User talk:Bomb Bloke
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).
None at the moment.
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
Consider this a draft/discussion on firing accuracy. This topic has been dragging on for quite some time now, so I figure it to about time I had a stab at it.
My view on the matter is this: When you fire a gun, UFO works out the horizontal and vertical angles between your unit and the target, then modifies these depending on your overall accuracy stat.
Say for example you have a perfect 100% (or better) "accuracy". The lines are unmodified, and so are guaranteed to hit (assuming there are no obstructions, in which case you should get a "No LOF!" message when you attempt to fire. Note that the game doesn't ALWAYS give this message and will sometimes allow you to attempt "impossible" shots. In these cases, less-then-perfect aim can still allow the shot to land).
Because perfect aim is perfect aim, no matter the size or distance of the target 100% accuracy should give a 100% hit rate. For anything less then a rated 100% accuracy, size and distance become all important: As size decreases and distance increases, the range of angles that could lead to a hit fall. As accuracy decreases, the range of angles that a shot can take rise and so it becomes less likely that a given shot will fall within the "hitting" range of angles.
(As for why multiple angles can "hit", think of your target as a dartboard: Perfect aim would result in a bullseye, approximate aim would still hit the board, and bad aim would miss altogether. However, in X-Com, you get full "points" so long as the bullet hits the target at all).
That is to say, the ultimate firing accuracy formula is (range of acceptable hitting angles)/(range of possible firing angles). This assumes that, when firing, you're just as likely to fire at your maximum "worst" angle as you are your "best", the range of angles that can hit is determined by target distance and size, and the range of angles that can be fired along is determined by your rated firing accuracy.
Firing Point Origin
To get the absolute range of angles a unit can fire along, you first need to know where a unit is firing from. To this end I created a copy of my game folder and modified a save game, some terrain files, and the LOF templates.
Now, when we talk about UFO maps, we generally refer to their dimensions in terms of how many tiles there are. However, each tile is really made up of smaller "points": A 16x16x24 point space. This means that a 30x30x4 map has 3,600 tiles in it, and 22,118,400 points within those. When a unit fires, he doesn't aim from his tile at his target's tile, he aims from a point within his tile at a point within his target's tile.
This first test was aimed at discovering exactly where a shot originates from, by creating tiles on units to selectively block their LOF. By seeing which tiles did and which did not, it could be seen exactly (or, at least, as accurately as I think I'm going to get it) where the shots were coming from.
The first row of units stood on tiles similar to the large earth blocks you see in bases, with one layer removed from each. Each therefore entirely blocked LOF so long as the removed layer wasn't at the same height as the unit's firing origin point. The only unit able to fire through the gap was the one sitting on the tile with the third layer down removed.
However, when defining tiles with LOFTemps, you can only stack the layers 12 high. Presumably the game "double stacks" them to make the resulting 24 point high object. Because of this, the removed layers accounted for two possible Z co-ordinates, meaning the exact value there is still unknown. Might be able to work something out to get it more precise, I dunno.
The second row stood on walls facing to the east/west. Unlike the first row, in this example I moved a single layer for each tile, as opposed to having all layers and moving a "gap". This meant that only one unit would not be able to fire, and that was the one sitting on the ninth tile (made up of my layers from LOFTemps[15]).
The third row followed more or less the same concept, with the walls facing north/south. Only the first unit was unable to fire (LOFTemps[23]).
So! With this information, getting a (x,y,z) co-oridinate is easy enough: It's either (8,15,18) or (8,15,19) (the Z co-ord being imprecise due to the 12 LOFTemp layer limitation).
Not that this value only goes for units with a facing of north. When I get time I'll go through and work it out for the other directions. Furthermore, Sectoids are likely to have a lower firing point (as their guns are rendered lower on the screen).
Rated Accuracy Vs Angle Range
To do: Gather stats on the maximum/average angles possible with given rated firing accuracy levels, and calculate the formula that links the two values.
Target Size
To do: Determine the exact size of a given unit. We know height and where a unit "floats" within a tile, have to find width and depth. Hopefully these values are in UnitRef[48]/[52].
See Also
Pages relevant to this subject: