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Wow, I tried a new game on veteran (after dicovering that vetaran is "normal" and beginner is actually -2 from normal), the calcinites are REALLLLY..... tough to kill, practically emptied clips and a few grenades before dying. That is just for _ONE_ calcinite. And the damn gilman/aquatoids are so much more accurate and sneaky. So far, getting aquatoids on the 2nd terror mission is possible by saving right after the 1st terror mission and keep re-rolling the dice (save/fast fwd/reload...) Thanks for the replies.

Hi, Has anyone gotten an aquatoid terror mission as the first terror mission? I want to get the calcinite corpse early and get over it. I've experimented with it for abit and it seems that the earliest is the 3rd terror mission where the game changes to some other alien race than the gil man (Got lobster man twice, aquatoid a few times more, but mostly still gilman though). I once got a 2nd terror mission with aquatoids though... Is the game hardcoded to give the first terror mission as gilman? I've restarted a quite a few games to test the first mission trying to get some other alien race, no no avail. So far the 3rd mission gives the best chance (saving at the end of terror mission 2 and forwarding time, give mostly gilman, but i can get aquatoid or lobster man) BTW for the experiment, I skip ignore all UFO's and basically abort terror missions the moment i know the alien race. Later tonight, I'll try saving after the 1st terror mission and see whether I can get 2nd terror mission with aquatoids. Cheers.

Anyone actually played Technophobe Scenario? Would like to hear some comments... [let's not count pure grenades scenario NKF played since it's a different sub-class, doesn't make use of guns] (Can make it easier on the $$ side by allowing laser cannon research and manufacturing) Your most powerful weapon is probably the Large Rocket and Hi-X. I'm sorta playing this variant (not too strict on the other stuff, just my weapons used are purely non-research, PLUS motion scanner, some armor) on Veteran. It was all fine with average 2 deaths per mission, until I saw a cyberdisc on a terror mission Wasn't expecting them (kinda forgot they existed), and only had 5 Hi-X in the ship not equipped on anyone. Loadout is something like (IC is incase I land a night mission, since I chase small-medium UFOs with Skyrangers for Elerium) : 1 x Rocket Launcher (3 Large, 1 IC) 1 x Heavy Cannon (HE/IC) 1 x Auto Cannon (HE/IC) 6 x Rifleman (with extra clip, 1 grenande and variants of motion scanner/hi-x/medi-kit) 1 x Pistol Scout (grenade, motion scanner and misc) 1 x HWP (Rocket) [ Re-read my post asking for help on Terror missions, NKF suggested HWP Cannon for cyberdiscs though... ] That's the full 14slots of the Skyranger. Not using laser kinda sucks, since it's hard to make holes in walls/fences/etc. And for terror missions trashing the whole place up is the best for sniping from far (for get Line of Sight). So, a REAL technophone scenario, w/o armor, motion scanner, $ making tools, will be one heck of hard game. (If you want to win it, just research the appropriate stuff. Will be "fun" to play Cyndonia with T-shirt guys and purchasable weapons only, not to mention full out Psi-attacks on you w/o knowing ur Psi Strength )

I kinda felt the ascii art and "nethack" term was misleading. What I had in mind was top-down(think Zelda3 SNES), but with 2d artwork for the sprites. (I can't draw ) Anyway, I'm stuck at thinking on how to represent small mounds of hills in top-down. So units can have height advantage (sniping etc). Paralysis by analysis... sigh.

Okay, maybe not xcom. But I'm thinking of implementing a top-down view prototype mini-game with walls and grenade throwing/bouncing just to scratch my coding itch. So when a grenade is thrown, it'll grow bigger to simulate it's trajectory. (Remember it's a top-view, ur looking at the heads from the sky) THE question, would you want to play it ? And what if it's expanded to geoscape-ish level of gameplay. EXAMPLE (in ascii. hehe) : You : @ Walls : --- or | ---------------- (B) | | --------- |(A) | @ throw grenade into direction (A), would bounce to somewhere around (. If the wall has no ceiling, you can throw over the wall too.

AbraM, Can you tell me which part of the executable controls the FPS rate of the geoscape update ? I'm able to understand some disassembled asm. And maybe also what code inserted for loading the mp3play.dll So I can create a version which has : [mok] - proper alien screams [abraM] - mp3 music [???] - geoscape slowdown but with proper FPS [max] - autosell manufactured item - allocate all engineers/scientist easily Without the idle engineer on base contruction etc... Or construct a way to item-ify each patch and patch in as needed. Properly just patch everything in, but disable certain jmps to disable the 'feature'.

http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index...?showtopic=1468 a literally LONG post about MCD and LOFT.

I've been reading up on tile-based games recently and I was wondering how the bullets animate across the screen while keeping track of it's screen coordinates (x,y) and it's game space (x,y,z) coords. Can't seem to understand what is going on in the ufo2000 source. (what's fi_zang and te_xang?) I'm confused because say a soldier at tile 1,1 shoots an alien at tile 3,3. While it is easy to animate the bullet from the derived 2 points of the screen coords. There is the issue of checking for collision between point x1,y1 (screenspace coords of tile1,1) and x2,y2 (tile3,3)... not to mention if it misses, the bullet will keep on going until it hits something or goes off the screen. And also, I read about MCD and LOFT maps. When a xcom soldier stands/kneels, I suppose there's a taller/shorter LOFT map for both states right ? Where is that defined in the original xcom btw ? Any developers on ufo2000 care to explain ? Thanks in advance!

