Hobbes

Well, UFOPaedia will be needing again a new home until the end of the year. NineX is too busy to keep hosting it, so any suggestions would be welcome.

I posted this suggestion today on the wiki's Talk Page and I'll repost here to get the attention of the other admins: We had another request to add an entry to the Featured Projects sidebar (LWOTC) and since we now have a Featured Projects page I've been wondering if it wouldn't be better to remove all the current Featured Projects from the sidebar and put them in that page, for several reasons: The wiki has always been focused on the games and not on fan projects. There are wiki-relevant sidebar links that keep getting pushed downwards everytime a project is added, like languages or tools. With the reboot of the franchise and OpenXCom, a lot of fan projects are in the works. While we provide a space for their subwikis if they need, the wiki was never a hub for fan projects and to publicize/monetize them. Those projects typically came and use our space but I can't remember any who contributed to the wiki's main pages about the original XCom games, other than placing links to their projects on the original game pages for publicity. A couple projects have also left and set up their own wikis, without ever bothering to at least delete their content once they stopped updating it, since they decided they didn't want to be here anymore when they didn't get the publicity they wanted. UFO2000 & UFO:AI have zero or limited development for years - they're dead or almost. OpenXCom and OpenApoc already have links for their subwikis on the UFO and Apocalypse tables. Having Long War and Long War 2 then leads to other large projects like Long War Reworked and Long War of the Chosen also wanting the same attention/publicity. All of those could have also links for them on the Enemy Unknown and XCOM2 tables. And the Featured Projects page could be reworked so that they are properly grouped together according to their specific game that they originate from and it could also include a short description about their scope and objectives. Ideas/Comments?

Good news! I talked back to NineX yesterday about this conversation and he informed me that he meanwhile got a sponsor willing to cover the costs for the next two years. So this issue seems to be solved. I'm not familiar with the Leo reference. Above all, what I wanted to avoid was the situation before NineX, where the guy that was hosting the site offered his help out of the blue, and then there were constant wiki break downs and all sorts of things happening because he was trying to make money of the traffic. That's why I decided to get back to the place where the wiki was born and ask rather than accepting the first person who stepped in.

NineX server has been running smoothly since the wiki was moved there, we were glad to have found him when the guy that was previously hosting started constantly having issues. Put a link to donations (Gumtree/Patreon/etc.) on top of the main page and I'm sure that we would get some help. I've stopped adding content to the wiki a while ago but people have kept adding content for the newer games and we get quite a bit of traffic (which was one of the reasons why the site owner previous to NineX was reluctant to give back control). You're not being a mercenary by asking for financial support - we all have jobs and the wiki takes time and resources.

NineX was hosting it on its site (which has lasted for 19 years according to him) and the costs were: "i lost sponsor that was covering 75% of my internet and electricity bills. and keeping small DC at basement of private house isn't cheap. 1G/1G fiber costs arround 200EUR/month + electricity for servers"

Hello all, NineX, who is currently hosting the wiki on his server, has informed me that due to future rising costs he can't continue hosting it past December 2021. Me and NineX will be looking for alternatives. Since the UFOPaedia.org was born from this site (thanks to Pete who hosted it for years and years) I thought I'd ask if anyone is interested.

I've recently added links to both Phoenix Point and Xenonauts on the wiki sidebar, under the designation 'Spiritual Successors'. Phoenix Point has its own official wiki (and they based it on the UFOPaedia!).

From Terry Greer's website (one of Alliance's developers) - http://www.terrygreer.com/xcomalliance.html

No argument there, you did the work in finding this issue, I merely passed on the information. He likely just credited me since I was the one reporting to him and just to publish the commit as quickly as possible, and most regular contributors don't really mind about being mentioned or not in the change log since there are tons of these small changes. If you want to make sure that you're credited in the change log, may I suggest that you cut the middleman and contact directly with Warboy through the OpenXcom forums or the Discord channel?

That is correct. It has already been fixed on the latest nightly OpenXcom build by Warboy.

