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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Bugs, Suggestions, Etc...


Popek

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Have been playing a few games lately, trying different things ranging from stupid matches involving players who just float in the sky with explosive ammo to dull matches without any explosions at all. It's no secret I'm a big fan of a healthy medium, and I'm very partial to proximity booby traps when I can't cover my flanks. :)

 

A few odd discoveries involing some 'bugs' have come up. Running the latest beta 1.079 and well, it's the bugs forum so here goes.

 

The first and foremost, which is already known is the blind spot created about 3/4 of the way in a units vision when they are spotting on an angle. Mostly I'm curious to know how progress is going in the regard to fix this issue. It has proven to be game breaking on occasion.

 

Another major game breaking bug is when you have a unit under influence of Panic and it is NOT your turn and you are using tab to switch through your units (to check stats,vision,whatever) and you come across the Panicked unit it triggers your turn to start.?This?ejects?the?other?player?from?the?game,?and?causes?a?big?mess?for?reconnecting?as

the turns are now out of synch, units sometimes go missing, etc...

 

A smaller bug that was brought to my attention are in the case of the 'sliding doors'. Aside from the fact they are still unfunctional, they do not highlite from the blindside which has confused a few players as they were unaware they are doors at all (until I've walked through them).

 

Also earlier this evening/morning I had a friend compile up the svn for linux and after some niggling he got it working and was able to join a server but was invisible to me in the player list.

All his text showed up in the chat window, we just couldnt even challenge eachother. If there's any files i can deliver to help resolve this i'd like to know. Unless this is intentional due to the version mismatch.

 

My apologies if these have already been discussed and brought to attention, I was unable to find reference when digging into the old threads so I figured I would post.

 

PS. what do you actually do with plasmid cores in the ufo2k set?? :D

Edited by Popek
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the first bug has pissed me off to no end. Few people notice it until they get an Air unit whore who does nothing but hide out of view and pop out the occasional shot. More needs to be done to fix this bug and kneecap air units.

 

Never heard of that panic bug before. Id suggest posting a bug report but it STILL isnt fixed yet.

 

Sliding doors bug has been with ufo2k since the dawn of conception. It has never been fixed and is unlikely to be fixed since a new method of sliding doors will probably be created instead. Support for some Xcom features probably wont ever happen.

 

The reason you cant see your friend is because the game thinks its a different version. If you have different versions names will not appear but you can still chat.

 

I wouldnt count on any of these issues being resolved any time soon. The game seems to have stopped moving again. We dont even have a bug tracker.

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PS. what do you actually do with plasmid cores in the ufo2k set?? :D

 

I think they are some kind of remotely detonated HE pack. They are too big to fit in a soldier's hands (3 blocks wide) and must be dropped rather than thrown. Troopers can then lob an on-impact detonating grenade, or drop a primed grenade on a set timer, to blow stuff up. Obviously the packs themselves cannot be primed to prevent suicide troopers carrying only the packs (where the cores would explode at the end of the turn if primed to 0 if the soldier died and the packs hit the ground.)

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PS. what do you actually do with plasmid cores in the ufo2k set?? :D

 

I think they are some kind of remotely detonated HE pack. They are too big to fit in a soldier's hands (3 blocks wide) and must be dropped rather than thrown. Troopers can then lob an on-impact detonating grenade, or drop a primed grenade on a set timer, to blow stuff up. Obviously the packs themselves cannot be primed to prevent suicide troopers carrying only the packs (where the cores would explode at the end of the turn if primed to 0 if the soldier died and the packs hit the ground.)

 

 

thats what I figured. Though combining the irregular detonation method+ their poor blast range you might as well just bring a knife instead as 3 chops will cut down a powersuit for a mere 30% of your time units.

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I wouldnt count on any of these issues being resolved any time soon. The game seems to have stopped moving again. We dont even have a bug tracker.

 

This is not something i want to hear :(

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Sadly, such is the life of an open source project.

