Messages

316

Mac / Re: 2.3 dev version for mac question

« on: March 09, 2009, 04:46:35 am »

If I have XCode installed, how much more space do I need to compile 2.3 for PPC?

Source code, object code, final package, all the libraries that need to be downloaded and compiled, etc.

Are we talking 2G, 5G, or 10G?

317

Discussion / Re: anyone else playing a 2.3 development build?

« on: March 08, 2009, 08:45:12 pm »

2.2.1 is a ((stable)) beta. There is no real 2.3 ATM.

Then perhaps we should call it 2.2.9 or something like that?

Point is, the time gap between 2.2.1 and 2.3 is huge. The feature gap between 2.2.1 and 2.3 is huge. There has been a lot of work on 2.3, and playable but buggy releases are being released for people to play with.

Heck, as pointed out, the Wiki documents 2.3 more than it documents 2.2.1. Some of the developers have been working on 2.3 for so long that they cannot answer questions about 2.2.1. Bug reports based on 2.2.1 are so out of date that they are of no use anymore.

As much as 2.2.1 is the current released beta, and 2.3 2.2.9 is alpha, everything I've read on these forums in the last few days indicated that 2.2.9 is currently at least as good as 2.2.1. So people want to play it, and have questions about it.

Now, are you really going to say that with the wiki describing 2.3, the developers talking about 2.3, bug reports only being useful if they are 2.3, and more features in 2.3, that we cannot talk about playing 2.3 on the forums?

318

Discussion / Re: Wormhole travel vs. FTL engines

« on: March 08, 2009, 08:26:16 pm »

I that everyone wishes that FTL were possible, but I agree with Einstein when he basically said that light was the unsiversal speed limit.

Completely offtopic for the game, but one of Einstein's assumptions was that the speed of light was constant from (almost any) reference frame. ("Guassian", I believe, is the actual term, but don't ask me to explain the difference between that and "any"). That, along with the assumption that the laws of physics are the same churns out a bunch of odd results that match experimentations.

"Cannot travel faster than light" is NOT one of the conclusions.
"Cannot accelerate up to the speed of light" is.

Space itself can, and does, "move" faster than light -- see the superluminal expansion of space itself.

The idea that you can move a bubble of space around faster than light, while nothing in that bubble has to move "fast" (don't ask relative to what) is both theoretically possible under G.R., and under (or at least was) research.

So it doesn't take a wormhole (and last I heard, the research into wormholes was indicating that they were most likely unstable and collapsing, and certainly not common.)

319

Discussion / Re: Civilians... those little buggers.

« on: March 08, 2009, 08:02:29 am »

That was the method in XCOM either. Aand a method to save them in terror missions.

-geever

Naaarrgh! Now you tell me :-).

OK, stun bombs on civies to keep them from being killed. I bet it doesn't work if a cyberdisk blows up :-).

320

Mac / Re: Potential Bad News for pre-built Mac Binaries...

« on: March 08, 2009, 06:12:37 am »

I may be able to provide a host for the mac builds. Will depend on how much the bandwidth turns out to be.

321

Tactics / Re: Some help with original xCOM tactics please.

« on: July 05, 2008, 06:14:41 am »

(bump)

My memory of the original XCom's finances was:
1. Start with the medkit. Best return on investment (manufacturing profit) of anything you can make initially. I think the next was the laser cannon (ship weapon); much better, but took some time to research.

2. Laser weapons were better than plasmas. You get them quicker, they never run out of ammo, and they (plus grenades) are good enough for anything.

3. Psionics is an unnecessary diversion. I spent no time on it. Blaster bombs firing around corners, along with sacrificial scouts is more than enough to handle any situation.

4. Reaction walls is your friend.
4b: If a UFO door gets propped open, RETREAT! Blaster bombs will come out of that door and wipe out your wall of troops. See also #3 above :-).

322

Discussion / How many people can my base support?

« on: May 21, 2008, 08:20:24 am »

Old XCom had a nice base summary screen that would give you at a glance info on your base, including how many people could be housed there, how many engineers/scientists were busy, etc.

I can't find anything like that.

