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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Xcomutil Question


v0rt3x

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Hello all, quick question about XcomUtil. I am currently playing the DOS version patched to 1.4, and have just installed the XcomUtil program.

 

I choose an option that would allow XcomUtil to send me a message, or list of choices if I remember correctly, right before an UFO assault. This is where the problem lies. I click through the first screen and it goes back to the Geoscape with what appears to be XcomUtil giving me those "options" at the top left of the screen. However, to my dismay, it is a bunch of black boxes where I believe text should be.

 

I can hit enter, a few numbers, or N and Y a couple of times and the game will continue into the battlescape, where I can continue the fight without knowing exactly what choices I picked.

 

Does anyone know what these questions are? Or can tell me what I did wrong in the installation of XcomUtil. As far as the rest of the game, it works perfectly.

 

Thanks in advance. :D

Edited by v0rt3x
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Yeah, I've seen that problem also.

 

The first question is about the terrain type you want to play. For the UFO terrains they are listed from 0-9, TFTD (if you have the Hybrid games option on) from a to ??. For a list of them, check the xcomutil.cfg on the Default Area Data section (just do a search on that term).

 

The second question is about light level (0 = night, 1 = dusk, 2 = daylight)

 

The third (if available) concerns UFO types, 0 being Small Scout, 1 Medium Scout, etc.

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Hrmm, It's gotta be somewhere in the runXcom.bat file. I don't know if it puts these questions in the xcuhook1.bat (check if it exists, you can put a cls at the top).

 

Basically you need to clear the screen for it to display properly. Simply insert a line 'cls'

 

Probably the easiest/surefire place would be in your runxcom.bat file (open it in notepad) and go to the ':begin' label and insert 'cls' there. Essentially making it look like this:

[....]
:chklvl1

:begin
cls
if errorlevel 1 goto end
:nonewer
[....]

Edited by Pi Masta
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What's probably happening is that the colour normally used by the console text has been changed by the game's palette. I don't remember if cls clears the current text colour.

 

I don't know if using mode 80 instead of cls to switch from the game's 320x200x256 to the dos console's 80x25 character text mode will work - but that's a great way of fixing the screen if you know the game's crashed and you've been thrown to the dos console but there's nothing visible on-screen (as the text colour is very dark or black).

 

Alternately, mode 40 keeps you in 320x200, but I think it drops the colour down to 16, or lesser. It will ensure that the text will be displayed as white on black.

 

I'm not sure why this happens with UFO. With TFTD, it displays the menu in standard 80x25 text mode.

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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You're probably right NKF. I knew it was because of the palette and the mode the game was using (I was trying to keep from getting too technical :D ). I think cls resets it in DOSBox (can't remember now). I had just assumed it did the same in a true DOS environment. You might have to use a combination of both, i.e. mode 80 then cls.
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