Talk:LOC.DAT
Altitude
Shouldn't the altitude be set in this file as well? Probably one of the Unknown values, and XCOM and Alien Bases might have rubbish data in them. --Pi Masta 15:27, 8 February 2007 (PST)
Count Down
I have some doubts about offset 6-7. The page says that it is the horizontal destination, it looks more like the time left before crash/terror site will disappear (or maybe the offset has two usages depending on the type of the location?). It is reset to 3 for as long as there is a craft targeting the site. Seb76 10:45, 26 April 2008 (PDT)
- As neither crash nor terror sites have meaningful destinations anyway (only start locations), there's no reason why these offsets can't be overloaded to mean something else in these cases. -- Zaimoni 14:32, 26 April 2008 (CDT)
My experience confirm that offset 6-7 is time to count-down. If this is a terror or crash sub - time meeasure in hours. In example, if we show time = 10 that means this site 'll disappear through 10 hours
If this is landed Alien Sub - that time 'll fly up. It time measuring in 5-seconds. 1 minute = value 12. When I checked time to lands Alien Subs, I 'll became to convince it.
As far as I see, offset 6 (word) indeed used for countdown, both set, updated and checked. But offset 8 is very weird. I haven't found use of this field value anywhere. Yes, it set, updated, but never checked. How's that? There are couple of places where field6=5400/speed and field8=5400%speed and another with field6=latitude/speed and field8=latitude%speed, and I have no idea what are they doing this for... It looks like some companion field of offset6, but apparently not used. --Volutar 06:59, 13 April 2011 (EDT)
Multiple interpretations
It turns out that LOC.DAT also contains/indexes key data for configuring alien bases. One of my attempts at manually constructing an alien base entry critically backfired.
For a Floater base, the Reapers are instantiated in a post-processing pass; they start out as Floaters at the *front* of the alien unit list. The game knew enough not to arm the would-be Reapers, but with key fields in LOC.DAT bungled the pass to convert would-be Reapers to Reapers did not execute. -- Zaimoni 21:34, 4 December 2008 (CDT)
- Alien ranks higher than Soldier also are created in a post-processing pass; their equipment, however, was templated properly based on what their rank would have been from where the entries were in the file. The proto-Reapers did not have Soldier rank either. -- Zaimoni 21:51, 4 December 2008 (CDT)
Supply ship requests
Just to jot a thought down before I forget:
Since supply ships aren't scheduled to happen as such in ACTS.DAT/MISSIONS.DAT, and are instead requested directly by the alien base, would the base's loc.dat entry store a timer that counts down between the when it makes its next supply ship request? Or are supply ships just generated at fixed times during the month?
- NKF 04:41, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
edit: Shot this idea down as soon as it came to me. An alien base's information is fairly static in loc.dat. I can only guess that the game randomly decides whether or not to create a supply ship each day at 00:00am, with the supply ship's being 'ping'ed for the first time by your radars at 00:30am. Had a few supply ships show up in the span of a few days in one game, then after reloading none appeared until close to the end of the month. -NKF 05:16, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
- I think I wrote it somewhere, but once a day each base has a 5% chance of generating an alien supply mission. You can change the "6" there to increase the probability:
.text:00441DC6 66 3D 06 00 cmp ax, 6
- Seb76 14:49, 30 April 2010 (EDT)