Messages

31

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: November 19, 2012, 07:28:55 pm »

I still haven't managed to spot a single alien using IR goggles. I position guys around a UFO, use headgear, the charging sound plays but no aliens show. I do this about 4 times per turn using different soldiers, twice per soldier if enough TUs looking in different directions. Nothing. Click end turn. Aliens appear and kill me.


Please document the IR Goggles, explain how to use them, what the range and field of view is and how long the effect lasts.


Would be nice if some form of indicator was drawn over the tiles covered by the goggles.

32

Discussion / Re: Accuracy, Sniping and tactics.

« on: November 12, 2012, 05:31:19 pm »

Having advanced in the game I still think sniping should be far more accurate than it is, if realism is what you're going for.

33

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: November 01, 2012, 12:50:09 am »

What range do IR goggles currently have?
If I'm facing north when I click on them, and then I turn east, will they still uncover aliens behind walls to the east?
Do they work for more than 1 turn if clicked just once?


I did try using them many times but could never get them to work as in a video I saw on youtube - I'd have a few soldiers stand in front of walls and use them but nothing would show up, then during the aliens' turn they'd appear out of nowhere and kill me. Tried this a few times on a few maps.

34

Feature Requests / Video settings are unclear

« on: October 31, 2012, 02:11:20 pm »

This is not really feature request, but neither is it a bug. I guess it belongs here more than there.


The game's video settings are unclear, so in the end I'm not sure which options I want to enable for what effect, and which I'd rather keep turned off to not drop FPS too much. To correct this, the tooltips would need to be improved, and one or two labels too. All tooltips should say how much of an impact this setting will have on the FPS, and whether it affects geoscape, battlescape or both. Considering that a number of these settings require a game restart, it would be a major time saver if the items were improved on as I list below.


Resolution Cap: the tooltip doesn't really explain what implication this has or how to figure out a correct setting. I imagine it's correlated to GPU RAM.


Compression: same as above, what visual and FPS effect will this have? At what level of GPU RAM does this become irrelevant?


LoD: very informative tooltip, no issues here.


Anisotropy Level: what does 0 mean? Off, or some kind of automatic? It's not obvious to me that 0=off because 0 has a special meaning in Multisample Buffers/Swap Interval.


Vertex Buffers: the tooltip is black magic here. How high is the FPS impact and what will look nicer with it?


Multisample Buffers / Swap Interval: This is commonly called Antialiasing, and that is the name most games and GPU setting panels use. Multisampling is a technique of antialiasing, but the user doesn't care what technique is used under the hood - the end result is that the user wants (or doesn't want) antialiasing, and unless he knows what multisampling is, he won't find it. Please rename this to Antialiasing. The tooltip does mention that "multisample buffers provide a mechanism to antialias all GL primitives" but that's greek to non-coders (and non-greeks).


Post-Processing Shader Effects: more effects could be listed than just "glowing textures".


Lightmap Block Size: "Higher block size means more detailed lightmaps" ok, but what's a lightmap? I'm sure this could be expressed in layman terms.


Realtime Lighting / Max Dynamic Lights: "Maximum number of dynamic hardware accelerated lights allowed" what effect do they have, and what exactly are we talking about? Lights in a room, light given off by plasma shots, other? How do I figure out whats optimal for me?


Texture Normalmapping: like in Multisample Buffers, normalmapping is a technique of bump mapping, so you should use the more common term "bump mapping" and optionally have "normalmapping" mentioned in the tooltip.

35

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: October 30, 2012, 03:37:28 pm »

For some ideas, see:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/100395-mit-can-now-see-through-concrete-walls
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/seeing-through-walls-wireless-router

36

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: October 30, 2012, 03:33:48 pm »

'boring and tedious solution is more effective'

That looks like a quote to me. If you're so liberal in your use of single quotation marks, don't be surprised people don't understand you. I did clearly write "second paragraph"... and that's a quote.


I do retract what I said about pinpointing objects through solids such as walls, it's not IR that does that.


headdie I see, either that's a new tech added since the last time I finished the game or I managed to miss it.

