Latest revision as of 00:20, 3 June 2015

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Feedback

INstallation Problems

HI fellow Sectoid Killers!

I have used UFO extender before and loved it.

I recently checked the forum and saw the latest version and downloaded, But i'm having some installtion problems.

Operating System: Windows XP Version: X-Com Collectors Edition CD

Firstly, I could not delete the old UFO Extender.exe file as access was denied. I tried moving it - failed. I renamed it to UFO.exe and moved to recycle bin and copied over the new install (full latest version with modified Externde.ini file. Still could not delete it.

Game failed to load - complaining of me trying to run 2 mods together.

So I un-installed CE totally, vaped all the files and re-installed a virginal copy of CE. Moved the zip file to the location & unpacked. Edited the ini file to switch on the mods.....

Nothing happens when I use the shortcut.

What did I do wrong?

Also - I used old TFTD extender but the battlescape was in super-mast mega zoom mode with the mouse. Is there a variable battlescape mod as per UFO to tweak mouse settings for TFTD? (I've yet to try the latest release of TFTF extender)

If the loader fails to launch UFO.exe or the program crashes, often the UFOloader.exe will still be running. If that happens, explorer won't let you remove it. To check and fix this, open the Task manager and see if UFOloader.exe is present. Select it and 'end program' or 'end process'.

The problem with the 2 mods running is an oversight, if you get the version 1.33beta that is available on the Strategycore forums, the problem is fixed. I'm working on version 1.34 and it is fixed. I'll release it once I can resolve a few other issues.

Look at the Slow Battlescape Animation Speed option in TFTD Extender to slow down all battlescape animation, which will also slow the scroll speed.-Tycho (talk) 22:05, 25 May 2015 (EDT)

Thanks for the tips. The odd thing is that I WAS using the 1.33Beta. Also I think I'm being a bit of a frag-head in that the TFTD extender i downloaded just had patcher.dll. I think I must have downloaded the wrong TFTD extender.

I just uploaded a hacked version of 1.33beta, which is now called 1.33.1patch, to the forum on strategycore. I just used a hex editor to remove the bytes of code that were causing the dual address patched error.

1.33 Mod List Mismatch

Just a small point - the mod list in the latest 1.33 Full Configuration Settings File does not exactly match the listings on the website for UFO Extender Mods.

Could you please update the web page to match. For example, the Mod "Small Firestorm" is in the Configuration Settings, but there is no clue as to what it does. Also I think there is a mod listed on the website "More Chrysalid noises" that is not in the Configuration Settings.

Y:Yeah. There is a lot I need to update on the website. Not enough time lately. The small firestorm mod explanation should be in the INI-readme file. It makes the firestorm into a UAV: less production time and materials, and you can have two per hangar but the hull points are lower than the regular (modified) firestorm.-Tycho (talk) 04:43, 27 May 2015 (EDT)

Grenades

Having non-destructable grenades in the latest full version of UFO Extender is good. Does this apply to Alien Grenades as well? They should also be indestructible. Does this apply to TFTD extender grenades? - both terrestrial and sonic (They should also be indestructuble)

You can set the amount of damage needed to destroy each type of grenade by following the guidelines for the OBDATA section of the INI.

Also - what is the point of smoke/dye grenades? I thought aliens could see through smoke, so if you chuck a smoker at an Alien, you just affect your own line of sight detrimentally!

This is not true for the original (I think that in the Firaxis version, smoke only gives a penalty on the hit percentage.) Smoke will impede line-of-sight for both sides depending on the intensity and number of squares that are between an alien and a soldier. The best strategy is to throw a smoke grenade so that it lands midway between a soldier and an alien to maximize the penalty. Of course, if the alien moves closer he can obtain LOS for himself and other aliens, just the same as for the player.

Now a much better idea would be to change smokes to Wille Pete's (white phosphorous - i.e incendiaries)

You can do this with the OBDATA section of the INI.

Also - you probably know this but my (previous) version of UFO extender had a grenade bug so that when you primed it, but did not throw the grenade/HE pack, it disappeared and was not available in the next combat round.

