Bug Reports Options

[PlacidDragon]

Please post bug reports in this thread.

When posting, so that ALTAR can easier find and identify bugs, please post a short description of what the problem is (IE, mutants attacking through solid walls, soldiers change voices, etc), and please keep it as short and consise as possible.

Thanx

[Lurker]

Please, oh please!

Also, when you do your bug reports, let them know what kind of hardware, operating system, sound drivers or sound card, firewall, graphics card drivers, CPU, SATA or IDE drive you have.

The last time around, I found bugs that were related to Aftermath being incompatible with a specific version of Zone Alarm Firewall for example. If you provide information about what hardware, software, and drivers are causing the problem, then those of us with similar machines will know when it is safe to get in, or we will be able to get a feel if it will always be the case that we should stay away from Aftershock.

In the past, I was quite heartened or encouraged whenever somebody was posting messages that they never had Aftermath crash, ever, on a machine that was exactly like the machine I was thinking about buying. And, I also started to avoid the expansion cards and drivers that were getting all the repetitous reports of crashes with Aftermath.

Knowing the hardware, drivers, and firewall that's producing the crash can be very useful information, both for future buyers of hardware or Aftershock, and maybe for Altar and Cenega as well.

It's just nice to know what hardware or drivers are the most likely to cause a problem, once we have established that there is a problem.

[Rugster]

Here we go again

Athlon Fx 64 3200+
2 gig Ram DDR 400
Winxp updated - Does not and WILL NEVER have service pack 2 installed.
800Fsb Motherboard.
Sata Hard Drive 120gig
PCI-Express 6200 (64meg turbo)
Dx9c
Nvidia Forceware Video Drivers - 78.01
Sound - Realtec Ac'97 Drivers 5.10.0.5830
Bios - Flash Updated
CPU - Flash Updated

Slowdown issues:

/ LOS mode - i get severe slowdown if i move soldiers in this mode.
/ When shooting friendly cyborgs i get jittering fps and slowdown.
/ When shooting friendly humans i also get the same jittering fps and slowdown. It stops as soon as i stop shooting them.

Otherwise i have have no slowdown issues. None in geoscape.

Geoscape issues:

/ Alt Tabbing can crash the game.

/ Unable to capture states after a successful mission complete. Even after serveral mission success's that state remains neutral.

/ Theres no listing under deplomacy to note the current resources available. So if i want to send resources to the humans i have to keep moving back to main view to note what i have then into diplomacy screen to send them.

Squad menu:

/ Moving avatars around to change thier position can cause the game to crash.
Selecting cyborgs and then dresses can cause game to crash.

/ Tactical Squad menu with PSI mode on, dolls are swimming all green like...

Bases menu:

/ Factories and other buildings never being completed. They reach 0h0min but theres never a message saying complete. Resources or tracks isnt a problem.

/ As a consequence i had to demolish them and rebuild, however it occured again on another base and i had to restart game. Time lost is too important.

Tactical Issues:
/ Pathing of ai in escort missions is very bad in narrow areas, instead of following the soldier they attempt to surround him, often pathing the long way around fences or buildings.

/ Cannot shoot over prone or kneeling soldiers.
/ Ai cannot shoot over flatsters.

/ Ai has a tendency to suicide into combat instead of moving to an optimum range to fire or attack from. Except for rets which act in a way that looks as though some work was put into thier ai. The mutants however just suicide.

/ Ai can spawn outside of map or in inaccessable areas of the map. Making capture missions impossible to complete.

/ Morelmans spit/punch attack is far to harsh, it can kill faster than any other weapon in the game. With exception of the Warp Rifle. 1 shot can kill a soldier if they dont have a medikit available, often it kills them before they can even equip the medikit.

//*There is a certain map which has 3 green houses in, the map warps,lags, freezes no matter what graphics are on (Very high, or Low). Gets frustrating.
^^ I also get this.

// Annoying things.

// If mission fails, it just quits. You get no option to collect the weapons that have dropped or continute for experience. Surely if the option is there for success it should also be an option for failure. At least then if you soldiers make a fluke kill shot in a capture mission it wouldnt be a complete waste of time.

// Can't edit the equipment of rescued ai, also mutant and ret captured ragdolls look bloody terrible.

/// CTD's

/ CTD 01 Entered Equipment screen in tactical, unloaded ammo from a Ret Lazer Pistol. CTD. No error msg.

/ CTD 02

[Sebastian123]

- sometimes you don´t get the things that are found in a mission.

