Topics

31

Suggestions / Ufopedia improvements

« on: October 14, 2014, 11:30:39 pm »

Some additional information in the ufopedia would be useful:
1. Crafts: Add "Fuel Type" to the stats
2. Craft Weapons: Add "Ammo Capacity" to the stats
3. Weapons and especially armors: Add "Weight"
4. Melee Weapons: Add "Accuracy" and "Tu" like it is shown for firearms

Some technical improvements:
5. Add a slider for weapons with more than three ammunition types, so one can see all possible available types.
6. Allow the definition of keyboard shortcuts for "page forward", "page backward" and "ok"
7. When finishing a research project show ALL new ufopedia pages one after another.

and finally a feature from UFO APOCALYPSE I really miss in openXcom:
9. Right mouse click on an item in the inventory screen opens the ufopedia page for this item. Especially when I try some new mods I cannot remember immediately all the new stats. And with this feature this problem would never occur again.   

EDIT: some additional suggestions
10. An indicator that an item uses some stat to determine damage, usually strength. (Solarius Scorch)
11. Show 32 bit images unconverted in the ufopedia. Now, images with high color depth can be loaded, but they are automatically converted to the ufopedia palette. Is there any reason for this? I know that keeping the UFO palletes is necessary for geoscape and battlescape, because of the calculation for lighting. But there is no lighting in the ufopedia  .

32

Open Feedback / Minor Issue with the Memorial

« on: October 02, 2014, 11:28:13 pm »

In the memorial screen were your fallen agents are listed you can also check their stats.
The stats in the memorial are still modified by the armor stats of the armor, which the agent wore at his death.

I think the memorial should show the unmodified "pure" stats of each agent.

33

Suggestions / [GLOBE] [MOD] more space for labels

« on: September 21, 2014, 07:00:59 pm »

Some suggestions for making globe modding easier:

1. give more space for country labels on the globe, otherwise longer names are cut (screenshot 1)

2. Allow the placing of labels for "region" names maybe with red color. When you create a completely new globe (like Mars or Moon) people usually cannot easily identify regions by their shape on the map, they need a label.

3. Make the country name boxes in the "graphs screen" larger. There is some unused space (red circle in screenshot 2)

EDIT

4. The background color of the globe is now blue (ocean). Even when the globe is completely covered with textured polygons one can sometimes see the backround color at the globe border (screenshot 3). Therefore it would be good if one can change the background color via ruleset.
This is probably necessary for TFTD anyway, where the backround color of the globe is yellow (land masses).

34

Work In Progress / [TOTAL CONVERSION] [GLOBE] DUNE - Desert world 0.28

« on: September 20, 2014, 03:23:44 pm »

Update by Meridian: updated to be compatible with newer OXCE versions

"Land of Sand" - DUNE Total Conversion

This mod should become a DUNE total conversion in the future and is now WIP. The player takes the role of the Fremen.
The mod provides a desert planet with Harkonnen and Sardaukar to fight and some technology from the Dune Universe.
The game can be finished, however, it is lacking some content and balancing.

Mod files are attached to this post.

Features:
- Desert globe
- New equipment
- Enemies are Harkonnen, Sardaukar, Smugglers, Spacing Guild
- Changed research and manufacturing
- Changed text, backgrounds, cutscenes


Installation:
- Install OXCE (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5258.0.html)
- Download the .zip file attached to this post and unpack it into the mods folder
- Choose LandOfSand as master mod
- Only EN-US language supported



Credits:
- Tools
  - Falko's mod tools used for globe modification and all kind of sprites (http://falkooxc2.pythonanywhere.com/)
  - MCDEdit (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=MCDEdit)
  - Mapview (http://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1321.0.html)
- OXCE+ by Yankes and Meridian
- Sprites, sounds, maps, ruleset code etc:
  - robin (lots of graphics from "MIB" and "From the Apocalypse")
  - Dioxine (lots of graphics and sounds from Piratez mod)
  - XOps (graphics from Xeno Operations Mod)
  - Solarius Scorch (FMP)
  - Hobbes (Hobbes terrain pack, Aea51)
  - jackstraw2323 (War of shadows)
  - Ryskeliini (weapon sprites, explosion)
  - Chiko, civilian, luke83, ascadix, Aldorn, yrizoud, Ran (laser weapon sprites, clips, clip ruleset, red beam etc.)
  - civilian (sand city terrain)
  - robin/Meridian (Smoke)
  - IvanDogovich (ImprovedHandobs)
  - Hellrazor (Alternate Lightning Thunder)
  - Sporb (UFO2000 graphics, Sonic weapons)
  - Dolphman (ripped Dark Legions sprites)
  - Tollworkout (Antman Mod)
- Ufopedia texts, backgrounds, cutscenes
  - http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page and wikipedia.org
  - Background images from various internet sources
- Music: Toto


