Rifle butt to the face!

[JellyfishGreen]

EclipseDog -

 

Not only is this 1994 game not in Java, it probably predates object-oriented programming in general. Instead of layers, classes, and triggers we have screen regions and branch pointers.

 

And C isn't an assembly language. Assembly languages are usually specific to the CPU in the computer. E.g. MASM for the 80x86 family.

 

So reverse-engineering it is...difficult (and the wise will heed NKF's studies of sprites in the wild)

[FullAuto]

Look, I just want to hit aliens in the face in my favourite game, ok?

[Lonestar]

What about us guys with the Collecters Edition? Is possible for us to rifle butt sectoids?

[Maugan Ra]

Too bad my comp won'tletme play the game anymore...

 

That melee thingy could have been very useful to me...

[JellyfishGreen]

Look, I just want to hit aliens in the face in my favourite game, ok?

Look, just put on your sectoid mask, look in the mirror, and punch yourself in the face, alright?!

 

(Warning: May cause injury.)

[FullAuto]

I KNEW I could rely on you JFG! Cheers!

Ow.

[Zombie]

Psy Guy: concerning your question reguarding what would happen if you put 2 stun rods on a Chryssalid, and whether that Chryssalid would "infest" a person or just stun them. I just tried this and it appears that the Chryssalid prefers HTH (hand-to-hand) combat over stunning. When I mind-controlled the Chryssalid after its attack he still had the stun rods in his hands! Hmm... never knew Chryssalids could juggle and attack at the same time! Ha ha!

 

Seriously though, it would take the Chryssalid 33 Time Units to use a stun rod once. The Chryssalid used up 26 Time Units out of 110 to get to my soldier. He was able to "impregnate" my soldier SIX times in that round!

110 - 26 = 84 TU available to impreginate. 84/6 = 14 Time Units to impregnate once. If I were that Chryssalid, I would choose HTH over stunning every time, simply because the 33 TU to stun is more than double the 14 TU to impregnate!

 

Can anyone else verify that the Chryssalid uses 14 TU to use its HTH once? What about how many TU a Silicoid or Reaper use for each HTH?

 

By the way, the stacking of a Stun Rod on a weapon does not work in the PSX version of the game. *quiet sobbing* Apparently when the game was converted to the Playstation most of the "flaws" were ironed out or eliminated. Not that anyone cares...

[Ki-tat Chung]

in tftd, the weapon for the deepone is in the right hand i beleive and if you put something in to the RH, you don't see it in the battle. i can't remember if the brains have something in their hands...the lobbie has HTH attacks as well, don't they?

[FullAuto]

Lobster men do indeed have HTH capability, but I've only seen them use it when they've got no other weapons. Probably cause it's not much good even against unarmoured aquanauts.

[NKF]

A severely crippled lobsterman that woke up killed my Mag Ion Armour trooper who was a veteran of many missions, in the front plates too. I wouldn't underestimate their attack too much. Nasty buggers - almost as bad as the calcinites.

 

Let's see, I know they use their hand-to-hand attacks when they have no working weapons in their hands or when they're armed with the drill + 4 sonic pulser kit. The AI apparently doesn't know how to use the drills, so it resorts to hand-to-hand attack to give the illusion that it's using the drill. Other aliens will just stand there looking silly.

 

As for arming deep-ones, they have a 'HWP turret' type weapon installed, so any weapons in their hands will be merely for show. Of course, when under your control, you won't be able to use anything but the 'turret'. But I don't know if the AI will let them use handheld weapons.

 

Chryssalids armed with weapons use the weapons in their hands (same thing goes for the zombies too - especially when the game forgets to drop the equipment it's carrying). Don't let their 0 accuracy fool you. They might not hit their target, but the bullet is bound to his something.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

So if you give them psi-amps, I presume that makes them fairly useless units?

[Zombie]

Bomb Bloke, NKF - Chryssalids, Zombies and Silacoids, oh my! Give these guys anything under "Equipment" and they appear harmless, but looks can be deceiving.

