Messages

1

Brutal AI / Re: Grenade shortcut

« on: April 08, 2024, 04:10:40 pm »

Correct. Shortcuts are automating biscuits logic. Not only Greenacres type but all the actions on checking whether grenade is inventory, what type, primed already, and on and on. Essentially just an action script. I programed it for vanilla item set.

Can be redone for ogre sets but not customizable.

Meridian is right that it may be not good to force all player to this automation. However, it is not forced. Player ca use it or not.

2

Brutal AI / Re: Grenade shortcut

« on: April 07, 2024, 06:58:43 pm »

I agree. Any shortcut should be adjusted from the game point of view.

3

Brutal AI / Re: Grenade shortcut

« on: April 07, 2024, 05:59:44 pm »

Agree. It does get annoying to the level that interferes with conscious tactical thinking. Besides, this is just an available keyboard shortcut that does not stop player from doing this old fashioned way if they need to.

About 1-2 seconds. Absolutely tragic time loss

It is tragic to me and other people I made this improvement for. Not forcing it on others.

It takes a lot more time (and brain) to choose which grenade, or which medikit you want to use.
Bandages? Healing spray? First aid kit? Healing gel?
And take it from a belt? Or quick draw slot? Or Backpack?

Automated decision is never a good decision... so what "innovation" and what "layer"?

Are you talking about vanilla like game/mods or complete game redesign? This feature is for vanilla grenade/item set where you have only those listed in shortcuts.
This is pretty useless to argue how bad it would behave in some other game with different item set.

4

Open Feedback / Re: Small windows

« on: April 07, 2024, 05:45:34 pm »

Try to suggest this feature for BRUTAL AI fork. You can always turn brutal AI itself off if you don't like it and keep other features.

5

Brutal AI / Re: Brutal-OXCE 8.3.0

« on: March 06, 2024, 02:11:47 am »

Regarding killing the last alien. I think someone introduced surrender option making AI surrender when they are overwhelmed. I think this should solve the long ending problem without tweaking AI algorithms.

6

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 02, 2024, 08:59:51 pm »

Started to analyze the code and found something quite interesting :-). The Graphs do NOT necessarily get updated every 30 min as written here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/UFO_Detection#UFO_Activity_Graph

I mean - most of the time they do - but there are events that can be triggered (and increase the score) inside the 30 min interval. Take a look here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Scoring#Alien_Scoring

For example - the 10 points score for Terror mission creation will be granted immediately when the UFO reaches the city - not at the 30 min. Also other missions will work the same way - no necessarily on the 30 min switch. I tested it and could confirm by looking at the graphs just before and just after the Terror ship would land in the City. This was quite a surprise for me - technically it would mean that as a "Heavy Graph Reader" you would actually want to check the Graph every 5 sec to catch all the events immediately :-).

I need to think what this would mean for your notification..... whether I would want it to show up immediately or rather add up the mission score to whatever other score will be generated on the 30min and then display the notification....

If you have any opinion / idea - happy to brainstorm here :-)

Nobody said graphs are updated every 30 minutes. They are real time.

UFO flying (landed) for 30 minutes generates 1 (2) points. That is why UFO related activity is naturally reflected in graphs every 30 minutes. Other alien activity types have their own rules. Usually just once they happened as you discovered.

7

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 02, 2024, 08:44:07 pm »

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/UFO_Detection#UFO_Activity_Graph

Wow, this is exactly what I was calling my feature. Just never saw this statement before.

the UFO/Alien Sub activity graphs, accessed from the Geoscape, can act as a sort of "MUFON" (Mutual UFO Network: a civilian group dedicated to the observation of UFOs/Alien Subs), allowing you to see activity that your radars/sonars cannot.

8

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 02, 2024, 08:42:00 pm »

I don't really understand the fixation on graph granularity. Yes, this feature is replacing graphs constant watching by player, but it does not replace graphs themselves nor it attempt to mimic graph behavior in any way. Seriously, it does not have to do anything with graphs. The presence of graphs in the game just creates an excuse to not call this feature a hardcore cheat as it provides similar information. Should these graphs not exist in the game at all, this feature still would be usable and likable by some players even if called a (formal) cheat.

Think about it. Graphs start with zero every month. OXCE allows scaling them to the smallest granularity so, essentially every new month, your granularity drops to 1 and then may grow again depending on amount of alien activity accumulated during the month. You seriously want to emulate these up-down granularity jumps?

9

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 02, 2024, 08:31:12 pm »

Still - after playing with your feature (on setting #2) for some time, I realized that it is really powerful. In January it is very similar to 'graph mining' but later in the game it brings way more value than

Setting 2 is for super punctual players. I introduced it just because one of such asked me to.
Setting 1 is for normal people and it has granularity 10. Meaning triggering popup only when UFO is 5 hours in the area. This is pretty much designed way: give player some generic insight without pixel precise knowledge.

If you think 2 is too abusive - play with 1. That is what I do. And if you think 1 is too abusive - just not use it!
😀

I mean, with your feature one can play the game with zero radar coverage and still catch most of the UFOs.

