OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => Topic started by: Kzer-Za on August 21, 2019, 05:28:30 pm
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The UFOpaedia states that the Celatid:
1. appears to detect human brain waves and will move towards a human target even if well hidden;
2. has the ability to clone itself at an alarming rate.
So I decided to give them both these abilities :) Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.
This mod still has some quirks that I can't (or don't know how to) iron out for now, but they are minor.
1. Since the only way to spawn an enemy during combat is via a weapon, the Celatids are actually carrying around grenades that do nothing more than spawn the clones. These grenades can be picked up from the Celatid corpse. I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now. Fixed.
2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.
Other than that it works fine.
I would like to express my gratitude to Yankes for his script language and his explanations on how to use it, and to Meridian and Solarius Scorch for explanations on rulesets.
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Attached the version 0.9. The first of the mentioned issues is fixed.
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Nice work Mate, i will try this out this weekend as i would like to bring it into my OXC Factions total conversuon mod.
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You are welcome to use it :)
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This looks pretty swell, thank you! Nobody did the Celatid cloning before.
1. Since the only way to spawn an enemy during combat is via a weapon, the Celatids are actually carrying around grenades that do nothing more than spawn the clones. When these grenades go off, you can see flame as from an explosion beneath the Celatid and smoke above it appearing for a brief moment. If someone tells me how to get rid of these effects, I would be very grateful.
Create an empty X1.PCK entry and use it as hitAnimation. (Empty, or something else - up to you.)
For example I made an EMP grenade with custom explosion graphics:
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
width: 1024
height: 64
subX: 128
subY: 64
files:
80: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Triple_Ripple_exp.png
88: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Grey_Skull_exp.png
96: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/EMP_Explosion.png <---- this one
104: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Red_Skull_exp.png
112: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Green_Skull_exp.png
items:
- type: STR_EMP_GRENADE
hitAnimation: 96
2. These grenades can be picked up from the Celatid corpse. I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now.
I think it would be okay to make it totally visible for the player and even recoverable as "Celatid Egg", Celatid Spore" or something like that. Why not?
3. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.
I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.
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I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.
Or even make it a game mechanic, spore die 2 turns after host, you need some explosive to kill it (change item armor to be bit lower than in normal items).
And you can manually "kill" it by unpriming it (you can change name of this action to "kill spore").
Item can have different look in inventory when its "live" or when its "die".
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1. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it doesn't seem to be working. If I specify an empty X1.PCK like this:
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
the game just displays the same one-tile explosion as before. If I add a path to a non-existent file, it crashes. If I give it a transparent png I found on my computer, it crashes.
2, 3, and Yankes's suggestion: I would need sprites of these objects for it. And since anything I draw is not even half-decent, I can't make mods with graphics. Maybe if this mod actually finds some users, and one of them would be willing to contribute the graphics...
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Can you post your code?
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Well, I made only two changes to the code: inserted the piece from my previous message in the end of the file, and inserted hitAnimation in the item description like this:
- &STR_CELATID_GEMMA
type: STR_CELATID_GEMMA
size: 0.1
weight: 0
power: 0
damageType: 0
battleType: 4
blastRadius: 0
hitAnimation: 96 # the inserted line
# fixedWeapon: true
...
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Ah, if I try to add an empty file, then the part with the X1.PCK looks like this:
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
width: 1024
height: 64
subX: 128
subY: 64
files:
96: Resources/UFOpaedia-friendly_Celatid/Blank.png
And I place the specified png to the specified location, of course.
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I am shooting blind here, but try changing damageType to 3. I doubt 0 would play nice with explosions.
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Yes, changing it to 3 did work!
Updated the attached file.
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I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now.
I think assigning
invWidth: 0
invHeight: 0will help.
2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.
You can, for example, give these eggs "armor: 1" and make celatid exploding on death with "power: 2".
Btw, great minimods.
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Thanks, I'l try that, when I get around to it in a couple of days.
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Unfortunately, the second suggestion doesn't work, it seems that the items are dropped only after the corpse explosion takes place. But assigning the zero inventory size does work, so at least these grenades now can't be picked up :)
Updated the attached file.
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Nice work!
It's nice to see the issue of making the Celatid lore-friendly being tackled again.
So I decided to give them both these abilities :) Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.
luke83 made a good point here (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1314.0.html)that perhaps the cloning rate should vary with the chosen difficulty level otherwise players will either be overwhelmed or underwhelmed (or perhaps just whelmed).
