Topics

1

OXCE Bugs FIXED / [FIXED] you can transform a soldier out of the base, if you do it individually

« on: October 08, 2024, 07:40:26 am »

See: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=5047.msg167120#msg167120

You can't apply transformations to soldiers which are out of the base, e.g. enroute to mission, if you try to do this through "Transformations Overview" screen; shows no eligibility for those soldiers that are out of the base.

If you go to the agent directly and apply it there (see the instructions to reproduce above), you can do it and it results in strangeness (the agent teleports back to the base).

I suppose the same restrictions should apply as in "Transformations Overview" screen.

2

OXCE Bugs / [Bug] ironman game saved/exited in battlescape, yet no battleGame in the save

« on: October 06, 2024, 10:15:04 pm »

While playing XCF (the most recent github snapshot) with OXCE 7.14.3, I experienced something strange. I had been playing a battle mission (STR_UCITY) for an hour or two and was almost complete (turn about 20 or so), but had to stop for a couple of hours so I saved the game and exited (ironman mode). The timestamp of the save (today 17:22) matches the time I saved and stopped. Now that I reloaded the save, the game brought me to the geoscape (centered on the mission site) as if I had never went on the mission (also no returning craft from the mission).

There must have been some problem with saving, and for some reason OXCE failed to create battleGame entry in the savefile. No returning craft is probably related to this (and would have been created only after the mission was success or failure?). Unfortunately, I no longer remember the exact gametime, so I don't know if the time also rolled back somehow or the game continues from the time mission previously started.

If the game had crashed, the save entry would have been a battlescape save from turn 20 or so (save every 5 turns).

Unfortunately, I doubt there is anything that would give away the problem in the save or help in reproducing the issue. But I'd love to be proven wrong. So I'm attaching the save.

If there could have been something special in openxcom.log, the log has been overwritten when the game was next run with nothing suspicious on it. (I wonder if it would make sense to store multiple versions of openxcom.log, say 5 latest runs, to separate files).

As said I fear nothing can be done about this, but I'm posting this in any case if
a) someone has encountered something similar, and/or
b) by some miracle a bug would be found and this could be prevented from happening in the future.

3

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] Experience Overview UI

« on: September 28, 2024, 07:52:17 am »

Now that we have got CTRL-ALT-E, the experince screen with steroids (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=10900.0), this made me wonder.

How easy would it be to put even more steroids on the experience screen. That is, develop CTRL-ALT-E (or some such keybinding) in a way that would show which skills the soldier has already trained in (and maybe even how much). This would be more useful than just knowing who has got any experience at all, as many would like to give the soldiers multiple types of skill experience if feasible (firing, throwing, melee, etc.)

4

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] hotkeys to adjust dogfight speed during a dogfight

« on: September 25, 2024, 06:02:11 pm »

In mods which include hunter-killers (or otherwise very fast enemy UFOs), you need to keep dogfight speed in the options rather low, so that you have time to react if someone attacks you quickly, even out of the blue so you don't have time to go to the options screen. But if it ends up being a usually boring encounter, you'd like a quick way to speed it up.

What I'd really like are some hotkeys in the dogfight screen to speed up (or I suppose slow down) the dogfight.

I propose using 1,2,3,4,5,6 similar to geoscape speed setting where 1 would be the slowest and 6 the fastest speed. This way the players would not really need to learn and remember any new hotkeys that they would not already be using in geoscape. This change would only apply to the specific dogfight where the key is pressed, not the dogfight speed setting in the options.

5

OXCE Support / [Answered] smarter equip mod issue with item categories (TWoTS)

« on: August 09, 2024, 08:27:33 pm »

I suppose this can be reported here because smarter equip mod is shipped with OXCE.

If I enable smarter equip mod with TWoTS, many early-access items of 'categories: [STR_DUALENV_WEAPONS]' disappear from the equipping screen regardless of the starting conditions (underwater / surface). Tested with OXCE 7.13, I haven't tried this earlier.

You can test this with, for example, a new battle with Gas Cannon or Magna-blast grenades. For some reason (not inheriting anything from vanilla definitions?), for example ADS works.

However, I'm not sure if 'smarter equip' is even supposed to be compatible with non-vanilla TFTD (and more precisely, what kind of mods will cause misbehaviour). But if it isn't intended to work, I wonder if there should be some way to mitigate confusion like this.

6

OXCE Suggestions OK / [Suggestion] Record the real time spent on a campaign?

« on: July 12, 2024, 04:46:48 am »

It would be cool if OXCE kept track of how many hours you have used (wasted) on a particular campaign, like some of the newer games do.

