Messages

136

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: November 09, 2019, 03:49:22 am »

One thing I disliked about the original XCOM is its basebuilding centered world map. There is no sense of adventure and the number of possible scenarios is rather limited. I.e. you can't re-enact say Lords of the Rings scenario in XCOM engine. Player just boringly waits for the next alien event to happen, without doing any exploring or guiding the game somehow. XCOM Apocalypse tried to fix it (Phoenix Point addresses it even further), allowing player to visit sites on demand and say raid internal city enemies, like Cult of Sirius. That works with XCOM setting, but not enough for a fantasy like game. Good example of turn based fantasy game would be heroes of might & magic series, which has fog of war for global map and strucutures, like lookout tower and eye of magi gradually uncovering it, yet allowing player to decide where to go next, depending on his/her strategy. XCOM unfortunately missing that, and its research tree is a rather linear - you just go for laser rifles, ignoring everything else. But yeah, for XCOM world map was rather bolted on. I.e. no need to secure some unobtanium mine or raiding opposing camp psy-labs for that mind control tech.

137

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: November 08, 2019, 03:20:16 am »

The idea with moving all player units to the exit squares/map-border was flawed. It is just boring and not really that tactical. So the new approach is allowing player to leave with all units or specific units, which were out of enemy sight for a few turns and have full movement points. For now the idea is that most sites are heavily overpowered and player has no resources to deal with all enemies, so his objective is quickly complete the objective and leave the site (i.e. retrieve the spell scroll wit the the new spell). Although quest items should be first given to the leader, before leaving the site. That would force the player to somehow get out of the heavily patrolled dungeon or risk losing his leaders.

Currently I don't have unconsciousness status, so there is no problem with resolving such units.

138

Fan-Stuff / Re: XCOM Crossovers that'd never work

« on: November 04, 2019, 12:38:36 am »

Maybe something of Silent Hill vs Pokemons crossover set inside XCOM like mechanics. Say city of Silent Hill gradually merges with Pokemon city. Now you have the same city in superposition of several dimensions.

Also, I believe there was already a Mario game with XCOM-like gameplay.

139

Offtopic / Re: X-COM/XCOM and the "Ocean Girl" series

« on: October 30, 2019, 01:25:55 am »

I always thought TFTD devs were inspired by Ecco The Dolphin, which was released a year prior and also had that Lovecraftian theme going on...

If that is so, then TFTD unfortunatelly missed one of the most cornerstone Ecco's elements - limited air supply, which created some scary moments in the game, but yeah the game is hard even without that, and XCOM aquanauts are no Dolphins and can breath underwater just like fishes other potentially missing element is decompression sickness, which could have been also added to say differentiate higher difficulty modes, like Superhuman, with more content, instead of just fatter aliens.

140

Offtopic / Re: New X-COM-like game: Terran Shield

« on: October 28, 2019, 09:22:14 pm »

Phoenix Point is (very loosely) based on X-Com as a whole and not TFTD in particular;

They even have the iconic Lobstermen aliens! Also, Gollop's game looks much closer to the original XCOM, than the Firaxis ones, although a bit too realistic for my liking. Original XCOM games had that comic book charm.

141

Offtopic / A Game Where Player Plays as Alien from The Thing

« on: October 27, 2019, 02:34:54 pm »

https://youtu.be/ZEEiKw-VGsk?t=377

Although the concept is not completely original. There was a really old game called "The Ooze", which was obviously based of that The Blob movie, about blob like alien life form crashing on Earth.

142

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 27, 2019, 02:28:04 am »

Another seemingly easy subject is battle resolution. Well, it is easy in simpler games, like Final Fantasy, but not in XCOM-style games, where you can leave site, without recovering all characters and/or items, or recovering part of them. So there can be no precise victory condition, where you need to just recover that specific alien technology or a specimen, and then retreat. I decided to break player forces into mercenaries and leaders, so player can retreat at any time when his/her all leaders are at the map's edge, or when he defeated all enemy leaders, or when he/she has cast the Spell of Mastery for that specific site. If some of the leaders are not at the edge, they will be lost, but all mercenary units will retreat by themselves. There is a catch to that: player must have at least one leader, otherwise it is an instant defeat (yeah, leaders are akin to lives in arcade games), but leaders require constant upkeep, while mercenaries require larger payment for each battle. Trying to cast the spell of mastery instantly reveals all player leaders to the enemy, and frees AI to use all his many units at once against the player.

