The Lightning

[Fox]

How many of you guys use the Lightning? It's probably my favorite lander, but only because of the bugs.

 

Is it cheating to use the wall bugs to your advantage? I always move my guys out of the corners, and hardly ever out of the main door. It's a pretty controversial topic, but I'd like to hear some input.

 

I just love it to death because you can get 50% of the map mapped just by moving soldiers and having them look through the walls. Then wait a few turns, and you'll see a guy walking around. Then mind blast. Infinite ways to do it. I love the Lightning.

[NKF]

Cheating? Nah. The walls don't offer very much protection once the aliens get close enough, and they do know how to shoot and throw grenades through the walls (so can you, as long as you see someone outside, you can try experimenting with the angles until you find one that you can shoot or throw objects through). So I'd say it's fair enough.

 

But even if the Lightning was truly solid all-round, it would still make an excellent point of defense. (Any map editing gurus think you could put this on your to-do list?)

 

The lightning is indeed a unique experience. I like using it for my specialist veteran squads with flying suits. Pity it cannot carry a HWP, but that's not too bad.

 

The alien AI seems to make them gravitate towards you if you don't leave the lightning. Stay long enough and there'll sometimes be a huge congregation of aliens waiting outside. You can sometimes beat an entire battleship with one or two soldiers by just staying withing the general vicinity of the Lightning -- stepping out, tossing the occasional high explosive and proximity mine and stepping back in again.

 

Also, the aliens prefer to enter through the main access hatch. Must have a waypoint there for them to follow.

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

I was under the impression that the walls were only walk through if you used xcomutil.. i know it modifies the avanger to alow your to walk through the back door and ajoining walls

[NKF]

Oh the walk-through walls thingy is in the game even before applying XComutil's enhancements. I'm definitely sure about this one, since I've purposely left my copy of UFO CE un-enhanced.

 

As for the Avenger, I know there's one corner on the north-western edge of the ship that you can walk through (just to your soldier's left as they leave the ramp). From what I've seen, XComutil increases the number of unit spaces and adds a purple walk-through wall at the top of the ramp where there wasn't one before.

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

hmmm maybe i should fix this.... i feel it is cheeting

[JellyfishGreen]

I think multiple exits are the clear benefits of the Lightning, although it would be nice to have some sort of indicator such as purple walls or a diagram to show where these exits are. Avenger likewise.

[JellyfishGreen]

Oh wait - as noted by NKF in the Field Manual topic today, you can walk through "wall-like objects" when changing levels. Is this why the Lightning has so many holes?

[Fox]

JFG... good observation. I'm 99% sure that's the reason. Props to JFG.

[BladeFireLight]

how about returfiting door on all the sides of the craft.

[Zombie]

From the "How explosions work in the battlescape" thread:

 

Lightning is also badly bugged. I wrote this proggie to help with problems along those lines.

Okie, I think I fixed the Lightning bugs too. (Oooo, do you get it? A play on words)!

 

The "hole" that you mention in your program's help file is a LOF template issue. The center North wall segment's LOF templates are actually pointing to the South wall segment's LOF templates. And because a South wall is shifted to the right (urm, North) to allow movement, when you place that in a North configuration it gets shifted to the right also, thus creating the hole (or gap). Luckily, there is another North wall segment which has the correct LOF templates, so I changed all the 12's to 44's, loaded up your program and then the game, and bingo, problem fixed.

 

The other issue is of course the "wall" bug that many people mention. Technically, there are no true wall segments for the Lightning, only objects. The problem is, those objects are not even acting like walls. The Skyranger and the UFO's don't have this issue, so I compared those to the Lightning. LIGHTNIN.MCD[033] has 0 set for walls (or called "big wall" in MapEdit) when it should be 1. After editing the file and running a mission, my troops could not exit through the diagonals anymore. I waited a while to see if the lone Sectoid would find a way to shoot into the ship, but it never did so I assume that bug is also fixed.

 

So, head on over to our files section and download the Lightning MCD and LOF Fix which I just added. Like I mentioned in the description, losing the ability to deploy through the diagonals is a fair trade-off considering that aliens can't shoot inside. Besides, this is the way the game was meant to be played.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Not too shabby, it does solve the "walk through walls" bug.

 

But... you can still fire through the walls in some cases though. See the diagonal ones? Yeah, for whatever reason bullets go between them.

 

In UFOs, this was solved by sticking pillars in the "holes". You can walk through them, and for the Lightning they wouldn't even need to have a sprite attached to them.

 

It's still actually possible to fire outwards in UFOs by walking into the same tile they occupy. It seems your gun sticks through them at such a close range and hence can shoot past them. Not really a great tactical advantage though.

 

Also really needs a tile added so the door can actually open/close. Not fair being able to walk through it then step back behind the "curtain" to safety.

