Feel free to report any problems or comments you have on the Extender.

If you want to suggest a change or addition to something in the base game. Please post your suggestion on the Wish List page.
If you have an error to report, please check the list of already reports problems, and post there if the problem is in the base game (if not already reported). Please only post problems caused by the Extender on this page.

Feedback

Music

XCOM CE's Sound effect volume is excruciatingly high (about 5x) compared to DOS version. This means that, at least for me, music is relatively quiet. At least it is so on Windows 7. I'm using modified SAMPLE/SAMPLE2.CAT files to compensate for it, but it would be great if there was an option to adjust this. Maybe this isn't an issue on Windows XP.

There problem here is that there is nothing in the program to manage aspects of sounds/music. The game selects the music entry or SFX and then dumps the data string directly into the OS's sound mixer. - Tycho

- After some investigating, the DOS version's 1.4 SAMPLE/SAMPLE2.CAT audio is the same volume as the CE .CATs, yet is played in-game at a much lower volume than the CE version. Perhaps there is some sort of volume adjustment going on in-game, which isn't being performed in the CE version, or not on Windows 7 at least. The fact that the audio data in the DOS 1.0/1.2 SOUND1/SOUND2.CAT files is a lower volume than the 1.4 sounds (yet still played at the same volume in-game) seems to suggest this.
- This is also another minor gripe, but it seems some weapons (namely the Heavy Cannon) use the wrong sounds (for example the Heavy Cannon HE rounds firing and hit sounds both use the explosion sound ,and it definitely isn't this way in DOS. Is this a SAMPLE2.CAT problem or is this defined elsewhere in the game files?

The music is playing as a MIDI channel (usually via the OS's built-in SW Synth), whereas the SFX is all handled as standard wave channel. In anything earlier then Vista, Windows let you change the volume on those two channels separately (along with whatever other output channels your system had). From Vista on, you can now adjust volume on a per-program level (which is good), but you lose the ability to do so on a per-output-device level (which is bad). I'm not aware of any workarounds. -Bomb Bloke

The Windows version did change the sound. Check out my user page for a lot of information on how sound EFX play in the game.-Tycho

If I wanted the game to play GMMARS instead of GMSTORY during debriefings, what should I change? CE by default seems to use GMSTORY instead, and Abram's Fmod patch uses the game's default music mapping instead of letting you define one.

check my user page. At the bottom, I've listed the addresses for all the events that call a sound. You'll need a disassembler like IDA. The list will help you locate the hex address that you'll need to change to call a different sound entry.-Tycho

Are there any bitrate limitations to what MP3s the game can play?--amitakartok 14:49, 13 March 2013 (EDT)

There shouldn't be any limitations. With the mod enabled, the game has nothing to do with mp3 playback except telling the BASS system which track to play. I checked their website[1] and no limitations are mentioned.- Tycho 23:16, 13 March 2013 (EDT)

Video

I was playing the game normally, started up a new game and, sometime after building a couple of base facilities and more stuff. Then this happened. So, yeah. Geoscape pretty much got KIA. --SuggestedBowl 01:25, 26 May 2013 (EDT)

EDIT: After closing, "XCOM crashed at 0x76F25F29 with error 0xC0000005 trying to access 0x0564FACA". I left it on while posting... Restarting the game completely and reloading the save fixed it, though.

Other

Alien Bleeding: If you have Aliens Bleeding enabled, your soldiers might randomly receive same injuries as aliens. Noticed that when I critically wounded a floater. He went down unconscious, and so did one of my soldiers (without being shot at). When the floater died, my soldier died, too.

The alien bleeding mod doesn't affect how units receive fatal wounds only which units with fatal wounds are damaged at the end of a turn. Originally, wounds only affected the Xcom faction. The mod changes this check to the type of creature and skips the apply- wound-damage routine only for a select few unit types (tanks, cyberdisks, etc). -Tycho

Clip cursor behavior:I know that there are two different settings of clipping the cursor on screen, but the game Intro sequence and the menu is not clipping yet. Can be possible to force the cursor to clip surely for the whole game at all e.g. as option three?

In my upcoming changes patch I've forced mouse clipping at all times in fullscreen mode. It should probably be ready by the next UFO Extender release. -Tarvis

I observed that the battlescape can completely lose mouse clipping for that session if the game window loses focus due to things like an overzealous ESET firewall's always-on-top window asking every fucking hour whether Adobe Flash Player's updater is allowed internet access. The game automatically regains clipping at the start of the next battlescape session but it's still very annoying.--amitakartok 17:18, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

With Tarvis' addtions, this should be fixed in a new version. - Tycho

It seems that you can click during soldier moving or shooting, and then the soldier will execute that command as soon as the action is completed. Has it always been this way? I remember that if you did this in the DOS version then nothing happens. This has resulted in a lot of mis-commanding and I'm not too keen on using double-click (too used to single-clicking!)

