Messages

31

Playthroughs / Re: Base defense. All aliens (sectoids) seem to be killed, but that doesn't end.

« on: March 16, 2015, 11:54:24 am »

just a thought ... perhaps this oxc save is just converted from vanilla?? while gameolay was happening in vanilla versions.. lol

32

Playthroughs / Re: Base defense. All aliens (sectoids) seem to be killed, but that doesn't end.

« on: March 16, 2015, 11:43:00 am »

that's why aliens should be able to pickup weapon, ALWAYS, and not that limited way as vanilla allowed. hiding in toilets still gonna be issue unless we implement suicidal(weaponless rush) or pushing(picking weapon no tter what) logic types of ai.

33

Suggestions / Re: Manufacturing bug/ unintended consequence of item limits.

« on: March 15, 2015, 07:29:26 pm »

Fair call.
Actually this idea of reinforced limit was not well thought out. I guess you found real the flaw in it, which requires either a quick fix, or temporary disabling this feature until it will be fixed.

34

Work In Progress / Re: Nightly Builds Discussion for Modders/LPers/Players/etc.

« on: March 15, 2015, 06:14:12 am »

Unfortunately these custom recolored sprites won't work for tftd, since their units are painted with yellow, and blond hair colors are mixed with ion armor's. Face coloring tho can work. 

35

Programming / Re: Paletted 8bit -> 24bit shading.

« on: March 13, 2015, 10:17:49 am »

This picture above WOULD be achieved only if artists gonna make 5 versions of each TFTD battlescape (shadable) sprite (for custom), or with odrinary 8bit sprites for TFTD palette.

36

Programming / Re: Paletted 8bit -> 24bit shading.

« on: March 13, 2015, 08:20:02 am »

Well, results are not too good for TFTD.
Since there are 4 different palettes (terrain, shallow, medium and deep), the "semi-shade" sprites are quite different with different palettes. Sprite with full light is the same, but "shading curves" are too different.

Current algorithm for xcom1 which resembles vanilla by 99%:
- Full light sprite.
- Medium shaded sprite (the 6th grade of shade).
- For shade values 0-6 it takes interpolated result between full light and medium shaded sprites.
- For shade values >6 it takes medium shaded sprite and applying linear shading curve with black clamp (decreasing each of RGB values by some number with each step, red is decreased slowly, so shades are slightly reddish, which is xcom1 visual style).

For TFTD sprites medium shaded sprites are different for each depth. Shading curves also slightly differ (terrain is neutral, and different depths has different slopes with different blue component decreasing speed).

For vanilla 8bit sprites we can generate "medium shaded" versions on battlescape load, and use different shading curves, and result might be not that bad.

But for custom sprites, drawn in 32bits, the artist would need to draw 5 different sprites. Full light, and 4 semi-shaded version for each depth. It's not really nice thing, but currently I can't think of other way, besides giving no fucks on vanilla tftd look and feel and implementing something entierly different.

37

Programming / Re: Paletted 8bit -> 24bit shading.

« on: March 12, 2015, 08:29:19 pm »

Holy pixels!
Meridian, thanks!

I hope all this... was made not because I asked

38

Programming / Re: Paletted 8bit -> 24bit shading.

« on: March 12, 2015, 05:19:44 pm »

vanilla:

hybrid lighting:


I need more savegames (night missions from batlescape) from vanilla to make more test shots. If anyone has - would you mind sharing with me (specially crashed plane mission). Thanks.

39

Tools / Re: MCD Edit by volutar

« on: March 12, 2015, 02:08:13 pm »

can mcedit edit pck files directly ?  is that gonnaa be implemented?

Just make fake .mcd file for the PCK. It's the way how I edited units.

also for png sheets is it possible to make it so it automatically adds new MCDs for each of the tiles in the png sheet that are OVER the MCDs in current .mcd file

MCD has nothing with PCKs. PCKs can be either frames from the animation, or different MCDs can refer to same PCK multiple times. It's unguessible thing, so the answer is "no".

like for ex if you import a sheet with 10 and your current text1.mcd has 5 ..it should automatically add 5 more than you can erase etc

No, it shouldn't. You do want this, others do not (because it's animation frames). You wish computers could guess what you want, without manual work but it's simply impossible. It intentionally doesn't do any guess work, because it will fail.

