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TFTD extender (alpha)


kyrub

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I thought I would add this to the forum. I continued Xulisk's conversion of TFTD extender and added many of Kyrub's modifications and a few of my own. I have verified that most of the options work and don't generate a fatal error but consider it a beta version.

 

The sound pops that were common are now fixed as well as the zombie walking sound.

 

There is an option to allow the aliens to respond to interception attacks, reactions depend on game difficulty.

 

Most bug fixes are enabled by default and not listed in the INI. There is a section in the INI in case you want to disable a fix: Add the line from the reference file and set it to zero.

 

If you choose to disable the notifications for Interceptions over land and USO that are very deep, the xcraft will continue pursuit but will not automatically engage once the USO reaches a proper interception point. Be careful when adjusting the time frame as your craft can quickly run out of fuel and not engage the enemy.

 

[A new version of Extender has been posted - the old one has been removed. Keep reading..and thanks!]

Edited by Tycho
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I'm also still trying to transform / fix / extend my own TFTD extender version, but with very moderate time commitment. Several times I stumbled already over UFO extender bug fixes that were not applicable because those bugs don't seem to be still present in TFTD. Ufopaedia was no great help in this respect, I found only a reference that TFTD shares the game engine with UFO so all bugs are there as well, what is obviously not the case.

 

Anyway, one special question for all those still interested in modding the game: can anyone tell me how to set the sound volume (standard mode, I think that is playing the midi files with DirectSound)? If I play the game and see/hear some internet video at the same time (what I often do), then the game sounds all but drown all other sound, and playing with the windows sound controls doesn't help.

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By "sound", do you mean SFX (guns blasts, movement, screams and so on), or music?

 

The music is all played through your system's MIDI synth, whereas everything else goes through the standard wave interface. Note that the underwater "bubbly" noise and the on-land "waves on a beach" noise are NOT music - they're SFX, and while the underwater noise is pleasant enough, especially under CE the waves noise is annoyingly loud.

 

Frankly I suspect if you could just get rid of that particular noise everything else should be possible to handle under the Windows volume control settings (assuming you're running something prior to Vista - you're kinda out of luck otherwise).

 

Turfing that sound would make me happy, in any case. ;)

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I verified that the "pay for dirt" and "incorrect base maintenance monthly report calculation" are both fixed in the original code for TFTD. There are a few others that I can't think of right now. I'm not sure about the "blaster bomb/PW torpedo vertical waypoint bug" so I updated the reference and left it in. I couldn't verify the "reaction fire for underwater weapons on land" bug but it doesn't crash the program or prevent reaction fire for underwater weapons. Kyrub patch the code on the background file to play for land missions but I can't get a land mission to come up easily..now that I need one..... pinch.gif .

 

Giratorh, I've played around a lot with the sound file settings and I don't believe there is any internal volume setting for the sound files as it passes the sounds to the system to play through. Yeah, there isn't a whole lot of TFTD specific information in a central place... Its all scattered as side-comments on the EU topics.

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By "sound", do you mean SFX (guns blasts, movement, screams and so on), or music?

 

The music is all played through your system's MIDI synth, whereas everything else goes through the standard wave interface. Note that the underwater "bubbly" noise and the on-land "waves on a beach" noise are NOT music - they're SFX, and while the underwater noise is pleasant enough, especially under CE the waves noise is annoyingly loud.

 

Frankly I suspect if you could just get rid of that particular noise everything else should be possible to handle under the Windows volume control settings (assuming you're running something prior to Vista - you're kinda out of luck otherwise).

 

Turfing that sound would make me happy, in any case. wink.png

Yes, I have WinXP SP3 smile.png

 

Mainly I mean SFX. I can regulate SFX volume with the "Wave" slider in the windows sound controls that also controls browser video sound volume (at least of those videos I usually watch, don't know whether that depends on the player or what). Music volume can be set with the "SW Synthesizer" slider (if that is also called like that in the English version). Since there is always background sound in missions as you said I would at least like to be able to adjust the SFX volume, but wasn't able to find a volume setting in the code. But then I have no deep knowledge about DirectSound, so I may not have been able to spot such a setting, so I asked.