- you can´t shoot over small things (flasters, proned people...)

[Stefan100]

A list of bugs in the closed bug report topic in the general section:

*No closed doors

*Some aliens hit you through walls.

*Several Slowdowns, may be starforce or something but los = ultra low framerate.

*not a bug maybe but saving/loading and mission loads can take ages on a fast system(may be a leak since seem to take longer more you play, though could just be harder/more complex maps)

*Had a bug with troop selection moved troop from bar into squad his icon vanished but when I selected a new troop his ragdoll was superimposed on the old troops, then game crashed.

*Moving items around in the inventory is unresponsive and laggy.)

*Alot of occuring CTDs (Crash to desktop), error pops up.

*There is a certain map which has 3 green houses in, the map warps,lags, freezes no matter what graphics are on (Very high, or Low). Gets frustrating.

*Sometimes when coming out of reseach, squad etc tabs the globe spins rapidly and then stops.

*Track system very buggy. Cant demolish track.

*Sometimes soldiers avatars will be ten times the size in the equip screen and you only see their legs.

*Alt tab twice for instant crash.

*Career Training can destroy all equipment and armour and implants.

*Crash to desktop randomly.

*Crash to desktop when sometimes selecting dresses when on a cyborg equip screen.

*Enemy aliens can remain as icons sometimes.

*Enemy aliens can do melee combat thru steel and stone.

*Soldier turning speed is very slow.

*Scroll wheel press to spin camera can sometimes fail in missions.

*Run ( SPEED ADVANCE!) icons in missions sometimes dont work. They click and make the sounds but spacebar is needed to bumb it into action again.

*No real clear mention of how mines work . You can have 5 countries with mines and still have no income from them.

*Loot isnt picked up automatically.

*Research and manufacture times in your available list dont take into account multiple factories/labs so you dont get the actual time until you queue it.

*aliens can walk and shoot through doors. your soldiers can only shoot through them and both sides can see through them. and all doors make what sounds like the noise doors make in star trek even standard doors

*on an industrial map there is sometimes a train with a carriage that sits across the map boundary. you can shoot through the carriage there is a small gap between it and the ground but shouldnt allow firing. (not really a bug i suppose)

*enemies can be spawned in locations that trap them unable to move freely

*I had a CTD when i went into Research, where you select things there was a bar with DEBUG_ (something like that) then it CTD.

*Ive had it once when moving my inventory around in the squad tab.

*Happens radomly in missions too, can be doing nothing or be moving the squad and it will CTD.

*Aliens/Mutants etc spawn either outside of map area or in parts of certain maps which are inaccessable. If mission is a capture then mission will fail.

*Aliens show as !exclamation marks! when they should be seen, even if 1m from them standing up. When killed no corpse is left. Only weapons or equipment.

*Pathing on Non Player Allies in Escort missions is terrible. Often resulting in the Escortees running off and getting killed.

*Mutants sometimes throw grenades badly...and kill themselves. Also Aliens (rets) misfire rockets and kill themselves. (Possibly low moral?? or they are attempting to target player from inside a room)

*Can't shoot over prone or kneeling party members, Aliens also can't shoot over Flatsters.

*Long save times for both menu save and auto save F5.

*Initial Player Soldiers' LOS is unrealistic. Although you expect them to flounder around and miss alot, they should be able to see Aliens 10m+ or so in front of them. Not 2-3m as it is now.

*Morelmans spit attack is too powerful, one shot can kill a soldier if no medikit is applied in time.

*Remark on turning speed of "watching" soldiers. I think that a soldier should have an area in front of them that is "watched" ie about a 30-45 degree area and anything that enters thisd area should be quickly targeted and fired on. If target is outside this area then obviously soldier must come out of watched mode, turn to target and them aim again and this takes time. But if he is only moving the gun a few degrees to left or right...it takes far too long.

*Fatal Bug - Moving avatars around in Squad screen crashes the game.

*Pickup 1 avatar and move to a different position, this swaps avatar with the one you're replacing, now place this on another avatar and CTD. Occurs 90%

*Set view to PSI mode, open Equip screen to get swimming green ragdolls.

*If game crashes the profile becomes corrupted and the WHOLE of all the saves becomes inaccessable. Thus forcing a complete restart of the entire game!!

*Soldier voices randomly switch each time you boot up the game, but only within appropriate sets (eg. male humanA to male humanB, cyborgE to cyborgC etc...)