 

[Zombie]

But... you can still fire through the walls in some cases though. See the diagonal ones? Yeah, for whatever reason bullets go between them.

 

In UFOs, this was solved by sticking pillars in the "holes". You can walk through them, and for the Lightning they wouldn't even need to have a sprite attached to them.

Well, I can't think of a way which bullets can be prevented from going through the walls except for stuffing a pillar in the diagonals like the UFO's have. What do you suggest?

 

It's still actually possible to fire outwards in UFOs by walking into the same tile they occupy. It seems your gun sticks through them at such a close range and hence can shoot past them. Not really a great tactical advantage though.

I haven't been able to get one of my men in the same tile as a diagonal wall in a UFO except by throwing a stunned unit in there and letting him wake up on his own. Got a step-by-step guide on how to walk a unit in there? I would like to replicate (and test) this out.

 

Also really needs a tile added so the door can actually open/close. Not fair being able to walk through it then step back behind the "curtain" to safety.

Ah, yep that is another issue. Although, the pck tiles for the door opening sequence exist (43, 44, 45, 46, 43, 44, 45, 46) it just doesn't animate for some reason. Gotta look into why.

 

Edit: Hmm, it seems the map programmers forgot to set the "Door Open Tile" field to the proper number and didn't add a open door tile in the mcd entries. I'll try and fix this in my next version of the Lightning Fix.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, I can't think of a way which bullets can be prevented from going through the walls except for stuffing a pillar in the diagonals like the UFO's have. What do you suggest?

Stuffing a pillar in the diagonals like the UFO's have.

 

I haven't been able to get one of my men in the same tile as a diagonal wall in a UFO except by throwing a stunned unit in there and letting him wake up on his own. Got a step-by-step guide on how to walk a unit in there? I would like to replicate (and test) this out.

No no no, you stand in the same tile as the pillar that blocks the gap between the walls. Like this:

 

 

Of course, you can only fire outwards this way.

 

To prevent this from happening, pillars could be stuck on the outside too. Of course, those would NEED to be invisible to the player, unlike the ones inside.

[Zombie]

Stuffing a pillar in the diagonals like the UFO's have.

How original. Well, I'll try to give this a shot by reusing the UFO pillars first. If I get really into it I may create new pillars to match the color scheme of the Lightning.

 

No no no, you stand in the same tile as the pillar that blocks the gap between the walls. Like this:

 

Of course, you can only fire outwards this way.

Ah, understood.

 

To prevent this from happening, pillars could be stuck on the outside too. Of course, those would NEED to be invisible to the player, unlike the ones inside.

And how would we make a pillar invisible to a player?

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

And how would we make a pillar invisible to a player?

Easy - Insert a blank sprite into the PCK archive, then point the pillar to that.

 

I've taken the liberty of editing your Lightning upload as an example. Using the "standard" sprites, it looks exactly the same, but if you run the LOF program over it you'll see the pillars. They block bullets completely regardless of whether you can see them or not, of course.

 

I didn't really need to add one blank sprite for each pillar, but I did anyway ('cause it stuffs up the LOFTerrain generator when different shaped tiles share the one image).

 

A similar layout could also be used on all the UFOs to completely seal them off. But again, at the moment you need to go RIGHT up to the gaps to shoot those ones, so it's a relatively minor thing compared to having no pillars at all.

 

I've also been considering using invisible walls in UFOs to prevent the HE glitch which lets you punch through the non-wall walls...

 

You will probably notice I also added an "open door" tile, and linked it up with the "shut door" as best I could. Despite spending some time comparing the data with a UFO door however, I couldn't actually get the thing to open...

[Zombie]

Easy - Insert a blank sprite into the PCK archive, then point the pillar to that.

 

I've taken the liberty of editing your Lightning upload as an example. Using the "standard" sprites, it looks exactly the same, but if you run the LOF program over it you'll see the pillars. They block bullets completely regardless of whether you can see them or not, of course.

 

I didn't really need to add one blank sprite for each pillar, but I did anyway ('cause it stuffs up the LOFTerrain generator when different shaped tiles share the one image).

 

A similar layout could also be used on all the UFOs to completely seal them off. But again, at the moment you need to go RIGHT up to the gaps to shoot those ones, so it's a relatively minor thing compared to having no pillars at all.

 

I've also been considering using invisible walls in UFOs to prevent the HE glitch which lets you punch through the non-wall walls...

