Hi.
I am playing aftermath, as i got a new graph card a while ago and desided it would be nice to actualy play the game now that i am able to.
I like aftermath so far, allot.

Some questions i have, are the flares really used fore something?
For something useful i mean.

Smoke grenades seem to work for a relative short time, or is it only the graphics thats disperses fast?

And how are exp done/work in the 1.4 game?
If my troops kills the unconscious enemy's do they get more exp?
If i shoot for example two shots (shotgun) for 900 damage, do i get the exp for 1800 damage done, or the creatures hp, or exp value?

If i can enter either a ufo or base without clearing the outsides, dose it matter?
(besides the obvious exp loss)

Grenades, acid and fire, are they useful?
(more then the usual one that is)

With all the patches and such, are the info about the weapons valid, or where can i find out the effective weapons info to look for?


Russian mission are not at a high lvl of priority or whatsitsname, but i got rocket ass rammed with a battleship mission.
Oh yeah, psi and alien rail weapon was there too.
And i have not got blue armor develop't yet even.. >_<


Now for some real trouble i got, in ufo ships or bases, several rooms are missing their textures.
The aliens themselves show up fine, but 1-3 rooms usualy are greay unifor non renderd blanks.
Floor shape and such shows, but not the "paint".
I tryed to re in stall, both game and my nividia drivers (nividia 6200 card) still same thing happens.
No matter if i use one or the other way to patch, or windowed mode, or setup settings or annything.
Can my cd1 or cd2 (witch got a few year on the belt) be scratched so something not being installed?
I are downloading the game from the net to see if that helps -if- it is a scratch.

But have you any help to give with getting the missing textures to work for me?

It's been quite some time since I played AM, but I think I recall some things from then.

Indeed, the actual "blinding" effect of smoke grenades last a bit more than the it's smoke screen effect.

Unfortunately, I never bothered to study on how exp gain works so I can help you much there.

The objective of the 1st part is to reach the green square target. As long as you do this and then kill everything in the 2nd half of the mission, it will be succesful.

They are usefull for large profile targets as they'll recieve damage for every square they occupy that is in flames/acid. Carcrabs, even tho they're somewhat resistant to flame, will fall quickly if over half of their body is engulfed in flames. There's no exp gain from the ongoing burning effect, but there is from the initial explosion.

Weapons have remained the same, there was only trouble in getting the advanced alien batteries from missions, but that was it as far as weapon goes. However, avoid these weapons in unmodded games as they suffer from some buggy behaviour:
- SuperStriker in burst mode: Granade and launchers suffer from a bug when they're suppose to fire multiple projectiles at the same time. They'll consume the number of projectiles fired, but they'll deal the damage of only 1 greatly reducing damage dealt.
- Flamer thrower in either mode: Same as above (designed as a launcher)
- Plasma shotguns: Regular shotguns have a 15 pellet configuration and each pellet has a chance to hit according the accuracy rating show when aimed at a target. This results in that the % show when firing at a target will be close to a relative damage from the max the shotgun can deal with the current skill rather than a chance to hit. But the plasma versions are designed like regular rifles, thus they'll either hit full power of miss completely and considering their low accuracy, it tends to be the latter than the former.

As for the missing textures, they were designed that way and is considered by some in the comunity as a design mistake. Many think that even if empty, it should of had the floor and wall patterns drawn. You can't "fix" it as there's no fix to it.

ok, thank you.
Are there any mods that has another texture instead of the current "invisible" ones?
Or are those un modifiable things?

Oh and have everyone had the same invisible textures?

I don't usually mess with the settings for my 3d card, but as i re installed the drivers and such, and it changed the setting from performance to quality i opened it up (NVIDIA control panel) and got to thinking.
Maybe there are some obvious setting here that i overlooked.


GLOBAL SETTINGS
----------------------------------
anisotropic filtering : application-controlled/off/2x/4x/8x/16x

Antialiasing - setting: application-controlled/4x/2x/none

conformant texture clamp use hardware/off/use open gl specification

extension limit on/off

force mipmaps none/bilinear/trilinear

maximum pre-rendered frames : 0-8

Multi display/mixed-GPU acceleration :single/multiple/compatibility performance mode

Texture filtering - Anisotropic mip filter optimization: on/off

Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: on/off

Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: allow/clamp

Texture filtering - quality: high performance to quality

Texture filtering - trilinear optimization: on/off

Tripple buffering : on/off

vertical sync : use 3d application setting/force/off



I think i can use a custom setting for particular programs, i have never used it tho.