Equipment such as the Mind Probe, Electro-Flare, Stun Rod, Psi-Amp, Medi-Kit, Motion Scanner and the Smoke Grenade are practically useless to normal aliens. Fill the hand slots of those 3 aliens with any combination of the above list and well... they are still harmless in the sense that they will not use them!

 

I intentionally pre-primed a Smoke Grenade for a "lucky" Silacoid, but all he wanted to do was engage in HTH combat. I taunted, tempted, and lured, even with multiple targets, but everything I tried didn't get it to throw that grenade. Attempted this with an alien grenade - same deal. Chryssalids and Zombies are the same way - they will fiercely attack with HTH rather than use equipment occupying the hand slots.

 

Weapons are a different matter alltogether.

Gave a Chryssalid one pistol. Result : HTH combat.

Gave him two pistols. Result : HTH combat.

Gave him two Heavy Lasers. Result : HTH combat.

Gave him two Heavy Plasmas. Result : HTH combat.

Gave him one Heavy Plasma. Result : HTH combat.

Gave a Zombie a Laser Pistol. Result : HTH combat.

Gave a Silacoid a Laser Pistol. Result : HTH combat.

Do you see a trend developing here?

 

I hovered in the air with Flying Suits (no possible way to attack with HTH, in order to force Chryssalid to fire gun). Result : he just stood there looking silly.

Multiple targets on the ground didn't help - the closest soldier got the claw!

This Chryssalid had its full Time Units (110), morale was 100, and it always faced a soldier (no wasting time searching for a target).

The result was the same each time : a target an the ground = HTH attack on target during alien movement phase. A target in the air = Chryssalid looking quite perplexed.

 

Step a soldier into view of a Chryssalid with full TU and wielding a gun during X-COMs round : REACTION FIRE!!!!

Fire an auto-shot salvoe of a laser pistol at a Silacoid with full TU (also with laser pistol) and it will reaction fire back if you do not kill it!

Chryssalids, Zombies, and Silacoids will utilize opportunity fire if they have a gun and enough TU to use it.

Normally, they would be idle during X-COMs turn, so the chance to inflict some damage with opportunity fire must be too good to pass up.

Granted, those shots have to connect first, and with 0% Firing Accuracy it is near-impossible...

 

Sorry, I guess I'm a little off-topic here, but this needed to be explained.

If anyone has Chryssalids, Zombies, or Silacoids using guns during the alien movement phase let me know how you did this. I will stand corrected!

[NKF]

I think the ability for melee aliens to use ranged weapons via reaction fire when under the control of the AI makes sense. It's automatic and built in, so to say. Everyone has it.

 

Try arming a civilian with a weapon. The civilian will not manually attack with the weapon when the civilian gets to move. However, if any creature that does not belong to the civilian's group (i.e. civilian) moves and the civilian just so happens to get a higher reaction score, the civilian will get an opportunity to react.

 

What this means is that the AI script for opportunity fire is shared by all unit types.

 

Regarding control during the AI's turn, the distance between units seems to affect the behaviour of Ai controlled units. For example, any alien unit with a gun will use snapshots when they're 4+ tiles away from you, but when they're below that, they'll willingly utilise automatic fire if the gun has that mode available. I don't think this will be relevant for the case of arming melee units with pistols, but hey, it's still a valid case scenario.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

NKF - Yeah, I took the distance factor into account before doing the simulation (in an alien base). It is pretty tough to get a Chryssalid out of its hand-to-hand combat range (110 - 14 + 1 = 97 Time Units, or about 25 squares) and yet, still able to target (see) your soldier in a base. This is mainly due to the fact that the largest "blocks" in an alien base are 19 squares in any direction (19squares * 4TU/square = 76 TU). This is much less than the minimum 97 TU necessary to get the Chryssalid out of its HTH range. Sure, the corridors are plenty long (sometimes spanning the entire length of the base), but there is a point where the Chryssalid cannot see you anymore due to darkness or obstructions. The minimum a soldier can see is a 19 tile separation between himself and the target. The aliens can see greater than or equal to 21 tiles in their base.