This could at least be saved to the save file when the game is (auto)saved, but it could also be shown when loading the save in the new load screen, under "DETAILS" section at the bottom (i.e. when it now says, for example, "Geoscape [DATE], (IRONMAN)" one could add at the end ", XXX h". (Although I'm not sure how one currently shows the details when loading a battlescape save with a really long mission name; if this is a problem, it would be sufficient to show this only for geoscape saves, not battlescape saves.)

In my opinion optimally the timer should pause if you open the options screen (e.g. hit ESC on Geoscape), allowing you to pause without quitting. But I suppose opinions might differ on this.

Essentially this would only have information value to the player, but I suppose the players could also use it for various self-challenges (e.g. how quickly you can get to a particular point in a campaign) but not competitive speedrunning.

Apparently real time things are easily implementable (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=9572.msg137832#msg137832) so I suppose it's more a question if this is something deemed useful in OXCE or not.

7

OXCE Builds & Ports / OXCE GUI issues w/ Linux after upgrading from native SDL 1.2 to sdl-compat12

« on: June 21, 2024, 10:10:25 pm »

After I upgraded Linux distro from Centos 8 Stream to Centos 9 Stream, I have noticed a few new issues in OXCE 7.12 (I'm using the bionic image from the  lxnt.wtf site) that were not present before:

1)  When your craft arrives at destination and you press CTRL on the "start mission yes/no screen", the GUI button for "NO" no longer changes to "PATROL". However, if you still press the button while holding down CTRL, the craft will start patrolling, not return to the base. So this is a visual problem only. I suspect the same would occur with similar other things were the GUI should change based on CTRL-pressing.

I suppose this is due to some changes in SDL compatibility (see some earlier issues, for example, at https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl12-compat/issues/215). What happened in the upgrade was that earlier I had installed "native" SDL 1.2.15, the system upgrade switched this to "sdl12-compat-1.2.60", which tries to provide compatibility but actually uses SDL 2.0. Updating to the latest sdl12-compat (1.2.68) didn't seem to help.

I suppose it's more probable that this is a problem in sdl12-compat, but I suppose it cannot be ruled out that there might be some issue with the GUI code (while it still works in native 1.2). Not sure how to go about trying to find the root cause for this; ideas are welcome.

2)  With music and/or sound effects, I'm getting strange beeps now and then, so far I've noticed this only in the battlescape sounds. Still trying to figure this out.

8

The X-Com Files / EMP equipment and its damage

« on: February 29, 2024, 10:17:33 am »

On another note, the dependencies for EMP weapons are somewhat strange.

In real life, the existence of EMP has been well-documented for a long time, although I admit I do not know how and if it has been miniaturized for use of EMP grenades, for example. But I suppose being able to obtain or manufacture EMP weapons after Promo III in 1998-1999 timeframe should not really be a major issue.

In XCF getting EMP is gated through Jarhead investigation, which is dependent on Jarhead autopsy.The only two ways for you to initially get Jarheads is either through Jarhead terror mission (7 % chance starting month 20) or by raiding at least level 2 Dagon manor (the best chance, if you let one grow, but upgrades are also RNG-dependent). So all in all, without good RNG, you might be stuck for a long time without access to EMP. Which would make many things a lot more straightforward and also eventually enables capturing and repurposing sectopods, for example.

How to fix this? If the dependencies are not completely restructured, my other suggestion would be to create two mission scripts: jarheadTerrorEarly and jarheadTerrorLate, like with many other similar instances. The first would have a higher trigger rate, like 20 or 25 % with STR_JARHEAD_INVESTIGATION: false. The latter would have lower percentage, such as 5 % or less, with STR_JARHEAD_INVESTIGATION: true. That way, like in numerous other instances, the probability of initial jarhead encounters would be increased until you have gone forward with the jarhead research.

9

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] Unify removal from psi/gym training

« on: February 27, 2024, 08:09:44 am »

Continuing from a side comment from here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=11808.msg161801#msg161801

Regular soldier transformations can be configured with 'transferTime' (the soldier "leaves the base") or 'recoveryTime' (the soldier gets "wounded" for a certain time, the time is always affected by Medbays). With the latter option, the soldier gets kicked out of PSI training, but you can manually put him immediately back to the training. Getting wounded on the battlescape, however, AFAIK does not kick the soldier off PSI training (but I didn't test to confirm this). On the other hand, you cannot gym train wounded soldiers, though they get or can be queued for training automatically when they recover (shows with '+' or '-' sign),

PSI training while wounded seems inconsistent in a number of ways compared to gym training.

I suppose there is no big demand for modders to be able to gym train wounded soldiers (though I suppose some could perhaps argue that being able to do physical exercises should fasten your recovery). But I suppose modders might want to have PSI training wrt. wounded soldiers configurable.

