Messages

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

Discussion / Re: Some quick questions

« on: May 08, 2011, 08:13:56 am »

1. I'm probably missing something here but do laser defenses need to be equipped like missile defenses do or are they self-sufficient?
2. Is the game not supposed to notify me when research has been completed and my scientists are idle? I know the game pauses if new proposals come up or my production is halted/completed but I've missed some research completions and have lost research time assuming it would better notify me.
3. What determines how many alien items that you sell remain for purchase later?

Love the game (3rd version I've played) and keep up the great work.

The default options *should* pause the game whenever you complete a research project. I've noticed that if you happen to be pushing one of the time-controlling buttons on your keyboard when any event occurs, though, it won't pause. The button will take precedence.

As for the alien weapons (And all other weapons, in fact), there's a list of how many of each item should be on the market by default. The market takes 10 days to reach that state. So if you buy up all of the frag grenades, it'll take 10 days for them to fully replenish. If you sell a couple crates of plasma pistols, their numbers will gradually drop until they're all gone 10 days later. Of course, they'll never actually reach zero if you're constantly selling more (like I am).

3

Tactics / Re: Base invasion

« on: May 08, 2011, 08:03:48 am »

I'm not sure what everyone is talking about with the AI not being aggressive enough... The aliens automatically know where your troops are and will make a bee-line straight for them. Positioning your troops at the bottom of some surface-access point with reaction fire and flamers will take care of just about everything. Just be sure the aliens can find a way down to your troops. The one time I actually had to sweep my own base to find the last alien, it's because I had left an injured soldier hiding safely in the living quarters. It took forever, but when I finally found the last alien, it was standing directly above my wounded soldier. The alien got as close to his target as he could, but couldn't figure out that he'd have to go several turns out of his way to get to the stairs. Now, I bring all my soldiers to the main entrance when I do a base defence mission. I just leave the injured ones directly below the ramp so that they can't be shot, but they still lure the aliens in.

4

Tactics / Re: 2.4 IR goggles

« on: May 08, 2011, 07:57:21 am »

The IR goggles are a one-time effect. You click the button, the goggles scan once for body heat. Once a target has been picked up by the IR goggles, though, they'll remain visible to you until you end the turn and give them a chance to move. The scan will penetrate just about anything, including the outer hull of a Harvester. That's something that maybe needs to be changed in the future, perhaps by giving the IR scan the same limitations as throughwall weapons.

The glow effect doesn't do anything other than look cool so, while it probably should go away or only apply to the actors immediately in front of the guy using them, it's not too big a deal.

The range is kinda short, somewhere around 8 squares I think. The scan is cone-shaped, too. The field of view is narrower than your troops get when using the Mk1 Eyeball.

5

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Re: Crash/Freeze when killing last enemy

« on: April 26, 2011, 07:02:06 pm »

Having just made the transition from playing UFO on Windows Vista to playing it on Fedora, I noticed that the experience points are calculated almost instantly under Fedora. The total time between the last alien dying and the victory screen appearing is around two seconds, and virtually none of it is from the experience points. In Windows, it could take upwards of 10 seconds to total the experience. If most of our developers are using Linux to play the game, then this might explain why they have trouble reproducing the bug for themselves.

6

Linux / Re: Texture Errors

« on: April 26, 2011, 03:21:40 am »

I've played around with the video settings some more, and found some odd behavior.

While in a UFO recovery mission, I went to the video options "Other" tab and selected the "Medium" configuration. Exiting the options menu, all the textures were being rendered correctly. I went in and disabled a few options, like bilinear filtering, dynamic lighting, glsl shaders, etc. My framerate vastly improved and the textures remained in working order. It even lasted back to the geoscape, where I could view the items in all their textured glory in the buy/sell and soldier equip screens.

I exited the program and restarted it, and the textures were back to being completely screwy again. So, I once again opened up the options menu, picked the "Medium" preset, and this time disabled all the options I had disabled before while I was there. Once again, the textures were rendered correctly. I saved my game, exited, and restarted the program once more.

Again, the textures were screwy. I tried using the "Medium" preset (textures were restored!) and immediately exiting the game without making any other changes. Upon restart, the "Medium" preset was still in effect, but the textures were gone again.

I still have no idea what's going on, but I actually got some useful-looking lines in my console. Attached is the console log after loading the game, using the "Medium" preset, and deactivating every checkbox on the "Advanced" tab.

7

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.

8

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.

9

Discussion / Re: 50 Hours of Game Design Notes

« on: April 22, 2011, 01:01:52 am »

If UFO:AI could improve over the XCOM games in regards to battle screen scrolling you would get heavey praise from me. Lets face it, when ever we play games like this its usually for 2+ hours if we can manage it. In that time your mouse hand can get pretty tired and even out right sore. Less clicking would be phenominal. If we could have some way of scrolling the battle screen with keys as oppsed to having to drag the mouse it would make the entire game less torture on my hand. I'm a massage therapist so I'm prone to carpal tunnel in my profession. I tend to find myself off for 2-3 days hoping to give my hands a break, but you guys had to go and make an amazing game inspired by another amazing game I still enjoy playing. (Thanks by the way)

That feature already exists in the game. You can use the WASD controls to pan the battlescape, while the arrow keys are tied to elevation and rotation.

