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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

UFO Extender


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Greetings.

 

Been a while, but maybe there are enthusiasts around to discuss.

 

Ufo Extender has some problems, but worst one for me is unability to use the graphs. Problem - every graph is insanely scaled (the top point of the graph is something like 300 000 000). This makes them totally unusable since you cannot actually see any change between zero and nonzero values (alien activity doesnt go well above some thousands, so its still 1/100000 th of the scale of 300 000 000!)

 

Can anyone confirm he has this bug?

Maybe something exactly known triggers it (some exact option or course of action) or maybe there is some simple way to fix it?

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This bug isn't related to extender, rather one that sometimes occurs with the plain vanilla game.

 

The scores in the monthly graphs may have been corrupted. Possibly by a memory leak that resulted in the game overwriting the values of one of the stored monthly scores with an abnormally high value.

 

You can reset the graphs to 0 by starting a new game and saving it in a new slot.

 

For alien graphs, copy the alien.dat file from the new game into your current save. For X-Com, use the xcom.dat file. These files store the score logs for the last 12 months.

 

- NKF

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NKF, now that i have studied UFO through and through with the help of UFOpaedia, i know the files.

I opened them right away when i noticed huge vaules on day 2.

They are filled with very low values!

 

Well, i will confirm today again, since i just glanced the values, didnt read them throughly, but for me, this is happening EVERY time i play X-Com1 with UFOExtender. Every time. From day 1 this happens. Thats why i suppose UFOE has something to do with it. Or CE version. Dos version ran in dosbox has no such flaw for me (at least X-Com2 i checked two days ago, played for a month and was able to have good graphs).

 

And since i also experienced insane bugs i never before had (like corruption of the file holding world data and ufo data, creating ufos with values out of range, i posted about them in my other post http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242034894) and the fact that UFOE is actually tempering with game memory in order to introduce its tweaks, it just feels logical to me that this problem must be somehow related to UFOE. Or isnt it logical? I dont exactly know HOW this "working with memory" is done.

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I checked. Its very wierd.

 

My save for a good start (i was re-starting game until i got a start where USA was giving about 600 000 funding - normally it gives 1000 - and europe countries would be giving more than usual - since the sum must be 6 mil) is at day one at 12:28

I re-rolled approximately three or five times to get it - new game,superhuman, make base, check funding, options, abort, new game...

 

And it already contains an alien.dat file that has values of 16 in the last of four bytes (meaning, 00 00 00 10 is stored, meaning, value of 0x10000000 is stored for alien activity)!

(Guess i overlooked them when i glanced at the file as ones seemed harmless enough, forgot its four byte word in little endian format)

 

More exactly, i have 0x10000000 value stored for:

Current Month: China

Two Months before current (third row of the file, if you consider all countries of one month to be one row): Arctic & Siberia

Three Months before: Arctic

Five Months before: Germany & Nigeria

Seven Months before: Southern Africa & Indian Ocean

Ten Months before: India & Arctic

 

Also, some values of 01 00 00 00 were present, too, which i conclude can also be erroreous (since ufo cant score 16 points can it? and anyway ufo should have no score before game start)

 

I attach my aliens.dat file (renamed to txt since i am "not allowed to upload with extension .dat"...) in case anyone willing to check it. I think i MUST be some infro overwritten here from other part of the game? Or maybe it has something to do with the way game handles re-starts, maybe something is cleared wrongly on the "abort"?

 

The same problem is true for xcom.dat file too! It also has bizzare 0x10's in numerous places (also attached).

 

Is there any way to check other save files fast for "integrity" this way too? I mean, to see what other parts of my save are corrupted? I mean, what are the easiest save files to check for such errors?

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I checked. Its very wierd.

 

My save for a good start (i was re-starting game until i got a start where USA was giving about 600 000 funding - normally it gives 1000 - and europe countries would be giving more than usual - since the sum must be 6 mil) is at day one at 12:28

I re-rolled approximately three or five times to get it - new game,superhuman, make base, check funding, options, abort, new game...

I did it cos i wanted to start my base in europe and thus wanted more funding in europe.

 

And it already contains an alien.dat file that has values of 16 in the last of four bytes (meaning, 00 00 00 10 is stored, meaning, value of 0x10000000 is stored for alien activity)!

(Guess i overlooked them when i glanced at the file as ones seemed harmless enough, forgot its four byte word in little endian format)

 

More exactly, i have 0x10000000 value stored for:

Current Month: China

Two Months before current (third row of the file, if you consider all countries of one month to be one row): Arctic & Siberia

Three Months before: Arctic

Five Months before: Germany & Nigeria

Seven Months before: Southern Africa & Indian Ocean

Ten Months before: India & Arctic

 

Also, some values of 01 00 00 00 were present, too, which i conclude can also be erroreous (since ufo cant score 16 points can it? and anyway ufo should have no score before game start)

 

I attach my aliens.dat file (renamed to txt since i am "not allowed to upload with extension .dat"...) in case anyone willing to check it. I think i MUST be some infro overwritten here from other part of the game? Or maybe it has something to do with the way game handles re-starts, maybe something is cleared wrongly on the "abort"?

 

The same problem is true for xcom.dat file too! It also has bizzare 0x10's in numerous places (also attached).

 

Is there any way to check other save files fast for "integrity" this way too?

I mean, to see what other parts of my save are corrupted?

I mean, what are the easiest save files to check for such errors?

___________alien.txt

___________xcom.txt

Edited by Istrebitel
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In addition to the X-Com games behaving very differently on different PC configurations, I do know the CE version introduces a whole array of its own bugs to the mix that weren't present in the dos version.

 

Still, what ever bug is occurring may be exacerbated by Extender, but I doubt it's entirely at fault as this particular bug isn't just isolated to it. What sort of results do you get without the extender?

 

As for the scores being present from the start, I wonder if it's just unused or uninitialised data? Do they appear on the graphs or is it just when you view the alien.dat and xcom.dat file?

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Since in file there are values of 0x10000000, that is, 268 435 456, the graphs get scaled to ~0 to 350 000 000

But, for some reason, these vaules dont dispay at graphs. Instead, if said month has a bugged value of 0x10000000, the line from previous month to it and to the next month would be just missing

 

So graph line would look like:

___ ___ ___

 

 

Strange thing is, before, i got this very commonly (in fact, from three different playthroughs i did with Ufo Extender, all three had this bug, and only last one was re-started to get a specific funding).

 

Now, i cannot seem to reproduce it! Even with UFO Extender!

 

It does look like stray bits dropped here and there, since its basically sections of 1 bits randomly thrown around, creating 00010000 or 00000001 bytes in different places of the file.

May be uninitialised data.

 

Maybe - just maybe - and i will test this when i get home - this happens if you save a game before any UFO or XCOM activity happens, maybe teh alien.dat and xcom.dat files (data that later goes into theese files) are initialised when they are first accessed, like there is no function InitGraphs(), only AddScoreToGraph(), and AddScoreToGraph() checks wether the graphs were initialised and initialises them if not. Would be lousy programming but can be what is causing the problem.

This can also explain why i cannot reproduce it, since i never tried to save - i only made new games and looked at graphs.

And all the games i start - i always save right away so that i can re-start if i fkup without need to do all the routine stuff (sell/buy, re-equip, etc) which can explain why i always have this bug.

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