Changelog:

Ver. 0.28
- Fixed more bugs for corpse recovery
- Fixed some bugs in research strings


Ver. 0.27
- Fixed bug for corpse recovery


Ver. 0.26
- Compatibility updates


Ver. 0.25
- Added enemy units: Atreides Defector, Atreides Officer, Guild Servant
- Added HWP: Distrans Bat
- Added a few resource items
- small improvements


Ver. 0.24
- Use Mudranger as enemy craft
- Added Bene Gesserit as enemy unit
- Two soldier types available: Normal and Fedaykin.
- Small fixes


Ver. 0.23
- Added two Sardaukar ships (graphics from XOps)
- Updated mission scripts
- Added items: Spear, javelins (from PirateZ)
- Fixed some smaller issues


Ver. 0.22
- Added region labels (thanks to Meridian)
- Revised research and ufopedia entries
- Changed visibility at night
- Revised Drifter map


Ver.0.21
- New Enemies: Smuggler Thug, Smuggler Rogue, Smuggler Drone
- New Items: Taijur Bomb
- Added more cities on globe
- Cleaned up ufo interception images
- Revised mission zones and mission scripts


Ver.0.20
- Updated OXCE+ EXE
- Added Spacing Guild as faction. (Units are from robin's Apocalypse mod and Tollworkout's Antman mod)
- Updated Ufopedia
- Exchange some item graphics from robin's apocalypse mod (Rifle, Pistol, Launcher, Glowglobe, high explosive)
- New items: Kindjal, Tech guns, cutter ammo (graphics from XOps and dioxine)
- Small graphics fixes
- Added stun and wounded indicators from Piratez mod
- Removed timer from most grenades
- Added Harkonnen Slave as unit
- fix a bug with melee weapons (clipsize -1)


Ver.0.19
- Updated OXCE+ EXE
- Updated some Ufopedia images with new palette
- Fixed an error with life bloodhound capture (thanks to Meridian)
- Added a spice harvester mission (Harvester map from Dioxine's Piratez mod)


Ver 0.18
- Added intro slideshow
- Added ufopedia planet informations
- Added wavy desert (from XOps)
- Added Sardaukar terror unit
- Small manufacture and research changes
- Added spotter team as craft
- Change to OXCE+ EXE from Yankes and Meridian

35

Open Feedback / What's up with the celatid animation?

« on: July 12, 2014, 09:26:09 pm »

The Celatid animation consists of 25 frames +3 death frames, but it seems openxcom only uses the the first 8.

Does anybody know why the other 17 frames are not used? The unused frames seem to be related to the celatid ufopedia page, where we can see a meat bag plus a hovering celatid.

Frame 25 shows maybe one of those egges mentioned in the autopsy report. Maybe the celatid was meant to be laying eggs on its death.

Was all this not completely finished in the original game? Questions over questions ... 

36

Open Feedback / Melee and meleeskill

« on: July 04, 2014, 12:12:21 am »

I would like to use meleeskills for alienunits.

In the ruleset I added for the alien melee weapons "skillApplied: true" and changed the meleeaccuracy. However, the alien units score always 100% hits even if I set accuracy to 1% they always hit.

Strangely, when I control the alien units (via psi or in debug mode) the meleeskill seems to be working, which means that the percentage of hits is approx. equal to the accuracy.
However when the aliens are are AI controlled they always hit, no matter whats the accuracy.

So, am I missing something important or is the melee skill not working for aliens?   

37

Released Mods / [Armor] Grav Armors

« on: June 28, 2014, 11:44:03 am »

Features:
- This mod introduces two new armors: a flying jumpsuit and a flying personal armor with sprites based on the original flying armor.
- The research of flying armors is based on the floater autopsy.
- All armors are recoverable from the battlefield and can be repaired in the workshop.
- Ufopaedia pages for standard jumpsuit and civilian.


Installation: Unpack the mod in your openxcom datafolder and activate in the options menu.


The following mods are integrated into this one and should not be activated:
- Moriartys Armor (by Moriarty)
- New Flying Armor (by 54x) (Sprite modification combined with Moriartys Sprites)
- Jump Armor (Ruleset by Solarius Scorch)
- Armor repair (clownagent)
- Ufopeadia Page for standard Jumpsuit and civilian (civilian graphics by dioxine)


Ver 1.1
- Added handsprites for gravmodule and standard Xcom jumpsuit.


Ver 1.0
Finally fixed the hair color for the jump armor and added sizes for the damaged armors.

Updates and download from the mod-site:

https://www.openxcom.com/mod/gravarmors

38

Suggestions / Aiming cursor for melee attacks

« on: June 15, 2014, 06:11:20 pm »

Right now when you perform a melee attack the target in front of your soldier is automatically attacked. This has two problems:

1. You cannot attack terrain, like walls or furniture. (A message appears that no target is there)

2. If you control a large (4 square) melee unit, there can be 2 or 3 potential targets in front of the unit and you cannot choose one.

