Zrbite and Weapon dropping through Sub Floors Bugs

[Thunder_Gr]

Hello all! I am glad the forums related to these great games are still active!

I am curious though, since I couldn't find any mention to these two bugs, which trouble me more than the tech-tree bug, to be honest.

 

I have the DOS version of the game, and still play it with Dosbox. The bugs exist from the real DOS era, though, so Dosbox has nothing to do with it.

 

The Zrbite bug, is the one that you cannot get any Zrbite from ufo misson exept from cruisers, no matter in which state you recover them. So, your ZrBite supply is completely dependant on how many Cruisers with intact energy sources you down and recover.

 

The weapon dropping through sub floors was introduced with patch 2.0, in the attempt the company made to fix the "weapon stay on mid-water" when a panicked soldier dropped them. But after that, if the soldier panicked at, lets say, the second level of an alien Sub, the weapon falls all the way to ground level through solid sub floors.

 

If you know anything about these bugs or a fix, any information would be very appreciated!

 

P.S. I did post the question for the wepon bug in Zombie's combo-patch thread for UFO-EU, but I believe this is the correct place it, since it is an XCOM-TFTD issue.

[Zombie]

I'll take a look at the Zrbite issue this afternoon. Just a question though: which version are you using? v1.0 (unpatched DOS), v2.0 (patched DOS first update by MicroProse), v2.5 (patched DOS second update by MicroProse), or the Collector's Edition (Windows)? I'm assuming you are using one of the patches by what you said from your previous post.

 

Right now, I'm revisiting all the TFTD USOs again (in CE) and writing down what you recover from a perfectly intact craft. That way I have something to base the patched DOS versions against. What is strange is that the Survey Ship and the Escort USOs both have Ion Beam Accelerators, yet only the fake Escort carries Zrbite in it's engine. (The maps for the Survey and Escort are swapped, see). So the game must be doing a little pre-calculating to prevent the Zrbite from spawning in a mission when the ship type in craft.dat is set to 5 (the smallest size possible). If the whole game is hard-wired in this manner, it'll be pretty hard to fix the ships up properly as just editing the maps or MCD records will have no effect on Zrbite recovery. Still too early to tell though. Will let you know what I find out.

 

Edit 1: When I swapped the Survey and Escort ship maps just now, the true Survey Ship didn't have any Zrbite, just an Ion Beam Accelerator, one Magnetic Navigation and 8 Aqua Plastics. So the game must be doing a little calculating.

 

Edit 2: I just visited the real Escort. The Zrbite didn't spawn underneath the Ion Beam Accelerator, it actually spawned in back of it outside the craft. See pic with the soldier carrying the crystals:

 

 

So it appears from these limited tests (at least in CE) that the game is doing all sorts of stuff to Zrbite spawning unlike UFO where Eleruim always spawned underneath a Power Source. Don't know if this is intentional or not. Needs more research which I shall endeavor to work on this afternoon.

 

Edit 3: Just visited the Cruiser and the 50 Zrbite didn't spawn under either of the 2 Ion Beam Accelerators. (With 2 engines you would assume there would be 50 per engine for a total of 100 but nooo). Instead, the crystal spawned underneath the right "globe" at the front of the craft. That proves it, Zrbite is hard-coded to spawn in the executable somewhere. If so, it might be intentional to limit Zrbite recovery, not a bug. Still, Zrbite shouldn't spawn just anywhere: it should go under/inside an engine. Dumb.

 

- Zombie

[Thunder_Gr]

You are quick, thank you for examining the issue.

I use patch 2.0, DOS version. Haven't heard of a 2.5 patch for TFTD, nor have found it anywhere. Just version 2.1, which claims to fix the research problem with MC, IIRC.

The problem with the ZrBite is that you cannot get it in any quantity from any craft or alien base !?!

It is definatelly a bug to have to "pray" that a cruiser will come by to get 50 Zrbite!! Or otherwise your Leviathan and ZrBite depended interceptor will be out of fuel.

