OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Work In Progress => Topic started by: jackstraw2323 on November 09, 2014, 05:54:40 am
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REPO opened on bitbucket
https://bitbucket.org/thridda/openxcom-war-of-shadows (https://bitbucket.org/thridda/openxcom-war-of-shadows)
Wanted to start a conversation about what I'm working on.
Background: It sort of bugged me that we never really got a sequel with decent continuity. I.E. you start off in TFTD with more junk equipment...So here's my take.
Overview: After the end of the First Alien War and the colonization of mars the alien forces are in disarray. There needs to be some kind of response but the amount of blood and treasure spent doesn't leave them with many options. Into this power vacuum steps an ethereal with a unique vision of how to proceed. Plasma based weapons will not be used due to their expense, and other alien races will not be flown in. A small team will establish a base on planet and begin building a new army from an array of local materials. There will be an entirely new set of races to contend with. In the interim without a direct threat, X-com will have had funding cut and materials scrapped or sold. Starting players will have 3 or 4 old plasma rifles and maybe 6 clips. Elerium has been mined almost to exhaustion on Mars and is available for purchase at very high rates. (My current estimate is something like 60,000 for 1 unit of Elerium as I'm trying to simulate the expense of mining and shipping a super rare energy source in a capitalist structure).
Status: I'm planning on setting up a public repo, possibly on bitbucket, maybe github. So far I've got the groundwork laid for 2 sets of aliens and their terror units. I think they are interesting enough conceptually and tactically to seem distinct from the previous game. Artwork assets are in progress for the aliens, and I've got the prelims done on a new HWP mech.
Clearly there's tons to do, outside of just aliens and weapons. I haven't even started looking at research trees, translation strings, or deployments. I'm trying to work in a modular way so that each piece can be used standalone for playtesting.
A quick Question
1. Is it possible to change the rewards for UFO capture? I's like to change the economy and keep elerium super rare, or even remove completely from the alien transports.
Edit: 7-29-19 added revised rules from Meridian (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1702)
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yes, easily. specific item spawning rules are available to map blocks in the ruleset, and these override any default "put elerium in engines" behaviour. see the alien base terrain in the ruleset for more info.
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I like the idea of the Ethereal taking over. I always wondered why the aliens with all their resources NEVER had any backup brain at all, I mean even ant queens aren't irreplacable (for their species, not their tribe).
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It's possible there might be another brain in the network. But you would still need some primary prosecutor of the war with some new ideas, since clearly the old approach failed.
I'm working on multiple avenues right now, so progress is slow. I'm trying to lay out a planning document before I throw up the raw material to version control.
Sprites seem to be my current time sink. I'd debated on switching drawing routines for one unit to use Routine 4 (Ethreals, humans) since it's simpler, but because I might have units picking up other weapons it might be preferable to have all of the variations.
I've got a pallet swapped muton standing in for one alien, which may work okay in the context of the story, but I'd like to draw one up from scratch eventually. I'm hopeful that once I've got something more concrete I can attract some other people who want to contribute.
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Current Graphics Progress
Race: Mechanoids
Infiltrator: Done. Very happy about the death animation.
Jarhead: 64 sprites remaining to finish. Mostly arms and aiming positions.
Will-o-Wisp: Done, but could be improved. Not sold on current animation rotation or color choices.
Items: a few odds and ends around the conventional weapons. Not happy with the tactical rifle. I want it to echo the first rifle, but look like a good upgrade. Just doesn't feel right yet. I suspect my rearranging of the barrel hood made it look skinnier, and that's translating into a less aggressive look, when I want something that is supposed to feel like a good upgrade to the conventional rifle, somewhere in early mid to mid game, with the possibility of being a late game option.
HWP Jaeger. Base graphics done, but I really need to recolor and add accent colors for contrast etc. Some of it could stand to get redrawn between facings, but it's a decent starting point.
Race: Sleepers
I have about 3 separate units based on CIVM or CIVF that I'd like to tweak. In particular the two Sympathizers need something more normal looking and more threatening than just bermuda shorts guy. I'm currently thinking something like swat gear for the higher level sympathizer. I still like the challenge of the graphics being the same as the CIV units for the lower level sympathizer as it adds an extra dimension of challenge to terror missions.
Race: Fungoids
Currently I've got a pallet swapped muton standing in for the main work horse of this group. I need to animate the terror unit using the DOGE.PCK as a model as it's a 4 legged creature. I've got a single facing done there and I think it's an interesting enough model.
Rules progress.
I've got a fair amount done for SLEEPERS and MECHANOID units/deployments. Almost ready for some reasonable play testing. Deployments are thinly written right now and I want to understand them a bit more to try and tailor the loadouts and units in the terror mission. It's unclear to me how units/weapons are chosen in the terror mission.
Question: Are there always 2 terror units? My last test I didn't see any of my designated terror units, but it's possible my rule wasn't correct.
Storyline progress.
Not much written down at the moment but some solid ideas I'm kicking around about the how and why of our particular conflict. I don't know if anyone here has gone back and watched the end of XCOM:UFO Defense, but the ending is sort of hilariously bad. The giant brain says "we should cooperate, it would be great" and then some trigger happy cowboy blasts it with hot plasma before it can finish the offer. I mean, yeah they were invading and killing lots of people, but hear the brain out first man. Find out where it hid the alien gold or whatever first. So our sympathizers most likely have at least some notion of what went down and don't agree with the outcome. What if we had joined forces? It's clear from the XCOM:EW game as well that the Ethereals have some need of human DNA if not human ideas.
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Can we please, please see some graphics?
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Okay. Finished my sprite for the jarhead soldier so I've got the first leg of the Mechanoids finished. There's some bleed over with the Sleepers as the Infiltrator is in both groups at the moment. I'm attaching my Rules the mechanoids, Revised conventional weapons that includes updated artwork for my Tactical Rifle which is intended as a solid midgame option, 3 sets of ammo for the TAC rifle, a deployment set for the aliens that starts them off with standard weapons and alloy rounds, and something the german / japanese engineers cooked up that's a bit stronger than our standard tanks.
Mostly small scout and terror are all that's working as intended, but I just ran a terror mission with only tac rifles, no extra armor and only lost one or two team members and got a good rating. Probably still needs some balancing, esp since I haven't added in the other terror unit for the Mechanoids yet. After doing the sprites for the mechanoid I'd love to find someone to collaborate with as it's just very time consuming to make new drawingRoutine 4 units. I've got at least 2 of those to do still, and at least 2 or 3 routine 4's.
Have fun play testing and let me know what you find/think so far. Numbers are raw and subject to adjustment, but the intent is for jarheads to be pretty damage resistant.
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Small launcher wont be a viable option. However there is this. It's a "tiny" bit bigger, but it beats stun batons for bringing down aliens for capture.
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bit of a refinement on the artwork for the Jaeger MK I. Still thinking about trying to tie in paint scheme, but the red and white always looked silly to me. Went with alien alloy base.
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Sure looks cool 8)
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Making decent progress on rule sets. Also some quick artwork in spots. Got a palletswapped xops armor for swat gear on my sympathizer soldiers. Some bigObs for assorted weapons, getting to them as I feel like it.
Was going to declare Mechanoids mostly finished for testing purposes, but decided to not have the Will-O-Wisp terror unit persist into their section. Instead looking at a Mechtoid Hybrid. Don't get too excited because there's a lot of art to create for this but at least one facing is partially baked.
Started on Puffer animations but ran into a snag as walk animation is 7 frames total and my unit has 4 legs, so I've got a weird gait going on. Not sure how noticeable it will be without more testing. I thought about converting to a floating unit to save some animation time but I really like the spidery version right now.