Which version are you playing? With the hot grenade mod enabled in version 1.33, the data-point that makes the grenade not appear in the inventory should not be set until the soldier throws it. ~~I'll double check to see if it's still a problem.~~ It seems to work as expected in version 1.33

You should be able to prime a grenade and have it "hot" until you throw it. Woe betide a grenadier that gets shot holding a live grenade....

This is part of the original game. If you prime a grenade, even with the hot grenade mod enabled, and drop it, it will explode when the turn ends. A viable strategy when going against chryssalids, as a "precaution" against zombification.-Tycho (talk) 00:52, 30 May 2015 (EDT)

Not fully exploiting alien Alloys

I like the fact that more is being made of Alien Alloys, but I have another idea - better bullets for the sniper rifle.

Now the original Terrestial rifle that troops start with is actually quite good in terms of accuracy and flexibility, but is limited by terrestial bullets.

Once the Alien Alloys are researched, it should be an easy thing to make Alien Alloy rounds, giving the olde sniper rifle a new lease of life - with higher damage rounds.

New Ammo Tpye: Alien Alloy Rounds - increase rifle damage with Alien Alloys researched. Same should also apply to the heavy weapons that use AP ammo.

Ver. 1.31

The feedback was on the file version that was presented here on this wiki (1.31). Thanks that you mentioned there is a newer version - I've found and downloaded it, and also updated it on the wiki. (Apparently UFOextender was updated to describe 1.31.5 version, but not the download page). As I can tell now, 1.31 didn't have partial clips recovery feature. Battlescape hotkeys work in 1.31.5, but there's ~~a bug now related to hotkeys and alt-tabbing in fullscreen mode~~. As to MC issues, I'll be able to tell when I get a chance to test them. I'll be giving further feedback in the program's forum thread. — Slider2k 00:31, 6 December 2013 (EST)

Music

I'm just wondering if it would be an idea to providing a selectable option that allows you to mix up the tactical music to include some of the other tracks as well, like the Geoscape tracks or gmstory. Breaks up the monotony a bit and can sometimes change the mood of the battle. But leave that until after you've achieved what you're setting out to achieve.

The intro should stick with the midi music, or you could use the interception music since that is a remix of the intro. On second though, scrap that - it lacks the slow buildup that is a major part of the intro.

P. S. Oh, and don't forget that the PSX music tracks start from track 02. -NKF

Hehe, you should have posted this yesterday. I lost one hour banging my head in a why-the-hell-does-it-play-interception-music-in-the-menu way before I realised that ;-) The intro music does not use the same mecanism as ingame music so it is not impacted by the modification. As for your suggestion, well the patch is written in C and mciSendString is flexible enough to allow stuff like that I think. The most difficult part is to define what we want... I'll however update with the current version and keep that improvement for later.

XCOM CE's Sound effect volume is excruciatingly high (about 5x) compared to DOS version. This means that, at least for me, music is relatively quiet. At least it is so on Windows 7. I'm using modified SAMPLE/SAMPLE2.CAT files to compensate for it, but it would be great if there was an option to adjust this. Maybe this isn't an issue on Windows XP.

There problem here is that there is nothing in the program to manage aspects of sounds/music. The game selects the music entry or SFX and then dumps the data string directly into the OS's sound mixer. You can't simply add a directx volume option into the game. XCOM creates secondary DX sound buffers for each sound. Either the option was not available at the time the game was written or the developers intentionally excluded volume control when these buffers are created. To fix this one would have to replace the current sound buffer creation routine.- Tycho

You can enable and option in version 1.33 to play all sounds through the BASS sound system. Doing this will allow to to adjust the volume for sounds and music separately with the entries in the INI.-Tycho (talk) 02:36, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

- After some investigating, the DOS version's 1.4 SAMPLE/SAMPLE2.CAT audio is the same volume as the CE .CATs, yet is played in-game at a much lower volume than the CE version. Perhaps there is some sort of volume adjustment going on in-game, which isn't being performed in the CE version, or not on Windows 7 at least. The fact that the audio data in the DOS 1.0/1.2 SOUND1/SOUND2.CAT files is a lower volume than the 1.4 sounds (yet still played at the same volume in-game) seems to suggest this.
- This is also another minor gripe, but it seems some weapons (namely the Heavy Cannon) use the wrong sounds (for example the Heavy Cannon HE rounds firing and hit sounds both use the explosion sound ,and it definitely isn't this way in DOS. Is this a SAMPLE2.CAT problem or is this defined elsewhere in the game files?

