Revision as of 10:21, 22 June 2011

Redundant Images / Pages

Here be a list of images and / or pages that I think can be deleted safely (because they've been replaced with other files or links, or created by accident).

You Have New Messages

Now that I've started using this talk page again, I get the message "You have new messages" attached to the top of every page (other then this one) that I visit. Most annoying. Anyone know how to get rid of it? - BB

Do you still get those messages BB? --Zombie 00:04, 11 September 2006 (PDT)

I just figured out the answer a couple of days ago. Up the top of the page is an watch/unwatch link that toggles. Whenever a new post is made on the messages page, the page becomes "watched", and you have to click it before the notifications stop. - Bomb Bloke 03:16, 11 September 2006 (PDT)

Firing Accuracy

Section moved here so that this user page doesn't take so long to load on my poor slow internet connection.

Can't get Hybrid to work

Hey BB, I've downloaded your Hybrid program but I can't seem to be able to run. I got latest Java, I unzipped Hybrid to the UFO folder and I have changed the Hybrid.bat file to: set CLASSPATH=D:\Terror\ Every time i ran it though I get an exception- Can you please tell me what i've been doing wrong? Hobbes 10:34, 22 March 2008 (PDT)

Edit edit edit, I forgot how this thing worked...

Ok, extract the archive into your game folder, open up a prompt window. If UFO is in D:\UFO, the program should end up in D:\UFO\Hybrid. Change to that folder and run it with the other game's path as a parameter. eg:

Hybrid D:\Terror

If that gives an exception, lemme know what it is.

The classpath line should be left as it was. It's just required on some systems for java to work correctly.

- Bomb Bloke 16:17, 22 March 2008 (PDT)

Inventory screens

Hi Bomb Bloke

I really love your Map editor, which in fairness is a full Battlescape editor. It crashes for me a lot but probably that's because I have other mods messing with the files.

My question is - do your cool Inventory screens work with the actual game? I would love to see my weight and TUs while loading up my guys. Otherwise you need paper and pencil and printouts.

thanks! Spike 11:28, 25 March 2008 (PDT)

The alien portraits do, the editor tweaks the save files so the actual game will use them. I'll be making that optional though (because if the saves are then transferred to a system that doesn't have the extra graphics the game could crash).

I'm afraid I can't add the weight display stats to the original game. Seb76 or one of the other machine coders out there might be able to pull it off, but it's a big ask (right up there with adding stuff to the tech tree).

You mean stuff like that? File:Ufo weight.zip ;-) Seb76 18:09, 28 March 2008 (PDT)

That's pretty impressive... :O Reckon you could get it to display unit strength as well? Bomb Bloke 20:53, 28 March 2008 (PDT)

You are correct, I could have done it. Have a look at the updated version ;-) Seb76 10:23, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

That's nearly perfect, but... well, there's always a catch, isn't there? ;)

For whatever reason, the weight carried by some troopers won't display. Here's a sample save game: File:GAME 4.zip (check the guy in front of the ramp). I've tried loading up the units in concern and they do get their TU penalty if I go over their limit, but the weight carried always shows up as "0" on their inventory screens.

In most of my saves (just about any that involve flying suits) it doesn't work for any units. Bomb Bloke 19:53, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

I'm using offset 0x28 of unitref.dat to get the soldier.dat index (to in turn get the carried weigth via an already builtin function). Strangely it is set to 0xff for some units. Did you mess too much with this file? Or maybe offset 0x28 is not yet completely understood. Seb76 02:07, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

I think I nailed it. Care for another try? Seb76 02:42, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

Yes, this one seems to be working perfectly. Mind if I build it into a patcher tomorrow and stick it up on StrategyCore, so it can be used with other mods? (or does it add code to the end of the executable, like Mok's does)?

Some code is added in the executable in a padding section (unused space in the binary) so the file has still the same size. It'll conflict with other patches if they use the same place in the executable to inject their code (the patch specifics are available on the download page). I have no account in SC so I don't know what other mods do... Perhaps a bit of testing is required before posting this (does it works if you MC an alien and go to its inventory screen?). Seb76 10:09, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

That offset isn't used by non-X-Com troopers (the trooper in front of the ramp was created with my editor, which "wipes" that offset for clones). So it should've also failed for civilians and aliens.

