Messages

46

Suggestions / Re: Graphic Format Standardization

« on: April 01, 2015, 01:44:27 pm »

Thanks for the response, what I meant though was that it seems like the behavior of the format is different on basebits vs everything else, which seems strange to me, but maybe transparency/index is handled differently on basebits than bigobs, handobs, etc?

47

Suggestions / Re: Graphic Format Standardization

« on: April 01, 2015, 04:57:12 am »

Additional addendum, it seems a non indexed PNG with transparency works, which is unique behavior as most everything else seems to require the index to match up. I haven't tested with non standard colors, but it seems to be failing gracefully based on my preliminary test.

EDIT. Let me know if I'm wrong please, but now that I think about it, there's not a pallet for the base specifically, unless it's using battlescape? maybe it's looser than all the other sprite requirements? I'd just gotten in the habit of using the battle pallet set for most of this stuff since I've not touched UFO pedia or other items much yet.

48

Suggestions / Graphic Format Standardization

« on: April 01, 2015, 04:18:45 am »

Not sure exactly why this is the case, but at least on OSX all battlescape items should be PNG's with the first index color set to something that's not used. I'm using green at 255 personally. But basebits set to this generate corrupted GFX, but transparent GIF files do not. Not sure why one format works in one context but not the other and vice-versa. What I'm seeing with the PNG is what I usually see with GIF files on OSX.

Of course maybe this isn't possible because of some of the original xcom limitations?

EDIT, clarification. PNG still works, but background must be transparent, not green 255 in order to work.

49

Suggestions / Re: Enlarged Minimap

« on: March 31, 2015, 04:22:54 pm »

For me at least the legend would limit modding. I'm making custom pck/rmp/maps and my scang objects are limited to what's already available, so sometimes I might use a grass tile just because I have something green in my artwork

50

Work In Progress / Re: [Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows

« on: March 30, 2015, 05:24:30 pm »

Thanks. I feel like I'm starting to approach a playable alpha state, even though I've still got some bugs and balance issues. I had a map crash issue that opened up a can of worms since I could now have a much taller ufo set, which I had considered before. I may hold back on changing maps much until alpha 2 though.

Still all of the ufopedia artwork to generate and my final level maps, but I want to wait on that a bit until I understand a bit more about the mapscripting.

Play testing is progressing well enough at the moment, but my tier transition is slightly off as I captured an alien earlier than I expected and had a bit of a research shortcut. I'm also playing with 50 bonus scientists I didn't have to pay for so that's probably skewing things a bit.

51

Work In Progress / Re: Map generator encountered an error: no xcom units could be placed on the map.

« on: March 30, 2015, 04:30:09 am »

Seems like the resize command was what I was looking for. Just had to place before the crafts and ufos are placed on the map.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2934.msg35920.html#msg35980

52

Work In Progress / Re: Map generator encountered an error: no xcom units could be placed on the map.

« on: March 30, 2015, 04:16:19 am »

Is there a way in the mapscript to increase the dimensions of the map, or exclude a particular MCD like the water that seems to be crowding out my landing spots? Looks like size isn't really  the appropriate place for that. Or is there some sort of conditional set of rules to make sure that exerything deploys before we do the fills?

I don't think it should be RMP routes or deployments as those are set in my maps and rule files, although I don't remember now if I specifically included a tile on the map for the deploys since the Rulefile allows me to place untils as I like. Still, my xcom craft is similar dimensions to skyranger, and the 30x30 for the supply ship should work in theory unless I'm missing something.

53

Work In Progress / Map generator encountered an error: no xcom units could be placed on the map.

« on: March 29, 2015, 10:18:16 pm »

So playtesting my TC Mod and I get this error when facing a supply ship in the polar region. Basically everything at this point is custom, but a quick test of turning off the UFO map replacement makes this work.

I'm able to run the exact same scenario with new battle and it launches fine, so I'm assuming it's something about how the maps are building in this one instance.

I did make my supply ship as large as the battle ship, but I don't know if that should matter since it does work pretty much every time I test in the simulator.

