Messages

1

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 15, 2012, 08:16:34 pm »

Maybe there could be a much less 'dense' smoke effect made. It can block vision and lasers for all intents and purposes with the combat rules in the game, but visually make it a shallower effect. The original XCom just had a few pixel trails in each square, which was simplistic but it let you know there was smoke there and that it was working. The current smoke looks like a very 'dense' effect, maybe it draws too many resources on certain rigs and drivers. Can't be sure, just tossing a possible idea.

I also remember older games using alpha blending back in the day, take a solid image and it goes partially transparent without using too much hardware resources for many effects. I know for sure Homeworld did this, but seen the option on quite a few other games before multi-core CPU's hit the market.

2

Feature Requests / New method of Production time calculation needed

« on: September 14, 2012, 07:53:16 pm »

I think the production times in this game is nuts for various items, but that is a balance issue I won't discuss. What I want to discuss is how to calculate the times. In my experience you spend plenty of time setting up for a certain fabrication project, but once set up you could crank out units with ease. Happens all the time in the local machining shops, some only take projects with a certain number of items minimum to be produced.

Maybe calculate times for fabrication of stuff, say a laser rifle like the following:
W = amount of item on queue for production
X = total time to make for entire run
Y = shop setup time
Z = time to produce each item after shop setup

X = Y + (Z*W)

3

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 14, 2012, 07:41:27 pm »

System Specs:

AMD Phenom 2.5GHz x 4 quad-core
EVGA Nvidia GeForce 550Ti GPU
Asus M4A785-M with latest BIOs
5GB DDR2 RAM
SATA2 HDD

This is an older Mobo I kept upgrading as parts took out or the need to update came up. The 550Ti was the last upgrade this PC is going to get, but it can play Battlefield 3 on medium-high online with no framerate stutters noticeable to my eyes. About the game, the .ufo file fixed the smoke grenades. Disabling the shaders all together though stopped the crashes. Played 30 or so tac missions with no issue.

4

Discussion / Re: Won Game

« on: September 14, 2012, 12:42:36 pm »

First of all I am at June 10, 2084 in my game. First time I played, but let me say I easily took down 3 harvesters on my first playthrough by June. I did find a trick to make Stilettos work against alien fighters and harvesters very effectively after losing my first Stiletto to a fighter 1v1: I decided to pair them up. So each of my bases always has 2 Stilettos and a Firebird. Load them with 2 missile racks, the Shiva cannon with HEI rounds an ECM and targeting computer. I found polymer armor slowed them down too much to be useful, the speed advantage comes in play against alien fighters.

So, when I see an Alien fighter if I am lazy I will just send 2 Stilettos and boom they kill it reliably without casualty. If not lazy I will send 1 Stilettos and the moment it goes into missile range and launches a missile I pause the game, tell it to retreat, play slowly until the missile is reloaded and then tell it to attack again, kiting right outside the range of the alien ship weapons. This works well with 1 Stiletto against an alien fighter, and if you can get ahead of a harvester you can fire 3-4 salvos of missiles while trying to run before you are in range of the alien weapons. Using this trick as I said above I downed 3 harvesters by June, the hardest part is actually lining up in front of them to shoot them from the front.

5

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 13, 2012, 10:06:36 am »

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

It's cool. So about the smoke fix, it's better but still a bit of slowdown going on when it's on my screen. Seems like an expensive effect CPU/GPU wise. As for the other SV_threads fix, I had only 1 crash out of 10 tac-missions and that one was a straight CTD with the same log, right after that I disabled shaders and the game runs much better.

6

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 11, 2012, 04:53:01 pm »

Smoke Grenades cant cause any lag. Lag is a high delay time between computer or phone networks. You ment a FPS drop.

Solution:
http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,6755.msg53820.html#msg53820

Hardware lag aka FPS drop, don't need to be nitpicky. I could be nitpicky and say you spelled meant wrong above as 'ment' but I knew what you meant to spell and normally wouldn't call anyone out for it. Back to topic, I'm going to try both posted solutions and post results here later. Thanks for the replies.

