4Aces

Just in case anyone misunderstands, the "quality of the portraits" is that the originals were actually a little too detailed to blend with the rest of the art in the game. I was not saying these were bad. The new versions are great looking! I will look for that file right now, and post here when I find it. EDIT: Gameconfig.xml <customSoldierCreationChance value="5" comment="This is the chance that a custom soldier will be bought instead of a normal one." /> This is my line from the file, and so value="5" may not be what you have in yours, as I am pretty sure that I increased mine to get more varied faces. After looking into the soldierimages/faces folder, with a fully decompressed game, I think what other people are talking about as being hard-coded, was just archived (in the PFP files). I thought they were actually hard-coded into the game (which means non-editable), but if these file names are accurate, then these are the custom portraits. That leaves 25 non-custom portraits for you to work with, and you can probably just extend their script call to add in more (if you can find it, that is).

Ah, of course the Steam installer. That makes a bit more sense. I never trust Steam to install anything, preferring to do it manually. If it does not work, just let me know.

WJ - Sorry about that, it is for 18.51hf3. I want to get the fundamentals down on the stable version before I try to translate it to 19. Kabill - I have now tested it thoroughly. It is just like the armour file, it needs to reinitialize the mission to take effect. As for the suppression effect, it does appear to be a bug. Changing the value to 1500 did nothing for Suppression, but it did work for Stunning also cranked to 1500, but it is still not working properly. I had one of my units drop a flash bang with Stunning of 1500 only two squares away from her own position, and she was not stunned. This is the first mission in a new game, so she does not even have armour yet. Strangely, a unit that was three squares away was Suppressed by that same grenade. Oh well, I guess I will just mod the FBs to something else then. Edit - Quick update. I just pumped the Range on the Suppression to 25, and it only suppresses the target if it is a direct hit. So basically the Range is non-functional most of the time. I tossed a few right beside my own units and while there was a reaction (animation and audio) by no Suppression. Since Matt is not interested in my other v18 reports, I will wait until I update this V19 (probably in week) before reporting it.

Henri - there is no installer for this mod. You have it confused with another, and mixing mods can be very tricky so make sure you are installing this onto a clean Vanilla version of Xenonauts (18.51hf3 - aka latest stable). Download X6 again (from the first page here) and when you open the Zip file it will be full of loose files to copy over the originals (after you back them up of course ). As for disabling the Hidden Movement screen, just go into \assets\scripts and open hiddenmove.lua with a text editor. Then change the following line (note: I added "Line 24:" at the front for easier location) from Line 24: image = "gui/hiddenmove", to Line 24: image = "", then save the file. Play, and enjoy! This simply removes the hidden movement screen, it does not make aliens suddenly visible that are not within your unit's LOS.

I have a small problem with my grenades, specifically the flash-bang (FB). I am assuming these are holes in my understanding and not bugs. So I am testing away with: suppressionValue="100" suppressionRadius="5" But what I am seeing is that the radius does not appear to be in squares. When used on a Sebillian non-com (is the second mission of a new game), with two FBs dropped 1 square away from the target, it reacts to both but is not suppressed. So a third lands two squares away, and the alien ignores it (or at least did not react with the animation of being hit, or the standard hiss), and is still not suppressed. So the first question concerns the radius, and to how it is actually handled. The second question is if the weapons_gc.xml values are stored in the save game, or are they read when the game is launched? If it is the latter then they can be modified during a tactical mission, and a restart will adopt the changes. Otherwise the mission must be re-launched to test alterations. My last question concerns Suppression and Bravery. My understanding from the forum is that Bravery is the value that gets reduced when Suppression fire comes in. With a Bravery score of 40 and the FBs having the standard 100 Suppression effect and range of 5, how can two FBs landing 1 square away not have suppressed the Sebillian? It has a Resilience of 48 in case that it taken into account. The only special thing to note is that I have added 5 points to all types of armour. Even should the grenade effects have a cubic drop-off, I do not see it being the explanation unless armour rating is categorical instead of linear. Cheers!

Well, at least it is a curved effect (at least that is what it said in the String.xml file), so the effect is lessened the closer your Strength is to the Recoil value. That is far better than just a general accuracy penalty to the weapon.

That is what I suspected when it did not work. Thanks for confirming! G.I. can pander to our every modding need after they get the game shipped (make a hundred million, and recover from the after-party). Oh well, back to the design board.

