Messages

1

OXCE Suggestions Archive / Re: [Suggestion] Recon Mission Assignment Feature

« on: March 10, 2023, 10:48:35 am »

This would be reasonably easy to implement with more X-Com Apocalypse style handling of locations. Send a team to X, scout around, withdraw. Send the reinforcements in.

2

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: [SUGGESTION]Custom Hangar/Craft types

« on: March 03, 2023, 07:44:02 pm »

For example because right now the crafts don't belong to any hangars, just to a base. After this change, they will have to belong to particular hangars.

Total space of <all hangars with given functionality> could be checked just as well… But this would only build up on top of a workaround, of course.
Facility does have association with craft used for GUI, however (via _craftForDrawing/getCraftForDrawing/setCraftForDrawing).
What more complicated would be required for a straightforward designation back and forth, at this point?

I really can't see the point in many specialized hangar types, where each one can  only fit a limited range of crafts (you should destroy/build hangars every time you advance in crafts), but I suppose it could make sense for 'thematic modding'.

In near-vanilla, maybe only basic VTOL vs spacecraft. In expanded and hybrid mods — garage for cars, hangar for aircraft, and dock for mini-subs probably should not be the same thing.

3

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: [SUGGESTION]Custom Hangar/Craft types

« on: February 27, 2023, 06:14:51 am »

but it is very difficult to implement (in a backwards-compatible way).

Why would it cause any more backwards-compatibility problems that requiresBaseFunc?
Hangar would have functionality property (much like provideBaseFunc, but affecting only this facility) set (or maybe even tag?). Craft has property that requires a hangar with certain functionality, which defaults to empty string. If a given craft has this requirement set, the required functionality is matched when available hangars are checked, so they are ineligible unless it’s present, much like they were full. Otherwise, all hangars remain good for this craft.
Then any mod not using this feature would be unaffected.

4

Suggestions / Re: Toss grenades around corners.

« on: February 27, 2023, 05:36:00 am »

How cool would it be if grenades could be tossed around a corner or an entry way without exposing your soldier to enemy fire?

As in, object bounce physics instead of instant "whoops, all momentum is suddenly gone"? Well, yes.
Even if it was implemented, however…
1. In order to not look weird too, it should at least crudely tell the obstacles apart when deciding how elastic the collision should be, i.e. requires an extra tile property. Not that it was a big deal, but still.
2. In UFO:AI bounce physics is implemented (it’s on Quake 3 engine, after all), and it is, indeed, cool. But also, last checked this led to the following chain of events: <hidden movement> <impact sound> <impact sound> <green flash> <alien dying sound> …more often than once per two missions. The invaders keep taking losses from devious hu-mon architecture (like street lamps). Grenade bounce is the new point-blank rocket, at least in dense terrains.

5

OXCE Suggestions Y-script / Re: Long Range Motion Scanner

« on: February 24, 2023, 06:51:06 am »

Ok, so how about a scanner that doesn't require motion to detect then? Like XPiratez has dogs that can use smell as motion scanner which is a bit weird.

That's basically just a cheat, isn't it.

That’s basically an extension for the model of senses and environment.
Currently there are what — vision, nightvision, psiVision, plus quirky magic sense of motion detector and proximity mine? Okay, let’s add hearing and smell — it makes sense, after all. But then, there are water and hybrid rulesets, maybe electrolocation for sharks and shark accessories specialized devices that would sense things through some walls, but not others?
But that’s direct unit-to-unit. Not how the dogs work most of the time. Perhaps moving units could leave tracks for subsets of senses — some human-visible, some dog-“visible” (aura imprints?), as extra decals much like fire and smoke, some in the air and some tied to floor and walkable objects (and destroyed with them)?
If that’s where development goes — cool, but at some point this model will need better unification than more fields like psiVision / psiCamouflage (e.g. arrays of senses/signatures with different properties, much like damage types/resistances, and motion detector “seeing” a more volatile type of tracks), if only to avoid excessive growth and spaghetti-fication of code. The sooner, the better, obviously.

