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[majikero]

Curse you computers! Why do you count "0" in your 256 bit limit?

[Sergius]

Curse you computers! Why do you count "0" in your 256 bit limit?

8 bit, actually.

[JanusTwoface]

In binary, you can have either a 1 or a 0, I believe. That results in a number of two as a bit (since you can have 2 options) and a byte is 2^8 bits. Therefore, he is correct in saying it is 256 bits.

Nope. In modern usage, 1 byte == 8 bits == 2^8 or 256 possible values. Although as an interesting side fact, traditionally a byte referred to how many bits stored a single character of text so it didn't necessary have to be 8 bits to the byte. Some early computers had 4, 6, or 7 bit bytes and I've seen at least one case of a 10-bit byte. It was standardized in 2009 actually with ISO/IEC 80000. Yay random (most) useless trivia!

Curse you computers! Why do you count "0" in your 256 bit limit?

Out of curiosity, why would 1-256 work better? How would you represent not having that value?

More on topic, I don't remember ever running into overflow in the original X-COM. Was that actually something that could happen in a regular playthrough (albeit rare) or would you have to hack their attributes to get them high enough?

[Sergius]

In binary, you can have either a 1 or a 0, I believe. That results in a number of two as a bit (since you can have 2 options) and a byte is 2^8 bits. Therefore, he is correct in saying it is 256 bits.

Or something like that. I can't remember properly.

1 bit allows you a number 0-1.
2 bits allows you between 0 and 3
3 bits allow you 0-7
4 bits allow you 0-15
5 bits: 0-31
6 bits: 0-63
7 bits: 0-127
8 bits: 0-255, this is called a byte


Useless old-school trivia: one digit of a byte in hexadecimal (meaning, half of the bits) is called a nibble.

[Soadreqm]

Speaking of bytes, my whole squad just bit it due to teleporting mutons. Yay bugs.

[Thexor]

Since we're on a binary kick...

An 8-bit data field can contain 2⁸ = 256 possible values. What these values actually represent depends on your system.

Using that byte as an unsigned integer, you have the possible values [0, 2⁸ - 1] == [0, 255]. In this system, the value 0 is represented by the bit pattern 00000000, and the value 255 is represented by 11111111.

Life gets more complicated with signed integers, or values that could be negative as well as positive. The simplest version is to use the highest bit as a 'sign bit' - anything of the form 0xxxxxxx is positive, while 1xxxxxxx represents a negative number. The problem is, the byte "00000000" and "10000000" mean "0" and "-0", which means you're wasting space.
There's also the issue of overflow and addition errors. The number 01111111 represents +127 in this system. Add 1 to it, and you get 10000000, which represents -0. Add 1 to this, and you get 10000001, representing -1. As a result, you need a separate handler for adding/subtracting from a negative number.

The solution? The Two's Complement representation. There's a bunch of marginally-complex math behind it, but basically, +127 is represented as 01111111, while 10000000 represents -128. This increases to 11111111 representing -1, and good old 00000000 representing 0. As a result, two's complement supports values in the range [-2⁷, 2⁷ -1] given 8 bits of data.


Long story short, this is why some old games have values that go up to 255, while others cap out at 127. The guys using 127 are using signed integers, meaning they have potential support for negative values too. 

[Culise]

In binary, you can have either a 1 or a 0, I believe. That results in a number of two as a bit (since you can have 2 options) and a byte is 2^8 bits. Therefore, he is correct in saying it is 256 bits.

Or something like that. I can't remember properly.

1 bit allows you a number 0-1.
2 bits allows you between 0 and 3
3 bits allow you 0-7
4 bits allow you 0-15
5 bits: 0-31
6 bits: 0-63
7 bits: 0-127
8 bits: 0-255, this is called a byte


Useless old-school trivia: one digit of a byte in hexadecimal (meaning, half of the bits) is called a nibble.

Or, to follow the example set by the byte, a nybble.  Hence the old joke from these relatively memory-scarce days, real programmers don't take big bytes; they just nybble a bit. 

[Metalax]

More on topic, I don't remember ever running into overflow in the original X-COM. Was that actually something that could happen in a regular playthrough (albeit rare) or would you have to hack their attributes to get them high enough?

Psi Skill was the only one that could overflow in an unhacked game, as psi-lab training would still add 1-3 points each month even after reaching the nominal cap of 100.

[umiman]

I gave up trying to play marathon mode on impossible so I switched my gears.

I'm almost finished with a "every single second wave option except marathon" on impossible ironman. However, I realized something when I was building the Gallup chamber.... I forgot that foundries exist. As in, I never researched it, never built it, I literally forgot every single thing about it. I only got to thinking about it because I remembered from past games that Mutons were supposed to give you extra ammo but I never had it in this one.

So it got me thinking, what else did I completely ignore and not need in my run. I didn't research and get:
1. Any power other than the standard one.
2. SHIVs.
3. Titan armour. Had no need for it.
4. Laboratories. Seriously. I didn't have a single one. Vahlen must have hated me.

Turns out you can actually play quite well without labs and workshops. You don't even need titan armour surprisingly as carapace is enough to protect you from oneshots most of the time.

I think I'm satisfied with my end result though. Not going to bother going through the entire tedious ending mission again. It's honestly a bit sad that this game lends itself really badly to replayability.