I had a little time today to check this out. Basically, aliens can still see you and still shoot you too. And those bullets are still real and hitting the mark blank pillars and all. To see what was wrong, I just assumed your changes were correct and focused on the other tiles in the MCD record. I edited all the "ground" tiles of the Lightning so that they were not see-thru anymore. Didn't work. Then I edited the walls to follow suit. Nope. Made the proper wall segments true "North" and "West" walls. Nope again (though, technically this is how those walls should be defined). At this point I basically ran out of options and had to assume your changes weren't correct. I edited the invisible pillars so that they were not see-thru and still no dice. The see-thru field obviously isn't to blame.

 

What's wrong? Right now my best guess is that the floor tiles (the diagonals) are not correct. See, in a UFO you have a set of 5 extra "composite" floor tiles (images 3-7) as seen here:

 

 

Those types of tiles are missing in a Lightning. I'll bet we need to add those tiles and reconstruct the floor of the Lightning using them. Remember how if your man is elevated near a UFO that he is able to see (and shoot) inside in certain circumstances (the "gap" between the wall and the ceiling)? Well, a UFO doesn't have ceiling tiles with those composite tiles either. It would explain the certain aspects of the bugginess near the diagonals in a UFO. Likewise, since the Lightning is elevated, that exposes the "gap" between the wall and the floor allowing shots to enter from below. Otherwise could the LOF templates be extended somehow to fill the gap?

 

If this still doesn't work, there is a brute-force solution to the problem: remove the landing struts and set the Lightning down on the ground floor. I hesitate to do this though as it is not in keeping with the intentions of the map programmers. It would then be a mod instead of a patch. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but all I'm after right now is to patch up the game as best as we can. Besides, this would require us to fool around with the spawn points for the X-COM units, which might not be possible...

 

You will probably notice I also added an "open door" tile, and linked it up with the "shut door" as best I could. Despite spending some time comparing the data with a UFO door however, I couldn't actually get the thing to open...

Yup, I saw it. I tried messing with it some more today with little luck. The normal sequnce for an opening door in a UFO is something like: 0, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 while in the Lightning it is: 43, 44, 45, 46, 43, 44, 45, 46. I applied the same sequencing as in a UFO (43, 44, 45, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46) but that didn't work either. It looks better though in MapView. Something else is wrong, but what? We are rapidly running out of offsets to edit in the MCD record. There are still a couple unknowns in there yet. Might have to compare the Lightning door with a UFO door on a bigger scale. Could this be because of an elevation change? I think I'll try setting the Lightning down on the ground to find out.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

What's wrong? Right now my best guess is that the floor tiles (the diagonals) are not correct. See, in a UFO you have a set of 5 extra "composite" floor tiles (images 3-7) as seen here:

 

 

Those types of tiles are missing in a Lightning. I'll bet we need to add those tiles and reconstruct the floor of the Lightning using them.

Actually, those tiles need fixing too. So long as they're at ground level they're ok (even if it's possible to fire through them out the bottom of the map, that's unlikley to ever happen), but when elevated (like in the Supply Ship, see the bottom of this section) they let you see/shoot right into the craft.

 

Remember, what a tile looks like isn't important here. It's which LOF templates are associated with that tile that matters (and those can't be made to extend outside of a 16x16 square). Those tiles look like they cover two, but in reality they can only ever cover one.

 

Otherwise could the LOF templates be extended somehow to fill the gap?

Could well do. I switched the LOFtemps associated with the diagonals (they used 79-82) to ones which protrude slightly (89-92). Uploaded the new version if you wanna give it a go. Those, along with the pillars, should make it pretty hard to get a shot through. I checked over the walls in case there was anything amiss there, but I think it's pretty much sealed from whatever angle now.

 

Might have to compare the Lightning door with a UFO door on a bigger scale. Could this be because of an elevation change? I think I'll try setting the Lightning down on the ground to find out.

While I was at it I took just a door tile and stuck that at ground level. Didn't make a difference.

[Zombie]

Could well do. I switched the LOFtemps associated with the diagonals (they used 79-82) to ones which protrude slightly (89-92). Uploaded the new version if you wanna give it a go. Those, along with the pillars, should make it pretty hard to get a shot through. I checked over the walls in case there was anything amiss there, but I think it's pretty much sealed from whatever angle now.

I agree. I ran a few missions with the updated Lightning fix and the aliens can't fire (or see) in and my guys can't fire (or see) out. The real litmus test was when I had my troops face the diagonals and it didn't change the fog of war overlay one little bit. After about 85 turns with a Large Scout, all 6 Sectoids stood right outside the Lightning without so much as a peep. Looks like this one is nailed shut and all the joints are caulked. Congratulations, and thanks for the help!

 

While I was at it I took just a door tile and stuck that at ground level. Didn't make a difference.

Indeed, I ran a test with the L1 Lightning map pasted on L0 instead. Nothing, the door seems as unsolid as ever. Something is obviously amiss yet. I'll need to research this a little more to see what's up.

 

- Zombie