Messages

1

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: July 14, 2014, 10:52:36 pm »

I can only manufacture one tuned missile at a time despite having lots of the base missile in stock.

Huh? What error message are you getting when you try to manufacture more than one?

2

Released Mods / Re: Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: July 09, 2014, 07:00:38 pm »

I'm seeing them all the time. Almost as much as Large Scouts.

Lucky you. I'd love to see more mediums, I like that design with the door on the second floor etc. But not getting them! Alien Abduction and Harvest missions (the only ones where they show up) seem to be really rare - most UFOs I see are on Terror or Retaliation missions, with occasional Infiltration and Research (and Base, of course).

3

Released Mods / Re: Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: July 09, 2014, 02:00:28 pm »

Welp... just noticed I've posted in the wrong forum. Could this topic be moved to "Complete mods" please?

4

Open Feedback / Re: Is there a reason why UFO fire sound uses laser cannon instead of plasma?

« on: July 09, 2014, 01:59:18 pm »

There is no UFO attack sound in either version AFAIK.

But was Laser and Plasma sounds similar in either of those?

5

Open Feedback / Re: Chryssalid reaction melee?

« on: July 09, 2014, 01:58:33 pm »

On a side note, have they made Cryssalids fair (meaning, they have to kill a unit actually to zombify it) or is it like vanilla (no matter what happens, if Cryssalid attacked a unit, when it stops attacking unit will be zombified)?

6

Released Mods / Re: Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: July 08, 2014, 12:24:45 am »

2 iblanix
Well, medium sized UFOs were actually not a concern when balancing things out because... do you see them often? I mean, what's the last time you saw one? Honestly, I hardly ever saw them in my whole life... I've played countless of campaigns, I've played when I was ten years old, I've played it on PS One, DOS and Windows, I've played it with XComUtils and UFOExtender, I've played it over and over... and I'm playing it now when I'm 28 and... well, maybe I had 3 or 4 I can remember? They're really really rare... and thing is - they have pitiful range and not that much health, so they never were a challenge to begin with. They're outranged by even Stingrays in vanilla! And btw, new Avalanche is both less damage total per one sortie (a little bit), and is less reliable, than old one... so the damage change can't really make anything easier.

7

Released Mods / [CRAFT] Air Combat Rebalanced

« on: July 05, 2014, 05:07:10 pm »

This mod changes the air combat balance, aiming to make UFOs more challenging, provide incentive to use different weapons together on one craft, make more craft weapons useful etc.

Mod page: https://www.openxcom.com/mod/air-combat-rebalanced

---

After getting back into X-Com again with the long-awaited release of the OpenXCom version 1.0, I quickly remembered how simple is the air combat in that game. The tactical combat is awesome, deep, and challenging, where aliens remain quite terrifying for a long time, but in the air, X-Com dominates from the first day, and just keeps dominating until the end. Seeing as at that time, there were no mods available that tacke this problem, with most modders focused on the tactical aspect of the game, I've decided to do it myself.

I've tried to focus on making different weapons vialbe on the same craft - so that a loadout like Laser+Plasma, for example, is preferable both to 2xLaser and 2xPlasma. I've also tried to make it so that the player spends more time in range of a UFO taking damage, while at the same time not forcing the player to always engage with multiple craft. I hope I managed to achieve that, and at least in my experience, shooting the UFOs is much more fun now, but we will see what the players who use the mod think.

In order to strike the optimal balance, I've relied on both calculations and actual playtesting. In process of developing this mod, I've made some simple programs, spreadsheets and even a crude emulator for the dogfight process in order to test the modded stats over millions of engagements, or just calculate exact probabilities of each outcome (like, for example, to know what damage total, on average, would 10 shots of Plasma Beam do against a Terror Ship, with exact probability of each outcome, or summarised probabilities, like, the chance to crash it, or the chance take it down to less than 100HP). If anyone is interested, I could release those too.

Well, guess that's it. Now I should await what you guys think of it.

PS: As a side note, how do I contact the admins of openxcom.com? The "images" section for mm mod has bugged out and I can neither sort nor delete images I've uploaded for the mod. I need help with that.

8

Work In Progress / How to mod it so that Tanks do not start on the first slot in the transport?

