Light drones invisible?

[ingolfson]

I get this all the time (especially during first base mission) that the "can see enemy" icon at the right appears, but the light drone it refers to is invisible, and cannot be attacked. So I have to wait for it to move or attack me.

Note that this doesn't refer to me not having line of sight, as far as I can see. Normally, you can see the model of the enemy, greyed out, if that occurs. The light drone is simply not there, and clicking the right hand icon centres the image on where the enemy is supposed to be, but still nothing.

I tried to use the multi-level option to see if the drone was higher up, but nothing either...

[thixotrop]

I can confirm that for some fights, but this is not always the case.

This is not just for the light drones but for all.

In a alien base assault two drones (the middle and the largest one, don't know the name) were in a large room as my soldiers opened the door. One round everything was ok: targetting and shooting of my soldiers worked. Next round both were invisible, despite the icon. However, manually targetting could hit them. They could shoot back nevertheless.

[Newfr]

Probably this is "invisible drone bug". Try to remember were you loading saved game before drone(s) became invisible?

[thixotrop]

Sorry I can't remember and don't have a save game anymore.

[dmholt]

Sounds like someone may already be working on this bug, so I assume I shouldn't post a new one.

However if it's any help I have a saved game and screen shot of this bug occurring where you can locate the "invsible" drone by it's shadow, which is visible and accurate - managed to locate and shoot down the drone by it's shadow. In the screenshot you can see the shadow inside the lower (ground level) red circle of the targetting cursor circles. I'm 99% sure that the invisible drone only happened after loading a saved game. Of course you can't go back and check an unsaved game to be be certain .....

Version is v20 Hotfix 08/01/2014.

Files at https://mega.co.nz/#F!HYUFXC7L!YulJxlSZduCUJb7lgTUVvw.

[Gorlom]

sounds like the sprite isnt loading for some reason. have you verified your game data? (if playing through steam)

[dmholt]

I'm a bit of a newbie to Xenonauts and this forum - I'm not sure what you mean by "verify your game data". I am playing through Steam, I've checked that it's up-to-date, and I've checked that I reported the version I have correctly in my post. I'm not using the betas at the moment.

If you can point me to another thread that describes what sort of data you think I should cheeck I'll have a look.

[Gorlom]

1) Open up your Steam client

2) rightclick the game in your library

3) select properties from the drop down list

4) click the "local files" tab

5) press the button at the bottom that is labled "verify integrety of game chache..."

[thixotrop]

I had, at that time, verified the game data to see if that helps; but it didn't (for me).

[dmholt]

I've verified the game data now as described above - all OK. Loading saved game after verifying data the drone is still invisible.

[Gorlom]

ok can you open the Xenonauts folder on your computer and find the sprite sheets (or where they should be) for the light drone? It would be swell if you could tell which sprites are missing (if any) or if the game is trying to call upon the wrong sprites.

[dmholt]

Ok, assuming the sprites sheets are the png files under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts\assets\units\alien\lightdrone\lightdrone\weapon.lightdroneblaster, they look ok as far as I can tell.

There are 8 sheets/png files, anim_light_drone_idle_[e/w/n/s/nw/ne/sw/se].png, showing the drone at 8 different angles.

Each sheet/png file has 8 pictures of a drone, all of which look the same within each sheet as far as I can tell.

Not sure exactly what's meant to be there of course, but there are no blank sheets or sheets with blank spaces. Unless there are meant to be sheets for more points of the compass, ie 16 sheets instead of 8, I can't see anything wrong.

I've seen this a few times now, and so far it is always after reloading a saved game - i.e. the drone is visible when the game is saved, but not when it is reloaded. Without knowing much (anything!) about game code and mechanics, I would imagine that a missing sprite would affect games whether they were from the load of a saved game or after an ordinary end of turn, and that it must be a failure to load the correct sprite when restoring a game.

[Gorlom]

You only got sprite sheets for idle? shouldn't there be for all animations? such as walking/moving, fireing, taking damage and dieing? Or did you only mention the idle one because that one was the only one that seemed important?

(have you looked at functioning sprite sheets for other functioning units and compared? )

There should only be those 8 compass directions. There is no point to blank sheets so they are not included. if a sprite sheet is missing the file would be missing.

Hopefully all this information will be helpful to Matthew when he comes around to look at this. ^^

[dmholt]

I'm feeling my way a bit here, but the idle sheets is all I can see for the light drones. There is also a "droneexplode" sheet in the same folder - I don't know if there should be others, but I I can't find any. They may have obscure names or locations I guess.

I can see that the heavy and medium drones each have a set of "shadow" png files, I don't know if that would account for all the other possibilities like moving etc.

Update: just had a look at the shadow files for medium and heavy, and they are just shadows, as they would appear on the ground underneath the drone. This is a bit weird, as when the bug occurs with light drones I can see the shadow but no drone - but I can't find any png files showing the shadows I do see, while the png files showing the shadows appear to be complete. I have no idea what's going on here.

Edited January 28, 2014 by dmholt

[thixotrop]

I also have looked for the PNG files for the drones. Have the same that dmholt mentioned. There are no files for weapon-firing and crashing animation-sheets - unless the explosion file - as they are for other dying aliens.

The Harridan warrior for instance has 128 PNG-files with all kinds of positions, with and without weapons and all in different zoom factors of the alien.

[Gauddlike]

I would assume that you have the required files and that the fault lies elsewhere.

Remember the humanoid aliens need to be animated as they move around or take firing positions while the drones just sort of hover there.

When they move they don't have legs to animate so the same image can just be moved around.

When they fire they don't need to raise a weapon they just spit out plasma so no additional animation needed there either.

[Caaygun]

I got this too in a base attack when I loaded the game into that turn. There is the shadow of both a light and a heavy drone, they can be shot and killed with apparently no other problem though I didn't go on furhter to see I will get the issue again with more drones. Playing it through again from the start with no save-load didn't cause any such issue. i have V20 stable hotfixed.