Really enjoying playing with shotgun style weapons at the moment, but trying to find a good balance as they get out of hand quickly and I don't want to feature too many of the same type of weapons. I'm considering changing the short range zombie weapon to use a spread just for randomness, but haven't decided yet. It's very short range and I don't have a sense yet of how it would play psychologically. I want scary and I want them to be a concern when the player sees the unit, but I also want it to not be cheap or unmanageable, particularly with virulant zombies being the result. I think I've just got to play test it.
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This is all on repo, but thought getting my planning document up would be good. Should help keep me focused a bit. It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of drawing a bigOb when I should be doing something macro.
Additional thought. Should write a small mod that creates X-Com race / deployment with various arms / armor for testing new weapons with. Probably faster than giving the weapons to aliens and waiting for them to shoot me.
This is all in Markdown, so no idea if it's going to translate 100%
# TODO #
## GENERAL ##
* How to remove existing aliens?
* Rebalance Economy
* How to set final mission completion requirements / final message screen or movie
## UNITS ##
------
### XCOM ###
* JAEGER MK II Sprite and Rul
### Sleepers ###
* Sympathizer Sprite / Reskin Civ M and Update Civ M
* Priest Sprite
* Balance stats / deployments
### Mechanoids ###
* Mechtoid Sprite
* Balance stats / deployments
### Fungoids ###
* Improved Fungoid Sprite
* Puffer Sprite
* Balance stats / deployments
* Zombie Reskin to match new CIV M
### Chimeras ###
* Minotaur Sprite (Reuse cow from abduction?)
* Siphonophore Sprite
* Siphonophore Rul
* Drone Sprite
* Balance stats / deployments
### Cult of Cydonia ###
* High Priest Rul
* High Priest Sprite / Reskin of Priest
* Ethreal Cultist Rul
* Ethreal Cultist Reskin
* Ethreal Form 1 Rul - Final Leader
* Ethreal Form 2 Rul - Mutation
* Ethreal Form 3 Rul - Transcendence
* Ethreal Form 1 Sprite
* Ethreal Form 2 Sprite
* Ethreal Form 3 Sprite
## ITEMS ##
------
New Armor?
### BIGOB ###
* COMPACT BLASTER
* SPITTER
* SPORE VARIANTS
* ALIEN CORPSES
* SATCHEL CHARGE
### HANDOB ###
* TAC RIFLE
* RAILGUN
* SPITTER
* SPINEGUN
* SATCHEL CHARGE
* HYBRID PLASMA
* STORMGUN
* HEAVY RAILGUN
### FLOOROB ###
* TAC RIFLE
* RAILGUN
* SPITTER
* SPINEGUN
* SPORES
* SATCHEL CHARGE
* ALIEN CORPSES
* JAEGER CORPSE
### BULLETS ###
* COMPACT BLASTER
## VEHICLES ##
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* Add a low end / mid range option. Alloy Fighter.
* Craft with Better HWP Storage / Exits.
## DEPLOYMENTS ##
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* Balance equipment levels for deployments
## RESEARCH ##
------
* Develop ideal order - Compare to original and work backwards
* Price out research hours
* Some items researchable but don't produce direct usability. Mostly Organics.
## MANUFACTURE ##
------
* TIME / Price / Requirements for all new equipment
* Jaeger requires a soldier corpse. Possibly a Mechtoid Corpse.
## UFOPEDIA ##
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* Identify necessary entries
* Write Entries for all items
## UFO TRAJECTORIES ##
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* Come up with sleeper trajectories
## ALIEN MISSIONS ##
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* Figure out which missions go with which aliens
## WAVES ##
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* Decide on how to parcel out Waves to ensure Sleepers are the first engangement that then slides into mechtoids.
## ECONOMY ##
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* Establish costs of all alien tech / corpses. Negative costs on some equipment for disposal? Spores, Zombies, Puffers.
* Reprice Elerium
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Lots of interesting stuff coming up! I am looking forward to this. I also had the idea of a human cult/alien sympathizers for early enemies but no will to do the sprites yet.
Regarding how to remove existing aliens: Have you tried setting raceWeights to 0? It should do it for most of them. The only problem is with the first mission in the game. It is hard coded to be a sectoid research mission in the same region as the player's first base and I don't think you can change that (although you might work around that by redefining what it is to be a sectoid!).
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Lots of interesting stuff coming up! I am looking forward to this. I also had the idea of a human cult/alien sympathizers for early enemies but no will to do the sprites yet.
Regarding how to remove existing aliens: Have you tried setting raceWeights to 0? It should do it for most of them. The only problem is with the first mission in the game. It is hard coded to be a sectoid research mission in the same region as the player's first base and I don't think you can change that (although you might work around that by redefining what it is to be a sectoid!).
Hadn't really looked at it yet as I've been deep in other pieces, but was wondering if I was going to have to redefine the existing races as a hack. I'll ook at the suggestion once I'm a bit closer to doing more than tactical simulations.
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Added sprites for low level sympathizers/civM. Basically Exalt style dress or bankers. Took a smuggler sprite from the Piratez mod and redid the hair, took off the armored vest and added a tie. Swanky. Also finished sprite for fungoid terror unit. Need to reskin my beta-zombie and swap out civM with something that doesn't look like a kid in shorts. Possibly reuse the civm_2.
Fungoids and their weapons are probably complete enough that I can start play testing them. Organic weapon stats seem out of whack at the moment, but I'm not fielding armored soldiers, and I think I gave fungoids pretty heavy resistance to damage, particularly plasma. Took me a little bit to figure out that terror units were rank 6 and 7 in deployments. Looks like they have no gear by default, which most of the time is good, but wonder if something's going to break if I throw in something like a story item that's research only? Or if I add plasma rifles and the unit is a living weapon will it still equip? I've definitely seen my terror units pick up guns even though they are living weapons.
Once I've got a Priest sprite I can probably wrap up the basics for the Sleeper Cells. Still lots of other work to be done like the deployments and supplementary graphics. but they would at least be ready for full play testing to tweak arms/armor/stats vs. various levels of arms.
Need to take some time to look at research trees and plan out progression. It feels like I've got some alien tech holes as far as weapon progression, and I want it to feel like the aliens are responding to your escalation as well, rather than just swapping out heavy plasma for plasma rifles.
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Successfully overrode the Alien Missions percentages so my first race shows up. Needs more testing but looks promising. Also lost 4 soldiers, but I was being careless. More balancing needed. Also need to look at alien weights for the individual ufos, as the unit mix may have not been what I wanted at this stage.
Added graphics for Warboy's shotgun, but haven't implemented yet. on OSX the rule for a handob folder vs a single sprite crashes the game, so I rerolled into a single PNG file. Added the Sniper rifle, but needs tweaking. Feels sort of inaccurate at the moment and my damage vs armor/health numbers may be off. So I need to decide if the units need to have lower baselines or if the rifle needs higher output. Still feels a bit random that a hit vs. a standard human wouldn't bring them down.
Research tree is starting to coalesce, but needs tweaking I'm sure. Feels like the mechtoids contain the bulk of the tree, and they are potentially the 1.5/2 wave of aliens, but capturing one will prove difficult.
Need to think more on armor, I want there to be an extra tier but I'm also trying to keep the game at about the same length as original. Still trying to figure out how to limit or remove lasers from the game. They feel unbalanced a bit to me. Unlimited ammo is very unrealistic at current tech levels, so maybe clip based versions are the answer, but I also want to close them off from the beginning of the game. Considering tying them to the advanced batteries from the mechtoids. That feels right to me, but might seem like too much of deviation to others.
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Background/storyline/setting are starting to develop well. I've now got good reasons/explanations of equipment differences due to economic and geopolitical considerations. I also like where some aspects are headed because I feel that it doesn't conflict with x-com apocalypse storyline, and possibly compliments. TFTD never sat right with me, and now that I'm older it feels like a wasted opportunity from a story perspective.