40

Programming / Re: Paletted 8bit -> 24bit shading.

« on: March 12, 2015, 02:02:56 pm »

Ok, I made a test with hybrid solution, when artists gotta make two different shaded 32 sprites for each battlescape sprite - full light, and half-light (It makes light shades being interpolated between these two, and dark shades are going towards "black" by static curve). For vanilla it will simply generate all "intermediate light" sprite pairs, for custom - it should be done manually.

For XCOM-1 it works perfectly. The difference is barely noticeable, so there's no need even to show it.

But for TFTD underwater blue, or deep black is really off. Right now I can't figure how to make it possible with just 2 images.
Obviously there should be "ambient color" parameter, but not only that, because in xcom2 all colors all colors are gaining blue tint, even before going black in deep palette. I hate TFTD colors.

41

Tools / Re: MCD Edit by volutar

« on: March 12, 2015, 01:23:09 pm »

Any issues?

42

Suggestions / Re: Auto multi-level view (indoor/outdoor)

« on: March 12, 2015, 10:25:34 am »

Why?
Noone is using this button. Use mouse wheel to scroll map, and "center target" buttons.

43

Work In Progress / Re: Upcoming mission changes

« on: March 11, 2015, 05:51:24 pm »

Hobbes,

It isn't a problem to assign MissionZone locations that actually are outside the Region.

It makes no difference. There should be shared location list for all regions. Shared lists with N last sites being kept not to repeat.
There is no way to make that, if you will clone this list between regions. They will repeat even if there will be "no repeat" in terms of each region. Thus it must be shared, global location list. And actually - two different lists, for sea attacks (with randomly chosen type) and special case - artefacts.

As SupSuper said, it is possible now to add monthly missionWeights to the entries on alienMissions. The game will use them when selecting between missions with the same objective.

It's irrelevant to what's important to make TFTD (different weights through months, dynamic ARTEFACT mission affecting ratios until all of them are completed).
All your notes perhaps can be used with your mods, but they have no use for TFTD.

To make TFTD possible, this current "mission changes" should be deeply refactored. Since it doesn't allow for any limits, any anti-repeating, any dynamic month-based weights.

44

Work In Progress / Re: Upcoming mission changes

« on: March 11, 2015, 09:27:44 am »

Unfortunately these changes aren't helping to implement TFTD sea/artefact mission types either.

+ Island/Port terrors being part of mission zone3 are easily done with -1/-2 types, but I still couldn't find where I can put custom briefing text depending on terrain type.

- Sea terrors and artefact terrors are not related to specific geographic regions per se. Despite they can be initiated by region-related mission type of activity, in fact their coords are taken from the "global" location lists. (In opposite to logic of city/port/island-based terror sites, which are fully region-related).

- Sea terror coord list consists of 48 different unnamed locations, with last 5 USED locations kept in the save (not to repeat same location). Type of terrain - cruize/cargo is chosen randomly, 50/50. I simply failed finding where to put this global location list.

- Artefact terror coord list consists of 36 different unnamed locations, with last 12 locations kept. List is also shared between regions, and have no place in current structure.

- I couldn't find how to make STR_ALIEN_TERROR a kind of an alias, or some META-MISSION type mission with ability to have some inner-distribution, weights through months/waves and references to specific missions. Also there is a need to have ARTEFACT mission spawned only 12 times, and then - ratios of terror missions gotta be changed (artefact is zeroed -> others are filling proportionally).

- Terror types through months:

Code: [Select]

  0,1,2 : 100% port/island attack
  3,4,5 : 40% port/island attack, 60% cruize/cargo ship
  6, ... : 20% port/island attack, 30% cruize/cargo ship, 50% artefact (after 12 artefact missions spawned it becomes 0%)


45

Work In Progress / Re: i created a new alien --- WIP - called ant man

« on: March 08, 2015, 09:54:45 pm »

I believe the author repeated to death that "this is only temporary".

I like this alien and in battlescape specially, but putting the ufopaedia image into proper shape is gonna be not easy. I just hope the author(tollworkout) will finish this