Messages

16

Discussion / Re: Game Engine

« on: July 19, 2008, 09:00:49 pm »

Actually, the Blender people do have a game engine - it just isn't called Blender.  It's called CrystalSpace3D.  And since a lot of the frequently asked questions relate to problems and limitations of the archaic Quake2 engine, at least look at it before shooting the idea down.

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Discussion / Re: Machine gun / Autocannon Discussion

« on: July 19, 2008, 08:30:38 pm »

Soldiers already are penalized for being injured. A soldier with less than 50% health gets an accuracy penalty.

Does this work on the aliens as well?

18

Discussion / Re: Machine gun / Autocannon Discussion

« on: July 01, 2008, 07:53:48 pm »

Be neat to throw them off roofs or into the back of the room, at least.

Since there is no damage from falling, this would only be minor annoyance to them.  Actually, you might help them to move to a less visible position...

19

Discussion / Re: Machine gun / Autocannon Discussion

« on: July 01, 2008, 07:49:05 pm »

The rockets, keep in mind, are HE and IN, which are both feasible anti-infantry weapons.  One smashes by proximity, the other burns.  Neither needs a direct hit to be effective, nor is that the intended objective. 

Except that in this game an Incendiary rocket is a poor substitute for the HE.  I have repeatedly seen unarmored Ortnoks take a direct hit with the IC rockets and grenades and laugh about it.  I guess the flame from these rounds is decidedly weaker than that from the Flamethrower.

20

Discussion / Re: Particle Beam Weapons: More Than Just Flashlights?

« on: July 01, 2008, 06:48:39 pm »

Sure, i'll go along with that.  I'd imagine that the flash would be bright enough to blind people even in full daylight.  I'd expect the shooter would have to wear a face shield with 'active protection', i.e., a transparent material that can become instantly dark under electronic control.  Our bomber crews wore something similar during the Cold War to protect them from nuclear flash blindness.

21

Feature Requests / Re: Keys

« on: June 15, 2008, 01:03:35 am »

Some people like to use the mouse more, others like to use the keyboard more.  Some people want to use both simultaneously.  It sounds like he wants a hotkey to bring up the palette of firemodes for the left hand weapon, and optionally another for the right hand.  Meanwhile he can keep his mouse cursor pointed at his target.  I think this is a good idea, as it cuts down on wasted mouse movement - especially since mousing down to click the 'fire' button tends to cause your view to scroll away from the target.  As well, this would help those have Carpal Tunnel conditions by reducing the amount of movement needed to play.  This is only one [well, two] of many places where it might be nice to have a hotkey, if there was a hook to hang a key on.

22

Feature Requests / Re: Can't walk up the stairs to UFO

« on: June 15, 2008, 12:51:13 am »

I tried trunk, but i never inhaled.     No, seriously, half the time when all the makes were complete, all i got out of it was a seg fault.  Or the game would start, but refuse to load my save.  Or whatever.  I gave up.  Really, you should have stopped when you said that trunk can be compiled.  On any given day, it was not what i would consider to be 'playable'.

23

Coding / Re: Changing the weapons you get in multiplayer

« on: June 15, 2008, 12:32:25 am »

No, it's not that editing text is hard.  The hard part is knowing which line to edit and what value to put in that line.  Note how many replies it took [and finally a picture] to nail down which section of relevant file really applied to the question at hand.  Again, this whole thread would be unnecessary if the script was commented.  This is something that a special purpose editor wouldn't really be helpful for - or to put it another way, to make such an editor really helpful would require that the editor know about every value in every line.  This is just not gonna happen, especially since it would have to be rewritten every time the ufo files got extended/repurposed.

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Feature Requests / Re: Can't walk up the stairs to UFO

« on: June 14, 2008, 04:23:28 pm »

it was fixed in 2.3

You mean, it will be when 2.3 is released?

25

Feature Requests / Re: Aliens with human weapons?

« on: June 14, 2008, 04:17:28 pm »

This is a known bug and [i believe] has been fixed in 2.3-dev.  Yes, when the monsters start turning our own guns on us it's more likely that things will go bad and i will end up reloading.  I once had my Rocket gunner take a direct hit from a Rocket launched out of a Harvester.  It's not clear to my why this is uniquely a problem with the crews of Harvesters, as i would think that starship crew would only carry Secondary type weapons anyway.

26

FAQ / Re: A couple of questions...

« on: June 14, 2008, 03:53:01 pm »

1) I have the same question as DanielOR.  You get a fair bit of kit to begin with, and are free to sell whatever you can't/don't use.  For me, that includes Shotguns, Smoke Grenades, IR goggles and Shiva cannons.  Also since the budget is so tight the first month, try not to get anything extravagant until the first of April.

2) It might be possible to edit the .ufo files, but it wouldn't be easy.  Also, there's no guarantee it wouldn't corrupt your saves.  As Daniel-san said, first look for optimization.  It might even help to reboot before playing...

3) It's currently not possible.  I get better performance through giving each soldier a weapon that matches what they are good at.

27

Tactics / Re: Help for beginner

« on: June 14, 2008, 03:22:08 pm »

You should strenuously avoid the auto-mission button.  The important thing about going on missions is that your soldiers earn experience to make them better.  Auto-mission == no experience.  Having said that, i have used it on occasion - if a particular map is bothering me.

Acceptable loss rate is whatever you're willing to accept.  However, as you improve your tactics [and get to understand alien tactics] you should be able to complete most missions with no loss.  It also makes a difference what difficulty level you selected.  On 'standard' or harder difficulties you can't afford to lose that many troops, as there are limited replacements available.

28

Discussion / Re: Particle Beam Weapons: More Than Just Flashlights?

« on: June 13, 2008, 11:06:46 pm »

@DanielOR: The Ideal Gas Law breaks down when intermolecular interactions increase, namely 1) under high pressure and 2) under low temperatures.  For our purposes, the high temperature of the plasma effectively cancels out the high pressure.  Besides, we only need to use the van der Waals corrections when we need to know exactly what the pressure [volume/moles/whatever] is.  The general principles of the Ideal Gas Law still guide us.

@SirMoric: The ETC concept was invented well after WWII [and the flak 88].  While modern formulations of gunpowder do indeed burn more slowly than the old black powder, it still doesn't last long enough to maintain barrel pressure as the bullet moves towards the muzzle.  However, there is the U.S. Army project using separate sections of gunpowder progressively ignited by electric charge.

@Darkpriest667: Chemical reactions do not and can not create radiation, or indeed any changes in the nucleus.  Sorry, but you must have mis-heard whatever it was you overheard.  You could, of course, suffer from burns due to the plasma...  And no, it doesn't need to be hot enough for fusion.  It just needs to maintain enough pressure to keep the bullet accelerating the whole time it is traveling down the barrel.  If you could master enough energy to get fusion, you wouldn't need the bullet anymore.

29

Discussion / Incendiary Rocket

« on: June 06, 2008, 11:48:43 pm »

So i'm looking to make a tweak for an M202-style incendiary rocket for the rocket launcher [http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/flame/M202.html].  I have most of it, but i don't know how to set the damage and splash radius.  Since it appears this has been discussed before [going back at least two years], i wonder if anybody has any tentative values they'd like to suggest?

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Feature Requests / Re: Local troops?

« on: June 06, 2008, 11:36:59 pm »

Ah, the livestock - that's something i miss from Enemy Unknown.