Both Alien Alloys and Elerium are known items in this universe, but in general too expensive to use. I will probably allow a few classic items to be manufactured (plasma rifle, maybe the blaster bomb) but in general the lower costs of the new research tree/materials should make them a better alternative for most cases, though as I'm currently conceiving you could save your cash and outfit a squad in the classic gear at immense cost.
Ideally the configuration of the new aliens and their gear will provide enough variation to make this more than x-com plus some extra weapons.
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Need to finish the rule and deployment, but got my mechtoid HWP sprite done.
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ugh. Knee deep in balance issues. Trying to get progression and armor/weapons/challenge right and i have a spreadsheet of armors vs weapons. I guess this is FUN? things feel out of whack at the moment. Need to do some tweaking on lasers as they just feel lame. Armor boosts are an interesting avenue, needs more research.
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Feeling a bit better about progress. Got to do some fun sprites for the cult priest / high priest. Not sure if that's just a pallet swap yet. Also created my Ethereal Cultists with drawing routine 21. Shortened up a plasma rifle from XOPS work for my plasma carbine. Pretty happy with how it came out. Thinking I need to be conservative with sprite creation. Most of the heavy lifting is in the new units and the ufopedia sections. Weapon sprites are plentiful in the wild so I should consider using what's out there unless there's just nothing appropriate at all.
Starting work on the MKII jaeger as well, should be a bit faster as I'm not animating walking for a flying unit. I think Sleepers and Mechtoids are basically functional at this point. Fungoids are probably as well, though like the sleepers there's a bit of sprite tweaking I'd like to do.
Considering changing the rule for the infiltrator since the drawing routine doesn't include aiming arms. I could manually include the arms and artwork for a single weapon and just make it a living weapon that's also recoverable. Though saying that out loud now would complicate my research/manufacturing tree as the weapon is intended to be terrestrial in nature. I could make it some kind of alloy version, but that's not really something I've planned on to this point, and I think it might be necessary complication for a sprite that's good enough as it stands.
As far as aliens go. Still have my final boss to construct, and the whole set of Chimeras to generate. I think I can get away with a simple tweak for the Minotaur, could recycle the hallucinoid for the siphonophore since we're talking related families, and then I only really have to do the routine for the Drone, which I could cheat on a bit since it's flying and has no real legs. See Tentaculat for an almost complete lack of animation or moving parts. Actually that's not a bad idea, looks like facings plus one animation frame for movement. Still I'd prefer to have a couple of extra animation frames so maybe something like the floater would be more appropriate.
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Starting to mine some E.U. materials as well. Lookie what I made from a simple down-sample. Could use some refinement, but this is a good start...
Working on my Ethereal Leader using the EU version as a model. Mostly just involves creating the helmet sprite and some additional robe trim. Coming along nicely. Still need to figure out how I want multi form to work, and what those transformations should be or look like, but I've got some ideas.
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Whew. Final boss form 1 and transformation done. Form 2 may take a bit because there's more total custom sprites to do. But flying unit so no walking animation thankfully, also no weapons held so that's easier as well. Not totally happy with the first part of the transform around frames 4-8 but I was starting to rush. Probably need to figure out my transform art routine on form2->3 so I back back port elements to form 1->2
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Forms 2 and 3 drafts done with basic rule implemented. Still have to tweak but that was a big chunk. The only remaining custom alien unit is the drone.
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Just wanted to pop in and say you have an awesome looking mod here. Don't be discouraged by the lack of posts from other users; I'm sure quite a few people are keeping their eye on this. I really like the art style, by the way. It's nice and unique while still looking like it belongs. I thought it reminded me of Supreme Commander at first, but I can't quite figure out where my brain thinks you got your inspiration from.
If you need any help, let me know. I probably can't help much with sprites, but I'd be willing to do some of the dirty work as far as rulesets go if you'd like. Either way, best of luck with development. I'm looking forward to messing around with it in the future.
-Red
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It's a blend of influences, with some stuff from the latest xcom rolled in. I wanted to try and have it feel like it belonged in the same universe. Thanks for the encouragement, I sort of figured I'd see more comments once I released something officially.
If you'd like to help there's definitely lots to do still.
Research tree is only partially baked
Economy will need to balanced
Ufopedia has to be written/implemented
Missions/deployments need work/balance
Haven't thought much about maps yet, but would like to do some work there.
Need to rebalance air combat and put in some other transports
My TODO.md and readme.md cover a lot of my plans if you do want to get involved. Or you can pm me about what kind of mod stuff you're interested in doing so I can figure out what I could pass off.
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Ha, I thought I was close on finishing unit sprites. Then I remembered I have several armor types to create. Trying to use some mash up stuff to save myself some time, but when it comes down to it there just has to be more custom work done so that the sprites don't look crummy.
Need to make or finish
Drone Draft 1 done.
Personal Armor New - Might use recolor
Marsec Personal Armor - Need a recolor to match Moriarty's reds
Bio Armor - mashups and custom additions
Heavy Armor - mashup and custom additions. May get Minotaur sprite improvements out of this.
Psi Dampner - personal armor recolor/torso tweaks
Jaeger MKII facings and animations.
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Clearly pushing some limitation of the rules. Now that I know based on other forum posts about aliens shunning grenades until turn 3, it explains why my terror units with blast radius appear docile at first. Also flying melee units seem to not be particularly interested in attacking anything which makes a certain amount of sense since with one exception all melee units were walkers, and that exception pretty much goofed around rather than attacking a lot of the time.
Balance issues to worry about later. As of last night all of my alien groups exist and have basic sprites. There's some tweaking I want to do, but that's mostly aesthetics there. So I guess that's a milestone towards a ver .1 release
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Great idea! Also be sure to post on this mod on the modsite. Almost all the traffic the modsite gets (which is significant) comes from the Openxcom.org main menu link. Lots of people may not be checking the forum, and going straight to the modsite. This should help in drastically increasing exposure of your mod! Let me know if you have any questions. I might need to start a new superhuman playthrough with your mod.
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As soon as I've got something that's more concrete I plan on putting it on the mod site. As it stands now, even though I've finished a lot of sprites I'm probably in the 25% complete range. Early enough that if someone wants to go to the repo and download the rules and graphics to test out the alien deployments they could, but there's not really enough structure baked into a new game at this point. I've been making good progress on my remaining sprites, so I'm hopeful that I can switch to programming rules/balancing the game with the pieces I'm putting on the board, but at the moment I'm just one guy working on this in his spare time, and I'm basically creating an entirely new game. The mechanics may be similar but a lot of the assets are new, and the rules are all completely different.
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Been hammering away at my sprites, and I've got several armor sprites finished with prelim rules. Anti-Psi / Psi armor was easy / fun and I'm pretty happy with the results. Organic was a quick modification of Deep one sprite, but I think it looks pretty good. Looks sort of like a master chief/gas mask helmet with some streamlined armor. Heavy Powered Armor took forever and I'm not thrilled about the sprite, but it will do for now. As a side bonus, the work on HPA improved the minotaur sprite substantially. HPA is certainly interesting from a rules persective. I've created several weapons with ridiculous weights 40+ so they are impractical for regular soldiers to carry. The powered armor provides enough of a strength stat boost to make carrying them viable, but the armor also incurs a small TU penalty because of bulkiness. It's going to take some tweaking but so far I feel like I'm starting to create several armors that have tactical significance, and there isn't necessarily a "Best" armor at this stage. I'm sure something will emerge once the rules are final, but I don't think it will be like power armor/flying suit where if you have the resources you should put everyone in flying suits.
Need to go work on my TODO.md file to see where I am on milestones.
Still need to create my version of antigrav armor, and planning on grabbing shadics better PA for my baseline PA that you can manufacture.
