Talk:UFOextender

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.
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Feedback

Ver. 1.31 feedback

It seems that some features/bug fixes do not work. Of those that I've noticed:

• Battlescape hotkeys (although Geoscape hotkeys work fine)
• MC fixes (I've lost stunned mind controlled soldiers on a successfully completed mission)
• Partial clip never recover loaded or unloaded
• Music change freeze fix has no effect

The game sometimes crashes when going into load out screen before missions. As for a feature request, it would be nice to be able to reorder soldiers in Soldiers screen too if possible. Here's .ini that I use. And a CRC32 of UFO Defense.exe: 4FADEB76 --Slider2k 04:14, 30 November 2013 (EST)

Music

I'm just wondering if it would be an idea to providing a selectable option that allows you to mix up the tactical music to include some of the other tracks as well, like the Geoscape tracks or gmstory. Breaks up the monotony a bit and can sometimes change the mood of the battle. But leave that until after you've achieved what you're setting out to achieve.

The intro should stick with the midi music, or you could use the interception music since that is a remix of the intro. On second though, scrap that - it lacks the slow buildup that is a major part of the intro.

P. S. Oh, and don't forget that the PSX music tracks start from track 02. -NKF

Hehe, you should have posted this yesterday. I lost one hour banging my head in a why-the-hell-does-it-play-interception-music-in-the-menu way before I realised that ;-) The intro music does not use the same mecanism as ingame music so it is not impacted by the modification. As for your suggestion, well the patch is written in C and mciSendString is flexible enough to allow stuff like that I think. The most difficult part is to define what we want... I'll however update with the current version and keep that improvement for later.

• 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)

Other

• 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

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 mechanical (especially in TFTD). I'll see about an exclusion for the tank/cyberdisc/Sectoid.

• 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.

• 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 would 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) -

Other Feedback

• 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

Slowing down the alien turn is not really feasible. 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

• 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.

Hmm.. 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, fatal 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

Base Stacking

How does the Build Queue thing work, it doesn't say on the page or README? --Ditto51 12:32, 17 August 2013 (EDT)

Its is called "Base Build Stacking" and it's listed under the mod section. When enabled, you can place facilities next to ones currently under construction and they will begin after the current one is complete.-Tycho