But, even with that, cruiser is a quite common sub to come by, and, if you shoot down(by not using sonic cannons, of course, or else you tear it apart and no ZrBite from the wreck whatsoever) every single cruiser you detect and keep the ZrBite interseptor only for difficult missions(see Dreadnought), you can survive.

It is unsettling, though, since you would expect to get a significant amout of Zrbite out of supply subs and alien bases. You invest too much time and you risk quite a few of your soldiers to be able to storm these types of subs, and Zrbite is the single most valuable resource in the game. Even 50 Zrbite would be fine, but none at all is definatelly a bug.

 

The thing about the weapons dropping is the most difficult to overcome, since it ruins nearly every multilevel sub assault in the game... You cannot expect that your soldiers will not panic after the Aliens begin to implement their PSI attacks...

[Zombie]

You are quick, thank you for examining the issue.

I use patch 2.0, DOS version. Haven't heard of a 2.5 patch for TFTD, nor have found it anywhere. Just version 2.1, which claims to fix the research problem with MC, IIRC.

Ah sorry, I meant 2.1, not 2.5. I keep getting that messed up.

 

The problem with the ZrBite is that you cannot get it in any quantity from any craft or alien base !?!

It is definatelly a bug to have to "pray" that a cruiser will come by to get 50 Zrbite!! Or otherwise your Leviathan and ZrBite depended interceptor will be out of fuel.

But, even with that, cruiser is a quite common sub to come by, and, if you shoot down(by not using sonic cannons, of course, or else you tear it apart and no ZrBite from the wreck whatsoever) every single cruiser you detect and keep the ZrBite interseptor only for difficult missions(see Dreadnought), you can survive.

It is unsettling, though, since you would expect to get a significant amout of Zrbite out of supply subs and alien bases. You invest too much time and you risk quite a few of your soldiers to be able to storm these types of subs, and Zrbite is the single most valuable resource in the game. Even 50 Zrbite would be fine, but none at all is definatelly a bug.

None of the maps for an alien base have an Ion Beam Accelerator "object". (You know, the kind which is in USO's)? However, if you look at it's UFOpaedia entry, you'll see there are 3 objects shown which are supposed to be Ion Beam Accelerators. See those 4 purple spheres in a row? Supposed to be Accelerators, but in an alien base they are set as Aqua Plastics. I could probably fix this easily, but I'm not sure what the consequences will be. (If USO's spawn Zrbite anywhere without respect to the number of accelerators present, it probably wouldn't make any difference in a base). Still, it couldn't hurt to try.

 

The thing about the weapons dropping is the most difficult to overcome, since it ruins nearly every multilevel sub assault in the game... You cannot expect that your soldiers will not panic after the Aliens begin to implement their PSI attacks...

Honestly don't know how to fix this. In the TFTD v2 patch readme it says this: "There were rare problems with panicked soldiers dropping weapons in 'mid-water' - this has now been fixed." Perhaps the patch itself is flawed by actually forcing weapons to drop to the ground? That's my guess at the moment. A recourse would be to go back to the original 1.0 version and live with the other bugs which were fixed in the patch... that is, unless I can ever fix the issues myself and reissue a proper patch.

 

- Zombie

[Thunder_Gr]

Ah sorry, I meant 2.1, not 2.5. I keep getting that messed up.

 

 

None of the maps for an alien base have an Ion Beam Accelerator "object". (You know, the kind which is USO's)? However, if you look at it's UFOpaedia entry, you'll see there are 3 objects shown which are supposed to be Ion Beam Accelerators. See those 4 purple spheres in a row? Supposed to be Accelerators, but in an alien base they are set as Aqua Plastics. I could probably fix this easily, but I'm not sure what the consequences will be. (If USO's spawn Zrbite anywhere without respect to the number of accelerators present, it probably wouldn't make any difference in a base). Still, it couldn't hurt to try.

 

Since in UFO -EU everything worked as they should, it is safe to assume this was a great oversight by the developers...

 

Honestly don't know how to fix this. In the TFTD v2 patch readme it says this: "There were rare problems with panicked soldiers dropping weapons in 'mid-water' - this has now been fixed." Perhaps the patch itself is flawed by actually forcing weapons to drop to the ground? That's my guess at the moment. A recourse would be to go back to the original 1.0 version and live with the other bugs which were fixed in the patch... that is, unless I can ever fix the issues myself and reissue a proper patch.