Obviously not all sites allow casting the Spell of Mastery, and not all dungeons have leaders. In some cases player just have to recover the quest item or plunder some gold. And if player say starts with a thief, it can gain some quick money by getting inside dungeons, around the guards to reach treasury room, or maybe rescuing some prisoners taken by orcs. I.e. that exact mechanics from the preview demo.

143

Offtopic / Re: New X-COM-like game: Terran Shield

« on: October 25, 2019, 06:51:56 pm »

Cool! But I believe you will have hard time competing with Gollop's newest game, Phoenix Point, which is also based of Terror from the Deep, unless you get some distinguishing feature, like say time traveling aliens and base whole gameplay around time travel, or maybe Star Trek style setting. Otherwise your game will be greatly overshadowed and could go unnoticed - it is hard to compete with Gollop himself ;-)

144

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 24, 2019, 03:18:40 am »

Improved the 3d cursor movement, which appeared to be the most confusing part about my game to other people (and even myself):

145

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 23, 2019, 02:30:50 am »

Original XCOM was very efficient in its use of map cells, where each map element contains walls and ceiling. Dwarf Fortress uses similar format, where map cell has floor attached. Early on I decided to go full voxel approach, but in addition making character height 2 cells, so sprites won't look squashed/superdeformed and get somewhat realistic look, so instead of 1 cell, have to use 3. Yet some characters could have 1-cell height and fit inside 1-height passages, while other characters have height of 3 and need some area. Yet there is 1/2 cell height support for stuff like low-angle sloped terrain, which I added, because 45 degree roof looks stupid on larger buildings. That greatly complicates everything, especially when flying creatures get involved. Map generation is no exception, and I still get few occluding tiles improperly cut, due to difference in ceiling, used for heuristics.

Guess my current approach to 3d cursor movement appear to be wrong and people fail to grasp it. Better idea would be to make cursor move akin to ingame creature, so it wont cut through terrain, but jump on top of it. That would complicate cutting tunnels or casting spells inside solid terrain, but that feature wont be used that much, and it could be implemented as special mode. The other problem is quickly getting cursor back inside building, when it is not anchored to specific floor level.

146

Offtopic / Re: Crazy and maddest idea of the mad.. asking Julian Gollop for UFO’s source code..

« on: October 22, 2019, 01:13:00 pm »

Has Take-2 ever been approached to ask if a copy of the source code can be released? Whether or not the code is available, at least permission can be sought in the event a copy does surface.

I know the games have already been mapped out quite exhaustively, but I think having access to some of the original code would still be useful for historical preservation and academic interest.

I suggest you to avoid attracting Take 2 attention (especially the attention of their legal team), unless you want Cease & Desist order to close this project. The time people play OpenXCOM is the time they are less likely to buy newer XCOM games, or other games Take-2 sells. I think that was the exact the reason Blizzard taken down Starcraft and Warcarft 2 modding project (Freecraft), so they could be able to remaster and resell it themselves, like they did. Big companies legal teams always seeking a way to make themselves "useful", so if they notice OXC, there is a high chance they will be lobbying management to close it.

147

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 22, 2019, 02:21:36 am »

So you do daggarfall modding eh? Nice! I do Skyrim modding before I started this ufo project. What I did, I add Caravan masters and Merc Captains in Tavern where you can escort Caravan across Skyrim.  Also I have 5000+ spawn points with a script that generate random monsters all over the map. So, every trip from one town to another with a Caravan.. is a hellish fun experience..

Nope. I'm not a modder guy. Just researching prior art, hoping to get few nifty ideas. But in most cases people use what works for them. I.e. in Daggefall they had level actual human designers, so it was a good idea to create many big human-crafted parts, than creating more sophisticated generator, which is really hard to do and would be much slower than loading parts from disk. But yeah, creating a full featured random generator for Skyrim/Morrowind/Oblivion would be possible, although a bit on the harder side. Then again, people managed to add even multiplayer to these games.