[Sharp]

Turns out you can actually play quite well without labs and workshops. You don't even need titan armour surprisingly as carapace is enough to protect you from oneshots most of the time.

Wait what? You saying your playing on impossible? Carpace saves me from being one shot by sectoids, thin-men can still oneshot, mutons (and elite mutons especially) can one shot colonels in carpace, heck thats possible on classic let alone impossible.

Me on impossible is whole team with titan armour just because anything else can be one shot killed.

Also I need the muton ammo and thinmen medkit upgrades.

[Samio]

Savescumming and focusing entirely on satellite coverage, if I remember correctly.

I tried that... it was part of why I was fighting Mutons and Cyberdisks with assault rifles.

And I don't see how it could be done too still. I lost Nigeria after the first month, without losing a single mission. In fact I completed 4 abduction missions and shot down two UFOs as well as completed the Council's special mission. After that it went completely downhill because while I *only* lost Nigeria, at that point about half the planet was at orange status.

By the time I gave up I was down to North America and South America only... because those were the only places I managed to rush the satellites to.

This is why mods are important! If I remember correctly there's a mod called Warspace or something that makes it so that you lose only the countries that are abducted, not the continents.  But purely vanilla? Well, you'd need to be superhuman. Get the reference? Eh? Eh? No? *Cough*

[Damiac]

Since we're on a binary kick...

An 8-bit data field can contain 2⁸ = 256 possible values. What these values actually represent depends on your system.

Using that byte as an unsigned integer, you have the possible values [0, 2⁸ - 1] == [0, 255]. In this system, the value 0 is represented by the bit pattern 00000000, and the value 255 is represented by 11111111.

Life gets more complicated with signed integers, or values that could be negative as well as positive. The simplest version is to use the highest bit as a 'sign bit' - anything of the form 0xxxxxxx is positive, while 1xxxxxxx represents a negative number. The problem is, the byte "00000000" and "10000000" mean "0" and "-0", which means you're wasting space.
There's also the issue of overflow and addition errors. The number 01111111 represents +127 in this system. Add 1 to it, and you get 10000000, which represents -0. Add 1 to this, and you get 10000001, representing -1. As a result, you need a separate handler for adding/subtracting from a negative number.

The solution? The Two's Complement representation. There's a bunch of marginally-complex math behind it, but basically, +127 is represented as 01111111, while 10000000 represents -128. This increases to 11111111 representing -1, and good old 00000000 representing 0. As a result, two's complement supports values in the range [-2⁷, 2⁷ -1] given 8 bits of data.


Long story short, this is why some old games have values that go up to 255, while others cap out at 127. The guys using 127 are using signed integers, meaning they have potential support for negative values too. 

The other problem with the high bit representing + or - is that you then can't properly do binary math with the numbers anymore. So you need a more complex process to do math with positive and negative numbers.  If you use two's complement, the math works fine, except for the one issue of overflows, but those are always going to be a problem with limited space. (in other words, 01111111 = +127, add one to that, you end up with 10000000, which comes out to -128.  Oops.  Works fine the other way though, 11111111 = -1, add 1 to that, you get 00000000, since the last 1 overflowed off the left edge, and you get the right answer, 0) 

A cool thing about two's complement (and it's decimal equivalent, 10's complement) is that you can do subtraction by addition with it.  For a computer, that means you don't need a seperate process to do subtraction.  For a person, it means you can subtract using just addition (if you're into that sort of thing, or if the - button on your calculator is broken or something...)

Read up on the two's complement article if you're interested in that sort of thing.  It's pretty cool, if you're a big math nerd...

[umiman]

Turns out you can actually play quite well without labs and workshops. You don't even need titan armour surprisingly as carapace is enough to protect you from oneshots most of the time.

Wait what? You saying your playing on impossible? Carpace saves me from being one shot by sectoids, thin-men can still oneshot, mutons (and elite mutons especially) can one shot colonels in carpace, heck thats possible on classic let alone impossible.

Me on impossible is whole team with titan armour just because anything else can be one shot killed.

Also I need the muton ammo and thinmen medkit upgrades.

Well, you never get oneshot killed if you never get shot at. I should explain. I lucked out at the start of this run because one of the starting recruits had an aim of 90+ that eventually became a super godmode sniper that never misses. I used him in every single mission and he became a colonel before I even got to the underground base. After that point he could carry me through every single mission and sure while i would take losses from people being in the wrong place here and there, as long as I had that sniper, I couldn't lose.

Not being able to miss and being able to kill 3 aliens in one turn are damn good traits. Essentially wipes out an entire alien squad in one go. He's got more kills than all my other soldiers combined. Also a Scotsman.

So I could save all my resources from building erroneous stuff and put them into preventing the world from going to hell. Not to mention I barely have any money because of all the second wave options that shut you down as the situation gets worse.

After awhile of that all my guys are now colonels with plasma stuff so they can kill everything in one turn as well. There's no need for armour as nothing can shoot them and my liberal use of hunker down. I even have a few assaults with 120 aim. How can you possibly lose with those kinds of godly soldiers? Basically every single guy except supports can attack twice. There is nothing in this game that can stop them within the first turn.

[kilakan]

Surprise sectopod missile barrage in 3....2.....1....

[umiman]

That reminds me of people talking about the units appearing out of nowhere in the middle of your team.

I used to think it was fake, until I started playing again recently and it's been happening constantly. I guess one of the patches introduced it or something, it honestly is pretty irritating.