As you guys may have noticed, I have been adding patch after patch to our files section lately. This has been an on-going effort to try and fix all those little issues which the original programmers overlooked. Well, all those single patches really start to add up after a while so I decided to combine them all into one kit to make it easier to apply. You can find it in our X-COM patch section here. For the time being, I didn't add the footstep sound effect patch for the arctic terrain as it is a version specific fix, but eventually I'll make a patch for each version to make it even easier. Hope you guys like it, and if you would like to see a problem fixed with one of the game folders, don't hesitate to mention it here!

- Zombie

Day in and day out that's what I call quality service, Zombie.

Even though my own UFO: Enemy Unknown specimen is restfully enjoying some peace and quiet on a draped and cushioned cluster somewhere on my hard drive, your ongoing efforts are to be commended. Platinum award from me!

::

p.s.: moving up to Vista Ultimate 64bit sometime shortly. I'll be sure to see if it even runs there...

Thanks Thorondor!

Something has been bothering me for a very long time in Enemy Unknown. This stems all the way back to when I played the PSX version exclusively. You know me with all my alien base "Smash 'n Grab" missions, but a side-effect of bases is Supply Ships. Well, I always noticed there was a tile on L0 my men couldn't stand on for some reason (near the bottleneck). You could pass through the buggy tile by selecting a tile past it though.

Just so happens I visited a Supply Ship the other day and ran across this issue again. This time I decided to investigate what was going on. Turns out the last two "composite" UFO floor tiles in the U_BITS.MCD file were set to take 0 TU to cross (walk, fly or slide). When I edited them to take 4 TU, my soldiers were able to stand there again! Obviously, the game must have a problem with the 0 TU scenario.

You can find the single Ubits fix here, or it now comes bundled with my Combo Patch. Another bug fixed!

- Zombie

Zombie, you might have a ball when you get to TFTD. That game's absolutely littered with oddeties in its tile information. For example, check out the tiles for the door of the cold room in the kitchen of the first map of the pleasure cruiser map. Similar places include the parabolic indentations in the road around one of the buildings in the port terror mission. In fact, walking up to the walls in the third level of T'Leth requires enormous amount of energy (more than you can legally handly) for no apparent reason.

Also, this bug is present in UFO as well, but might not be so apparent due to the lack of situations where you'd see this. Move an alien up to the landing of the first floor stairs in the large resort building on the island terror mission. Now move your aquanaut behind the stairs and face towards the alien (after mind control's off). I think you can mimick this experience in one of the UFO X-Com base maps if it's got stairs that match the orientation of the first level resort stairs (going up from east to south).

- NKF

Can you please explain step by step how to apply those pathes? I have so many executabes in xcom1,2 and while playing I see no difference.

Eg. in Tftd patch say I get to keep equipment from doble missions, but i dont

Excellent! That's always been a minor annoyance in supply ships, good work

Got a screenshot of that cold storage room door, NKF? In MapEdit I see two cold storage room doors: one that opens to the left (doorknob on the right when closed and is used to gain entry into the room), the second one opens to the right (doorknob on the left). The second door really isn't a "door" as the door flag isn't set and there isn't an animation sequence either. In fact, the door doesn't appear to be used anywhere (it's possible it's supposed to separate the two halves of the cold area but the door is missing). I'm using the CE version, maybe the DOS version has this door and bug? This is why I need a screenie. The parabolic indentation is the same kind of bug where the TU for the different movement types are set to 0 instead of 4. It is also set as an object instead of a ground tile. That can be easily fixed though. I don't see anything wrong with my T'Leth ground tiles. Possible Dos issue which was fixed? Screenie would be helpful here too. Suppose I should really install my DOS version of TFTD to check.


Ah, the "See Thru" flag for the lower stair segment is set to 1 when it should be 0. This allows visibility through the tile/object. Easily fixed too. Good catch! (Seems to be fixed in TFTD CE though).


Whew. I'm glad I'm not the only person who is annoyed with this. I don't recall ever seeing this mentioned so I assumed most people really didn't care or didn't recognize it as a bug.

