Brutal-OXCE 8.6.3

[jnarical]

(and need to translate options string - STR_BATTLEALTGRENADES)

Is it fixed now?

[aziza]

new (cheat-bug-feature?) strategy that simplifies the battle with the Battleship for BOXCE 8.5.5
if a blaster bomb explodes on a ramp, it will not kill all your aircraft soldiers

here is a map of ramp-missile touches and soldier deaths
1 and 2 ramp points most deadly and will kill 3 rows
3 and 4 ramp points will kill 2 rows
5 and 6 ramp points will kill 1 tile

see map:
color tiles on the gray ramp = missile touch tile
color tiles inside the blue aircraft = deaths
white tiles = alive

to check this method:
v1 - just shoot by yourself at the ramp from your aircraft on the first turn
v2 - shoot from the ramp to any direction and step back and press end turn and wait alien missile
v3 - load this save file (+ options file too) and press end turn

maybe need to fix OXC or OXCE

[Xilmi]

v1 - just shoot by yourself at the ramp from your aircraft on the first turn
v2 - shoot from the ramp to any direction and step back and press end turn and wait alien missile

Yeah. That's the issue with how I implemented blind-shooting and why it only exists for the blaster in the first place.
My tester back then played mostly TFTD with the door on the indestructible Triton. It was extremely prone for shenanigans like that. Step out, do a shot, step back in and see how the AI wastes their grenades to blindshoot on the outside for no benefit.

For the blaster I left it in mostly because usually, in non-indestructible terrain, it would at least blow up the cover.

I also included the option to make everything destructible. (BOXE=>Battlescape=>Terrain destructibility)

There's certainly some potential for improvement when it comes to stuff like this. Some sort of detection that the player is likely trying to bait blind-shots in certain locations.

[aziza]

do these hotkeys not work on the equipment screen?

[Xilmi]

do these hotkeys not work on the equipment screen?

I actually have no idea. I never tried this. If you say they don't work there, then that's probably true.

[aziza]

BOXCE 8.6.0
crit error - cydonia part 2, alien movement

to reproduce:
1 download save + options
2 click end turn

Spoiler"log":

[FATAL]   A fatal error has occurred: invalid vector subscript
[FATAL]   0x7fefdc0b820 RaiseException
[FATAL]   0x7fef76f6630 CxxThrowException
[FATAL]   0x7fee3a2b5f0 std::_Xout_of_range
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   ??
[FATAL]   0x77b83d90 BaseThreadInitThunk
[FATAL]   0x77ce2930 RtlUserThreadStart
[FATAL]   Crash dump generated

[jnarical]

crit error - cydonia part 2, alien movement

I'm looking into it.

[aziza]

BOXCE 8.6.0
bug - cydonia part 2, turtle moving under Celatid vision

to reproduce:
1 download save + options
2 move your unit like in image below, it will move 1 tile per click (and stops moving) just because Celatid sees him

[aziza]

completed the vanilla game with Brutal-OXCE 8.6.0 with SH+iron
it really has only pros and zero cons
this will help you understand the game better and get new pleasure
with default settings it plays almost like living leather human and perhaps even better than average living leather human
if you haven't played a vanilla game with OXCEB, then you haven't played xcom

OXCEB's battlescape hotkeys and one-click grenade priming are super useful

[Xilmi]

BOXCE 8.6.0
bug - cydonia part 2, turtle moving under Celatid vision

to reproduce:
1 download save + options
2 move your unit like in image below, it will move 1 tile per click (and stops moving) just because Celatid sees him

I have fixed the crash in the meantime and thought this might be somehow related. But it isn't fixed by the one that fixed the crash. I still think it might be somehow related. What possibly happens is that the celatid supposedly reaction-fires but it doesn't work because of too low ceiling or something but it still interrupts the movement.
I tested this with regular OXCE and it also has the same bug. So it's not something introduced in BOXCE.

Edit: Thanks a lot for the review and kind words about your gameplay-experience!

Edit 2: This issue goes deeper. Even if I control the Celatid myself I don't get any error-message if I try to shoot but the shot doesn't actually fire. So whatever is done to check whether a shot should be working seems to succeed but the actual shot doesn't.

[aziza]

I tested this with regular OXCE and it also has the same bug.

separated topic:
[Bug] turtle moving under Celatid vision (cydonia part 2) (reaction fire)

[jnarical]

This issue goes deeper. Even if I control the Celatid myself I don't get any error-message if I try to shoot but the shot doesn't actually fire. So whatever is done to check whether a shot should be working seems to succeed but the actual shot doesn't.

Is this present in regular OXCE too?

[Xilmi]

Is this present in regular OXCE too?

Yes. It doesn't use the game-logic from Createprojectile to check whether the shot will be fired but some weird Mod-script or something that apparently says it's okay without doing actual checking.
I used a workaround to fix it in BOXCE which is letting it be checked by my AI, which I also had to teach not to think that impossible shots are possible and where I recreated the checks that are done in Createprojectile.
And when a human tries to use an arcing-shot-weapon it apparently uses the same faulty check that will give a false-positive so the human doesn't get an error either. This part I didn't fix though.

There should have been a proper API that implements the logic in one place and is just referenced at all other places. But instead the check whether it works was only done when the shot is already supposed to be fired and there's now 2 different methods who do a validity check before that happens. One works properly (mine) and one doesn't and creates false positives (the one that was used before).

But I didn't want to spend too much effort so I just did the simplest thing I could come up with to make it work.

[jnarical]

Maybe try to talk Meridian into implementing your fix… but it’s most probably OXC related, and getting pull request approved there… it’s kinda impossible

[Yankes]

Technically SupSuper should fix it as you probably could recreate in in base OXC