Yes, the land mission sound is especially annoying. I spent an hour to find initialization of that sound, but lost track before I got anywhere ...

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I verified that the "pay for dirt" and "incorrect base maintenance monthly report calculation" are both fixed in the original code for TFTD. There are a few others that I can't think of right now. I'm not sure about the "blaster bomb/PW torpedo vertical waypoint bug" so I updated the reference and left it in. I couldn't verify the "reaction fire for underwater weapons on land" bug but it doesn't crash the program or prevent reaction fire for underwater weapons.

Yes, I suspected as much, those two bug fixes I had to remove because they crashed the game. The intro sound bug fix didn't crash the game, but did nothing, I could only restore intro sound by copying the animated intro from the DOS version to the CE version. I set Music Change Freeze and Funky Fire to 0, but can't remember exactly why (although I think funky fire also crashed the game). I didn't specifically check all other bug fixes, but left them on 1 and didn't experience a crash yet, but then not all situations occured yet.

 

Kyrub patch the code on the background file to play for land missions but I can't get a land mission to come up easily..now that I need one..... pinch.gif .

 

Giratorh, I've played around a lot with the sound file settings and I don't believe there is any internal volume setting for the sound files as it passes the sounds to the system to play through. Yeah, there isn't a whole lot of TFTD specific information in a central place... Its all scattered as side-comments on the EU topics.

Ok, thanks for the info, we'll see whether someone of us can come up with a solution still ;)

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Thanks, Kyrub. Glad to have a chance to look it over. FYI, the offset on the Insert call function for the reaction fire fix needs to be moved to 410B0E and adjust the Nop offset as well, else you will get a crash during reaction fire.

 

Kyrub, changing the offset fixed one issue but the program still crashes whenever a reaction fire should be blocked. I tried a change to the code for jumping to the end of the routine but that only made game lock up. Have you gotten the code to run successfully?

Edited by Tycho
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  • 3 weeks later...

"Assign all personell" and "Auto sell" were not implemented in 1.01. I devoted my time to fixing a lot of other issues that I knew people used. I have got the initial base mod fixed and working. I am concerned by your inability to scroll.

 

Do you have shortcuts enabled or using the extender with XcomUtil? If you are enabling shortcuts, disable them and see if that works.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

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Well, it doesn't have everything I hoped to include but some bugs with 1.01 are fixed.

 

Shortcuts should now work correctly and some issues with D3D are hopefully fixed.

I have updated the sections for Autosell and AssignAllPersonnel. I borrowed heavily from Kyrub's work on the Personell section. Even he was not sure about the updates to it, but try it and report any issues.

 

Alternate base layout is now fixed.

 

For the option to change the land mission background sound, I disabled the sound reference instead. Makes land missions feel closer to EU with only the creepy combat music.

 

 

A new version has been released: https://www.strategyc...ftdextender-1x/

Edited by Tycho
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I don't have any shortcuts enabled. Right now I am using kyrub's version in tandem with xcomutil, with the link provided by Bomb Bloke. I'll test it out with your extender when I have the time. If anything comes up, I'll report it.
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Try using my latest version and see if the problem persists. Kryub's version is an early alpha which had some problems if you read this entire thread. He was unable to devote a lot of time into developing it further due to job commitments. I sort of took up the ball and kept developing it further by correcting a lot of the issues that were noted on his release.
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I was wondering if anyone who is using the TFTDextender has been successfully using the option "no underwater weapons reaction fire on land" (or whatever the entry is for that).

"Underwater weapons reaction fire" doesn't work in Kyrub's version. I debugged a crashing tactical game until I found the reason lies in said option since it manipulates the stack to jump to a different location on return from Kyrub's code but doesn't clean up correctly so that an access violation at address 00000001 follows. I didn't fix it yet though. but perhaps that points you in the right direction to fix it in your version.

