Messages

1

Suggestions / Re: [SUGGESTION-UNCUT][#052] UFO chasing, is it above the sea or above the land?

« on: July 12, 2014, 01:08:10 am »

+1

2

Released Mods / Re: Laser Reskin Mod

« on: July 12, 2014, 12:57:33 am »

Well, let me be the first to say I love the look of these weapons and agree with you 100% about how cool looking the vanilla laser rifle is. I was hoping for a mod like this. XCom is very Sci-Fi to me (fighting aliens and such), and I've always hated the vanilla heavy laser and laser pistol because they didn't match that sleek laser rifle at all, or each other for that matter.

[/rant]I also think the vanilla laser pistol and plasma pistol sprites got accidentally switched in development without anyone noticing. The plasma pistol is the one with the neat looking red triangle on it! That should've been the laser pistol, I think. The vanilla one looks alien and more plasma-y to me. And, gah! the lame khaki color of the vanilla heavy laser. Looks like a kid made it out of cardboard, and it shoots about as well too.[/endRant]

One thing I'd like to see is a different color shot for each weapon. There's a thread somewhere about recolored laser fire, and to heck with the lame (yet funny) yellow laser. I'd want the pistol to shoot green, the rifle to shoot blue and the heavy to shoot purple (to account for the shorter wavelengths of the more powerful lasers). I might try to figure out how to do that...

Also, you should put [WEAPON] [GRAPHICS] or something like that at the beginning of this thread title for convenience and stuff.

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Released Mods / Re: [UFO MAPS] Luke's Extra UFOs (52 working maps!)

« on: June 26, 2014, 11:09:03 pm »

I'm so glad everyone is enjoying this! Also, Yay, 1.0! 1000+ downloads on the Mod Site. Wow. That's awesome. I've been lazy modding of late, finding a balance between work and life. I'd like to get back to it.

But to answer Calapine's question, it's just a low chance. Each of the 12 large scouts has roughly 8% chance of appearance, and since the original layout is represented twice (one normal and one rotated) you have roughly 16-17% chance of encountering it. If you like, you can download my "lite" version and save just before you land then enable that instead, and the map generated will be the iconic map.

Clownagent, you're right! I had no idea at the time, but those values were redundant from the start. I'll make a patch.zip file with the updates, since it's not really a new version, but anybody who gets conflicts can use it.

Sorry, I'm really trying to make a battleship. 

4

Playthroughs / Re: Open X Com Heavily Modded Eddition Playthrough Now Up!

« on: June 14, 2014, 07:52:32 pm »

I see two other conflicts, there's two laser sprite changing mods and two firestorm sprite changing mods. The Lasers can be fiddled with so you have your favorites from both without much conflict, but you should choose which firestorm mod you like better because otherwise the "Restyle" one will just overrule the "GFX" one.

You could also fiddle with those rulesets and assign one sprite to another craft, like I was thinking of making the "Restyle" version another kind of interceptor and the X-Com:EU version would be my firestorm. It's up to you if you want to go through the work for that though.

5

Suggestions / Re: Preview soldier sprites?

« on: June 12, 2014, 12:09:12 pm »

That's all well and good, but it kinda requires you to have a craft at the base capable of carrying soldiers for the equipment screen to be available, and that's not always the case.

6

Suggestions / Grenade Ideas/Tweaks

« on: June 11, 2014, 11:48:41 pm »

I find grenades to be a very unique tactical option in this game, and can make or break your squad. I use them with Instant Grenades ON, but they are like sniper weapons that must be used by someone who has not moved yet and is strong enough to put it where it needs to go, or primed before battle which, while being an excellent option, can be very dangerous to your operatives/assets. I've never used the famous Grenade Relay before because I like Instant Grenades and the relay tactic is pretty ineffective with that option, but I have an idea that could fix that----what if grenades that are set to 0 explode on impact but if set to 1 wait for the end of the current Soldier turn before exploding, and set to 2 explode on the end of the next alien turn and so on? That way Instant Grenades doesn't effectively negate relay tactics.

Currently, set to 0 explodes instantly but set to 1 lets the aliens move and attack before they explode, while 2 makes it explode directly after the soldiers next turn and 3 waits for the aliens again. Seems inconsistent. Also, for the sake of completing my idea, it should also ignore the Civvie turn for this (I think it does already, but I'm not sure). It would look something like this: end soldier turn--> explosion timer reduced (if 0 it explodes), then the alien turn goes and ends, explosion timer reduced, Civvie turn, Soldier turn, explosion timer reduced and so on. I'm sure someone smarter than I could simplify what I'm saying here, but I hope I'm coming across right.

Also could the throw animation speed be slowed down compared to the firing animation speed? I'd like to see a thrown object sail through the air for a time before it lands, right now they're thrown with the velocity of a bullet, which is unrealistic.