Anyway, I've integrated the initial generator into the game. The approach I use would allow unlimited number of Z-levels on the same map - I can layer them as much as I want. It could also be used to generate cities and villages, if I specify more constraints, like city streets and building coming out onto them. That should be good enough for a simple indie game, but proper world generator for an AAA game will need an AI-based algorithm working from actual statistical data for real world cities, forest distribution and vegetation.

148

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 21, 2019, 12:41:25 am »

It appears Daggerfall dungeons are not completely random, but made out of big pre-generated blocks (i.e. like in XCOM)
http://www.gamesas.com/just-how-random-daggerfall-t27043.html

The dungeons are built of "blocks", with any dungeon having about 3, with as much as 5 or 6 and as little as just 1. The blocks are HUGE, though, so if you enter a block you have done a lot before, then you have a pretty big area that will feel familiar. That said, the blocks are big, twisted, and crazy, so just because you've been to that block before doesn't mean you're going to know the route by heart. It takes quite a while before the same block gets old--besides, the monsters and loot always change. Learning a block only makes it easier to navigate, which can be a good thing.

Some blocks are very recognizable; for instance, the whole of Privateer's Hold shows up sometimes, Others, such as those with very large central chambers are easier to learn. But there are quite a few blocks that consist of nothing but maze, and I'm convinced you can't learn those. Ever.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dungeons

a dungeon consists of up to 32 blocks, each of which may be connected to any (or all) of the four cardinally adjacent blocks since there are two connecting passages in each of the four cardinal directions, and thusly there are eight paths leading out of each block. While most dungeons may appear to be a random conglomerate of different modules, they were hard-coded in the release media and thus are never-changing. These were most likely generated via a pseudo-random program of some type, but Main Quest dungeons are an exception, because these were all hand-crafted.

While Main Quest dungeons may be the biggest dungeons in the game, it has been commented by some that even the least of the random dungeons are logically too large for the majority of quests. It has also been voiced that because the number of blocks in the source material is limited, most dungeons lack diversity/variance and hence all dungeons tend to look like each other.

Dungeons are built from blocks by assembling them together side-by-side on a 2D grid. Of these blocks there are two types of blocks: internal and border.

Internal blocks
    These provide the meat of the dungeon where most rooms and corridors are placed. Every internal dungeon block has two door openings in each one of its fours sides, one above the other. Each door opening is used to link to a nearby internal block or to an external block.
Border blocks
    These are used when it is necessary to close the side of an internal block. These are primarily composed of a single corridor which reflexively leads back to the same block of their origin. These are most often used to seal a dungeon's peripheral blocks, but could be used to create isolated areas within a dungeon. Border blocks do not contain any quest locations.

Cities are generated using exactly the same grid algorithm as XCOM uses.

So Daggerfall's dungeon generator doesn't handle Z dimension at all.

149

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 19, 2019, 08:55:47 pm »

Speaking of lost opportunities:
http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/12/21/rooms-and-mazes/

That guy got pretty unorthodox idea of generating dungeons, but then he botched it by pruning out the maze part, and levels lost the iconic look Better idea would be creating some gameplay around that maze-room concept, where say player sees entire maze and is given limited time to pick the passage to next room, or when picking passage leads to blocking it to the competing player, while botch players must navigate to goal (maybe to each other start loations). Each maze passage could have some specific bonus. But yeah, that would be completely different real-time action game, not tactics or roguelike, but I'm sure one can turn it into an instant smartphone hit 

150

Offtopic / Re: XCOM Inspired Fantasy Game

« on: October 18, 2019, 08:47:14 pm »

Currently my code generates dungeons of hierarchical topology. Such dungeons are a bit boring: enemy can't  surprise you by approaching from behind. Basically they would feel too safe. Regarding loops in dungeons: naturally human made buildings usually have hierarchical topology, so we actually need a good excuse to introduce loops: say have both stairs and a lift to reach higher floor: that  way if player secured the 1st floor, but have chosen stairs to reach 2nd floor, aliens could use lift to descend to the first floor left unsecured.

Badly placed loops stand out in the architecture. Diablo had a lot of them, but they usually created passable loops, appearing more like alternative way to reach the room. Then again, Diablo's dungeon is a cursed ruined cathedral. But, for example, Chocobo Dungeon generator produces some really nasty out of place loops, which would likely annoy player. Here a path splits before both forks entering the same room: