Messages

31

Fan-Stuff / Re: Fanart / Armour

« on: July 13, 2014, 05:36:34 am »

How do you mean - the other ones I posted, or the ones I've yet to do?

For the next few, I'm trying to base them around vaguely real-world stuff....an amalgam of fusion reactor designs, particle accelerators, etc.
Alien codes will probably be a big bank of screens doing cryptography stuff, electronics will prrrrobably just be a big crystal with geometric etchings on it (possibly under a microscope view), the shooty stuff will probably just be in various states of disassembly for one and being used on the range in another. I usually bang a scene together in sketchup real quick if I'm unsure of angles and composition though so I usually play it by ear to some extent.

The one that has me slightly stumped is the radiation. First thing I think of is just a picture of some kinda waveform but that seems a bit of a copout, I dunno.

32

Fan-Stuff / Re: Fanart / Armour

« on: July 12, 2014, 09:04:29 pm »

Right, thought I'd share what I've got so far. I actually did all these within a few days and was going to hold off until I'd done the rest this week.....but I ended up getting sidetracked by other stuff this week and didnt get around to anything. One part procrastination, another part juggling several jobs at once. Meh.










Anyway, I have to say it's an interesting workflow doing uber lo-res index art, I quite like it. However, I do have to bare in mind the low level of detail and what that allows.....in one or two of those I think I tried to do too much with the image. For example, the green dude was meant to have the fusion explosives detonation reflected in his goggles, but at such lo res it doesnt really read well - I'd probably go back and try to just zoom in on one lens, and try not to mess up the composition too much.

The only other thing I'm not 100% sure on is if it keeps with the feel of existing art. I never used to notice as an xcom player, but the art for ufopaedia entries (of which there isnt as much as I remember) is of a totally different style to the menu backgrounds. The former are semi-realistic, the latter very comicbook. Frankly I'm surprised just how much of a gradient you can achieve with the existing palette, and I think I might have overdone the lighting as a result. Still, some of the remaining stuff should end up a bit more industrial, and with the indexing method it's easy to mess with levels, colour balance, and posterisation effects to achieve a different look. Little bit of trivia....running this stuff though the cutout filter makes it look just like Flashback, all faux-polygonal and stuff.

33

Work In Progress / Re: [ARMOR] Gas-mask equipment

« on: July 12, 2014, 08:48:21 pm »

Running around in full nbc-gear is meant to be pretty gruelling, and even just the mask can be pretty bad as you'll know if you've ever played paintball on a summers day!

So I suppose if you wanted to go out of your way to find a negative for balancing purposes, it might make sense to give the soldier an energy penalty?

34

Programming / Re: New Feature: Infinite base sizes, POLL

« on: July 09, 2014, 09:39:48 am »

I always played in exactly the same way, using the aforementioned self-limiting playstyles in lieu of any actual hardcoded mechanics.
Things like deliberate avoidance of the usual laser-cannon mass production, or having smaller numbers of scientists/engineers spread across several projects to drag things out. Or even just the old xcomutil ini tweaks to alter storage capacity etc.

It's a legitimate option gameplay-wise, but as said it's just the difficulty of actually coding it all in.

If I understand yankes correctly and this could instead be released as a standalone then it'd be nice to have the option.

35

Suggestions / Re: [SUGGESTION] Geoscape News Ticker

« on: July 09, 2014, 09:28:02 am »

It might be fun to play up a large element of propaganda/conspiracy in these reports.
So, stuff like 'government reforms sparks disobedience in X'
or
'Social media shut down in Y'
'Military coup in Z'


It's a fun little mind game to play with real-life headlines. If you read something like 'airliner disappears'....must be aliens!
'Sinkholes swallow house in S America'.....molemen. etc etc.

Perhaps as the war gets more 'hot' you could have the news becoming more and more factual as it becomes harder to hide things. Perhaps more erratic as official channels get sidelined by reports from the man on the street.

36

Suggestions / Re: Sodier specialisation

« on: July 08, 2014, 06:01:21 am »

Yep, I've always liked the idea of specialisms being down to an open interpretation of their stats by the commander. It's just one other thing you need to think about, and I like thinking.

What I will say, however, is that I personally never bothered with statstrings, and for purely cosmetic purposes it'd be nice if you had a separate UI element to indicate an assigned specialism, just as a nicety. To some extent the new abililty to colour-code armours may fill that role.

37

Programming / Re: New Feature: Infinite base sizes, POLL

« on: July 08, 2014, 05:47:58 am »

Personally I've always subscribed to the idea of having lots of options open to the player to use or disregard at their own judgement, relying on their own willpower or self-limiting of actions for game balance. Plus, as mentioned previously I can see that there would actually be a fair balance of pro's and cons. You can put all your eggs in one basket in a high risk strategy, or you can hedge your bets and decentralise, or develop some kind of specialisation....point is, it alters defensibility considerations, redundancy and economy. How you split your supplies and manpower. How you split your time and money. That's something that could be further tuned by messing with costs (access lift included) to shift a bias towards certain types of behaviours, assuming the code is externalised to an ini file. From a gameplay perspective I have no issue.

That said however, I do understand that as the leader of a project you do have to consider the overall stability of the platform - it's no good introducing one thing if it's going to result in an inundation of bugfixes and compatibility problems with other mods, thereby making openxcom less 'open', as it were. Tricky.

Is it not possible to compromise and release this as a standalone mod, or does it require that the code is committed to the core build?

