[V8.41 - Ground Combat] Scout Ship Bugs and Some Insight into the Problems

[Quartermaster]

Currently the Scout has a few submap issues which I am compiling here. In addition I have attempted to understand what the issue is so hopefully my insights are helpful.

Door Issues:

1. The single door in the large portion of the ship is actually aligned to the NE. What this means is that you can see in through the front. In addition at the first tile in through the door a soldier cannot see to the NE. This is despite the appearance that the door is facing the NW.
   
2. The door on the NE side of the reactor room does not function. The issue for this one is that "open" state for the door had no orientation.
   

I fixed both of these using the submap editor and I have attached the spectres which fix the door issues. I tested both spectres and they seem to functioning as intended now. The spectre called C12R07_Door goes in the /xenonauts/assets/tiles/UFO/scout/undamaged/Wall folder. The spectre called C04R05_W_Door goes in the /xenonauts/assets/tiles/UFO/scout/undamaged folder. I've mainly included these to help Chris's team, but those people who would like to can change it themselves.

Ship Issues:

- Large portions of the ship can be passed through with no penalty. There are currently two issues with this:

1. The "corner" portions of the interior only have an orientation of one direction. So the walls in the corner only prevent movement from the oriented direction.

2. All portions of the UFO which are "Large props" can have aliens spawned in them and can be walked though. (AFTER TESTING THIS STATEMENT APPEARS TO BE FALSE - MAINLY DUE TO "Custom" tiles)

Door Spectres.zip

Door Spectres.zip

Edited December 14, 2011 by Quartermaster
Further Testing Invalidating a Hypothesis

[Quartermaster]

Here are the forum threads that this thread is attempting to cover:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?444-V8.41-Ground-combat-Problem-with-scout-craft-map-passability

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?431-8..35-Ground-Combat-Alien-next-to-door-cannot-be-targeted

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?428-V-8.4-Ground-Combat-Alien-Lost-Outside-of-Scout

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?413-V8.3-Ground-combat-Alien-ship-door-won-t-open.

[Sathra]

So that's what it was! I was wondering how the aliens could shoot through a closed door!

Nicely done.

[Quartermaster]

2. All portions of the UFO which are "Large props" can have aliens spawned in them and can be walked though.

After fiddling around more with the submap editor and the scout ship I have come to the conclusion that my earlier statement above is incorrect. It appears the issue has more to do with the "Custom" items. It appears that the uncrushable tag isn't preventing soldiers or the aliens from running all over the UFO or spawning in those locations when defining "custom" tiles.

Thanks Sathra!

[Gilryn]

Nice work Quartermaster. I like being able to go in either door and not getting shot before opening the door!

[Chris]

The UFO tiles are a bit of a mess really. I'll look at them in more detail and come back to this, but the frustrating thing is that there's often multiple tiles on each tile and that can cause lots of issues (particularly with sight lines, which are also affected by the fact the UFO walls are hollow). But there's a few basic things I can do to stop soldiers walking through walls, which should fix a lot of the issues.

Thanks for the thread though, it's a useful summary that I'll no doubt use.

[Chris]

Also, Uncrushable doesn't necessarily mean the same as impassable. An Uncrushable tile just means that vehicles cannot run it over. I'm kinda using it for the UFO parts in the corners of tiles that don't block movement for soldiers or vehicles, but it would be odd if a vehicle passed through the tile and destroyed it.

[Quartermaster]

Just to give you a, hopefully helpful, update. On the custom tiles the PathValue isn't as simple as 0 = unpassable, 1 = passable. It seems to be implemented such such different values indicate the degree of impassability (1 = behavior like a wall to the SE). I put in 5s for most of the full tile UFO walls and this seems to have helped prevent movement for most places, but there are still some gaps in the walls that can be walked through although not seen through. Additionally, because the units can no longer see into the UFO I am running into an error where they cannot see the door to the main cabin and thus will not walk in through the main door. I'm not sure how to fix this yet and have decided to simply put it down until your crew can figure out how the whole UFO is supposed to work. Anyways I just wanted to give you an idea of the results of my experimentation with the map in the hope that it is helpful for you.

By the way I wanted to thank you for updated the wiki on the mapping stuff. It really helped me figure out this stuff a lot better.