Not sure why it failed for my flying suit troopers. I was starting to think large units might've been messing up the calculation. Bomb Bloke 08:34, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

The first version was faulty anyway: it used the soldier.dat entry index instead of unitpos index. It worked as long as noone died else things start to get out of sync. Seb76 10:09, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

If you know specific methods to crash the editor, or have certain save games it won't load, I'd love to see them. I'm forever working bugs out of the thing but I'm limited in that I never get any actual bug reports. :(

I do know that it probably won't load XcomUtil based saves that use alternate terrain sets (eg. Hobbes's maps).

- Bomb Bloke 19:02, 25 March 2008 (PDT)

Thanks BB. What tends to happen is the editor hangs during file load, on the saved games list screen. The only clue is that the mouse pointer is visible/movable(normally the pointer disappears during file load). Back in the BBmap_edit.bat Dos window, it will have an "Array out of bounds" error (generic, I know). Will try to get a reproducible bug and send you the game save dir. Cheers, Spike 01:56, 27 March 2008 (PDT)

Categorization Guidelines

Hey BB, I've noticed that you've removed some categories from a few pages and stated you reason as 'redundant categories'. My first thought was that there isn't such thing as a redundant category (the more the merrier since I see them as tags for the articles that help connect common theme pages together) but I've been reading Wikipedia's policy regarding categorization and while I do not agree with all aspects of their policy I think it might be better if we set a common guideline of our own. What do you think should be accepted regarding categorization? Hobbes 13:06, 18 December 2009 (EST)

The way I see it, pages should be in as few categories as possible, and preferably child categories at that. If you want an example as to why, take a look at the Apocalypse cat - it's downright broken. Page one tells you there are 199 articles - there's actually 271 at present (and four sub-cats, only one of which is visible on the first page - hardly intuitive for finding stuff!), but you won't be given that information unless you jump to page two. And as for using a list like that to locate articles on a specific theme? There's too much junk to read through, you can only get anywhere if you already know exactly what you're looking for!

In comparison, try looking at the Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense category. You should find it dead easy to get to a page about any given topic that's categorised in there, even if you didn't start out knowing what it was called. Obviously I still consider there to be some more work to be done (base modules, X-COM craft + their weapons, not to mention the game files), but I'm sure you get the general idea of how that style of things affects practicality.

If an article looks like it belongs in two categories, ask yourself - should one of those categories actually belong in the other as well? If so, then the article certainly doesn't need to be placed in both.

We also had not one, but two categories for UFO - one called "Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense" and one called just "EU". I've since moved all articles out of EU.

Ideally, all categories will eventually link back to one "master" category, sorta like how all articles lead back (eventually) to the main page.

-Bomb Bloke 17:57, 18 December 2009 (EST)

OK, makes sense, my idea originally for the categories was that we should look at them simply by looking into the page elements and creating cats for each for them, making as much associations between pages as possible (an 'horizontal' view, i guess). Your 'vertical' helps to keep things tidier but at the same time i'm wondering if it doesn't prevent the creation of common categories to which all games can be related. Hobbes 17:50, 19 December 2009 (EST)

It allows for common categories (assuming you mean stuff like this?), but unfortunately most of the obvious names to use for them are dedicated to UFO:EU articles - meaning a whole bunch of pages need to be moved to allow for it.

But what the heck. I'm up for that.

- Bomb Bloke 17:55, 19 December 2009 (EST)

Come to think of it, I'm tempted to just scrap the UFOs/USOs category and just throw the contents in the generic Craft category. Can't see the need to have both. - Bomb Bloke 18:08, 19 December 2009 (EST)

We now have a primary category. - Bomb Bloke 19:29, 19 December 2009 (EST)

OK, it's making sense to me right now how the Category: Apocalypse should be reorganized. It is still a mess but it helps that you don't have to look for all Apoc related pages since they are already there :) Hobbes 20:24, 21 December 2009 (EST)

Indeed. There's a couple of hundred pages related to the other games that simply aren't sorted at all. - Bomb Bloke 06:33, 22 December 2009 (EST)

Windows 7 64-bit + XcomUtil + bb_tact

"This version of D:\games\ufo\BBReset.exe is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher."