The music is playing as a MIDI channel (usually via the OS's built-in SW Synth), whereas the SFX is all handled as standard wave channel. In anything earlier then Vista, Windows let you change the volume on those two channels separately (along with whatever other output channels your system had). From Vista on, you can now adjust volume on a per-program level (which is good), but you lose the ability to do so on a per-output-device level (which is bad). I'm not aware of any workarounds. -Bomb Bloke

The Windows version did change the sound. Check out my user page for a lot of information on how sound EFX play in the game.-Tycho

If I wanted the game to play GMMARS instead of GMSTORY during debriefings, what should I change? CE by default seems to use GMSTORY instead, and Abram's Fmod patch uses the game's default music mapping instead of letting you define one.

check my user page. At the bottom, I've listed the addresses for all the events that call a sound. You'll need a disassembler like IDA. The list will help you locate the hex address that you'll need to change to call a different sound entry.-Tycho

Are there any bitrate limitations to what MP3s the game can play?--amitakartok 14:49, 13 March 2013 (EDT)

There shouldn't be any limitations. With the mod enabled, the game has nothing to do with mp3 playback except telling the BASS system which track to play. I checked their website[1] and no limitations are mentioned.- Tycho 23:16, 13 March 2013 (EDT)

Video

Other

It seems that you can click during soldier moving or shooting, and then the soldier will execute that command as soon as the action is completed. Has it always been this way? I remember that if you did this in the DOS version then nothing happens. This has resulted in a lot of mis-commanding and I'm not too keen on using double-click (too used to single-clicking!)

I'm not sure of the specifics but I think Windows is buffering the input and allowing it to be executed it at the next opportunity. I think DOSbox eliminates this in some way directly or indirectly. The only solution is to use the double-click mod.

Tank issues

This site states they only lose morale from friendly fire (which itself is probably a programming oversight, as they aren't supposed to be affected by morale whatsoever). While the suggested solution sounds good, a better one would be a hack that makes large units always pass morale checks and thus not panic.

But not all large units in the game are mechanical (especially in TFTD). I have fixed this in patches to 1.31.

The improved tank needs alien alloys, yet it does not need alien alloys to be researched first. Was that intentional or did you forget to set the research prerequisite?

Intentional: The idea is that the base frame would be the same but that alien alloys are cut and attached, which doesn't require knowledge of their manufacture. The process is probably very wasteful but since there is usually a huge surplus by the time one can make the tanks, who cares? This is true for alien weapons, you can manufacture them using Elerium and Alloys, without researching either.

Are tanks supposed to lose firing accuracy if they take severe damage (as in, laser tank's accuracy dropping from 60 to 17 after losing 79 out of 90 health)? Shouldn't they lose, I don't know, TU regeneration rate instead?

--amitakartok 13:01, 17 March 2013 (EDT)

In regards to health and accuracy, they follow the same rules as other units. Damage to the frame would throw off targeting parameters.

Funky smoke

In my last few Battlescape sessions (not having researched powered armor yet), I noticed several times that an exploding smoke grenade inflicts some ~20 stun damage to unarmored soldiers in the blast radius, causing them to pass out faster than otherwise due to smoke inhalation.

The setup is this (no one is packing incendiary munitions so it's not the Funky Fire bug): first round, team deploys from 'ranger. One guy tosses smoke grenade to bottom of ramp. End of round, grenade goes off and covers the deployment area with smoke. Next turn, I notice every soldier underneath the smoke having a very prominent stun bar covering almost half of their health bar, far more than it should be from the two rounds of smoke inhalation; rookies start to drop unconscious at around turn 8, with the rest dangerously close to going under as well by the time we finish securing the LZ. Even if they recover, they immediately get stunned again by the smoke and I tend to clean out the map before the cloud dissipates, forcing me to fight at reduced troop strength.

