Two fixes needed

[Skitso]

As I was making the finishing touches to my new rural factory map (from my "I'll realise your map idea" thread) I found out that the game desperately needs two things fixed:

• This is important!: LoS bug when inside a submap. When inside a building, higher floors can't be seen from floors below it. In my new map, the large factory building has a three story main room and there's a second floor balcony. Aliens can shoot my units from there, but it remains out of my LoS. This same thing is of course a problem in other (sub)maps too, especially in the kabill's FitH lading ships with similar design idea, and more importantly could be a huge issue in future modular ufo's. This bug pretty much prevent's any shoot outs between different stories inside a submap. The second floor can be seen normally from outside for example through a window.
  example pictures:
  From inside:
  From outside:
  
• And a second one: Could it be possible to have aliens spawn on higher levels too? Like if the tile where the spawn point is, has higher levels available, the game could randomize the spawn level. Too much to ask? I think this would improve the game greatly.
  

Edited August 2, 2014 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Any comments on these, Solver & co?

[llunak]

The LOS algorithm the game uses is principally 2D and the added extension to make it 3D is rather ... simplistic. It's a wonder people do not complain about it more. I have an idea to rework it so that does 3D properly, so it that works out, if you provide me with a testcase, I can test it, whenever I get this done.

As for higher level spawnpoints, what's wrong with doing that manually? I'm rather sure aliens can spawn on higher levels if the map has such spawn points, and trying to extend a ground level spawn point to higher levels looks like asking for trouble (such as aliens on inaccessible roofs).

[Skitso]

In the above example the LoS works fine from outside of the building: as you can see from the second picture, the balcony inside is visible when looking through the window. For some bizarre reason the guy inside the building cannot see the balcony (the first picture) so I'm not sure this is a LoS logic problem but rather a bug where multi level LoS doesn't update correctly inside a submap. The example above is really easy to repro in my new rural factory map in Ultimate Megamix Map Pack but the same bug is of course seen in many similar situations.

About the spawn points: Level editor doesn't allow to set spawn point height level so that's the problem doing it manually.

EDIT: I added a save where you can easily see the problem: just load the save and select cpl. Cooper Wood, unit #8 and notice how he can't see to the second level balcony at the NW end of the factory hall. Then select cpl. Frasier Coleman, unit #7 and just turn him around to face north. As you can see, he can see the balcony fine through the window.

los bug.sav

los bug.sav

Edited August 7, 2014 by Skitso

[Skitso]

Edited post above to attach a save and steps to repro the bug.

[azzim]

I was saying about other lost in LoS that are happened to me but autside buildings - in the desert when soldiers hide in close of rockpile. Also when entering Ufos i had situations in main doors - alien wasn't visible by my soldiers who where easily killed without getting a chance to react and all logic was saying that my man should see the enemy in that place.