Topics

1

Offtopic / Frozen Synapse

« on: May 28, 2011, 04:37:59 am »

http://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/

Looks slickly produced, well thought through and developed. TotalBiscuit has a nice review.

And always the same-looking terrain and a very impersonal feel for the graphics. Plus my little pet peeves with rocket launchers inside buildings and whatnot.

Oh well. You all might be interested.

2

Tactics / Where/why/how many bases do you build?

« on: May 15, 2011, 03:59:18 am »

Good first placement base seems to be anywhere in the center of a landmass to minimize early UFOs shot down lost at sea. Middle East works. Africa. South America. Tibet area.

Then what?

1st base is gradually built into a research base (as I don't know if the Research needs aliens in THAT base, but it would stand to reason).
UFO yard outside.

2nd base turns into Production and secondary dual Stiletto base with one Firebird.

Then later on in game I have the globe fairly covered in Radar and SAM sites, with the 1st base gradually becoming pure Research while I shift the interception duties to a nearby flight-only base.

Just seems to be a bit overly tedious to have all these different bases, becomes a jumble of micro-management, but maybe I'm doing something wrong. Doesn't help that each base tends to become completely built-up, leaving huge areas to sweep through in overly lengthy base defense missions.

Thoughts?

3

Sounds and Music / @ whoever did the "In today's news, all three factions have finally..."

« on: May 11, 2011, 09:34:36 pm »

You fricking rock.

First time I heard that I thought it was so cool.

Now I've heard it about a thousand times. It's still cool and I wish there was more samples like that.

4

Tactics / Find enemy base?

« on: May 11, 2011, 12:57:19 am »

What are prerequisites for an alien base to even exist?

Is there something in game that prompts the player to go look?

Follow Scouts or Harvesters? With what, and what loadout?

I'm guessing I have too many Radar/SAM site combo's out, and maybe my reputation levels are too high. I did have a Stiletto that was getting ninja-shot at by an invisible laser opponent, so I took a few trips over there and clicked around ...nothing.

2.4 dev, only thing I can get to work.

5

Feature Requests / [Low priority] React fire camera vertical level setting option.

« on: May 10, 2011, 06:56:16 pm »

Mining map crash. We've all seen it a bunch of times. You set your guys to react fire up on the hill and the stupids - i.e., aliens - come walking into your field of fire. BAM. Camera cuts to your guy firing up top, then cuts down several vertical levels and zooms to aliens getting the sparkly tracers treatment.

I just hope there'll some day be a checkbox to click that lets the camera stay at the level of the shooter for the entire process instead of immediately cutting down to the vertical level of the target. Small thing, I know. But it would increase the visual cohesiveness of the map and make it seem a bit less of an abstract 3D layered 1990s computer simulation, and more concrete and real.

I'm sure coding that camera movement wasn't easy, but this shouldn't be a massive huge thing, at least. Then again, I'll take easily in-game reconfigurable keyboard shortcuts over this any day. (I used ESDF as my movement keys for 5 years of WoW - how often do you think I accidentally press "E" every day? I know you can modify the files, and I will, eventually...)

6

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Soldiers ignoring react fire settings.

« on: May 10, 2011, 06:21:36 pm »

Sorry no logs or screens for this. I guess a video would help. Didn't find it in the Bugtracker but not sure exactly how to post about this there.

How to reproduce in Alternative HUD (haven't tried others much):

1. You start a new tactical mission.
2. Pick a soldier.
3. Move soldier a little, then set react fire to burst or full auto or similar and keep moving past where they should really stop for react fire saving TUs.
4. The very lowest react fire setting Snap Shot or similar seems to work better.
5. If the very first thing you do before moving or having a soldier do anything in a turn is set the react fire, then the bug doesn't appear as consistently.


In other news setting react fire settings are a bit of a p.i.t.a. in the Alternative HUD - which is my favourite HUD for a few other reasons. Going through and setting react fire only to have people completely disregard saving the required TUs is a ...downer.

7

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / "Defeat" screenshot

« on: May 10, 2011, 06:01:46 pm »

Looks like a victory to me. No items gathered. Maybe this is just a setting to expedite playing for development purposes?

8

Bugs prior to release 2.4 / Funny geoscape Antarctica/South Pole bug

« on: May 10, 2011, 05:56:57 pm »

More at: http://parjlarsson.imgur.com/ufoai#0l1No

9

Tactics / How often do you find yourself wanting to only make ONE react fire shot?

« on: May 10, 2011, 05:34:54 pm »

Never.

React has two settings. For the life of me I can't quite figure out how this is useful, as the unexpended TUs from *not* making that second shot are lost anyway.

Someone enlighten me?

10

Mapping / Your least favourite map and why?

« on: May 09, 2011, 05:56:33 pm »

"+shelter" made me want to stop playing yesterday after running around looking for an alien without finding him and realizing I'd have to check every one of 6 staircases and 2-3 downramps. Blaster doors are nice, but ...damn that's a long way around and having to check every behind every one.