- For example, in TFTD PSI training is explained as inserting a surgical MC implant on the soldier. It would make sense that such surgical implantation could be applied even to wounded soldiers (= not requiring any or at least major active training from the aquanaut). [A modder might actually also want a behaviour that inserting the implant causes wounding for some time, i.e. not able to go on battlescape missions.] On other implementations, PSI training (before or after you learn the first bits of PSI skill), you might require the soldier to be healthy to conduct all the mental or molecular exercises.

So in summary, what I'd like is that:

1) the default behaviour of kicking soldier off PSI training after having applied a transformation with 'recoveryTime' is changed either so that you can
 a) continue PSI training while wounded and you don't need to insert him back manually ('allow smooth PSI training while not requiring manual re-insertment'), or
 b) not by default PSI train wounded soldiers ('change behavior by removing the manual re-insertment loophole and also make it consistent so that battlescape wounding would take the soldier off PSI training')

2) if you no longer can PSI train wounded soldiers, add a similar +- queuing GUI to PSI training as currently exists with gym training

3) major modders to comment on whether they would like the various aspects of PSI training of wounded soldiers be configurable. I can think of at least three scenarios that might all be the same but one could possibly want to treat in a different manner:
 a) can the initial PSI training be applied also to wounded soldiers [note also OG PSI training mode of being able to start training only on a monthly basis],
 b) can initial PSI training continue and produce results (= get closer to obtaining the first PSI skill) even though the soldier gets wounded (whether by transformation or in the battlefield) and
 c) after you have obtained your first PSI skill, can you improve your PSI skill while being wounded.

10

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] Shortcut from soldier list to stats (R-click)

« on: February 11, 2024, 09:47:04 pm »

I'd like to see one or two QoL-improvements to the soldier lists when applying transformations or special trainings.

1) Some way to get into a particular soldier's own stats and inventory (at least the armor selection) from those screens. This could be useful to verify all the stats before choosing a transformation/training. Another very useful thing would be to remove the armor from the soldier (to prevent it getting destroyed in transformations, or getting blackholed in those trainings where the soldier leaves the base and is transferred back to the base X hours later (e.g. in XCF martial arts training).

For example MMB or RMB would be ideal.

Currently I have to figure out which soldiers I want to apply a transformation/training on, then get out of the screen and go find the soldier from soldier list again to remove the armor. Sometimes you have to go back and forth multiple times if you're unsure which soldier would be the best candidate at the moment.

2) Once you have 30-40+ soldiers or other units on a base, being able to Q-search on the agent list might be useful, so that you wouldn't need to change the sort order or scroll down the list manually to find the soldier you're looking for. If the shortcut 1) is implemented, I suppose this wouldn't be all that useful. So just having QoL improvement 1) would be adequate for me at least for now.

EDIT:
Now that I'm at it, is there a reason why a person who undergoes some special training (in XCF for example 'Install TNI' that results in him getting wounded for X days), he gets kicked out of PSI training and gym training (can be inserted back - PSI training doesn't consider being wounded, at least in a visible manner, while you can queue the gym training with +)? It would be nice if this didn't happen if the person doesn't leave the base.

11

OXCE Bugs FIXED / [FIXED] crash when transferring currently opened craft

« on: February 09, 2024, 10:42:43 pm »

I got the following crash with 7.11.4 with XCF 3.3-snap. I was equipping my soldiers in India base OSPREY (I suppose I removed some armors and then the base storage was overflown). Then while still in basescape I tried to transfer the OSPREY to another base (Cuba). Then I got the following crash. I suppose this was somehow related to the base storage overflow.

[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] A fatal error has occurred: vector::_M_range_check: __n (which is 1) >= this->size() (which is 1)
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(OpenXcom::CrossPlatform::stackTrace(void*)+0x36) [0x55ce1b2810f6]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(OpenXcom::CrossPlatform::crashDump(void*, std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&)+0x477) [0x55ce1b281c9
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(exceptionLogger()+0x75) [0x55ce1b063155]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] /lib64/libstdc++.so.6(+0x9654c) [0x7fa62ac9f54c]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] /lib64/libstdc++.so.6(+0x965a7) [0x7fa62ac9f5a7]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] /lib64/libstdc++.so.6(+0x96808) [0x7fa62ac9f808]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] /lib64/libstdc++.so.6(+0x9206b) [0x7fa62ac9b06b]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(OpenXcom::CraftSoldiersState::initList(unsigned long)+0xad5) [0x55ce1b0a2ef5]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(OpenXcom::CraftSoldiersState::init()+0x38) [0x55ce1b0a5f18]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(OpenXcom::Game::run()+0x464) [0x55ce1b2a0a04]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(main+0x175) [0x55ce1b040035]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] /lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe5) [0x7fa62a2d37e5]
[09-02-2024_22-08-11]   [FATAL] ./OpenXcomEx(_start+0x2a) [0x55ce1b0478da]

As I suspected, there was probably something wrong with CraftSoldiersState.

