[V4, V4.2 Ground Combat] Fog of war/alien visibility for player out of sync with real view cone of Xenonaut

[wulf 21]

I've already seen this in previous versions but never found a reliable way to reproduce. Additionally I was never quite sure if it just was a camera perspective thing. But now I have an occurence that convinced me, this is really happening. Note: Was really V4 from before the hotfix and didn't get around to report it, yet , but I assume the Hotfix changed nothing about it.

What you see in the first screenshot is that there is a xenonaut in the upper right facing to the gap in the trees. But the view cone in the fo of war looks like he is facing to the upper right. Some alien blood appeared there during alien turn (fog in the gap between the trees). On second screenshot, taken after turning the xenonaut 45 degrees more, it can be seen that there really is standing an alien in the blood pool. EDIT: Just to avoid confusion: I am talking about the alien that is behind the trees from the perspective of second screenshot (because there is a dead alien with blood in the Screenshots, too. This is not the one I mean!).

So the game logic correctly decided that the Xenonaut could see the alien and did reaction fire (and hit). However the fog of war/visibility calculations determined somehow that he was facing 45 degrees away from the gap in the trees.

As already said, found no way to reproduce reliably. The only thing I am pretty sure is that it can happen if a soldiers last action before ending the turn before was using right-click to change the viewing direction of the soldier.

Edited April 27, 2019 by wulf 21

[Chris]

Thanks. You might have to explain a little more here though, as you've typed "upper right" twice and I think you meant something else? Are you talking about the soldier who is selected in the second screenshot?

 

It might be helpful if you could put a circle on the screenshot showing which soldiers you're talking about actually because your soldiers are quite close to each other and it's hard to know which one you mean.

[wulf 21]

No problem. I added some arrows and text on the screenshots, and I hope  they make clear what I mean.

Additinally added a "compass" that explains which directions I referred to as "up", "right" and "upper right" in the text. It was somehow clear in my head when I was writing it, but in hindsight, of course everyone who sees an agled view can have different intuition about naming the directions on the view.

Edit: Again to make it clear: I did not acutally see the reaction fire animation, only blood pool appeared during alien turn. I just concluded that it must be reaction fire of the marked soldier because noone else viewed the direction.

Edited April 20, 2019 by wulf 21
typo

[Chris]

Thanks for the screenshots, that's a lot clearer now. Hmmm. I think part of the issue is that the way soldiers are facing is not actually the direction their bodies are facing (it's the direction their heads are facing, which is about 45 degrees offset from the rest of the body) so some of this can be confusing - but it still wouldn't explain what happened in your screenshots. Keep an eye out for further examples of it happening and I'll do the same as we're doing some testing on the overwatch now, and perhaps one of us will find a reproducible case we can use to fix this up.

I'll speak to the animator about how much work it might be to update the animations too; it'll probably be quite a lot though.

[wulf 21]

I do not have a further example where soldier randomly overwatch fired during the situation, however I have 2 more times where it is happening where it is even more obvious. On first screenshot, soldier the difference between the direction soldier is looking and the fog of war is 90 degrees. In second one it is 135 degrees.

I am still not completely sure under which circumstances it happens, but what I am sure about is that I always first issued a move command and then a right-click turn. It seems the  fog of war calculation will stay turned where it was at the end of the move if it happens.

Both screenshots then taken directly after alien turn.

[wulf 21]

Once I had an idea what to do it was not so difficult to reproduce.

• prerequisite: Soldier was not moved yet (Sreenshot 1)
• Right click directly behind the soldier, so it turns around 180 degree (Screenshot 2)
• End Turn

The result is random. Sometimes the fog of war looks like soldier was turned only 90 degree (Screenshot 3), Sometimes like he was turned 45 degree and therefore offset 135 degree (Screenshot 4).

So it seems the issue is just not reported more, because playing situations where the soldiers last action is a 180 degree turn are rare. 90 degree like in original post is more common, but in this case it will work correctly >50% of times and the issue is not that obvious to see because of the angled body in the animation.

Screenshots:

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

Screenshot 3:

Screenshot 4:

Edited April 28, 2019 by wulf 21

[Chris]

Perfect, that's really helpful - now we've got the reproduction steps this should be easy enough to fix (although at this rate V5 is going to be 90% gameplay fixes ).