Right now you have it at every 3rd turn and it's possible that might be a bit much.
I'll let you know how I fared after I encounter a Celatid.
2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.
I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.
It's not what you intended but I agree with Solarius that it'd make for a nice surprise.
Maybe make it random?
I think it would be okay to make it totally visible for the player and even recoverable as "Celatid Egg", Celatid Spore" or something like that. Why not?
2, 3, and Yankes's suggestion: I would need sprites of these objects for it. And since anything I draw is not even half-decent, I can't make mods with graphics. Maybe if this mod actually finds some users, and one of them would be willing to contribute the graphics...
clownagent points out here (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2608.0.html)that the Celatid animation sequuence actually consisits of 28 frames and only the first ~8 are used.
So you probably don't need to draw anything as there's a lot of material to work with already.
In fact, the right combination of frames can show the cloning process, whether you want it to be from a live Celatid or a dead one.
As an added bonus, frame 25 shows what looks to be a Celatid Egg/Spore. So you can do something interesting with that as well.
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I think the difficulty is already factored in by the amount of Celatids originally spawned in the map. Where on one level you would encounter 1 Celatid, on another you encounter, say 4. Each of them creates a clone every X turns, so the amount of clones is already proportional to the difficulty level. If I also increase their cloning rate with level, the difference between the levels will be too sharp. What "X" is equal to is another matter, this is debatable. I thought that if I made it less than three, then most players would see Celatids clone themselves too rarely. Besides, now they attack not so often as before, because, as I mentioned in the description, I thought that cloning should take some time, so on the cloning turn they have 50% TUs. But if people think that 3 turns is too frequent, I will decrease it. Perhaps, 5 turns?
Concerning the unused frames: that's a good idea, but can you explain how to use them? Since I can't draw, I didn't bother learning how to use existing sprites either. Also, there is the issue of the embryo sprite for inventory. Ok, for this I can repaint a stun bomb into green, perhaps. But I still would need a PNG of a stun bomb.
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I think the difficulty is already factored in by the amount of Celatids originally spawned in the map. Where on one level you would encounter 1 Celatid, on another you encounter, say 4. Each of them creates a clone every X turns, so the amount of clones is already proportional to the difficulty level.
This is a good point that slipped my mind.
I used the battle generator to test it out but after the 3rd/4th turn the game crashed with the following error:
[FATAL] A fatal error has occurred: Invlid surface set 'BIGOBS.PCK' for item 'CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON': not enough frames
Either OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15 isn't enough or you are missing something trivial in CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON.
Concerning the unused frames: that's a good idea, but can you explain how to use them? Since I can't draw, I didn't bother learning how to use existing sprites either. Also, there is the issue of the embryo sprite for inventory.
Download and extract MapView2 (also called OpenXCOM.Tools) from here (https://github.com/kevL/OpenXCOM.Tools/tree/master/Distribution).
Copy CELATID.PKG & CELATID.TAB from UFO\UNITS (so you are not directly modifying the game files) and open CELATID.PKG with PckView which is bundled with MapView2 (also called OpenXCOM.Tools) by navigating to File > "Open Pck (terrain/unit)".
When you are successful, you'll see something like this (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=CELATID.PCK).
Now for some technical stuff, Celatids use drawing routine 9 and are in constant animations.
Referencing the relevant code here (https://github.com/OpenXcom/OpenXcom/blob/8d6694b8d86859765c7a3ebdbde9e3e03f3a61c0/src/Battlescape/UnitSprite.cpp#L1324-L1351)and here (https://github.com/OpenXcom/OpenXcom/blob/8d6694b8d86859765c7a3ebdbde9e3e03f3a61c0/src/Battlescape/Map.cpp#L1325-L1358) shows that their living sequence is hardcoded to start on frame 0 and end on frame 7 (8 frames altogether), whereas their death sequence simply starts on frame 25 and is limited to 3 frames by default (e.g. the death sequence could probably be from frame 25 to 50).
This means that to create new animation sequences for drawing routine 9, you need to define frames 0 to 7 and then frames 25 to 27 (i.e. frames 8 to 24 can be blank since they will be ignored anyway) and unless you increase the number of death frames (i.e. deathFrames (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Armor)).
PckView is surprisingly powerful and can accomplish this with relative ease.