- Zombie

I've technically only just installed the copy you helped me get, and have only managed to play a few missions in. Have we got reference images of the maps up on the wiki? (edit: No - looks like it just links to the UFO maps)

Maybe I'll set up an edited game so that I can speed through it. Been meaning to clear up the Tasoth Commander myth that's been bugging me for ages now.

As for the T'Leth wall maps, I find that when I get my troops to walk up next to the wall (or perhaps along it) that's just beside the doorways, that it sometimes complains that unit doesn't have enough energy to move. I guess it's hard to explain without a visual reference or actually trying it in-game.

There was one other things about the stairs that I was trying to remember. It involved being able to see the centre-on-visible-alien icon for the alien on one of the landings (not sure if it was top or bottom) but the alien itself not being visible. It might be another effect of the see-through bug.


- NKF

I'll install my Dos copy of TFTD tonight and check those issues. I wouldn't doubt that there were changes made to the maps for the CE version (it happened in UFO, and that game didn't even have half the maps of TFTD).

Yeah, you're probably right about the center on alien indicator being tied to the See Thru flag. Will check this as soon as my base is attacked.

- Zombie

Ok, I installed and checked the Dos version of TFTD (both CD-ROM and 3.5" European floppies). There doesn't seem to be a problem with the stairs on the Island mission (See Thru flag is correctly set). That's odd. Ok, for the door in the ocean liner, see this pic (circled in red):



Guess I misunderstood you there, you meant that the door can be seen through, correct? That can be fixed. Another possible issue is that the door is set as a sliding door and not as a hinged door. Have no idea what would happen if I switch this short of testing it, so this will have to wait till I get a cruise ship mission. There is an unused door which opens in the other direction in all versions of the game. Apparently it's meant to separate the two sections of the cold storage area. And like I said, it doesn't have an animation sequence or the appropriate PCK files either. It does have the same See Thru problem and also isn't even set as a door. All that could be fixed.

As for T'Leth, there are so many types of ground tiles there that it's hard to nail down which one (or ones) are causing the problem. There are obviously some tiles which you aren't meant to stand on (like near those pillars or by the "sleeping one") so some have to be set to 255 TU (actually they should be set to 0 as that prevents units from standing there in the first place). It looks like the rest of the 255 TU tiles aren't used or are for near objects. I haven't made it to T'Leth yet due to trying to understand the research tree so I can't test it out either. If you do get there, send me a copy of your saved game (I assume it only lets you save on the first and second parts of the mission, but that's not a problem), and/or a screenshot of your man standing on a bugged tile.

- Zombie

Finally! I replicated the bug NKF mentioned about being able to see an alien on a certain stair configuration in EU. The soldier has to be kneeling down facing the steps while the alien has to be on the top part of the steps. See the following screenshot:



You gotta realize this was a last resort test on my part since all the other configurations failed. I finally ended up cramming a ton of aliens both above, below and on the steps and then had my soldier stand or kneel. Will try to fix this issue soon.

- Zombie

Hmm, it's similar. I might have to set up the scenario I was thinking of on my copy of TFTD. Should be able to do that soon as I've I've made a horde of clone super mariners and edited facil.dat so that I can build my base aqua pods lightning quick at 0 maintenance. Should be able to speed through the game now and get MC Disrupters.

While I was speeding through some of the missions, I noticed something interesting about the island port bunker block: The walls inside the spiral bunker don't appear to block HE. I fired off a GC-HE shell at point blank at a gillman at the end of the spiral tunnel. It survived, but a civilian that was outside - just near the entrance - got killed by the blast. On the next turn, somehow the gillman doubled back on my aquanaut and was waiting at the entrance. How it was able to do that in a 1 tile wide tunnel blocked by an aquanaut is beyond me. The most probably answer is that I vapourized the first gillman with my second shot at the start of the turn and the one outside was another one.

A few other things I noticed: it's V1.0 that lets you research Deep Ones over and over again. Also, I was knocking beginner level lobstermen out with two to three shots from the sonic pistol (side shots). What gives? I don't ever remember them being that easy to defeat.

- NKF

I edited the lower part of the steps so that they aren't see through anymore and guess what? My kneeling soldier could still see the alien standing in that location. I think this isn't really a case of see through, it's a LOF template issue with the top part of the steps. When a soldier kneels down, he is just able to peer over the top of the steps. So if I change the template to something with covers a little more, that might do the trick. I'll let you guys know what happens.

