Messages

46

Offtopic / Re: 1st Jan, 1999

« on: January 13, 2013, 12:44:22 am »

Nothing happening for a couple of days, but the general stores completed in my new US base so I hung a large radar system there. I did not really have enough cash for a living quarters, but they take only 16 days instead of 25 so hopefully I'll have enough money soon.

47

Playthroughs / Re: Let's Play Is LIVE!

« on: January 12, 2013, 07:09:37 pm »

Yeah, I guess I need to go back and see who's dead. Trouble is, it takes quite a bit of checking to see who died. I'm going to add a request to display who died onscreen

This is a very good feature request. You should always be able to bring up a summary page of soldiers in the battle that includes their health/wounds and whatever else can comfortably fit on one screen, maybe weapon equipped.

48

Playthroughs / Re: Let's Play Is LIVE!

« on: January 12, 2013, 03:08:29 pm »

I hope everyone can see that the game plays really well now, with some very worthwhile GUI upgrades and lots more on the way.

Strategery-wise, I tend to go straight for laser rifle rather than armor, because 1) you pretty much need lasers to tackle cyberdisks, 2) laser pistols give you something quickly that is cheap and useful to manufacture, 3) armor takes quite a long time to manufacture per unit until you have lots of engineers, 4) armor works best with the Medikit which you also have to research and build and 5) armor requires resources which you just may run out of in the early game.

49

Offtopic / Re: 1st Jan, 1999

« on: January 11, 2013, 04:56:24 pm »

Downed a small in central africa on the 9th. Upped my scientists to about 30, and finally got Laser Pistol at COB on the 10th. I also realized that I'd forgotten to plop down an alien containment, so I've put some of my research paths 10 days behind schedule - darn!

50

Offtopic / Re: Xenonauts

« on: January 06, 2013, 07:31:49 pm »

I bellied up for the pre-order, and downloaded a couple of alphas. Not spent much time with it, really. It does look good, though, and is much more of a spiritual successor to xcom than EU. They are a little behind schedule but not terribly so, and bulking out a large quantity of good quality artwork. Certainly anyone browsing this forum should strongly consider paying the man.

51

Offtopic / Re: 1st Jan, 1999

« on: January 06, 2013, 07:19:44 pm »

.. and then nothing until a Small detected just before midnight on Jan 5th, brought down shortly after midnight in N Africa. I waited until daylight and got first blood, losing 1 operative.

52

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: January 06, 2013, 01:52:59 am »

btw I've merged this locally several times, and would be happy to reopen two or three small branches to incorporate the changes a piece at a time.

53

Offtopic / Re: 1st Jan, 1999

« on: January 01, 2013, 06:46:06 pm »

Well it's Jan 1st, I started an OpenXcom game on Experienced. Plopped a base down near Budapest. Fired 3 soldiers with bravery 10, hired some replacements, set scientists to work on Lasers and ordered 10 more. Set up an interceptor with Avalance and Stingray, and one with Stingray and Cannon. I also ordered up some misc items like flares, prox grenades etc. Got started on new stores, quarters, large radar, another lab, and alien containment. Also started a new base near Cheyenne Mtn.

Destroyed a vsmall around 1845. There was also some activity over South America but my interceptor found nothing. That's it for day 1.

54

Suggestions / Purchase/Recruit screen

« on: December 31, 2012, 09:41:44 pm »

I posted a small change to hide items in the Purchase/Recruit screen. It read values from the Options.cg file and required changes to options.h etc. It was OK so far as it went but was not much better than zeroing out the item in the rules file.

Warboy suggested being able to e.g. ctrl-click and the item disappears, with some other combination or button to restore them all. This would be a big improvement. It prompted me to post here and get suggestions.

I'm thinking about adding "arrow" buttons (like on the equip-soldier screen), when you click that button the item goes to the bottom and maybe turns a different color. This way you can shove unwanted or rarely-wanted items to the bottom of the list. This would get saved as part of the game, so you can keep old tech in the usual places for early games.

This is a good bit of work for a small improvement, but sliding through ancient techs on the purchase page has always bugged me. I'll take the best suggestion and give it a shot.

55

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: December 29, 2012, 02:09:40 am »

I pushed the changes, described above.

The request for shift-click as an option is reasonable, this will get done eventually. I used SDL to detect key states, so it ought to be cross-platform. It would be nice to hear from somebody that it works on a non-win platform. Turret state is rendered, this has been in there for a while I think.

I have not done much testing with path preview. If you have trouble, turn off path preview and I'll issue a patch.

I could have done a much better job with the soldier-strafe implementation, I will go back and code-clean that section using the learning I acquired during the last week. My thanks to Sup and Warb who waded through and cancelled some of my previous garbage.

56

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: December 28, 2012, 02:41:36 pm »

Progress report: I have it implemented pending an issue with vertical movement for hover tanks. I may push some of the ready changes.

Whoever suggested this for tanks, it plays very well. Here's how it works, and there may still be time for small changes (e.g. tu cost):

- strafe: true option set
- Turret becomes the FOV
- CTRL-key, LEFT click the point you want to look at
- Turret turns, tu cost is 1 for 45-90, 2 for 135-180 (cheaper than regular turning)
- Turret stays turned as the vehicle moves, FOV will now strafe whichever way the turret is pointing. Note that the turret stays turned relative to the tank, not the compass.

57

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: December 25, 2012, 04:23:28 pm »

My git skills having improved, I resubmitted the changes that support the strafe move, starting from a recent branch that includes all changes through today.

I also sent in a small change to LBM file loading so that people like me who deleted them back when 20kb was a big deal can still run openxcom.

58

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: December 25, 2012, 01:34:09 pm »

If Hythlo was referring in general to aliens strafing, the AI was not modified to be able to perform that kind of move. So it is a small advantage for the xcom faction.

59

Programming / Re: "Strafe" sideways move

« on: December 25, 2012, 02:00:51 am »

I'm all for it and I think I can do it. Leave me with it for a couple of days. I will also post a fix for a bug that does not show up under the debugger, only when you start openxcom detached.

60

Playthroughs / Re: Let's Play Is LIVE!

« on: December 23, 2012, 05:17:01 pm »

This is looking great. Grats to all the devs, fantastic.

For my "Jan 1st, 1999" game, I had not decided which game to use, but OpenXcom has so many killer GUI enhancements now that this is the way to go. I just hope I can stay one step ahead of Warboy's "Destroyer of saves" during my game