Did the 2048 smoke tiles hack change something it wasn't supposed to or is this behavior normal? Smoke grenades directly dealing stun damage, I mean.--amitakartok 18:05, 19 March 2013 (EDT)

Units always took some stun damage from smoke, but only at the end of Xcom's turn. With the "funky fire" mod enabled, units are taking stun damage from smoke at the end of your turn and the end of the alien turn. Unlike fire, the amount of stun damage inflicted is related to the intensity of the smoke in the square at the end of the turn. You might need to toss the smoke grenade further than right at the base of the ramp. I had to change my tatics slightly for this: Throw the grenade 4-5 squares from the end of the ramp, deploy a few men, and toss another to the front of the ranger. -Tycho 21:12, 19 March 2013 (EDT)

Well, that's the strange thing: they're not taking stun damage from the smoke but from the smoke grenade's explosion, as if it were a weak Stun Bomb.--amitakartok 09:11, 20 March 2013 (EDT)

The explosion generation routine only calls the "Do damage to Unit" routine if the explosion type is HE. It is possible that if your not playing with the 'hot grenade' mod but are using 'Funky Fire', the explosion occurs at the end of the turn and soldiers in smoke are then dealt stun damage by the end-of-turn routine, and then receive more damage at the end of the alien turn.-Tycho 11:58, 21 March 2013 (EDT)

I found an oversight in my code that applies the stun damage from smoke twice on the X-Com turn. I have fixed this.-Tycho (talk) 02:33, 10 May 2015 (EDT) -

1.32 bugs

Just tried the, as of this writing, newest version.

The game keeps alternating between MP3 and midi soundtrack, despite the INI containing the correct filenames for the MP3 tracks.

Something's really not right here.--amitakartok (talk) 14:03, 23 May 2014 (EDT)

At what points does the game switch back to MIDI/mp3? So far, this hasn't been reported by others. Tycho (talk) 08:54, 17 July 2014 (EDT)

Been a while ago but I seem to remember the switch randomly occurring every time there's a track change, ie. it happens even in the middle of the Geoscape, when one track is over and the next one starts.--amitakartok (talk) 17:00, 28 July 2014 (EDT)

There is something strange here. The vanilla game doesn't change MIDI tracks in the middle of Geoscape, so mp3 payback is the same. (I tested by listening to playback in the geoscape and let the music end. It just starts over.) The MIDI track might change after the game returns from the battlescape (it's determined quasi~randomly there). Also, the changes to the code that occur when you enable MP3 playback in the Extender replaces the code that plays midi music and the BASS sound system can't play MIDI without additional support. If I don't use BASS and remove a MIDI file to simulate a bad one, I just get silence. -Tycho (talk)

I've been playing a long game for a while now and have not seen this issue. Does it still occur for you?Tycho (talk) 21:56, 25 February 2015 (EST)

Abalative Armor

A non-bugfix question: would it be too much to ask to remove Ablative Armor from the Enhanced Game combination? I don't want to use it but the all-or-nothing behavior of Enhanced Game means I'm forced to if I also want to use the others. I feel it just doesn't fit among the others.--amitakartok (talk) 17:28, 29 July 2014 (EDT)

The purpose of the ablative armor mod was to prevent the first plasma shot of the game from killing a soldier in power armor, not to make the soldier able to take multiple Heavy plasma shots. I have removed the "enhanced" option and each settings can now be individually enabled, with the condition that the ablative armor mod will be active if the weak sectoid mod is enabled.

I've made changes to ablative armor. Armor is more effective and usually stops one-shot kills, although soldiers will be wounded, if the armor type matches the weapon used: personal armor will be very effective against plasma pistols and rifles, but rifles have a good chance to wound the soldier. Power and flying armor is very strong against pistols and rifles have a chance to wound, especially with repeat shots to the same location. With a strong hit, heavy plasma can severely wound a soldier, killing soldiers with low health in one-hit. Playing a game with these changes, I have less soldiers killed in battle, but I have a lot of wounded soldiers, some are in the medical ward for over 25 days.Tycho (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2015 (EST)

1.33 issues

The game crashes in battlescape ("XCOM crashed at 0x10007ACE with error 0xC0000005 trying to access 0x0100FFFF"), immediately after an explosion which would create smoke and/or destroy landscape. The crash occurs after the explosion animation, just before smoke/terrain damage would appear. Tested with HC-HE, AC-HE, Grenade and Small Rocket in farm terrain. Config - 1.33 default, except for fullscreen resolution (changed to 1440x900). Does NOT happen on 1.32.8a. Turning off bugfixes ([Bug Fix] Apply=0) prevents the crash. Game version: Steam. OSes: Win 7, Win 10 build 9926. Crash address consistent between reboots. I can provide a memory dump, if necessary. --Sapeer (talk) 16:24, 12 February 2015 (EST)

