Messages

1

Help / Funny names for my OpenXCom LP

« on: December 17, 2023, 03:41:15 pm »

Hi!

I'm planning to start a new series on my YouTube channel playing Reaver's mod, and I decided to throw in, as a joke, and as a treat to my viewers, new name files which contain pop culture and free software references, as well as the names of the viewers, in the mix. I don't want to delete the original name files from the game (I run Linux, installed OXCE into the root filesystem with the package manager, I don't want to touch it, and also for other games, keeping the names is good), so I made a "mod" with the new files for the SoldierNames. Testing this, I managed to get a few names from the mod files, but most still comes from the original game files.

Is there a way to not have names from the original files, only for the ones that are in the mod? If I put empty files with the same names in the mod's SoldierName  directory, it breaks the game. If I put one first name and one last name in all of them (I put "No" as first name and "Name" as last name in files that has the same file names as the ones in the game) and still got two soldiers named "No Name" in the game.

Thanks in advance!

2

Released Mods / Re: Looking for the next mod to play (for 3 years)

« on: November 21, 2021, 01:12:34 am »

If you stream any of these, post the details in the Playthroughs section of this forum so we can come watch!

I will announce it on the forum beforehand, for sure!
I've been doing the manual renaming of soldiers on my current stream using the live audience's suggestions, but it's a bit tedious, even though I'm well around the end of the game and there's no big carnage, mostly losing 2-3 rookies here and there, that's why I'd prefer to just put the suggestions into the automatic name generator and be amused by the results, so I'll only have to put base and plane names up for a vote directly while playing.

3

Released Mods / Re: Looking for the next mod to play (for 3 years)

« on: November 18, 2021, 02:54:33 pm »

Wow, I was not expecting such a detailed answer, thank you very much, Reaver!

I checked, and I've been playing Area 51 on Experienced (level 2) difficulty, and while it have happened a few times that I lost almost all of my good soldiers, I could always come back, so it's not like I'm against having any difficulty in the game, it's more like I'm playing "ironman style" (without the actual ironman settings because I don't want to be ruined by bugs or save file corruptions or such), and I just didn't want to end up losing the game too fast while streaming.

Your Harmony mod intrigues me based on the description, and would probably enjoy it a lot, even though Area 51 really spoiled me with its extensive alien and terrain additions. Final Mod Pack also seems interesting, and I'd really be glad to try them all (including X-Com Files, which I find really interesting based on the description!), and the only thing stopping me is not really having time to play them all 

So, tentatively, I'm thinking about firing up Harmony + the Community Map Pack together. Checking the CMP's description, it's the "Vanilla Extended Edition" that should / could be used together with Harmony, right?

And one final question. As a perk for my viewers / friends on YouTube, I'm planning to override the soldier naming schemes with stuff suggested by my audience, so instead of the original names I'd like to use my own name files. Is this possible to be done with the Harmony mod?

Thank you again for the great, detailed reply!

4

Troubleshooting / Re: Texture missing / misaligned on battlescape houses and fences

« on: November 10, 2021, 05:22:02 am »

Why does the original screen shot look like someone took a pixelart image and processed it through some vectorization algorithm? Are you using the assets saved from the original official game?

5

Fan-Stuff / Re: Soldier names

« on: November 07, 2021, 01:20:59 pm »

Is it possible to override the name lists in a mod?

6

Released Mods / Looking for the next mod to play (for 3 years)

« on: November 07, 2021, 04:46:10 am »

Hi Guys!
I've been playing OpenXCom on my YouTube channel for about 3 years now, and well, it's the same game (I don't have that much time and I'm not that good at it okay?  ). It is the Area 51 mod which I really enjoy, and it's being discontinued, so I already have some trouble as OpenXCom is getting updated but the mod isn't. Anyways, I will be finishing the game (hopefully with a victory soon), so I'm looking for options for the next 3 years to enjoy  .

The things I loved from the way Area 51 was, and would be happy to see in an other mod (in decreasing order of importance):
- more aliens, UFO models than vanilla,
- more diverse weapons and stuff to research, manufacture and use that gives new tactical possibilities,
- more diverse tile sets for terrains, terror and base missions than vanilla,
- more diverse missions, not just the UFO recovery, base defense, alien base assault and terror missions,
- doesn't rewrite the whole game, keeps the spirit of the original and builds on top of it.