I'll agree wholeheartedly on the automission request, though. I'm not expecting to be able to run an entire campaign using automission (though I did try that in X-COM with xcomutil. Let me tell ya, that was a MUCH harder game.) But after I've run a few dozen scout and fighter crash recoveries within the first two months of game time, I'd like the option of handing such "routine" jobs off to someone else. There's a certain point where the challenge of the game isn't to beat the aliens, but to summon enough willpower to actually launch yet another recovery mission instead of fast-forwarding to the next event.

10

Tactics / Re: Continents and happiness.

« on: April 21, 2011, 08:05:08 pm »

For income, sell every piece of alien technology you find. Keep only one sample of each for yourself to research. That's been my main source of income aside from the monthly funding. Terran weaponry is, if anything, more effective than the plasma weapons the aliens start with, so they're not worth your time to research at first anyway. An exception might be the plasma grenades, since you can build plasma rounds for the grenade launchers.

For the world happiness, sell every crashed UFO you recover. Only keep the intact ones, and then only one each of the scouts and fighters. Fill the rest of your UFO yard slots with intact Harvesters. When you sell the UFO's, sell them to the most unhappy nation. It won't provide a huge boost in their happiness, but it can keep them for a few months. Long enough to get a new base built in their territory, anyway. Once you have a base built in their territory, shoot down every UFO that comes into radar range. Even if you don't recover any of them, the aliens won't complete any missions in that territory, meaning the host nations happiness will degrade very slowly.

Those are really your only two options. The base you start the game with is NOT enough to cover the entire planet and keep the funding coming in. As soon as you can get the money, you need to start building combat bases on other continents (Either using some of your starting cash at the very beginning of the game or at the start of April).

11

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Re: Settings roll over between missions

« on: April 20, 2011, 06:36:56 pm »

If it's a feature, I'd like to have it retain all aspects of the reaction fire settings, like which shot mode was selected. I use plenty of assault rifles, and I always have to turn reaction fire back off, select 3-round burst, then turn it back on again. It'd be nice to just have it consistent.

12

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Re: Crash/Freeze when killing last enemy

« on: April 20, 2011, 06:33:58 pm »

I'll toss in my experience with this bug as well. I'm running Vista and 2.4-dev. I installed the game using http://ufoai.ninex.info/snapshots/ufoai-latest-win32.exe , and updated just the binaries on April 11 with http://ufoai.ninex.info/snapshots/ufoai-latest-win32.zip .

You can actually issue commands after the last alien is killed, but only for a brief moment. The freeze occurs if you try to take action while the game is adding up experience points for that mission, which starts ~1 second after the last kill. As a workaround, I've started opening up the console after a few kills to see if it's running the experience totals. That's where the delay between the last kill and the victory screen comes from.

I can share my ufoconsole.log if needed. I just intentionally froze the game and the log file has no error messages. It cuts off with the experience points it had totaled when I told one of my soldiers to move, that's it. It occurs reliably in campaign and skirmish mode.

13

User modifications / Re: PK3 and UFO file priorities

« on: April 15, 2011, 06:11:01 am »

geever already answered for me in IRC. I did, in fact, have the directory structure wrong. I had just extracted the .ufos into the /base directory, since that's where the 0ufos.pk3 was being kept. Didn't realize I needed a /ufos directory to store the uncompressed ones.

14

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: April 14, 2011, 08:32:05 pm »

Picking just one favorite weapon? Man, that's a tough job.

As has been said, the Bolter isn't necessarily a BAD weapon. It's more inaccurate than a sniper rifle, shotgun, or assault rifle. But it does a decent enough job of combining all three into a single package. The three-round burst on a Bolter is especially dangerous. Ortnoks beware. I generally only carry one on my squad, but he's the guy who can do any job. You don't want a laser rifleman running into a building to trade blows with a medium-armored Ortnok, but the Bolter guy can do it. Hell, the Bolter guy probably doesn't even have to go into the building himself. He can just blast the Ortnok through the walls.

The Flamer is another nice one. As has been said, it's reliable. No randomness involved. If the target is in range, it's going to take full damage (barring partial cover), and that full damage is more than enough to roast any alien when set to Inferno mode. You'll find no better option for reaction fire at close ranges. Setting a flamer on either side of a Harvester's doors is a perfect death-trap. They're the perfect weapon for an untrained rookie.

Grenade launchers are another fine choice. Not exactly my style, but they have their uses. Firing over obstacles with a three-round airburst is a death-sentence for most aliens. Within their range, they're great. I haven't had much success with the flechette rounds, though. I've fired a three-round burst into an unarmored Taman from 1 square away and it didn't die. I'm using 2.4-Dev, so it may be a bug. *Shrug*

Then, of course, there are the riot shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, lasers, and the lot. They all have their charms. In the end, however, I'm gonna have to go with the coilgun as my favorite weapon, despite the assorted drawbacks, if only because I built one of my own back in highschool. It was barely powerful enough to fire a slug more than five feet and wouldn't have put anyone's eye out even if they were staring straight down the barrel, but coilguns will always have a special significance for me.

15

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?