« on: July 03, 2014, 12:28:07 am »

I've tried to make this mod:

crafts:
  - type: STR_AVENGER
    deployment:
      - [4, 11, 1, 0]
      - [5, 11, 1, 0]
      - [4, 12, 1, 0]
      - [5, 12, 1, 0]
      - [4, 13, 1, 0]
      - [5, 13, 1, 0]
      - [4, 14, 1, 0]
      - [5, 14, 1, 0]
      - [4, 15, 1, 0]
      - [5, 15, 1, 0]
      - [4, 16, 1, 0]
      - [5, 16, 1, 0]
      - [4, 9, 1, 0]
      - [5, 9, 1, 0]
      - [4, 10, 1, 0]
      - [5, 10, 1, 0]
      - [3, 10, 1, 0]
      - [3, 11, 1, 0]
      - [3, 12, 1, 0]
      - [3, 13, 1, 0]
      - [3, 14, 1, 0]
      - [6, 10, 1, 0]
      - [6, 11, 1, 0]
      - [6, 12, 1, 0]
      - [6, 13, 1, 0]
      - [6, 14, 1, 0]

But it has no effect - the tank still start in the first slot, blocking the exit ramp (and making smoking duty on turn one VERY problematic)

9

Work In Progress / Re: Refuel > Rearm > Repair

« on: July 03, 2014, 12:26:31 am »

I guess you can't, you'll have to change the code for that.

10

Open Feedback / Re: Is there a reason why UFO fire sound uses laser cannon instead of plasma?

« on: July 03, 2014, 12:23:40 am »

It's very different, and mainly, the laser sound is LOUDER. While plasma sound is less loud. And then, it makes sense for aliens to use plasma, not laser sounds

11

Open Feedback / Re: Attack on Primary Base

« on: June 28, 2014, 11:42:51 pm »

Sounds like you're asking for OpenXCom to replicate the bug in the original game?

12

Open Feedback / Is there a reason why UFO fire sound uses laser cannon instead of plasma?

« on: June 28, 2014, 11:41:13 pm »

Well, AFAIK the original game had no sound for UFO fire (and it made sense that way, because it didnt interfere with awesome sounds of player's craft firing...) And also, should we really hear the sound of UFO weapon fire, if we're supposedly the interceptor? It's understandable why we hear the sound of UFO being hit or crashing (since that's obviously quite loud) but there could be an argument why can't we hear UFO firing especially at 60 kilometers...

But then again, maybe it also makes sense for us to hear the sound. Gameplay purposes and all...

Then, why is the laser cannon sound used? If anything, it makes sense for UFO to use plasma cannon's sound, not laser, because.,. well, most likely they are firing plasma at us! Plus there is another argument for using plasma sound... it's less loud!

So, maybe UFO firing sound should be changed to plasma?

13

Programming / Re: I'm terrible at this, please help me compile OpenXCom

« on: June 26, 2014, 12:53:04 am »

RRrright, got it to compile, and found a really big bug (basically, missile weapons almost can't miss because if they miss, they try to hit again and again several times in a row before finally giving up)

14

Programming / Re: I'm terrible at this, please help me compile OpenXCom

« on: June 25, 2014, 10:47:48 pm »

Many thanks for the link, AndO3131!

However, was I supposed to guess that (I mean, for example, that dependencies go in the "deps" folder)? I mean, there is no such folder initially, and readme does not say that you have to put dependencies in that folder...

15

Programming / I'm terrible at this, please help me compile OpenXCom

« on: June 25, 2014, 09:40:41 pm »

Well, title says it all. I'm a C# programmer (done a lot of C/C++ stuff in the past) and I consider myself quite advanced with PCs, but I just don't get this.

So, I want to compile OpenXCom for myself since I want to add some debug output to debug air combat (https://openxcom.org/bugs/openxcom/issues/717). I downloaded the code from git. I have VS2010 installed, so I open the sln file. I compile and it fails - needs yaml's header. Okay, I'm looking at the readme and it says I need five libs:

- SDL (libsdl1.2):
https://www.libsdl.org
- SDL_mixer (libsdl-mixer1.2):
https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/
- SDL_gfx (libsdl-gfx1.2), version 2.0.22 or later:
https://www.ferzkopp.net/joomla/content/view/19/14/
- SDL_image (libsdl-image1.2):
https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/
- yaml-cpp, version 0.5.1 or later:
https://code.google.com/p/yaml-cpp/


Okay, I start with yaml-cpp. I download it - it's a folder with folders inside. Where do I put them? How do I tell VS2010 where to look for them? Okay, I guess I go into project properties and add an include path to the folder that contains the folder that contains yaml's header. But now it complains about some "boost/shared_ptr.hpp"... what is an hpp anyway? I only remember there being "h" files and "cpp" or "c" files! Anyway, I look at the yaml's google code page and readme and it doesn't tell me I need any other library to use yaml... I google and it seems I do need this "boost" so I download it... another folder, with another bunch of folders... do I add it again to the "include" paths? But then I'm looking at SDL site, and no download option offers "libsdl1.2"... or does it mean I need to get source codes?....

You see, I'm kinda getting nowhere here... and I don't even know where to read about this. It seems it's so trivial to other people since nowhere it explains how to do it! And I don't even know how to google for this, because... well, I don't know what to ask for!

Can anyone who has already done this please tell me how am I supposed to do it properly?

Thanks in advance!