I'm planning to play on OXCE.
So here's a list I've found fascinating and interesting, please correct me if I'm wrong, or add more suggestions.
1. The X-Com Files -- (pros) The new terrains, equipment, factions, missions all seem amazing. (cons) It seems like a major departure from the original X-Com, and might end up a very very long game.
2. Hardmode Expansion -- (pros) Seems like hitting all the major points I want from a mod. (cons) It might be lacking in new mission types and it is advertised for its extreme difficulty, which is not what I'm looking for.
3. Final Modpack -- (pros) Seems very similar in spirit to the Area 51 mod. (cons) I'm not sure what the "new missions" would entail, how much diversity would that bring. I don't know how much time the author has to fix bugs as they're working on the X-Com Files now.
4. Reaver's Harmony or Reaver's Faithful -- (pros) Seems very similar in spirit to the Area 51 mod. (cons) Can't figure out the difference between Harmony and Faithful.

Thank you for reading, and if you're a developer of any of these mods or someone who played any of these and would want to share how you'd think the mods you played would match with my list of "expectations", I'm interested in reading your opinions!

7

Troubleshooting / Weird behavior in certain terrains (very unique setup)

« on: October 31, 2021, 02:52:19 pm »

All right, my problem is going to be very specific, and very weird, so, strap in!

I've been playing one specific play-through I started sometime in 2018 on Windows, with the then-actively developed Area 51 mod. Then in 2019, I have moved to Arch Linux, upgraded to the then-current build (2911_g47700c398), had to fiddle with the mod files (rulesets), with the help of the then-actively developing Hobbes. As I was streaming the game on my YouTube channel, I wanted to just keep going with the same rules, that's why I didn't just switch to the then-current version of the mod. And things were all fine and dandy until today.
During the last update, Arch Linux got a new version of yaml-cpp (bumped to 0.7.0), which resulted in an error, of openxcom not being able to run, as the libyaml-cpp.so.0.6 was not available in the system anymore. So, what I did is that I just grabbed the newest openxcom version from github (3050_g6ef797008), built it against the new dependency files. Now, openxcom ran well, I finished up my mission, and went on a new one, finished that too, and then went on a third one, a base / hive map, that relies heavily on tileset from the now unmaintained Area 51 mod. That mission became super weird, some tiles that were under the ground level and should have worked as solid blocks (or as empty ones to fall through?), let me move through them.
Then I realized something was up, so cut the game, and went back to get the 2911_g47700c398 commit from github, and compile that against the new dependencies. Now, if I load any save games where I'm on a mission, the mission is just dark black emptiness with soldiers, dead bodies and aliens visible (WTF). However, if I load a save state with the geoscape, go on the same base/hive mission, the game acts in a bit more reasonable way, such as, i can't traverse the underground tiles that should be untraversable, and sometime the soldiers fall down as stepping on a hole (and at this point I can't tell if that is desired behavior or not). However, as I said, the save games from the battlescape (even if saved from this version) fail to load.

So after describing my situation, I have a few questions. And I am fully aware that this might be just one of those "doesn't worth attempting to solve", and I am prepared to accept if the community refuses to help. So:

1. Is there any way to salvage the situation, or should I just say f*** it, start a new game with a supported mod and hope to finish it in less than 3 years next time (dubious with my usual 1-2 hours play time per week lol).
2. Does anyone have any clue, what changed with yaml-cpp, that suddenly screws up the file loading system for battlescape savegames? Is there a commit that was done specifically to counter this issue? Maybe I could just get that specific modification and apply it to the old version and make it work?
3. Does anyone have any clue, what changed in the battlescape handling that modified the behavior of certain tiles?
4. Would it be possible to edit the savefile so that specific base mission has a different tile set, one that maybe doesn't involve the newly broken stuff?

If you read this post to the end, I already owe you one.
Thank you very much.

8

Programming / Re: Alien randomizer

« on: September 03, 2021, 01:59:10 am »

Thanks!

It looks interesting, however not exactly what I am looking for (and I also don’t run Windows).
I will take a look, it might be a good starting point.