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Thanks for the info, Giratorh. I had come to the same conclusion. I've tried to fix Kyrub's solution and then tried several of my own. So far, I have managed to get one that works as I intend it but some register change somewhere messes up another section of code....
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Thanks for the suggestion Giratorh, but the "Underwater weapons reaction fire" option is already off. It always has been. Also, the game immediately crashes when the month ends, when the fundings screen is supposed to appear.
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Hello. I found this project and like it. I registyered in order to give some feedback on this. I tryed the version: TFTDextender1.02.zip who upload Tycho and it works fine with XComUtil but i find something that doesn't work.

 

The "Scale Mouse=1" feature doesn't work. I tried same video config than in extender for UFO:EU and there it works. In our case mouse goes out in right and bottom sides of image.

 

I used this video config:

 

[Video]

Video Pitch=1

Max FPS=70

HQ4x=1

D3D=1

D3D Windowed=0

D3D Window Position=0 0 838 1296

Always On Top=0

Clip Cursor=1

Scale Mouse=1

Screen Ratio=0.833333

Skip Intro=0

Force Language=0

 

When I have some free time i will test more things like the Air autofire aquatic weapons. Thanks for your work.

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Thanks for the feedback, Frisbu! I looked into it and found the problem, which was just an oversight on my part. It should be fixed for the next release. The aquatic weapon reaction fire bug has not been successfully fixed as yet. I think I am close to a solution however.

 

--Just wanted to report that I have successfully implemented the restrictions against water weapons firing on land under any circumstances smile.png I also tweaked the code so that the Gas Cannon tank can fire on land but not the Aqua Jet torpedo nor the PWT launcher.

Edited by Tycho
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I too signed up just to thank you and Kryub for your work, and to complain that it won't work lol. You're frikkin awesome!

 

More specificaly the aspect ratio modifier "Screen Ratio=0.xxx" doesn't work like it should. It defaults to 0.8333 regardless of what you put. With UFOExtender I set it to 1.06 because I have a 16/9 screen. I can't run it out of D3D mode because I'm on win7 and the directdraw version doesn't work.

 

Recomendations:

[initial Base]

Apply=0

row1=SubPenTL SubPenTR SubPenTL SubPenTR SubPenTL SubPenTR

row2=SubPenBL SubPenBR SubPenBL SubPenBR SubPenBL SubPenBR

row3=AirLock Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty

row4=GeneralStores LivingQuarters Workshop Laboratory StdSonar Empty

row5=Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty

row6=Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty

//I removed a tab character that displays differently on different computers and respaced the facilities.

//I don't know where seb got the idea to hanng the lab and workshop on the small radar but...

 

//rename readme.txt to TFTDExtenderINIreadme or Extender_INI_Refference.txt or something that's not readme.txt.

*Auto Sell: enable automatic production and selling of items

*Assign All Personnel: assign all available scientist/engineers to the project by decreasing quantity below zero

//missing from ini refference file.

 

Awww nvm the spacing, the forum doesn't post a bunch of space chars.

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Thanks for the info darkestaxe!

 

I think I found the source of the screen ratio problem and have fixed it. I also removed that tab character from the ini in the base layout section and added the new options' explanation to the reference file.

 

Keep the feedback coming!

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Crash on assign all scientists (250 to gause pistol)

XCOM crashed at 0xCD with error 0xC0000005 trying to access 0x000000CD

 

I've tested this a couple times now and it accesses a different address each time. The error has less 0s when I assign all technicians.

 

(techs)crash at 0x43A183, error 0xC0000005, access 0x959E1A3A

(techs)crash at 0x43A183, error 0xC0000005, access 0x959D1A3c

 

I also tried disabling personel overflow bugfix to see it still crashed, it did.

(techs)crash at 0x43A183, error 0xC0000005, access 0x95B11A3c

 

I was however able to confirm that it takes 256 technicians to have 0 technicians.

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