XComUtil: forcing statstring updates outside of combat?

[shabby]

Hi all,

 

I'm playing Enemy Unknown with XComUtil and have been enjoying it greatly so far. However, I'm having problems with statstrings - I know XComUtil generally doesn't add statstrings until a soldier finishes their first combat, but this is causing me some issues.

 

Once I have psi-labs, my standard operating procedure is to hire around 40 soldiers per base, fire everyone who doesn't have excellent starting attributes, psi-train the rest, and then do a second round of firing everyone who is a psi-liability. Obviously, with statstrings next to everyone's names I can do this at-a-glance in the Sell screen in a matter of seconds. Without statstrings, it becomes a very tedious task that takes more time and effort. It would be great if I could make XComUtil add these strings when I first hire soldiers.

 

I did some Googling to try and find out how to force statstring updates at any time and found this post:

 

https://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3362 (see last post in thread)

 

So in theory, I should be able to save my game, then run xcomutil like so:

 

xcomutil c:\games\x-com\game_1\ REN

 

...and it should apply my statstring criteria to every soldier for me?

 

If I do this, it finds the game okay, and correctly lists the savegame file and the names of all the bases I have in the game; but it doesn't rename the soldiers. When I reopen X-Com they all still have no statstring. I don't understand why this is? If I use a different flag - for example, "c:\games\x-com\game_1\ LST", xcomutil will spit out the name of every soldier I have at every base, so it isn't that it can't find them or whatever.

 

If anyone has been able to get this working I would be very glad to hear how you did it as it would save me an inordinate amount of time.

 

Many thanks

 

(sorry if this should have gone in Support, but I didn't think an xcomutil issue constituted support for the game itself as such)

[Bomb Bloke]

You need to use the "WRT" flag, or else XCU won't edit any files.

 

Note also that when using the command line, a "." refers to the current directory.

 

So a command you could use would be:

 

xcomutil .\game_1\ REN WRT

 

You could stick that line at the top of the batch file you use to start the game, if you like, so that simply closing and restarting UFO would cause it to be processed. To do this, right click "RUNXCOM.BAT", and select "edit" from the context menu.

[shabby]

You need to use the "WRT" flag, or else XCU won't edit any files.

 

Note also that when using the command line, a "." refers to the current directory.

 

So a command you could use would be:

 

xcomutil .\game_1\ REN WRT

 

You could stick that line at the top of the batch file you use to start the game, if you like, so that simply closing and restarting UFO would cause it to be processed. To do this, right click "RUNXCOM.BAT", and select "edit" from the context menu.

 

Hi Bomb Bloke,

 

Thanks for your help. Hopefully I will no longer have to send soldiers on extraneous combat missions just to get their stats to show up. I'm afraid I have a further question about another utility, this time UFO Extender:

 

Having read about some of the features of UFO Extender, I decided to give that a try also (auto-sell and re-equipping soldiers sound fantastic). I'm trying to get it to work with the Collector's Edition; thing is, when I run UFOLoader.exe, the game starts OK and is playable, but the modifications that Extender is supposed to introduce aren't there, I just get the default, unchanged EU. I have edited all the flags to 1 in the UFOExtender.ini appropriately, so I don't know what's going on here. In case it makes a difference, I'm using the video bugfix patch (ldr_XCOM1.exe). Any guesses as to why Extender does not appear to do anything?

 

Sorry for the further questions and thanks again.

[Bomb Bloke]

Don't use f0dder's loader, instead run "UFOLoader.exe" directly if you want to use the extender. Make sure the "Video Pitch" option in the "UFOExtender.ini" is set to one if you need the video fix.

[shabby]

That works, thanks again for your response . A further problem, though: neither the 'clip cursor' nor 'scale mouse' settings actually restrict my mouse to the game window. Even with both on (or either one on and the other off), the game holds the cursor roughly over the window, but if I move the mouse all the way to the edge it changes to the Windows resize cursor, so I'm effectively clicking outside of the game window boundary. This means that I can't scroll the map in the battlescape, which is a bit of a constraint to say the least. I don't suppose some enterprising soul has worked out a way around this?

 

I sincerely hope I'm going to be able to get this working, because having just had a play around with some of its features it is going to be difficult to live without.

 

e: having done some googling to try and find a fix for this it appears this issue is common to everyone running Extender windowed? It is touched on by multiple people in this Steam thread (end of 2nd page, most of 3rd page) and nobody seems to have an answer.

[Bomb Bloke]

Your best bet would likely be to describe the problem on Seb's talk page. Don't forget to mention exactly what version of Windows you're using, your system specs, etc.