Jump to content
XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Random Glitches


Tithis

Recommended Posts

I've seen a few weird glitches but the weirdest was the farm in the english channel. I had shot down a ufo over the english channel but noticed it never sunk into the ocean. It appeard to have crashed. So I went over there and found a farm. Glitch or mistake by the programmers? Edited by Tithis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Occasionaly when I get a ufo encounter on the screen the geoscape flips upside down and centers on the ufo. So the south pole becomes the north pole, I'm pretty sure you can fix this by right clicking anywhere. I got this bug a lot more frequently in TFTD. you should have discussion like this in that forum you'll get a ton of responses, Enemy Unknown is not nearly as glitchy at TFTD.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've seen a few weird glitches but the weirdest was the farm in the english channel. I had shot down a ufo over the english channel but noticed it never sunk into the ocean. It appeard to have crashed. So I went over there and found a farm. Glitch or mistake by the programmers?

 

UFO was designed for a 20 mhz 386SX cpu. the SX means that cpu does not have a math coprocessor. so there compiler had to add extra code to do basic math.

 

I see three posible causes of this glitch.

1. the function used to detect locations on geoscape was flawed in design

2. the math coprocessor emulation was flawed

3. the data type used to store the locations could not hanle decimal places.

 

I remember having a ship terror site on the contenent of australia.

 

It's interesting that on some copmuters certain clitches hapen more than others. I notice this paticular glitch more often using dosbox compiled on the mac.

 

-Blade FireLight

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Occasionaly when I get a ufo encounter on the screen the geoscape flips upside down and centers on the ufo. So the south pole becomes the north pole, I'm pretty sure you can fix this by right clicking anywhere. I got this bug a lot more frequently in TFTD. you should have discussion like this in that forum you'll get a ton of responses, Enemy Unknown is not nearly as glitchy at TFTD.

 

You can legally flip the globe upside down with the globe control buttons on your lower right. Right clicking turns the globe upright and centres on the location you clicked.

 

Mind you, it is unusual for the game itself to flip the globe upside down, but I wouldn't be surprised or too alarmed. As BladeFireLight said, the games were developed for much lower spec computers. TFTD was only mildly more higher-spec than UFO, as it was geared for a 80486, the cutting edge in home computer technology at the time. I still have mine, but I refuse to play UFO/TFTD on it. It's just too mind numbingly slow.

 

Speaking of the games providing their own math routines, I think that's what's causing the blaster/DPL vertical waypoint bug in the Collectors Edition. The trigonometry function that assists the rocket by telling it which way to go must be returning an unexpected value, resulting in the bomb flying south. This probably doesn't happen in the dos versions because its math trigonometry functions are working the way they're expected to.

 

- NKF

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can legally flip the globe upside down with the globe control buttons on your lower right. Right clicking turns the globe upright and centres on the location you clicked.

 

Yes but even if the alien ship is at the equator the screen flips polarity from what the normal view is. I think thats just a little bit screwy. I checked on what you said because I had never been able to make the south pole appear where the north pole was before, and you can't using the right click center sceen technique. I never use the controls at bottom right, the screen spins uncontrollably and I throw up, its an ugly sight :D .

 

As for the trigonometry you mentioned. It all sounds very interesting but I'm an art student who tries to avoid math at all costs so all I heard was blah blah blaster/dpl blah blah. Although I do agree the blaster will not stay on its coridinates as well as it used to when I played the DOS version. I seem to remember the bomb being able to make vertical leaps but in the CE version you must make a smooth transition down levels or it will fly at unexpeted angles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

The Playstation version of X-COM is terribly bugged. But, its so very very awesome. The "background" part of the control pannell will often show different images for no apparent reason (ranging from a rank sign to something indescribable)

 

The R buttons also have a crazy effect on the game. By pressing these buttons at differnt times you can cause a few effects:

 

You can make your soldier who is walking to a distant destonation skip a step and turn of either side .

 

You can completly change the direction of the alien fire. This seems to happen most with Cyberdisks which fortunitly kills them.

 

You can change the crazy images in the background

 

If you press and hold the SELECT button after the alien turn (when it says press any button) the screen will center on an Alien. (tested and proven)

 

Pressing SELECT to cycle through your units will sometimes move them.

(this is very frustrating)

 

Keep in mind that these events do not always occure, and they often result in the game freezing. (especially the R buttons)

 

Oh, and if you ever loose sound for no reason, save your game because it is about to freeeeze.