What I did find is that my starting base has 10 engineers, 10 scientists, and 8 soldiers, with only one living quarters that is documented as supporting only 20 people.

323

Discussion / Re: Problem starting a new game

« on: May 21, 2008, 07:01:45 am »

Ok, a third: The language defaults to nothing, instead of defaulting to english.

This means that you get intro_sentence_1, and similar placeholder strings instead of the actual descriptions.

324

Discussion / Building a new base: Show radar coverage area before confirming the placement

« on: May 21, 2008, 06:52:29 am »

When you are selecting a location for a new base, there is no indication of where the radar coverage for that base will be.

325

Discussion / Problem starting a new game

« on: May 21, 2008, 06:48:32 am »

I've found 2 problems when starting a new game, in 2.2 and 2.2.1.

First: The money that you are told you will start with, and the money that you actually start with are not even close to each other.

Second: When you build your first base, and go back to the geoscape, the clock is running very very fast -- it does not start in 5 second mode while you get your bearings.

326

Mac / Gamma for mac display

« on: May 21, 2008, 06:45:27 am »

The mac comes with a very nice display calibrator that does more than just a single number gamma adjustment. Yet UfoAI wants to override that with a simple gamma, and the default for it is yucky.

Can we please get an option to not change the video display color / gamma at all ? Right now I have to go into display preferences every time I start up the game.

327

Discussion / Re: Ufopedia: Sort equipment by category / weapons by range

« on: March 26, 2008, 06:40:43 pm »

The UFOpedia could use some work, that is true.  It is a community project, and there is more work to be done than there are people doing the work.  Do you feel like stepping up?

How? Is there a wiki that we edit, that turns into the UFOpedia?

Many of the maps in UFO:AI have wide open areas that you will have to cross.  If you don't carry some rifles or other long range weapons it is likely that you will get cut down before you get within pistol range.

Actually, XCom's old pistols had full range across the map. Kinda spoiled me. How does range work in this game?

(Still dealing with starting equipment, haven't gotten to the first mission yet :-)

328

Discussion / Re: X-Com veteran's initial impressions...

« on: March 23, 2008, 07:02:02 pm »

Actually, as far as the ending goes, one thing that I really hated about XCom 1's ending was the mars mission.

You got one -- only one -- chance. If your first base assault on mars failed, you got "Game over". Not back to your base, and try again later.

And please, please, make sure that Mar's interior walls are strong enough that a blaster bomb can't destroy it. A setup where you walk down a long hallway, into an exposed area, where mind-controlling aliens are going to make your guys fight each other is a great idea. But blowing a hole in the roof of that hallway, sending one person up to look around (and "light up" the room), and sending another blast up and into the computer is totally anti-climatic.

Yes, I did that in one turn. The "final room" was so different from the rest of the base that it was obviously the ending.

329

Discussion / Re: Melee attacks -- roadmap?

« on: March 23, 2008, 06:26:26 pm »

After reading all this, I have an idea:

Can you define melee weapons so that they are strong against low-armor enemies, and weak against heavy armor enemies?

Then, give them a small chance of penetrating (ignoring) the armor.

Fast, good against unarmored foes, and weak (unless you get lucky) against armored foes.

330

Discussion / Ufopedia: Sort equipment by category / weapons by range

« on: March 23, 2008, 06:02:02 pm »

(I searched, but did not find anything on "ufopedia equipment").

In almost every area of the game, equipment is broken down into primary, secondary, armor, etc.

In the ufopedia, equipment is just a single alphabetical list, not categorized.

Additionally, while there is a need to easily tell what's a close range, medium range, or long range weapon, there's no breakdown by that either; I'm resorting to taking notes.

(I consider it a sign of a problem if I have to take paper notes on a modern game if the online documentation can't address simple stuff).

The docs seem inconsistent -- on one hand, some entries say that most fighting will take place at close/knife range, while other entries imply that medium/long range weapons are essential. This almost implies to me that I need my "main" combat characters to have two primary weapons, one for distance, and one for close combat.

GAAAAHHH.

(For what it's worth, I generally only use plain pistols and laser pistols in XCom. That's good enough until I'm shooting blaster bombs around corners.)