 

On another note, the Plasmid core was designed solely as a breeching charge. It was in fact named that to begin with. Its used with the detonator to blow large chunks through buildings in one hit. Primarily used in sets like Xbase where smaller guns are useless for that sort of thing. it can be a hugely useful tool in some circumstances, say, if a camper has you bottlenecked and indeed, for removal of any tough obstacles on the field. I haven't used it much since i changed the blast radius but if its too small, it can be changed. The reason it inst throw-able is because it has the maximum damage capable of any weapon, enabling it to be thrown would make the 'nade whores very very happy. Everyone else on the other hand would get very irritated about it. At least with the remote detonation somone will have to think his moves far more thoroughly to pull of a kill using this weapon.

Edited by Sporb
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thats what I figured. Though combining the irregular detonation method+ their poor blast range you might as well just bring a knife instead as 3 chops will cut down a powersuit for a mere 30% of your time units.

 

Like Sporb said, it's not a kill weapon, it's a terrain weapon. Breeching charge. Use it to punch holes in extremely tough terrain or scenery (outer walls of UFOs, anyone?) easily.

 

It's not that hard to actually plan the use of. If you do it right, a trooper can drop the charge, take out and prime a grenade (timer as short or as long as necessary to get clear), drop the grenade and run. :)

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The first and foremost, which is already known is the blind spot created about 3/4 of the way in a units vision when they are spotting on an angle. Mostly I'm curious to know how progress is going in the regard to fix this issue. It has proven to be game breaking on occasion.

 

What is that bug? Can someone post a pic of it?

Also earlier this evening/morning I had a friend compile up the svn for linux and after some niggling he got it working and was able to join a server but was invisible to me in the player list.

All his text showed up in the chat window, we just couldnt even challenge eachother. If there's any files i can deliver to help resolve this i'd like to know. Unless this is intentional due to the version mismatch.

 

It is intentional. Thanks anyway

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There are other annoying things like vision unsymmetry at random places. If soldiers are facing each other and there are no obstructions or the obstructions don't cover either player's head, they should ALWAYS see each other.

 

Now it's completely random, and it really sucks to lose games because you can't spot a guy perched on a balcony while he can see you all the time and keep reaction shooting while you walk.

 

The memory leak also sucks. You get the virtual memory warning and when you click it your guy walks there. (goodbye to that soldier.)

 

The smoke has vision symmetry problems too. Sometimes you can't see someone while they can see you.

 

The almost alongside the wall upstairs/downstairs vision has symmetry bugs.

 

After newbie level all these bugs render the game unplayable. Last game I lost three plasma-armed mutons just because of bugs. The bugs worked my way once, enabling me to spot one guy (while he couldn't see me then) but I couldn't shoot him.

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im not sure if this one was fixed but there was a bug where a soldier who was concealed by fog remained invisible when the fog cleared regardless of how close he is to your soldier. The soldier only becomes visible when you either look around or he reacts on you.
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The bug when the smoke clears has been fixed, I remember that one.

 

I dont see any problem with the 2 situations from the pics above. From my understanding of the vision arcs the unit (muton) could never notice an enemy from the positions from here it starts in both.

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The bug when the smoke clears has been fixed, I remember that one.

 

I dont see any problem with the 2 situations from the pics above. From my understanding of the vision arcs the unit (muton) could never notice an enemy from the positions from here it starts in both.

 

The situation inside the large brick warehouse I had no problems with the soldier not seeing the units below very easily. (It was designed in that Manner).?This was because of proximity to vision blocking obstacles and?their proximity to each unit. Take a real life scenario like a concert. if you are directly behind a tall guy you can't see much of the stage, if you back up a few feet your overal vision improves. Thats not a bug.

 

however in the other images of our game.

All those pics bambuz makes it confusing to explain whats what, but the situation between the power suit unit (mine) and buz's muton south of the greenhouse was a case where I really should of been spotted on the balcony but was not, due to the 'blind spot' about 10-12 spaces away (haven't counted) when spotting at an angle.

 

If you want to check it out take a flying unit into hotseat and fly up 3,4,5,6 floors and watch the minimap

area. You'll see a very evident gap. Then try walking a enemy unit into that gap, it will likely be able to see you, but not vice versa.

