Messages

1

Discussion / Re: Feedback 2.3

« on: August 29, 2010, 10:22:28 am »

Hi Merlin and welcome from me as well
Well, geever was faster than me and said exactly what I wanted to say, so I saved some time

As you can see from those discussions, we have numerous 'junior game designers' around here. So simple approaches like yours (to get things started) won't stand the test of discussion.

As you are a professional, I see two major areas of work for you:
1) bugfixing. We don't have so many devs that are able to fix *any* bug.
2) encapsulation. We started the tedious task to work the code towards a more OO design. Maybe one fine day (2084 ?) we can switch to C++.

You can get much applause from the users for #1. For #2, you'll 'only' get kudos from a few admins. But #2 will always fit into your time table

Hi, thanks for the responses guys. I tend to prefer simple solutions because they actually get implemented. I've had a look at the medkit diffs and there's some interesting stuff there, however I can't help thinking it would have been nice to fix what is effectively a bug for the latest release, without getting so bogged down in multiple wound locations etc. I'd have thought multiple wound locations could have been added later, e.g. when it became possible to target particular locations (which would presumably require creation of a body graphic as well, so that could be reused to show where wounds were).

I'm more than happy to bugfix, it's a significant part of what my job involves anyway. It will take me a while to get up to speed though, bearing in mind I've never programmed in C before, never used SourceForge before, etc. We use quite low level C++, so I didn't have any problems understanding the medkit diffs, but there are C vs. C++ style differences (how something is done) as much as anything else. Bug fixing would probably make more sense until I understand how you want to do encapsulation, for example. When I'm a bit more comfortable with the code I might have a look at picking up the medkit stuff.

One final point on features (and I know you have more features than you have coders!): is armour facing anywhere on the ToDo list? I always quite liked that it in the X-Com games there was a tactical element to which way your soldiers faced. If you get hit on the front then even with quite weak armour you had a chance, whereas if you got hit from behind then even with the super armour you could get damaged. It's also quite realistic, as soldiers and tanks do have stronger armour where they're most likely to be hit, i.e. on the front.

Keep up the good work- I will try to help out where I can.

2

Discussion / Re: Feedback 2.3

« on: August 28, 2010, 11:34:08 pm »

Hi, I'm coming into this as someone who loved the original games, and I'm impressed by what you've done so far. I am a commercial C++ programmer, and I would like to help out when I have the time. Realistically, "if I have the time", as I have a family, but I will try.

A few proposals:

1) I gather there's no weight/ strength/ Time Units system created yet. I would have thought it would be fairly straightforward to create a simple one: an item requires two strength for each space in the inventory it takes up; perhaps there could be "light", "medium" and "heavy" items, which take up 1, 2 or 3 strength for each space in the inventory. If a soldier is over their strength limit, Time Units are reduced accordingly, rounded down. i.e. if strength 30 and they have medium items taking up 20 inventory spaces, their TUs should be reduced by ((20 * 2)- 30)/30, so they will have their TUs reduced by 1/3. I think that would be about right, as long as ammunition was rated as a "light" item then the average soldier should be able to carry primary weapon (and reload) and secondary weapon. At the moment I can't see any reason not to give every single soldier multiple reloads, a secondary weapon, medikit, infrared glasses and multiple grenades.
Strength "experience" should be significant if a soldier is carrying their maximum weight or above.

2) I know there are various proposals to resolve medikit issues. I would have thought a simple way would be to say that only half the damage inflicted in a mission can be healed by medikits. So if a soldier was hit for 20, medikits can heal a maximum of 10. Hospital healing should probably be speeded up somewhat to compensate.

3) As far as I can tell, it's no cheaper to produce something than it is to buy it. This makes producing items which you can buy pointless (I suppose you might run out of stock to buy, but I've not seen it happen). In the original game you could make a bit of money by producing things and then selling them. This gives engineers who would otherwise be idle something to do. It doesn't need to be huge, even being able to produce something for 90% of the value you can sell it for would be worthwhile.

Keep up the good work, let me know if you'd like me to flesh these ideas out more.

merlin

3

Discussion / Does the amount a soldier carries affect their Time Units?

« on: August 28, 2010, 07:28:09 pm »

Hi, in the original games, if you loaded a soldier with too much equipment for their strength, they weren't able to use all their time units. As I remember the TU bar was less than 100%. Does that happen in this game if you give your soldiers too much equipment? If so, how do you tell that they don't have all their TUs?

Thanks,

merlin

4

Discussion / Can't open doors? Makes fuel depot map unplayable

« on: August 28, 2010, 07:24:44 pm »

Hi everyone, I've only recently discovered this game. I was a huge fan of the originals and I'm very impressed by what's been achieved by you guys in getting a playable modern version.

I'm struggling to open doors though. I've searched the forum and I can't find anything on this. In particular on the fuel depot map there seems to be a gate leading into the building, with a car park barrier in front of it. I've got my troops standing in front of the gate and I press backspace, but nothing happens. Am I missing something? There doesn't seem to be another way into the building, so unless I can open the gate the map is unplayable. Is there another way to open the gate, e.g. from the console?

A couple of other things I've noticed people talking about which I haven't managed to find yet:

1) I read something about being able to target the head using a sniper rifle. How do you do this?
2) People talk about flash-bangs and smoke grenades. I only seem to have frag grenades. Do I have to research something to get these extra grenade types?

Thanks,

merlin