Yeah, i can set up a special custom setting for ufo.exe

So what should i set for maximum compatibility with the game? :-/

I was just playing around in AM and to answer your question, killing an enemy rather than leaving them incapacitated offers you a little bit more EXP. I saved the game before leaving a combat area after leaving a critically wounded enemy and left, recorded the overall exp then reloaded and killed the creature before leaving.

I got an extra 10 EXP, all in all, any experience is good.

Yeah, every little thing helps.
But 10 exp per killd alien are indeed not much.
Hmm, wonder if you got the exp for firing the weapon instead of the kill. :-/
I mean as i have read some where that you could load up a troop with ammo and fire at the ground to get a lot of exp("allot" at the start of the game).

I really should try some experiments too, to see if that is the case in a 1.4 game.. :-/
(yeah i am a lazy bugger) >_<

I only tested it with a Cudgel on the last bar of health. Maybe it's relative to total damage done and the difficulty of the creature. I know when you start gunning down Rets and high tech Transgenants the EXP floods in for a few levels.

tried 3 diffrent soldiers with:
1 with uzi
1 with the basic shotgun
1 with the basic grenades

Enterd a rescue pilot mission and just let one soldier use up its ammo.
(all was fully loaded with respective ammo/grenades)
Keep in mind, i only shot at the ground/suroundings.
Grenades gave no exp at all when i presst abort.
Shotgun gave 2024 exp
Or was it 2420. :-/
Uzi i found attracted attention so i had to move them and abort before i could finish single fire shooting.
But when i tried with full auto with the uzi i stopped at the same point to compare.
Was no real diffrence between the two modes as far as i know, besides speed.
Also attracted attention again, but as it did not take nearly as long to get true the ammo, i got a result just in time.
1006 exp i think it showed.
Sorry for not writing the numbers down, but did only want to make a quick test.

Oh and i have no idea if skill and level matters, but the two weapon carrying soldiers was both lvl 11.

Conclusion: Well it is a way to get lvls quickly in the beginning.
Especially as you use the same weapons with unlimited ammo (at the base)then.
Just fill up, enter mission, drop 2-3 clips and blast away the rest before picking up ammo and going on with the mission.


Hmm, got to thinking, is it this game that removes the whole clip from the base inventory even if only one shot was fired?
If so, always emptying any weapon before exiting missions might be an easy long range exp gain plan.


<br /><br /><br />Hmm, yeah perhaps, and diffrent wepons have diffrent exp and or damage exp most likely too.
Perhaps it is calculated per damage.
As per my example, the shotgun had less rounds, but perhaps more damage overall.
Or however it (exp) is calculated.. :-/

damd html.. >_<
cut and pasted my reply, dont want to edit my post, probably will look ewen worse..


C&P:
Hmm, yeah perhaps, and diffrent wepons have diffrent exp and or damage exp most likely too.
Perhaps it is calculated per damage.
As per my example, the shotgun had less rounds, but perhaps more damage overall.
Or however it (exp) is calculated.. :-/

Huh? O_o
Weird board.. :-/

From what I've experienced magazines are completely replenished after returning to base. It's very handy early on when you find that magical G36 in the first half hour but you only have two or three magazines. Fire the weapon until there is only one bullet left, reload and repeat. When the chopper gets back to base the magazines are refilled.

I also find that occaisonally new magazines appear from no where.

But that shooting technique, hmm.

In my overhaul of AM I'm planning, I'm going to remove infinite limits on items so that won't be possible.

Oh, thats handy.
Hmm, now after sleep and your info, it was probably UFO Extraterrestrials that i was thinking of.

I was wondering why i was not going throe the ammo, but i was thinking i was getting allot of clips from the base capturing..
But i agree, leave just one shot or so, and no clips needed.
I was afraid to use weapons with few clips available, but no more!
Hmm, wonder how the game is whith grenades/rockets...
Probably not quite as generous.