Ok, for this I can repaint a stun bomb into green, perhaps. But I still would need a PNG of a stun bomb.
PckView lets you paint with pixel precision.
Just copy BIGOBS.PKG & BIGOBS.TAB from UFO\UNITS and open BIGOBS.PKG with with PckView by navigating to File > "Open Pck (bigobs)" where you'll find the stun bomb on frame 38.
Actually, you know what, I made some time and attached some proof of concepts (just to show it can be done). I only consider the repainted stun bomb "final" but the clone animation sequence from the Celatid egg/spore could definitely be more seamless.
Note: I used ImageMagick to turn a sequence of PNG files into GIF format since PckView can't do that. For the game you can just have a custom pair of PCK and TAB files.
Edit: I was able to fix the crash by replacing:
builtInWeapons:
- CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON
with:
livingWeapon: true
and removing:
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
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Concerning the crash with the CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON; that's strange, I tested it on a nightly version 5.6.1 (v2019-08-03) and on 5.6.2 (v2019-08-28), both didn't crash. Maybe something was temporarily up with OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15? Besides, I created this weapon by simply copying the rule of the original CELATID_WEAPON and decreasing the power and accuracy, since I wanted the clones to be slightly weaker than full-grown Celatids. So, maybe it was removing of
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
that fixed the issue? Though in my installation I didn't have problems with that. Could you please check if this issue is there with the latest nightly?
And thanks for the explanations on animations! I'll get to it in about a week, when I have some time again.
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Concerning the crash with the CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON; that's strange, I tested it on a nightly version 5.6.1 (v2019-08-03) and on 5.6.2 (v2019-08-28), both didn't crash. Maybe something was temporarily up with OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15? Besides, I created this weapon by simply copying the rule of the original CELATID_WEAPON and decreasing the power and accuracy, since I wanted the clones to be slightly weaker than full-grown Celatids. So, maybe it was removing of
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
that fixed the issue? Though in my installation I didn't have problems with that. Could you please check if this issue is there with the latest nightly?
And thanks for the explanations on animations! I'll get to it in about a week, when I have some time again.
probably incorrect reuse of bigobs from xcom1, read more here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Negative_indices_and_cross-referencing_other_mods
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Strange that in my case everything is working, but to be on the safe side I replaced in CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON "bigSprite: 60" with "bigSprite: { mod: xcom1, index: 60 }".
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Concerning the crash with the CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON; that's strange, I tested it on a nightly version 5.6.1 (v2019-08-03) and on 5.6.2 (v2019-08-28), both didn't crash. Maybe something was temporarily up with OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15? Besides, I created this weapon by simply copying the rule of the original CELATID_WEAPON and decreasing the power and accuracy, since I wanted the clones to be slightly weaker than full-grown Celatids. So, maybe it was removing of
extraSprites:
- type: X1.PCK
that fixed the issue? Though in my installation I didn't have problems with that.
Technically what I had were 2 separate crashes with the same reason given.
The first crash happened on the 3rd turn and was fixed by removing the extraSprites section.
After that, the second crash happened on 4th turn and was fixed by defining livingWeapon.
I find it strange myself that this fixed it.
A couple things though... why is the extraSprites section there? X1.PCK contains the grenade animation which isn't used here. From what I see that section should be removed irregardless.
At first glance, the ruleset reference suggests that defining lvingWeapon won't work since it requires the "grenades" be marked as fixedWeapon which mean they can't be dropped but when I tested it, the cloning process still worked.
Could you please check if this issue is there with the latest nightly?
For the record, whatever is linked here (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5258.0.html)is what I consider to be the latest OXCE "nightly". If you are building from scratch or using an unlinked version you'll probably only have a handful of people who will experience your mod as intended.
Which, incidentally, is why when I tested your Chryssalid tweaks, they all spawned dead.
Edit: I did some digging around and found https://lxnt.wtf/oxem/#/Extended which is labeled as "Latest version(s) for Linux" in the main post but also contains builds for Windows.
Either the main post should be updated or anything newer than 5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15 are "nightly nighties" and it might be a safe assumption that most are not using it.
Strange that in my case everything is working, but to be on the safe side I replaced in CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON "bigSprite: 60" with "bigSprite: { mod: xcom1, index: 60 }".
I reverted my changes and used this instead and everything worked as intended.
