Manual/FAQ

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Contents

Gameplay

  • Hiring soldiers
    • More candidates become available at the end of each month. Scroll through the list using the mousewheel. More candidates are supplied if you use an easier difficulty level. More candidates are supplied if you are doing well and keeping your funding bodies happy.
  • Saving from within the battlescape...
    • ...is not allowed. This is because saving after killing an alien and loading after losing a soldier is not in the spirit of the game. It takes the fear away: and you should be afraid. [1]
  • building a new base
    • In 2.2.x investigate the buttons that appear when you hover over the items towards the bottom left of the geoscape view. 2.3 and higher it is more obvious.
  • Why can't I use the medium alien armour?
    • Alien armour is only for aliens! At version 2.2.x, the best armour useable by PHALANX is the nanocomposite. There will be more armour available when more dev work is done (need more 3D artists). See Equipment/Armour.
  • Is there an easy way to compare weapons, and learn more about them?
    • See weapon tables. Includes link to table with list of skills for different skills/firemodes.

Gameplay for veterans

Notes for veterans of UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as Ufo Defense or just X-COM)

  • Where are the proximity mines?
    • Not implemented yet (at version 2.2.x). [2] They will be implemented for sure.
  • Why can't I destroy all the terrain like in X-COM?
    • The 3D engine that is used to make UFO:AI (a modified Quake2 engine) does not support fully destructable terrain. There are plans to add some destructible items (furniture, barrels...), but even that will be a lot of work (mapping, models, particle-effects etc.) See also [3] and [4] for more details. Please do not post on the forum asking for fully destructible buildings. This has been discussed to death. If, however, you are are a coding genius and can implement this within the quake 2 based engine, and leave it running fast...
  • The time units (TU) for reaction fire (RF) makes no sense
    Up until 2.2.x
    • It is quite different X-COM:
      • Your round n: You spend seven TU in your round. You then get all TUs back at the end of your round/beginning of enemy's round.
      • Enemy round n: That seven TU has bought you the right to spend TU on a shot in your enemy's round.
      • Your round n+1: In fact the TU for shooting are spent from your next round's budget.
    • You can think of it as your soldiers having to creep around slowly being observant. The converse is they could move much farther without using RF, but are likely to get caught with their pants down in the enemy's round.
    2.3 development version and higher
    • A 'new' system for RF has been implemented mimicking most of the RF-features of X-COM. You can reserve TUs in your round which will not be used up but can be used for RF in the enemy turn.
      There is now an advanced system in place to reserve various things (e.g. the RF reservation as mentioned already or stuff that can be suede in the same round such as crouch/stand-up). There are still some rough edges (i.e. not all of this is usable yet) but time will help us iron them out.

Multiplayer

  • What port is UFO:AI using?
    • TCP 27910 since 2.2
    • The standard Quake2 UDP-port 27910 for version 2.1.1 and older
    • you can also check whether your server is listed here: http://ufoai.ninex.info/ufo/serverlist.txt - if not, check your firewall settings.
  • Nobody can connect to my server - what am I doing wrong?
    • Make sure, that you have opened the game port in your router
  • The server doesn't show up in the serverlist - what can I do?
    • Again make sure, that the game port is opened in your router configuration - also make sure, that the cvar sv_public has a value of 1. This can also be done in the multiplayer menu. Activate the public option in the menu when you create the server.
    • more networking tips in the Multiplayer article.
  • Is there a mapcycle available?
    • Yes, there is a mapcycle available. Just have a look in the UFO:AI installation base/ directory. There is a mapcycle.txt with comments inside.
  • Versions
    • The players (clients) and server must use the same version of UFO:AI.
  • Maps
    • A checksum is calculated to ensure that all players (clients) are using the same version of the map. Maps compiled on different systems may have slightly different checksums (due to differences in floating point operations). So, for multiplayer, stick to installers (from [5] for example) or mappacks (from [6]).

Compiling Maps

(If you just use an installer, do not worry about this.)

  • Does it take a long time?
    • Yes, but if you use one of the make files in the repository then only the maps that need updating will be compiled.
  • Can maps compiled for one OS or system be used on another?
  • It says "Could not load image pk3 (/base/0pics.pk3)", does that matter?
    • No, it will load images from the normal filesystem, instead of from the archive file.

Controls

  • How can I turn the soldier's direction without moving him?
    • Position the 3D cursor on the terrain in the desired direction, then press RMB Image:Template-RMB.png Right MouseButton or use Ctrl. See also the Keymap. See also change key bindings
  • What console?
    • The more you mess with UFO:AI, the more likely it is you will hear references to the console. If you hit Shift ESC then the console should come up. Press ESC to return to the normal GUI. There are many console commands. The console is logged in a text file from the time you start UFO to when you quit. This is overwritten the next time you run it. See the General item below to find the path.
  • What is a CVAR?
    • Console variable [7]. For example to set your nickname in for multiplayer you can go to the console and type "/name iamthegodofhellfire" or whatever. There are many other CVARs which can be set.