No offense, but have you actually tried to play to this to support your statement?. 😉
Radar coverage is definitely better. That is why people keep building bases together with tracking graphs.
Detecting UFO with craft radar requires craft which has multiple disadvantages:
- Information delay. UFO may leave region at the time player knows about it and craft reaches it.
- Discovery chance could be really low especially for combing large regions like pacific.
- All this flying here and there takes your craft out of service for days and makes them unavailable for interception when you need them.
- First couple of months is fine but then player needs more interceptors just to search hidden UFOs. Keeping interceptors just for that, you know, costs much more than few radars.
- Besides, it becomes pretty plain annoying very soon. Again - try it and you'll see.

10

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 02, 2024, 12:58:30 am »

I see. Got it.
Sure, you can go with whatever additional version you want.

Honestly, I was thinking about multiple version of this initially too. However, later I decided to cut down to the minimum. Most player would not care about intricacies of granularity. They just want to have some QoL improvement even though it may be somewhat cheat-like.

11

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 01, 2024, 07:52:59 pm »

I understand what is granularity in GRAPHS. I don't understand how graphs granularity applies to the numbers shown in the popup.
Graphs may show increase from 1000 to 1010 and, yes, human may not be able to distinguish it. However, popup shows just 10.

12

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 01, 2024, 07:03:06 pm »

a) exact info from the Activity graph (so basically +N for every region/country/total whenever something should happen). Is is also a kind of "cheat" cause the graphs get less granular with the time....

You mean another column showing the unfiltered activity? I think this can be done. The question is - which one you want to trigger popup by?

b) the info from a) but with the right granularity factor. Would be the most "purist" solution but maybe not so easy to explain due to granularity.

Sorry, I don't understand the granularity thing. The popup shows how long UFO is present in region. This is usually a number between 1 and 20.

Would this be something interesting? Should I build up a PR?

If you already know what to do - by all means!
Check with the mod owner. I am completely fine.

13

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: March 01, 2024, 02:55:04 am »

I played a bit more with this feature and noticed that it works a bit differently than the Activity Graphs:

- it will show activity as 1 for a landed UFO (Graphs show +2)
- it will not show additional activity for a completed mission
- it will not show activity generated by an alien base, etc.

Have you considered "plugging" this functionality into the
void Country::addActivityAlien(int activity)  (AND void Region::addActivityAlien(int activity) )
functions?

This way you would really track the activity (as the Graphs do) rather than track UFOs.

You are right. It does not and this is by design. This being said, I am open for design modification discussion.

At the beginning of the game radar coverage is tiny. There are a lot of undetected UFOs out there. Standard workaround is to watch activity graphs and send crafts to the active region hoping to detect UFO with craft radar and intercept it (or land nearby). This approach is completely workable. However, it is very annoying to play game at low speed checking graphs every 30 minutes for few months. Ugh.
This feature is the replacement of this technique. Now player can spin the globe at max speed and popup will stop the time when activity changed. Consider it as public report of alien sights helping young X-Com forces.

This feature counts only number of undetected UFOs in region to help player understand where to send their crafts to comb the area. Any other alien activity is irrelevant for this purpose. Similarly, it is irrelevant whether UFO is flying or landed. Player just need to know there are UFOs in region present for X hours.

I agree that, since it filters alien activity, it may be considered as a borderline cheat. However, seasoned player still should be able to differentiate most of the noise events. Detected UFOs are visible on the screen and their activity can be subtracted from the total one. Terror missions also known to player and can be subtracted. Alien base activity happens once a day at midnight and not every 30 minutes making it easy to filter out. Etc. The only thing that cannot be differentiated is whether UFO is flying or landed. I think this is minor, but can modify it if this is a concern.

14

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.12.1

« on: February 14, 2024, 01:31:13 am »

Must be my "number right alignment" feature. Need to make more space for last column.

From the other hand, it seems that the number could either have or not have slash with following difference. In this case I am not sure it needs to be right aligned at all. Yes, it will look misaligned for 1 and 2 digit numbers mix but with this slash character they are not numbers anymore but strings.

15

Brutal AI / Re: Graphs notifications or improvement

« on: January 24, 2024, 08:14:02 pm »

@Alpha Centauri Bear: my original XCOM does not react to the '+' button, so I guess this is an OXC(E?) feature. Also - even if you zoom in, it is only practical when the value is very small - for big values they are "above the screen", so the zoom does not help (the zooming happens on the 0 level, not at the peak).
I remember when I used to play XCOM it was enough for one country/region to go "over scale", so that the scaling (and thus granularity) would change for all of them. 
But anyway - your feature is great as it is, so totally no worries- I don't want to sound like a smarta$$ here :-)
Cheers guys!

It is a

• on numeric keyboard. Check the Options - Controls. The key is listed there for "Zoom in, graphs".

That is fine suggestion, no worries. I just don't want to overly complicate it even if it is perceived somewhat unfair. Think of it as "local news".