Late Edit: No luck. First I progressively increased the templates which didn't help. Then I edited the entire upper step object so that the LOF templates completely filled the tile (all 6's). Nope. Thinking the changes might not take place in a saved game, I even started a new game and the same thing happened. There isn't much else I can do at this point. I'm going to try editing the lower step so it is completely filled to see if that has an effect. If we find the LOF templates for X-COM soldiers in the executable, I could shorten them a bit to see if that would work, but this is a long way off. Suppose this really isn't that big of a problem as when are you ever going to run into a situation like this, but still, it would be nice to fix it. Anyhow, let me work on it a bit more.

Another late edit: Ok, I switched all the LOF templates for the lower step to fill the tile. Still could see the alien when kneeling. I suppose I could drop the ceiling a bit and dump a few "blocking" templates in which would hopefully prevent LOS to the alien. Don't know if this is a good or a bad thing yet. Needs testing.

Very late edit: Works! I tested with a value of 6 for the top template of a normal floor tile. No more alien! I'm going to try and use another template which doesn't completely block LOS between levels. The idea is to minimize impact on playability of the game as much as possible. Not really what the programmers had in mind, but it gets the job done.

Another very late edit: Used template 24 which is a thin strip on the right side 2 pixes wide and it works fine too. I suspect a 1 pixel wide strip would be enough as well, but that template doesn't exist. Seems like I don't have enough information on LOFTEMPS.DAT in order to create my own template either. There's supposed to be 1's and 0's to indicate what's solid and what's empty, but I see everything but those values when the file is opened up in MS-Edit. For instance, loftemps.dat[024] looks like 30303030303030303030303030303030. Aaargh!

- Zombie

That's cause MS Edit shows values in bytes. But it's not one byte per pixel, it's one bit per pixel...

For example, 3 in binary is 00000011. Does that help give you a better picture?

Anyway, there is another way of doing this that doesn't involve editing the LOFTEMPs file, if you're interested. Sticking template 7 on the other side of the gap should work just as well.

Couldn't help myself, I had to draw some pictures. Here's the problem:



(Keep in mind each tile is 24 dots high, and there are 12 templates in there: Hence why I've double-layered them).

Units can see diagonally between the spaces the LOF templates block (it's the exact same issue that let units look/fire up into the Lightning).

Here's what I assume is your current solution:



You've taken template 24 and stuck it up in the corner. Blocks it nicely. Now, you want a thinner strip, but there's none in that orientation. The solution is to take template 7 and stick it on the other side of the gap:



Oh, and for the record, changes to MCDs and LOFtemps do effect all your previous save games, while changes to MAP and ROUTE files do not.

Yeah, a little. The two 1's at the start would thus be the two pixels at the left, then comes 6 empty pixels. Since a value of 0 comes after the 3, that means there are 8 more empty pixels which come after it to finish out the top line of 16 pixels. Correct?


Unfortunately template 7 wouldn't work. You can't put it to the right of a ground tile as they use template 6 which already fills the entire area. You would need to stick it on the "ground" in the empty (blanks?) tile to fill the gap. I thought about this, but it would create long LOF "stripes" in the hangar and access lift. Basically, any structure with an open area would be affected. Not good. Using a template on the upper part of a normal ground tile doesn't do too much damage overall as most tiles on L0 already have something above them. The access lift would still have some issues even with my current setup so this is why I wanted to create a new thinner template which would minimize the impact on the game.

- Zombie

That's more or less it. Just to trip you up though, those pixels are on the right - I was talking about template 24 with that example.

You might quite correctly point out that the values seem to be in the wrong order. The reason for this is that each row is stored as a two byte value, and, well, that's just the order they get written. Mapping out the entire record for that template you get:

0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011
0000000000000011


Oh! I see now what you're doing.

Ok, think back to what I did with the Lightning. Remember those pillars I stuck everywhere? Basically that's the best way to do this here as well; Create a new invisible tile type that can be place exactly where it is required. There's no issue of overcrowding the MCD array (there's nearly a hundred free records in there for X-Com bases).

I suspect it'll be easier to demonstrate this myself, so I'll make the file edits required tomorrow and upload the results.