 

- Zombie

 

Exactly this. The problem is that, due to the Leviathan placement bug, which is the only one of the fixes I really liked, although getting to research Aqua plastics was a great deal more difficult in version 1.0, you should either keep your leviathan understaffed or ready to lose one soldier in every enemy base attack mission...*sigh*

 

I just hoped someone would have heard of a solution to that problem.

 

Are you saying you have never encountered these problems yourself in TFTD, though?

[Zombie]

Since in UFO -EU everything worked as they should, it is safe to assume this was a great oversight by the developers...

Or they (the programmers) tried having those purple spheres as Ion Beam Accelerators and decided it gave a player too much Zrbite, so they didn't use it. Nevertheless, I'll do some editing to see what happens. It would be nice to gain some benefit from a successful alien base mission though.

 

Exactly this. The problem is that, due to the Leviathan placement bug, which is the only one of the fixes I really liked, although getting to research Aqua plastics was a great deal more difficult in version 1.0, you should either keep your leviathan understaffed or ready to lose one soldier in every enemy base attack mission...*sigh*

 

I just hoped someone would have heard of a solution to that problem.

Leviathan placement bug? Is that where an alien spawns on the roof of your craft? (The programmers tried this as a test and found it was too hard and decided to keep it out of the game. They probably forgot about the Leviathan). I could easily fix that for you, if this is indeed what the problem is.

 

Are you saying you have never encountered these problems yourself in TFTD, though?

Not really per-se. The version I have been using for the last 5 years has been the Collector's Edition. Some of the bugs may have been ironed out in that version. That's why I need to test so much because all these versions are different.

 

- Zombie

[Thunder_Gr]

Leviathan placement bug? Is that where an alien spawns on the roof of your craft? (The programmers tried this as a test and found it was too hard and decided to keep it out of the game. They probably forgot about the Leviathan). I could easily fix that for you, if this is indeed what the problem is.

 

No it is the one that one of your own soldiers in placed outside the leviathan, about 10-20 squares away...

 

Not really per-se. The version I have been using for the last 5 years has been the Collector's Edition. Some of the bugs may have been ironed out in that version. That's why I need to test so much because all these versions are different.

 

- Zombie

 

Could they have fixed these bugs? You get normal ZrBite, too?

[Thunder_Gr]

One more thing. I play this game all these years, I never knew there were actually ZrBite crystals that could be taken!! . Could it be that the crystals exist on the map, but there is bug in the code that gets them dissapeared in the trasition to the base, except for the cruiser?

Could I manually add the ZrBite at the propper locations and quantities by editing the maps??

[Zombie]

No it is the one that one of your own soldiers in placed outside the leviathan, about 10-20 squares away...

Hmmm... I never had that happen with CE. I just tried with a full load of 26 soldiers and they all spawned within the craft just fine. Could you replicate the bug and tell me how many soldiers you have when this happens? I'm assuming that it only happens with a lot of soldiers present? If the programmers didn't allow enough room for the soldiers, that would explain why some start spawning outside the craft.

 

Could they have fixed these bugs? You get normal ZrBite, too?

It's been so long since I played, it's hard to remember whether I got Zrbite anymore. I'll find out with my tests though. The Leviathan seems to function just fine on my version.

 

As for the Ion Beam Accelerators in an Alien Base, well, I took a look at some of the maps and noticed that there are a ton of them in certain modules. If each sphere (or heck, even one of the string) were to be set as an Ion Beam Accelerator, you would see at least 10 of them for most base missions. Maybe more. But I'm not sure how the game handles IBA in an alien base situation. It may just ignore them and most likely you wouldn't be able to recover them either. Needs direct testing though, I only looked at the maps...

 

- Zombie

[Thunder_Gr]

Hmmm... I never had that happen with CE. I just tried with a full load of 26 soldiers and they all spawned within the craft just fine. Could you replicate the bug and tell me how many soldiers you have when this happens? I'm assuming that it only happens with a lot of soldiers present? If the programmers didn't allow enough room for the soldiers, that would explain why some start spawning outside the craft.