 

As for the smoke symmetry issue, it shouldn't be equal vision to both units. A unit looking IN to smoke from the outside needs to spot past empty spaces AND the space containing a unit. The unit looking OUT of smoke only has to view through the empty spaces of smoke between them, giving them an advantage which I always figured was the benefit of using smoke for cover. Correct me if this isn't how smoke works, that just how i see it. :)

 

 

sorry about the wacky formating of this text, opera doesnt like these forum post boxes much. =p

Edited by Popek
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http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1585/ufoexamplessc5.th.jpg

 

I put together a rough example of a similar situation as to the warehouse Bambuz. Mostly this is to illustrate my point in the previous post better. I'm poor with words...

Ignore the smoke it has no bearing on this given the units positions.

In panel 1 the Human cannot see very far beyond the edge of the house. Consulting the minimap its pretty clear.

In panel 2 the sectoid who resides in the humans blind spot can see him due to no obstructions up close.

Panel 3 shows that once the sectoid steps into the area not covered by the blind spot the human can see him.

 

The game we had the other day where you could spot me in the warehouse rafters and I conversely could not was due to this situation. The catwalk floors are like solid walls up close to the player above, while the player below gets a better view of whats going on.

 

 

Bonus panel 4 for Hobbes demonstrates the gap in vision referred to for units above/below. in this case the unit is 2 floors up on a balcony with clear view of everything in front of him.

 

Yeah it was 5 am and I was bored because nobody was online to play :D

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That situation is not symmetric since the sectoid can spot the shoulder of that guy, while obviously the guy doesn't have eyes in his shoulder to spot with (and his head is blocked by the house).

It's different when a guy's HEAD is showing from behind an obstacle, yet still he can't see you with his eyes, even when you can see his eyes.

 

If you can see someone's eyes, they should see yours. (Since air or even smoke doesn't care which way the light travels.) And lighting is not implemented in ufo2000 yet so all such situations should be completely symmetrical. There just is no excuse.

 

Of course maybe we could invent some completely off the wall and random rules for every situation where it's not a tactical squad war game anymore but some special case memory race which I'm not interested in any way. You can't apply any deductive thinking.

 

The game has to make at least some sense to be playable.

 

 

Btw I also think that the 16 square vision is probably too short. It makes lots of problems to intuitive gameplay. I'd like to test a version with unlimited sight distance. (Since the maps are so small, it could be pretty realistic.)

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I'd like to test a version with unlimited sight distance. (Since the maps are so small, it could be pretty realistic.)

 

i don't think this would lend itself to a very fun gameplay experience. I dont know whats so unintuitive about 16 distance spotting, but with unlimited vision being able to move undetected and out maneuvre another player would become a very fruitless endeavour.

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That situation is not symmetric since the sectoid can spot the shoulder of that guy, while obviously the guy doesn't have eyes in his shoulder to spot with (and his head is blocked by the house).

It's different when a guy's HEAD is showing from behind an obstacle, yet still he can't see you with his eyes, even when you can see his eyes.

 

If you can see someone's eyes, they should see yours. (Since air or even smoke doesn't care which way the light travels.) And lighting is not implemented in ufo2000 yet so all such situations should be completely symmetrical. There just is no excuse.

 

It wasn't meant to be symmetric. You missed my point entirely, it's to illustrate excactly that it isn't symmetric. You know as well as I do vision isn't decided based on where a unit's head is visually represented either. Also that example was to show the situation we had in the warehouse and why one unit couldn't see another, NOT the situation around the greenhouse involving the mutan who saw nothing, we've already established thats part of the bug surrounding the vision gap.

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That situation is not symmetric since the sectoid can spot the shoulder of that guy, while obviously the guy doesn't have eyes in his shoulder to spot with (and his head is blocked by the house).

It's different when a guy's HEAD is showing from behind an obstacle, yet still he can't see you with his eyes, even when you can see his eyes.

 

If you can see someone's eyes, they should see yours. (Since air or even smoke doesn't care which way the light travels.) And lighting is not implemented in ufo2000 yet so all such situations should be completely symmetrical. There just is no excuse.

 

It wasn't meant to be symmetric. You missed my point entirely, it's to illustrate excactly that it isn't symmetric. You know as well as I do vision isn't decided based on where a unit's head is visually represented either.

 

It is actually, try walking behind the crates in the big warehouse and crouching - you lose vision because your head went below the cratetops. With a sectoid I think that happens even if you don't crouch.

 

Also that example was to show the situation we had in the warehouse and why one unit couldn't see another, NOT the situation around the greenhouse involving the mutan who saw nothing, we've already established thats part of the bug surrounding the vision gap.

 

But the warehouse thing was a vertical situation, not a shoulder spotting one. The only thing the floor blocked was your feet and perhaps torso - the head should have been the most visible part - and I think I spotted the head - but you couldn't spot me. How come is there a line of sight from my head to your head but not from your head to mine? Or at other times exactly the reverse?

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I'd like to test a version with unlimited sight distance. (Since the maps are so small, it could be pretty realistic.)

 

i don't think this would lend itself to a very fun gameplay experience. I dont know whats so unintuitive about 16 distance spotting, but with unlimited vision being able to move undetected and out maneuvre another player would become a very fruitless endeavour.

 

You don't find it unintuitive that the guys practically can't see more than maybe 16 to 30 meters ahead? Even if there was a huge army on an open road - no, nothing there. It's completely mucked up I say.

 

And btw you can still shoot beyond that distance (which is realistic and intuitive and good game design).

 

Now I can have snipers on an open road just trusting a measly one medium city block (20 tiles) distance and not fear about ever being spotted.

 

Cover would really become important (as opposed to just distance now), and also you would spot people but not all the time. You could perhaps see a soldier crossing a street some way forward but you still wouldn't know exactly where he was - cover would become much more important. Also scout-sniper whoring (which I do a lot, you know, all available guys shooting at one spotted enemy) would not be so effective tactics, as you couldn't so safely fire from black map land anymore without being spotted.

Starting should be corner-corner so there wouldn't be clear lines like with current maps having roads all over the place. Flying would be very different with such rules, rewarding but very risky too. Indoor battles would stay prettymuch the same they are already.

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And you also wouldn't be able to outsnipe your scoutless opponents. :wink1:

 

The only real benefit an "infinite view length" mode gives is on very open maps where there is very little terrain cover like buildings. CQC remains the same because you can't see through walls/doors/etc. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

A small, but rather large issue that was overlooked in the original post. I was hoping this could get some discussion as well.

 

 

Another major game breaking bug is when you have a unit under influence of Panic and it is NOT your turn and you are using tab to switch through your units (to check stats,vision,whatever) and you come across the Panicked unit it triggers your turn to start.?This?ejects?the?other?player?from?the?game,?and?causes?a?big?mess?for?reconnecting?as

the turns are now out of synch, units sometimes go missing, etc...

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thats a fairly large ugly bug in the game when one uses the terror weapons in the ufo2k weaponset. Not sure if theres a fix in the tubes for much right now so we may just need to be more vigilant about it.
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  • 4 weeks later...

If you need me, I'll be fixing the vision bug. :washwindow:

 

(And probable creating a few more that I don't know of...)

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Errm... I think I just fixed that and the flying units unfair advantage from above bug.

 

That has to be my quickest fix ever.

 

In the next Beta!

Edited by nachtwolf
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Errm... I think I just fixed that and the flying units unfair advantage from above bug.

 

That has to be my quickest fix ever.

 

In the next Beta!

 

kickass. This will stop a certain opponent of mine from whining a lot ^_^

 

any possibility of getting the 'burbs-beta in the next beta? =D

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Errm... I think I just fixed that and the flying units unfair advantage from above bug.

 

That has to be my quickest fix ever.

 

In the next Beta!

 

kickass. This will stop a certain opponent of mine from whining a lot ^_^

 

any possibility of getting the 'burbs-beta in the next beta? =D

 

Yes there is one , PM me for that.

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