37

Feature Requests / Remember unassigned soldiers' equipment

« on: October 30, 2012, 03:21:27 pm »

Soldiers who are not assigned to a transporter lose all their equipment, and the user must waste time re-assigning it afterwards. Would be great if the game remembered what they had, and tried to re-equip them with it (if stocks allow) when I assign them to a transporter again.

38

Feature Requests / Plasma blade should be re-equipped after mission

« on: October 30, 2012, 03:19:51 pm »

If you use a plasma blade during a mission, it needs to be manually re-equipped afterwards. Would be a time saver (and more consistent) if the game re-equipped after the mission those soldiers who had it before the mission.

39

Feature Requests / Lines of sight

« on: October 30, 2012, 12:34:26 pm »

When you press "t" a line gets drawn from the selected soldier to any aliens it can see. I would like a feature that would automatically draw these lines.

40

Discussion / Re: Accuracy, Sniping and tactics.

« on: October 29, 2012, 09:15:08 pm »

I'm talking about "today's head", today being yesterday. ;] My sniper-skilled soldiers with sniper rifles miss more often than hit at long range, and with that bolt gun in aimed mode (which the game reports requires sniper skill) they are completely useless even at close range.

41

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: October 29, 2012, 09:11:16 pm »

Examples are abundant, I won't Google for you.

I don't know what you're quoting in the second paragraph nor can I comprehend it.

42

Feature Requests / Lighting / tone mapping / night light

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:54:50 am »

Battlescape lighting could be greatly improved, especially regarding night missions.

I use my machine mainly for photography, so I play on a monitor calibrated with a hardware color calibration device. It is adjusted perfectly to my viewing conditions (a dim room). Despite this, it is very difficult to make things out in night missions. What I see doesn't feel like night, it just feels like inadequately lit maps. Both day and night lighting feels flat.

Currently there is only one way of increasing brightness - via the "gamma" slider. This is very crude and the end result is equally poor. It changes the gamma of the whole screen while the game window is in focus (luckily when I Alt+Tab the gamma is returned to normal).

Perhaps if the maps had many lights added, and the game used tone mapping which the user could adjust, this would lead to aesthetically far nicer graphics, and more usable too.
Increasing brightness should not clip already-bright areas (currently that's what happens when you increase "geo ambient lighting") nor should it make gray what should be pure black.

This is what night should look like:
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/08D410d0b25Uq/550x.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/isERClRkwOg/0.jpg
http://www.strategyplanet.com/commandos/images/c2_mission1.jpg
http://projectcerbera.com/gta/2/vedic/magic-4.jpg
http://projectcerbera.com/gta/2/multislayer/eternityhill.jpg

Sadly, this is what night does look like in UFO:AI:
http://i.imgur.com/0GAd0.png

43

FAQ / Re: smoke grenades and frame rate

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:13:30 am »

I suffer from the same issue - i7 quad-core CPU, 8GB RAM. The game seems to be capped at 50FPS. If I drop a smoke grenade, most of the time my FPS drops dramatically, sometimes as low as 6FPS. Unplayable.

The workaround: edit ufoai/base/ufos/ptl_misc.ufo, find "particle smokefield_smoke" and scroll about 17 lines down until you find "physics  true", and change the "true" to "false".

44

Discussion / Re: Accuracy, Sniping and tactics.

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:09:16 am »

Agreed, aimed sniper shots should hit the target from far away far more often than not, and that is not the case in today's head.

45

Feature Requests / Re: IR-goggles

« on: October 29, 2012, 12:06:12 am »

10 years ago few people knew what google is, now we can't live without it. The game is set in 2084.  That's 72 years from today. Infrared thermography today can pinpoint objects behind walls with complete accuracy. What is generally suggested in this thread is to make gear from the future perform worse than sonar did a hundred years ago.

I find having my best soldier  - equipped in nanocomposite armor, with reaction fire enabled, hunting for that last alien - killed without even trying to fire back to be not-fun, and the IR goggles are a great way of preventing that. I like them the way the are (in today's head).