"+forest" (might have the name wrong, newish map with walkable-on water on a coastline) is awesome, but the starting point for the aliens mean they get stuck in a little alcove at the bottom of the main big cliff. I think I just learned how to take screenshots with my non-standard iMac keyboard, so next time I'll try to get screenshots up.

I'm hoping to join the mapping team eventually, and to start off with just a nice vanilla desert thing followed by just straight up forest.

11

Feature Requests / Random name lists

« on: May 09, 2011, 05:21:51 pm »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_male_action_heroes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_action_heroes

...by first name and last name randomized ofc, so eventually you'll see Errol Willis fighting right alongside Bruce Flynn.

Plus I'm hoping this is implemented already, but the main people who have been working on this project should have their names in the database already, along with everyone in the prior XCOM games.

12

Tactics / 2.4 IR goggles

« on: May 08, 2011, 02:41:39 am »

Exactly how do these work in-game?

From the research post at http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Equipment/Misc/IR_Goggles I gather that the effect is dependent on facing - though I have used them and ended up spotting stuff behind the person.

Is it a one-time effect or does the effect last with the person using them or what?

Why does the "glow" effect stay even after I move away?

What's the range?

13

Discussion / HUDs

« on: May 08, 2011, 01:41:44 am »

ORIGINAL
The original is a bit clunky imo, but is also good in that it shows at a glance what's equipped in each hand. Also very good and smooth for going through each soldier quickly and efficiently on the first round to set/check their react fire settings.
Major drawback is that each soldier's health isn't immediately obvious, or who's left to move.

CUSTOM
Shows most promise, but every time I try it in 2.4 dev it seems to enable some sort of whacky cursor tooltip that is enabled in the geoscape too. Can't seem to make it go away. Looks most modern.

ALTERNATIVE
What I'm using currently. Great for telling what you have left to move in any given round. I could do without seeing a full-figure thing of what each guy is doing in a window, but that's just me. Too-small fire button (that badly needs a keybind, I'm sure you know - I'm not at the point yet where I'm comfortable changing keybinds inside a data file). Trouble switching between what's in each hand. I'd rather have what's in each hand immediately obvious and not have to click to see or switch (takes two clicks to get other-hand weapon usually). To go through each soldier's react fire setting you have to press Esc to get out of the fire menu instead of just right-clicking as with the Original HUD. Bit of a pain but doable.

EDIT: On second thought, quickly and obviously being able to see if your selected soldier is standing or crouching is awesome, but the animation is jerky when firing Machine Guns in react fire on slow camera settings - and bugged when you select a new soldier that's already crouched and you un-crouch him. The animation then does a delayed air squat, which is a great fitness exercise, but I digress...

PHONE
Wow. Amazing that someone's trying to port this to a phone. Hat's off to you if you make it work.

Sidenote:
It seems you can only switch HUD when in the Geoscape. Had to restart the game after the Custom HUD messed up the geoscape tooltips.

14

Tactics / Defeat/Reload/Auto mission/Special mission issues

« on: May 07, 2011, 11:45:41 pm »

Please correct if I'm wrong in any of these assumptions. Playing 2.4 dev version since it's the only thing I know how to get to work.

1. All special missions or special, unusual map tiles have some sort of special blurb in the geoscape. I'd hate to miss something really cool.
2. All defeats are actually victories - all aliens are killed and all my guys survive with no injuries. To be fixed in a future update, I'm guessing.
3. There's zero chance of going in with injured guys on a second attempt.
4. There's zero chance of capturing an alien via auto mission. Might not be a bad thing, it's tricky and should be tricky to get your ten live bugs. Speaking of which I have no idea if the ten have to be at a single base or not.
5. The "try again" button actually means "reload the game at the start of this mission" - it doesn't mean your guys got their butts handed to them, are injured, beat up and low on ammo and just say "To heck with it, we're going back in!"

I personally would like a little more realism with my tactical stuff, but I understand those who don't.

15

Mac / How to play the game on Mac?

« on: May 06, 2011, 01:22:36 am »

OPTION A:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Download - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ufoai/files/UFO_AI%202.x/2.3.1/ufoai-2.3.1-macosx-i386.dmg/download 2.3.1 doesn't seem to work on my 5-year-old iMac.

OPTION B:
Thread http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=5821.0 -

1) go here: http://ufoai.ninex.info/snapshots/
 and download the dev. 2.4

2) launch it, if it doesn't ever finish loading, go to ~/Documents/UFOAI-2.4-dev/base

and make put a config.cfg file there containing only:

set cl_introshown "1" a

...which doesn't have the text for the intro sequence, and has some bugs (no more than I would expect from an open-source fan-made work in progress) but more importantly has no text for the research and gear and stuff - you're basically playing blind.

OPTION C:
Play the PC game via Wine or CrossOver or somesuch.

OPTION D:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Compile_for_Mac - which has a crapton of difficult-to-follow (for a non-techie) instructions that seems very complicated and involve a few separate programs in order to get the game going.


Question:
Would someone be kind enough to toss the whole thing together as it is right now with the playable dev 2.4 version but including the text and research information? I'm fine with bugs, no big deal.