Edit: Interesting. Looking at various source material for mash up items, and looks like the snakeman torso is a pretty close match for space marines and jump packs. Possible that the source artwork started that way based on some of the other materials released by the creators. I'm torn between using that because it would be quick and adapting the personal armor since this is supposed to be a lighter flying armor and the mash up would look a little bulkier than the original flying armor. But I'm also concerned that I might be using too much of the same look so changing it up would be good too.
In the interest of time I should probably take an attitude of done is better than good in some cases. I can always revisit the artwork later.
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Jack...whatever insight you've gleaned, would be helpful to share. You found a correlation with Space Marine artwork?
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EDIT: Sprite attached
I basically dropped the snake man torso on a power suit and it looked pretty close to a warhammer 40k marine. Also the original creator of Xcom posted some of the old artwork when they were brainstorming, and there's a lot of licensed material there. Robocop, terminator, lobo, aliens. I'm sure they were aware of 40k game and probably were fans.
Looking at the art I wonder if the snake men were supposed to fly. It's pretty clearly a jet pack. After all their slithering might not be a particularly fast movement form. Probably removed for game balance.
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Facings for Jaeger MK II proceeding well. Hope to have done by the end of the week and then I'll have all unit facings done, at least in draft form. Can revisit sprites I'm unhappy with later, or if someone decides to take a crack at one of them.
EDIT: ALL UNIT SPRITES DRAFT 1 COMPLETE!
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Okay. I think I'm getting close to identifying all of the milestones I want to hit before releasing a pre-alpha version. Hopefully in the next week or two.
This should primarily be a testing release, as I should have my tech tiers set up and all of my aliens, so I can try to balance weapon/armor/deployments. Hopefully this will net me some feedback regarding my tech level balance issues.
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Okay Pre-Alpha 1 attached. I decided to try and keep things narrow for this release, so here's what you can expect to find. There's a bunch of rules all prefixed with oXc-WOS you should enable all of them. Bear in mind they will probably conflict with lots of other mods as I've deleted races and items since I'm starting from the ground up in some aspects.
The actual campaign mode is unfinished at this point. I'm just starting research trees and game balance, so while the aliens are there and missions/deployments work, you really won't be able to progress up the research tree very far.
However you can test battles, and that would help me a lot to get a sense of just how out of line my tech tiers may be with their intended targets.
Tech tiers
- Sleepers vs. vanilla xcom gear / marsec equipment / upgraded pistols and rifles as well as alloy ammunition. Should be a bit of a cakewalk honestly
- Mechanoids vs. Upgraded Pistols and Rifles / Marsec Equipment / Storm Gun / Laser Rifle with Power+ or Storage+ clips / Alloy Armor
- Fungoids vs. MARSEC / Laser Rifle / TAC Rifle with DE Ammo and Mortars/Alloy Armor / Heavy Power Armor / Superheavy Railgun / JAEGER MK I
- CHIMERAS vs. TAC RIfle / HEAVY ARMOR / ORGANIC Armor / SMART LASER SNIPER RIFLE / COMPACT BLASTER LAUNCHER / JAEGER MK II / DISRUPTOR
- Cult of Cydonia vs. all of the above plus anti-psi armor and anti-grav armor
I've probably missed some recommendations but feeling like I'm going in ten different directions at the moment so I need to bring it down and focus on a sliver at a time. Right now that's working out the research tree so I can start looking at the campaign setting. I think once the campaign is at least playable with the research tree in place I can release something on the mod portal, but I want to be careful to not release something half baked.
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Great work man. I love the minotaur, looks a lot like the minotaurs in heretic-hexen:
(https://a.pomf.se/kbgckr.png)
Their death sound shouldn't be impossible to find; otherwise there's always the baron of hell (doom minotaur) death cry, if you haven't found some sound already.
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I haven't really started on sound design yet as the lack of diversity will reveal, but that sounds like a great suggestion. I sort of thought it would be a good enemy that ties into all those mutilated cows the aliens keep leaving around....
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Making fair progress on the research /manufacturing tree. Still it seems a bit convoluted. I've got two projects with the same parent and one isn't unlocking. Probably just a bug in my code that I'll see once I uncross my eyes.
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research tree tier 1 skeleton in place, just needs some fleshing out and testing. got sidetracked onto crafts and ufos a bit so need to try to stay on task. Ufopedia art is going to take some time to produce, but i suppose that's lower priority ATM. Anybody working on custom crafts want to collaborate? I'm on osx and haven't yet tried to boot mcdedit with wine, though i suppose I'll get their eventually. I've got some clear thoughts about what I think makes sense in the context of the campaign, but it's going to take me a while before I even get to start looking at map files. Realistically I need to make two new transport maps to replace lightning and avenger, as well as a ufo map for a super dreadnaught that would fill the whole screen. Aiming to have research tree and manufacturing skeleton in place for next pre-alpha. After that I think crafts/ufos.
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Ugh. Totally fell down the rabbit hole on mcdeit and map view. fleshed out research/manufacture/ufopedia more and reworked some stats/deployments based on terror mission failure. Also refined craft ideas.
Assuming my trees are working I might be at an alpha 2 stage which would be playable, though maybe not finishable, and there's definitely content holes in the ufopedia.
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Playtesting alpha 2 to see how my research tree is going and getting crushed, so trying to ramp down the difficulty level by giving the player some tier 1 equipment that they were having to purchase at high cost, and lowering enemy stats for sleepers. Also ran into the baked in bug for sectoids as the first encounter. I'm assuming that will be corrected for a future OpenXCom release as TFTD would have it's own strings, unless they settle for the workaround I used which is to use the STR_SECTOID as the race for my new aliens.
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The good news is I've figured out PCK/Mapview/RMP for the most part. The bad news is now I've got a whole new toybox. I haven't had a chance to continue my alpha test for a bit so my game is currently stuck in the transition to the next tier. Craft ideas are starting to solidify, and I should be able to get the placeholder stuff in for at least two crafts in the next release, which should have the research/progression tiers in it, but I can't 100% guarantee that the game can be completed at the moment.
Current plan is for 4 custom ship maps to replace all xcom crafts. I'm trying to do some things to pull them in different directions to make deploying them more useful or interesting. Current working on
Dragonfly Dropship - Basically the updated skyranger. Not yet sure if I'm changing the floor plan much for the hold.
Mantis Interdictor - Similar stats to lightning as far as # of units, but planned to have a very different deploy/floorplan.
Rapier Strike Transport - Basically a mini avenger with excellent deployments and a small crew.
Broadsword Strike Transport - More or less the Avenger replacement. Different deployments/floor plan. Plan is still solidifying on this one, as well as the artwork.
Need to set up 3 different interceptors, but that's not nearly as artwork intensive.
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Dragonfly is partially done, need to finish MCP settings, but pretty happy with how this has come out.
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Pre alpha 2 update attached.
I wasn't as disciplined as I'd hoped on this, as my 2 and 3 goals got a bit mixed. :o
Bugs may exist in the research and manufacturing trees. There's also some question about alien missions and races and if I've been able to remove the xcom 1 races completely. I've only played about the first 4 months, and the base has extra scientists to boost research for testing. Shotgun added and sniper alloy ammo added to try and smooth out the difficulty curve until you get into experimental weapons.
I don't think cydonia or mars can be finished at this time as I've still got to tweak the rules. Still testing tier 0-1-2 progression and just general troubleshooting.
CRAFTS!
- Graphics done, coding in progress. all three can be tested in the battle simulator
- Dragonfly is in, and partially MCD coded. Might have walls with holes in them at the moment, and the wings aren't quite right yet to stand on.
- Rapier and Mantis are similarly partially complete. Both of them are different enough tactically to make them interesting. Needs holes plugged and maps built, but soldier deployments work like I want them to.
