Messages

1

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: June 02, 2013, 12:13:53 pm »

I remember having fired bursts with less ammo than needed to fire all shots, and it just fires less shots.
Someone might confirm it again, if there need to be absolutely certain.

Same for me.

2

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: May 31, 2013, 08:24:03 pm »

Played a bit around with the recent build. It certainly adresses some of the points I made earlier. One prob for me though is that I get now very often black squares on battlescape maps, and quite a lot of them. Checked the bugtracker, seems to be known as #4859 if I read this right. Still I can play on without probs, it doesn't crash, just looks weird. Different settings didn't help.

Additions and improvements I've seen so far are very nice. The previous version I had hadn't even the weight thing implemented

3

User modifications / Re: GFX modding questions

« on: May 31, 2013, 08:15:09 pm »

Made some progress. I changed the darkish background somwhat, and did more work. Still lots of stuff to do. Here are some examples in the current look:





I also tried to get into editing the UI files, I'll probably come back with questions about this soon

Edit: links should work now

4

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: May 29, 2013, 04:59:03 pm »

We now offer nightly builds you can download for windows, so you don't need the update utility. Look under the Development section on our download page and download the "UFO:AI installer". That is updated regularly.

Thx for the hint, I now changed to the latest build.

5

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: May 28, 2013, 07:37:01 pm »

Thx for the answers.

Re version, I installed the full version from the Win nightly build thread

"ufoai-2.5-dev-1351893478-Debug-pentium-m-O1-sse2-7z-small-win32.exe"

I didn't use the update utility yet, maybe I should do that. I just have to get around silly AVG to give false alerts...

6

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: May 28, 2013, 05:38:55 pm »

I've played 2.5dev now for over a year (game time of course) and thought I'd add my two cents:

Overall the game is still great. Fighting the aliens is more difficult than I remember from 2.3/4, but generally it's good to keep it challenging. Re op - flashbangs are definately working in my game. I also get RF for my own guys, though rarely (no prob for me though), and in comparison to that alien RF seems a bit over the top...

Other than that:

1. It's cool to have smoke grenades to hide yourself, but when hiding "in the clouds" becomes the primary thing to do in some maps it is imo less fun. Also firing out of the smoke screen just to avoid getting killed feels a bit like cheating, but otoh with so deadly aliens it remains often your best choice.

The above seems to be related partly to starting positions on certain maps - sometimes your tough elite guys prefer to approach the combat zone from the worst thinkable tactical position, which means you throw smoke grenades around for some time until finally finding cover.

I never tried the map editor - can you actually modify starting positions there?

2. I have no prob with the Aliens having superior capability for reaction fire, but when they hit  (nearly) everything 20-30 squares away, but otoh do nothing when you crouch or run directly in front of them it feels strange.

3. It seems particle rifles and needler guns are the most advanced weapons? If so I'm wondering whether they're coming too early or if research is too fast generally. As said, I'm in the game for over a year now and for a good deal of time the aliens only use those two basic categories of weapons and nothing else anymore.

Maybe alien teams could still use a bit variety in equipment in later battles, maybe depending on their role or UFO to make things more interesting.

Is it actually possible to mod which (of the available) weapons aliens use in specific missions and from a certain point in time?

4. Power armour slows you down a tad? I thought I get one of those nifty power suits that amplify human power Also, it seems to do worse vs. later alien weaponry (said particle thingies). Is this intended?

5. Sometimes alien behaviour is strange - on some maps they are super-aggressive, on others more passive. This wouldn't be a prob in itself, but sometimes it's contrary to the specific type of mission you play. For example in base attacks only some of them enter my base, but the bulk stands around outside doing nothing until I hunt them down. Otoh I'd expect them to be more on the defense when their UFO just got knocked out of the sky by PHLX interceptors.

6. There are some nice maps I have not seen before, but overall there seems to be less variety than I remember. I skimmed through other threads, read some maps have probs now, so maybe this is only a temporary issue.

7. When firing multi shots using beam weapons like lasers and PBs the beams sometimes start way besides the weapon (probably a known prob)

8. Imo, aliens should die more often instead of get stunned purely from wounds. At least in my campaign I barely had to make serious efforts to capture aliens alive because many simply got stunned during combat (maybe luck on my part though).



