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Author Topic: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste  (Read 1459342 times)

Offline CrazedHarpooner

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4455 on: January 04, 2025, 01:56:47 am »
There's an issue with the new mission Forest Lodge Defense. Only the 1st unit of the entire squad spawns in. The issue lies in that the Lodge block is spawned in as a craft and there's only a single open entry tile ouside the door. There's actually 2 more entry floor tiles next to that one, but they're both occupied by a content element. For craft spawning, soldiers will only be placed on valid entry tiles, ignoring xcom nodes by what I've observed. I've experimented around and managed to get it to work. Had to redeclare the block as a terrain map and used verticalLevels to get the desired effect. When no craft has been placed on a map via addCraft, xcom units will use xcom marked nodes for spawning and will clump up randomly around them if there's not enough nodes for all units.

During my testing I discovered that one of the forest terrains: FINNIKFOREST01 had an xcom node defined so they all spawned over that side far from the lodge. I've changed that node to another type so xcom units don't spawn over there, but don't know if that is intented for another mission which could break. I haven't seen such a mission while working on my submod, but then again, there's plenty of missions I haven't adapted yet.

Also, since I no longer used an addCraft, I had to change the node at the Lodge entrance to an xcom node as at least 1 is needed to spawn xcom units this way.

I've attached all modified RMP and the small ruleset files that fixes this. You can always add or modify nodes in the lodge to let the xcom spawns spread out a bit more.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2025, 02:01:21 am by CrazedHarpooner »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4456 on: January 04, 2025, 12:56:56 pm »
There's an issue with the new mission Forest Lodge Defense. Only the 1st unit of the entire squad spawns in. The issue lies in that the Lodge block is spawned in as a craft and there's only a single open entry tile ouside the door.

Yeah... That's how it's supposed to be. The description specifically says "To avoid attention, send only one agent to investigate." Allowing more people would trivialize this mission, and I wanted a mission with desperate civilians, not yet another zombie slaughter by a group of cyborg commandos from the future.

During my testing I discovered that one of the forest terrains: FINNIKFOREST01 had an xcom node defined so they all spawned over that side far from the lodge. I've changed that node to another type so xcom units don't spawn over there, but don't know if that is intented for another mission which could break. I haven't seen such a mission while working on my submod, but then again, there's plenty of missions I haven't adapted yet.

You're right, this looks like a 100% bug. Weird...
Thank you!

Offline CrazedHarpooner

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4457 on: January 04, 2025, 01:01:29 pm »
Ah, my bad, I assumed more was allowed since the lodge 'craft' ruleset defined room for 18 soldiers. I'll take note of this.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4458 on: January 04, 2025, 01:46:36 pm »
Ah, my bad, I assumed more was allowed since the lodge 'craft' ruleset defined room for 18 soldiers. I'll take note of this.

You're right, it should be 1. Doesn't impact the game in any way, but is quite inelegant.

Offline CrazedHarpooner

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4459 on: January 07, 2025, 12:44:22 am »
I was suspecting I might be hitting the same or similar issue in Night at the Museum mission. So I tested it there and took a save when dealing with the final enemy unit, saurian ghost:

- stunning him (resulting in four squares ZZZ's) with two hits of a power mace does not give you a live capture (should it?)
- ending the mission with MC also does not give you a live capture

Note that I don't even have ghost tank researched, let alone have one built, but I don't think that should affect whether you should be able to at least see the live capture (though you can do nothing with it). In earlier games I have usually had ghost tank build on a secondary base and been able to transfer ghost units there from mission debriefing screen.

Also in debug mode for whatever reason the hotkey CTRL-J for stunning all live aliens did not work, it displays text "Deploying Celine Dion album" (neither CTRL-ALT-J), but CTRL-K for killing works.

I wonder if this is some kind of stunning mechanic issue or related to the way how ghost units are defined.

I got around to testing this hypothesis with a New Battle of Haunted House, where there are stunnable humans and ghosts both. CTRL-J works for humans but not for ghosts. In this second save I didn't manage to manually stun a ghost (and then kill the rest), but on another having one go ZZZ also doesn't give you a live capture of the ghost.

At sometime this must have changed somehow, as I have clear memory of transferring poltergeists and ghosts from mission debriefing screen.
I used the save game provided to make a copy but with a ghost tank in Venezuela. First screen shows what you get if you capture without any ghost tank anywhere (basically the unmodified save) and the second image shows what happens when there's at least a valid prison type for the capture available. And yes, it gives you the option to transfer it at that point, but you still need a valid prison for it somewhere.

Additionally, New Battle won't help testing for this scenario as I've observed in my experiments. It simply churns all captures (MCed or stunned) in the debriefing blender and they all become corpses. I used vanilla UFO Defense to generate a medium scout with sectoids, warped my way around in debug mode with the stun rod and bonk them all to sleep. Debriefing reports none made it back alive anywhere.

Edit: self correction.
The issue with New Battle is not the option itself, but rather it recreates a dummy base using the starting facilities. Since most starting bases usually lack the required facility, all captures of any kind will just be killed in the afterbattle report. If you mod it so this starting base comes with a compatible prison type, or mod any of the starting facilities to act as said prison type, the debriefing will reflect that upon completing the New Battle.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2025, 01:20:18 pm by CrazedHarpooner »

Online psavola

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Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« Reply #4460 on: January 07, 2025, 07:50:49 pm »
Thanks for testing and verifying the engine behaviour. A bit odd that you get more points out of live captures when you have the corresponding containment facility built versus when not, but there we go..