Messages

46

Troubleshooting / Re: Playing Openxcom with Steam Overlay?

« on: March 19, 2017, 02:06:25 pm »

Ok, thanks but i found out the solution.

- I downloaded the zip file of openxcom.
- Copy everything to the steam folder of xcom.
- Copy everything in xcom folder of steam folder to data folder.
- Change the openxcom.exe to dosbox.exe

This way it registers the time you've played on steam. It may not be important for many people but people like me might enjoy it.

This is a great idea, and it worked well for me for UFO Defense.

However, when I tried to do the same thing for Terror from the Deep, when trying to launch the game Steam told me that the executable is missing. If I tried again, it downloaded the original files again. Any ideas, anyone?

EDIT: I see the problem. I deleted the original content of the folder first, which was a mistake. If I leave everything there and just overwrite with the openxcom contents, it works.

47

Troubleshooting / Re: Unequal LOS - what's going on here?

« on: February 15, 2017, 01:52:16 pm »

Ah, sorry for being unclear, I mean reaction fire by melee units. Like, I'm running past a silacoid and it hits me. I don't remember it ever happening in the original.

Come to think of it, it's listed as a difference.

48

Troubleshooting / Re: Unequal LOS - what's going on here?

« on: February 11, 2017, 11:11:50 am »

You forgot to add, that it's totally vanilla. Altering vanilla is not the purpose of OpenXcom.

By that logic, you wouldn't have aliens facing away from the Skyranger in vanilla, but not in openxcom. Or salary payments for soldiers in transit. Or melee reaction-fire. Or, y'know, any other of the many common sense improvements that openxcom introduced.

Equal LOS would make a wonderful example of such a common sense improvement. Consistent mutual surprise makes sense and feels fair.

49

Troubleshooting / Re: Openxcom messing with Windows language settings?

« on: February 11, 2017, 01:27:07 am »

Ah well, I'll just let it stay until I've had enough openxcom for a while.

Thanks for the answer!

50

Troubleshooting / Re: Aliens pick up weapons?

« on: February 11, 2017, 01:25:11 am »

Sooo any plans to finish the code for it? If not, maybe it should stop being distributed with the basic installation of openxcom... it's misleading. (Amusingly, I totally forgot about this thread and actually re-tested this again because it kept annoying me that it doesn't appear to work).

51

Troubleshooting / Openxcom messing with Windows language settings?

« on: February 09, 2017, 10:44:50 pm »

I have 3 languages/keyboards installed in my system, for switching around with alt-shift. English is NOT one of them.

When I start openxcom - and as far as I can tell, only then, no other program does this - English gets added to the keyboards I can choose with alt-shift.

To make it even more weird, the English option does NOT get added to the "language preferences" list. If I go into those options to remove it, I need to manually add it first, and only then can I remove it. Then it disappears from the alt-shift list as well, at least until I play openxcom again.

This is obviously not what I would call desireable behaviour from a game...

Other info: my system is Windows 10. Openxcom display language can be English, or it can be something else, it doesn't stop the behaviour.

52

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: February 13, 2015, 11:58:55 pm »

UPDATE: the game's fix to a problem with dogfight speed resulted in this info from Warboy:

mod authors: double your ufo break-off times and reload rates for both ufos
and craft weapons.

I replaced my tweaked ruleset with a version that does this, attached in the same post as before.

The actual mod author needs to do that for their ruleset. (Or you can all just play with my tweaks, muahaha)

53

Offtopic / Git builds history?

« on: February 13, 2015, 05:04:39 pm »

Is there a way to see it all, and if there is, is it known to the community? This page seems to only show a few latest ones, unless I'm missing something obvious. And the CHANGELOG.txt that comes with the game only goes up to the 1.0 milestone.

Reason I'm wondering is that you have things like the 02_12 fix to the dogfight timer, which says

mod authors: double your ufo break-off times and reload rates for both ufos
and craft weapons.

But it'll be gone from the page soon and those mod authors who didn't happen to look during that time won't know to do this.

54

Troubleshooting / Re: Unequal LOS - what's going on here?

« on: January 30, 2015, 05:27:49 pm »

"It's further from the corner than it is from the side." is exactly my point. 32, 20 is more the corner than the side and is further from the floater.

Anyway, the only thing that makes this asymmetrical, if I understand your earlier explanation right, is the smoke inside the soldier-cylinder:

Code: [Select]

  Floater                                                Soldier
[   P---]------------------------------#################[###P###]#####
    1   2                                               3   4
P is their point of view cameras.

So the Floater has to trace a line from 1 to 3 to see the soldier, while the soldier has to go from 4 to 2.
1 to 3 contains 3 (inner, clear) + 30 clear voxels and 17 with smoke, so 33 clear + 17 smoke.
4 to 2 contains 3 (inner, smoke) voxels + 17 smoke and 30 clear, so 30 clear + 20 smoke.
Do I have this right?

If you made it so that the 3 inner voxels were always ignored in the calculations, it'd be 2 to 3 for both of them, with a result of 30+17 and guaranteed mutual surprise. What do you think?

55

Troubleshooting / Re: Unequal LOS - what's going on here?

« on: January 30, 2015, 04:54:00 pm »

soldier B isn't taking reaction fire AFTER the alien already reacted to soldier A. if you move soldier B first, he gets shot just the same. the aliens spend TUs when performing reaction shots, and so their reaction score drops.