Both issues could be solved by giving melee attacks a target cursor, like ranged attacks already have.

39

Work In Progress / [Balancing] [MOD Collection] version 0.3 07.07.2014

« on: June 09, 2014, 10:46:42 am »

Attached is a mod collection I am currently using. It does include some content from existing mods,
but tries mostly to tweak and balance the existing rules.
Aim is to remove some bad aspects from vanilla but keep and expand the good ones and add a little more variety.

Main gameplay differences to vanilla are:
- ECONOMY: not so much money from manufacturing items and prices of most items adjusted
- UFOS: Increased UFO weapon strength and durability
- PSI: Psi is nerfed strongly and psi research is more complex

Mod-Compatibility:
To prevent interference with other mods I recommend to not use other mods along this one, which change items, alien deployment or UFO stats. 


Detailed Changelog:

Ver 0.3
- Apply MeleeSkill for aliens and X-Com (this means sometimes a melee strike might miss, which makes wounded melee aliens a little less dangerous)
- Adjusted soldier starting stats for melee and psi
- adjusted combatknife and stunrod stats, sounds and animations
- Sniper-Rifle Sprites from MIB Mod
- Flying Armor: Combined Moriarty's Armor sprites with modified flying armor sprites
- Added sprites for jump armor and grav-module
- Included Fusion Torch (Ran)
- Added Taser (Ryskeliini)
- Added Flamethrower (Dioxine)
- Improved Silacoid and Reaper, made Zombie a little weaker and less melee competent
- Improved standard jumpsuit
- Added Psioline based advanced psionics (Raindau)
- renamed stun bomb and stun grenade (Murmur) to cryo bomb.
- Added medipack (yrizoud)
- Added GrenadeLauncher (Ryskeliini)
- Added Anti-Gravity Research (connected with the floater anti gravity device)
- Reduced build time for living quarters and storage



Ver. 0.2
- Adjusted starting items in the base stores and the skyranger
- fusion blaster listorder fixed
- changed sell prices for Ligthning and Avenger
- adjusted handob_sprites for the assault cannon
- fixed: plasma cannon uses elerium as ammunition
- reduced TU for stun rod



Ver. 0.1

Economy:
- Prices adjusted. Selling always gives 75% of the original price
- Cost of manufacturing items is adjusted. Now one cannot earn so much money by manufacturing+selling items.
- All crafts cost maintenance 100000 per month
- Increased cost of scientists and engineers
- Facility maintenance increased
- Facility prices and build times adjusted

Battlescape Weapons:
- Autoshot only for rifles and autocannon
- All Weapon stats adjusted
   Plasma weapons: most damage, medium weight, smaller clips, medium accuracy, medium TU
   Laser weapons: medium damage, large weight, unlimited ammo, best accuracy, slow firing
   Standard weapons: low damage, low weight, medium ammo, least accuracy, fast firing
- Changed sprites for Plasma and Laser weapons (from Chikos images, terranplasma and Alien armoury expanded mods)
- Added incendiary grenade (from custom grenades mod)
- Added Mind Missile
- Added SniperRifle (from Toshiaki)
- StunRod uses Melee Skill
- Motion scanner needs only few TU's for activation
- Blaster Launcher exchanged by Fusion Launcher and Fusion Blaster

HWP:
- Improved weapon stats for Tank/Cannon and Tank/RocketLauncher

Armor:
- Changed graphics for Power Suit and Flying Suit (Moriartys Armor)
- Made Flying Suit weaker than Power Suit
- Flying Suit needs a dead floater for manufacturing
- Added Jump Armor (Solarius Scorch)
- All Armors are recoverable and repairable in the workshop 

Crafts and Craft weapons:
- Plasma cannon needs Elerium for rearming and is weaker
- Avalanche is a single, expensive but devastating missile (nuclear!)
- tweaked other craft weapons a bit
- Avenger is more expensive and needs more elerium for refueling than Lightning and Firestorm (it has two reactor chambers)
- Improved UFOs (Both weapon strength and durability).
- Two alien alloy interceptors added(Seeker(from firestrom restyle mod) and Sentinel)

Psi:
- Usage of Psi-Amp needs more TU
- Usage of mind probe needs less TU
- Increased minimum psi defense and bravery of Xcom soldiers to 20
- Psi research and facilities are more expensive

Aliens:
- Alien Item Levels are changed so that the plasma pistol and rifle are not phased out so fast.
- Some Aliens uses a Fusion Blaster (Sprites based on plasma rifle)
- Etherials are more vulnerable to fire (because of their cloak)
- Added alien inventory images (from alien inventory mod)
- Sectopod uses laser animation

