Messages

16

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: January 01, 2015, 07:59:44 pm »

Maybe Belchers crash the game since I have an old nighlty build. But recent ones cause house-crashed crafts I heard.
I may ask about the XOps's creator about how to implement melee damage if people need visual melee damage so badly. But somehow must indicate hit... Maybe assign basic X-com melee sprite (stun, chryssalid, etc...)?

There's still the sparky circle thingy to indicate a melee hit like chryssalid, just no nifty swinging the sword animation.  Still testing the Belchers, no crash... when it happened to you what turn was it on the battlescape? Their weapon is an explosive so they won't shoot until the third turn, if it's crashing before that the problem is something else.

And made some pedia pictures. Not the best but adequate for the respective topics. The last two is for fun\infiltration\placeholding\looks awesome...

Cool, new pics added to .zip(all of 'em) and ruleset(just the first two).

17

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: December 31, 2014, 07:32:03 pm »

Thanks for all your help!
I tested a bit this with FMP and without FMP to see what works and what needs some more work. I found these things so far - not know what may cause them in most times only suppose the reason:
- SNAKEMAN_MEDIC is available from the beginning untill all the new races not researched through that entry (12-24 hours of research). I am not sure what is wrong there, for me the code of the ruleset seems OK, of course I am hard-noob with YAML...
- Belchers cause crash when they do "something" (they do move I see that but then the game crash, maybe their attack cause the problem?) otherwise the Aerial bunch seems OK.
- Altoids tend to land on oceans (that is an FMP related thing!) otherwise they seems OK...
- Underwater operations have only string lines and not matter how do I rewrite them in the ruleset the lines remain... I think I messed that up myself again or basicly...

As for the rest. I work on more pedia pictures - that shall need to edit the ruleset further - but most pictures I made so far I was really unsatisfied. The Drone spritesheet remain static. I planned that way but maybe I chosen the wrong spritesheet reference for that. For the Belcher I want that thing drool when moves but it always looked terrible so far. I am not quite sure about them and I think I want some stripes on the Crabman's back. I shall see how does may looks like, white or orange stripes upon their brown carapace... For the chrys-sword I recolour a XenoOps melee sprite and edit a bit. How could that be implement in the ruleset? That is another question.

Snakeman_medic... shouldn't exist. [FIXED]

Belcher crash... Not sure, I had 'em lobbing fireballs no problem. [INVESTIGATING]

Water Landings... only trajectories used here are from default so don't think it's related, tho it is somewhat fitting [UNKNOWN BUT I'M OKAY WITH IT]

Underwater operations... Underwater operations =\= Underwater operatons ; Inconsistent typo issue[FIXED]

For the probe you used the Etheral sprite sheet, right? If you wanted static than it's fine, tho using the Celatid may make for a smaller graphic file it's not much of an issue.

Belcher and crabman ideas: sound good, I'm still thinking silacoid sprite sheet for the Belcher, have it drool constantly instead of just while moving.

For the chrys-sword... How could that be implement in the ruleset? That is another question. And not one I've answered before, but hey how hard could it be 

18

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: December 28, 2014, 08:50:33 pm »

Been swamped with seasonal work, finally got around to doing some testing... after going though and fixing a bunch of stuff that might have been a problem but wasn't THE problem and some quality time spent banging my head on the wall I figured out that it was a problem with the hanObs part of the extraSprites: So that's fixed and I got both the alternate missions and default to work with all races in the new battle mode, haven't had a chance to try it out in campaign..

As for development notes: There are still some UFOpaedia articles w/o pics(Exploration, Demoralization). I don't know how to do hit animation so the Crystal Sword doesn't have any. The sprite sheets for the Probe and the Belcher look funny, kind of static, perhaps change them to match the silacoid spritesheet(just a 6 frame loop and 3 death frames) making the Probe blink and bob and the Belcher pulsate?

19

Open Feedback / Re: Is there any way to keep aliens 'blinded' after the 20th turn?

« on: December 03, 2014, 08:56:21 pm »

I think we were having enough with mind controls already

Well there's your explanation right there, the whole time the alien commanders back at base are psychically scanning the battlescape, by turn 20 they have pinpointed all of the X-Com operatives and even tho they are too far away to intervene directly they are feeding your locations to the aliens on the ground.

20

Work In Progress / Re: [EXPERIMENT] manufacturing a research project

« on: November 30, 2014, 06:42:13 pm »

getOneFree only works with alien interrogations.

I've used getOneFree semi successfully on research projects that don't require items, you finish the project and are given one of the listed topics completed but the original project is only available to be researched once... I was hoping adding a needItem: clause would fix that.

Perhaps you could make a chain of prototype research projects that each one would have a smaller list of possible failures, so:

acquire UFO part research it
  getOneFree:
                      UFO part
                      Prototype UFO part1
                      Prototype UFO part1
                      Prototype UFO part1
                      Prototype UFO part1
                      Prototype UFO part1
if you get prototype part1 then build one and research it
 getOneFree:
                      UFO part
                      Prototype UFO part2
                      Prototype UFO part2
                      Prototype UFO part2
                      Prototype UFO part2
and so on until if your luck totally sucks you get to prototype part5 which has only UFO part as it's possible result.

I like the idea of using engineers in research.

Likewise, was thinking of these things while trying to figure out a way to make firing the initial 10 engineers a tougher choice than is the cost of hiring replacements worth it for the extra bunk space for scientists before the first living quarters are completed.