I know how reaction fire works. Are you responding to this? "Other approaches, either to 32, 20, or to 31,19 then 30,20, result in mutual surprise". I didn't mean "the other soldier approaches". I meant other lines of approach. With the Floater still having his TUs, if you move the first soldier to 32, 20 you get mutual surprise.

as for the alien seeing you when you can't see it, think of it this way: your soldier's line of sight is a line, traced from near the top center of the soldier, which is represented in 3d space by a cylinder of diameter 3. the alien can see you because of these 3 voxels: the alien's line of sight has to travel through say, 320 voxels to spot you, 17 of which are smoke, your soldier has the same 320 length line, but because his is starting from inside the smoke, it has to go through 20 voxels filled with smoke, hence the difference.

But wait, 31, 20 is closer to the Floater than 32, 20, so the path should be shorter. Why would the soldier be able to see from 32, 20 but not 31, 20? I suppose there could be some quirk in how the smoke got distributed, since the epicenter was on the other side of the Skyranger and it could have shielded that square better...

If so, then yeah, that explains it. So, this wouldn't be a problem if the smoke cloud was entirely between them, as both of them would go through the same number of smoke and non-smoke voxels, right? And this means you're potentially putting yourself at a disadvantage whenever advancing through smoke cover... so every time you exit the Skyranger for instance.

But from the point of view of the player this is arbitary. There is nothing that can be inferred from the battlescape that says "tactical mistake" about moving to 31, 20 but not 32, 20.

Do you think it could be fixed by simply not including those 3 "inner" voxels in the calculations? Then they'd both be counting a path of 317, of which 17 would be smoke.

56

Work In Progress / Re: minimod: Elerium and Alloys Listed on Top

« on: January 30, 2015, 03:39:52 pm »

Wow, C++ got a lot uglier since I last bothered with it (which admittadly is a loong time ago).

57

Troubleshooting / Unequal LOS - what's going on here?

« on: January 30, 2015, 11:14:15 am »

Savegame attached.

The soldier on 32,19, Niahm O'neill vs Floater on 24,31.

If the soldier moves left, to 31,20, she dies from the Floater's reaction fire. No mutual-surprise.
Other approaches, either to 32, 20, or to 31,19 then 30,20, result in mutual surprise.

What's going on here? Something wrong with smoke calculations? Assymetry in LoS shapes?

What's especially weird is that the "bad" spot, 31,20, from which she can't see the floater, is between the two "good" ones, 32,20 and 30,20.

58

Open Feedback / Re: TFTD Damage or XCom damage?

« on: January 27, 2015, 10:38:29 pm »

Interesting thing about this thread is that most everyone is focusing on the low end of the damage, on the fact that 0-200% occasionally means deadly weapons don't kill.

To me it seems far more important what happens on the higher end. 150% max means you have a noticeably lower chance to get one-shotted instead of taking wounds, as a power/flying suit and even more so as a hovertank. Meaning game is more forgiving of poor scouting and positioning (= not a good thing, in my book). Let's do some math for fun (correct me please if I made any mistakes)

Take a rookie with 30 health using a power suit and getting a frontal hit (100 armor) from a heavy plasma (115 base):
Damage required to kill: 130 or more

With 0-200% rules, damage range is 231 long, from 0 to 230, and the killing damage range is 230-129 = 101 (damage values from 130 to 230 kill, damage values below that wound or do nothing).
101/231 = 43% chance.

With 50-150% rules, damage range is 116 long, from 57.5 to 172.5 (*), and the killing damage range is 172.5-129 = 43.5.
43.5/116 = 37.5% chance.
(*) I don't know which way the game rounds so I won't bother

Now 37.5% vs 43% chance to get oneshotted may not seem that much a difference, but we were looking at a rookie, and those are fragile in any case. Let's consider an experienced soldier - the kind we care about if they die or not - using a flying suit.
60 Health and 110 frontal armor.
Damage required to kill: 170 or more

With 0-200% rules, the killing damage range is 230-169 = 61.
61/231 = 26.4%

With 50-150% rules, the killing damage range is 172.5-169 = 3.5.
3.5/116 = 3%

Three percent.

Then you have the hovertank, which has 130 armor and 90 health... never mind one-shotting in this case, just consider max possible damage. 100 vs 42.

Now of course often you will be hit with entire series of shots, or not from the front, etc. Still... that's why I can't play 50-150% rules. Tried it, and it felt like easy mode.

59

Offtopic / Re: Quick question about the ufopaedia wiki

« on: January 27, 2015, 01:55:44 pm »

I'll probably still use gauss on my cannon fodder, while the MC-strong troops in the back hold the real weapons. Just so the scouts don't kill my Psi-men when mind-controlled.

Still, a shame. I /like/ gauss weapons: their look, sound, general feel. Can't wait for openxcom's TFTD, so I can fiddle with resistances.

60

Work In Progress / Re: minimod: Elerium and Alloys Listed on Top

« on: January 27, 2015, 12:20:39 pm »

Beats me! I've never used the ocx editor, so I don't know how well that works. And I don't mess with Xcom1ruleset. I just wrote it as a separate mod.

I now attached it to my original post, so if you like, try using that file, enable it in mods, and see if that works better for you? (Hopefully you won't need to go back to a savegame from before you made your change).