I'm not sure of the specifics but I think Windows is buffering the input and allowing it to be executed it at the next opportunity. I think DOSbox eliminates this in some way directly or indirectly. The only solution is to use the double-click mod.

Tank issues

While using the loader, I intermittently had problems regarding berserk HWPs. Most of the time, it behaves like a normal unit (randomly fires off everything and loses all TUs); just after switching to 1.30 however, I had a floater chuck a grenade into the middle of a four-man fireteam without armor, killing them all. My turn starts, I receive "Tank/Laser Cannon has gone berserk" and BANG! XCOM crashed at 0x41F7D8 with error 0xC0000005 trying to access 0x00000000 AKA an access violation error. My guess is, the loader broke something regarding HWPs being immune to morale and 1.30 made the problem even worse: older versions never crashed on me.--amitakartok 16:31, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

Not long after writing the above, I had a tank panic (not berserk)... and the game didn't crash. Weird.--amitakartok 19:59, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

Known_Bugs#Berserk_HWP_crashes_the_game. I may have a fix for this: change the code to prevent the Berzerk option from being assigned to units with a turret weapon (Probably a little more relevant to TFTD). - Tycho 23:02, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

I know about the bug; the problem here is that this site states they only lose morale from friendly fire (which itself is probably a programming oversight, as they aren't supposed to be affected by morale whatsoever). While the suggested solution sounds good, a better one would be a hack that makes large units always pass morale checks and thus not panic.

But not all large units in the game are robotic (especially in TFTD). I'll see about an exclusion for the tank/cyberdisc/Sectoid.

Other stuff:

Nowhere does the Improved Laser Tank's readme description states that the tank's cannon has to be manufactured separately. Also, doesn't really make sense: the same weapon can pierce UFO hulls when mounted on aircraft but cannot when mounted on a tank? I know the aircraft is bigger but I don't think it has a bigger power source; it'd be too heavy.

Here is my reasoning: Since you can't manufacture a tank until after you research the corresponding craft weapon, it seems logical that the weapons are the same. You didn't normally see this because the Gallops choose to keep manufacturing requirements to only alloy/elerium/ufo parts so usually the weapon is included in the manufacturing costs. I thought it interesting to show it overtly.

After reviewing, I realized that I also should have altered the time and cost for the tank to compensate for the need to make the laser cannon first, so it is simpler to keep the manufacturing requirements as per the original.-Tycho 21:10, 22 March 2013 (EDT)

The improved tank needs alien alloys, yet it does not need alien alloys to be researched first. Was that intentional or did you forget to set the research prerequisite?

Intentional: The idea is that the base frame would be the same but that alien alloys are cut and attached, which doesn't require knowledge of their manufacture. The process is probably very wasteful but since there is usually a huge surplus by the time one can make the tanks, who cares? This is true for alien weapons, you can manufacture them using Elerium and Alloys, without researching either. Also, the same thing applies to XComUtil's heavy laser mod, and no one seemed have a problem with it so I followed the same idea. If you want a larger inconsistancy, the Craft Laser Cannon flavor text mentions that it runs on an antimatter reactor but E-115, Alloys, nor UFO Power Source are prerequisites for it.

Are tanks supposed to lose firing accuracy if they take severe damage (as in, laser tank's accuracy dropping from 60 to 17 after losing 79 out of 90 health)? Shouldn't they lose, I don't know, TU regeneration rate instead?

--amitakartok 13:01, 17 March 2013 (EDT)

In regards to health and accuracy, they follow the same rules as other units. Damage to the frame could throw off targeting parameters.

Funky smoke

In my last few Battlescape sessions (not having researched powered armor yet), I noticed several times that an exploding smoke grenade inflicts some ~20 stun damage to unarmored soldiers in the blast radius, causing them to pass out faster than otherwise due to smoke inhalation.

The setup is this (no one is packing incendiary munitions so it's not the Funky Fire bug): first round, team deploys from 'ranger. One guy tosses smoke grenade to bottom of ramp. End of round, grenade goes off and covers the deployment area with smoke. Next turn, I notice every soldier underneath the smoke having a very prominent stun bar covering almost half of their health bar, far more than it should be from the two rounds of smoke inhalation; rookies start to drop unconscious at around turn 8, with the rest dangerously close to going under as well by the time we finish securing the LZ. Even if they recover, they immediately get stunned again by the smoke and I tend to clean out the map before the cloud dissipates, forcing me to fight at reduced troop strength.

