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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Keyboard Shortcut to Add Indicator over a Soldier
« on: September 07, 2024, 12:19:15 pm »Wrong.Sure bud. Ignored.
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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Keyboard Shortcut to Add Indicator over a Soldier
« on: September 07, 2024, 11:47:39 am »When I was playtesting it, the yellow motion scanner arrows (and the yellow current/selected unit arrow) were mixing with the yellow custom unit arrows.
I could not distinguish which is which.
That's a fair point, even if you change the yellow custom arrows to another color it could still be a cluster fest of arrows if everything is displayed. Perhaps leaving ALT for the old facing/motion scanner markers and if you do CTRL+ALT it only displays the custom markers (?). Altho I guess this would also require the color cycling to change to CTRL+ALT+C if that's even an option. Alternatively, could the directional arrows be repurposed here and be the ones that change color giving them a dual purpose? If it's an option, then everything could remain within the ALT press and ALT+C without having to use CTRL.
I don't know about reducing the available colors, they're more discernable than changing the symbol being displayed. "Shouldn't clash with force fire"? Why wouldn't it?
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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Keyboard Shortcut to Add Indicator over a Soldier
« on: September 06, 2024, 07:17:11 pm »
I would not consider this feature useless, while I haven't given it much time in actual gameplay I can see that this can be used to easely identify units that are carrying specialized items, medkits, stunrods, BLs and anything else when you don't want to play with cookie cutter loadouts for all soldiers. Could also easely mark units that have low health / armor, have shown MC weakness, etc... It's very new and people just haven't found their use of the feature. It does make it easier to tell appart your currently selected unit from motion scanner arrows indicators.
Now for the facing indicator, I have used it with relative frequency, the most common case is for "aliens in the dark" where an enemy unit has been spotted, but the tiles it's standing on haven't been revealed. It helps in both determining the facing AND where on the map it is if I want to try to take a shot at it, instead of having to cursor scan every dark tile.
I believe the issue comes from the fact that the new feature has "pushed" the older one into requiring 2 key holds instead of the 1 and muscle memory has not adapted. I don't find the new method particulary problematic, but that's my opinion on it.
Now for the facing indicator, I have used it with relative frequency, the most common case is for "aliens in the dark" where an enemy unit has been spotted, but the tiles it's standing on haven't been revealed. It helps in both determining the facing AND where on the map it is if I want to try to take a shot at it, instead of having to cursor scan every dark tile.
I believe the issue comes from the fact that the new feature has "pushed" the older one into requiring 2 key holds instead of the 1 and muscle memory has not adapted. I don't find the new method particulary problematic, but that's my opinion on it.
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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Amiga thinking...
« on: September 06, 2024, 04:12:31 pm »
I'd like to request that the border value actually work with 0 instead of using 'color+4'. This would allow any modder to use borderless progress bar as well as completely disable the feature without leaving an empty rectangle. You can achieve a borderless progress bar if you use these values as it exploits the overflow of the Uint8 parameter, but it's the only way to currently achieve this, probably unintended and still doesn't allow fully 'turning off' said feature.
Code: [Select]
interfaces:
- type: battlescape
elements:
- id: thinkingProgressBar
color: 252
color2: 0
border: 0
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The X-Com Files / Re: XCF Alternate Map Scripts (WIP)
« on: September 02, 2024, 07:40:23 pm »
New update (v0.4) with new and modified scripts.
Different approach to unevenly shaped maps. Some terrains have been grouped to use the same script.
Made the necessary changes to allow maps that use STORMMOUNTAIN terrains to spawn craft instead of an entry mapblock.
VAMPIRE_CASTLE is now a little less static. While the back interior already had some randomness, the entrance and x-com spawn point didn't. Now they do... to some extent.
Different approach to unevenly shaped maps. Some terrains have been grouped to use the same script.
Made the necessary changes to allow maps that use STORMMOUNTAIN terrains to spawn craft instead of an entry mapblock.
VAMPIRE_CASTLE is now a little less static. While the back interior already had some randomness, the entrance and x-com spawn point didn't. Now they do... to some extent.
