Messages

121

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Dummy UGV items impossible to get rid of

« on: December 26, 2012, 01:52:52 am »

Out of curiosity, I built the items 'Chaingun' and 'Autocannon Module', costing 0 credits. I quickly realized the UGVs (HWP-equivalent?) aren't implemented yet and the items cannot be used. But since the items don't show up anywhere in the sell screen, they are impossible to get rid of and now permanently take up valuable storage space in my base.

Maybe these items could be reclassified to show up under "Other" or something, until UGVs are implemented for real?

122

Discussion / Game mechanics lookup?

« on: December 26, 2012, 01:37:56 am »

I'd like to know how several things in the game work in detail. Is it possible to look this information up somewhere? (Version 2.5dev)

 - How does radar detection work? Is it chance-based or 100% once it enters the detection area? What are the inner and outer circles? Is one radar enough or is it beneficial to have several? Should you have one of each, or only one of the best type available?
   With the basic radar you get at the beginning, whenever I detect a UFO, it is usually at the border of the inner circle. But once I built an advanced radar, I started getting detections only further inside the inner boundary. And then I got a "landed UFO" site within my detection area without ever seeing the corresponding UFO.
   
 - How does reaction fire work? On the whole, it doesn't seem as reliable / effective as I'd like it to be. I've seen a thread about people arguing over how strong reaction fire makes "camping" as a strategy too powerful, but they never actually came out and said how it works. If you reserve TUs for reaction fire, can it trigger once only, or several times?
   Also, does it work the same way for humans and aliens? I've noticed that on a turn after an alien walks very close to you, you can often evade reaction fire by walking around it and shooting it from the side / behind.

123

Discussion / Re: New encumbrance/TU system

« on: December 26, 2012, 01:12:41 am »

The encumbrance system is pretty unbalanced as it is. Personally, I think it's too abrupt - instead of having three states "light", "normal" and "encumbered", there should be more of a sliding scale. Either have it be more finely grained, with more states such as "lightly encumbered", "heavily encumbered", etc.; or just have it calculate your available TUs from the fraction of "current load" divided by "carrying capacity".

I think the latter solution in particular would be great. It would force the player to really weigh the TU cost of each item they want to bring along in a combat mission - should you bring that one extra reload, or have +1 TU instead?

124

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Graphic anomalies on Mansion and Urban Periphery

« on: December 26, 2012, 12:28:12 am »

I've seen this happen, too (2.5dev 12/12/23), both the mansion map and the huge parkhouse in some other city map.

Is there a way to unpack the maps.pk3 file and replace the mansion map with my old copy from 2.4? Or is it some change in the graphics engine and disabling the map is the only solution for now?

And yeah, seeing nothing instead of that broken garbage that obscures everything is preferable, I think. Would it be possible to make something that still lets the player identify walkable floors and maybe walls, even if their graphics fail to render? I remember creeping around the garden of that mansion for a half-dozen turns or so, searching for a door to a stairwell that wasn't there until I figured out that the stairwell only starts one floor down...

125

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Laser weapons research failed to unlock

« on: December 26, 2012, 12:13:17 am »

Wait, so I won't get any laser weapons until armored aliens show up? I think that's pretty dumb. I'm 3-4 months in - I really think I should be able to have laser weaponry by then if I want it.

126

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [Not a bug] [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Mislabeled Weapon categories / weapon experience

« on: December 26, 2012, 12:11:32 am »

As shown in the picture, the sniper rifle is now (as in compared to 2.4) classified as Assault instead of Sniper category, but it still (correctly, I think) awards experience in Sniper Rifles. Other weapon classifications may be faulty, too - it seems I'm seeing a lot more "Assault" and "Close" than I remember. Wasn't the Machine Gun supposed to be "Heavy"? I've noticed that despite using a variety of weapons, none of my soldiers has gained any experience in heavy weaponry. Are there any weapons with the "Heavy" attribute in the game?

127

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Memory leak in wounds system (battlescape)

« on: December 26, 2012, 12:01:11 am »

There appears to be some kind of memory leak in the soldier status screen in the battlescape, related to the wounds system. When opening the status screen for a soldier with a wound (red exclamation mark, or blue in case of treated wounds - doesn't matter in this case), it takes longer each time. After opening it 12-20 times or so, it starts taking inordinately long - 15+ seconds easily. The resource loss is persistent over several missions and only goes away when exiting and restarting the application.

By the way, is it just me, or is there no way to tell how many untreated wounds a soldier has? In the old X-Com, you got a numerical fatal wounds counter, didn't you? Also, it would be nice if mousing over the exclamation mark in the status screen during combat told you what kind of wound it is (torso, arm, leg, etc.). I'm pretty sure the position within the green square is consistent for each location, but you'd have to know them in the first place for that to be useful.

