My soldier became invisible

[SoftwareSimian]

I don't know what's special about the tile I moved into, no alien had been there, no grenades, nothing like that, but I moved my soldier to this tile at the corner of the building and he became invisible. I can still select him no problem, I just can't see him:

[SoftwareSimian]

I just had this happen again. I picked up an alien plasma pistol and my soldier immediately disappeared. I think that may be a common link, since the previous soldier also had an alien plasma pistol.

[smoitessier]

Does he stay invisible no mater what direction he's facing? What armor is he wearing along with that combat shield?

what build are you playing btw?

[Ol' Stinky]

Hey, yeah, there's no sprites for an alien plasma pistol + shield. Good catch. You can make a workaround by doing this:

1) Browse to Xenonauts\assets\units\xenonaut\armour.basic\

2) Create a folder called "weapon.combatshield.AlienPlasmaPistol".

3) Copy and paste the contents of the weapon.AlienPlasmaPistol folder inside this new empty folder.

Now your soldier will look as though he's wielding an alien plasma pistol, but no combat shield will display. You can use the contents of another folder if you prefer (such as weapon.combatshield.plasmapistol).

You'll need to do this for the other armours as well when you get to them.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[EchoFourDelta]

Urgh. They could avoided all this if they'd used the system X-COM did...

[Tobbzn]

Shields disappear quite often, but the entire sprite only disappears for me with Alien Plasma Pistol + Shield when standing diagonally with respect to the grid.

Urgh. They could avoided all this if they'd used the system X-COM did...

And what was that?

[EchoFourDelta]

Shields disappear quite often, but the entire sprite only disappears for me with Alien Plasma Pistol + Shield when standing diagonally with respect to the grid.

And what was that?

In the original game, each armor set had facing sprites, moving sprites, and firing stances. Imagine your Xenonaut soldiers, but without guns, miming as if they were holding them.

From here, depending on what weapon you had, say... a ballistic rifle, laser rifle, or plasma rifle; they all used the same two-handed "rifle stance" this soldier would have. All that happened was that it simply dropped the appropriate weapon sprite in place.

If you wanted to, for example, reskin an armor appearance, you didn't have to re-do literally every position for every weapon iteration. You simply worked on the base set that was used to depict that soldier moving, standing, and taking other actions while carrying a pistol/rifle/grenade/whatever; the weapons were independent from this, merely being overlaid onto the soldier when the battlescape was loaded.

Similarly, if you wanted to add a weapon, you simply drop in the sprites needed for that weapon pointing in different directions, and all the requisite frames, and then tell the game whether to hold it like a pistol/rifle/whatever, and there you have it: a new weapon. You don't have to create an entire sprite set for every armor in every conceivable position. You simply drop the new weapon in and give it instructions on how to carry it.

[Hairyscreech]

^^ I think this may be one of the limitations of the game(lame) engine, given the choice again I highly doubt they would go with diner dash.

[EchoFourDelta]

^^ I think this may be one of the limitations of the game(lame) engine, given the choice again I highly doubt they would go with diner dash.

Wait, what?

[SoftwareSimian]

Does he stay invisible no mater what direction he's facing? What armor is he wearing along with that combat shield?

what build are you playing btw?

V19 STABLEHOTFIX 02/09/2013, the launcher tells me.

As Tobbzn noted below, the two instances I've found were with alien pistol + shield, standing diagonal to the grid (facing straight left on the screen). As soon as I tell my soldier to move somewhere else he reappears. Possibly just random that I noticed it twice when the a soldier stopped moving facing the same direction (straight screen-left).

[GizmoGomez]

Wait, what?

The game engine probably doesn't support what you described, even though (if properly implemented, of course) it would look just as good and work better, asset wise.

If given the chance to redo Xenonauts, the devs probably wouldn't have chosen to use the same game engine as Diner Dash.

[EchoFourDelta]

This uses the same engine as Diner Dash? Hasn't that been like... dead and unsupported for a few years?

Edited September 7, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[GizmoGomez]

Yup. That's the problem.

[SoftwareSimian]

It's even more annoying when aliens become invisible. Here I've got one of those alien flying discs (what are they called?) that I know is there, but I can't see it:

[Ol' Stinky]

Ugh, a mistake on my part. Sorry.

Edited September 8, 2013 by Ol' Stinky