Messages

391

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Spawning missions at base coords

« on: May 11, 2020, 04:49:07 pm »

Maybe we can have syntax like that to solve the problem:

Code: [Select]

alienMissions:
  - type: STR_ALIEN_RETALIATION
    points: 0
    objective: 4
    spawnUfo: STR_BATTLESHIP # Vanilla - Spawned for the final retaliation run
    baseDefenseCustomDeployment: STR_BATTLESHIP #case we still want base defense without any ufo
    customMissionDeploument: STR_CULT_SAFEHOUSE #custom deployment, that would be spawned on top of the base
so before we to spawn a ufo with

Code: [Select]

const RuleUfo &battleshipRule = *mod.getUfo(_rule.getSpawnUfo(), true);
const UfoTrajectory &assaultTrajectory = *mod.getUfoTrajectory(UfoTrajectory::RETALIATION_ASSAULT_RUN, true);
Ufo *ufo = new Ufo(&battleshipRule, game.getId("STR_UFO_UNIQUE"));
ufo->setMissionInfo(this, &assaultTrajectory);
we can choose to spawn base defence with deployment `data:` loaded from `baseDefenseCustomDeployment:` or even just spawn a mission site within region's xcom base coordinates using `customMissionDeploument:`. I think we can process each rules suquencially using something like if(!ruleProperty.empty()), or pick only one with priorities customMissionDeploument -> baseDefenseCustomDeployment -> spawnUfo.

Also, I looked at how to tweak base defense deployment to make special one and end up to use the dirty hack, that is working more or less ok for FTA, but to make a general solution to use other properties other than `data` for baseDefenseCustomDeployment case it looks to me we should do a big job with battlsescape generation.

392

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 13, 2020, 01:42:13 am »

The most stupid thing in TFTD to me was that if USOs can fly over land, why can't they fly over water? It's faster, nothing limits them to hover as much time the RNG wants, so its also not about resources. The only explanation that the game engine does not allow that, and its sad to hear such an explanation for full price game, that was realized by a big dev studio.

393

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 12, 2020, 10:42:32 pm »

If it was possible to merge those two ideas though...

What if mission sites had an altitude assigned to them, also. That would allow for much more complex mechanics of which craft can go where without more complexity on the modding side.

What I mean is if a craft has a max altitude of 80,000 feet and a min altitude of 0, then it can intercept most UFO's and do ground/aerial(If it's implemented this would be possible) missions while a craft with max altitude 1000 feet and min altitude -800 feet or something would be able to do underwater missions and land missions but nothing in the air. Even better, it would also simplify things like space missions or moon missions where craft that can go to them simply needs to have a high enough or low enough max/min altitude to get there.


P.S. I think this is a more effective all-round solution, but would probably be more difficult to implement.

To me, it looks like this is a very different story for implementation in code. I mean, what you want with interception is an INTERCEPTION. When you choose to land on a site, it's not a UFO anymore, its a deployment. It has no altitude as a class property, it has depth instead. We already have it and we don't need anything more. What altitude of mission site? Alien base? Why do we need artificially make it if we already have all we need? I really can't understand this.

To me, this altitude think is a very different case in realisation (as I can imagine it) and can be handled separately. I can't see also how that can really change the situation with space missions. We have both space and moon missions, and they are handled ok (well, it could be done better, but only if we would have not only one globe at a time )

UPD:

... Even better, it would also simplify things like space missions or moon missions where craft that can go to them simply needs to have a high enough or low enough max/min altitude to get there.

How it could ever help? I mean, we already have maxAltitude. What exactly would be easier? Making mission sites that are floating too high? Cant startingConditions help?

394

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 12, 2020, 09:27:46 pm »

But your solution with altitude has nothing common to what we suggested here, and it alone would not solve our problem, because those 2 mechanics are not connected. As we can place submarine carrier craft on true land and if limit it to only your "negative" altitude, it would be unable to move anywhere!

395

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 12, 2020, 05:15:26 pm »

Guys, please correct me if I'm wrong. Let's operate on the engine terminology. I understand there are two concepts-- altitude and depth, and they're not related to each other. Altitude is how high an object flies on a geoscape. In TFTD, this parameter works the same way, just for the player in translation its value is turned upside down. And there is depth - this is a property of the terrain and the deployment will take this value from the terrain on which it finds itself. So, as Nord said, these parameters are of different kinds and in fact have no relation to each other, as far as I understand.

