[V14.1] Hidden movement covering plainly visible shots

[Puciek]

The visible alien has shot at my guy behind the former rock in this screen: 

 

And yet those shots from alien were covered by the "hidden movement" plaque and fog despite being clearly in plain view of my troops. I don't know will it reproduce with every turn end, but uploading turn end save in hope that it will make it easier to spot.

auto_groundcombat_turn_2_end-337.json

[maxm222]

The "hidden movement"(HM) system continues to be broken.  It covers and blocks from view both movement and firing by aliens that is within LOS of human troops-on multiple turns in every game.  I did a series of tests where I was able to jerk the background and animations "out from under" the HM graphic, revealing aliens in clear LOS of soldiers.  If you can't find those test results through a search, let me know and I will repost them.

This build has not fixed the broken HM system.  Others have complained about this in the past, but many of the beta players seem to simply have faith that it works, or else feel that missing where and how they were attacked by aliens because the HM graphic blocked the action just doesn't bother them--I guess. 

In the past when I have complained multiple times, Chris has said that the devs would get to that issue eventually and that there were more pressing problems.  I really, really hope that there will be no way that an early access release will happen until the HM "feature" is removed (it's completely unnecessary with a working LOS system), as that would be a fatal flaw for some people.  I wouldn't get Xeno if I had to hear the screams of my guys and firing of the aliens without being able to see that part of the battlefield.

[Chris]

9 hours ago, maxm222 said:

The "hidden movement"(HM) system continues to be broken.  It covers and blocks from view both movement and firing by aliens that is within LOS of human troops-on multiple turns in every game.  I did a series of tests where I was able to jerk the background and animations "out from under" the HM graphic, revealing aliens in clear LOS of soldiers.  If you can't find those test results through a search, let me know and I will repost them.

This build has not fixed the broken HM system.  Others have complained about this in the past, but many of the beta players seem to simply have faith that it works, or else feel that missing where and how they were attacked by aliens because the HM graphic blocked the action just doesn't bother them--I guess. 

In the past when I have complained multiple times, Chris has said that the devs would get to that issue eventually and that there were more pressing problems.  I really, really hope that there will be no way that an early access release will happen until the HM "feature" is removed (it's completely unnecessary with a working LOS system), as that would be a fatal flaw for some people.  I wouldn't get Xeno if I had to hear the screams of my guys and firing of the aliens without being able to see that part of the battlefield.

Sure, the HM system isn't working very well at the moment but it's not true that it's unnecessary. What it indicates when the game is working correctly is that the sounds you hear are occurring in non-visible parts of the map.

Ifyou don't have it we either don't play those sounds at all (not very atmospheric particularly on Terror missions etc) or we focus on the spot where the sounds are played, which essentially shows the player exactly where the aliens in the shroud are. Or we focus the camera somewhere near the edge of the shroud where no units are visible, which is just going to make people think there's an invisible unit with a missing model or something.

[Chris]

On 11/2/2020 at 8:30 AM, Puciek said:

And yet those shots from alien were covered by the "hidden movement" plaque and fog despite being clearly in plain view of my troops. I don't know will it reproduce with every turn end, but uploading turn end save in hope that it will make it easier to spot.

auto_groundcombat_turn_2_end-337.json

 

15 hours ago, maxm222 said:

The "hidden movement"(HM) system continues to be broken.  It covers and blocks from view both movement and firing by aliens that is within LOS of human troops-on multiple turns in every game.  I did a series of tests where I was able to jerk the background and animations "out from under" the HM graphic, revealing aliens in clear LOS of soldiers.  If you can't find those test results through a search, let me know and I will repost them.

So the big problem with saves posted for things like this is that save games break quickly as we introduce new features, so one of these save games is generally only good for a few days before it just crashes when we try to load it in Unity. Fixing the camera / hidden movement system is likely to take a few days, too, so I didn't want to look at it while we had more urgent fixes to do.

We've spent all the "fixing" time this cycle fixing crashes and major gameplay issues but I'm happy to take a look at the general camera / hidden movement weirdness in V15. I think we'll need to wait until the first hotfix comes out before we start collecting examples (so there's less changes happening to break the save games) but then we can start to put together the instances where things are going wrong and try to get them fixed.

[Puciek]

Thanks chr

43 minutes ago, Chris said:

 

So the big problem with saves posted for things like this is that save games break quickly as we introduce new features, so one of these save games is generally only good for a few days before it just crashes when we try to load it in Unity. Fixing the camera / hidden movement system is likely to take a few days, too, so I didn't want to look at it while we had more urgent fixes to do.

