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[Spoiler]

16

Open Feedback / The most useless piece of equipment in the X-COM arsonel

« on: June 21, 2014, 07:30:59 am »

Edit: Some of the responses in this thread turned out to be useful to others like me who don't get/use motion scanners.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hmmm... lets see what is moving

OMG there's stuff! Things that moved!

Spoiler"OK lets count how many soldiers I have in range.":

1... 2... is she in range, let me count the tiles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, that's 3... 4... is he in range? lets count the tiles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 no so thats 4... is she in range? lets count the tiles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 yes thats 6 7 wait did I already count her? SHIT!

1 2 3 she was in range 4 5 he wasn't 6 was she in range, lets count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ya.

ok was that 6 or 5? Shit 1 2 3 4 5 6 wait I double counted I think

1 2 3 4 5 6 nope. 6

ok how many blobs are there. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -- 9? There's 3 aliens in there? Oh I wasn't counting the guys in flying suits! FUCK!

7 8 is she in range? 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 no. wait 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ya. OK so that's ...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 right! and nine bloobs. Good, no movement, building is clear.

*PSHEEW* *AAARGH* Oh i guess there was an alien, he just didn't move.

Spoiler"Building is clear, move to the next one.":

OK how many soldiers are in range? Fuckit, lets just look.

I liked how they did it in UFO:TTS where the movement was marked in the main battlescape, but then that might be just too easy and a bit OP.

I've heard some people have found the motion scanner useful though. How? and how many?

17

Open Feedback / Yaay 1.0 %cough% TFTD %cough yaaay woooo 1.0

« on: June 14, 2014, 12:57:40 pm »

So um, about that other true X-COM? The one with all the game-breaking bugs, techtree dead-ends, Lovecraftian themes, dark music, flying chrysalids, and extremely long 2-stage missions?

I was lead to understand that:
1. "After 1.0"
2. TFTD is almost identical from an engine perspective with the exception of some extra functionality and a few hard to crack alien weirdness's
3. Almost all of the TFTD specific functionality and most of the new race weirdness has already been replicated in Openxcom either in enhancements or mods.

So, where do we start?

The last time I tried to turn OpenXcom into OpenTFTD I found that I was able to get the game to run by renaming TFTD files to their EU equivelants, but I quickly ran into issues with parts of the engine expecting the exact data from EU.

I don't remember the details. I got tired of renaming files but more importantly a lot of important info was coming from the ruleset. I started converting things in the ruleset but I quickly ran into the problem that I couldn't figure out what half the stuff in the ruleset was.

Questions:
1. Should I start building a TFTD ruleset by changing everything I do understand so someone else can continue from there? Has anyone already started doing this? Do I have to use the GIT versioning repo stuff to be helpful?
2. Has anyone gotten a recent version of openTFTD running?
3. Aside from the drudgery tasks like strings/translation, converting the basic stuff in the ruleset etc; what stands between what we have now and openTFTD?
4. Did u devs want a break first? Cause you damn well earned it. Not as if you needed to but you F-ing did!

18

Suggestions / Aspect Ratio [letterbox] in options

« on: May 07, 2014, 12:10:06 am »

The letterboxed option should maintain the current aspect ratio when cycling possible resolutions. There should be an aspect ratio reset to put it back to default (16/10).

Most people hate math entirely too much to consider that the original resolution was 640x400 and then extrapolate that 1280x720 would squish/disalign pixels and 1280x800 would not.

19

Open Feedback / No file uploads on Bug Tracker, here for now

« on: May 17, 2013, 09:08:24 am »

I just need this to be here so that I can link to a ruleset file without fucking with rapidshare or whatever.

20

Open Feedback / WTF are these rulesets

« on: May 08, 2013, 09:03:41 pm »

 

21

Offtopic / Anyone opened the Jedi Outcast/Academy code open yet?

« on: May 07, 2013, 11:28:25 pm »

As soon as I found out it had been released I downloaded it, unzipped, and broke it open with mah dick! You ever get into a situation with a girl and you got all this excitement but your not really sure where to put it, or what to do with it once it's in there?

I was looking at the Jedi Academy code and it has all this scary ':std' shit. Looks like some ancient low-level c based code from before VB.net with stuff inside () and {} and all the lines end in ';'s, and someone just stuck these random ass -> things everywhere. Maybe C++, but basically it's one of those languages that's free but you got to turn her over a few times to find the holes and read half a public library of instruction manuals just to find out what all the default public libraries are.

It had lots of these *.cpp files in folders with ridiculous names like cgame, ff, bspthing, RMG, qcommon, Win32. Why can't oldschool programmers use useful descriptive folder/file names like 'Game Launcher' or 'Microsoft Windows Integration Functions' or 'Single Player Menus' or 'In-Game Scripting and Model Animations'. Come to think of it, it looked a bit like OXC source!

