MINOR GLITCHES

[SIMON BAILIE]

First of all the following few glitches aren't fatal and can be worked around but since I'm picky and want everything to be perfect I thought I would ask the community on how to solve these glitches.
   Firstly in current game which I've been playing from the start of November I added the mod "New Races Mod" to add some more aliens for variety and a challenge but anytime I try to assault a crashed/landed terror ship, battle ship, terror mission, alien base or if an attacking battleship gets through the base defences the game crashes to my desktop. Seemingly atm this seems to be only involving Calcinites/Deep Ones on the previously mentioned missions. Is this just too many mods conflicting with each other as I've 50 active atm.
  Secondly and this is very minor, the ufopaedia entry for the first clip of the Mechtoid Scorcher weapon doesn't show the text explaination. I've tried editing the ruleset with notepad+ changing the extra string entry from en-US to en-GB and I tried using OX ruleset editor without any success. Thanks for any advice.

[volutar]

Shouldn't it be in the particular mod feedback thread?

[SIMON BAILIE]

Yep, sorry about that but there doesn't seem to be an option to add attachments in the mod threads.

[WhiskeyBob]

Sometimes I encounter situations, where my troop always misses. Just for fun, I've reload more than hundred times. Tested with snap or sniper shots, and 32% hit probability. I'm not sure if there will be a miss with next reload, so I just came closer to an alien. )))

[Arthanor]

In OpenXCom's options, there is a choice regarding save scumming. That might be your issue?

If you don't have save scumming activated, saving, doing an action, reloading and performing exactly the same action will have exactly the same outcome because the computer's random number generator will generate the same number. So if you have a sniper with a 99% chance shot, save, take the shot and miss, then reload and miss again, and again, it's normal, your computer generated the 1% chance of missing for your next shot and that was saved when you saved the game, so when you reload and try again it sill will miss.

Ways around this include: perform a different action after reloading the game (ex.: shoot with a different soldier), then come back to take the shot with the sniper. It will now use the next number in the random series, which will likely be a hit. Of course, that's "gaming" the RNG.

The other option is to allow save scumming, which means that every time you load, the computer will start on a new random number series, and in that case, loading then taking a shot multiple times should produce results close to expected.

[WhiskeyBob]

Hi,
  I've changed random numbers generator seed creation in .ini file, so new seed is generated every time I reload. Just encountered several cases when reloading doesn't help. It's not much a problem, since it is easy to solve it by moving my soldier closer to an alien.

[WhiskeyBob]

I finally found "Save scumming" ingame, I think I turned this trigger already using hex editor. )
I also encounter constant collision form glitches, when firing from behind wall corner. A shooter much likely will hit a wall corner, rather than its target.

[Arthanor]

OpenXCom actually takes into account which hand your gun is in when calculating projectile trajectory.

Firing from your right hand while taking cover behind a left corner (ie a corner that will shield your left side) is a great way to engage aliens. They carry their guns in the right hand, so for them firing at a right corner (a corner that shields their right side) means that they will hit the wall much more than you do.

Firing from your left hand while taking cover behind a right corner is also not bad, but the alien will be firing from the right hand behind a left corner, so it's a wash. Of course, try to avoid firing from your right hand behind a right corner, because then you'll hit the wall and the alien will hit you!

This is a non-trivial consideration when breaching UFOs. Even entirely symmetric UFOs have a better breaching path because of the corner(s) you can take advantage of.

[volutar]

This was vanillified in recent commits. 1. origination point itself. 2. And wrong usage of eye instead of the barrel to calculate target point.

They both caused lots of wrong no line of fire and corner hit. Use nightly.

[Arthanor]

So what changed recently in the nightly?

It seems like you imply the calculation of trajectory has been reverted back to vanilla where units shoot from center to center (I think?).

[ivandogovich]

@ Volutar:  are you saying that the right-hand/left-hand no longer matters in the Nightly? 

And Arthanor!  I never had a clue this was how it worked !  It makes a bunch of sense now, and explains a bunch of my mistakes!  Thanks !

[Arthanor]

Yeah, I remember reading something to that effect here on the forums, although it is possible that I misinterpreted it.

It seems to be making a difference for me, like making breaches of the left/south side of vanilla a medium scout easier (an alien coming out of that door hits the wall a lot instead of a properly positioned soldier, since the gun in his right hand is close to the wall).

That's also why I am interested in what changed now..

[volutar]

This and this.

First one changes origin point to the center (front center). This was done after number of playtestings of TFTD, which has really lots of diagonals, and small rooms. Left-right weapon positioning became too prominent, when aliens can't shoot, or you can't shoot, in lots of places (in xcom1 it was mostly just the entrance point).

Second one fixes a minor miscalculating of target point. But the effect of it should be quite noticeable. Chances to miss by hitting some obstacle should be much less now. Units should demonstrate more expected behavior, for both sides, xcom and aliens.

But still, estimating of the target coordinate is not optimal. I've had an idea about it for couple of years (since implementing scanning and targeting proper tile voxel), but didn't really work on this matter, yet.

Add: First and second are mixed in the descriptions.

[Arthanor]

Interesting! Thanks for the info!

I guess it makes sense instead of trying to to stick with stiff sprites to do something to represent the units adapting even though the graphics don't.

[Warboy1982]

actually the first one changed the AI's estimations for where on the map it could shoot from, meaning they're less likely to target units that they can see but not physically hit because of the disparity between vision and bullet origin points. in a nutshell it means they won't waste shots as often anymore.