I'm getting the above message on every switch between geoscape and tactical when using your mod with XcomUtil. Does that mean your mod won't run, or am I doing something wrong? Rovlad 19:37, 5 May 2010 (EDT)

Nevermind, I figured it out after skimmering through .bat files a bit. For some reason your installer did not detect my system to be 64 bit (could be because it's not AMD-based). I've manually replaced BBReset.exe with BBReset32.exe and it works fine now.

Cheers! Rovlad 20:31, 5 May 2010 (EDT)

That's odd; last I knew, it used the same check that XcomUtil uses for its own executables. Having users manually moving files about isn't an ideal solution, so I'll have to take a closer look at it. Thanks for the heads-up. - Bomb Bloke 21:10, 5 May 2010 (EDT)

No problem, let me know if you need any specific information on the system, steps taken during setup process or whatever. One thing for certain, XcomUtil has detected 64-bit correctly right off the bat. Perhaps your installer could just check for "64-bit system" flag from XcuSetup to set everything up accordingly? It would not be a perfect solution, but since running XcomUtil is the only way to use bb_tact with 64-bit system (at least for now), it probably still is a feasible thought. Rovlad 08:06, 6 May 2010 (EDT)

Actually, never mind that. I've digged a bit more and discovered that Example.txt file in \XcomUtil\Addon directory is a bit outdated in terms of detecting 64-bit OS. You can fix your installation script by taking a look at \XcomUtil\batch\SysCheck.bat to see how it handles system detection now. Rovlad 10:19, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

Night vision goggles for soldiers during night missions

Hello there again.

I have drawn some graphics today which replace several images to add night vision goggles on soldiers' heads (for overalls and personal armor troopers). There are 19 images for both xcom_0.pck and xcom_1.pck, 38 in total. I've compiled them into pck files for testing (using your tools, of course!) and they seem to be working properly.

Thing is, I'm not very keen in actual modding, and seeing as your camouflage mod serves the very similar purpose (being purely a visual enhancement), I was wondering if you would be interested in using these for your own mod. As far as I understand, it would require a pre-battle check to see if it's a night mission, and only use new graphics in this case.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

- Rovlad 20:05, 14 May 2010 (EDT)

I think that sounds awesome. Right off the bat, you'd be able to tell whether night-rules were in effect for that battle or not, simply by checking how your soldiers are outfitted. Though, I don't suppose you could also update the SPKs for inventory screens? There's a tool in my pack for converting those back and forth, works much the same way as the PCK one.

Actually, I could even take it a step further: Make it so that, when using the goggles, mission light-levels are capped at the point just before "night-time" rules come into effect. So that it's visibly "dusky" to the user, but your troops still have full range of vision (like when you're in a base defense mission for eg). It always seemed rather silly that soldiers didn't have some sort of attached visual aid (like, say, a flashlight).

- Bomb Bloke 02:38, 22 May 2010 (EDT)

Clean Up

If it is in your abilities can you erase all these Russian blank pages (and their discussions)? They are redundant and left after vandals invasion. Thanks. ---ufo.mesh 05:32, 27 August 2010 (EDT)

BBmod.bat error: "dont find xcloader"

I cant install the BB mod set. When I run the BBMod.bat, the game begins with the intro without sounds and I get a black screen. When swap to the desktop I see the error message: unable to locate "xcloader". But, the xcloader.exe is in the folder. I have xcomutil and the seb76 extended mod installed. I run xcusetup and recognices the BBmod. But when a mission beggins the game crashes: error, unable to find kevlar brown...(the BBMod.bat dont worked)

user: man.manza (juny 2011)

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