7

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 11, 2012, 10:54:47 am »

Found out what was happening with my crash log, when my game crashes it asks me to upload the crash log but before I can click yes it crashes that prompt also, with Windows asking me to look for solutions to the problem or closing the program. Working on Win7 64-bit. Here is the crash-dump from this last crash I found in my application folder:

======start======
Date: 2012-09-11
Windows version 6.1 (Build 7600)
Win32 DEBUG, cpu: IA-32, version: 2.5-dev

Failed to get file flags from (C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll) File in wrong format
0x75eac1c1 : C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll : initterm
0x98193d : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h (562) : in function (_ZNSt20__copy_move_backwardILb0ELb1ESt26random_access_iterator_tagE13__copy_move_bIcEEPT_PKS3_S6_S4_)
0x982f93 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h (582) : in function (_ZSt22__copy_move_backward_aILb0EPcS0_ET1_T0_S2_S1_)
0x9830f1 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h (591) : in function (_ZSt23__copy_move_backward_a2ILb0EPcS0_ET1_T0_S2_S1_)
0x982642 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_algobase.h (626) : in function (_ZSt13copy_backwardIPcS0_ET0_T_S2_S1_)
0x981ae6 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/vector.tcc (627) : in function (_ZNSt6vectorIcSaIcEE15_M_range_insertIPKcEEvN9__gnu_cxx17__normal_iteratorIPcS1_EET_S9_St20forward_iterator_tag)
0x981d9b : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h (1276) : in function (_ZNSt6vectorIcSaIcEE18_M_insert_dispatchIPKcEEvN9__gnu_cxx17__normal_iteratorIPcS1_EET_S9_St12__false_type)
0x981ff3 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.7.0/include/c++/bits/stl_vector.h (1045) : in function (_ZNSt6vectorIcSaIcEE6insertIPKcEEvN9__gnu_cxx17__normal_iteratorIPcS1_EET_S9_)
0x48944e : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/common/dbuffer.cpp (21) : in function (_ZN7dbuffer3addEPKcj)
0x486c59 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/common/net.cpp (712) : in function (_Z17NET_StreamEnqueueP10net_streamPKci)
0x48918f : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/common/netpack.cpp (622) : in function (_Z17NET_WriteConstMsgP10net_streamPK7dbuffer)
0x4a4a3b : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/server/sv_send.cpp (146) : in function (_Z12SV_MulticastiP7dbuffer)
0x49b3b4 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/server/sv_game.cpp (335) : in function (SV_EndEvents)
0x6a612949 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_events.cpp (620) : in function (_Z10G_EventEndv)
0x6a611d73 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_events.cpp (340) : in function (_Z17G_EventActorWoundPK7edict_si)
0x6a613eb8 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_health.cpp (163) : in function (_Z16G_SendWoundStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a61abac : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_stats.cpp (41) : in function (_Z11G_SendStatsP7edict_s)
0x6a60bddd : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_combat.cpp (81) : in function (G_Morale)
0x6a60cae1 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_combat.cpp (433) : in function (_Z22G_CheckDeathOrKnockoutP7edict_sS0_PK9fireDef_si)
0x6a613d74 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_health.cpp (149) : in function (_Z13G_BleedWoundsi)
0x6a61a8e2 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_round.cpp (217) : in function (_Z16G_ClientEndRoundP8player_s)
0x6a606141 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1231) : in function (AI_PlayerRun)
0x6a606197 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_ai.cpp (1249) : in function (_Z6AI_Runv)
0x6a615c2a : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\base\game.dll : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/game/g_main.cpp (452) : in function (_Z10G_RunFramev)
0x49ba5e : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/server/sv_game.cpp (639) : in function (_Z15SV_RunGameFramev)
0x49ba10 : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/localslave/src-master/src/src/server/sv_game.cpp (625) : in function (_Z21SV_RunGameFrameThreadPv)
0x61af6e : C:\Program Files (x86)\UFOAI-2.5-dev\ufo.exe : /home/users/mattn/mingw-cross-env/tmp-sdl/SDL-1.2.15/./src/thread/SDL_thread.c (205) : in function (SDL_RunThread)
======end========

8

Feature Requests / Re: Alien bullets/Armor piercing rounds

« on: September 11, 2012, 08:12:55 am »

The best idea is just a general new tech tree: Tech 1.5 aka advanced human weapons. The simplest form of this idea would of course be technology gleaned from studying the aliens but useable in human tech, like say nano-bullets or plasma incendiary rockets/grenades. Stuff that will work in Tech 1 human weapons but brings them up a notch, the go-between before you are actually making alien-level technology.

9

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Crashes on Tac Missions, smoke grenades cause lag

« on: September 11, 2012, 08:05:58 am »

Playing on a few tac missions and they randomly crash to desktop for no apparent reason. Had all settings set to highest possible on graphics and game ran well except smoke grenades cause major lag and the random CTD's. On the last CTD I got a prompt to make a crash log, it's very short:

======start======
Date: 2012-09-11
Windows version 6.1 (Build 7600)
Win32 DEBUG, cpu: IA-32, version: 2.5-dev

Failed to init symbol context
======end========