Thanks for the information. The problem occurs in the code that generates the three-dimensional blast damage for explosions. I believe I have already found it and will be releasing a patch soon.Tycho (talk) 02:35, 13 February 2015 (EST)

Have you been able to fix it yet? -Sapeer (talk) 16:17, 9 May 2015 (EDT)

I have but I am stuck in the middle of fixing another issue and events in life have slowed down my progress.-Tycho (talk) 02:28, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Could you upload the current source code? The last one published is for 1.31.9. --Sapeer (talk) 16:24, 12 February 2015 (EST)

Just waiting for someone to ask. I'll post it soon.-Tycho (talk) 02:35, 13 February 2015 (EST)

Other Feedback

Hidden Movement speed

Could you please slow down the battlescape Hidden Movement speed as well? It looses the magic of the hidden movement. Nowadays computers compute very fast and the inteligence of the game is now very fast too and you could not see or hear what is happenning e.g. if somewhere in the battlescape - in the dark where you couldn´t see - aliens kill two civilians, you will hear two screams together, not one after one. It is very fast and not readable yet and loosing the main meaning of the hidden movement part. ElfKaa

Slowing down the alien turn is not really feasible. If it's just about the speed of death screams from unseen units, I could write a time delay to occur after a death scream on the alien turn. This wouldn't affect the alien turn routine per se but would give some distinction between each yell. - Tycho

Alien Bleeding: If you have Aliens Bleeding enabled, your soldiers might randomly receive same injuries as aliens. Noticed that when I critically wounded a floater. He went down unconscious, and so did one of my soldiers (without being shot at). When the floater died, my soldier died, too.

Tt sounds like a routine is mixing up the CurrentUnit and CurrentTarget variables or one is being replaced by the other....Tycho (talk)

One idea on the source of this problem may be a side-effect of "more reaction fire". The call to check for reaction fire when units change their facing, seems to create a possibility that the program can't keep track of which unit was the current active one, usually when multiple units reaction fire to the same event. Often, this will cause a crash because the variable for the active unit was cleared in the mix-up.Tycho (talk) 22:06, 25 February 2015 (EST)

Seeing that it's possible to modify manufacturing requirements with the lasers and the Laser Tank, would it be possible to make an option that upgrades armors instead of producing them from scratch? I.e. producing a Power Suit requires a suit of Personal Armor on top of its own price, kinda like an "undersuit" the additional plates and movement assist frame is bolted onto. Similarly, a Flying Suit needs a Power Suit as well as whatever it already costs. This achieves two things. First, it provides the player a good way to utilize accumulated Personal Armors:as the death of a soldier means loss of his/her armor, the player probably has a helluva lot of spares which take up store space and will become dead weight once Power Suits are available. Second, it makes the production of advanced armors much slower and more expensive - $122,000, 14 alloys, 21 Elerium and 3,200 hours for a single Flying Suit? Are you really willing to give a rookie an armor that takes days to build, costs over six times his salary and might not save him anyway? I'd say this would be fun; what do you say?--amitakartok (talk) 11:30, 23 May 2014 (EDT)

There is now 'Stack Armor Production' as an option in version 1.33-Tycho (talk)

Base Stacking

How does the Build Queue thing work, it doesn't say on the page or README? --Ditto51 12:32, 17 August 2013 (EDT)

Its is called "Base Build Stacking" and it's listed under the mod section. When enabled, you can place facilities next to ones currently under construction and they will begin after the current one is complete.-Tycho

TFTD Bugs

Sorry, this is completely the wrong place to add bug reports, but I can't work out where in the forum this is supposed to go.

If you mean on this forum, you need to post these bugs under the TFTDextender section. Also add your signature by typing four "~" at the end of your post. You can find the link on my user page or under the "Game editors and mods" section of the main page of UFO topics- Tycho (talk) 20:20, 2 June 2015 (EDT)