We've spent all the "fixing" time this cycle fixing crashes and major gameplay issues but I'm happy to take a look at the general camera / hidden movement weirdness in V15. I think we'll need to wait until the first hotfix comes out before we start collecting examples (so there's less changes happening to break the save games) but then we can start to put together the instances where things are going wrong and try to get them fixed.

Thanks for that Chris! Will there be some announcement when you are interested in HM bug samples? I'll gladly take some time then and produce bunch of saves :).

[maxm222]

Thank you Chris for that additional information about timing and amount of work involved.  You also said:

"Sure, the HM system isn't working very well at the moment but it's not true that it's unnecessary. What it indicates when the game is working correctly is that the sounds you hear are occurring in non-visible parts of the map.
"If you don't have it we either don't play those sounds at all (not very atmospheric particularly on Terror missions etc) or we focus on the spot where the sounds are played, which essentially shows the player exactly where the aliens in the shroud are. Or we focus the camera somewhere near the edge of the shroud where no units are visible, which is just going to make people think there's an invisible unit with a missing model or something."

Okay, I finally understand what the original intent was.  However, if the LOS system is working and the noise-making unit or event is out of LOS and therefore invisible to the player, why not center the view randomly within 5 or 10 hexes (hexes? squares?) of the noise source--so the player can't locate it by simply drawing an imaginary X on the screen?  That shows the player roughly where the noise is coming from.  There is no reason I can think of to "hide" anything with a graphic, since the LOS mechanic already "hides" any movement or event--yes?

Actually, my preference would be to simply see what direction the noise came from through a compass or the correct edge (N-S-E-W) of the map glowing briefly or something.  The "show the part of the map where the sound comes from" gives the player TMI, in my opinion.

[Chris]

On 11/12/2020 at 6:45 PM, maxm222 said:

Thank you Chris for that additional information about timing and amount of work involved.  You also said:

"Sure, the HM system isn't working very well at the moment but it's not true that it's unnecessary. What it indicates when the game is working correctly is that the sounds you hear are occurring in non-visible parts of the map.
"If you don't have it we either don't play those sounds at all (not very atmospheric particularly on Terror missions etc) or we focus on the spot where the sounds are played, which essentially shows the player exactly where the aliens in the shroud are. Or we focus the camera somewhere near the edge of the shroud where no units are visible, which is just going to make people think there's an invisible unit with a missing model or something."

Okay, I finally understand what the original intent was.  However, if the LOS system is working and the noise-making unit or event is out of LOS and therefore invisible to the player, why not center the view randomly within 5 or 10 hexes (hexes? squares?) of the noise source--so the player can't locate it by simply drawing an imaginary X on the screen?  That shows the player roughly where the noise is coming from.  There is no reason I can think of to "hide" anything with a graphic, since the LOS mechanic already "hides" any movement or event--yes?

Actually, my preference would be to simply see what direction the noise came from through a compass or the correct edge (N-S-E-W) of the map glowing briefly or something.  The "show the part of the map where the sound comes from" gives the player TMI, in my opinion.

The problem with showing a random area around a sound that happens beyond vision is that it's possible the camera just focuses on an entirely black area of the map, which is going to leave the player very confused and disorientated. I think that's why the original X-Com developers used the HM screen. There's probably some stuff we can do to improve the way it works but it'll require quite a bit of experimentation and polishing, whereas the HM screen is a pretty simple system and it does a reasonable job of solving the problem.

I think you're right there would be better ways to solve the problem, but it's just a question of whether we have the development time to devote to it - there's a million things that need to be done and it's just a question of priorities. In the short term we'll get the HM screen working like it's meant to work, and if we have time we'll do something better later in development.

[maxm222]

Thanks for the response, Chris.  I've noticed that the same problem of centering the screen over completely or near-completely black map areas happens, sometimes, when off-camera combat sounds are present, especially at the beginning of combat when a lot of the map is blacked out.

In any case, as long as the dreaded Hidden Movement graphic doesn't cover my units getting shot or enemy units moving in full LOS of my troops, I'll be happy!

[geno]

This problem is still present in v15.1, are you aware of it?

[Chris]

17 hours ago, geno said:

This problem is still present in v15.1, are you aware of it?

Yeah, we've not yet started dealing with it yet. Maybe after the next hotfix.

[Chris]

@Puciek @geno @maxm222 The thread I mentioned creating in this post is now up! https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21312-v15-dumb-camera-hidden-movement-stuff-megathread/