kirilz

I am running Arch Linux 64 bit. No .deb or .rpm packages would work for me but a tarball of binaries would suffice I think.

I run Arch Linux, has been a very smooth ride so far. Only problem is the ATi drivers, but I had that problem under open SUSE as well.

On topic, I find the best way to survive plasma fire is Privates. Lots of privates, moving forward and drawing the enemy fire. I usually follow behind carefully with sniper rifle and machine gun equipped veterans (as it is, the machine guns are very effective right now). You still need to be careful though, as every Private killed to death is -3 points for the mission. Only in terror missions that does not seem to matter much, as despite how badly I go through the carnage, the terrorized nation is always super grateful. In general, I think going for a mix of many expendable bodies with 2-3 killing machines is a very viable tactic. Then again I might be influenced a little by my experience playing the Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40k.

Actually one of my areas of interst is procedural generation of content (admittedly, I use Python and C rather than C++). Fact of the matter is, tile based levels fit quite naturally with a number of procedural generation approaches. We are not talking about generating a realistic city like in Introversion's Subversion, we are talking about a much simpler type of level. Take for example Atom Zombie Smasher - the levels there are procedurally generated, make sense and you can repurpose them for Xenonauts simply by swapping the buildings with sub maps. The algorithm sounds like it can be easily tweaked to yield the desired general layout of the map, so by changing some parameters you can get a farm-based layot with lots of open spaces. I'll hold off on claiming what effect the sub maps plastered over a hand-designed level actually is as in the current build there is no variation in the sub maps. If I have to speculate though, I'd say that you greatly overestimate the effectg a sub map will have on keeping a level fresh. From my experience in ground combat right now, the thing that mostly matters is the general layout of the map and that is what I build plans on. Once I know where the UFO will spawn and where the roads and buildings are, there is usually only one optimal approach.

Hm really? I was under the impression that the maps would only be semi-random, with their general plan predefined and only the types of buildings that fill in the slots being randomized. Actually that is my only concern about the game so far - no matter how many semi random maps are added, repetition will set in as soon as a map has to be replayed, unlike if there was even a simple procedural generator in place (especially for tiled maps procedural generation of content is quite easy)

I encounter the same bug. I have 64 scientists now. It is worth noting that lab space does not begin to disappear until after you get down to the original number of scientists - that is, if I have 64/15 like now, and I bring it down to 15/15, no lab space is used. Then when I use some from the 15 scientists, lab space begins to fill up again.

Hm, is it intentional that the rocket equipped hunter has hilarious accuracy? It does not get above 13% even at close range with perfect LOS (no obstacles). And it is not just 13% to hit the exact tile but still blow stuff up, it is 13% no to hit the civilian 90 degrees and 10 tiles away from the alien target.

Gak the fighters dodging missiles caught me by surprise... That MiG was really expensive. The builds since 9.5 are very stable, finally managed to get to fight corvettes. Ground combat is cool, though I haven't found much use for grenades yet. Quick question, is it normal that every battle so far has been on the exact same farm map(my base is in the US)? I remember from v8 there was an industrial map too. Furthermore, I fail to see the effect of the semi-procedural generation (sometimes there is the odd shed here and there btu that's all).

After each ground combat mission, the slider representing the weight carried by a soldier grows. Growth continues in the 'red zone' for as much as possible, despite that the equipment carried by the soldiers has not changed. The weight gain is real, as soldiers lose action points once the red slider starts growing. The slider is 'reset' to its actual position by picking the soldier's main equipped weapon up from the slot and then putting it back there. This seems to affect all weapons.

I may be too optimistic, but would it be possible to create a procedural map generator? While I am in no way familiar with the engine of the game, procedural generation especially for tile based maps is quite easy and beats hand-designing maps when it comes to generic battlefields with no specific plot related requirements fro the terrain.

I have the same issue. The lack of menu also prevents exiting the game in the normal way.

Wine results in a very small performance hit, if any in many cases. Just check out all those 'Crysis 1/2 on Linux' videos out there, the hardware used for the demonstrations is hardly hideously powerful and the performance is very close to what you'd get on a similar system running Windows and the video capturing software. Not that wine can reach the exact same performance; DX10 is still not implemented for it, so that's that. As for whether people would be disappointed, this topic is about Wine compatibility. Chances are, if you are using Wine you know what you are dealing with. Anyway... Turns out the bad performance on the geoscape got fixed by reinstalling the GPU driver, so yay. Got to play a little longer today and the winehq review seems to be true - everything in the game that currently works works, and seemingly most of the bugs that are confirmed make appearence too. Just a good thing to keep in mind. Also, just to be sure, is the game's rendering using SDL? P.S. I am sorry but you do not qualify; I was referring to the fact that in every OS vs OS discussion a mac user appears and starts posting those annoying 'Mac vs PC' ads like they are the grail of truth.

I really do not want to sound hostile here, but you might look into not giving advice lacking any context whatsoever, just to push your favorite product. I half expect the obligatory Mac Guy to pop up any second now. Sometimes you cannot fit a round peg in a square hole. In this case, the context is that my ArchLinux x64 boots for less than 10 seconds and shuts down in 4, has increased battery life because of some fine tuning, but most important of all has all the tools that I need and gives me full control over everythig, ever. Bash, git, vim, gcc and python as they were intended to run. Also package management and it's free. Windows 7 is a nice system, I used it for about a year in parallel, it just does not offer me anything that justifies the disk space it uses (I mean come on, the basic Win7 installation is about 4-5 times the size of my full current installation). Back on topic, Air combat seems to work perfectly fine.

That is good advice. While the game is rated platinum for stability on winehq, it is just based on one review - and wine performance variesfrom system to system, a lot. For example, on my machine (ArchLinux x64, latest Wine in 32 bit mode), the geoscope is very laggy, every two or so lines of text has the text warped as if it has a strikethrough, and right clicking on an item in a soldier's inventory results in a crash to desktop. Haven't had the chance to test ground combat yet. Good thing I have a windows 7 installation just for cases like this (as a bonus, I can have two coffees while waiting for it to boot and load).