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The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« on: August 23, 2024, 12:25:39 am »
Terrain RURAL2 has no script property, so it will run the basegame's DEFAULT script whenever that terrain is used and the deployment doesn't specify its own script. It'll work, but some of the terrain's blocks never get used in that script, like the size 3 block.
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OXCE Support / Re: Pilots in OXCE with FMP + FMP extended
« on: August 22, 2024, 06:53:41 pm »Default is 0 (zero pilots).Which means that the vanilla games don't use pilots even if the engine has them implemented, only mods that use that functionality.
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Troubleshooting / Re: 40K mod not appearing
« on: August 21, 2024, 04:02:41 pm »
Master mods need to be changed from the top long button, just under "Base game" in the mod screen.
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The X-Com Files / Re: Want to help?
« on: August 16, 2024, 08:19:27 pm »
While making my submod I've made a couple of block changes that you might have use of:
- Removed the exterior floor in SKI_XCOM.MAP so it uses the terrain provided by the 'landing blocks'
- I've sliced up the FOREST_HIGHWAY.MAP into 4 smaller blocks and provided the ruleset to use these new blocks. This will allow the spawn point of the vehicles to be random along the road instead of a fixed position. The road segments are visually identical, but use different node placements to imitate the original.
- Removed the exterior floor in SKI_XCOM.MAP so it uses the terrain provided by the 'landing blocks'
- I've sliced up the FOREST_HIGHWAY.MAP into 4 smaller blocks and provided the ruleset to use these new blocks. This will allow the spawn point of the vehicles to be random along the road instead of a fixed position. The road segments are visually identical, but use different node placements to imitate the original.
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The X-Com Files / Re: XCF Alternate Map Scripts (WIP)
« on: August 16, 2024, 06:40:50 pm »
Updated the mod with more scripts and a couple of changes to some blocks to accomodate for some of the scripts.
Tried an extensive version of the scripts that unified all 4 corners and covers all sorts of rectangular maps greater than 50x50 up to 100x100. The SE spawn is particulary problematic as the number of conditional checks grows exponentially if I want to try and cover all sort of map sizes. While this is great for somewhat future-proofing this submod if existing deployments change their map size, this is unlikely and mostly pointless effort on my part besides providing proof of concept.
To expedite this sub mod's completion I've decided to change my approach in future versions past v0.3:
- I will be only performing checks on maps that I know will require them, mostly UFO landings/crashes, but others too.
- The checks will be made only for sizes the corresponding deployments use if there's at least 2 different map sizes defined for the same script.
- I will be shifting the 'corner' spawn deployment to a 'map border' deployment method. Without going into too much detail, this will greatly reduce the checks needed, in particular it would remove almost all the work that is currently needed for SE spawns. In exchange, the scripts will guarantee that at least one side of the 'craft' area is touching a border. The previous method could result in very small craft (10x10) spawning near a corner, but not actually touching a border. Larger craft always touched at least 1 side.
Tried an extensive version of the scripts that unified all 4 corners and covers all sorts of rectangular maps greater than 50x50 up to 100x100. The SE spawn is particulary problematic as the number of conditional checks grows exponentially if I want to try and cover all sort of map sizes. While this is great for somewhat future-proofing this submod if existing deployments change their map size, this is unlikely and mostly pointless effort on my part besides providing proof of concept.
To expedite this sub mod's completion I've decided to change my approach in future versions past v0.3:
- I will be only performing checks on maps that I know will require them, mostly UFO landings/crashes, but others too.
- The checks will be made only for sizes the corresponding deployments use if there's at least 2 different map sizes defined for the same script.
- I will be shifting the 'corner' spawn deployment to a 'map border' deployment method. Without going into too much detail, this will greatly reduce the checks needed, in particular it would remove almost all the work that is currently needed for SE spawns. In exchange, the scripts will guarantee that at least one side of the 'craft' area is touching a border. The previous method could result in very small craft (10x10) spawning near a corner, but not actually touching a border. Larger craft always touched at least 1 side.
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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« on: August 10, 2024, 03:07:11 pm »
Most of the time, they should work, however there's always a possibility of bugs from mid campaign update. It is recommended to update between geoscape saves, avoid battlescape updates.
