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[X:CE 0.34 U] Dodgy LOS / very good peripheral vision?


Professor Sparks

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Sometimes looking directly at something makes it disappear, whereas looking 45 degrees to the side reveals it. I've attached an annotated screenshot.

XCE_bug_LOS.jpg

It's as if the view cone is being calculated based on the tile in front of the xenonaut, instead of the tile (s)he is actually standing on.

Edit - I've just noticed the forum decided to resize and recompress the image without even warning me about it. If anyone knows a way to prevent this, let me know. The original is around 1800x700 / 400kB.

XCE_bug_LOS.jpg

XCE_bug_LOS.thumb.jpg.df4b0ab88a28fda714

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The details aren't little; the forum resized the image. I actually used a font larger than the Xenonauts UI font, so if the forum shrinks every image, it's going to be a problem for the game text as well. There should be a setting in the forum configuration to prevent resizing; I post on several other vBulletin forums and they keep the original images (at least up to 1920x1080) just fine.

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Here is another image showing the LOS bug (or possibly a slightly different bug). I suspect this might be related to the "lean around corners" thing being incorrectly applied when the soldier is not near any corners.

Notice how not only is the LOS incorrect when looking east, but when the soldier is rotated to look NE (which shouldn't change the visibility of any tiles, it should just rotate the cone of view 45 degrees), the error gets even worse.

XCE_bug_LOS_corner.jpg

This bug also affects line of fire, BTW, so it's not merely a way to see enemies that should be invisible, you can also shoot them, in some circumstances. In the image above, I am able to shoot the andron, and the bullets travel through the brick wall without any problems (they are, ironically, partially blocked by the low wooden fence after the brick wall, but that's a different issue).

And the aliens benefit from this bug, too. For example, aliens standing 2 squares away from a corner can face into the wall and shoot someone on the other side of the corner. So the supposed advantage of standing at corners to be able to shoot enemies on the side without being visible to them (as mentioned in one of the loading screen tips) doesn't actually work - you are visible to them, and they can hit you as if you had no cover at all, even though you are on the corner tile and they are 2 or 3 tiles away from the corner, and supposedly have no LOS to you (let alone an unobstructed line of fire). All they need to do is turn 45 degrees, to gain X-ray vision.

XCE_bug_LOS_corner.jpg

XCE_bug_LOS_corner.jpg.932ae6ef37c598033

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Yes, it is the leaning/peeking around corners feature. There doesn't seem to be anything incorrect in the pictures besides the incorrect assumptions added in the comments (either about the supposed inability to lean to the side, or about the game precisely calculating geometry of every single object).

If you are concerned about the lack of the leaning animation that would show this or allow improving the presented trajectory of the shot, you are welcome to create all the necessary animations for each armour/weapon combination.

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Yes, it is the leaning/peeking around corners feature. There doesn't seem to be anything incorrect in the pictures besides the incorrect assumptions added in the comments

The soldier is 1 square away from the corner, unless it's Inspector Gadget with his extensible neck, he can't "peek around the corner" from there.

And I never said that I expected the game to "precisely calculate the geometry of every single object". All the lines and marks on the images are based on the tile grid, not on "the geometry of every single object".

you are welcome to create all the necessary animations for each armour/weapon combination.

I can see the standard response in this forum is "go fix it yourself". I won't bother to post any more. Sorry for having polluted your bug report forum with bug reports.

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The soldier is 1 square away from the corner, unless it's Inspector Gadget with his extensible neck, he can't "peek around the corner" from there.

He certainly can at least a bit.

Sorry for having polluted your bug report forum with bug reports.

That's fine. The annoying part was the attitude of expecting people who do this for free/fun to fix your perceived problems just because you know better.

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I can see the standard response in this forum is "go fix it yourself". I won't bother to post any more. Sorry for having polluted your bug report forum with bug reports.

That's fine. The annoying part was the attitude of expecting people who do this for free/fun to fix your perceived problems just because you know better.

You see some choices, made by the modders, as bug. You can be right for yourself. I try to show you what you can do about it. But the key here is your attitude I tried to say that to you at the other topic.

You can notice things and got good observation. You can give your time to explain them. But your attitude.. I would like to see a tester like you at my mods bug testings..

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  • 2 weeks later...
That's fine. The annoying part was the attitude of expecting people who do this for free/fun to fix your perceived problems just because you know better.
So the supposed advantage of standing at corners to be able to shoot enemies on the side without being visible to them (as mentioned in one of the loading screen tips) doesn't actually work - you are visible to them, and they can hit you as if you had no cover at all...

Sounds like a definite problem to me.

Add onto that the inability to shoot around or see around certain random objects on the map for no apparent reason and this gets even worse.

And then add onto that enemies just randomly appearing/disappearing when turning despite not losing the view on the squares and you've got yourself a complete mess of a LoS system.

This is a problem. Whether with the vanilla game or only the CE, it's a problem.

If you took up the reigns to patch up the game with access to the original source code, then I don't see why you're even remotely defensive about putting work into looking into and potentially fixing this issue.

Edited by DAOWAce
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Agreed, both with DAOWAce and Professor Sparks.

To be fair to llunak though, from what I understand this is not a CE problem, it is a vanilla issue that even Chris had problems trying to fix.

TBH I don't see picture number 2 as a problem. Depending on how you want to look at it, the soldier leaning out from the corner could have a much wider view then it would normally seem.

Picture number 1 however is definitely a problem that needs to be fixed if at all possible.

Edited by legit1337
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Picture number 1 however is definitely a problem that needs to be fixed if at all possible.

Yeah, I'm surprised that no one even commented on the original images of the interior of the UFO, which is CLEARLY nonsensical and an obvious issue with the LoS system. Needs to be fixed.

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I did some testing on my own. I came to the same conclusion as the OP.

Vision seems to be calculated as starting at one tile in front of the soldier instead of in the square the soldier is actually standing in.

Look at the first picture. The soldier facing northeast misses the psion because his vision cone is calculated as starting one square in front of him, and the opposite side of the UFO door blocks his vision of the one square. When the soldier turns to look inside the UFO, the game is actually calculating his visible squares as if he is standing one square closer to the UFO, which would place him right next to the UFO wall and would block everything except his peripheral vision.

In the second picture, the soldier is able to see more around the corner when he turns because the game is calculating his vision cone as if he were actually standing at the corner, instead of one square back and having the corner block his view.

EDIT: This is weird, sometimes this doesn't seem to be the case. In certain situations vision seems to be calculated correctly. I have no idea what is going on.

Edited by legit1337
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