6

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Can items generated from geoscape events appear instantly

« on: January 29, 2023, 09:17:59 pm »

Currently the code only checks base storage limits at the one-hour mark (as part of production updates). Not sure if moving such a check to every 5s-mark is something that is wanted (performance wise).

I mean transfer time, if zero created some problems.
The check should be forced when space reservation for the transfer is done, either way.

While I'm looking at it though, is there any special reason why soldiers, scientists, and engineers are all given a 24 hour arrival time from events (whereas everything else was 1 hour)? I don't really care much about the 24 hour arrival time for people. It's not relevant to the thing I'm trying to fix; but it just seems a bit odd to me, so I wondered if there was a reason for it.

IMO a single mechanism is always preferable, to minimize spaghetti code and chance of hard-to-catch intermittent bugs.
It looks like the most universal and least-contorted way to do this would be to treat all transactions where anything or anyone moves to the base as Transfers from a temporary “storage place”. Also applicable to vanilla style purchases/hires/etc — so the items or personnel could move from the current mission site, nearest large city, randomly generated site within given range of an existing site, whatever.
So if the people you hire are supposed to come from the present (i.e. large) city nearest to the base hiring them, transfer time would be not arbitrary and constant, but derived from range and “transfer speed”. Speed is set for each terrain; perhaps somewhat randomized around the average value, so mean speed and maximal deviation.

…I’m starting to see why Apocalypse developers chose to do things the way they did.   They also had dynamic background, however, so just pass the route to transport activity tracker and boom, it’s a fully modeled process.

7

Offtopic / Re: Ai generated images.

« on: January 28, 2023, 03:58:11 pm »

Those are not “AI generated”, they are AI remixed.
It looks like some bright bulbs already have started “hire an artist to make a basic set of samples, fire the artist, start auto-remixing” routine, but they are likely to be crushed quickly and thoroughly, probably with support of other publishers.
Technically, there are few differences between AI-controlled and manually controlled image editor, and they are not necessarily provable. And then, AI can be set up to do only negligible adjustments… you see the picture (sorry).
The following assumes the status quo in the powers over Internet. Things would be very different in conditions of e.g. Swiss (with approval of Russia and China) emerging as the keeper of most Internet infrastructure that matters, while holding in absolute contempt Disney, Hasbro, Salon com and Californian courts, while EU is confused by all this — but there’s no point trying to predict details of turns this sharp. 

If AI remixes were somehow exempt — however shaped, this de facto would effectively kill both copyright (protection of authors, mainly from publishers) and IP (protection of publishers, mainly from consumers) laws. The latter obviously is not going to die anytime soon — if Disney and other dinosaurs could not man the ramparts, they would be gone already.
Thus, most likely AI exemptions are not going to happen either. If anything, it looks like a great excuse for another wave of “publishers own everything, including Pythagoras table” style crackdowns (which in turn are a tried setup for “unofficially official” censorship infrastructure, of course).
Much less likely (but not impossible, seeing how some animals are a lot more equal than the rest already): lawyers embrace the opportunity to metastasize some more, but are cut short by the scandal-averse bureaucrats on all sides. The publisher oligopoly strengthens its grip enough that they don’t really care what you do, because things they don’t want to go around cannot survive even on your blog anyhow. So the “creative collaborative community” and “unofficially official” press are allowed to go all out in celebration of this shocking new freedom (as long as they don’t deviate too much from the Party Line), but since they still compete with each other even when not allowed to disagree, this results in near-cyberpunk grade “I grabbed it first” jungle.

8

OXCE Support / Re: [Solved] HK soft lock

« on: January 28, 2023, 01:30:47 am »

Why not just… you know, allow to disengage?
At which point the enemy craft could either follow and attack, follow to track or also disengage, depending on whether it can attack and set fallback behavior?

