[OLD] Old OXCE discussion thread

[Yankes]

a)

[Meridian]

I think we may have found a rather critical issue in OXCE 3.3: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4822.msg73841.html#msg73841

Please have a look if what I say there is right or not.

[RSSwizard]

Dunno if this is as much a feature request as it is a bug, but I noticed this while playing x-piratez and since there wasnt an option for turning it off I must assume its the engine:

If a soldier sees an alien (or more than one) it stops them in place.
But it does it more than just the 1st time the alien has been seen, it does it every time somebody sees them (individually) for the first time. Even though the alien has already been seen by the player's forces.

Now I understand its worth the caution but if the critter has already acted, or has melee only, or if they've got their back turned... and especially if there are a BUNCH of aliens (like 4, 6, or even 10) then I have to keep CLICKING over and over and over again for every soldier I want to move through spotting territory. I even end up mis-clicking and moving them somewhere I dont want to because I just get so frustrated with it.

*I* as the player already know the aliens are there, I know where they are because of the indicator. Its good to stop the soldier when they spot one ... but then its up to me whether ive got the brains to move my soldiers through beaten zones. The soldiers themselves dont need to keep stopping over and over again.

Vanilla does not have this feature, it notifies and stops your soldier when an alien has been seen for the first time that round (it can even eat up some time units by stopping them), but after that nobody else is going to freeze in their tracks.

In X-Pirates for example all my soldiers have melee weapons usually, there may be like 4 or 6 enemies in plain view but I have to rush up to get to cover close to them and that means moving the soldiers through seeing all of those guys, over and over and over again.

This is like a Nag Screen on a dos game.

This is Artificial Difficulty and it takes away from the enjoyability of the game.

Ive tried to hold down the Alt key, the Ctrl key, the Shift key while moving to do a "forced move" like other tactical games have but it doesnt bypass the behavior. Its infuriating.

I understand its a good design/safety feature, but pleeeeeease provide an option to turn it OFFF


EDIT:
The other thing id like an option to turn off is the "pausing" in motion between units moving from one tile to another. Vanilla xcom didnt do this, it just started moving them immediately to the new tile as soon as they reached a tile, the movement speed just dictated how quickly they moved between tiles.

Again just an on/off option, not to remove the feature because I think it is useful, but it feels like the game is stuttering even if it isnt.

[ohartenstein23]

OXCE+ has it set that running (CTRL) or holding SHIFT does ignore sighting new enemies, what you might be experiencing is a reaction check on a range-limited weapon or an arcing weapon that can't actually make the shot.

[Meridian]

If a soldier sees an alien (or more than one) it stops them in place.
But it does it more than just the 1st time the alien has been seen, it does it every time somebody sees them (individually) for the first time. Even though the alien has already been seen by the player's forces.

It doesn't stop because it sees the alien... that works like in vanilla... only stops 1st time.
The soldier stops because there is reaction fire from the aliens (you can easily check that by pressing Ctrl+H if you don't believe me).

There have been reaction checks (causing soldiers to stop) for weapons with limited range (which didn't exist in vanilla). You just couldn't see this because they could not fire from these weapons.

I have fixed that in v2016-11-05 .... so the newest piratez version 0.99e should not suffer from that (you must have ufo extender accuracy option turned on tho, I hope everybody does).
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4830.msg73772.html#msg73772

If I missed some other case, please let me know and attach a save.

EDIT:
The other thing id like an option to turn off is the "pausing" in motion between units moving from one tile to another. Vanilla xcom didnt do this, it just started moving them immediately to the new tile as soon as they reached a tile, the movement speed just dictated how quickly they moved between tiles.

Again just an on/off option, not to remove the feature because I think it is useful, but it feels like the game is stuttering even if it isnt.

This is not a feature. It's a performance problem.

Vanilla had max vision range 20, Piratez has max vision range 40... which on slower computers and bigger maps gets stuttery.

[Yankes]

EDIT:
The other thing id like an option to turn off is the "pausing" in motion between units moving from one tile to another. Vanilla xcom didnt do this, it just started moving them immediately to the new tile as soon as they reached a tile, the movement speed just dictated how quickly they moved between tiles.

Again just an on/off option, not to remove the feature because I think it is useful, but it feels like the game is stuttering even if it isnt.

As Meridian said this is performance problem, this is always happening? If you run normal XCOM using piratez exe its works same? What processor you have in your comp?
Stian put lot of work to speed up this but there is some limitation what you could do. If problem is with weak hardware then is not many things to fix without rewriting big parts of engine.

[RSSwizard]

Based on what you guys said that sounds like it might be the issue. Ive noticed some enemies turn while im moving and it stops then, but they're not firing anything just turning (the enemies have pistols I think, ive rarely run into any enemies in piratez that throw things, even ratmen with bows are able to fire a long distance).

Ive got a netbook so performance *might* be an issue. It takes over a minute for the program to load with the mod (and normal openxcom takes about 30 seconds to load).

I also have no video card, OpenGL is locked at v1.4 so I cant use shaders. But I dont try, so no biggie (that locks OXC up so bad I have to delete the config otherwise it never runs).