I have been trying to find info on how to add additional burst fire modes, and am coming up blank. I have tried the following: - added shotCount="2" to entries in SingleShot with no obvious effect (though this could be an animation issue hard-coded to SingleShot) - scanned the Scripts, but the code for Single/Burst seems to be in the engine - added Sets to BurstFire (CTD) - looked through many mods for any example of this working So has anyone else tried this?

So the Recoil setting is the minimum Strength that is required to use the weapon without penalty? Any idea what Recoil is actually doing (e.g. increasing the probability of just missing vs the prob. of shooting high)?

The weapons.xml file also sets the starting weapon's ammunition level. As an example: You modify the weapons_gc.xml file to have larger magazine capacity for the basic pistol to 20. You also need to update the weapons.xml file for the basic pistol 'clip size' as well. Otherwise at the start of the first mission (and possibly all missions), units equipped with the basic pistol will only have the original number of rounds (12) in their weapon. They would have to perform a reload to get a full amount (20). The weapons.xml file is also responsible for the data in the area above the weapons list, but not the pop-up box when hovering over a weapon. That appears to be in the strings.xml file.

I saw someone take a .50 to the head and survive. Had a real stiff neck for a week, but the plates in his helmet deflected the round (which was assumed to have been fired from about 1km away, so it was pretty slow at time of impact). As for that being a miracle about the RPGs lodged in torsos of living people. Imagine the nightmares! You want an example of PTSD, that is the poster case right there. If chain skirts protect vehicles from RPGs, will chain mail protect people?

If you contact a company for permission and they refuse to answer, then that does constitute due diligence. While it does not protect against nuisance lawsuits, it would be simplicity to show that they did not care enough to respond. Secondly, do you know for a fact that this is the free version? I naturally assumed it was the paid version. Until I know otherwise, I have to assume the latter. You purchased XP for personal use, while P5 (paid version) was primarily purchased for development. Customization of SDKs for use is baked into their very nature. I would love to see someone try to claim that Dev Kits are perfect and do not need to be altered in any way, in court.

Goldhawk Interactive obviously has a legal licensed copy of the game engine. Just because PlayRight decided to stop distributing the Playmaker 5 (P5) engine does not mean that G.I. is in any danger of legal repercussions from altering their copy of P5 for this release. The development of Xenonauts on this engine began before PlayRight stopped sharing P5, so G.I. is legally entitled to complete Xenonauts.

LOL, someone was really screwing with you when they told you that. The shockwave radiates out at most .25 cm from the bullet as it travels downrange. So if you get hit by the shockwave, you got hit by the round, which is why you probably died. I have seen a few that were hit with .50s and survived (thanks to the plates in their armor). Sure they needed a nice laydown afterwards.

Some aliens are treated as part of the Xeno-squad and can make architecture/obstructions transparent. In my mega-bug thread for v18 I covered an alien crouching behind a water-trough (Farm map) performing this. As soon as the alien was dead, the trough went back to being opaque. SoftwareSimian's picture shows the same thing, as the Sebillian is making the console in front of it transparent. We are seeing the ship through it's POV.

Actually, the better bug in this is that you can stand on stunned aliens/units. Dead makes sense as you do not care about what you are stepping on. I constantly gas all the civvies and locals. Keeps 'em nice and fresh until I am ready to leave. I really got sick of that one guy that wants to poke about inside the carrier (you know the guy).

Can you post a saved game? I have v18 with hotfix 3 and could take a look at what you save is doing. Upload to dropbox or mediafire and just post the link.

Is that an auto-attack (cursor automatically changes to target cursor) or did you try clicking on the weapon (stun baton) and then clicking on the alien? There are other non-auto targeting aliens (18hf3) but they all can be manually targeted by clicking on the weapon and the enemy square.