On the treat each building as a UFO idea. The problem is the other "UFOs" nearby will see you and shoot you when you can't even see them. And using Hi-X on cyberdiscs would cause lotsa smoke. To the disadvantage of my men. I have this terror mission on veteran I can upload if you guys want a try at it. I use it as my training of sorts, unable to get 0 or at most 1 death. Nowadays I try to avoid doing terror missions with the dustoff or shoot visible aliens method. Turnover rate not low enough to get lotsa experienced soldiers to mop up terror sites with ease. LZ does make a big difference I suppose. Must get off my butt and play with NKF's smoke bomb savegame.

To furthur support NKF's tips, I would strongly suggest doing this (which I've only tried doing recently on a new game). On medium/large scouts and maybe supply ship, send out both skyranger and interceptor. In the case it lands favorably (daylight), skyranger will engage. Otherwise if daylight is soon, patrol skyranger and hope it stays landed. If it takes flight again, shoot it down Since the scoring thread says landed ufo's give score to aliens, you could do this only when u need elerium. I've got quite a stockpile (compared to previous games) without visiting bases (too risky and hard to me).

what i did was to set run the given .reg file. so the local_machine\software\microprose\x-com enemy unknown\E.T tree is there. Then set the vres to 400 (decimal), hres stick to 640. And if it display with the black border below i switch the edge_filter key to 1 or 0 (toggle to the other) Seems every time i run it, i have to switch it. If it was 0, I play it. Next time I play it 99.99% it'll be the black border, i exit, go to regedit (it remember where i was previous in) so i just set edge_filter to the other value. (1 in this example). so on and so forth... Works like a charm. P.S : i notice with that key, somehow when i run the original exe with say f0dder fix, it'll still have the black border... wierd huh ? I had to delete the whole \E.T tree to get it to work as per normal.

Bob : thanks for the reply. puts my mind to ease Btw, the globe is done by hand rite ? (think oldschool demo scene) meaning not using any 3d api (i dun think GBA has any 3d api anyway...) Some suggestions for usability. Since GBA has no touchscreen. Assuming Start is used to pause the game. (when ur boss sneaks up on you at work while ur playing GBA Xcom ) -=- Geoscape -=- R + D-pad to rotate L + D-pad to zoom Select goes to Baseview -=- Baseview -=- L + D-pad : Switch base (up/down d-pad would be wasted though) R(holding down) + D-pad : select the buttons on the right like menus (no need to use the fake mouse to click) (in this case left/right d-pad would have no function) Select exits Baseview only D-pad : move the mouse cursor -=- Battlescape -=- R + D-pad to scroll L + D-pad to up/down the layer/level (?) -=- All cases -=- Button A and B of cuz would be left click, right click. Notice I chose "R" for the more common cases(so that one hand controls one thing). "L" + d-pad requires you to use two fingers from the same hand. That should make playing the game on gba less of a bitch with the d-pad controlled cursor While your at it, make the windows version battlescape run at a higher resolution (to show more of the map at one time). Otherwise I dun really see the point of a new windows version. hehe.

Wow, thanks for the reply. It helps alot to hear from the great NKF Hmm, I think these tips are helpful (yet to try) : - Low TUs attract reaction fire - Use out of range sniper to shoot. (kinda always read this but never did use this) - Smoke in between (not IN) From some other thread, I just load up on HighExplosive for terror missions in case of cyberdiscs. (I've got laser rifles now though, still takes too many shots though) About the corner or edge of map thing ( I'm quite lucky to normally get a more or less corner). Do you sweep like horizontal first then sweep the next "bar" of horizontal ? Kinda like a zig-zag (like how CRT monitor refreshes the screen). Or diagonal ? I guess this is my main problem. There was one mission (in a different game) my winning streak got turned around by one damn chrysallid. I was still in the purchasable weapons stage... Attached the picture. I've never seen 5 lower right corner numbers before besides this

Hi all, I'm playing veteran difficulty. And all this damn terror missions (specifically sectoid/cyberdisc) are killing me. They have mad vision, mad reaction shots, mad camping skills. Short of arming my men full of High Explosives and bombing the heck outta every square tile. Is there a strategy to comb/clear the place ? Smokes are not helping me out (other than for exiting SkyRanger), tends to REDUCE my visibility more than the aliens. Cuz all the smoke from HE autocannon or heavycannon killed me in one of my missions. Since I'm not good enuff to play no reload, I tried it many times, in the end I just gave up and aborted the mission. (At least I didnt ignore the terror mission) When doing normal maps my limit skills work sufficiently to clear it without much problems. It's the damn buildings and all the corners, u bomb the building, the smoke blinds you. Then the alien shoots thru the holes YOU created... argh! Ok, so please please help me out.

Just to help you guys to past the time before Bob finishes his GBA, DS or Windows version. GBA Rebelstar Tactical Command : August 2005 - no base building though... google for more information - i've seen the E3 trailer of it (no sound), there's burst fire modes with like a swarm of laser hitting the alien! PC Laser Squad Nemesis (already OUT) Single-player mode(NEW) - $19.99 or something. Lastly, if and when Bob(aka One Man Band) see this, could you explain how you got the geoscape globe to render/display ? Not to sound too cynical, but it seems more like a photoshop job to me. As the geoscape globe imho is done the oldschool way of having flat/gouraud shaded kinda sphere (made of many polygons). And I kinda recall seeing a sine.dat in the game which i suppose are precalculated values for speed of rendering the globe. I would settle for a rectangle wrapped around globe if it gave the battlescape(the hader part) more time to be coded. ~just my 2 cents.