down here can figure it out instantly, i had to peice things together slowly)
Open the 0ufo.pk3 file with winzip/winrar
Open campaign.ufo with some sort of writing program (i used notepad)
change the variable you want
Then make sure the Ufos folder is where the 0ufos.pk3 is. Because like somebody said the game prefers that unpacked folder rather than the pk3
Thanks for all your help. now to kill more aliens
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I think it is fine that civilians die etc.. and thus makes a "time" factor for the game.
However I also think that the civilians are sometimes really stupid.
One example I recently had was this big building complex, a military complex.
The civilians there dont really flee, in fact they even seem to aggregate near my
soldiers and BLOCK their movement! And two rounds later, they even DIRECTLY
WALKED TOWARDS THE ALIENS. I am not sure about the algorithm but I think
this behaviour should be changed. They should try to not block movement of my
guys and they should go AWAY from aliens too - if you are afraid to die because
a guy has a gun, then you wont run towards that guy (unless you maybe plan to
tackle him or something, but in most cases running away or hiding is much better)
Another problem, but it is smaller, is that the aliens do a terror attack. Many days
nothing happens. Then some civilians die. That is ok.
If you however enter a mission and abort it, they will immediately kill max amount
of civilians on that map. My problem here is that this will only happen if we start a
mission. If we wont start the mission, these civilians will not die, because we have not
triggered the mission (!) - i think this should be changed somehow. It is not good
to assume that a player-started action will end up with more civilian deaths just
because the game calculates it this way.
One way would be that civilians have a chance to flee the game area. I think this would be
realistic, and on every map there could be a few flee spots.
But at any rate, I think the AI problem would be more important to fix because I cant
understand why the civilians dont run away from aliens in certain situations
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Why not using a point-system like in the original UFO:Enemy Unknown?
Just like:
dead Civilian - 50 pts friendly fire additional -20
dead Soldier - 40 pts friendly fire additional -20
dead Alien + 30 pts
not accepting a mission- 300 pts
destroyed UFO + 60 pts
recovered equipment + 5pts each
ect. ect.
Then u can start with 1000 pts and if it gets beyond 0 u loose the game.
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The bunkers AI SUCK as you pointed out
Not only did those idiots block my movement, but one picked up a plasma blaster from behind me and SHOT one of my guys in the back when he did not see any aliens! I checked and there were no aliens nearby, so the civilian soldier with the plasma blaster seemed like a good suspect.
Its even weirder that the civilian soldiers don't have guns or do anything. you would think some of the urban levels would have cops that will help you.
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Not only did those idiots block my movement, but one picked up a plasma blaster from behind me and SHOT one of my guys in the back when he did not see any aliens!
Actually, that's not a bug, that's a feature! In the latter stages of a campaign the aliens recruit and supply rebel humans. Soon that will give you a new research topic...
Its even weirder that the civilian soldiers don't have guns or do anything. you would think some of the urban levels would have cops that will help you.
Yes, and several of the missions involve military bases and military convoys. You'd certainly think those people know which end of gun is which... But as has been discussed in another topic [http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=2066.0 (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=2066.0)], even these would not have as good equipment and training as you and probably end up killing each other on accident.
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A feature eh? I never got a topic on it after it happened. i sorta gave up that campain after i got some meesage that said "to do" and all the countries said "giving up"
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Hallo,
I am big fan of UFO games. Enemy unknown was my favourit game. I was very pleased about finding this remake.
I want to ask all of you. I have also probably problem with limit of killed civilians. I am in situation where I can not do any mission without ending the game after winnig the mission - minimaly 1 dead civilian.
I read all of posts, but I am not able to find exact line or parametr to rise this "time" limit. Please, can anyone post me exact information, where or what to change ??
Thanks alot, Marek
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Try to update your version of game at first.
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Hallo,
I have installed last release - 2.2.1 downloaded from home page of UFO AI.
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2.2.1 doesn't have a civilian death limit, so it should rectify your issue. Civilian deaths now affect the satisfaction of the region and you have to keep above the percentage otherwise you loose.
Steve
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Hmmmm,
so it is probably a bug. Each nation is pleased, but when I do mission with even one dead civilian game will end. So what now ??