Loc.dat file question

[Stygian]

UfoPaedia states that offsets 02, 03, 04, and 05 are starting positions while 06, 07, 08, 09 are destination positions. How can an item like a base have a destination? Does anyone know how to decipher these numbers? When I run them through the hex conversion, highbit/lowbit CLng("&H" & highbit & lowbit) I end up with something like this:

 

File position/object-----------------HzSt-------VtSt--------HzDt-------VtDt

 

0: X-COM Base_______________67_______65172____ 20_______ 24260

1: X-COM Ship_______________ 605______ 65112____ 5________120

2: X-COM Ship_______________ 67_______65172____0________1140

3: X-COM Ship_______________ 67_______ 65172____0________360

4: X-COM Base_______________2088_____65173____1________840

5: Terror Site________________ 662______ 65096____3________120

6: X-COM Ship_______________ 2088_____ 65173____0________480

7: X-COM Ship_______________ 2088_____65173____0________1500

8: X-COM Base______________ 789______65184____1________4560

9: Alien Base________________ 1148_____67_______1________3960

11: Alien Base_______________ 1146_____68_______3654_____18313

16: Alien Base_______________ 346______65380____36870____59406

Where:

Hz/VtSt = horizontal/Vertical start pos.

Hz/VtDt = horizontal/Vertical dest pos.

These obviously do not refer to traditional lat/long. How does XCOM global positions work?

 

From the above, you can tell that item 2, 3 are associated with XCOM base item 0, as is item 6 and 7 to XCOM base item 4, but I can't look at these numbers and say, "XCOM base item 4 is located in North America."

 

XCOM ship item 1 is bound for Terror Site item 5, but you can't figure that out by it's desitination. Shouldn't the destination of XCOM ship item 1 be the starting coordinates of the terror site item 5?

[hatfarm]

This is the weirdest file to me. I tried "creating" a base when I was doing research on this file and when I did so, I could see the base no matter how much I moved the map. It's just a weird, hard to completely get your head around file. I think some of it references stuff in other files, but I can't remember completely. I need to check the ufopaedia for their info because I haven't been there in a long time and they've probably got a lot of new stuff I couldn't figure out.

 

-hatfarm

[Bomb Bloke]

A base doesn't move, but that doesn't mean it can't have a destination. The game just ignores those values for that item.

 

In the case of a ship tailing another, it's also likely that the destination bytes are ignored, in favour of a "follow that ship" flag somewhere else in the file.