Topics

1

OXCE Support Y-scripts / No way to retreive unit's coordinates?

« on: March 28, 2023, 02:07:57 pm »

Long story short, I'm trying to create an alien with a "dread aura" that drains morale of nearby x-com soldiers, and I want the intensity to scale with distance between the alien and the soldier. Except there seems to be no way to get unit's XYZ coordinates on the battlescape map? There are ways to get facing direction, and even turret turn angle, but I see nothing for actual position. That can't be right, can it? Any suggestions for a workaround?

2

Help / How to illuminate a map evenly?

« on: June 23, 2018, 07:04:41 am »

Hello once more.

I've finally "finished" my new alien base terrain, but a few ugly issues revealed themselves during the testing.

The main one is the inconsistent shading of tiles (see attached picture). Tiles that have no floor MCDs on top of them are lit better than the tiles "under the roof". Obviously, this is very undesirable for me since the base is underground, and no sun is supposed to create shadows there. I would rather all tiles were lit evenly, but I don't know how to force it. Is there an option to disable these shadows somewhere in rulesets? If not, I guess the "best" solution is to create a fake Z-level on top of every map block and fill it with floor tiles, but that sounds like an enourmous amount of work. Is it possible to add a level on top of the existing ones in MapView without having to completely remake the map? Are there any better ways?

I know there is a shade property for alien deployments that ranges between 0 (day) and 15 (night). Is there a reference table for how all the intermediate values affect X-Com's vision? Is everything below 15 purely cosmetical or does it reduce the vision range still?

3

Help / Different elevator behaviour in OpenXCOM and OpenTFTD?

« on: June 20, 2018, 07:50:12 pm »

Hi again.  A bit of a weird question today.

As far as I'm aware, OpenXCom "fixes" grav lift plugging by making the elevator floor tile see-through and shoot-through. At the same time, lifts in OpenTFTD seem to to behave like they used to (can't see other floors through it, can't shoot through the floor).

How is this difference actually coded? I've examined MCDs for lifts in EU and TFTD and failed to notice the difference. How can I force the TFTD behaviour in my mod for XCom1? (my grav lift MCDs right now have vanilla properties, but are moved into a custom MCD file.)

4

Help / How customizable is the digTunnel mapscript command?

« on: June 11, 2018, 04:01:14 pm »

Hello, everyone.

Long story short, I want to make my own alien base maps and so I need to understand the digTunnel command better. To summarize it in a few questions:

1) Can the positions of the removed tiles be customized? I know I can specify which Z-levels have tunnels, and which tiles are used to make tunnel walls/floor, but can I dig tunels in ways other than the standart 3 by 1 right in the middle of each map chuck's side?

2) What would happen of I try to dig tunnels on a map composed of non-standart map chunks (i.e. not 10 by 10 or 20 by 20)?

3) Can map chunks in general have sides that are not dividable by 10 (of course assuming that all map chunks in a single terrain have the same common divisor that I specify somewhere in rulesets)?

I know I can always just make tunnels a part of the map chunks themselves, but that would lead to tunnels cutting off into nowhere at the edges. Assuming I make special map chunks to use as borders, what do I need to write in my mapscript commands to place them around the map's perimiter? So for example the map itself is 80 by 80, where the outermost chunks are solid rock and the inner 60 by 60 are filled randomly as usual.

Thanks in advance. 

5

Help / How to make patrolling routes for aliens?

« on: October 10, 2017, 09:01:59 pm »

Greetings, fellow operatives. 
I'm working on my first mod for OXC, and it's going to be just a bunch of new UFOs for now (baby steps, all the way). I've figured out editing maps themselves (mapview) and editing MCDs (MCDedit), but setting the routes efficiently still escapes me. Just connecting all the main passages and setting spawns randomly results in 20 aliens clumping up in chokepoints, so a better approach is needed. There are some parameters of nodes that supposedly allow for it, but I can't figure it out by myself. Hopefully some kind soul could help me here.
1) What is the difference between setting the node type as "small" and/or setting all its links to "small"? If there are no terror units in the alien deployment for the map, can I just leave them both at "any", or will it potentially cause errors?
2) What does the priority flag do? Is one the highest priority, or is it ten? If a node has the lowest priority, does that mean the aliens will never use it? I really need some aliens to stay in their rooms / on their floors, can I achieve it by setting the lift nodes to one (or ten?)
3) What will happen if I leave some patrol routes disconnected from the rest? Errors? There is a disconnected circle of nodes on the roof of the vanilla Harvester, but no spawns there, does it serve any purpose at all?
4) What are the spawn priorities? Are they weights for randomized spawns (when there are more spawn nodes than aliens) or will the game fill them in strict order from highest to lowest? Is one the highest or is it ten again?
5) Is it possible to have "groups" of spawns? Lets say I have 2 rooms, each room should have exactly 1 soldier, but there are 4 possible spawn positions in each. Is it possible? If yes, how?
6) How precise should the node graph be in general? If a straight link between two nodes intersects a solid object, will the patrolling alien walk around it, or will it get stuck?
I know this is a lot of questions, but if I could get at least some answers, it will be amazing. Thanks in advance.