9

Programming / Alien randomizer

« on: September 02, 2021, 06:39:23 pm »

Hi!

I will never forget the first time when I played the Area 51 mod and first met the phaser android and spent ungodly amounts of ordinance just to take one down and then taking the corpse home for analysis and figuring out their weakness.

I am afraid that the fact that all mods need to hard code their aliens, might reduce the enjoyability of replaying the game.

Is there anyone out there who would be interested in an alien randomizer? Maybe a Python script you run before starting the game, that selects from a pool of different options the final aliens. Maybe you have three different stats + ufopaedia entries for sectoids, and the script choses one and puts it in the mod directory, so you don’t know which one you got when you start the game.

This would of course require multiple meaningful descriptions and meaningful stats for multiple aliens, and probably on a mod-by-mod basis, so I wouldn’t want to do it alone, but if others are interested, I’d be happy to collab on this idea for the basic game or the more popularly appearing added alien species.

Unless of course if something like this already exists and I just missed it, in which case please point me to the direction.

10

Troubleshooting / Re: Compatibility changes between old version and the latest release?

« on: September 08, 2019, 04:50:11 pm »

are you SURE you were playing 1.0 stable (from the year 2014)... or were you playing some 1.0 nightly from a later date?

Ohh damn, thanks for asking, I remembered wrong. My actual version is 2018-04-10 03:19.
For some stupid reason I thought that is the version of the Area 51 mod, but now double checked it and it seems to be the version of the OpenXCom.

Silly me.

11

Troubleshooting / Re: Compatibility changes between old version and the latest release?

« on: September 08, 2019, 04:11:43 pm »

Hi!

My question is, that if I change the required values in the old mod version's ruleset files, will the savefiles will be compatible between the 1.0 (stable) release (what I've been playing with) and the newest nightly (that I decided to install on my new system)?

12

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: November 22, 2018, 02:09:16 pm »

this particular weapon is so rare that you are unlikely to ever encounter it before Cydonia. This means that if you are lucky enough to find the weapon in the first place, you can't realistically replenish your ammo by looting.

but this also means that this weapon is not really required to win the game though, but if found, makes it easier. In this case, if you need to capture it to manufacture it, the luck factor will be multiplied by you being able to replenish the ammo.

Just in a general perspective, in case of a narrow win/loss situation, not finding this weapon before going to Cydonia might result in a loss, if you find it, it'll be an easy win. So if you keep it very rare and hard to find with a launcher that can't be reproduced, but very powerful and let the player get the ammo for it, there's no way it won't screw the balance. It either will be too easy if found, or too difficult if not found.

13

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: November 22, 2018, 03:05:14 am »

I would REALLY like to be able to make ammo for the multi blaster launcher.  Maybe require a capture of the Ethereal Ambassadors from their envoy ship to get the recipe for the ammo?  As it is I'm fine with the launcher being unbuildable but being able to make ammo for it would be so so good if it is sutably expensive and not easy to unlock.

I don't really have a say in this as I have never tried the FMP (maybe after I finish the LP for Area 51 I'll give that a try too), but to me it sounds like a good balancing for a very OP weapon that you have to painstakingly loot the ammo for it to use, it sounds like it makes it more like a special thing to solve extremely hard problems, but you are always encouraged to try any other method before resorting to this option.

14

Work In Progress / Re: Project ASgard

« on: November 20, 2018, 10:22:41 am »

Its for this very reason the Tech Tree should be wider and only a random selection of item types should be added each new game , this way each game experience is a little difference. Same with Aliens, throw a few extra aliens into the mix and when you start a new game, let OXC work out what units it wants to use and which ones to beef up the stats on. Pretty sure i suggested this years back 

We have enough original game assets now to do this in the Vanilla offering.

YES YES YES!
And some aliens could have 3-4 versions, with different weaknesses, so you never know just by looking, what will that be without trying / doing the research.
It would add more to the replayability of the game for sure.

15

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Pyramid Rebirth

« on: November 14, 2018, 03:15:24 pm »

So happy right now I will be able to move on to the internal walls on the weekend.

Wow, nice! Though the right side seems like that Floater has a serious dildo collection on the wall.

I hope these UFOs will be able to be implemented with other mods, too!