Messages

106

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: September 22, 2014, 06:56:57 pm »

. I shall use your correction (the laser-eyes exception) if you agreed to do so.

I would be honored.

Huh, I wasn't even getting it to load, so I went thru the ruleset you posted last night and hammered this one out from that, so it won't have any changes you've made between the two postings.

I re-organized the extraSprites so you'll have to adjust those if you use this, but it seems to work.

If you want to move like the Chrysalid you'll have to adjust the sprite sheet to avoid floating limb chaos (muton drawing routines that you are currently using have empty space where kneeling legs would be, Chrysalids drop those slots completely)

Not sure how much of what I did was fixing problems and how much was just adjusting it so it looked how I thought it should look, most of what I did was adjusting spaces, adjusting capital/lowercase letters to make them consistent and reordering the parameter entries so they matched the order in the ruleset reference.

Here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Ruleset_Reference_%28OpenXcom%29 is a great reference for rulesets and should answer most of your questions.

[Spoiler]

107

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: September 22, 2014, 01:43:05 am »

I use CS6 and have had luck with the pallet robin posted here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1557.msg30946#msg30946 https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1557.0;attach=10581

Opened yours up and loaded the Battle.act from there and it looks like it will work.

I hope you don't mind I went thru and made some adjustments to their UFOpedia entries too:

Spoiler:

      STR_ALTOID_UFOPAEDIA: Altoids are the specialized deep-space navigators of the alien forces. While they have an almost identical appearance like the Sectoids Altoids are devoid of any psionic skills. They seems, however, as independent members of the aliens hive like society as they showed strong and proud individualism during our researches. Indicating possible amphibious origins their movement seems cumbersome on dry land but they are powerful swimmers.
      STR_ALTOID_AUTOPSY_UFOPAEDIA: These creatures have a frail body, similar to the Sectoids, but they bear some unique features. The eyes and the brain are very developed, displayed in their keen aiming skills. All specimens we have seen so far had internal sexual organs what indicates two things. They reproduce sexually and they are like earthling reptiles or amphibians what explains the aquatic-origin signs they bare.
      STR_CRABMAN_UFOPAEDIA: These towering giants are nothing more than brute bodyguards and bullies often allied with Altoids. Their pincers can crush strengthened steel and their blows could rip even a car apart. Their behavior is purely predatory and they controlled via long training like our dogs. Although they are unable to use weapons they are seemingly able to shoot lasers from their eyes. Wish you met rarely with these beasts.
      STR_CRABMAN_AUTOPSY_UFOPAEDIA: After the autopsy and genetic examinations we can clearly say this thing originates from Earth! It seems the aliens collected some crabs and played with their genes and risen them upon special drugs and enzymes to grow them such a big giants. Their internal is a mass of nothing, much just like earthling insects. What appear to be it's eyes are actually two special bio-luminescent organs which produce it's laser blasts. Their eyes are actually on the en to their two long antennae. Crabmen have a strong, rigid carapace, rendering them immune to HE damage, and are resistant to stunning due to their complex nervous system.

Mostly rewording, but big changes to the crab men as you seem to have given them laser weapons but in the description you talked about them using grenades.

108

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: September 20, 2014, 10:45:56 pm »

crepe.

109

Work In Progress / Re: Flashlight

« on: September 20, 2014, 10:44:09 pm »

Technically the 9 square light around your soldier represents a 360 deg. flashlight.  It's been discussed, but would require a change in the way that lighting is calculated.  You may be interested in the "real-vision" mod, and they are working on night vision tweaking in the extended mod.

110

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: September 20, 2014, 10:37:47 pm »

The word it's self is actually a russian word for a type of political or military officer.  But in WWII that was the rank of the officers who would stand behind the front line and shoot anyone who stepped backwards.  In Warhammer you put them in a squad and if they fail a moral check the commissar shoots the officer and the squad doesn't run away, and will kill your psychics if they screw up to prevent alien influence.

If you keep track of which troops are being controlled before the crash kill/stun them before ending the turn when you reload.