Today I asked Warboy to check it out and you just found a major difference on what UFOPaedia.org describes and the actual game behavior General missions code if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 1 ) v23 = 1; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 3 ) v23 = 2; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 6 ) v23 = 3; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 9 ) v23 = 4; p_GS_Missions_DAT[acts_offset].MissionAlienRace = a_mission_race_0[miss_num_ + 7 * v23].race[xc_RandMod(9)]; Terror mission code (handled on the Council Monthly screen) LABEL_13: v5 = 0; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 1 ) v5 = 1; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 3 ) v5 = 2; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 6 ) v5 = 3; if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 9 ) v5 = 4; v8 = xc_RandMod(9); v9 = 7 * v5; v7 = 0; v6 = a_mission_race_0_5[v9].race[v8]; Whomever wrote the page on alien missions on the UFOPedia assumed that there was a 2 month interval between the introduction of new races when instead it's 3 (which fits with your observations of no Mutons/Ethereals on June). When OpenXCom was implemented, the 2 month interval was used incorrectly and Warboy just fixed it on the latest nightly version. This is the a_mission_race_0 array that is used to select the race (00 = sectoid, 01 = snek, 02= ethereal, 03 = muton, 04 = floater) 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 01 01 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 01 01 01 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 01 03 03 03 04 04 04 00 00 00 03 03 03 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 01 01 03 03 03 03 03 04 00 01 01 01 01 03 03 03 04 04 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 04 04 00 00 01 01 03 03 03 03 04 04 00 00 01 03 03 03 03 04 04 04 00 03 03 03 03 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 04 04 00 01 02 02 02 02 03 03 03 04 00 01 01 01 01 02 03 03 04 04 00 01 01 02 02 02 02 03 03 04 00 00 01 01 02 02 03 03 04 04 00 00 00 01 03 03 03 04 04 04 00 00 00 03 03 03 04 04 04 04 00 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 04 04 00 00 01 01 02 03 03 03 03 04 00 01 01 02 02 02 03 03 02 04 00 00 01 01 01 02 02 03 03 04 00 01 02 02 02 02 03 03 04 04

This is the OpenXCom ruleset for Terror missions - type: STR_ALIEN_TERROR points: 10 objective: 3 spawnZone: 3 #Mission zone for terror missions raceWeights: 0: STR_SECTOID: 30 STR_FLOATER: 70 1: STR_SECTOID: 60 STR_FLOATER: 40 3: STR_SECTOID: 20 STR_SNAKEMAN: 60 STR_FLOATER: 20 5: STR_SECTOID: 10 STR_SNAKEMAN: 20 STR_ETHEREAL: 40 STR_MUTON: 20 STR_FLOATER: 10 7: STR_SECTOID: 20 STR_SNAKEMAN: 30 STR_ETHEREAL: 20 STR_MUTON: 20 STR_FLOATER: 10 If the June Terror mission used the April settings then you'd never see Mutons or Ethereals in June terror missions.

Exactly. This is why I like people still testing the original game to see how their results compare to OpenXCom's implementation of those same features

Thanks for the correction

And actually this discussion just revealed a difference in behavior between the original game and OpenXCom - in OXC the region for scheduled retaliation it is randomly selected - Warboy didn't notice this quirk on the original game (first base is always selected if there isn't a retaliation there yet) and decide to make it all random when implementing it. This is the reason why I never updated the UFOPaedia page on the original alien missions using the info from OXC and decided to make a separate page instead describing how it works on OXC - OXC tries to be as faithful as possible to the original game but there are slight differences.

Just mentioned this to Warboy on Discord and here's the original game code if ( v_GS_time_year != 1999 || v_GS_time_month )// not at game start { xc_GS__Setup_Alien_Mission(); if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count > 5 ) xc_GS__Setup_Alien_Mission(); if ( v_GS_Elapsed_Months_count >= 14 - v_DIFFICULTY_LEVEL || a_GS_Research_Builtin[57].researched2 & 1 ) { v2 = p_GS_Loc_DAT; v1 = 0; while ( 1 ) { if ( v2->obj_type == lot_XCom_Base ) { v3 = xc_GS_Get_RegionID_from_LatLon(v2->cur_x, v2->cur_y); if ( p_GS_Missions_DAT[7 * v3 + 6].UFO_Counter == -1 ) break; } ++v1; ++v2; if ( (_WORD)v1 >= 50 ) goto LABEL_13; } v4 = 56 * v3; // retaliation *(__int16 *)((char *)&p_GS_Missions_DAT[6].UFO_Counter + v4) = 0; *(__int16 *)((char *)&p_GS_Missions_DAT[6].UFO_SubCounter + v4) = 0; *(__int16 *)((char *)&p_GS_Missions_DAT[6].MissionTimer + v4) = 5;// 2.5 hours *(__int16 *)((char *)&p_GS_Missions_DAT[6].MissionAlienRace + v4) = xc_RandMod(4); } } According to him, the original game is simply selecting the first base in loc.dat and sending retaliation there, assuming there's not a retaliation there already. Which makes sense, if you consider that this is a way of ensuring that the player gets hit where it hurts (starting base) when the scheduled retaliations start.