Hi thixotrop, The game has random elements, and there are some periods of the game right now that will go through 'dry spells' with no good UFOs to shoot down. There are many types of UFO that do not create a mission for you to recover. Fighters (including Heavy and Interceptor versions), Bombers, and Strikecruisers all just disintegrate. It also sounds like you have a lack of active radar, possibly only one base? More bases means more UFOs, at least in v18. This is a necessary evil, otherwise the UFOs would terrorize the world and you would lose all funding long before you could get a second base running (with aircraft). So, there are four ways you can improve your game. One is to watch for those new items that appear on the map and send your jets to those areas if they are over land. They are telling you that a UFO was there. The second is to tail any non-disintegrating UFOs that you encounter over water and hope the head over land. As soon as they do, click on the Squadron and tell them to Engage (it does not always work automatically), and do not worry if it says the UFO went into the sea, the mission will be there if you were over land. Thirldy, if you are really desperate for supplies, then save the game every 12 in-game hours and if no UFOs appear near you, then reload and do it again. Since the UFOs appear (approximately) every three days, you will get used to the schedule. This is a good practice to get used to right now, as the random generation can either give you little, or suddenly hit you with an armada on one country. But that is why this is a early Beta. Lastly, Terror mission have a UFO right beside them. If you wait until the last second before landing at the city, you can re-target to the UFO and take it instead (with all that goodies). It solves the Terror mission at the same time. Make sure to save before you try this though, as it can take a few attempts to get the timing just right. As soon as you run out of materials for a production queue, it will issue a pop-up on the Geoscape (global map) warning that Production was halted on 'x' due to a lack of 'y'. You may not have received the warning since it sounds like you were producing two things as once at the same base, which might be a bug (especially if the Corsair was the second item on the list). The build queues do not pre-allocate materials for anything in the queue beyond the current item, so if you were building two Corsairs and some weapons, then the first Corsair would start (using up those Alien Alloys), but the weapons might use up too much and the second Corsair would not be able to start. You are correct in your assumption, if there is only sufficient Alloy for weapons, then that is what will get built. As soon as the Alloy levels are high enough to start the Corsair project, it will begin however those engineers are just waiting around doing nothing without the materials. Personally, I would just focus all your engineers on a single project (per base) and get that finished as quickly as possible. That way you have something that can be used right away, instead of having twice as much at 50%.

For the Reaper issue, it is not a screen refresh issue. The Reaper will remain invisible (except for the shadow it casts on the ground). I literally bumped into one, on the far side of a building as the building was not transparent yet. So I plotted a move to the corner, and began moving square-to-square (not paying attention to the Alien Sighted indicator), and when I noticed a blocked path I saw the shadow being cast in the next square. Luckily my unit had enough time for burst fire. It looked like Matt was asking for saved games instead of reports, and since the UFO type, map type, and the other details are saved there, it is far easier to just send one of them than to make an actual report. Just save the game (so it is has the latest date stamp), then Alt-Tab out to your desktop, and surf to "C:\Users\<insert computer name here>\Documents\Xenonauts and sort by Date modified and take the top file. If you really want to be sure, just open it with any text editor and you will see the file name in the Upper-Left corner. Make sure that you re-load the game after Alt-Tabbing back in, as it causes many different glitches at both the Ground Combat and Geoscape level. You should also save & reload when you find a bug. At least 10% will disappear after saving and reloading, downgrading it to a glitch.

If it is already researched, then it would become a corpse pretty quickly (and then sold). Do you know if the magazines, 'nades, and other freebies are not ready for production (missing assets)? Or was their removal a design decision to streamline the game?

Needs more screen flares STAT!

Flare will illuminate the area, but do not show aliens by default unless they are within range of the line of sight of a unit. At night, that probably means the alien was over 12 squares away, and until you moved close enough, it would remain unseen. I do not know what the exact night visual range is, so I cannot be specific. Also, what kind of alien was it? Reapers (Purple with Clawblades, that makes people into Zombies the become more Reapers) are known to turn invisible from time to time. Targeting will still work on them (with no penalty) and the Alien Spotted Icon will let you know they are there (if you keep an eye out for it). Just click on that icon when it appears and it will center on where the alien is. Then just move the cursor around the center of the screen until it changes to a target icon.

The saved game is no longer on dropbox. One thing to add to a lockup/crash report that is not an instant CTD (as in the game disappears and you see your desktop), is what happens to the cursor? If it suddenly becomes your OS cursor, then it means either an Appcrash or BEX error (99.9% of the time). If it remains a game cursor, then the game is truly frozen. Sometimes the game will appear to still be loaded, but really it has crashed and the OS has not performed a screen re-write.

It appears, at least in part, to be tied to the opacity of the tile. So stay one tile away from walls and you are *less* likely to get shot at. This does nothing for the shots from above, as they appear to be another matter entirely.