Overall still a great game, far from "sucking completely"

7

User modifications / Re: GFX modding questions

« on: May 26, 2013, 11:14:39 am »

Thanks for the answers

Yes, I have 2.5dev, so can look into those files. I'll certainly continue work on this.

8

User modifications / Re: GFX modding questions

« on: May 24, 2013, 05:04:31 pm »

I actually managed to put something together. It builds on the stock GUI of course and needs still quite some work. See below for previews.

Some things, like the UFO AI headline are only temporary since they need still improvement and the font is nothing special.

Feedback is welcome of course, and when there's interest I could provide all the gfx when they're done.



Questions regarding the gui:

1. As far as I see some screens are present as big screen-filling gfx, some others use a lot of tiled elements. Is this all coded, or is there somewhere an editable file non-programmers like me could change to have the game using a new custom screen? Because I use a lot of gradient filllings which doesn't work well with small tiles.

2. The tiles under pics/tiled have all some magenta colored markers on the right and bottom. What are these for, and does changing them have any effect, for example on window borders?

9

User modifications / Re: GFX modding questions

« on: May 17, 2013, 01:05:55 pm »

Thanks guys, got it to work. The path was wrong indeed, but it also turned out the png was saved initially with wrong settings.

10

User modifications / GFX modding questions

« on: May 16, 2013, 06:04:19 pm »

I'm trying to get into modding the game. From what I've read here, I understood I can just unpack pk3 files, and the game will use files from the unpacked folders first? I did unpack 0ufos.pk3 to tweak some weapons, costs, etc. This worked quite well, the game accepts my changes just fine.

However, now I want to test some gfx changes, and added a new main menu screen. I unpacked 0pics.pk3. Then I placed my own main_bg.png under \UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\0pics\pics\background\ (overwriting the original)

But my new file does not show up in game, only the standard screen with the greenish earth.

I also tried to move the whole background folder incl. new gfx into a newly made mods/mymod folder, then launching the game with the suggested parameters to load "mymod", but I always get the green earth menu. How can I tell the game to use my gfx instead?

11

Windows / Re: 2.5dev questions and problems

« on: May 05, 2013, 06:02:36 pm »

FWIW, the crashes were not caused by UFO-AI. They got suddenly worse and worse out of the blue, so I checked my system for everything - viruses, updates, re-installed gfx drivers from scratch, even checked cables and slots and cleaned everything from dust.

Whatever it was, it is gone now. Since then I've been able to play the game with only some of the known probs, but no crashes anymore.

12

Windows / Re: 2.5dev questions and problems

« on: May 01, 2013, 02:36:39 pm »

Thank you for those answers. Selling via mousewheel works nice indeed, I just didn't think of it. The upped difficulty of 2.5 was somewhat surprising, but I got used to it. It might be a bit frustrating for new players though.

However, I'm having serious stability issues. Crashes do occur frequently in the battlescape, never so far in the geoscape or during base management. Symptoms are mostly:

- sometimes I get a "open gl driver lost connection with the display driver and is unable to continue" message after the game exited to Win
- sometimes the screen turns black completely, computer freezes and has to be rebootet
- sometimes I get some garbled sounds or gfx shortly before the crash happens like described above

I use NVidia drivers 314.22 (latest I could find). In the settings I put the "threaded" option off, since I read that's recommended. Is there any other specific setting known that has to be used (or avoided)? 

Also, re the installation question - I had briefly installed 2.4 before, but did uninstall it before installing 2.5. The install folder was completely empty, but I didn't check if all user data were removed (if that matters).

The lag with smoke grenades is still there, but for now my main concern is to get the game to run more stable during missions. I was able to finish some missions, but sooner or later it crashes.

Any help would be appreciated.