If I'm right, our suggestion has nothing to do with either the fakeUnderwater texture property or the altitude (of what? UFOs that are flying around?). It has to do with the depth of the deployment that the XCOM craft is going to fly and land on. This depth of deployment will be obtained either from the terrain of the texture on which it finds itself, or from the terrain that is represented in the deployment itself (for example, missions cargo ships, although they will be on fakeUnderwater, will have their own terrain with a depth 0, so they do not need a submarine). I understand that it is possible to specify depth in the deployment itself, but I do not know how they interact with the depth that comes from the terrain. I think the depth of deployment is used, but that's just my intuition.

396

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 12, 2020, 04:01:57 pm »

If a solution is to be implement in this, please don't do it just purely for XCF. Please do it for the benefit of all the other Hybrid mods as well. Most of the other Hybrid features implemented prior were designed not for just one mod.

I don't think only XCF could use this feature. In any mode where the developer would like to make different crafts for surface and underwater operations, this property will be very handy to use. I'm just saying that from my point of view, this suggestion is mechanically in no way related to what you want for your hybrid mod. As Nord correctly said, depth is a parameter from battlescape and that's all we need. We don't need to introduce other, much more complex mechanics for that.

Negative UFO trajectory altitudes and underwater intercepts are very different mechanics to what we asked.

397

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 12, 2020, 02:32:15 pm »

I believe Solarius is doing XCF for UFO, not TFTD.

Of course, that is obvious! I said that because it is based on the same engine, so it does not matter, I can use the same properties, that are used for tftd mods.

Of trajectories, interception and altitudes are not related to the topic. I believe, when deployment is formed and presented on geoscape with its marker, it already has some depth. It can take it from the terrain, or it can be set on deployments rulesets itself. So, deployments on true land would always have depth = 0, like vanilla xcom1. Textures with fakeUnderwater: true would have terrains listed that would have depth > 0. With that, we could split crafts, that are going to land at these deployments, having crafts only for true land operations (car, helicopters, etc), and for underwater operations.

So ufo trajectories, altitude, interception is not related to the topic.

398

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: Land/Underwater craft setting

« on: April 11, 2020, 10:36:38 pm »

I am a newbie in tftd modding, and I played tftd once when I was 8, so I can't say for sure. But as far as understood ruleset reference - this is only for interception and only because of craft weapon property. If it is possible, I would very welcome some advice on how to do what we need.

399

OXCE Suggestions Rejected / Re: Economic expansion in X-com

« on: April 11, 2020, 10:33:34 pm »

More interesting question - would OXCE devs agree to have such optional feature 

400

OXCE Suggestions Rejected / Re: Economic expansion in X-com

« on: April 11, 2020, 09:05:48 pm »

With that approach values from rules would be base for calculations, and in save there would be the only modification for that value. I don't think it's so hard to save an array of items, only case not that obvious for me at this point is forming that array after buying and selling, but it's possible to handle, I think. Btw, relaxation could be made with this - on monthly debriefing, we get all that value for each item and reduce it by some fixed factor. Its all should be optional ofc, under some global vars (one for enabling the model and one for relaxation factor)

401

OXCE Suggestions Rejected / Re: Economic expansion in X-com

« on: April 10, 2020, 05:26:13 pm »

I think the easiest and most necessary part here is the rule that the more you sell an item, the lower the selling price of that item. Maybe it makes sense to make a property in an object that introduces a coefficient to this formula. Say, selling trophy AK-47s after some time will not be so profitable, but rare and valuable mind probes will always be in price.
All this might be quite good for correcting a problem that I often hear about in XCF - in lategame the economy breaks down and the value of money is no longer there. Of course, this needs to be fixed in the mod itself, and only modifying the engine for this is not the clearest way. In addition, we will have to store in a save file a quantity for each sold item, and read this quantity every time the sale price is calculated.
By the way, if you store this data in a save file - we could do this - by buying an item we reduce the value in the counter, and by selling - we increase it. We can store negative numbers, right? Then one integer will be used to modify the price of buying and selling, and selling a lot of items, and then buying them, you could correct the dynamics.
But still, these rather massive changes in the mechanisms of the game, will only implement the simplest mechanics, price changes will be a constant parameter and there will be no relaxation of supply and demand, this is a separate mechanics.