 

anyone else notice these strange thing w/ the ps version?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Yeah. R1 and L1 cause weird images of fire and smoke to flash on the screen. They also mess up the graphics near the rank button on the control panel for some odd reason. Also in forests, I couldn't hit an alien that was in one of those weird half up/down zones on one of the hills where it looks like the alien should be on one level but is technically on another for targeting purposes. He was taking direct rocket hits and not dying. Then I noticed the cursor wasn't flashing so I went step down. Couldn't see the alien anymore but the cursor was flashing. Rockets aimed too low to hit but the bullets finally did the trick after like three guys got killed by Mr. Invincible.

 

I've also had phantom alien warning signatures (little red boxes on the lower right) after an alien was killed. Easy fix. Just turn away and turn back. Anybody know if it's possible to to zoom in on aliens using the controller. IIRC, you could click on the red alert icons and automatically center the view on the alien.

 

Perhaps the most irritating bug is when the motion scanner shows nothing but static.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you bring a 26-man avenger full of equipment to a battleship on superhuman, there are more than 80 items, so the game deletes enemy equipment until it's at 80. This results in Muton Commanders running around with no weapons. It's actually kind of funny.

 

On the other hand, the game cannot create corpses when something dies, nor stunned bodies. This means that you can't capture anything until you blow some stuff up with explosives.

 

The worst part is, if one of your men gets hit by a stun bomb, he disapears forever. You don't get any kind of point penelty, and the game gives you the nifty messege of "(Insert Name Here) Has Been Knocked Unconcious", but you don't get the soldier back. Not even after you win...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not nearly as bad as the "Invisible" chrysalid.

 

It was at a snakeman terror ship downed in a farm relatively late in the game, and at night. I was at the point in the game where I starting collecting for my "completed" UFOpedia.

 

The first couple of turns go fine, and then the trouble starts.

 

A lucky rookie reaction-killed a chrysalid with a stun bomb, but instead of creating a body, it just kind of...disapeered. During the next turn I had him running around looking for a body (He was pretty close to the Avenger, so I was going to have him stash it and get back to combat), but there wasn't any. I move the rest of my men and hit "end turn".

 

The lucky rookie got rather unlucky and zombified. I figured another chrysalid ran up and avenged it's brother, so I sent a 4-man squad to take him out.

 

Now, here's where my stupidity shines through. I had armed everybody with stun launchers and laser pistols, except for 2 psis and 2 guys with blaster launchers that were in the ship...

 

So my 4-man squad takes out their laser pistols and manages to kill the zombie (And resulting chrysalid) by auto-shooting it to death. Yet I still had one of those blinky boxes that tells me an alien is near. I clicked it but it focus on nothing, so I ignored it. And yet again, no corpse, no stunned body...

 

They all got zombified. Every last one of them, in one turn.

 

Now I'm thinking "what the heck?!", because I had them facing 4 different directions just in case.

 

I have no other soldiers to spare since they were all off engaging random enemies, so I sent a blaster bomb and nuked the epicenter of my problems.

 

Two turns later, my entire avenger squad is zombified. They were all facing the doors, and I never saw a chrysalid come in or anything.

 

Now I'm scared. My weapons are worthless, 9 out of 26 guys are zombies, I'm cut off from a retreat, and I'm facing invisible enemies.

 

 

 

Ugh, the story has dragged on long enough. The rest of it goes that the remainder of my squad gets zombified, except for 2 guys who got shot by snakemen, one of which was an idiot and paniced himself right into the line of fire.

 

 

Needless to say I reloaded...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mine was invisible ALWAYS, although about half of his subsequent spawn were visible, and I could still-reaction fire at them... I think I hit one that was invisible while not aiming for it, too..
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
Well, if X-Com's known for anything, it's definitely crazy glitches. Maybe it's just me, but it certainly seems as though the game's at its buggiest during base defense missions, but only really on the Collector's Edition (I'm running the CE version on XP using 'Util). The old DOS version was still buggy, don't get me wrong, but not THAT buggy. Possibly the strangest bug I've encountered is the dead-Sectoid-shoots-me-in-the-crotch glitch. Happens periodically, especially on terror missions for some reason. Occasionally, I'll be walking over the corpse of a dead Sectoid, and suddenly I take a plasma shot to the gut. No fun. I can't even begin to count how many times an enemy tried to shoot me through the wall during a base-defense mission, which of course inevitably leads to a crash. Interestingly enough, Util doesn't seem to crash to the desktop - rather, it simply boots me out of the mission with the stats from the last one, or worse, reports that everyone's dead, but the mission's still a victory! In such a case, the transport returns to base, only everyone aboard is named AlienCorpse-1. Does a buggier game exist?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...