inteck Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 After all this time I, still can't figure out why the descriptions for the ship weapons don't show up in the UFOPEDIA. The text descriptions for the STINGRAY, LASER CANNON, PLASMA BEAM etc. have always been there. Each description gives a brief rundown of the weapon, just like for your transports, fighters and small arms. They are in the English.dat file located underneath the descriptions of the ships (Skyranger, Lightning, Interceptor) themselves. There doesn't seem to be any errors, and it seems like they should show up in the pedia. What gives?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 I'm confused. You mean to say certain craft weapons don't show up in your UFOpedia? Well, they do in mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteck Posted December 24, 2004 Author Share Posted December 24, 2004 Heh , The Pictures and statistics are there. What I mean is that they also have some short descriptions that were meant to be beside them like everything else in the game. I have copied these descriptions directly from the English.dat file. I guess in the final build MPS decided not to use them for some reason because they don't show. This could be a bug-but its so trivial, that I guess no one has ever caught or mentioned it. Stingray-ADVANCED AIR TO AIR MISSILE WITH SPECIALLY SHIELDED ELECTRONICS. Avalanche-AIR TO AIR MISSILE WITH NUCLEAR WARHEAD, BUT AN EXTREMELY HEAVY LOAD. Cannon-HIGH POWERED CANNON WHICH FIRES ARMOUR PIERCING ROUNDS CAPABLE OF PENETRATING 16 INCHES OF STEEL. Fusion Ball Launcher-THIS LAUNCHER FIRES A BALL SHAPED MISSILE POWERED BY ANTI-MATTER REACTION. THE BALL DESTROYS THE TARGET WITH A GRAVITY WAVE IMPLOSION. Laser Cannon-THIS CONVENTIONAL LASER BEAM IS POWERED BY AN ANTI-MATTER REACTION CHAMBER. Plasma Beam-THE GRAVITY BEAM DIRECTS A FINELY CHANNELLED IMPLODING GRAVITY FIELD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted December 24, 2004 Share Posted December 24, 2004 Ah, I see... I can't even hazard a guess on that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jman4117 Posted December 26, 2004 Share Posted December 26, 2004 In mine it has the craft weapons in the same form as the armour, just stats. Maybe they thought there wasn't room? Any way of "fixing" it like the weapons were in TftD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Not without editing the executable code, I reckon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteck Posted December 30, 2004 Author Share Posted December 30, 2004 It might be true that the executable would have to be modified in which case nothing short of getting the source code would fix it. I think there might be a way around it depending on whats going on. If its just a graphics problem, then you might be able to import some of the files from Tftd to Ufo to make things appear right. What I mean is changing the background color in UFO from black to something else. It might be just a simple matter of changing colors. I haven't tried it yet, but it may be possible to transfer the background(s) from Tftd over to ufo. I know this doesn't make sense, because the other stuff is showing up, but you never know. The pictures of the weapons would remain the same. The background colors would be way of because of a different pallet, but this is just for experimentation. I know that if i trade the English.dat file from Ufo to the one in Tftd that the writing appears when playing tftd. By contrast, switching things around the other way- Tftds descriptions will not appear in Ufo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted January 1, 2005 Share Posted January 1, 2005 The text is not part of the screens, as you know. Thus changing the screens won't help... Unless it's something to do with transparency, and the order of rendering (text over screen, or tranparent screen over text). Load up XCView and see if there's a notible difference between the non-working screens and the ones that do. We're looking for transparency here, XCView shows that as purple by default (magneta?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteck Posted January 9, 2005 Author Share Posted January 9, 2005 Well I just tried some different transparencies today with no success. I fooled around a bit with the different folders and it looks like that this is a problem which is encoded into the geoscape.exe.....I hope i'm wrong on this, but I went through by trial and error with different folders and files with some interesting crashes and narrowed it down to this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zombie Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 I was browsing through the english.dat file a year ago, as I wanted to glean the info for "Alien Reproduction". Low and behold, there at the top was the craft weapon descriptions. However, what I really was after was the description for the three armor types: Personal Armor, Power Suit and Flying Suit. No luck. The file lists the three types a few times, but nothing more. I dunno, maybe the programmers forgot to add this info. I can't seem to find it anywhere. Can any of you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteck Posted January 12, 2005 Author Share Posted January 12, 2005 To tell you the truth there, Zombie, I don't believe that any descriptions for the armor were incorporated or encoded into the X-Com Enemy Unknown English.dat file or any other file for that matter. There are, of course, descriptions for both the armor and craft weapons in Terror From The Deep....but then again they show up too. For whatever reason, the descriptions and coding for showing the descriptions, seem to have been given the axe at the last minute and were not incorporated into any of the X-Com 1 builds (unlike TFTD). The descriptions for the craft weapons in the 1st game were probably meant to be put in at a later date but never left the ground. The armor descriptions were probably given low priority and eventually had the axe put to them alltogether. I seriously doubt if the original designers intended their work or mistakes to be uncovered by those of us curious enough to open up the files. Unfortunately mountains of errors and lack of support from MPS to correct those errors demanded it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zombie Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 Common X-COM lore says that the Gollop brothers were behind schedule in finishing the game. If you were behind schedule and needed to finish programming a game asap, what would be the last thing you would do? Item descriptions would be my choice. The Gollop brothers simply forgot to make the Craft weapon descriptions visible, and never got around to typing the descriptions for the armor types. That's about the only logical conclusion I can draw. It just seems as though they simply ran out of time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 I can back up that X-COM lore by saying that I know for defiite a lot more was planned than actually appeared in UFO, so it would make sense what Zombie says. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteck Posted January 13, 2005 Author Share Posted January 13, 2005 Only too true on all counts . It might be possible to make a comparison between Enemy Unknowns Geoscape.exe and Tftd Geoscape.exe to fix the problem , but doing something like that in hex would take more patience and time than I have ever had . Just out of curiosity, I wonder what else they had in mind to put in that had to be thrown out at the last second because of time considerations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 I believe better diplomacy with governments was one, and y'know on the funding screen background with the men in (presumably) black suits? Y'know the film Men in Black? Fill in the blanks It could well have added a third side to the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 The game would've been entirely different with a MIB side to it. I wonder if we could ever get a statement on what was planned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solarius Scorch Posted May 20, 2006 Share Posted May 20, 2006 The game would've been entirely different with a MIB side to it. I wonder if we could ever get a statement on what was planned. Or maybe there will be some... new version... or mod... or anything... ..Congratulations guys, I won't be able to sleep tonight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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