As for making a submod, specially if you're changing some values, it's much easier than many people think. Amateur IT is more than enough to do it and a bit of time to read the nightly ruleset information at ufopaedia and you don't even need to read the whole thing, just the metadata and the sections that you'll modify.
As for making a submod, specially if you're changing some values, it's much easier than many people think. Amateur IT is more than enough to do it and a bit of time to read the nightly ruleset information at ufopaedia and you don't even need to read the whole thing, just the metadata and the sections that you'll modify.
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Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)
« on: August 02, 2024, 06:08:33 pm »So the game doesn’t need .TAB files, they are needed only for MapView2, then if you want, you can delete them altogether from the mod folder?No, the first attached image shows what you will get if the game tries to build a map with blocks that have missing TAB files. I provoked this by renaming the tab file for the avenger to avenger2, so they ARE required. Mapview can build a new TAB file from the contents of a PCK. How this is possible is explained in https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Image_Formats#PCK however, if the contents of the PCK is "bad" the new TAB won't help.
On that very matter, I have also noticed that some of the PCK files in this mod seem to contain trailing "corrupt" sprites. This doesn't affect the game or mods since they aren't used. Would need to experiment to see what would actually happen if OXC or OXCE tries to load these sprites but I haven't yet. I'm also attaching a hex view of the c_bits TAB and PCK files, notice the repeating pattern of FE FF values at the end of the PCK, this is what's causing issues with mapview. If you're comfortable with hex editing and understand the structure of PCK file as explained in the ufopaedia site a simple "fix" is to trim this bad data, save the pck (or copy of) and then use mapview to generate a new tab file for it.
At this point, I agree that it might better to bring this up with kevL in the Mapview Upgrade thread and possibly request a feature to "recover" the PCK files while pruning out the bad sprites.
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The X-Com Files / Re: XCF Alternate Map Scripts (WIP)
« on: July 24, 2024, 12:03:27 am »Would you perhaps have some idea on how to simplify the cave script? Right now it runs on 4 scripts (CAVE_A to CAVE_D), each of them rather big. I think there should be a way to make it saner, but the fact that all blocks are 20x20 makes it hard.
This does the trick, all 4 map scritps covered by 1. Most of the work was already there, it just needed to combine the rects into a single command:
Code: [Select]
- type: CAVE_ABCD
commands:
- type: addBlock
size: 2
groups: 6
rects:
- [0, 0, 2, 2]
- [4, 0, 2, 2]
- [0, 4, 2, 2]
- [4, 4, 2, 2]
- type: fillArea
size: 2
rects:
- [0, 0, 2, 2]
- [2, 0, 2, 2]
- [4, 0, 2, 2]
- [0, 2, 2, 2]
- [0, 4, 2, 2]
- [2, 2, 2, 2]
- [2, 4, 2, 2]
- [4, 2, 2, 2]
- [4, 4, 2, 2]
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The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« on: July 23, 2024, 02:30:29 pm »...
This forces the building to spawn in the upper corner to leave enough space for any craft (none is bigger than 20x20).
I normally avoid using fixed positions, but in this case we can make an exception, as it's a rare and specific mission.
You could use these rects for a 60x60 map:
Code: [Select]
rects:
- [0,0,6,4] # Leaves a 60x20 gap south of the map
- [0,0,4,6] # Leaves a 20x60 gap east of the map
- [0,2,6,4] # Leaves a 60x20 gap north of the map
- [2,0,4,6] # Leaves a 20x60 gap west of the map
With these the block will avoid the central area and will always leave a 20x20 gap somewhere to fit any of the mod's crafts. The map generation doesn't allow for blocks to partially spawn in different rects, even if the combined rects fit the whole block, it must fully spawn within one of those rects.
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The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« on: July 22, 2024, 05:40:12 pm »Thank you very much. Here is the save game.
"Morozova's Abduction" strikes again, loaded up the save and about 1 in-game day later the error pops up. I've taken the liberty to "fix" the save with another random correct region for the alien mission. This should bypass the bug for this month, but I recommend you update the mod's files from the github repo so it doesn't happen again.