Oh and if your about to tell me that Dark Forces is a FPS game and therefore not X-COMY enough to fit in here, well you'll have to take that up with the late Infograms, Raven Software, and 2k. They're all pretty sure X-COM is just as much about FPS/3rdPS as any turn based strategy. Oh, and space piloting sim, go X-WING: X-COM: Alliance Interceptor!

On a serious note: code I saw all looks really clean and well commented, nicely divided into small files, and overall seems pretty small and mostly modular. Just to clarify it's all C++ with VS project and solution files already built, and I was just joking about the STDs.

22

Open Feedback / Absurd ludicrous FPS

« on: May 02, 2013, 10:07:25 am »

30 FPS is acceptable, 60 would be good, 120 is ideal for action games but thoroughly unnecessary in menus and turn based stuff. And it's nice to know that my computer can run the game with out breaking a sweat or having to slow down at any point...

But 950+ FPS is so many times any monitors refresh rate or any living creatures flicker rate that it leaves me scrathing my head and wondering 'why?'.

I'm not saying we should cap the frame-rate, just that ... I'm really not sure what I'm saying other then anything faster then 10 million trillion frames per picosecond is overkill.

What exactly are we updating every time the sun emits a new photon anyway?

23

Suggestions / [old]Lets release a new "stable" build

« on: April 14, 2013, 12:05:18 am »

Or get rid of the idea... at least until 1.0

It's misleading to newcomers and the current release isn't really serving any purpose. It's kinda like - we have this complete, updated, mostly debugged total re-implementation of the good ol X-COM1 that we're ironing out the last few wrinkles from. However what we're showing to the world is this thing that says:

Look, we've got a spinning globe, with bases, and we made even more progress on the battlescape. We even have place-holders for the ufopeadia and graphs, and it all has the original look and feel. Here in another year or two we might even have a version that lets you play x-com without having to install dos-box. Well ok, I guess that's probably not going to happen, but we haven't given up yet and neither should you.

Unfortunately we had to go get real jobs about 8 months ago, and since Firaxis/2k made that other X-COM we just haven't been all that interested anymore. But at least you know your not alone in thinking the good ol X-COM is still worth playing.

Anyway here's what we had before, well, we don't really want to say it... Hey, want to try out one of our test builds? They're really fun!

24

Open Feedback / Selected unit auto-switching on psy-control as an option please?

« on: April 13, 2013, 04:49:57 am »

Currently psy-controling aliens causes them to become selected immediately. This might sound like an odd request but I'd like to be able to turn that new feature off.

In vanilla I could mind control up to 3 aliens before I had to scroll back to the Avenger to select my next psywarrior-in-training.

Also I'd like if I could do something about the duration of the pop-up, it's kinda annoying, especially when your spamming panics.

25

Open Feedback / Missing items from Ruleset

« on: February 24, 2013, 11:36:18 am »

This is just a list of three things that I would expect to see in the ruleset that aren't there.

Soldier Stat Caps: you can set their min and max starting stats but not the caps.
personnel monthly costs: you can set their hire costs but not their monthly wages.
Craft repair rate: I assume the current code repairs a flat amount each hour, and that amount is the same on all craft like Vanilla.

26

Suggestions / Grouped Lists in Purchase/Sell/Manufacture etc

« on: February 22, 2013, 09:55:09 am »

As it is the lists can get pretty long and it can be tedious to get to the item you want. Just wait until modders add 5 new armors, 3 new ammo types for the small-launcher, 14 new HWPs, the ability to build any UFO and fly it out of your hangar, infinity-trillion new grenades including grenades that turn sectiods into chickens and proxies that blow female soldiers clothes off...

The lists are only going to get longer. My idea is to categorize the lists by item types and than by related items, probably using collapsible lists kinda like in windows explorer.

27

Suggestions / Dragable re-ordering of soldiers in crafts

« on: February 22, 2013, 09:46:45 am »

As opposed to clicking the up-arrow on Squaddie Jenkins 8 times to get him to the top so he can die sooner for getting mind-controlled last mission. It would just be easier if I could click and drag him up.

Even better would be if I could ctrl-select multiple soldiers and drag them all at once.

28

Suggestions / Soldier Stats in Soldiers list w/sort

« on: February 22, 2013, 09:40:15 am »

Sometimes I like to buy 100 soldiers, that's how I get 10+ soldiers with 90+ psyStr. That's 100 soldiers to click through and 100 soldiers to individually sell.

Sometimes I just want to know who has the lowest fireing acc/bravery/psy str/reactions so that I can deny them proper armor and weaponry in the hopes that they die a bit sooner.

Sometimes I just want to know how badass my squad is.

My idea is to have perhaps ~4-6 columns in the soldiers list of the basescape, or however many can fit cleanly. Clicking on a stat in the column header would re-order soldiers by that stat, and right-clicking it would open a pop-up that allows you to select a different stat for that column.