128

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [Not a bug] [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Laser weapons research failed to unlock

« on: December 25, 2012, 11:48:59 pm »

When playing the old 2.4 release, researching "Continuous Wave Laser Operation" unlocks the laser man-portable weapons, the laser base defense weapon and the laser craft weapon - 6 things total, I believe.

In my new game in 2.5_dev, however, only the craft weapon and base defense weapon research projects were unlocked. I never got the man-portable weapons. There were no research items for them, and they don't show up in my production menu, either. Considering how far into the game I am, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to have them by now.

Could someone also list the requirements for the laser weapons for me? I guess I could be missing something obscure, like needing the Bloodspider autopsy to research monomolecular knives, but I don't really think so.

[Savefile attached.]

129

Bugs in older version (2.4) / Re: Repeated crashing to Geoscape

« on: December 02, 2012, 07:34:22 pm »

But there is nothing I can do to work around or try to avoid this bug?

I wish there was a 2.5 stable release or something where this is fixed, but I guess people focused more on the development rather than the viability of the current release...

I'm kind of wary of spending another gig of my precious limited bandwidth on one of the dev releases, not knowing how stable and/or balanced they are. Apart from this glaring problem, I'm quite happy with the 2.4 version. All the features that are implemented are really well-polished. I like the story aspects and the flow of the campaign, like how you have to research that breathing apparatus to even get to where you can make stun rods. The slower progression makes the struggle to keep up with the aliens technologically more real. Until I went back to try the old X-COM again, I hadn't even noticed how much I'd started taking all the improvements and little conveniences for granted, such as being able to rotate the battlescape. I hope this project keeps coming along.


Quizer

130

Bugs in older version (2.4) / Re: Repeated crashing to Geoscape

« on: December 01, 2012, 11:52:43 pm »

I have the same problem - during many battles, I get thrown out of the battlescape, and it's like the battle never happened. This crash always happens during the AI's turn, never during my own. Here is the log of my latest reproduction of this bug:

updateact2012/12/01 23:21:37 (player 0) It's team 1's turn!
2012/12/01 23:21:37 Quizer has taken control over team 1.
2012/12/01 23:21:46 Soldier entered the rescue zone
2012/12/01 23:21:48 Soldier entered the rescue zone
2012/12/01 23:21:53 Soldier entered the rescue zone
2012/12/01 23:21:55 Soldier entered the rescue zone
2012/12/01 23:21:56 Soldier entered the rescue zone
2012/12/01 23:22:01 Team 1 ended round
2012/12/01 23:22:01 Team 7's round started!
2012/12/01 23:22:02 [STATS] alien (Akrokk Tt Treknk) kills civilian (b c) with Snap Shot of plaspistol_ammo (entnum: 130)
2012/12/01 23:22:05 [STATS] alien (Uoorgh Zr Zus Soufz) kills civilian (b c) with Snap Shot of plasrifle_ammo (entnum: 128)
2012/12/01 23:22:07 R_AnimChange: No model given (walk)
2012/12/01 23:22:07 LET_StartPathMove: Could not change anim of le: 138, team: 7, pnum: 9
2012/12/01 23:22:07 ********************
2012/12/01 23:22:07 ERROR: LE_DoEndPathMove: Actor movement is out of sync: 157:128:0 should be 159:137:0 (step 2 of 2) (team 7)
2012/12/01 23:22:07 ********************
2012/12/01 23:22:07 Shutdown server: Server crashed.
2012/12/01 23:22:07 Unload the game library

It seems the problem has to do with alien movement - apparently the alien isn't where the game expects it to be. It always happens to aliens, not civilians (all my occurrences of this bug say 'team 7' in the error line). It seems to me that this often happens when the aliens are shooting around a lot, but since only deaths are logged and violence may happen off-screen (as during this particular trial run), it is impossible for me to confirm either way.

If I retry the mission enough times, I can usually get to the end without this happening within a couple of attempts, but it severely hampers my enjoyment of the game. I decided to get the stable release instead of a development version, but this isn't turning out to be particularly stable.

I'm pretty sure this problem has long since been fixed, and I would like to know if a patch exists, or, failing that, a workaround, or whether I'll have to get a more recent development version to avoid this problem. I tried looking over the bug list on the sourceforge page, but wasn't able to find this bug among the huge number listed there. I also wasn't sure what version the 'open' and 'closed' tags apply to - just because something is labeled as 'closed' and thus presumably fixed, doesn't mean this is the case for this release which is more than half a year old now.

Anyway, if someone reads this, please let us know if there is a patch or workaround for this bug.


thank you for your time


Quizer