Gijs-Jan

The current AI is still nowhere near what it will be, so don't worry too much about its difficulty; but it should be better than the current one. ;-) Edit: I forgot the "too much" bit, you should worry a little!

It was just a matter of a simple settings file; However Chris is in the middle of moving to the new office and has been hard at work at getting everything setup. So I really can't give even the slightest bit of ETA. The only thing I can communicate is that I'm using every minute of delay to pump in new code. :-)

Hey guys, Chris and Sergey are currently working hard on V16. There's been a bit of a delay which is (at the very least) partially my fault. Long story short: I uploaded new AI code yesterday, but forgot to upload the project settings which gave a bit of a mess on their end when compiling the project! To make up for this; I'm currently working hard to add in some extra targeting AI.

Ow... it's ON!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSjh5sB7BtE

To explain myself in more detail: The problem with Alien Reproduction (as far as I understood) was that the map meta files (MCD) did not have the correct values set for that particular tile. I.e.: They show up ingame, but when the inventory count is made (all tiles are asked to provide their "inventory object"), the AP tile provides nothing and/or a wrong meta info. (Which is what I meant with; they are not added to the UFOs ingame) You can apply the patch yourself in handy zip format, located here: http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242028836. With a bit of luck (depending on whether the mod utils do fault checking), you could first add these files; then run XComUtil, then UFOExtender; and have all the mod/bugfix glory. Or just use MCDEdit to alter the files after you run XComUtil / Extender. As for Util / Extender on TFTD; the game is based on the same engine with some minor fixes. I think most of the bugfixes just transpose. If you want more info, I really, really suggest reading up on the http://www.ufopaedia.org/ page I linked to earlier. Then I'll continue bashing on the Xenonauts engine to see if I can get Psionics to work in a somewhat intelligent fashion. ;-) Good luck!

You are given the choice to enable mods; or just use the bugfixes. And yes, you can stack Util and Extender. As for Alien Reproduction; it should be relatively straight forward, adding it's number to the MCD files adds it to an ingame UFO. (Maybe that the randomized UFO sections even have them.)

I would suggest taking a look at the UFOExtender wiki page, or the XCOMUtil webpage. Among the notorious bugs fixed are: Difficulty, Base Disjoint, Radar Stacking, Paying for Dirt. Quick overview of the major bugfixes for X-Com EU: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=UFOextender#Bug_Fixes When using the programs you can enable the features desired (like, only bugfixes). It also adds hotkeys, which I find very refreshing.

Not many patches? http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Game_Editors I *think* they work on DOSBox, as I know that I was at the very least playing the game with one of them in DOSBox. However, I also remember eventually switching over and patching the windows version so I could play in windowed mode.

For UFO; I can really recommend the mod utilities (XComUtil, UFOextender); at the very least to fix the difficulty bug. My most fun / frustrating runthrough was with: - Alien Capture Research enabled (i.e.: research only progresses if you capture an alien in the respective field (Soldier -> Weapons; Engineer -> Elerium.. etc) - Randomized UFO designs (randomized for each level) - Base building stacking - No other helper mods: extra rank/stat strings, mc psi control testing etc Ow... and do the PSX Music MP3 mod; I CANNOT recommend it enough. And... I'm off to a hefty coding session! ;-)

Quite correct; and a part of these precalculations (the value maps) I am currently rewriting as a multithreaded model which works parallel in the background during the players turn. So actions of the player are handed over to a separate thread working on the background, continuously updating the AI belief model. Once the turn of the A.I. player starts, it first checks whether all those belief systems have been updated before starting calculation. Do you maybe have a youtube link to a gameplay example of this?

I'm currently working on the GroundCombat AI; and as far as I know, most of the Strategic AI is already implemented. It was a topic of discussion however.

It would fall into the category of game optimization; yes, but it would have to be done by me. Quite simply because I would need to track and sort all planned actions on visibility before execution; which could be done.

Funny thing though; try placing the AI on a map with only islands... The problem with this is that I'm trying to move away from the traditional "If you see Unit X with weapon Y, and Health < Z; then do A, else B". Essentially, I'm trying to move to a system in which we give the aliens a set of actions that are possible, some way to give a score to each action based on some preference, and let the aliens try to calculate what the best action would be. (Instead of explicitly telling it what to do) Tl;DR: The API will probably be that you can adjust a (long) list of preferences of each alien on how it scores different actions. Depending on how well this works, I'll extend it on community preference. :-) (The only thing I'm not sure now about is maybe allowing actions to be read from LUA -> performance goes out the drain) Although I'm looking into reducing the time of the "Hidden Movement" phase, I don't know if this is feasible, given performance constraints. The problem here is than you have a sorting problem with data that needs intensive checking. (LOS) Hmmm, and while typing this, I think there is a shortcut for achieving similar behavior. I'll try to look into it, and if you don't see it in the Beta, just bump it here again :-). At the very least I'll give an explanation on why I did not implement it. On the other hand, it seems like a gameplay alteration request, so I'll have to run it by Chris first. At the very least I should be able to "clump" together the aliens with visible movement.