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I've been play testing and I think I've set some targets too high, so need to reduce some research requirements and lower some times. I've already moved into tier 3 of encounters and still don't have a viable air game for large ships. Normally in vanilla I'd have plasma beams and that would hold me until later, but I've restructured the air weapons so that the progression of damage is more gentle, but the larger ships also deal more damage so there's real threat of losing even alloy interceptors.
Also encountering more research bugs, and finding that some of my original ideas (Project code names, long transfer time on marsec items) just aren't fun so going to edit those out.
Ultimate craft is taking shape but not wild about the look of it at the moment. I think as much as I liked the nose i kitbashed it just makes the layout a bit odd so the lines aren't what I want. Rapier looks better with new weapon pods and some position fixes, as well as the jaeger bay gfx.
Maps/missions are getting restructured anyhow so should wait on some portions for later release.
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Remember that research cost is in man-days while manufacture cost is in man-hours, I also had this problem.
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Thanks that is definitely something I wasn't aware of.
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Game balance is coming into focus as manageable for savvy players in the tier 0 - tier 1 range, possibly into tier 2. I've got to rebuild some of the rulefiles around missions now since I'm upgrading to the new structure. My hope is this will resolve the capture issue I was seeing. If so that would fix a major problem I am having at the moment as the unit has to be captured in order to get access to a large branch of the research tree. Air combat feels right for the first couple of encounters but then large scouts wreck my interceptors, so they probably need to be toned down a touch.
Also experimenting with some alternate craft weapons for variety.
Need to simplify the heavy weapons at game start, and refine the tanks.
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Reworked the Heavy armor, the previous set looked wonky, and the weapon sprites weren't working out with the drawing routine. Organic armor shares a similar issue, but I think I can fix the one or two things that look off and once I decide to refine a bit.
Newer armor looks beefy enough to carry the superheavy weapons. cheated on the arms and legs a bit, so may need some refinement but as a first draft I like this tons more than the last version. I plan on adding a melee weapon for them as well.
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So beautiful. Exactly what I wanted. :)
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Thanks. I'm finding that I'm guilty of scope creep as I've added in several stretch goals. I've revised the Heavy Cannon, Auto Cannon into a single superheavy weapon, and reworked all of the HWP's now. 2 tanks, 2 jaegers. Added in a TAC pistol for medics etc. So I think maybe all of the pieces are now in place for battlescape testing. I don't forsee adding any more weapons or units.
Testing today has turned up a few interesting things, stuns on zombie spawns still don't produce a live alien, but they do disable the self destruct which is good enough for me for now. Superheavy items need to be heavier, it's possible for a strong soldier to carry without a ton of penalty right now, so that needs to be fixed. I.E. it might be possible to fire a superheavy weapon without the armor but you shouldn't be able to walk around much.
Maps/Crafts seem to be my next big rabbit hole. I've got drafts for 3 of my 4 craft maps. Ideally I'm going to redo all the ufo maps as well to provide a new experience.
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Saying that no more units are planned, did are mean no new sprites at all, or just no vehicles? Because I have high hopes for that new heavy suit you've just posted.
As for the UFO maps, I can offer some help with the RMP files, since I've done quite a bit of them.
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Heavy suit is definitely in, it replaces a previously un posted sprite that looked more like a deep sea divers suit.
Thanks for the offer. Once I've got my ideas written down in a clear way I can hopefully collaborate.
Sprites are still being generated for handobs and floorobs but the game should be in a decently playable state on the next release, but maybe not balanced.
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Okay, pre alpha 3 progress. Again I'm doing a bad job on project management as I've slipped some goals and expanded scope in others. I am however starting to scale back in spots to try and tighten things up.
- At this point, all units are in. One armor sprite needs adjustments to arm for single items, and I'd like to change the tank base, but it's not totally necessary.
- Still need bigobs, floorobs, and inventory screens for assorted units, but there are placeholders that will work for now.
- All weapons graphics except one should now be present, or have a reasonable placeholder. I tried to edit the list down in spots to eliminate overlap and provide some fun options while reducing grinding.
- Added in improved handobs
- found a few research tree bugs that need to be fixed for campaign play
- 3 of 4 transports in game, but need fine tuning.
- Bullet sprites/smoke need work in spots
- Research and manufacturing are a work in progress, I'm not sure how far you can progress on the chain at the moment as I've not had a chance to thoroughly playtest since a substantial restructure
- Air combat is more interesting, but unbalanced. Expect anything large to destroy your interceptors/alloy interceptors before they can do much. I've got some new weapons I'm playing with like the swarm missile, but haven't had a chance to really try and balance them. I want air combat to be hard, but not as bad as Long War. I.E. it would be nice if the aliens got lucky and brought down your fighter, but not every time
Tons more I've done I'm sure, but I think I'm approaching a point where the game might be playable, if a bit empty in the ufopedia section in spots.
Once the game is playable to completion with vanilla maps I want to at a minimum revise all of the basic ufo maps completely, just to add some new wrinkles to the game. I also want to kit bash some TFTD graphics to incorporate some organic elements into the ufo designs since my alien races have a substantial bio tilt over cyber and tech.
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Finally started in on my UFO designs. decided on an angular crystal thing for my art direction. This works pretty well I think since i've got a crystal based weapon as my aliens version of the heavy plasma. I'm also playing with some sections of UFOs being basically open to the outside, similar to EU2012 UFO doors. You cant see the animated fields in the example by the green crystal engine, but the idea is if the UFO crashed on a farm the back end could blow out and set the fields on fire, which would be more interesting I think. Also means the aliens could shoot at you from engineering bay rather than waiting for you to come through the one door on the ship. Should be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I think at a minimum it will provide some very different experiences than XCOM 1 or 2. I've got about 3 other layouts partially planned, with the idea being to replace all the basic tiers and possibly add one extra UFO layout.
I've fallen behind on my playtest in the interim, but I felt like working on this for now, and it's a big chunk of work that I've already got done by getting my MCD PCK files partially set up. Making maps still takes forever though.
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Pre alpha 4 attached.
Major bug possibly discovered, but not sure if that's in the nightly or something to do with my terrain/map files. If you use explosives on some destructable terrain items (Primarily tested vs. the OXC_UFO_CARGO.mcd terrain files) the game will hang. I was having a similar problem with the Rapier.MCD files but making those armor 255 seemed to fix the issue for the xcom crafts. The items in question can be shot and destroyed and should have DIE MCD tiles set, but I think even if they are set to 0 it should do the right thing. Maybe I've got something wrong in my rule file or the MCD file?
I've been able to playthrough to about tier 2 or 3, but I'd have to check my notes. Most time has been spent on revamping all UFO graphics and layouts with my crystal ships. Pretty excited about some of these as they are very different than either UFO defense or TFTD. Hoping they aren't too insane in some cases.
The Cargo Ship and the Abductor are probably the most tactically interesting.
X-Com has all it's ships in but some PCK files could be refined later.
There's definitely some crashes around my blaster launcher for the aliens and some ufopedia entries causing crashes, but it should be possible to test the new UFOs now for holes in the ship walls, LOFTS, etc, as well as how the RMP's are working as I was in a bit of a hurry, so no idea if things are going to spawn where they should or if patrols are going to happen.
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Finally started in on my UFO designs. decided on an angular crystal thing for my art direction. This works pretty well I think since i've got a crystal based weapon as my aliens version of the heavy plasma. I'm also playing with some sections of UFOs being basically open to the outside, similar to EU2012 UFO doors. You cant see the animated fields in the example by the green crystal engine, but the idea is if the UFO crashed on a farm the back end could blow out and set the fields on fire, which would be more interesting I think. Also means the aliens could shoot at you from engineering bay rather than waiting for you to come through the one door on the ship. Should be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I think at a minimum it will provide some very different experiences than XCOM 1 or 2. I've got about 3 other layouts partially planned, with the idea being to replace all the basic tiers and possibly add one extra UFO layout.