I still question the extraSprites section though.
I'll let you know how I fared after I encounter a Celatid.
That said... since I had some times I went quite a few rounds with your Celatids and I think 3 turns might just indeed be balanced.
However, I think the primary Celatids should act more like rear commanders. This means removing psiVision from the primaries and giving it to the clones instead. This prevents the primaries from charging towards possible targets and thus increases the possibility that they'll survive to create more clones.
But to make the primaries somewhat opportunistic, the primaries should be marked with sniper while the clones should be marked with spotter. This means that the primaries could potentially attack what the clones see.
I get that you are want the Celatids to be UFOpedia-friendly so if you are opposed to removing psiVision from them, consider reducing it by a bit less than half (like say 6) and take it as though the primaries are more resistant to human brain waves.
Just my two cents.
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Maybe extrasprites is not really needed, I added it as a part of the patch that removed explosion animation from the "grenades" when they went off.
About making Celatid clones into spotters I'm apprehensive because, as far as I know, you can't limit spotters to relaying their information to only a certain type of units. I mean, it would be okay if they spotted only for primary Celatids (kind of psi-link between them), but if someone uses a mod in which, e.g. Muton navigators are snipers, then they (navigators) would also get information from the clones. That would, in my opinion, be unreasonable both from the "realism" point of view since Celatids are not sentient, and from the gameplay one since it would essentially give non-Celatid snipers psi-vision too (since Celatids would detect someone with psi-vision and relay that information to snipers).
To make primary Celatids more or less stay in hiding it's not necessary to decrease their psi-vision radius. We can just decrease their aggression to 1 or 0. I think, 1 would be okay, and I made this change, but I won't be able to test it for a week or so.
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About making Celatid clones into spotters I'm apprehensive because, as far as I know, you can't limit spotters to relaying their information to only a certain type of units. I mean, it would be okay if they spotted only for primary Celatids (kind of psi-link between them), but if someone uses a mod in which, e.g. Muton navigators are snipers, then they (navigators) would also get information from the clones. That would, in my opinion, be unreasonable both from the "realism" point of view since Celatids are not sentient, and from the gameplay one since it would essentially give non-Celatid snipers psi-vision too (since Celatids would detect someone with psi-vision and relay that information to snipers).
I knew about this concern but I never experienced it myself so I left my theoretical changes in place until I encountered a Celatid.
And boy, oh boy... it was a slaughter. The clone Celatids took point and the Mutons rained reaction fire. I lost over half my troops (barely taking out 4 aliens in the process) before I noped out of there.
Definitely felt "cheaty".
To make primary Celatids more or less stay in hiding it's not necessary to decrease their psi-vision radius. We can just decrease their aggression to 1 or 0. I think, 1 would be okay, and I made this change, but I won't be able to test it for a week or so.
So yeah, unless the spotter/sniper values can be further restricted that idea is out the window.
I'm going to try reducing the aggression instead as you mentioned.
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A further lore-friendliness problem rears its head from the limitations of psiVision: Namely, the inability (unless the Wiki needs updating) to define specific units that can or can't be spotted by specific armour's psiVision at all, or by it in general other than through fearImmune. Celatids can detect human brainwaves according to the 'pedia, but would also be able to psisee dogs, Sectoid hybrids, Tau, elves, or whatever other player units you have in your modpack that are subject to morale rules. (and as an aside, that also means you'd have a harder time of making heroes who are immune to panic but can still be psi sensed, but I'm pretty sure that's possible by tinkering with bravery formulae)
But that is/was a limitation of OXCE, not a problem with this mod. Just wanted to mention it.
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Seeing people while not seeing elves or dogs reeks of BS anyway. I can't come up with a single explanation for it, apart from magic (probably poorly designed).
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Stunned celatid clone unit cannot be recovered alive, because the corresponding geoscape item is missing.
You can fix the mod by adding an item like this:
- type: STR_CELATID_CLONE
size: 0.0
recover: true
liveAlien: true
costSell: 40000
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Stunned celatid clone unit cannot be recovered alive, because the corresponding geoscape item is missing.
You can fix the mod by adding an item like this:
- type: STR_CELATID_CLONE
size: 0.0
recover: true
liveAlien: true
costSell: 40000
Is there a way for me as a modder to know which specific frames in a given pck are missing? Currently, the debug message states only that some frames are missing, but does not say which.