111

Work In Progress / Re: [GLOBE] random desert world

« on: September 20, 2014, 09:32:59 pm »

One planet comes right to my mind when I look at the desert Geoscape:

Mod where you defend Mars from the invading humans culminating in launching a battleship directly at the ali.. er.. Xcom base for a two stage mission to assassinate their funding council?

112

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: September 20, 2014, 09:20:55 pm »

You need to start employing Commissar tactics in combination with the save scumming.  When you reload shoot the weak minded soldiers so there's no chance of them getting controlled... but again that's only an overly complicated situational fix that doesn't address the underlying issue.

113

Open Feedback / Re: Need a new Range Based Accuracy mod

« on: September 20, 2014, 01:36:08 am »

Set custom ranges how you like then put a note of it in the UFOpedia entry's main text.  Something like "The laser pistol is extremely accurate, but aiming suffers at longer ranges due to it's size."

114

Tools / Re: Sprite Sheets

« on: September 18, 2014, 03:59:42 am »

Silacoid: So 0 - 3 are the animation cycle? 4 and 5, unused? then 6 - 8 are the death.

Muton:
Thought so, thanks for saving me a headache.

115

Tools / Re: Sprite Sheets

« on: September 18, 2014, 03:15:40 am »

Okay.  So this explains most of them, for aliens they go in the same order as soldiers just dropping unused frames.

Remaining mysteries:
Silacoid 6 frames and then 3 for death, that doesn't even make one for each direction it can be facing let alone moving.

Celatid: long death animation, but are all of the last 20 frames just it's death, does it not have any movement animation and I just never paid enough attention to notice? (this could be useful if you want something with a elaborate death scene tho the zombie is a good option for that too...)

HWP/Cyberdisk/Reaper/Sectopod: I can place them together, but I wouldn't complain if someone saved me the jigsaw puzzle.

New question:
In the Muton sheet there are empty spaces where kneeling legs would be because they kneel to nobody... but do those need to stay blank or can they simply be omitted?

116

Tools / Re: Sprite Sheets

« on: September 17, 2014, 07:49:19 pm »

Thanks!  I also found this thread(https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=426.msg4296#msg4296) which seems to answer these questions... well at least for the soldiers, not for the other races drawing routines...

Here's the standing/kneeling frames in a layered .xcf file too(https://openxcommods.weebly.com/downloads2.html), it's not all of them but it certainly helps.

117

Tools / Re: tiled mapeditor for xcom [in development]

« on: September 17, 2014, 03:26:26 am »

Any update on this?  I haven't had any luck with mapview and this seems to work for playing around with the sets you included in the zip, but I'm lost at the moment as to how one would make a useable .MAP file or import new tile set drawn as a .gif or .png...

I'd really like to play around with map making but at the moment I'm considering drawing the parts writing up the data and dropping it here for someone who can to put together.

118

Tools / Sprite Sheets

« on: September 17, 2014, 02:26:20 am »

I've been playing around with editing different tilesets and was wondering if there was a comprehensive list of the order things are referenced in sprite sheets?

For example 2-handed weapons should have 8 sprite blocks in the order W,NW,N,NE,E,SE,S,SW(North being the top right edge) Soldiers sprites should be 275 blocks in this order L-arm N, L-Arm NE, L-Arm... 3 frame death sequence, F-Torso N,...

It would be helpful when trying to picture what which body part at what angle I'm looking at it.

119

Fan-Stuff / Re: Tactics to survive early games

« on: September 15, 2014, 07:06:35 pm »

...standard grenades. They have unbelievable accuracy with them (much better than aim shot on knees). Often with good range.

It is the prevalence of extremely good throwing stats that has me convinced Xcom has a minor league baseball team as a front for it's recruitment program.

120

Open Feedback / Re: Catching aliens in their Crashed Ship

« on: September 15, 2014, 06:53:38 pm »

Can't recall this in the original, but for OXcom the deployments are independent of the crash circumstances.  You could get that deployment by luck(the deployments listings give a percentage chance that each unit will be outside the UFO), but how long the crash site has existed won't change things.

Sidenote, after assaulting a Sectoid terror ship in where all the cyberdisks decided to deploy inside and patrol the hall ways, I'd prefer they wander out in the open so I can pop these weather balloons from a distance.