I've fallen behind on my playtest in the interim, but I felt like working on this for now, and it's a big chunk of work that I've already got done by getting my MCD PCK files partially set up. Making maps still takes forever though.
Great. I think you should make the bright lines of the texture on the floor tiles, one step darker (or even two, but then the texture would be very faint): in my opinion having too much contrast on the floor creates too much "visual noise". In your case the issue is mitigated by the purple color, which makes units (or objects) stand out nonetheless; but I'd still keep the contrast tamed and save stronger contrast for units-objects.
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Thanks for the constructive criticism. I'll try it, but I'm wondering if lightening the darker color would be better to make the walls more distinct from the floors. I'll mess around with it.
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I like the crisp, "early 1990s PC" look of these crystal ships. Indeed there was nothing posted here that is similar. In general, most of your gfx is unique, which is a big plus.
And Pedia crashes from my experience usally come due to lack of properly linked pictures, so they should be easily fixed.
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I think i fixed the terrain issue that was causing the explosives crash. i also dropped the contrast on the floor tile and tweaked it to give some more contrast.
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Excellent work so far. I'll be looking forward to the 1.0 release.
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Thanks. I feel like I'm starting to approach a playable alpha state, even though I've still got some bugs and balance issues. I had a map crash issue that opened up a can of worms since I could now have a much taller ufo set, which I had considered before. I may hold back on changing maps much until alpha 2 though.
Still all of the ufopedia artwork to generate and my final level maps, but I want to wait on that a bit until I understand a bit more about the mapscripting.
Play testing is progressing well enough at the moment, but my tier transition is slightly off as I captured an alien earlier than I expected and had a bit of a research shortcut. I'm also playing with 50 bonus scientists I didn't have to pay for so that's probably skewing things a bit.
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playtesting continues and is uncovering some bugs. Mostly typos or missing strings I thought I'd put in. Figured out that my craft manufacturing rules weren't completely written just now as the firestorm popped up. Working on difficulty balance as well and making some tweaks there. Still losing a unit or two on average per couple of missions so things are staying deadly. I think once I can confirm that Jaeger Manufacturing is in I can do my next pre alpha set, which should be substantially cleaned up from the last version. I've been doing some polish stuff as well, redoing some craft maps and graphics. Much happier with my ultimate craft now, even though it could use more love.
It's still tough to know whether this is exactly fun as I know all of the secrets and the AI is locked into RMPs, but maybe someone who knows more about that can give me some pointers. My current issue is that I've got aliens on top of a UFO and they jump off almost every time, even when there are flags with high numbers set and no connecting route to the ground. Maybe making them less aggressive would help too. I think right now I've got everyone dialed up to max.
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Aliens pretty much ignore RMPs once their combat routine kicks in. What you could do is 'cheat' - like make impassable tiles around the edge of the craft or sth? Making them less aggressive just makes them more conservative with TU usage.
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Is there some sort of breakdown or explanation of how the combat routine works? I've not found any kind of lay and explanation yet. I've got a flying melee unit that never engages but I'm assuming tftd patches will address that, but I've got other terror units that while not ignoring civilians don't seem especially interested in them either. This confirms that in one instance I need to revise my map, but I was already leaning that way now that I understand the map sizing script.
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Is there some sort of breakdown or explanation of how the combat routine works? I've not found any kind of lay and explanation yet.
The following is my interpretation from the code at AlienBAIState.cpp. I'm definitely not a code expert, so I might be wrong in some conclusions. The most important aspects to take in mind are the alien's Intelligence, which determines the amount of turns it can remember an enemy's position even without seeing it, and its Aggression stat, which sets how it will respond upon seeing an enemy (0 = more likely to pull back and set a reaction ambush, 2 = more likely to attack rightaway).
There are 5 AI modes:
* Patrol
* Ambush
* Combat
* Retreat
* Psi
There are several conditions that will determine which mode the AI will select for each unit, including sometimes a random element. An alien's Intelligence and Aggression will be a major factor for certain modes, including the type of weapon it is carrying (rifle vs melee).
Patrol is used when an alien doesn't remember the position of any enemies, nor it can see any enemies, either looking back at him or not). When determining where to patrol the AI considers the 'flag' that defines a route node's importance. If an alien spots or learns of an enemy's location it will then reevaluate its next action. Aggression is also a factor when choosing the reaction shot type when on Patrol: Aimed is used by low aggression units, while Auto will be chosen for high aggression.
There's too many conditions for each specific mode, plus more conditions for when choosing the mode, to list them all here.
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Thanks those are both helpful. Sounds like I need to tweak some of my settings as I think many of my aliens are too smart and aggressive at the moment.
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Pre-Alpha 5 attached. I've done a bunch of polish play testing, but haven't gotten all the way to cydonia yet. Air combat feels unbalanced at the moment with xcom having too much of an upper hand, but the original game was like that to some degree so it might be kind of baked in.
Research tree tested up to tier 3 and some tier 4. Streamlined some research stuff, but probably needs more work. I still need to make some adjustments based on newer nightly code but this should run on 2015-02-22 era.
Started to fuss with mission maps, but probably won't make many changes until i see some more details about how to work with the script, or take the time to examine how others are using it.
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Been squashing bugs and doing my playthroughs. I've just fixed enough now that I have unlocked the ultimate craft and have all armor. I've still got two other unlocks that need to happen, but waiting on a terror unit to make that happen.
Lots of sprite cleanup done too so I think I'm mostly down to needing to generate all my ufopedia artwork, bigobs for corpses and then any misc stuff that I feel like. In some cases the vanilla grenade handob will probably do for now.
Feel like I'm definitely approaching a playable/winnable alpha release, and I'm trying to focus on the broad issues while making note of minor bugs to fix later.
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Well ufopedia artwork still needs generation, as do my corpses. Ufo's have diagonal wall holes that need plugging too.
But game is playable and can be completed. I was close before but had to rebase thanks to the new mod structure. I THINK that maybe i didn't break any sprites when I combined everything, but I've not tested completely.
I also was able to put in placeholder slides for a custom end that I need to write/generate for storyline purposes. I've not had much time to work on this lately so I feel like my timeline slipped this month.
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Well ufopedia artwork still needs generation, as do my corpses. Ufo's have diagonal wall holes that need plugging too.
But game is playable and can be completed. I was close before but had to rebase thanks to the new mod structure. I THINK that maybe i didn't break any sprites when I combined everything, but I've not tested completely.
I also was able to put in placeholder slides for a custom end that I need to write/generate for storyline purposes. I've not had much time to work on this lately so I feel like my timeline slipped this month.
Wanted to make short test, but the mod failed to load. Two floorobs are unrecognised:
OXC-WOS--SIPHONOPHORE-4 and the MARSEC floorob.
After replacing these with other floorobs the mod loads, but in battlescape no bulletsprites are visible at all.
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Wanted to make short test, but the mod failed to load. Two floorobs are unrecognised:
OXC-WOS--SIPHONOPHORE-4 and the MARSEC floorob.
After replacing these with other floorobs the mod loads, but in battlescape no bulletsprites are visible at all.
I just tested the zip file with a fresh install on the last nightly and I'm not getting the missing floorOb when I kill the siphonophore or missing bullets. Can you provide additional details? Which marsec floorob item was missing? There's a whole batch of them, so I'd like to narrow down to weather it was the armor/corpse or one of the equipment/weapons
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I just tested the zip file with a fresh install on the last nightly and I'm not getting the missing floorOb when I kill the siphonophore or missing bullets. Can you provide additional details? Which marsec floorob item was missing? There's a whole batch of them, so I'd like to narrow down to weather it was the armor/corpse or one of the equipment/weapons
the MARSEC-PersonalArmor__floorob and siphonophore floorob are damaged in my unpacked zip, so I cannot even open them with a graphics program.