Unrelated: is there a wiki or documentation of the new ruleset functions for OXCE+? Its nice to look through piratez' ruleset for how some things were done but I might be missing cool stuff (somebody mentioned terrainDamage multiplier though its probably not implemented yet).

[Arthanor]

The best documentation, if a bit difficult to parse sometimes, is the OXC readme that comes with it and Piratez. There's a description of pretty much everything, including damage to terrain that is available no through damageAlter.

[RSSwizard]

A short question on scripts:

Is it possible with them to define secondary explosions?

Example: A demolition pack is lying around and hit by a grenade. The grenade then triggers the demolition pack to explode with its normal strength.

This can be solved with a simple boolean switch, in fact the same one used for the bio-drone and cyberdisc. When it dies, it explodes. All the switch needs to do is be applicable to other items as well.

Also this reminds me of a Linked Attack, common mechanic in alot of rpg games for tricking out their equipment. Basically check to see if the attack does any damage/effect to the target at all. If so then the Linked Attack/Weapon is applied (or an entire chain of them if it has more than one), though in the case of OXC it should still apply armor to all of the linked attacks because modders can make armor effectiveness 0 against them if they wish.

For example: Chryssalid hits, main attack does normal damage but has a linked zombification weapon. If the attack does any damage (health) to the character, they get hit with the linked weapon and wouldnt you know, they turn into a zombie. But unless they can be hurt (stung) it doesnt do anything because the linked attack isnt triggered.

Same idea for a Harpoon Tranquilizer, can make it do 20 AP but the 50 Stun is a linked attack. If the target takes so much as 1 health damage from the dart they take the 50 stun damage roll (a kind modder can still give the armor some effectiveness against it, maybe 0.2, that way the dart gets stuck in but not deep enough to fully inject).

In a similar way I guess explosives could be attached to a package, or an incendiary, or a stun bomb, but unless some additional switch was present the secondaries wouldnt trigger unless the primary did damage (that be like alwaysLinked = true, then you're pretty much sticking a bunch of different things on the same projectile for hellish results, and for giggles the linked weapons also trigger linked weapons if they are likewise activated or have alwaysLinked).

Some things would always trigger though just because they cause an area of effect (HE and Inc). This would allow a true shaped charge - the explosive goes off, and then a linked AP shot hits also and can maybe divide armor by 2, the explosive could be small but the direct hit damage as a result could be high.

The best documentation, if a bit difficult to parse sometimes, is the OXC readme that comes with it and Piratez. There's a description of pretty much everything, including damage to terrain that is available no through damageAlter.

Thanks man, didnt even know it had that info.
Edit: also didnt know it was in YAML either

[Yankes]

This can be solved with a simple boolean switch, in fact the same one used for the bio-drone and cyberdisc. When it dies, it explodes. All the switch needs to do is be applicable to other items as well.

Sometimes "simple" solution are very hard. You need consider structure of OXC code. You could have your bool and place where you want use it far apart. Linking this two parts will require lot of "digging". This will in long run reduce quality of code base because each change like that made next change harder to implements.
Great example of this is shotgun mechanic. Because it was written as simple bool switch now is impossible to add lot of behavior available for other items.
This is because its logic was handled in wrong place in code. Fixing it need rewriting whole code responsible for shooting bullets.

Corpse explosion is handle completely in different place, when unit die it detonate its own corpse item as if it was grenade, other items do not have dying units to trigger it.

Aside of that. I have plans to add that capabilities to allowing remote detonating or chain detonating of items.

Also this reminds me of a Linked Attack, common mechanic in alot of rpg games for tricking out their equipment. Basically check to see if the attack does any damage/effect to the target at all. If so then the Linked Attack/Weapon is applied (or an entire chain of them if it has more than one), though in the case of OXC it should still apply armor to all of the linked attacks because modders can make armor effectiveness 0 against them if they wish.

For example: Chryssalid hits, main attack does normal damage but has a linked zombification weapon. If the attack does any damage (health) to the character, they get hit with the linked weapon and wouldnt you know, they turn into a zombie. But unless they can be hurt (stung) it doesnt do anything because the linked attack isnt triggered.

Same idea for a Harpoon Tranquilizer, can make it do 20 AP but the 50 Stun is a linked attack. If the target takes so much as 1 health damage from the dart they take the 50 stun damage roll (a kind modder can still give the armor some effectiveness against it, maybe 0.2, that way the dart gets stuck in but not deep enough to fully inject).

This is too on my TODO list.

[Yankes]

New version 3.5 ready, biggest change is update to recent nightly.

Dioxine now you will have fun with fixing all incompatibilities caused by over half of year of changes

[Solarius Scorch]

New version 3.5 ready, biggest change is update to recent nightly.

Dioxine now you will have fun with fixing all incompatibilities caused by over half of year of changes

........Holy shit. Here it is. Thanks, Yankes!
So much work! But Meridian goes first.

[Dioxine]

What are the incompatibilities? What has been changed? Do you happen to have any comprehensible log?

[Yankes]

What are the incompatibilities? What has been changed? Do you happen to have any comprehensible log?

After posting it I check changes in basic rulesets, and probably it wont b so bad. One that I find that is incompatible is waypoint weapons (instead of bool is number).
Tomorrow I will prepare something like that.

[Dioxine]

Thank you! I'll be very grateful, and probably not only I