Common bugs

There is a file called BUGS distributed with all UFO:AI packages listing major known bugs for this release. Please read it to avoid unneccesary bug reports :)

Check sourceforge [8] and the forum [9] for a complete list of known bugs.

Really common ones are listed here to save you time. If you have found something new then tell the team about it (see Bugs).

  • Broken savegames
    • savegames generally do not work between versions. If you are compiling trunk look out for the giveaway commit messages.
  • Estimates of hit probability are distinctly fishy
    • Hit probability estimates are not great when your target has partial cover. Using the first person view (toggle with v) can help you to estimate the hit probability yourself. The true calculation is done by the server (even in single player mode)
  • The game crashes
    • Make sure that you have your latest 3D graphics card drivers installed (See also #Windows).
    • Still a problem? Go and report it.

General

  • Where can I find the savegames, screenshots, config.cfg and ufoconsole.log?
    • This depends on your OS:
      • Linux: /home/<username>/.ufoai/<version>/
      • Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\UFOAI\<version>\
      • Windows Vista: \Users\<username>\appData\Roaming\UFOAI\<version>\
      • Windows98 - german version: \windows\Anwendungsdaten\ufoai\<version>\
      • MacOSX: /Users/<username>/.ufoai/<version>/ (prior to 2.3)
      • MacOSX: /Users/<username>/Documents/UFOAI-<version>/ (>= 2.3)
    • Screenshots are in those directories in ./base/screenshots/, savegames are in ./base/save/
  • Game seems to be untranslated (missing texts). What did I miss?
    • This may be due to a missing translation - generate a new one on your own and send it to us - see translating article (also see available translations)...
    • ...or the system can't find the locale (the installed language file). You can use the cvar s_language to set your language (see base/i18n for valid languages) or you can copy the base/i18n/en directory to e.g. the language prefix you need.
      • Linux users must have the locale installed they are trying to use in the game. You can try to set another locale via the environment variable LANG. Start ufo with LANG=en; ./ufo
  • Under which licence is this game released?
    • GPL and Creative Commons (mainly we can modify, adapt, build upon, and use commercially)
  • When will the game be ready?
    • When it's done. No seriously, there will never be a fixed release date (for any given version), when the game is ripe enough to make a new release it'll be done.
  • Where are the scripts (*.ufo), maps, models, ...? (also what is a *.pk3?)
    • if you used an installer look in UFOAI-<version>/base/*.pk3.
    • you can copy the *.pk3 somewhere (so the game still works!), rename them zip and unpack.
    • on windows you can just use 7zip, which works it out for itself.
    • *.ufo scripts contain a lot of useful information. [[10]]
    • all the same information is also available to anyone from the subversion repository. [[11]]

Windows

  • I'm getting the error "Couldn't register window class"
    • Install your 3D Graphic card drivers - or update to the latest version
  • The game doesn't even start on my Vista system
    • Deactivate Aero (right click on desktop/personalize(sic)/theme/windows classic). Make sure, that you don't use the Microsoft drivers for your gfx-card. Install the latest official vendor drivers.
  • The game quits unexpectedly when I switch to full screen under Vista
    • Try setting full screen in config.cfg: set vid_fullscreen "1". See the General section above for the file's location.
  • The game quits unexpectedly when I switch screen resolutions under Vista (and doesn't save the new resolution)
    • Setting the resolution in the config.cfg doesn't work. It still loads at the default 1024x768. This probably will require a bug fix.
  • The game runs very slow on PCI-E NVIDIA based Windows XP Computers
    • Try to turn off "Threaded optimization" in the NVIDIA control panel. You can find the option on the "Manage 3D Settings" page.

Linux

  • The game is running very slowly
    • Make sure to use the latest drivers for your graphic card - for ATI and NVIDIA only the closed source drivers may work
    • Intel cards maybe need texture compression enabled. Also try to reduce the texture resolution in the video options menu. If you get an error like "[driAllocateTexture:636] unable to allocate texture" try deactivating the option Multitexturing in the Video-configs of the game. It seems you need to restart the game to make these changes take effect.
    • Intel card owners should install the package libgl1-mesa-dri to get higher framerates

MacOSX

  • There is no text when starting new missions, Development screens etc
    • Your language hasn't been set.
      • Go to the main menu, Options, Game, Set a language.
  • Doesn't scroll in all directions
    • You cannot have the game resolution the same as the screen resolution in windowed mode. This causes the window to be slightly larger than the screen size.
      • Go to the main menu, Video and either decrease the screen resolution or tick the full screen box

Links

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