So maybe just my zip file is corrupted. With redownload from your post the same error appears. If it works for everyone else maybe its just a problem with my computer.
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the MARSEC-PersonalArmor__floorob and siphonophore floorob are damaged in my unpacked zip, so I cannot even open them with a graphics program.
So maybe just my zip file is corrupted. With redownload from your post the same error appears. If it works for everyone else maybe its just a problem with my computer.
Strange, they do appear to be corrupted, but when I open with preview rather than photoshop they work fine, and don't throw errors for me when I play. I've corrected and will upload newer versions when I have a chance.
Are the bullets giving you the same issue?
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Strange, they do appear to be corrupted, but when I open with preview rather than photoshop they work fine, and don't throw errors for me when I play. I've corrected and will upload newer versions when I have a chance.
Are the bullets giving you the same issue?
No, the bullets are just invisible.
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Just an observation . If you have any custom bullet sprites, they have to be numbered in groups of 35. As there are 11 vanilla sprites, any others need to start at 420.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Items
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Looks like one bullet sprite was set to 11, so rearranged, and hopefully that will address for you . Just tested locally and that one sprite is working. Also corrupted sprites should be fixed in the attached.
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Looks like one bullet sprite was set to 11, so rearranged, and hopefully that will address for you . Just tested locally and that one sprite is working. Also corrupted sprites should be fixed in the attached.
Tested your new package and floorobs and bullets are ok now.
By the way, I really like the new dropship and those pink UFOs.
The ufopedia text of the marsec armors is too long and cannot be read completely.
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Thanks! I'm pretty happy with the overall art direction on them, but if I get enough time I'd like to modify the terror ship to add some ramps and widen a few doors. The internal layout is too weird right now I think, and it's easy to get caught between sections right now. I fixed some of the equipment strings in ufopedia, and added slides for game over win and lose. So the game should now be playable / winnable with my custom storyline ending.
There's still polish to do on bigobs corpses, and ufopedia art for captures and autopsies. Maps need work too as it's possible for an error on supply ships where the map doesn't resize enough. Diagonal walls need fixes and I haven't had time to work on it.
If there are people who'd like to collaborate to help me wrap this up I'd love to have some help on the map scripts in particular. Art assets for the autopsies and aliens would be a big help too. I'm finding with family commitments I'm having less and less time to work on this but I want to wrap up a pretty polished version of the mod/conversion so I can post on the mods portal.
Remaining Polish Issues
- Bigobs Corpses
- Ufopedia Artwork for Autopsies, Crafts, Captures
- Unit Sprite for organic armor lacks a kneeling state. Part of that is the draw routine. May have to restructure artwork onto standard unit file and append/rearrange tiles.
- I'm sure there's something else I don't remember at the moment.
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Tested 0.7
Pretty impressive work. 8) *Understatement*
My only critic point would be the Minotaurs, they simply don`t fit into a sci-fi setting. Even though the graphics are very nicely done. ;)
Btw, what program are you using to edit the RUL files, it seems whenever I try to copy something from those into my own RUL files they get corrupted.... :-[
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Tested 0.7
Pretty impressive work. 8) *Understatement*
My only critic point would be the Minotaurs, they simply don`t fit into a sci-fi setting. Even though the graphics are very nicely done. ;)
Btw, what program are you using to edit the RUL files, it seems whenever I try to copy something from those into my own RUL files they get corrupted.... :-[
Thanks, the minotaurs are sort of a joke, since what were the aliens doing with all of those cows if not trying to make some kind of cow/alien hybrid?
I'm using komodo edit to do my yaml files, most likely you've got white space problems. I've found that's usually what my issue is.
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Solarious new_civilian (sorry) make curious me, therefore I loaded your ufomap by Mapview to preview them
I set UFO-engine and UFO-cargo as tilesets
Some north wall appear to me with a wrong tile (destroyed tile ?)
Did I make some error ?
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Most likely what you are seeing is the force doors. They are animated in game, but are mostly decorative as they don't block line of sight or bullets. I was going for more of an EU2012 vibe here. Also with that configuration, when an engine explodes on landing, it can cause more environmental damage.
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Thanks, I will have a look in game.
I am not play UFO2012 yet,
I bought it by a cheaper offer on Steam, but for now I prefer play with OpenXcom ... ::)
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Tested some of your crafts a bit. They look really great and so I thought I give you some feedback, they are really worth it. :)
-The Dragonfly has shoot-through issues. I think it's the ceiling tiles, but I could be wrong.
-The Broadsword is looking very nice BUT it has see-through-hull issues. The HWPs on the special fields can see enemies behind the ship as well as some soldiers in the front when looking diagonally to the north-west. And no, the lifts are NOT the reason, I checked that.
I really like the look though, I can see you studied the original XCom cover artwork very closely! :)
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Thanks! I'm pretty sure most of my issues are double diagonal walls, but there was a time I was toying with making windows transparent. Unfortunately I've not had any time to work on this lately so I'm kind of stalled on development until things quiet down a bit more. Of course this is all on bitbucket if someone wanted to try and work with me on these issues to push this thing into an alpha release sooner rather than later.
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Thanks jackstraw2323! How about to update first post with the latest version you made avaiable (here (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3097.msg45803.html#msg45803))?
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Yeah sorry I've kind of been doing other things. I just downloaded a nightly and looks like I've got some strings to fix now that things have been abstracted a bit more. Or maybe just changing my mod to not declare itself as standalone as a lot of what's in xcom1 is all I'm using. I wanted to get further along, but I should probably just release the 80% complete version of the game as it's basically done except for some graphics polish and some map issues, but maybe in released form someone would like to contribute to help finish up what's done. I'll see if I can update the first page and maybe release something to the mods site soon.
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jackstraw2323, do you have bigger pictures or 3D models for jarheads? I'm trying to make inventory pictures (to see enemies by middle-click) for the X-COM Files mod, which uses the same animation sprites.
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Sadly no, I drew them by hand in the sprite editor, never got around to the inventory corpses or autopsies. Actually all of the sprites I created are done that way with the exception of cannibalized sprites from Front Mission or other old sprite based games. Art direction wise they are sort of Sci-Fi 50's robots. You could possibly get away with a pile of gears and the smashed jar if you were drawing it yourself. I've been meaning to post the mod even though it's slightly unfinished, it is playable, just buggy in spots with some default assets left in place.
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Then you are welcome to give suggestions on 3D modelling here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5215.msg90768.html#msg90768 I'm not a fan of clockwork gears and went with rectangular pipes and cylindrical casings.
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Hello! May I have a request for Christmas Mr. Jackstraw? Can you please repair the mod? I'm unable to play it since there is a ruleset problem which I can't fix. Can this be done?
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Yataka Shimaoka, I'm going to be traveling away from my computer for Christmas unfortunately, but I have been thinking about picking this back up to do some work. Can you tell me what your ruleset problem is if you know? Is it failing to load, crashing the game, etc? That would help me troubleshoot the issue. I think maybe crash errors now refer to the offending file and line of code. If it's something straightforward I can maybe do it before I leave (unlikely unless it's something super simple), otherwise it's probably January before I could take a look. I'm moving houses in January so may not have much time then either unfortunately. What version of OpenXCom are you using? I was developing on the nightly ages ago, I'd have to look at home to see what version I have. If anyone wants to help out finishing this mod I've always been hoping someone would take an interest.
Bugs I know of of the top of my head:
- Maps - Some maps generate errors if the xcom vehicle is too large to get placed. Mostly this was with the Mantis and the Arctic maps as the large bodies of water were conflicting. If someone who understood maps a bit could help out it would be greatly appreciated
- Maps/ufos/vehicles - pretty sure I've got some holes in walls, and some of my alien routes could probably be improved.