 

The space is fine. The placement is wrong. I am left with one empty space on the sub, and a soldier outside. That was fixed in version 2.0.

I usually load my leviathan with 4 HWP and the full capacity of soldiers.

 

It's been so long since I played, it's hard to remember whether I got Zrbite anymore. I'll find out with my tests though. The Leviathan seems to function just fine on my version.

 

I bet it does. I am interested about them having fixed the rest of them, bugs, though.

 

As for the Ion Beam Accelerators in an Alien Base, well, I took a look at some of the maps and noticed that there are a ton of them in certain modules. If each sphere (or heck, even one of the string) were to be set as an Ion Beam Accelerator, you would see at least 10 of them for most base missions. Maybe more. But I'm not sure how the game handles IBA in an alien base situation. It may just ignore them and most likely you wouldn't be able to recover them either. Needs direct testing though, I only looked at the maps...

 

- Zombie

 

Normaly, you should have gotten as many as Elerium from UFO-EU. I doubt the whole Zrbite thing to be something that was done on purpose. It is the only resource you can't produce FGS!

[Bomb Bloke]

No it is the one that one of your own soldiers in placed outside the leviathan, about 10-20 squares away...

That's a bit of an exaggeration. He's placed on the highest level, in the northwest corner of the Leviathon map module. A decent soldier should be able to make it back into the craft in about a turn from there.

 

Mind you, I seldom "change my mind" about an attack I've started... In practise, that soldier ends up raining down death from above!

 

But I'm pretty sure you need the craft filled in order to trigger it. Four tanks and ten soldiers seems to do the trick.

 

This would suggest that the devs failed to set the final spawn node for that craft (that is to say, he's getting placed at 0x/0y/0z within the Leviathon's map module).

[Zombie]

I tried getting an Aquanaut to spawn outside the Leviathan with no luck. Even tried some SWSs to see if that would make any difference. Nope. So it looks like this problem has been fixed in the CE version. What's interesting is that there are 2 spots empty in the Leviathan. They probably don't have spawn points, but you just gotta wonder if they can be edited in somehow to cram a couple more Aquanauts on the ship. Illegally modding extra Aquanauts into the craft via soldier.dat doesn't put an extra guy in the 0,0,0 location when on a mission either. They just get placed anywhere on the map. Sounds like the programmers forgot about that last point on the ship and accidentally left it pointing to the origin of the map module.

 

The Zrbite bug, is the one that you cannot get any Zrbite from ufo misson exept from cruisers, no matter in which state you recover them. So, your ZrBite supply is completely dependant on how many Cruisers with intact energy sources you down and recover.

I have been getting Zrbite on all the missions so far (up to the Battleship) so no shortages for me. I actually thought I was recovering 100 more units than was possible on the Battleship but then remembered that long "room" on L1 that points to the West. There are 4 more IBA in there with (I assume) 100 Zrbite. There is at least 100 on the ground floor but I can't be sure of the exact quantity because I didn't have a weapon powerful enough to poke a hole in that L1 room to verify.

 

I did find out the hard way that when you shoot IBA's with a weapon, they explode... and it's massively powerful! My guy in Mag Ion Armor actually got hurt badly from the blast. Looking at the MCD data for it, the IBA has an average blast strength of 100. Ouch!

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Probably a case of not enough spawn nodes - too many slots on the Leviathan. The alien bases seem to have that with the interior level map where you have more troops than spots in the starting zones that results in soldiers that stranded deep inside the colony.

 

With TFTD, I think they took a selective approach to placing Zrbite rather than automatically generating under an item designated power unit - since there tend to be a lot more of them on the map. A bit of balancing, I guess. Hence why they hardcoded the zrbite locations.

 

In bases, you do occasionally see the zrbite sitting in the fittings around the map. Such as those fleshy coloured pumping cylinders and most prominently those purple storage pods in the large room that looks like a theater. I'd refer to the overhead map often to see if there are any items lying inside furniture objects.