Is there something I'm missing configuring in my rule files or is this strictly a matter of the game expects a 20x30 map even though I set it to 30x30 for the UFO and it's somehow knocking my craft off screen? Looking at the map with the standard supply ship map there's a lot of water, so maybe with my larger ship map there's just no place left for the xcom craft to spawn? I suppose I can resize my ship, but would prefer to keep it as it is if possible.

54

Work In Progress / Re: [Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows

« on: March 26, 2015, 03:54:29 am »

I think i fixed the terrain issue that was causing the explosives crash. i also dropped the contrast on the floor tile and tweaked it to give some more contrast.

55

Work In Progress / Re: [Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows

« on: March 25, 2015, 01:45:42 pm »

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I'll try it, but I'm wondering if lightening the darker color would be better to make the walls more distinct from the floors. I'll mess around with it.

56

Work In Progress / Re: [Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows

« on: March 25, 2015, 04:12:01 am »

Pre alpha 4 attached.

Major bug possibly discovered, but not sure if that's in the nightly or something to do with my terrain/map files. If you use explosives on some destructable terrain items (Primarily tested vs. the OXC_UFO_CARGO.mcd terrain files) the game will hang. I was having a similar problem with the Rapier.MCD files but making those armor 255 seemed to fix the issue for the xcom crafts. The items in question can be shot and destroyed and should have DIE MCD tiles set, but I think even if they are set to 0 it should do the right thing. Maybe I've got something wrong in my rule file or the MCD file?

I've been able to playthrough to about tier 2 or 3, but I'd have to check my notes. Most time has been spent on revamping all UFO graphics and layouts with my crystal ships. Pretty excited about some of these as they are very different than either UFO defense or TFTD. Hoping they aren't too insane in some cases.

The Cargo Ship and the Abductor are probably the most tactically interesting.

X-Com has all it's ships in but some PCK files could be refined later.

There's definitely some crashes around my blaster launcher for the aliens and some ufopedia entries causing crashes, but it should be possible to test the new UFOs now for holes in the ship walls, LOFTS, etc, as well as how the RMP's are working as I was in a bit of a hurry, so no idea if things are going to spawn where they should or if patrols are going to happen.

57

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT] Tactical Lightning V2

« on: March 24, 2015, 04:48:32 am »

Nice. I've got something very similar in my mod, but haven't posted much about the craft yet. Are you using light source values of 1? I've not found good documentation but I'm under the impression that lower values are better? I love the look of this, much better exterior than the vanilla lightning walls which look more like the satellite of love.

58

Work In Progress / Re: [Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows

« on: March 18, 2015, 04:22:03 am »

Finally started in on my UFO designs. decided on an angular crystal thing for my art direction. This works pretty well I think since i've got a crystal based weapon as my aliens version of the heavy plasma. I'm also playing with some sections of UFOs being basically open to the outside, similar to EU2012 UFO doors. You cant see the animated fields in the example by the green crystal engine, but the idea is if the UFO crashed on a farm the back end could blow out and set the fields on fire, which would be more interesting I think. Also means the aliens could shoot at you from engineering bay rather than waiting for you to come through the one door on the ship. Should be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I think at a minimum it will provide some very different experiences than XCOM 1 or 2. I've got about 3 other layouts partially planned, with the idea being to replace all the basic tiers and possibly add one extra UFO layout.

I've fallen behind on my playtest in the interim, but I felt like working on this for now, and it's a big chunk of work that I've already got done by getting my MCD PCK files partially set up. Making maps still takes forever though.

59

Work In Progress / Re: custom missions ideas

« on: March 03, 2015, 10:55:43 pm »

How about the fishing village crysallid whale mission from Xcom eu? Or set it in a polar environment for a john carpenter's the thing vibe. Not sure if you could do something like the alien brain for completion, but if so that could be the mission objective.

60

Work In Progress / Re: Upcoming mission changes

« on: March 02, 2015, 06:14:41 pm »

Associating the alien race to the terrain is very interesting. You could have a terror specific version of the race with different weights, or additional units that only get deployed for the terror mission. I suppose you could also combine tftd and ufo, and limit all the Tftd units to water and vice versa.