I can't say that this is a priority thing, although in my opinion it would help solve some problems. If we define the design, I can work on the implementation, it seems not to hard - we need advance of the methods of getting the price and incrementing of new records on items in save after approving buy/sell (and output them in save).

402

OXCE Support / Re: Visual help space for modders.

« on: April 08, 2020, 01:16:51 pm »

I'm not asking for a scrollbar on a tooltip, that's pervert.
Just saying that we have 320x200 pixels; and modders like to overdo everything...

meleeAlter may be rare in XCF, but it's not rare in Piratez for example.
OXCE is not made for XCF, it's made for everybody.

And if something looks ugly, I prefer not taking it at all over letting it be ugly.

Right now, we have vanilla pedia and we have stats for nerds... I understand you want to make something inbetween.
I wish you good luck (honestly!), but I reserve the right to not merge it if I don't like it. That's all.

I completely agree with you on all points. Of course, when it comes to developing OXCE, I don't just think about XCF, but try to take into account all the mods. In a recent commit, I deliberately set the defaults for the new properties to be rather uncomfortable for XCF, but that way they won't affect any mods that already use related mechanics.
Yesterday I tried to do a little digging in the code on these tooltips, but nothing is productive yet - I am too inexperienced. Of course, if I take this seriously, I will inform about the details of the implementation, in order to avoid doing things that are not suitable for OXCE, there is no profit for me in this.
If I get away from the topic of pop-up tooltips a bit and consider my excitement about the hidden section of damageAlter for the player. I'd like to suggest adding an * sign after the value of power to the ufopedia item article if the rules describe the damageAlter or meleeAlter section for that item whose power value.

403

OXCE Support / Re: Visual help space for modders.

« on: April 07, 2020, 05:49:38 pm »

If the modder puts too long a description of ufopedia article, it will be cut, and it is fine to everyone for years. Probably we can add a scroll to a tooltip, and I saw good realizations of such UI elements. But come on. I think it's insane for a real mod that people play to use more than 10, well 15 additional properties. That could fit. Ok, maybe some handling with text resize. Let's be realistic. I can, for example, using Memmaker python tools or whatever other game designer tools to check how many entities could be in the mods like piratez or xcf, or twots, add, say, 5 to that value and it would be fine to me. I think such a tooltip can fit real people's needs. If it exceeded that reasonable value, well, dear modder, your weapon is lame, sorry, your player would have to go to the info to read full of its properties.

UPD:
I think in case we will have both meleeAlter and damageAlter on same item extremely rare and cutting it with asking the player to look for more details in INFO is fine. Also, a lot of properties have attached bool to define random. so, it would be good to merge such properties in one line in the tooltip. For example, `toHealth: 0.55` and `randomHealth: true` could be shown "To Health: 0.55; Random.", without showing "; Random" if `randomHealth: false`. So in the end entities count could be much less.

404

OXCE Support / Re: Visual help space for modders.

« on: April 07, 2020, 05:06:57 pm »

I think if we talk about pop-ups, we should just talk about additional information, which is easier to get. At the very least - for information that is absolutely no other way to display to the player. For example, I really like the idea of showing the values of the damageAlter section in a small window that pops up by clicking on the power value in ufopedia. For example, you can put * next to the number of the power value to show the player that there is something behind it. Sometimes weapons in the mod are made in such a way that the damageAlter section fundamentally affects the final damage, and the value of power compared to this becomes even less important information. In addition, I'd also display a method for calculating damage and armor penetration and armor efficiency if they differ from the default values. From my experience in XCF, these parameters dramatically change the effectiveness of a weapon, and to find out that they are not set by default, you need to view all types of ammunition for a weapon via INFO.  Doing it for all types of weapons to see if it's not a fun activity for me. As far as I can see, many players have no idea about these properties at all, as their value for the game is not obvious to them (it is not vanilla and as far as I know there are no full descriptions to all of them). That's why they don't understand why guns are so different, although it doesn't come from the value of power alone.

405

OpenXcom Extended / Re: OXCE (OpenXcom Extended) main thread

« on: April 06, 2020, 02:21:11 am »

I never noticed such AI behavior in vanilla. Once I found the last alien hiding in my Skyranger in vanilla =)