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It's exciting to see you picking this up (potentially). I haven't played your mod yet, but your resources are great.
If you are looking for resources, please ask - there is good chance something will exist already, especially if they're humans.
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Well, the mod always crashes on startup, but on a far more outdated nightly version, the game do start, but I can't do any campaign runs.
First problem which the log gives me is that something about the Cydonia research, the error says "Cydonia research have dependencies, but the cost is not zero! This is not allowed!"
Second, on the old nightlies, the error is something about segmentation error, which however I cannot detect the problem.
Hopefully this helps, and no rush, I'm waiting patiently for this, such a cool mod and lotsa resources to get from.
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
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Thanks. I'll take a look and see if I can start debugging. I might take my laptop if there is room so I can work on this a bit over the holidays.
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Tryed to un the mod (this version (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3097.msg45803.html#msg45803) picked up from the drop down menu, it is a "master mod"?) but i wasn't even able to run it, as he screenshot says :'( :'(
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That's the same crash I had when starting the game
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OK, I downloaded a nightly, fixed the Cydonia research rule to include the unlocks final mission flag, and it now loads the mod without crashing. I don't know if there are other bugs as I've not tested anything other than loading and starting a random battle on the final mission, so let me know if you run into anything. New mod file attached.
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OK, I downloaded a nightly, fixed the Cydonia research rule to include the unlocks final mission flag, and it now loads the mod without crashing. I don't know if there are other bugs as I've not tested anything other than loading and starting a random battle on the final mission, so let me know if you run into anything. New mod file attached.
Well with the version attached in the post abve game sarts, but crashes at the very beginning , either with option "custom initial base" be on or off.
Edit: tested the mod with openxvomextended+ 3.9c. Peraphs it is dedigned to run only on a nightly?
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Well with the version attached in the post abve game sarts, but crashes at the very beginning , either with option "custom initial base" be on or off.
Edit: tested the mod with openxvomextended+ 3.9c. Peraphs it is dedigned to run only on a nightly?
OK, looks like some additional scripts and rules have been added since I worked on this, just added the missionscripts.rul which has fixed the missing sectoid error. I've not tested with anything other than nightlies, so no idea if openxcomextended would even work.
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Replacing the previous bugged build. Seems like research chains have been changed a bit and rifle/pistol upgrades were causing a crash. Tested further but more may be present.
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Downloaded it now, testing and enjoying I can finally play the mod, which I waited for since last August
--- posts merged ---
Found a bug, its about the jaegers (or Jagger I think?).
When they get destroyed, the game will just freeze, and I have no idea what the problem was and the log shows nothing of use.
To reproduce, kill a jaeger
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Weel, with the relase of WarOfShadows_0.91_2017-08-01_00-27-15_Nightly.zip the game finally starst correctly! Please jackstraw, mind to put it with a nice feature changelog/catalogue, in the mena time some screenshots, i actually like the ufopedia backgriund for weapons :)
(https://s10.postimg.org/tz4g3tft1/screen000.png) (https://postimg.org/image/tz4g3tft1/) (https://s10.postimg.org/v1emmdlrp/screen001.png) (https://postimg.org/image/v1emmdlrp/) (https://s10.postimg.org/clu5p1ct1/screen002.png) (https://postimg.org/image/clu5p1ct1/) (https://s10.postimg.org/h7q9xcgbp/screen003.png) (https://postimg.org/image/h7q9xcgbp/) (https://s10.postimg.org/43kpkoykl/screen004.png) (https://postimg.org/image/43kpkoykl/) (https://s10.postimg.org/8cpfmtjth/screen005.png) (https://postimg.org/image/8cpfmtjth/) (https://s10.postimg.org/3qtbegqkl/screen006.png) (https://postimg.org/image/3qtbegqkl/)
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I hope everyone likes the walk through wall glitch
Edit: WHOOPS! Wrong mod thread
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I hope everyone likes the walk through wall glitch
What is that UFO?
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I'm curious too :o
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What is that UFO?
Its from Dune mod.
Here is an image of bug I encountered. No biggie, its just that corpse of soldier in flying suit won't show up and the game crashes.
Love the mod, I hope more content is coming.
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Finally posted this mod since I'm not sure anyone really ever saw it. It may have bugs. I will fix if I can, and can find the time. I'm happy to have help in this area as well.
https://openxcom.mod.io/war-of-shadows
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Finally posted this mod since I'm not sure anyone really ever saw it. It may have bugs. I will fix if I can, and can find the time. I'm happy to have help in this area as well.
https://openxcom.mod.io/war-of-shadows
I'm so happy that this mod came back to life. Is truly awesome. ;D
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Not sure it every really died, I just never got around to posting it. I know it will crash in some cases, there's a map conflict with one of my ships and water tiles in the arctic. I sort of ran out of steam around that point, and didn't know enough about the new map system to fix it. :) anyhow I am still around, and finally finished my 4th play through of long war 2 so I seem to have finally broken it's hold on me. Of course I just started DMing a D&D 5th edition game. My first in 20+ years, so that's taking up a lot of head space. It's possible there's other bugs around the tech tree as I wasn't super tidy when I wrote it, and everything kind of had to be in a monolithic file at the time to work correctly.
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I know it will crash in some cases, there's a map conflict with one of my ships and water tiles in the arctic.
What's the issue exactly?
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It's been a while since i was looking at it, but on arctic tiles with water the map would generate and the placement of the player vehicles would crash since it can't be on a water tile. Specifically the "Mantis" was the one I was using at the time, but I suspect the "broadsword" would crash as well as it's quite large.
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It's been a while since i was looking at it, but on arctic tiles with water the map would generate and the placement of the player vehicles would crash since it can't be on a water tile. Specifically the "Mantis" was the one I was using at the time, but I suspect the "broadsword" would crash as well as it's quite large.
This doesn't make sense. The only thing that defines a 'water' tile is an impassable tile that looks like water, there's no special tile property called 'water'.
Also, you're using the vanilla script, so the game will use the map blocks already defined for placing craft/UFOs (POLAR00-02). POLAR00 has a single 'water' tile, but since it is used for vanilla craft, it shouldn't crash at all.
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well yes it's been a long time since I worked on this. I suppose it is the impassable tile that looks like water, but you could fly over it and shoot through it. It's possible I was wrong about what caused it, but based on my foggy memory that was the issue. It didn't happen every time, just when the impassable tiles were placed in such a way that there wasn't enough room for the craft.
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Finally posted this mod since I'm not sure anyone really ever saw it. It may have bugs. I will fix if I can, and can find the time. I'm happy to have help in this area as well.
https://openxcom.mod.io/war-of-shadows
I've updated the ruleset to run on the latest nightly, attached.
Can you please update the mod portal? (and the first post)
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Nice that disruptor thing
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Good morning.
I would just like to make a request. I know that it's been years since you last worked on this mod, but if it's not too much trouble, may I please ask if you could make it run on the latest OXCE? Here are some of the important info I found in the log when I tried to run this mod.
[11-04-2022_09-27-51] [ERROR] During linking rulesets of armors:
Error processing 'JAEGER_ARMOR' in armors: Item STR_JAEGER_CORPSE not found
Error processing 'JAEGER_ARMOR2' in armors: Item STR_JAEGERII_CORPSE not found
Error for 'STR_ALLOY_ARMOR_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_ANTI_GRAV_ARMOR_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_ANTI_PSI_ARMOR_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_FLYING_SUIT_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_HEAVY_POWER_ARMOR_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_ORGANIC_ARMOR_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)
Error for 'STR_POWER_SUIT_UC': The first battle corpse item must be of item type 'corpse' (battleType: 11)