And one more request: Can the TUs it takes to prime a grenade be moved to the ruleset? I'd like to mod in and play around with the balancing of a flat-rate cost of priming, the idea here is so that veterans can use them with greater efficiency than rookies.

Ideas, suggestions, feedback?

7

Playthroughs / Re: Open X Com Heavily Modded Eddition Playthrough Now Up!

« on: June 09, 2014, 09:24:47 pm »

Sweet, I made Captain! (AKA Sweet! I killed something and didn't die in my first two missions!) Thanks for including me, I'm honored to be fighting alongside Sup and Warboy and the rest. I can't wait to see how I die horribly!

Also, that new UFO I saw there was one of Solar's, not Luke's. I'll be interested to see more of those. I don't know how to make new interception images so I didn't design any new UFO shapes.

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Released Mods / Re: [UFO MAPS] Luke's Extra UFOs (52 working maps!)

« on: June 04, 2014, 09:42:04 pm »

They can spawn anytime a UFO map is generated, whether shot down or allowed to land, at any point in the game.

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Released Mods / Re: [UFO MAPS] Luke's Extra UFOs (52 working maps!)

« on: May 27, 2014, 10:30:49 pm »

I also have another question: is there a map editor which doesn't require you to rename the files and put it in the UFO directory? It's a bit bothersome...

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2184.0

I don't think one exists currently, but the above topic seems to be an effort in creating something like that.

10

Released Mods / Re: [UFO MAPS] Luke's Extra UFOs (52 working maps!)

« on: May 27, 2014, 09:51:42 pm »

Wait, did you manage to log in? I can't.

Nope, I can't either, says "Login temporarily disabled due to site maintenance."
But the downloads work.

11

Released Mods / Re: [UFO MAPS] Luke's Extra UFOs (52 working maps!)

« on: May 27, 2014, 09:01:05 pm »

Sorry for being incommunicado. I fixed the links to the MODsite in the first post and included a ruleset for just the rotated ships, per Arpia's request.

I was making Battleships but driving myself crazy because I'm hardly a designer (making 4 new designs at once because I couldn't keep focused), then got sidetracked playing with all the crazy mods and helping hunt bugs prior to 1.0 and now I have a job that will use a lot of my time. I can still spend some time on my battleships, but I'll have to manage my time differently. 

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Released Mods / [RESEARCH/PROGRESSION] Plasma Needs Elerium-115

« on: May 24, 2014, 12:40:44 am »

This is a very simple, tiny mod that was inspired by everyone who ever thought or said anything about making plasma weapons tech take longer to obtain. I don't like weapon self destruction, but I also think it's ridiculous to be able to research heavy plasma as soon as you get one. Of course this can be used with the self destruction option, but it was made for those who don't like it.

This mod makes alien plasma weapons impossible to research without first-hand knowledge of their main functional component, Elerium-115, while keeping them recoverable in missions for the moolah boost. Also makes the weapon research progression like that of Lasers, each higher tier needing the previous tier of weapon. Clips, too.

Plasma Pistol requires Elerium-115 to research, and unlocks Plasma Rifle and Plasma Pistol Clip research.
Plasma Rifle requires Plasma Pistol to research, and unlocks Heavy Plasma and Plasma Rifle Clip research.
Heavy Plasma requires Plasma Rifle to research, and unlocks Heavy Plasma Clip research.
Plasma Rifle Clip requires Plasma Pistol Clip, and Heavy Plasma Clip requires Plasma Rifle Clip.

All topics still require the actual item.
ALSO makes it impossible to manufacture anything that uses Elerium until that is researched (like Stun Bombs and Mind Probes) but the research of those still allows the use of that type of captured equipment.

It's only a bit tested, but it should be complete.

Installation: Just stick it in your Ruleset folder and enable!

Please feel free to use or modify this in any way.

13

Suggestions / Re: Misc Ideas For Geoscape/Basescape

« on: May 22, 2014, 09:58:02 pm »

Well, it does do something -- if the soldier list is longer than one screen's worth, the mouse wheel scrolls the list.  If the changeValueByMouseWheel option is set to a value greater than 0, then scrolling is usually disabled when over the up/down buttons and it changes the values instead.  What you are suggesting is similar enough to this feature that it might fit in, but even changeValueByMouseWheel is controversial due to the "unexpected" behavior of not causing the list to scroll "sometimes".  Moving soldiers with the mouse wheel has the same potential for confusion.

Yeah, you're right, it does do something in the screen itself, it scrolls the list - UNLESS the cursor is over the arrows that move the soldiers up or down. THEN it does nothing. I have changeValueByMouseWheel set to 4 and still the mouse wheel does not scroll my long soldier list when I'm over those arrows, and that's fine, besides I'd also not want a soldier moved 4 spaces per wheel-spin. I'd rarely want to move a soldier up or down by any more than 1 at a time ever, but scrolling up or down by 4 is helpful. I recently learned of the right click function in that screen (never even thought about it until Aldorn mentioned it) and that adds something, but not the quick precision I'm after. My idea involves the mouse wheel moving a soldier one space up or down exactly like a normal click on the respective arrow and ONLY when over the arrows (like how scrolling the mouse wheel up a notch over an up OR down arrow in the buy screen will increase a value but otherwise scroll the list).