The Torus man; once you get that 2nd ION II, you're golden. Add 2 Mantis crew members if you're too lazy to wait for asphyxiation.. ;-) Destroyed the endboss with more than 75% hull remaining.

I wouldn't recommend challenging the guy with his hand on the difficulty control knob ;-)

The more I think about it, the more I like it! While the argument made on the tension of breaching the UFO is valid, the plethora of options opened by using two-part missions cannot be denied. Also, I would say the tension of breaching is still prevalent; The moment you enter you do not know what you will encounter, only the entry point giving you a brief time of relief before assaulting the unknown. The tension could even be added by having options on what happens if you do not clear the outer perimeter before entering the UFO. Hostiles could follow in after you after X turns, resulting in a two-front assault, prevent an abort mission or sabotage your transporter. Other mission types could become valid as well, as pointed out earlier: capture the engine room/bridge. Or for Grab 'N Dash (Capture Officer) missions, UFO's could have automated defenses which would continuously spawn some of the robotic races/units; forcing the player to keep pace and accomplish their objectives as fast as possible. It's a bold move, departing from the old; but imho it is the right choice.

What do you want (/expect) to implement, or extend?

At the last GamesCon in Aachen, I was allowed a private one-on-one with two members of the team. The debate essentially ended in a (very) friendly us-vs-them of XCOM:EU and Xenonauts. I really got the feeling that even some of the higher-ups in the development team were kinda disappointed with some of the streamlining in the game. (The amount of guidance/tutorial missions was ridiculous in the showcased build) On the other hand, some of the streamlining did make some sense. From my limited perspective, I would say the fact I was disappointed with was the amount of expected re-playability. Levels are fully preset, localized to the region of the mission. In one play you shouldn't see any duplicate levels, but in replays, you will. The attention to detail was tremendous though; per example, if you would play in Germany, you would see locally textured police cars. The game feels heavily choreographed in presenting a thought-out, polished story. I wasn't able to play the game at higher difficulties, so I don't know how the difficulty scales up. And now I'm contributing to derailing this thread! A small update then: I've been primarily busy the last few weeks with further designing of the system to be implemented. For those interested of things to come, some of the details of the system could be compared with articles found in the Game AI Wisdom series. I'll try to get another blog post up in a week.

On the Reaper front: Yes I think so. But we'll see how this is balanced, before I make any final remarks. (Don't want you guys to get stuck with overwhelming waves of reapers) I also talked to the development team of XCOM:EU, and point is pretty simple: They're aiming for a different target group, instead of the traditional X-com fans. This is just one of the byproducts of being forced to ensure your product can return on the (large) investments. As for AI in XCOM:EU; I don't know the details and I really don't want to sell anyone short. But in these types of games (AAA, lots of graphics polish) you traditionally see the A.I. as being there to enhance/bring out (extra) polish; seeking cover is not necessarily done to provide the player with a challenge, but to showcase animations, etc. E.g. the focus of the A.I. is to complement the polish of the game (and not do any overly stupid stuff), not necessarily provide a challenge. (Which is not the case for all games, but sadly, a large portion; as The-Powers-That-Be require a game to first look good; then play-well, because they know that is what sells to 80+% of the population)

The whole point is to not to do a fsm as backbone for the system, that just was the system already implemented. The only part which might remain is an extremely light version of a fsm which switches between sets of weights. This part being so trivial that there would be little distinction between a hsfm and a nn. (except for me having to train a nn for a very trivial fsm) So in recap; no, not a FSM. Also not a NN. Both would just result in simple reactive behavior.

(This is my personal opinion) I'd would support this; if units were adjacent (and one crouched), I would want close to 0% chance of friendly fire. Friendly fire ingame should come from wrong positioning within the squad. Crouching/lying indicates intentional, thought-out positioning and should not be penalized by friendly fire. However, if you open fire while one of your squad mates is in the line-of-fire.. All bets are off, because you as a commander made a mistake. I would go even further and say that friendly fire should have increase morale cost.

Any links to published stuff?

As far as I know map sections have designated spawn points; which are randomly filled. The A.I. then takes over unit pathfinding.

True, true; just a simple occam's razor from my end ;-)