Craft order however should be separate from the order soldiers are currently displayed in, so that you don't loose your order every-time you check for psy-noobs.  Maybe a "reset" button would revert the table back to craft order. Ideally I would have the reset button grayed-out until the player re-orders on a column and a separate  button to commit the new order to the craft order, in case you want the psy-noobs in the front or something.

I hope the way I described this isn't too confusing.

29

Suggestions / New Player Messages and Right Click Tooltips

« on: January 01, 2013, 09:15:38 pm »

I would like to see OXC be accessible to new players or younger/noober players, much more so then XCOM1 was. Veteran XCOM masters like us can easily overlook how steep the learning curve actually is. It's obvious when you new it about 20 years ago.

Messages/tooltips could be added later as MODs but that would kind-of defeat their purpose. New players don't try a new game out with the best MODs for learning the game already installed, they actually only look to the modding scene once they decide they like the game. Most new players won't even look at the manual, and for most games why would anyone?

New Player Messages would show once per game when getting to a screen for the first time. Right-click notifications would provide in-depth descriptions of specific things anytime you click on them. Both could be turned off in the options menu (for all games, in options.cfg) and New Player Messages could be reset, all flagged as unseen for the current game, or all flagged as already seen for the duration of the current game.

New Player message examples:

• Geoscape: This is the Geoscape. Here you control the X-COM organization on a global level. The Geoscape connects all other areas of the game. Here you control your crafts and can detect and shot-down hostile alien UFOs, land soldiers at crashed or landed UFOs and respond to various global events.
• Monthly Costs: This Screen shows a readout of the monthly costs associated with running this base, followed by the total monthly income of the X-COM project. This includes craft monthly rental costs, personnel wages, and the maintenance costs of the base itself. Beware that his does not include costs associated with another base, nor the costs of any spending you do throughout the month. If the sum total of the costs of each base is greater then your monthly income, you will lose money at the end of each month. This can cause you to go into debt.
• Pre-battle Soldier Equipment: Here you can choose what weapons and equipment you want on each soldier. Having too much equiped or too heavy of items equiped can cause a soldier to do everything slower, resulting in less then their full amount of TUs being available at the start of a turn. Two handed weapons are more accurate when the other hand is empty. You can view a soldiers stats by clicking their rank insignia. Beware that once you click OK to proceed to the battlescape it will be much more difficult to change your loadout for the rest of the mission.


Tooltip Examples: I assume you can guess what was right clicked on.

• This is the total time it will currently take for your engineers to complete production of these items. The time is shown as hours/days. Items can be manufactured more quickly by assigning more engineers if available. Engineer hours to produce one unit X Total units to produce / Engineers assigned = Total hours to finish
• This is the weapon currently equipped to %STR_CRAFT_CLICKED%. You can find out more about individual craft weapons by looking at their individual pages in the UFOpedia. Craft weapons are used to shoot down UFOs.
• Energy is an unnecessary stat that is only meaningful to newblets that run their soldiers into the middle of the battlescape without reserving time units. Do yourself a favor and right-click on a different stat.  NOOOB!

I'd be willing to write individual messages, collect feedback, etc, if someone else wanted to actually code the messages in. It took me like 30 mins just to write these examples and they're pretty rough so I don't want to write all of them unless they're actually being included. Someone else would still need to write them for other languages too, I only know English.

30

Open Feedback / Resolution settings 16:10

« on: December 28, 2012, 02:49:23 am »

XCOM1 and TFTD graphics were made for 16:10 graphics. It is at 16:10 that the world in the geoscape is round. I have no idea what idiot at microprose thought that people used 16:10 on DOS machines in 1992, they were all 4:3 and as a result everyones globes looked vertically stretched.

At any rate in running OXC in a 16:10 resolution results in nice square pixels, cleaner fonts, a round globe, square base facility tiles, etc. However there are only 2 16:9 options in the options menu, and most people don't exactly know what the ratios of various resolutions off the top of their heads.

I recommend having a separate aspect ratio selection in the options and allowing the user to select from common resolutions in that aspect ratio. Also I assume that at some point we want users to be able to resize the window in windowed mode. If so there should be an option to maintain their selected aspect ratio.

An alternative would be to allow resolutions to be selected from a table. However in the mean time you can set the resolution in the cfg file.

Common resolutions in ratios:
 5:4
320x256
600x480
640x512
1280x1024
1800x1440

 4:3 standard TV/monitor
320x240
400x300
640x480
800x600
960x720
1024x768
1280x960
1440x1080
1600x1200
1920x1440

 16:9 standard widescreen
640x360
960x540
1024x576
1280x720 aka HD 720p
1600x900
1920x1080 aka HD 1080p

 16:10 or 8:5 Ideal for OpenXcom
320x200
640x400
768x480
1024x640
1152x720
1280x800
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200