redrat9595

Ok, here I am, as promised, Wednesday-ish. Everything's working fine and dandy here on my old computer, just as before. Many thanks to you for your patience and cooperation through this whole thing and good luck in whatever endeavors you may follow. Thanks, Redrat

Ok then. The main screen is working properly again, and the bar at the bottom is gone! Also, I meant exactly as you thought I meant, apologies for not being more clear. Thanks a bunch, I don't see any more problems at this point, though I'll give it a shot on my old computer Wednesday-ish. I don't want to be the cause of it messing up for others with older systems, though I don't see any issues cropping up. Thanks, Redrat

Finally got time for further review of the new version. Just figured I'd put this up for you, even though neither of these are more than the slightest of nuisances. The first screen, where you select the save, seems to have issues with the cursor. It's sort of laggy is all, but once the actual editor opens it's smooth again. The other thing is that it seems as if it can't poroperly cover the taskbar, so there's this rapidly flashing bar (like a strobe light) across the bottom, but only a couple pixels tall. Also, it will turn whatever color your cursor is if you move your cursor around on it. It's hard to explain. I just fixed this by opening the OSD of my monitor and moving the vertical position down one. 6 second fix. Other than those two things it works perfectly, as always. The Reapers and their clubhouse are forever grateful to you! Also, these don't seem to appear at all if it doesn't have to change screen configuration. Thanks, Redrat

Ok, just wanted to make sure. I was a tad confused because the support forum seemed to be a bit of a jumble. Thanks a bunch! Seems like the new version works just dandily. I'll look a tad more into it tomorrow night. Also, I could barely tell about the "distortion". I probably wouldn't have even noticed if I wasn't looking for it. Now I can finally continue my work on my "Reaper Clubhouse" map! Thanks again, Redrat

Hello again. So I've gotten another new computer, running on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit with a grafics card built into the processer. After struggling for some time and fruitlessly searching for a solution, I eventually managed to get the game running. Excited, I wanted to get my old joke maps up again so I could mess around with them some more. But alas, there was an issue. The editor runs in a small square in the corner! It's fullscreen (no window) but it's only about an inch square in the top left corner. The rest of the screen is black. Any idea what's going on? The command prompt shows no errors. Is there a config file I can tinker with, some other magical solution, or will I just have to use my XP computer to run this? Perhaps it's possible that the lack of ability to turn off DirectDraw Acceleration is an issue? By the way, I've already tried a clean install with both your Toolkit and X-COM, something I learned to do from last question. Also, slightly off topic, but this IS where I'm supposed to be asking questions, right? Not some other board or thread? Thanks for your time, Redrat

Before we begin, let's go over a couple things to minimize confusion. Firstly, this is a workaround for people with Windows 7 64 bit computers. I couldn't tell you if this works for ANYTHING else at all, be it TFTD, 32 bit, or other OS's. Next, I did relatively extensive-ish searching and could find no such soulution in this forum. There were, however, at least 3 or 4 unanswered cries for help. Most of said looking was done in the FAQ section (here), where I've found zero evidence. If a duplicate exists somewhere else that I missed, feel free to take whatever actions you see fit. Lastly, I'm making this because this took me way too long to figure out for what seemed to me to be an obvious answer in the end. Also, with such an amazing game I believe that this problem may begin popping up more and more (with people who already own the game, anyways) as computers are upgraded from that little tiny Win95 or Amiga down in some corner of our basement. Now that that's over with, let's begin. Ok, so real quick, let's answer why this happens. As far as I understand (I may be a tad off on this) DirectDraw Acceleration has to be turned off on newer computers to get this game to function properly. Win7 uses DirectDraw to help display it's GUI (taskbars and such), so, because it's embedded into the OS, it's a nasty bugger to get working using DirectDraw. However, thanks to this great community, the fix for this problem's been here for quite some time, and is pretty easy to do. This is probably dumbed down further than most of all you coders need, assuming you don't already know this stuff, but I'm willing to elaborate on anything that's unclear. All you'll need is UFOExtender, but I'll include steps in the instructions for people who are using it with X-COMUtil, because I do myself. Remember that a clean install is always the best way to start off. Also, this shouldn't screw up your saves, but back them and everything else up, as always. Step 1: Go into UFOExtender's config file, UFOExtender.ini in your game directory. Step 2: The following settings should be taken note of. Note: The find function is your friend! Skip Intro: I'm a laaaazy bugger and just can't handle that extra click to skip the intro I've seen a million times. But it looks like it's a sacrifice we'll have to make because it seems to cause a crash. Nextly, cursor clipping. That needs to be on. Scale cursor's 0 should be changed to a 1 also. This can create a slow mouse in some instances, but you can change your Windows mouse settings in the Control Panel if it's an issue, which will make it go faster ingame. If it isn't turned on, it appears that the cursor can still leave the right and bottom edges of the screen in menus and the Geoscape. And lastly in this config file you must change D3D from 0 to 1, and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE. The others have really been for smoother playability. This is the real game-changer (see what I did there? ). What this does is makes the game use Direct3D instead of DirectDraw, skirting the issue until we have swirly whirly whizzy-tizzy changing takbars or something that require D3D. But that shouldn't happen for a while. If you don't use X-COMUtil, you should be finished. Step 3: Run X-COMUtil. I haven't done a TON of experimenting, but I've found a couple of things that should have a certain value. As far as I can tell everything else can stay the same as defaults or whatever you choose. Firstly, you have to split the .exe. Really though, why would you even have this utility if you didn't use that? When it asks about the patch program, say yes here, but when it actually opens the program at the end say no so that it uninstalls itself (which is what it does when you say no at the end), because I'm assuming that if you're here, you've already tried installing this. Next, I originally played some of the older versions, so I wanted the original sound effects for geoscape and tactical. These seem to make the sound mess up, so it seems you have to turn it off, but any way to fix that would be appreciated. So say no to those two for now. Everything else stays the same as whatever you use AS FAR AS I KNOW. I say "n" to most things in there, however, and haven't had a huge amount of time to experiment. The only one I could MAYBE see issues with is if you don't fix all of the issues when it asks all, none or prompt on the bugfixes bit. Step 4: Probably the easiest. Run the game by double clicking "runxcom.bat". The game should work now, barring any very strange settings or something. As always, the more background programs closed, the higher chance it will work. Ok, so again, any inquiries and I'll do my best to answer. I'm pretty familiar with most of the ins and outs of this program and these two tools, in general, but try to keep in mind that this is my first new topic, I think only about my 7th post (though I have lurked about these forums for a while), and I'm not the person who made either one of these tools, so I'm not totally omnipotent. But I'll give you a shot and get back as soon as I can.