9

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Can items generated from geoscape events appear instantly

« on: January 28, 2023, 01:27:08 am »

Base over-stuffing is a problem either way. If you need to check storage space both to add the items right away and to reserve place for “transfer”, what’s the difference?
Adjustable parameters are always better, unless the modders can chain the event to a separate delay. I’m not sure when setting the delay explicitly would make sense, however. Maybe “delivery” at a set speed to base from an arbitrary point (which defaults to the base, but could be a mission site, coordinates of a city or whatever)? But then, maybe add a boolean to allow the player selection of the base (or rather initiate Transfer immediately) or use the default (first) base?
If some minimum is needed, maybe 5 seconds tick would do?

10

Suggestions / Re: Shooting range/Training center

« on: January 19, 2023, 06:04:07 am »

OXCE already uses pseudo-battlescape for deployment  (Crew → Preview) and to walk the base (right-click on the Access Lift).
This could be much the same, via right click on a facility and constrained to one big room with some dummies and standard flimsy cover. But with real turns and resource regeneration, rather than infinite TU/energy, to evaluate how this will work in a real mission. It would have to discard some or all changes, however, especially if using "hostile" dummies.

11

Suggestions / Re: Show how many bases are currently researching something in the research list.

« on: January 19, 2023, 05:52:52 am »

Small font is very unnecessary. Research screen columns are wide. Especially "Scientists Allocated" (which usually has just 2 digits under it, how many do you expect in any feasible mod?). And then there’s space between them, including "Scientists Allocated" and "Progress".

Also, it would make sense if Geoscape events sent the player to the unified rather than single-base research (or manufacture) screen.
OXCE already has those (from menu under Extended button). The same space-inefficient base screens, but with everything listed and color-highlighted base name headers inserted in the name column. They could be improved, of course.

12

XPiratez / Re: some sprite reskins

« on: January 16, 2023, 08:05:27 pm »

Please might i ask to update its post adding a version without that foregrip? I never stood those on firearms >. < 

I’m not going to claim that rail-mounted perpendicular grips aren’t butt-ugly, but foregrip in general is a feature that’s not going away. See for example here.
Handling recoil.
Placing the hand further from parts that heat up.
Also, having a proper foregrip discourages the user from instinctively trying to use magazine as a grip (depends on placement of the magazine, of course).

It provides an added lever of control and they really help with rapid target acquisition. To the point that they are considered an assault weapon feature.

…“are considered” by whom?    Surely it’s not an effect of faceless and omnipresent gravity. I have seen  mockery of the term «assault weapon» as such from “gun nut” crowd, for that matter, and inclined to agree that it’s an anti-concept, given lack of straightforward definitions.

My opinion is an angled grip like a tommygun or maybe 45 degrees, butted up against the magwell, would likely be ideal.

But if the grip is too close, wouldn’t arm sometimes push against the magazine?

Including lever action rifles, which should have a 4-6 tube carousel of ammunition able to hold 20+ rounds (check out the SRM-1216 for reference, then put it on a lever action rifle).

An interesting design.
But where it’s useful? Selectable magazines are desirable for shotguns (like side-by-side tubes of NeoStead 2000, though of course detachable is better), because there’s almost always more than one type of ammunition that can be useful. Even a hunter who only wants ducks may keep some slugs at hand, because close encounters of a nasty kind with boars happen.
While for rifles variety of rounds does exist, actually carrying several types seems unusual. I don’t see a solid niche for multi-magazine rifles unless quickly swapping variant ammunition somehow becomes a major consideration too (not that it’s implausible, but non-trivial).
Specifically for lever action, isn’t simplicity its advantage? When extra mechanisms make strong sides of the basic design meaningless, we are looking at Mateba Autorevolver tier of incongruous complexity. What’s the point, other than as a novelty?

