Newbe questions

[Vansi]

They were not. Both EU and TFTD had 30 minute scan intervals, no matter what the description (which is wrong about pretty much everything) of the buildings said.

I have original, boxed Ufo: Enemy Unknown from 1994 on floppy discs. There is manual, and there is technical appendix for info omitted from manual. It is stated there "long range detection system rotate very slow, once every 10 minutes".     

Stop labeling conscious design decisions as bugs. Having line-of-fire and line-of-sight identical is far easier than the implemented model, so quite clearly effort was spent to make it work with different origins instead of copping out and accepting cliping.

Ufo: Enemy Unknown is rushed game, made by two people team (if I remember correctly). As they ran out of time to fix all bugs, they simply added warning "no line of fire", changing game breaking bug into "feature".       

[ohartenstein23]

The manual is wrong; ufopaedia.org tells the correct sweep time at 30 minutes, determined by experimentation on the original game.  The OXC devs also have access to a decompiled version of the original game executables to confirm this.

As for the the LOF/LOS difference, you're barking up the wrong tree here if you want to see it changed.  Once of the OXC devs left the project over this exact issue (correction: this was one of the issues that was part of a major contributor leaving) - yes, we get that it's frustrating, but changing it has been deemed outside the scope of the OXC project and in the meantime we try to work around it with things like the new highlighting of objects blocking your LOF.

Edit: Correction by Meridian, see below.

[Vansi]

As for the the LOF/LOS difference, you're barking up the wrong tree here if you want to see it changed.  Once of the OXC devs left the project over this exact issue - yes, we get that it's frustrating, but changing it has been deemed outside the scope of the OXC project and in the meantime we try to work around it with things like the new highlighting of objects blocking your LOF.

How sad it is. Reasonable people who wanted to fix bugs were chased away and replaced by people who said "Fixing this bug is outside the scope of Open Xcom. Instead fixing that bug, we will create new system that will make that bug irrelevant". It sounds like Open Xcom is now managed by former Apple employees and they just invented a new dongle.

New system will be a dud. There is no guarantee that in new place something else won't block my LOF. Instead of highlighting objects blocking your LOF, it should highlight places (in 3-5 tiles radius from soldier) from which making that particular shot is possible.

Or very simple rule "I can see it, I can shoot it". 

[Meridian]

Don't start urban legends please.

I am not aware of any openxcom dev leaving because of this "issue".
All 3 oxc devs and both oxce devs agree it works correctly now.

[ohartenstein23]

Was this not the reason why Volutar stopped contributing to the project?  Searching the forums doesn't take long to bring up this exact topic.

Edit: or was it Daiky?  I see both names in reference to this argument, although it occurred before I was active around here, and I will gladly retract this if I'm wrong.

[Meridian]

Technically, volutar is/was not an oxc dev... but more importantly he left for tons of (other) reasons. Maybe this was one of them (I can't see it in his goodbye posts), but I won't speculate. Lastly, he was the biggest vanilla-purist out of all openxcom contributors.

[ohartenstein23]

Ah okay, my bad.

The point I wanted to make that yelling at Dioxine or on the Piratez subforum about the LOS/LOF stuff isn't going to get you far.  While we're not against improvements to mechanics, no coder around here has been willing to attempt this particular feature such that it would be optional on a per-mod basis and default to OXC behavior, all the while not looking like a massive kludge.  The "if I can see it, then I can shoot it" idea is not so simple a rule to implement.

[AgentFransis]

I feel like I'm missing something. What's so great about this shooting from the hip model? Just the fact that visually the projectile would emerge from the "correct" place in the sprite? Because if so it doesn't sound very important. I mean the graphics are pretty abstract as it is. Or is it just a refactoring issue?

[Vansi]

The point I wanted to make that yelling at Dioxine or on the Piratez subforum about the LOS/LOF stuff isn't going to get you far.

You are probably right. But didn't Meridian just said that "no line of fire" is not an issue, and everything is working as it should in opinion of all devs? I am beggining to see, that going with this problem somewhere else may not accomplish much more. 

The "if I can see it, then I can shoot it" idea is not so simple a rule to implement.

Just think about it, this it is the simplest, most obvious solution.   

[ohartenstein23]

Just think about it, this it is the simplest, most obvious solution.   

I'm not saying this isn't an easy-to-understand rule for the player, I'm saying working it into the codebase isn't easy or simple.  This is the sort of thing that would take a long time to develop on top of OXCE, and the coder who's willing to invest the time on this particular feature hasn't shown up.

[Meridian]

Just think about it, this it is the simplest, most obvious solution.   

Alone, it would be the simplest and most obvious method (I will avoid the word solution).

Having both current method and this new method side-by-side and configurable would be a bigger challenge; still doable. I guess that's what Oharty wanted to say.

[ohartenstein23]

Yes, thank you Meridian for the clarification.  There are a number of things that could be done differently if our goal was creating our own open-source turn-based tactical game engine, but instead we have a re-implementation of X-Com on top of which we're trying to load a bunch of cool modding features.

Edit: For full disclosure, I'm somewhat annoyed with the LOS/LOF difference, but it is nowhere near aggravating enough to me to spend my mod and code development time on it.

[Vansi]

There are a number of things that could be done differently if our goal was creating our own open-source turn-based tactical game engine, but instead we have a re-implementation of X-Com on top of which we're trying to load a bunch of cool modding features.

Edit: For full disclosure, I'm somewhat annoyed with the LOS/LOF difference, but it is nowhere near aggravating enough to me to spend my mod and code development time on it.

Do a mind trick. Consider this a bug that must be fixed.  Or even better... take new member of the dev team. Let him prove his skills by fixing it.   

[ohartenstein23]

Do a mind trick. Consider this a bug that must be fixed.  Or even better... take new member of the dev team. Let him prove his skills by fixing it. 

[Sarissofoi]

What about color coding enemies not only in green(no LoF no LoS, seen by another teammate) or red(LoS but current LoF possible or not) but also in orange(seen but no LoS). Obviously change red to have LoS an LoF.