*Number of AI weapons have their under-barrel weapon mods in the scope slot

*AI melee attacks through solid objects

*AI free to walk through closed doors (not tried shooting but def can't see through them)

*Odd grinding/lag on tactical missions after extended play, often stops once all enemies are visable.

*I've also got a saved game on a finished tactical mission that will ALWAYS crash when you try to end the mission, I'l make it available if anyone wants.

*The soldiers dont show helemets on portrait but they will armor.

*Other things which I dont know if its a bug but the game went from doable to extremely difficult. Trying to take out a dissenter to win a province has you going up against rocket launchers tough opponents while still using laser guns with maybe a uzi or pistol here or there.

*Also the random resource generator is nice but makes researching a PITA. Trading with other factions seems so far like a 3-1 payoff, altho I am sure this has to do with standing.

*When saving the music needs to either shutoff or not go garbly.

*Dmg indicator seems so sparse, alot of times my soldier is burning and never saw anything hit him even tho the enemy is visible. All I see if hit for so and so dmg.

*85mm Explosive Rocket graphic is the wrong size, it looks massive when lying on the ground, but shrinks to its correct size when put in backpack.

*The alien (ret) missles have the opposite bug, they appear tiny on ground but grow bigger when put into packs.

*Bug when requesting a mission: It's supposed to work that if you request a mission of a faction territory, you get the option to attack and annex the province, at the cost of relations with the faction in question.
However if you request a mission, then refuse to attack and request a mission again in the same province, you get a 'call for help' style mission.
I.e. You don't have to wait for a 'call for help', you can force one on any province that you have explored.

*spinning globe when leaving research

*pointer stops working on geoscope.

*after selecting track unable to select anything else

*changing character voices

*poor performance in LOS

*in defence missions character spawning on top of item and gets stuck

*aliens spawning in closed areas and impossible to kill

*enemies attacking through solid walls

*you can't shoot over an object but you can shoot under

*short los


That was all. Sorry if I report the same bug more than once. I did just copy directly.

::

Tsk tsk, Altarians and their bio technology. Full of bugs.

[Slane]

After my last CTD i cannot now play the game as i get a fatal error before its loaded.

How about making a safe mode that actually f**king works too!

[csebal]

First of all, i must say this: the game is very well done, the few bugs i encountered are more of a annoyance in nature, than actual showstoppers.

Lets start:
Performance:
*** Slowdown (priority low - minor annoying)
The game tends to slow down dramatically after a few hours of play. The actual tactical sim runs fine, but loading / saving starts to take ages.

*** Crash to desktop (priority low - minor annying but rare)
Only had it happen once in about 20 hours of play, so i do not consider it a big issue and have no real repro to it. Mine happened right after selecting the landing site for a mission. (i do not remember what mission it was)

Tactical:
*** Pathfinding (priority high - important game breaking)
Maybe the most annoying bug i got to-date. In UFO:AM, when a two paths crossed, a wait command was inserted into the blocked path, so that the guy waited for the other to move, then they both moved on.
In UFO:AS, when a someone is blocking my path, then instead of the wait command i get the 'i cant move' message, and the whole movement order is cleared. Because of this, i have to issue a new move order, which is kinda annoying. Happens quite often when moving 6+ soldiers at once.

Suggested solution: Modify the pathfinding to work like it did in UFO:AM. When the path of someone is blocked by another !MOVING! soldier, then simply insert a wait command into the blocked soldiers movement 'queue'

*** Line of fire (priority high - important game breaking)
The often mentioned flatster shield. If a flatster is in the way of say a morelman, and you want to take a shot at the morelman, you can't, as the flaster gives a cover of about 40-60%, meaning that your soldier has more chance hitting the flatster than hitting the tall morelman. This can be crippling sometimes. I had one atoll blocking a room once, with about 6 cultists on the other side, and i was unable to shoot at them because of the atoll. :/ Well.. grenades saved the day, but still..

Suggested solution: Tweak those stats so, that hitting flat monsters standing in front of tall ones has a way lower chance.

*** Friendly fire prevention (priority high - important game breaking)
Just imagine a guy laying prone on the field, and another one standing several meters behind him. An enemy comes up from the direction of the prone guy. Now the standing one got a little chance to hit its friend (like 2-4%), simply because it is in front of him... The problem is, that issuing a fire order for the standing one results in the 'i cant' message. This is bad.