13

Troubleshooting / Re: Typing names with accent marks

« on: January 15, 2023, 06:22:30 am »

Lol. Anyway, a somewhat more comprehensive answer: accents are in  FontBig.png sheet. The “extra” Unicode symbols are in FontBig_jp.png sheet.
The characters are mapped in Font.dat:

Code: [Select]

    images:
      - file: FontBig.png
        chars: >
          !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖŐŰÙÚÛÜÝÞŸßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöőűùúûüýþÿФИСВУАПРШОЛДЬТЩЗЙКЫЕГМЦЧНЯфисвуапршолдьтщзйкыегмцчнябБжЖхХъЪэЭюЮĆĘ깣泥ŚśźżŻŹŃńĂăȘȚșțČĎĚŇŘŠŤŮŽčďěňřšťůžЄєŒœіІїЇøØĞŞİğşıΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩαβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυφχψωΆΈΉΊΌΎΏάέήίόύώςΐϊĹĽŔĺľŕ∞ЁёĐđ
      - file: FontBig_jp.png
        chars: >
          ‐―‘’“”†‡‥…‰′″※℃№℡ÅⅠⅡⅢⅣⅤⅥⅦⅧⅨⅩ←↑→↓⇒⇔∀∂∃∇∈∋∑√∝∞∟∠∥∧∨∩∪∫∬∮∴∵∽≒≠≡≦≧≪≫⊂⊃⊆⊇⊥⊿⌒①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑩⑪⑫⑬⑭⑮⑯⑰⑱⑲⑳─━│┃┌┏┐┓└┗┘┛├┝┠┣┤┥┨┫┬┯┰┳┴┷┸┻┼┿╂╋■□▲△▼▽◆◇○◎●◯★☆♀♂♪♭♯　、。〃々〆〇〈〉《》「」『』【】〒〓〔〕〝〟
[…]Xcom Files for some reason uses slightly changed FontBig/FontSmall — «đ» disappeared, but other accent characters remain where they were. It does not have its own Font.dat or FontBig_jp.png, thus for the rest should behave just like vanilla.
Dioxine_XPiratez does have its own font config, but changes are not related to character lists, other than removing small Korean sets under FONT_GEO_*. Otherwise should behave just like vanilla, since the sheets are unchanged.
X1Overhaul adds big Korean sheets, for that matter.

For curious modders — consider at least some of ☀ ☐☑☒ ☛☞ ☠☢☣☹☺ ☼☽ ⚐⚑⚒⚓⚔⚙⚛⚠⚡⛉⛊⛏ ⯐.

14

Troubleshooting / Re: Typing names with accent marks

« on: January 14, 2023, 03:57:34 pm »

You mean for text fields in the game?
• If you want to use such things regularly, it’s probably easier to enable the relevant layout.
• If not, using Compose button is slower, ḅüť 🅸🆃 ãĺļóŵṣ lots of ⓕ🄐🄽©ẙ symbols (just tested in OXCE 7.8.7 — works for me).  ☺ Practically, however, it’s up to the font. Which is awesome compared to DOS, but as Unicode goes, almost modest. So the Greek letters, Roman numerals and « » † ‡ ← → ↑ ↓ © ♂ ♀ ≡ ≪ ≫ ¡ ¿ ∧ ∨ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ∈ ∋ are supported, but × ≈ ≤ ≥ 〈 〉 ∉ ∌ ‼ ⁈ — ⌀ ⯐ ⌁ ⚡ ☢ ☣ ⚛ ⛏ ⚒ ⚓ ⚕ ☤ are replaced with question marks and characters >2 bytes (🕏 🌡 🎃 ) are ignored. For some reason, ½ ¼ are replaced with tiny dots, but ⅓ ⅕⅙ ⅐ ⅛ ⅟ with question mark.

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Released Mods / Re: Decreased TUs for aliens on your first turn [OXCE]

« on: January 10, 2023, 06:22:52 pm »

Yes, “we landed in a clear spot, but somehow don’t know what is around, then waited until dust settled, now step out to the shooting gallery” part was always silly.
I doubt it’s the best solution, but it’s good — randomized, fairly simple and configurable.

Turn one is for smoke grenade deployment, why are you just sending your troops out into the open? 

Definitely. Also, pre-equipping 2 soldiers closest to the door with smoke grenades in hands makes a nice marker when cycling through them.
But that’s just a workaround.