 

My copy is the V2.0, and I haven't seen the disappearing zrbite issue myself - last mission I went on was on a supply ship (ye gods they have disrupter pulse torpedoes on board!) and I managed to bring some zrbite home.

 

Thunder_GR:

Just one thought, you wouldn't be using explosives near the IBA's, would you? It's just that as they are physical items, you can easily destroy them with light explosives.

 

Also, are you using any game editors or tools like XComutil?

 

- NKF

[Thunder_Gr]

That's a bit of an exaggeration. He's placed on the highest level, in the northwest corner of the Leviathon map module. A decent soldier should be able to make it back into the craft in about a turn from there.

 

How many TUs a "decent" soldier should have in your opinion? The soldier cannot make it in time to avoid being mind controled and, in this type of missions, it is very difficult to get out with minimal losses when your plans are thrown off this way...

 

Mind you, I seldom "change my mind" about an attack I've started... In practise, that soldier ends up raining down death from above!

 

Well, if you are not in an Alien base, that is. In Alien base assaults he is as well as gone...

 

But I'm pretty sure you need the craft filled in order to trigger it. Four tanks and ten soldiers seems to do the trick.

 

This would suggest that the devs failed to set the final spawn node for that craft (that is to say, he's getting placed at 0x/0y/0z within the Leviathon's map module).

 

Yes, this seems to be the case.

 

I have been getting Zrbite on all the missions so far (up to the Battleship) so no shortages for me. I actually thought I was recovering 100 more units than was possible on the Battleship but then remembered that long "room" on L1 that points to the West. There are 4 more IBA in there with (I assume) 100 Zrbite. There is at least 100 on the ground floor but I can't be sure of the exact quantity because I didn't have a weapon powerful enough to poke a hole in that L1 room to verify.

- Zombie

 

So, this was fixed. Any problems with weapons dropping throught floors on multilevel subs?

 

My copy is the V2.0, and I haven't seen the disappearing zrbite issue myself - last mission I went on was on a supply ship (ye gods they have disrupter pulse torpedoes on board!) and I managed to bring some zrbite home.

 

Thunder_GR:

Just one thought, you wouldn't be using explosives near the IBA's, would you? It's just that as they are physical items, you can easily destroy them with light explosives.

 

Also, are you using any game editors or tools like XComutil?

 

- NKF

 

No, not using any explosives, and have been trying a variaety of things in order to see if I can get Zrbite from other types of Subs.

 

I did not know these editors existed until I found this forum. Now I have them all, but I haven't used any yet. I don't think I am going to use XCOMutil, though.

 

Can you tell me if you experience the weapon dropping through uso's floors when dropped in version 2.0?

I have the CD version of the game.

[NKF]

I can't say I've ever had a soldier panic while inside a large alien sub (I always get massacred outside and everyone's running around and charging through the amazingly-hard-to-walk-through-coral as if it wasn't there). Wouldn't be surprised if it happened though as even UFO still has its fair share of a floor/ceiling collision detection problems. It too had the bug with equipment hanging in the air, but it was less pronounced and for some reason I think the items drop down to the ground after some action takes place.

 

It might be worth seeing if this happens in the interior map of the colony.

 

By the way, as an aside, you mention you have the CD version. Most of the CD versions are v2.0, just split so that most of the data is stored on the CD. Do you need to have the CD-Rom in to play the game?

 

I'm mainly asking as I feel that it's not the most ideal way to play this game - and often advise restoring the game to its proper full hard-drive install (+ the animations that's generally exclusive to the partial CD install). Just a little thing of mine.

 

- NKF

[Thunder_Gr]

I can't say I've ever had a soldier panic while inside a large alien sub (I always get massacred outside and everyone's running around and charging through the amazingly-hard-to-walk-through-coral as if it wasn't there). Wouldn't be surprised if it happened though as even UFO still has its fair share of a floor/ceiling collision detection problems. It too had the bug with equipment hanging in the air, but it was less pronounced and for some reason I think the items drop down to the ground after some action takes place.

 

It might be worth seeing if this happens in the interior map of the colony.

