Messages

271

Programming / Re: No way in hell

« on: December 27, 2015, 11:29:48 pm »

The best solution would of course be implementing pain sounds ~ ala Doom ~ so that hits can be identified.

There are several orthogonal solutions:
1. hit points flying out of the damaged unit, like in final fantasy games.
2. info window, exposing all the dice rolls the game engine makes.
3. hit animation. I.e. displace damaged unit for a second.
4. sound. (having just them will offend the deaf users)
5. blood and gibs.

272

Programming / Re: No way in hell

« on: December 16, 2015, 02:27:13 am »

"The algorithms were, of course, very fun to construct and interesting to discuss outside of the game. The players, however, felt left behind -- the computer was having all the fun -- so we cut the feature. Further, games require not just meaningful choices but also meaningful communication to feel right. Giving players decisions that have consequence but which they cannot understand is no fun. Choice is only interesting when it is both impactful and informed." --Sid Meiers, on Civilization game design

273

Offtopic / Re: something I realised about the aliens

« on: December 15, 2015, 08:23:36 pm »

What do you mean by "utilizing star's energy to assault the planet"?

Energy allows transforming mater. So you can do pretty much anything. From terraforming to bombardment.

Curiously, nanobots seem to be poor weapons. Since they are so small, they are extremely susceptible to overheating (the heavier an object, the more heat it can absorb and therefore it takes longer for 1 gram of this object to heat up), meaning even direct exposure to sunlight would toast them.

Bacteria is a "nanobot" too, but it can withstand surprisingly high temperatures and open radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

So X-Com aliens are relatively low tech barbarians. In the sense they cant manipulate galaxies or even stars.

274

Offtopic / Re: something I realised about the aliens

« on: December 14, 2015, 02:41:56 pm »

Technologically advanced civilization can utilize star's energy to assault the planet. Then again, current human civilization has no defense against say nano-robots or small robots at all. We cant detect their activity. I.e. a small drone can easily poison food or water supply.

275

Programming / Re: Field of Vision

« on: December 13, 2015, 04:22:57 pm »

What do you mean by "precompute"? You mean that it's still done on the battlefield, or that the information is somehow stored in the game files (which would help explain the lack of random maps)? I guess the latter takes it a bit far though

I mean, when terrain changes, for each cell store a bitmap of nearby cells visible from it. Alternatively, one can use a diffusion map and check that gas concentration is equivalent to the straight line (i.e. flow had no obstacles in the way). Diffusion could possible run fast in 3d with octrees. Although algorithm for getting neigbors inside of octree is a little involved.

276

Programming / Re: No way in hell

« on: December 11, 2015, 12:59:34 pm »

Why not make it as simple as "if you can see it, then you can hit it"? I.e. just roll a dice for any transparent obstacles, when dice fails, hit the obstacle instead of target.

277

Offtopic / Re: Fanart

« on: December 11, 2015, 11:35:29 am »

X-COM in Russia,

278

Offtopic / Re: Insane, Impossible Mod Speculation

« on: December 09, 2015, 11:37:12 am »

Maybe a mod that adds more personality to aliens, x-com squaddies and civilians? I.e. like ghosts in pacman have different behavior, modulated by players success. When player performs too well, that red ghost gets faster and catches him.

279

Programming / Re: Field of Vision

« on: December 08, 2015, 02:28:58 pm »

It's possible with raycasting. You either should increase resolution of raycasting (easier, laggier) or change raycasting in the way where such problem are not happening (extremely hard, lag-free).

What about X-Com Apocalypse?  The realtime nature of the game requires fast FOV. But I guess machines running Apocalypse can precompute it. A few bytes per cell would be enough to cache visibility bitmap of nearby cells.

280

Offtopic / Re: Open Source Fallout Tactics

« on: December 08, 2015, 11:44:23 am »

I knew imstead of falltergeist an open soirce port of fallout 2, even for linux!. Does the freeFT provides a linux executable?

Fallout2 was a nice RPG, but tactical part was very basic, compared to say X-Com (although hexes were nice). Fallout Tactics fixed that, but unfortunately dropped the RPG aspect, enraging most of the fans. Still a great game, if you ignore the "Fallout" part of the name.

281

Programming / Re: Field of Vision

« on: December 08, 2015, 10:11:00 am »

Seems like your average raycasting. There is a reason for 20 tiles vision limit, probably. If you download and use Real Vision mode (which expands this limit to 100 tiles), you'll find it lags even on fairly modern computers let alone PCs of 90x.

I'm surprised nobody has reverse engineered the most important part of the engine

The https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Line_of_sight article points that some hacks were used, resulting in blind spots, circles being not-perfect and objects like UFOs having holes in them.

Although AI turn really took way too long when I played the game back then on PlayStation.

282

Offtopic / Open Source Fallout Tactics

« on: December 06, 2015, 12:55:39 pm »

Did you knew about https://github.com/nadult/FreeFT

Fallout Tactics was basically an X-Com clone, with evil AI instead of aliens.

283

Programming / Field of Vision

« on: December 06, 2015, 11:32:11 am »

How did the original X-Com managed to calculated field of vision back in 1994? The only way I know is spherecasting - an expensive calculation to do in realtime.

284

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: September 20, 2015, 06:02:25 am »

The following ordering algorithm solves the problem with z-fighting tiles:
https://sourceforge.net/p/pentagram/code/HEAD/tree/pentagram/trunk/world/ItemSorter.cpp

Dunno why it is so obscure, because a lot of isometric games use more naive algorithms getting various occlusion problems.

Still it is computationally intensive (cant immediately employ zbuffer) and requires knowing bounding boxes, but in case of Magic & Mayhem that is not a problem.

I would love input from openxcom devs on what algorithm they use to get draw order correctly. Is it possible to use zbuffer to solve the problem?

285

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: September 08, 2015, 12:52:59 pm »

I loved the game. A open source port would be sweet, though it wasn't anywhere near as popular as UFO.

I'm currently working on my own game for Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=514233906

Most of the assets ain't free, because I paid a lot for the art, but the engine is open source and very similar to Magic & Mayhem. While my game is turn-based, the engine can easily be adapted for real-time games.