Research:
- Research cost and points of most topics balanced.
- Medkit and motion scanner are available from the start
- Alien containment facility needs to be researched
- Alien Alloys are needed for researching and manufacturing Laser weapons
- Elerium research is needed for manufacturing Elerium based alien stuff



Credits and Mods used as resources:
- Sentinel (Warboy)
- Firestorm Restyle (Shadow)
- Jump Armor (Solarius Scorch)
- Alien Inventory (luke83)
- Chiko's laser and plasma weapon sprites (Chiko, civilian, luke83, ascadix)
- Moriarty's Armor (Moriarty)
- Sniper Rifle (robin, Toshiaki)
- Incendiary Grenade from CustomGrenades (simon-v)
- MindMissile (clownagent)
- GravArmor (clownagent)
- Laser Sectopod (LouisdeFuines)
- Combat Knife (Warboy)
- Images from Tyran-Nicks Mod (tyran_nick)
- Images from the piratez mod (dioxine)
- Images from the terran plasma weapons (Shadow)
- Images from alien armoury expanded (Solarius Scorch)
- Fusion Torch (Ran)
- Sprites, images, Taser from Ryskeliini_GunsNGadgets(Ryskeliini)
- Parts from Final Mod Pack (Human Ktulu, Solarius Scorch)
- Sprites from Stun Grenade Mod (Murmur)
- Advanced Psionics (Raindau)
- Some sounds from HQSound (Daedalus)
- Medipack (yrizoud)

- Probably resources from other mods I forgot to mention. Notify me and I will add you to the list. Thanks a lot!

40

Troubleshooting / [DEFAULT RULESET] Research costs and points for finished research

« on: June 03, 2014, 11:16:12 pm »

Lately I checked the standard Xcom1 ruleset for the necessary research points and the score you get after research.
There I found some strange things:

1. The following research topics give no points to your monthly score:
UFO POWER SOURCE
UFO EXAMINATION ROOM
Sectoid Engineer

2. Two topics have some strange research cost not in line with the others:
Sectoid Commander
Power Suit

3. "Alien Autopsies" and "Live Alien Research" each have a "dummy" topic with zero research cost.
I think these are for dealing with the free topics you get when you researched a medic.
The dummy Chryssalid, Silacoid and Celatid, however, each have a research cost of 170.

4. The "cost: 0" line for all dummy topics could be deleted, because the default value is 0
This could shorten the ruleset a bit.

41

Suggestions / HWP options

« on: June 01, 2014, 05:56:27 pm »

Two suggestions regarding HWP's

1. They should have an inventory screen. Of course they should not be able to pick up items, but one can imagine that they have an automatic ammo loading mechanism, which let you choose which ammo to load. For example the rocket HWP could have different kinds of rockets and in the inventory screen you could load the rocket type you want.

2. HWP'S should have a chance to explode when they die, similar to a cyberdisc. But the cyberdisc explosion is too strong and happens always when they die (I know, when you hit them with an HE Weapon, they don't explode, but this I consider a bug, because it makes absolutely no sense at all)
So it would be nice, if one can define an "explosion strength/blastradius" and "explosion chance" for dying vehicles in the ruleset file. 

42

Released Mods / [UFOPEADIA] Page for standard Jumpsuit

« on: June 01, 2014, 04:55:38 pm »

This tiny ruleset adds an Ufopeadia page with the standard jumpsuit.

You can learn that the vanilla jumpsuit seems to have problems to withstand acid.


Edit: removed unecessary lines from ruleset

Edit2: added translations

43

Released Mods / [ARMOR] Damaged X-Com Armors are recoverable

« on: May 17, 2014, 06:41:15 pm »

Attached is a small ruleset which makes the armor of dead X-Com soldiers recoverable. They appear as "damaged Armor" in the stores and can be sold or repaired in the workshop.

44

Work In Progress / Question on weapon loadouts and AI

« on: May 01, 2014, 01:29:31 pm »

In the ruleset it seems to be possible to give several weapons to an alien (with the itemSets keyword). For example a blaster launcher AND a plasma rifle.

In the current state of the game would the alien use both weapons on the battlescape (maybe alternating)? How does the AI "decide" which weapon to use?

45

Suggestions / [GAME OPTIONS] Remove some "Advanced Options"

« on: May 01, 2014, 01:00:15 pm »

I consider many optional features are usual a good thing. However the "Advanced Options" menu seem to be cluttered a bit and looks confusing, because the list is simply too long.

Some of the options can just be activated and removed from the menu without game change. For example  "Alternate Movement" just enables strafing by using the Ctrl-key. This can be always enabled and removed from the menu. If you don't want to strafe just don't use Ctrl-key.

The same is true for other options, and I suggest to just enable them and remove them from menu, for example the following:
- Force Craft launch
- Airborne Transfers
- TFTD manufacture rules
- Alternate Movement