I tried to replicate what I did but I suppose I couldn't get it exactly right because I couldn't trigger the crash again.

I hesitate to open a BUG thread on this because I couldn't reproduce it myself. But good luck if this is sufficient to find the problem via code analysis. I'll attach a save just in case.

12

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] Longer search strings with 'Q'

« on: February 04, 2024, 02:25:14 pm »

Searching with 'Q' seems to be capped to 9 or 10 characters, depending on how wide the characters you type are (try with 12345689A and 1234567891 to see slightly different results). It could be useful to have some more, ideally at least 12 or 15 *). However, in some contexts there isn't enough space in the GUI for a much longer field.

Would it be feasible to implement the search field either as:
 a) the displayed width is fixed, but the text keeps rolling to the right as you type it longer (and the start vanishes from sight). Then the search string could be essentially of infinite length.
 b) like a) but as you keep typing, it still shows only the first 9-10 characters (no rolling), but you just have to write the rest of the string 'blind'.

Either of these would work for me, but a) would be more user-friendly.

*) For example, in XCF with a big tech tree, I just wanted to search for 'syndicate security', preferable I'd have typed 'syndicate sec' to find just that, not everything else related to the syndicate.

13

OXCE Support / [Answered] build-over of research space leads to negative research space used

« on: January 03, 2024, 05:29:37 pm »

When playing XCF and building an Advanced Intelligence Center over Intelligence Center (which provides space for5 researchers), with all the researchers full at work, I got to -5 available research space. So I suppose the scientists can continue working on their on-going projects in the living quarters even if the lab goes under construction.

I recall seeing this before as well. If you reassign scientists, you can no longer go negative. But I do have a recollection that some others things are checked in other build-overs (IIRC for example building over a facility that provides storage capacity requires reducing the used storage capacity first).

I wonder if it's intentional that this is not checked at build-over phase, and prevented - requiring you to de-assign the scientists first?

14

The X-Com Files / Synthmuscles availability

« on: January 02, 2024, 07:45:41 pm »

Another note inspired by Stone Lake's SH/IM run. If you get lucky and obtain synthmuscles (and later alien surgery from somewhere else) early in the game, this can dramatically change the game, even change the game balance. It's a completely different early and mid-game experience to have a number of synthsuits versus having to do without. You can even go through most of the campaign without seeing any of them.

There is about 4 % to get one or more synthmuscles out of an osiron crate. This is a very high chance (among the highest of what you get from osiron crates). If you wanted to rebalance the game to avoid these "extremely lucky runs", I'd remove synthmuscles completely from osiron crates or decrease their chances. On the other hand, the chances to get them from MIB crates could be increased. Given that MIBs actually use synthmuscles themselves in their armors it should be reasonably likely to find them there (currentl it's possible but it's actually more likely to find them in osiron crates rather than in MIB crates).

15

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] display craft's estimated flight time (ETA)

« on: January 02, 2024, 10:47:29 am »

It would be very useful to display the estimated flight time of crafts somehow, especially in mods which have slow crafts and missions with despawn timers counted in hours or days (and missions which despawn even if targeted).

This would make it easier to try to figure out if the craft will get there in time. (You can return to base immediately if you're not happy with the result.) This might also help if you're trying to figure out whether it's day or night on the other side of the globe when you arrive there, depending on which you prefer for the mission.

While the speed of craft is not linear due to different values of craft acceleration, for simplicity the estimate could ignore the acceleration and be based on a simpler linear calculation t=s/v (remaining distance over maximum velocity). Especially for missions where this would be most useful this would be a very good estimate.

Without bigger changes to GUI I don't see an easy way to display this information when you're selecting the destination, so I'm not proposing that - but rather an easy way to check it afterwards. So, I have two specific suggestions where to place this information.

1) in craft interception overview.  Where it now says "EN ROUTE", there's some space to add a few bits of information. This could say for example "EN ROUTE (13.7 h)". I would propose using only the hours here, and the accuracy of 0.1 or 1 hour (how it's rounded up/down doesn't really matter). I suppose the estimate is close enough so that you don't need a "~" there. Omit brackets and use just hours without decimals if you need to conserve space. So the most minimal way to display this information would be, for example, "EN ROUTE 2h".

2) in craft destination details. Where it now says "STATUS>(...)", if the craft has a destination, add a row below saying "ARRIVAL IN: 13.7 h.", with yellow and indented to the same level as DESTINATION. If you want, this could also show days, hours and minutes instead of just showing it in hours. ("ARRIVAL" or some other term instead of "FLIGHT TIME" to use a neutral term that applies to all kinds of craft.)

Instead of a new row, it might be possible to add the information at the end of the destination string like in 1), but this might lead to problems if the destination string is long. And because there is lot of free space in this dialog, I'd propose adding a more detailed information as a separate row.