Recent crashdump entries:

======start======
Date: 2013-04-30
Windows version 6.1 (Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Win32 DEBUG build 1351893478, cpu: IA-32, version: 2.5-dev

Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74629f40 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : memmove
0x839db9 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83b867 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83b9fd : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x83ac0e : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h
0x839f5a : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/vector.tcc
0x83a0ee : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h
0x83a286 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : d:/ufoaiwin32buildenv/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h
0x46f8ff : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/dbuffer.cpp
0x46cc39 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/net.cpp (715) : in function (_Z17NET_StreamEnqueueP10net_streamPKci)
0x46f43e : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/common/netpack.cpp (618) : in function (_Z17NET_WriteConstMsgP10net_streamPK7dbuffer)
0x4860ca : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_send.cpp (138) : in function (_Z12SV_MulticastiP7dbuffer)
0x47e0bc : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (335) : in function (SV_EndEvents)
0x6a60e176 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_events.cpp (638) : in function (_Z10G_EventEndv)
0x6a60ea24 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_events.cpp (340) : in function (_Z17G_EventActorWoundPK7edict_si)
0x6a61036f : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_health.cpp (163) : in function (_Z16G_SendWoundStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a615969 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_stats.cpp (41) : in function (_Z11G_SendStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a61348d : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_morale.cpp (157) : in function (_Z17G_MoraleBehaviouri)
0x6a615545 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_round.cpp (225) : in function (_Z16G_ClientEndRoundP8player_s)
0x6a605739 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1212) : in function (AI_PlayerRun)
0x6a605782 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1230) : in function (_Z6AI_Runv)
0x6a611117 : D:\UFO AI\base\game.dll : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/game/g_main.cpp (452) : in function (_Z10G_RunFramev)
0x47e8f4 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (648) : in function (_Z15SV_RunGameFramev)
0x47e93f : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : D:\UFOAIwin32BUILDenv\MinGW\ufoai_2.5/src/server/sv_game.cpp (634) : in function (_Z21SV_RunGameFrameThreadPv)
0x66b7c1 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_thread.c
0x66bc04 : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_systhread.c
0x66bc5d : D:\UFO AI\ufo.exe : SDL_systhread.c
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74631287 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : itow_s
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x74631328 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : endthreadex
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll) File in wrong format
0x748633aa : C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll : BaseThreadInitThunk
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll) File in wrong format
0x76f09ef2 : C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll : RtlInitializeExceptionChain
Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll) File in wrong format
0x76f09ec5 : C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll : RtlInitializeExceptionChain
======end========

13

Windows / 2.5dev questions and problems

« on: April 30, 2013, 01:49:20 pm »

Hi everyone,

I played 2.3 quite a long time ago, liked the game a lot, but stopped then. Recently thought I'd try out 2.5 for the first time.

I installed this version: ufoai-2.5-dev-1351893478-Debug-pentium-m-O1-sse2-7z-small-win32.exe
(link from the "Nightly builds" thread.

I'm running a Win7 64bit system, Athlon 64 X2, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT 610 gfx.

Since it's been quite a while since I played UFOAI could someone hels me a bit with several points/questions?

1.  Is there some "new feature list" or so I can read to see what the main differences in 2.5 are compared to previous versions?

2. What's the difference between "full" and "simple" campaigns?

3. When buying/selling, I can only click/sell one thing at a time. IIRC in earlier versions selling a lot of stuff from the same type was simply done automatically as long as I pressed the mousebutton over the specific selling point. For example now if I want to buy/sell 20 grenades in a row I have to click 20 times - is there a way to get the old method back?

4. Has there been a major change in the effect of using medpacks? Seems to be drastically reduced?

5. Smoke generated from a smoke grenade does dramatically slow down game speed during a mission for me - is there a setting that can reduce this negative impact? I looked through the options but I'm not sure what to do about this.

6. I had some crashs, got the message that upping my crashdump file would help the devs. Where should I put it?

Any help would be nice. Thanks in advance and please keep up the good work.

14

Discussion / Re: Base from scratch

« on: November 12, 2010, 03:20:46 pm »

Would be nice to have, or maybe starting only with the entry so that you have a little more control over the base layout. That would be imo less restrictive for the player. Dunno if it fits into the plans of the creators though...

15

Windows / Re: Win32 Development Binary Installer Links

« on: November 09, 2010, 06:56:56 pm »

Is it normal that game is stuck to my OS language [WinXP polish] even when i change it to english in options?

There's a simple work around for the language prob posted in one thread somewhere. Just go into the folder UFOAI-2.4-dev\base\i18n then move all folders of language files but not "en" to another location or folder. The game will then use what's left, which is the english language files under "en". Works for me.