The default region is set for North America when determining mission regions, so that might explain it. I can bring this up with Warboy for him to check the original code to see what might be causing your observed behavior. Just a couple of questions: * When you mention June, you mean 1999 or 2000? (1999 means you researched The Martian Solution) * Is North America the location of your first base?

Pacific has a city (Hawaii) so terror missions can spawn there I was trying to make it simple to understand since the values are also used for Retaliation

It's not possible to have Terror missions in the Arctic/Antarctic because there are no cities on those regions, that's why you're getting 0 missions. I should have removed those values from the list, like I removed the values for the Atlantic/Indian oceans (no cities there too). Those values are only used for determining Retaliation missions in the case of the Arctic/Antarctic/Atlantic/Indian. While testing 132 times is a lot of effort, even if you tested 1000 times you could still get a series of results that doesn't correspond to the theoretical distribution based on the predefined weights, regardless of the probability of that series of results happening. That's the problem with those empirical tests - if you're only relying on those results you could be basing your entire conclusions on flawed data because the sample was not large enough. OpenXCom reverse engineered the original code, so it determined how exactly the values on the game files (ZONAL.DAT and others) are used by the engine. The developers had to figure it all out by themselves so it's possible that mistakes were made, and Warboy has figured out a couple of them simply because of my questions that made him recheck the original code. It's a matter of deductive vs inductive logic

Correct, I forgot that month 0 corresponds to January, so 2 missions start in July (month 6) Because there's regional weights also involved when selecting regions with XCom bases for Retaliation missions?

Here are the regional weights when the game spawns a Terror mission (source: OpenXCom) North America: 18 Arctic: 4 Antarctic: 4 South America: 10 Europe: 16 North Africa: 12 South Africa: 8 Central Asia: 12 Southeast Asia: 15 Siberia: 10 Australia: 10

Due to OpenXCom there isn't much of a mystery there You can see all the major aspects regarding how alien missions are generated here: https://www.ufopaedi...nown_(OpenXcom) . * There are 2 independent triggers for the scheduled Retaliation missions: November 1999 on Superhuman (lower difficulties mean later activations) or researching The Martian Solution * The scheduled alien Retaliation always happens in a region with an XCom base (100%) * Race is random: 20% chance for every race, regardless of the month. In theory you can get a scheduled retaliation mission consisting of Ethereals in February if you are able to research The Martian Solution until the end of January (and it will take place in the region of your starting base!) The page dealing with alien missions on the Enemy Unknown section of the UFOPaedia is a good effort, but it was based in empirical observation made by players 15 years ago without knowing how the original engine actually worked. I was the original author of the page detailing how it works in OpenXCom, which reverse-engineered the original code.

I never used BB's uniform mod, so I can't answer your question. As for XComUtil a long time ago I used it to add additional mapblocks/terrains but it was very limited and you needed to select manually which terrain you wanted to play. The original game is simply not easy to mod and quite limited when compared what UFO2000 and OXC allow.

Any mod for the original game needs to replace the original game files and their structure to work, regardless of being terrains, weapons or alien races. Converting OXC mods to work on the original could be possible, by adapting them to fit with the file structure and/or by hex editing the hardcoded values.

IIRC the additional fixes are related to TFTD since its implementation revealed several bugs with the original game files that were never patched before. Like NKF said, if you want more details just ask Warboy or SupSuper on the OXC forums since they were the ones responsible for that patch