Hello again. I absolutely LOVE your editor. I think it's the single most useful program I've ever come across. So when I moved to a new computer, I wanted to bring it along. When I tried to run it, however, I got a problem. When I went to run the map editor, a white screen came up and stayed up. I did the same thing as last time; I then tried every key on the keyboard in a fashion that would not overwhelm it. I then minimized the window, and in the Command Prompt Window, I got this: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IlleagalArgumentException: Color parameter o utside of expected range: Red Green Blue at java.awt.Color.testColorValueRange(Unknown Source) at java.awt.Color.(init)(Unknown Source) at java.awt.Color.(init)(Unknown Source) at Pal.getPal(Pal.java:174) at Text.loadText(Text.java:43) at Text.(init)(Teaxt.java:33) at LoadGame.chooseSlot(LoadGame.java:88) at MapEdit.main(MapEdit.java:28) The only difference between this one and that one is that the indentations in the Command Prompt Window were composed of a single press of the tab key as opposed to a ton of spaces in this one. So, I'm going to be honest. I have absolutely NO idea what this is, and any help you could provide would be met with the utmost appreciation. Good job on the editor, sir, and (hopefully) thank you for your help. Thanks, Redrat.

Well if nothing else, thanks for the education. Perhaps when I finish learning C++ I can actually look into this in some detail, but for the moment, my time is taken up by that. Anyway, goodbye for now, and thanks for the wonderful editor. Thanks, Redrat.

Interface-wise, I guess there could be a key. Getting it to respond to said key in a fashion that would have some human interface is a whole other story though, right? However, UFOExtender did add stun attacks to most of the guns, but I imagine making a turret for the Chryssalid and basically doing the same thing would be a different type of coding, correct? Thanks, Redrat.

Hey, always good not to accidentally offend somebody. Anyways, is there a way to attack with a Chryssalid? I know that you aren't supposed to be able to, but in the stat editing screen in the battlescape editor, the Chryssalid, and other close combat units, say they have a turret number of 255, and no ammo. Perhaps if the attack was to be given a limit, something like a clip, then would it be accessible to the player? Same with the Reaper and Silicoid. I tried giving it ammo, but nothing happened, probably due to the lack of a graphic for what is in the hand. Thanks, Redrat.

Why thank you. I think I know what's wrong now. By the way, I just read over my last post, and I sounded a bit... demanding? Sorry about that, anyway, whatever it was. I was in a bit of a hurry. But thanks a lot. I'm looking forward to using it. It will be a real help. Thanks, Redrat.

I ran your battlescape editor, and got as far as the loading screen. It said it was completely loaded, but I waited quite a while and nothing happened. I then tried every key on the keyboard in a fashion that would not overwhelm it. This didn't do anything. So then I minimized it, and the command prompt window had what I can only take to be an error message. This happened with every one I loaded, but with different numbers, key presses or not. Here is the message. Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 12 at UnitDrawer.getImage(UnitDrawer.java:129) at UnitData.getImage(UnitData.java:337) at MapDrawer.drawMap(MapDrawer.java:199) at Tactical.drawscreen(Tactical.java:289) at Tactical.gameloop(Tactical.java:270) at Tactical.run(Tactical.java:80) at MapEdit.main(MapEdit.java:37) I've heard a lot of good things about this program, so I hope you know what this is. Thanks, Redrat.