This is really only for clarity. I just hope I didn't make it more confusing.

I tend to ramble.

Further thoughts on the Engineers fixing planes; maybe a damaged plane is a temporary manufacture type thing with each point of damage taking 25 Engineer Hours to fix. (This would roughly translate to the work it takes to make a complete craft from scratch; every 22.5 EH on a lightning adds 1 HP, and every 28.33 EH adds 1 HP to an Avenger in manufacture, I'm thinking 25 is a good middle ground.) This manufacture project would be accessed via a button on the damaged craft's screen, taking you to a small dialogue to simply assign free engineers to the craft, and they start working on fixing the plane.

I further postulate:
1. is just a whine for more and more unneeded "convenience" that wouldn't be worth the time to code. What's there now is perfect for 1.0 and I shouldn't expect or ask for more. It was just a thought I had.

2. The ability to manually name the bases ourselves would, I believe, be the easiest to code in without needing to add triggers and automatic functions for counting floater bases vs sectoid bases. When we know the race, we name the base. We could even give them ominous names, like Waspite Nest or Snakeman Laboratory.

3. is also unneeded for 1.0 imo. I just have to be really f*&#ing careful with my Avengers, they can take too much damage and be useless for a month. Should let my Firestorms take the hits instead, send them in first. That's X-Com, baby!

4. just seems to me like good record keeping. It shouldn't be dependent on whether the limits are strictly enforced imo, if the info can be shown why not always show it? It makes the base info screen look... um, more informative. Maybe make it only show up when a base actually has an Alien Containment facility? I can only imagine coding hell coming from that idea. Sorry. Unnecessary. IGNORE ME!!

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Suggestions / Re: Misc Ideas For Geoscape/Basescape

« on: May 22, 2014, 07:13:54 pm »

This idea has been floating around here for ages. I am not against it, but it raises a question of whether craft is being repaired when Engineers are busy with something else, or not present al all.

I see it taking Engineers away from manufacturing for a small economic hit when you need extra hands to fix your planes. Of course, only extra/unassigned Engineers can help fix a plane. Currently, aircraft heals one point of damage every hour automatically, presumably using non-combat Hangar personnel, since this happens when no other paid personnel is on base. Adding engineers could increase healing by 1 (or 0.2, 0.5) extra point an hour each. I am asking this because the Avenger can take 1200 damage before it goes down, 1% damage to an Avenger is 12 damage, taking 12 hours to heal, so 10% damage to an Avenger takes 5 days to heal. 20% damage takes longer to heal than it takes me to build a new Avenger.

You'll probably be asked to provide a mockup screen to show where it would fit. But I think it'd be very useful.

It already fits in there just fine when Storage Limits is ON. I am asking for this because I used "Alien Containment Limits" when it didn't enforce item storage and stopped when it did for one main reason: I like to wait for my transport to return to base before I sell off captured alien equipment. I can't do that reliably with Storage Limits enforced, as I would often be forced to sell off anything extra I had immediately after a mission. Too much force I think, feels like babysitting to me. I can't leave the screen or even access the options screen until I've sold off enough stuff to bring it back under the limit, and forget about transferring stuff to other bases. I like to manage my storage on my own, vanilla already disallows purchasing or transfer if a base's stores are full. With it OFF, I can actually sell live aliens to make room for new ones coming in instead of having to kill them, I just can't use the Base Info screen to see where my alien containment storage is at.

Perhaps just not forget this was not possible at all to change soldier sequence before that great improvement

IMHO, may be improved a bit in the future, but to be considered at low priority, as current solution,  combined with use of right clic, is very, very comfortable as is

Well, you have an excellent point there. Being able to move them at all is pretty awesome and pure vanilla had not this invaluable feature. I just thought I'd throw the idea out there since it occurred to me, but it does seem superfluous, just extra unnecessary coding for another time perhaps. I don't hate clicking and the system that's in place currently works great and I love it. I didn't even notice before what right-click did there, that's awesome. I just noticed that the mouse wheel doesn't currently do anything over those soldier placement arrows, and I wondered how hard it would be to make it do something useful there, not that it's particularly needed.

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Suggestions / Misc Ideas For Geoscape/Basescape

« on: May 22, 2014, 09:23:08 am »

1. Allow mouse wheel scrolling over arrows in Craft/crew screen to move soldiers up or down without clicking?
2. Allow Human player to manually name discovered Alien Bases?
3. Allow Engineers to be assigned to damaged craft to decrease repair time?
4. When advanced option "Storage Limits" is OFF, display Alien Containment (current/max) storage in Base Info screen anyway?

Opinions, comments?