Did the 2048 smoke tiles hack change something it wasn't supposed to or is this behavior normal? Smoke grenades directly dealing stun damage, I mean.--amitakartok 18:05, 19 March 2013 (EDT)

Units always took some stun damage from smoke, but only at the end of Xcom's turn. With the "funky fire" mod enabled, units are taking stun damage from smoke at the end of your turn and the end of the alien turn. Unlike fire, the amount of stun damage inflicted is related to the intensity of the smoke in the square at the end of the turn. You might need to toss the smoke grenade further than right at the base of the ramp. I had to change my tatics slightly for this: Throw the grenade 4-5 squares from the end of the ramp, deploy a few men, and toss another to the front of the ranger. -Tycho 21:12, 19 March 2013 (EDT)

Well, that's the strange thing: they're not taking stun damage from the smoke but from the smoke grenade's explosion, as if it were a weak Stun Bomb.--amitakartok 09:11, 20 March 2013 (EDT)

If your not playing with the 'hot grenade' mod but are using 'Funky Fire', the explosion occurs and troops in smoke are dealt stun damage for the end of your turn, and then stun damage is applied again at the end of the alien turn.-Tycho 11:58, 21 March 2013 (EDT) -

Suggestions

An INI option for modifying how many times can the medkit's various features be used. According to the site, it's not stored in OBDATA but inside the executable. --amitakartok 14:50, 16 March 2013 (EDT)
Editable starting soldiers attributes.
Editable HWP stats of chassis and their weapons.
Editable fire/stun damage of equipment that does this type of damage.
Editable fatal wound system.
A critical hit chance system.
Option to chose % chance of aliens having a weapon over another.

Thanks for the attention, and the great job done with UFOextender to keep alive a game that, even with the release of a fun 2012 XCOM, still shines as the best of the series IMHO.

Hidden Movement speed

Could you please slow down the battlescape Hidden Movement speed as well? It looses the magic of the hidden movement. Nowadays computers compute very fast and the inteligence of the game is now very fast too and you could not see or hear what is happenning e.g. if somewhere in the battlescape - in the dark where you couldn´t see - aliens kill two civilians, you will hear two screams together, not one after one. It is very fast and not readable yet and loosing the main meaning of the hidden movement part. ElfKaa

The alien turn routine doesn't follow an easy to understand path and the code has no capacity for time management as the Geoscape and the human tactical routines do. Tycho 10:24, 15 February 2013 (EST)

Tycho's right, the problem is that there are no animations at all during Hidden Movement, so there isn't really a good or consistent place to inject delays into. It's not something as simple as 'turning on the FPS limiter,' since all that really does is add a delay every time the screen updates.-Tarvis

If it's just about the speed of death screams from unseen units, I could write a time delay to occur after a death scream on the alien turn. This wouldn't affect the alien turn routine per se but would give some distinction between each yell. - Tycho

How about an option for creating and using a custom research tree? Like adding and changing prerequisites as specified by the player in the INI.--amitakartok 17:22, 12 June 2013 (EDT)

Trigger Discipline: soldiers (and aliens under X-COM mind control) do not reaction-fire at unarmed targets. Psionic aliens and terrorists are considered armed at all times; soldiers under alien mind control are only considered a threat if they have a LOADED weapon (laser or a weapon AND ammo; smoke grenade/small launcher/stun rod doesn't count as weapon). This eliminates psi-induced friendly fire incidents but also removes the possibility of reactions training.
Beware the Ethereal: Ethereal Commanders gain maxed-out Psi Strength and Psi Skill. Lower-ranked Ethereals also gain increases to these stats.
Exponential Psi: mind-controlled soldiers can use psi-amps. If set to 1, only panic attacks are launched. If set to 2, mind-control is also permitted.
Join Us: all psionic aliens deliberately target amp-wielders before everyone else. Combine with Exponential Psi and Beware the Ethereal for maximum effect... and prepare to sweat blood.
Human Shields: psionic aliens deliberately mind-control civilians on terror missions to use them as scouts/cannon fodder. If killed, mind-controlled civvies count against the mission score. If the Tactical AI mod is active, mind-controlled civvies pick up weapons as well. If Trigger Discipline is active, soldiers will not reaction-fire on civvies under any circumstances, even if being shot at by them.
Battle Royale: on terror missions, a random number of civilians spawn with Pistols. Optionally, the Tactical AI mod makes them pick up dropped weapons and use them. Thing is, they shoot at not just the aliens but X-COM too!
Field Commander: alien commanders can only be found on Battleships. Bases only have leaders.
Conservation of Energy: plasma cannons of both flavors (craft and HWP) consume Elerium as ammunition. The first full reload is included in the construction cost, further reloads are deducted from base stores after each deployment (similarly to ammo-using craft and HWP weapons). Makes the game significantly harder.
Elerium Recycling: selling plasma weapon clips won't turn in any money but returns some of the Elerium used for production. Elerium is more plentiful as a result but an important source of funding is removed, making the early game a bit harder. Additionally, you never get back all of the Elerium used in production, making it inefficient to recycle your own clips.
Volatile Elerium: plasma weapons can be set to self-destruct as makeshift explosives. The blast force depends on how many times the current clip was fired; if the clip is empty, the weapon item is removed and the tile merely set ablaze for a few turns... but if it's a full Heavy Plasma clip, it goes off with the force of a blaster bomb.

--amitakartok 14:15, 2 August 2013 (EDT)

Talk:UFOextender

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