38

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT][WIP] E-3 Sentry AWACS

« on: July 04, 2014, 06:56:01 am »

Huh, I'd totally forgotten about the hangar mod.

As far as other roles go, let's think about real life:
Refuelling - no idea if the code could be made to allow it, but if it did I think it'd be treading a fine line between interesting logistics and boring tedium.

EW - cant think of any way that'd be relevant

Ground attack - again, no idea if the code allows it but I can see a pre-emptive CAS run being beneficial on certain missions. I suppose the trade-off would be lack of xp and artifacts compared to usual.

Can't say any of these ideas really grab me though. Besides which, in terms of lore you'd just assume the local forces deal with this stuff.

39

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT][WIP] E-3 Sentry AWACS

« on: July 04, 2014, 03:04:29 am »

Cool idea. It's just a shame that the game effectively limits you to a hard-capped number of aircraft due to limited base size/number, otherwise we could go nuts with all kinds of specialised aircraft.

40

Work In Progress / Re: Color suit edited ''update'' 07/02/2014

« on: July 02, 2014, 10:32:04 pm »

Question -
How do we actually go about assigning different colours to troops?

Since the UI doesnt allow for recolouring at will, I assume each colour shows up as a separate item on the construction menu?

41

Fan-Stuff / Re: Fanart / Armour

« on: June 30, 2014, 11:15:57 pm »

Ok, I'm a little new to pixel-art so have gone away to look up some techniques, and think I have a grasp on things. There's a certain technique that lets you put together lo-res imagines with hi-res input.....if that makes much sense.

Anyway, that's beside the point, I just wanted to check another thing that occurred to me just now while looking at the vanilla ufopaedia entries. Are your new techs sitting alongside vanilla entries, or are some of them meant to act as replacements? I'm just wondering if it's worth doubling up on redundant topics like vanilla 'UFO Power Source' (which already has an image), or if I'd be better off focusing on the more exotic stuff which doesnt have an existing analogue in game already?

42

Fan-Stuff / Re: Fanart / Armour

« on: June 30, 2014, 06:47:14 pm »

Well, on an initial skim read I've had a few vague ideas pop up already, largely due to the fantastically written blurb text.

As for immediate matters though, I have a couple of questions:
1) What do I need to know about the game pallete? I assume just the 256 colours available in the other images?
2) So, how does the text screen handle transparency? Going from the sample screens, am I to assume that pure white just comes out as transparent and all others are left as is, or am I misunderstanding?
3) Would you like these to any particular timeframe, or shall we just see how things tick along? For reference, that armour took a couple of days painting and maybe a day of faffing around with sketches, planning, thinking and experimentation. On and off anyway, an hour here an hour there. But then again, that was at 4800x3600 resolution, and xcom runs at.....less. What was it again, 320x240?

Also, just to give you an idea, as well as the established art style I was getting a bit of an Alpha Centauri vibe from some descriptions, if anyone remembers those cutscenes?

43

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

« on: June 30, 2014, 06:26:53 pm »

Since we're on the subject of armours, that reminds me of something I keep meaning to ask.
Since we now have stat effects attached, is it possible to have power suits add strength and encumberance, for example?

Always struck me that a Fallout-esque element would make a lot of sense there, and would add extra utility to the top tier armour beyond simple durability. Might make it interesting to add very heavy weapons that can only be used with suit augmentation?

44

Fan-Stuff / Re: Fanart / Armour

« on: June 29, 2014, 08:10:44 pm »

Lol, looking back I can see how my wording could be interpreted either way! That's fine, dont worry about it.

But yes, the mini-project is just painting in itself - since I'm trying to set myself particular goals and develop some more professional standards, I break things down into mini-projects.....it's what seems too work for me in regards to self-teaching.

My intent was simply to share the picture since it was related to and inspired by the work of the devteam (great work again btw), but as it happens if you do need more pictures doing then I'm 'available' (ie I currently have nothing better to do with my time, lol), so if you can give me specifics I could have a think about it. Frankly it'd be doing me a favour too as it'd give me something to sink my teeth into.

The good (and challenging) thing about xcom assets is that they're lo-res and muddy enough to suggest an idea, but allow for a lot of interpretation. Aside from using the silhouette and a couple of interesting hardpoints around the helmet (eyes, antenna, odd little mouthpiece) the old armour for example was very open, so that makes it a great way to practice concepting out ideas from an existing IP imo. Could be fun.

Can't make any promises, but I suppose the thing with concept arting is that 90% of the stuff that gets turned out by the artists never gets used anyway, so the more stuff you get the better, right?

Warboy - absolutely, good eyes! Yes, for a moment I was considering applying the high contrast gloss from the gauntlets to the whole body, but since this was a test piece I ended up with them being shinier than the rest, and just colour shifted the rest of it to attempt some sort of pearlescence. Just a bit of an experiment really. First time I've dared try reflective materials tbh so I'm just pleased it wasnt a complete write-off.
I borrow a technique from car modelling and had the 'paint' build up over a few layers of base/metallic/gloss, so it's easy enough to change.

45

Fan-Stuff / Fanart / Armour

« on: June 29, 2014, 06:00:29 am »

Hi all,

So, I'e been using my spare time to learn photoshop (well, re-learn after 10 years off), and the release of V1.0 OpenXcom inspired me to do a little mini-project. Thought it'd be worth sharing.

I havent actually had a chance to try the mod yet, but it looks very promising! Good work guys.