 

No problems with the interior of a colony... And the bug was introduced in version 2.0

 

By the way, as an aside, you mention you have the CD version. Most of the CD versions are v2.0, just split so that most of the data is stored on the CD. Do you need to have the CD-Rom in to play the game?

 

I'm mainly asking as I feel that it's not the most ideal way to play this game - and often advise restoring the game to its proper full hard-drive install (+ the animations that's generally exclusive to the partial CD install). Just a little thing of mine.

 

- NKF

 

When I say CD version, I mean the original cd version. It was not patched to 2.0. You had to manually apply the patch. In addition, I have copied(of course) the game on the HD and play it from there. If I hadn't done that I wouldn't have been able to play the game(require 4x CD rom. Todays CDs are too damn fast and cause an overflow...that strips you the ability to see the movie. Which is the only way to have the CD version, btw...) and I wouldn't have had a game to play with, in the first place, because the CD would have been damaged by now .

[Bomb Bloke]

How many TUs a "decent" soldier should have in your opinion? The soldier cannot make it in time to avoid being mind controled and, in this type of missions, it is very difficult to get out with minimal losses when your plans are thrown off this way...

"Decent"? High sixties, at least. But the time taken can vary depending on whether the unit has flying capability or not ("free falling" doesn't use TUs - at least, not in UFO).

 

Note that aliens are less likely to attempt mind control if they have low morale. Having your other soldiers slaughter anything within range helps. Given a choice between killing an alien and running for cover, I'll typically have my soldier kneel (assuming they're on the ground) and start blasting.

[Thunder_Gr]

On first turn, there is nothing, "in range", unfortunately. And the aliens attempting the mind control are usually far away from the assault point. However, when I have managed to learn PSI control, the soldier becomes an asset instead of liability, but I can not help feeling that, one way or the other, it is a handicap or advandage that is "abnormal". It shouldn;t exist...

[Thunder_Gr]

Apart from the quite interesting discussion, it appears that noone else has experienced these bugs!?!

How could I have been that unlucky? Were there more versions of TFTD than the one I got??

[NKF]

That's probably not the case with the drop-through-USO-floor bug. It probably happens, but some of us don't always notice it, or it happens sporadically.

 

The missing zrbite however is another matter. The games have been known to behave differently and bugs would crop up depending on the different specs of the players' computers. Even dosbox isn't entirely exempt from this as there seem to be some speed settings that make the game exhibit strange behaviour.

 

- NKF

[BladeFireLight]

Just weighing in.

 

Xcomutil changes the placement of units in all the xcom craft to fix the placement bug, Although the default adds more spots so you can cram in like a sardine. and some times it's a little off on placement. a bug i'm trying to track down.

 

The placement of zerbite is hard coded. For that reason when xcomutil builds a random ship map it is suposed uses the placement of zerbite as the starting points and places a IBA in that place. I have not delved much into that code as I am planing to replace the Battle Scape generator with my own once I fix the other bugs (like the xcopy /y issue)

 

As for missing Zerbit in every craft. Zerbit is an object in the Battle Scape each ship has a hard coded amount and hard coded placement. you can pick it up, and you can also destroy it with explosives. If your really aggressive taking out the aliens you can destroy what is placed.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Zombie]

The placement of zerbite is hard coded. For that reason when xcomutil builds a random ship map it is suposed uses the placement of zerbite as the starting points and places a IBA in that place. I have not delved much into that code as I am planing to replace the Battle Scape generator with my own once I fix the other bugs (like the xcopy /y issue)

Thanks for the reply, Blade. So Zrbite placement is hard coded after all. Makes sense as the crystals don't seem to be following the normal scheme used in UFO (ie, under each power source). Not only that, but quantity of it doesn't match either. You wouldn't happen to have the approximate location of that code would you? I'd really like to take a look at it. PM me with it if you don't want to give it out to just anyone.

 

- Zombie

[BladeFireLight]

I only have Scott's notes on the issue and the code he uses to generate the random ship floor plans. If your looking to validate it just replace all the ships with the same number of levels full of empty floors.

 

-Blade FireLight