21

Work In Progress / Re: [EXPERIMENT] manufacturing a research project

« on: November 29, 2014, 09:07:57 pm »

Neatness!

I was contemplating something similar for researching alien tech, in a way that would reflect more the process of reverse engineering something you sorta kinda have some idea how it works.

It would go:

aquire UFO Navigation
research UFO Navigation
unlocks Navigation prototype for manufacture
make one and start researching it
have it do a getOneFree where the list has several "nothing useful learned" results so they have a chance at progress but may have to build a few prototypes... here's where I got hung up, I don't know how to tell the player to stop building prototypes once they've gotten everything they can out of it... realistically that could happen, but it doesn't make for good gameplay. On the one hand if you have only one success among the possible outcomes you could have it say something like "we've learned all we can hope to from this"... but if you have potential progress in two areas I'd hate for people to find one and then think they should move on, and I don't want to set up a system where you could get a success, don't realize you should move on and build/research 10 more of the same prototype when the only possible further outcomes are a bunch of "better luck next time" messages.

So in short, I like the idea and haven't figured out a way to use it well.

22

Work In Progress / Re: needItem confusion

« on: November 23, 2014, 09:16:39 pm »

I don't suppose there's a ruleset syntax for "research X amount of technologies from this list of dependencies to unlock Y"?

I've had difficulty triggering things with getOneFree, so that may be a complication with trying to do things "Research X UFOs to unlock Y" chains.  When a Research topic has it's dependencies fulfilled thru getOneFree even if it is set at cost = 0 it just becomes unlocked and still requires 1 scientist-day on it to complete the research... You could get around this by naming the nested research topics something like "UFO topic summery report" and then set the desired research topic to be unlocked once any combination of X reports have been generated.

23

Work In Progress / Re: needItem confusion

« on: November 23, 2014, 08:04:06 pm »

Here's an alternative method for a this "or" that research progression.  I  changed it so instead of Laser Weapons you start with "First Contact Debris" for initial research option, which unlocks either Lasers or Gauss, then when you research plasma weapons it unlocks the other branch. From what I've found trying to combine multiple X = (A OR B) AND (C OR D) things get's messy quick. Figuring out plausible ways to cut it in to tiny step research projects seems the simplest method.

24

Playthroughs / Re: Necroscope86 is now lets playing OpenXcom!!!

« on: November 22, 2014, 09:20:22 pm »

  Will try!

25

Work In Progress / Re: craftWeapons reload rate?

« on: November 22, 2014, 08:33:53 pm »

The interception screen operates outside of the normal time progression, so altho your math seems correct I'm not sure that it works like that.

It might be better to just regard these numbers as scalar values that are meaningless unless compared to other reload rates, for example:

CANNON_UC reload of 2 would fire 6 times as fast as the laser cannon reload of 12 which in turn would fire twice as fast as a Harvester reload of 24.

26

Work In Progress / Re: [Crafts][Weapons] XCom Armoury Expanded - v1.03

« on: November 22, 2014, 08:20:54 pm »

Developers might hate me, but I think letting the possibility of zombification for other units might be great, not just restricting it It gives a lot more freedom for ruleset-modders.

They did that to solve the problem of probes and other one-square HWP equivalents becoming zombifyed... if someone is capable of writing a branch that allows more zombie control without breaking anything else a good argument to merge it with the main branch could be made, but otherwise the developers have bigger fish on their plate to fry.

27

Playthroughs / Re: Necroscope86 is now lets playing OpenXcom!!!

« on: November 22, 2014, 08:03:25 pm »

He uses straight dosbox, even when playing stuff like Doom.

I can totally sympathize with this choice for Doom, I'm open to suggestions but every port version of Doom I've tried tries to make it more 3d and I has failed to recreate the two and a half dimensions of pure awesome that was the original. Doomsday is the best I've tried, and the fact that the levels don't feel like they are the same size as they used to be is accentuated when you get above demons and see that they are paper thin.

28

Suggestions / Re: ItemSets in the ruleset should be defined in the "alienRaces" section

« on: November 10, 2014, 07:21:00 pm »

Like this idea a lot.

Another related thing I was thinking of is something to support swarm type aliens.  For example if setting cybermites as a swarm terror unit could spawn a group of 4 cybermites where the deployment would have 1 terror unit.

One possibility to change the ItemSets like above and keep the possibility of mission specific ItemSets:
1. Itemsets are defined in the "alienraces" section:
2. If an itemset is defined in the alienDeployment section it overrides the previous defined Itemset. If non is defined the Set from "alienraces" is taken.

I was thinking kind of the exact opposite would be easier to implement.  You are already drawing rank and numbers from alienDeployment, so set it that if there is an item set for the race/rank it overrides the itemset in the alienDeployment, if not use the existing itemsets.  This would take advantage of the already existing vanilla system while opening up the option for more customization.

29

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: November 08, 2014, 06:54:03 pm »

  Oops.  I had matched the disruptor tech to the manufacturing requirements forgot to check the items... and frankly I'm amazed I only misspelled Ethereal once.

Thanks Falco!

Fixed.

30

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens

« on: November 07, 2014, 08:34:35 pm »

Alright! This should be ready for further testing. All resources present are accounted for and tech branches integrated.

Tech:
New Aliens Only:
Coastal Activity (Engineer)
Underwater Activity (Engineer)

All(Default+new) Races:
Alien Experiment (Medic)
Alien Exploration (Navigator)
Alien Demoralization (leader)
Alien Military (soldier)
Alien Society (Medic)

EDIT: typos found, fixed version 0.741 attached two messages down.