Topics

1

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Freeze on reaction fire when inside harvesters

« on: December 10, 2011, 08:30:46 am »

UFOAI Version: 2.4 IA-32  2011.11.16
Distro: Fedora
Video: Nvidia GTS 450, using the proprietary 280.13 driver from RPM Fusion
Arch: 64-bit processor, but running 32-bit OS

I just re-built UFOAI last month and the game is pretty damn stable... Except in one rather specific instance...

If one of my soldiers kills an alien via reaction fire while inside a Harvester, there's roughly a 50% chance that the game will hang. The client itself doesn't freeze. I can still select my units and check up on them. But the killed alien never actually falls down, and the alien turn never ends. I've left it sitting overnight, hoping it would eventually work itself out, but no luck there. And it ONLY happens with reaction fire inside a Harvester. In close to 40 hours of play this month, that is the only crash or hang I have encountered.

Attached is ufoconsole.log and a screenshot showing both the terminal window and the alien whose death triggered the most recent hang. The taman standing in the doorway is the one that just got flamed to death, yet he isn't falling over. This is the first time I've seen the freeze occur on the doorways. Usually, it happens when I park my soldiers near the stairwell in the middle of the ship and wait for the aliens to poke their heads out.

As always, this game is absolutely wonderful. Thanks for the time put into it so far, and any time yet to come.

2

Design / Technology Updates

« on: April 26, 2011, 01:50:16 am »

There are a couple of changes that I've made to my own ufo files because they simply made sense to me, and I wanted to find out if there were design philosophies I was violating or if these really were reasonable changes.

equipment.ufo:

Added all equipment that does not require exotic materials to the asymptotic market; includes aerial laser cannon, base defence laser, electrolaser, DF stun cartridges, stun gas grenades, grenade-launcher plasma rounds.

Removed all items that require exotic materials from the asymptotic market; includes nanocomposite armor, coilguns, and coilgun ammo.



research.ufo

Added the electrolaser research project as a prerequisite for DF stun cartridge production.



weapons_human.ufo:

Reduced the size of coilgun ammunition from 2x2 to 2x1; the sniper rifle carries 5 rounds per magazine. A reduced ammo capacity for the coilgun is reasonable, and increasing the size of each magazine or reducing the capacity of each would be justifiable, but both at once feels excessive. I went with reducing the size since it maintains the shots-per-reload ratio while only increasing the overall maximum capacity.

weapons_laser.ufo:
Changed the ammo consumption of the Laser Rifle "Wave Fire" mode to 1. I can't see any reason why the laser rifle alone should have worse ammo efficiency for single shots than the pistol or heavy.


I was also wondering why it was necessary to have a special ammo type for the electrolaser. The fluff seems to suggest that it runs off the same deuterium-flouride cartridges as conventional laser weapons, and the .ufo files look like it shouldn't be a problem to copy-and-paste the DF stun cartridge stats into a sub-set of the standard DF cartridge.

3

Linux / Texture Errors

« on: April 26, 2011, 01:15:56 am »

I wiped my Windows drive in a fit of rage when it refused to do as I told it, and gave the empty remains over to my Linux install. I decided to build UFO:AI 2.4 from source so I can continue playing it, and everything appears to have gone fine.

When I ran the program to start a new game, however, I noticed two problems. First, sound effects are being delayed by about three seconds from the events that trigger them. I can click half a dozen buttons before the first sound effect registers. This isn't a huge issue; I can ignore the sound effects.

The second, larger issue is that half the textures appear to be not loading at all or loading incorrectly. Attached are a few screen shots; the errors are consistent within a given session of UFO:AI, but closing and restarting results in different textures being loaded in the problem areas. Take a look at the rocket - It's covered in facial textures!

I have no clue what's wrong with it. The source code, the program I built from it, the maps, and the pk3's are all stored in my home folder. I can't imagine it's a permissions issue, which is what has happened with textures and fonts in a few other games I've run in Linux. Nothing in the log file jumps out at me as being indicative of a problem. I'm at a loss here.

I've already turned of the glsl shader and set all the graphics options to their lowest settings with no success.

4

User modifications / PK3 and UFO file priorities

« on: April 14, 2011, 05:53:20 pm »

This page - http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Pk3 - claims that any file sitting out in the open as a .ufo file takes priority over anything loaded into a PK3. Is that still the case for 2.4-Dev? I've extracted and made some changes to equipment.ufo and research.ufo, but the game behavior is exactly the same.

I was trying to remove nanocomposite armor from the asymptotic market since it now requires alien materials for manufacture. I also tried to add aerial laser cannons, base defense lasers, anti-alien grenades, electrolasers, and DF stun cartridges since they're all based on terran tech. My attempt to add electrolasers as a requirement for DF stun cartridge construction similarly failed.

Do I need to package my customized .ufo files into a PK3, add a numeral to the beginning of "equipment.ufo", or something entirely different?

5

Discussion / UFO Yards and Workshop Base Distances

« on: April 14, 2011, 02:25:30 am »

Is there some kind of minimum distance where the UFO deconstruction rate is at its peak? Can I set the workshop base and the UFO yard far enough apart from each other that I can reliably click on one without having to select it from a pop-up "which one did you want" menu without sacrificing the speed?

6

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / ESC Key on the Victory Screen results in no UFO Recovery

« on: April 12, 2011, 08:24:57 pm »

The title says it all. I've posted this on the bugtracker, but I figured it couldn't hurt to toss it in here, too.

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3285423&group_id=157793&atid=805242

As always, thank you for this absolutely wonderful game. For years, I thought about remaking an X-COM style game, but my inherent laziness prevented me from actually following through. I'll see if I can't contribute something small to this project, though. I'm poking the source code regarding a "maintain inventory" option in place of the autosell.