 

It comes of no surprise to me that the maximum distance you can see an alien in their base is a 19 square separation. Maybe if I can get a Chryssalid on some flat ground outside during full daylight, perhaps the distance could be extended. The Silacoid and Zombie, which can only move 40 TU per round (or 10 normal squares), preferred charging at my soldiers rather than shooting them at distances between 11 and 20 squares (44 to 80 TU, or 1-2 turns away). You would think that the weapon in their hand would be used in this instance, but it was not. I am guessing that the code written for determining HTH combat with a Silacoid or Zombie is the same as the code for the Chryssalid (or they share it). If that is the case, then you will never see a HTH combat-only alien using ranged-weapons during their round no matter what the distance.

 

There is one exception: the Blaster Launcher! Just on a whim, I gave a Silacoid a blaster launcher (loaded with a blaster bomb). Can you guess what happened? He fired it during the alien movement phase! They were too dim-witted to actually load a blaster bomb into the launcher if they had both items in their hand slots though. It takes 66% of a unit's TU to use this weapon, and the accuracy the game gives is 120%, but this is negated by this aliens' firing accuracy: 0%. The ability to set waypoints must offset this penalty. However, HTH combat-only aliens are somewhat stupid and lack the necessary intelligence to accurately position those waypoints. Misfires will happen quite often with them!

 

Finally, distance did matter in this special case. If the Silacoid was 1 to 6 squares (4 - 24 TU) away he would attack with HTH as normal. Distances between 7 and 12 squares (32 - 48 TU) would induce what I call a state of confusion - he couldn't (or wouldn't) attack with HTH, yet was far too close to fire the blaster launcher safely. In this case it just wandered around in the area, occasionally charging my soldiers but falling back before he got too close (4 squares). A distance of 13 tiles (52 TU) seems to be the closest the Silacoid or Zombie will fire due to safety concerns, but only around 25% of the time. The Chryssalid will fire the Blaster Launcher during its round with a 21 tile difference between itself and its intended target. As a final point, multiple targets prompted these aliens to fire the Blaster Launcher far more often than a single target.

 

I double-checked my Chryssalid HTH Time Unit usage per attack, and it always seems to take 14 TU. Zombies also require 14 TU per attack. Silacoids seem to take 15 TU, though it may also be 14 TU. I cannot really determine TU usage with Silacoids that accurately because they are symmetrical when rotated around the z-axis. A 45-degree turn (1 TU) is easy to spot with a Chryssalid or Zombie, but damn near impossible with a Silacoid! If the Reaper ends up at being 14 TU, then most likely all hand-to-hand attacks require 14 TU.

[BladeFireLight]

What I'm also really interested in finding is what determines the bullet sprite when the gun is fired. You can turn any object into a gun (even corpses), but the bullets default to cannon rounds. It would be nice if you could choose the image. But if you can find this, you can probably find the command flags as well.

 

NKF: The Sprite and Sound used are based on the damage type in obdata.dat. However I have no clue what makse it choose between what verson of the sound (lite, med, heavy) of that weapon type. (I remember messing with it once but my notes for that some how got overwritten.

 

-Blade FireLight

[NKF]

I'm actually going to be keeping a look out for bit fields in the datafiles. The field in unitref for determining flight ability is also used for kneeling and one or two other things that escape me at the moment (the toggle for the kneeling leg sprite being one of them) (also the visibility field in unitpos.dat is used for the mind control status - that's definitely a bit field). Most of the rest of the fields are apparently filled with garbage bits (since they aren't always the same from game to game). Rather clever, when you think about it, as this can cause the same value to be wildly different from game to game while at the same time produce similar results. Quite clever... even if it may have been accidental .

 

When I'm free, I'll have a peek at the objects in obdata.dat and see if it has any bit fields in it too.

 

- NKF