Suggested solution: Add a new tactical event: friendly fire warning, which pauses the game whenever a soldier has a chance to hit a friendly. DO NOT CLEAR ITS ORDERS THO. If i decide to take the risks in shooting over the head of my mate, let me do it.

*** Mutants attack through solid walls (priority high - important game breaking)
Well, just as the name implies. They also move through closed doors without problem.

Suggested solution: Meelee attacking through brick walls should be made more difficult for them, also doors should provide a somewhat bigger obstacle.

*** Enemy spotted (yet not visible) (priority high - important game breaking)
When one of my soldiers yells: here comes another one, i center on that, and see... nothing. I click on the little enemy counter, and the enemy the guy spotted appears. Sometimes i have to cycle through all spotted hostiles to make them visible.

Geoscape:
*** Pistol research (priority low - minor visual)
After researching firearms, i get the message, that i can now research pistol blueprints. Well, i can't. I think you start with pistol blueprints researched. The message is still misleading.

Suggested solution: Remove the message.

*** Medium armor research (priority medium - moderate annoying)
Sometime during the game, i get the message, that i can now research medium armor blueprints. I'm unable to find the lab in which i could do that, so my guess is, that it must be a lab i do not have access to at the moment.

Suggested solution: Do not show 'you can now research' messages for items that you do not posess the necessary labs for.

*** Red tracks (priority low - minor visual)
When removing a track, it turns red... and stays red for an etermity. To my knowledge 'red' tracks mean nothing, and as such it should not be shown. If they mean something, then show them, but only in the 'track layout mode' (track button).

*** Mouse pointer issues (priority medium - moderate visual)
- During track layout, the mouse pointer flickers and is hard to see.
- In combat, after saving the game, the pointer remains the little 'gearbox' icon until you move the mouse.

Gameplay:
*** Various weapon research projects (priority high - important game breaking):
There are some 'item' requirements for these researches, like a firearm for the firearm research (interestingly, pistol does not do), or an advanced human weapon for the advanced human weapon research (still have to find one :/), or laser / plasma weapons for the appropriate research, or even the stupid ammo requirements for the AP ammo research.
Since we are talking about item theories, i think they should be researchable without any 'template' to base the research on. After all, somehow the first firearm was invented without having one to look at. Having these 'item' requirements are misleading and make the game one big equipment hunt.

Suggested solution: change these item requirements to speed up requirements, and increase the base research time of these technologies. That way, once could start working on laser weapons without even seeing one, while having one could provide an extreme speedup for the research. Additionally, if i have 9mm AP ammo, why can't i research AP ammonution, unless i have ALL kinds of ammo?

*** Travel times (priority low - minor annoying)
Well, there are none at the moment, which kinda deducts from the atmosphere of the game. I can just go on and on and on, doing missions without stopping even for a moment. Does the landing pod teleport to the mission or what? Even so, there should be some time after arriving from a mission, before i could start another one. Not to mention travel times.

Suggested solution: introduce some travel time for the landing pod, and some maintenance time between missions, even if just a few (say 15-30) minutes. Imagine it as loading / unloading equipment, scrubbing the blood off the walls, clearing the cargo compartment out of decompressed alien bodies, etc.

Dream list:
*** Iron man mode (priority: when dreams come true)
Well, a constant trouble for most of us with SAS / TB games, that we hate to lose people, so keep reloading until we can finish the mission without any losses. Part of this comes from the fact, that experienced soldiers are hard to come by.

Suggestion: Iron man mode - soldiers gain XP 3 times the normal rate, training time for specialities is cut to 1/4 of normal. However, you are not allowed to save the game. The game auto saves as usual, but you cannot create / initiate any saves, especially not during missions.

I'll update it as new issues come.

[Slane]

Csebal

*** Crash to desktop (priority low - minor annying but rare)
Only had it happen once in about 20 hours of play, so i do not consider it a big issue and have no real repro to it. Mine happened right after selecting the landing site for a mission. (i do not remember what mission it was)

Lets see how low priority it is when after 20 hours it CTD and then you can't get it to load back up even after a reinstall!

[BertieFCD]

AMD 64 3500
2 gig ram
XFX-6600 GT 128mb
AV8 Deluxe (ASUS) m/b
CL Soundblaster Live
DirectX 9c
78.05 nVidia drivers.

NO overclocking done!


Alt tab twice = certain crash to desktop (CTD)

Cannot shoot over prone characters or Flasters

Sometimes soldiers avatars will be ten times their size in the equip screen and you only see their legs.


Career Training can destroy all equipment and armour and implants.

Crash to desktop randomly.

Crash to desktop when sometimes selecting dresses when on a cyborg equip screen.

Enemy aliens can remain as ! icons sometimes.

Enemy aliens can do melee combat through steel and stone.

Soldier turning speed is very slow.

Scroll wheel press to spin camera can sometimes fail in missions.

Run ( SPEED ADVANCE!) icons in missions sometimes dont work. They click and make the sounds but spacebar is needed to bumb it into action again.

No real clear mention of how mines work . You can have 5 countries with mines and still have no income from them.

Loot isnt picked up automatically.

During missions for now reason ie throwing a grenade or firing on enemy , game can vanish and leave back at desktop.

Game unfairly puts you up against like 8 marksmen ( enemy who NEVER miss!) in the early missions. Very hard even on newbie mode to beat these guys .

In early missions where you fight psionic characters, youre men turn on each other .There doesnt appear to be anything you can do and no way to stun or incapacitate them. Your men dont seem to even try to fight the mind control or what ever it is.

When friendly soldiers panic, they fire on their team mates. Having paniced in life before i never found the need to kill my comrades when i did so. :/

You can kill the mission objective and steal his/her gun etc after mission complete flahs screen. Then finish mission and still be successful.

Slow down / performance issues. Slide show occurs during battles no matter what system specs.

On research screen, the settings for showing queued, finished etc doesnt save on reload. Have to redo each time.

[BertieFCD]

CONSTANT crashing to desktop during a mission. Perhaps during a grenade throw more than any other time. But its usually random.

Just crashed after hitting F8 during a mission. Game just vanishes instantly and no error messages.

Also ive had the error message we got during demo, when game could not find something etc.

[Rugster]

After my last CTD i cannot now play the game as i get a fatal error before its loaded.

How about making a safe mode that actually f**king works too!

When the game crashes there is a chance the profile becomes corrupted, i've had this in both the older AM as well as this newer AS..


Only thing you can do is go into Games on the menu of AS frontend and delete your corrupted profile. However try loading the autosave first, instead of resumbing, i managed to do this on one occasion.

[feta]

whoops, I made a seperate thread before seeing this post. Here goes a copy/paste:

NAME: SAVEGAME CORRUPTION

Ok, I have just run into this bug:
I'm assaulting a cultist base, and I quicksaved somewhere in the fight (no visible alive enemies).

So, I met some guy that 1-shot all of my group one by one and they all died XD
The problem is, that upon loading the save, the speed indicator says I'm playing in 2x whereas the game seems to be paused. Changing speeds does nothing, and trying to pause fails (If I click pause it instantly highlights and then reverts to the previous speed).

I have kept a copy of the save, If a dev sees this feel free to PM me with a way to give you that savegame.
I didn't try restarting the game or rebooting, but in any case, this is a serious bug (from now on I'll be scared to use quicksave and revert to multiple savefiles).

[BertieFCD]

Hit spacebar and it should re start time advance for that bug.

[csebal]

Csebal

*** Crash to desktop (priority low - minor annying but rare)
Only had it happen once in about 20 hours of play, so i do not consider it a big issue and have no real repro to it. Mine happened right after selecting the landing site for a mission. (i do not remember what mission it was)

Lets see how low priority it is when after 20 hours it CTD and then you can't get it to load back up even after a reinstall!

What i wrote there as priority is two fold: first is the severity it affects the game, the second part of it is how easy it should be to fix. Random CTDs are the worst nightmare of a developer. You got no appearent reason, it just happens.

Plus, the list is subjective. I only encountered CTD once after a whole day of play in which i did everything, from being AFK for hours to switching tasks every few minutes. So all in one, that single CTD could be the result of anything.

I can definitely understand that it can hit you at the wrong moment. So basically yes, CTDs have the potential to be showstoppers. Yet i classify them as low priority, as there are quite a lot straightforward, 'easy to fix' bugs that occur a lot more frequently than the CTDs and impact gameplay in a negative manner.

[SoundWave]

My full version has not arrived yet but i found this in the demo.... SO im not sure if it applies to the main game, so i'll report it anyway.

I was on the second and last mission on the demo and for some reason( just trying to free up the cursor) i dumped a medi-pac in the vambreces slot and the game crashed with an error along the lines of: "Cant find item etc, etc".

If it makes any difference the mission had finished and i had chose to play-on to loot the bodies and it was while in the inventory of that psi character who is reprisented by the green path marker.