User talk:Sherlock

Problems with your TFTD route fixes

Not sure if you still post here, but for your and anyone else's benefit:

1) The game appears to have a limit of 256 waypoints (or thereabouts), and the second phase of TFTD colonies already hit that limit (the last few modules are typically devoid of waypoints). Adding more waypoints worsens this significantly, to the point where it's not implausible for one or even both entry points to be affected (the latter would dump all X-Com personnel into alien spawn points).

2) The game's spawning algorithm doesn't seem to handle large numbers of spawn points very well; once it decides what spawn points are available for a unit, it seems to only roll among the first 50 or so (might even be less). This is already an issue in vanilla for TFTD colonies (since most of those 250-odd waypoints are assigned as alien soldier spawn points), resulting in all the aliens except the commanders being in the far north of the map. I have seen a report, however, of your fixes hitting something like this in other missions and putting most/all of the aliens outside their craft (reducing difficulty). Magic9mushroom (talk) 07:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

It's probably worth adding that there are two other resource patch sets for TFTD in addition to Sherlock's; the official OpenXcom "Universal" patches for UFO & TFTD and a special TFTD "Combo" Patch also for OpenXcom. A post here mentions 3 files that overlap between the two OpenXcom patches, and from my own investigations, comparing Sherlock's patch to the Universal Patch shows that the following files differ; ENTRY03.MAP, GRUNGE08.MAP, GRUNGE09.MAP and TRITON.RMP. Now comparing Sherlock's patch to the Combo Patch shows all these files differ; A_BASE00.MAP, A_BASE01.MAP, ALART07.MAP, ALART10.MAP, ENTRY03.MAP, ENTRY04.MAP, ENTRY05.MAP, ENTRY07.MAP, ENTRY08.MAP, GRUNGE08.MAP, GRUNGE09.MAP, A_BASE00.RMP, A_BASE01.RMP, ALART03.RMP, CARGO00.RMP, ENTRY03.RMP, ENTRY04.RMP, ENTRY05.RMP, ENTRY07.RMP, ENTRY08.RMP, GRUNGE07.RMP, GRUNGE08.RMP and GRUNGE09.RMP. It's probably also worth noting that Sherlock's patch is not only the only one of the three that incorporates the USO routes fix found in the StrategyCore files section, but also attempts to improve upon them. The Universal patch for UFO, based on both my own investigations and on this post, is based largely on Zombie's UFO Combo patch combined the official 1.2/1.3 patch's included resource fixes + several other OpenXcom specific fixes. Now the good news is the files Sherlock's UFO routes fixes overwrite aren't different between Zombie's Combo patch and the Universal patch, so they should be applicable to the Universal patch in theory. Unfortunately, I don't know if the Universal patch is compatible with the original DOS & CE versions of the game since all references on the OpenXcom Extras page say you should use StrategyCore's patches instead. Even though OpenXcom seems to have largely superseded everyone using the CE or DOS version in DOSBox, I still do hope that a true universal patch set for both games that works on both classic exes and OpenXcom can be developed one day. 3371-Alpha (Talk) 03:01, 11 June 2022 (CEST)