Messages

46

Work In Progress / Re: hwps with inventory

« on: March 07, 2017, 05:41:41 pm »

In vanilla too.

Code: [Select]

  - type: CHRYSSALID_ARMOR
    spriteSheet: CHRYS.PCK
    allowInv: false

PS: In OXCE+, you can display "inventory lite" (also called "alien inventory") even for units with disabled inventory; by middle-clicking on the unit. It will show only what's in hands, and ignore the rest of the inventory.

Thanks Meridian! I didn't know that was an option (it's not in the Ruleset wiki page).

So it half works. You can access the inventory of a terror unit if you go to one of your soldier's inventories and cycle through until you get to the terrorist. However, you still can't access the terror unit's inventory by simply clicking the inventory button like you would for a regular soldier or mind controlled alien (the inventory button on the battlescape is disable when you have the terror unit selected). Is this just the way it is for terror units or is there another Ruleset option? (I just added allowInv: true.) Thanks again.

47

Work In Progress / Re: hwps with inventory

« on: March 07, 2017, 11:37:18 am »

Separate but related question. There is no way to access the inventory screen for a terror unit (when under MC) is there? You can for other aliens, but can't for even 1 title terror units like Chyrsallids. Wasn't sure if this is a hard coded setting or something that could be changed in rulesets.

48

Work In Progress / Re: How to create mods or cover the ufo mods for TFTD?

« on: March 07, 2017, 10:05:46 am »

Mostly by Photoshop: changing mode from indexed to RGB and then back to indexed with other palette and dithering off. And then manually correcting. A lot of corrections... From this topic:https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2676.0.html i found useful only EvilPixie.

So I'm bumping this because I'm having trouble converting images from UFO palette to TFTD. If you just use the image with no conversion you get funky colors, but when I try using Falko's palette converter here (https://falkooxc2.pythonanywhere.com/spritepalette#) I get a bunch of funky colors anyway (second attachment). How do I convert it to TFTD and have it look right?

I tried using the link Solarius Scorch posted to go from UFO to TFTD_0 but that just gives me a silhouette (first attachment) rather than any colors.

See images attached. Thanks to anyone who can walk me through this. I do have photo shop, so if I need to do it in there I can, but I don't know what this "indexed to RGB and then back" Nord is talking about means.

*Third attachment is the original.

49

The X-Com Files / Re: Field reports

« on: March 07, 2017, 04:46:06 am »

Woah, what a good piece of fanfition I see!

Agreed. Solid stuff.

50

OXCE Suggestions Archive / Re: suggestion: complex UFO crash damage

« on: February 24, 2017, 06:09:53 pm »

- UFO crashed while cruising at high speed: after Battlescape is generated (but before battle starts), apply a line of explosions from the UFO extending to border of battlescape, creating a crash path. also apply damage to opposite outer hull of UFO.

That would look pretty cool.

51

Troubleshooting / Re: Bug - no alien bases show up (sav attached)

« on: February 24, 2017, 06:05:55 pm »

One more thing bothers me: when I skip a few monts and fail it shows "final score" where my difficulty rating is mentioned as "beginner", but I'm 100% sure I started playing Veteran difficulty before transferring my sav file from PC (once).

The infamous difficulty bug strikes once again, mwahaha.

52

Playthroughs / Re: Terror From The Deep Research ... WTF?!?

« on: February 23, 2017, 09:20:00 pm »

Because if you know everything from level layout to research beforehand you can win but for anyone else... good luck.

That is key. If you know the research tree from the start it won't be too bad, but going in blind you can be out of luck like me. Although even if you know the tree, if you missed your chance to grab a live Deep One on an early terror mission (let's say you lost the missions or just couldn't stun one), then you can still be in a tough spot where the campaign just drags on forever as you can't do the right research.

Just to provide a different experience.
I started playing this game when I was 14 (in 1996) and I never had a problem with the research tree (and google wasn't even a thing back then).
As far as I am concerned, the research tree is perfectly fine.

Even more, I learned about the bugs (like Tasoth Commander bug) a lot later... and even these bugs didn't prevent me from completing the game each time.

I understand what you're saying... just wanted to add that not everyone feels like that.

Fair enough, good to hear another perspective. Obviously not running into the Tasoth Commander bug on the original game is good luck. And I probably wouldn't have had such a bad experience if I didn't lose my main base very early game when my second base was barely getting going (so I lost my Deep One corpses and live ones if I had any). I guess my main beef isn't necessarily the tree itself, it's that they didn't make Deep Ones more abundant (at least have them appear at alien bases or something) later in the first year, given their crucial role in the research tree.

53

Released Mods / Re: Vanilla Rebalanced - nothing is added, but everything is different!

« on: February 23, 2017, 09:02:07 pm »

Align, I'm glad you bumped this thread. There are some cool balancing ideas here I'd definitely like to try in the future.

[Spoiler]

54

Playthroughs / Re: Terror From The Deep Research ... WTF?!?

« on: February 23, 2017, 01:51:01 am »

Spoiler:

Yes, research is really silly. In a sense it prevent you from completing tech early, but providing absolutely no clue was ridiculous.

In my youtube campaign, I cannot use melee weapon because the calcinites never spawned. And while armor is not crucial (really, building ion armor is draining my resources to hell), this is ridiculous to expect players to capture a deep one.

Late in the campaign, you should get "mixed" alien crews and deep ones will spawn at wildly random so your campaign isn't stuck without armor but yeah, this is dumb.
Yes this is dumb, I'm currently having a lot of problem as I am playing ironman and any misstep will have me going in circle.

Boltgun, thanks for confirming I'm not crazy to be so frustrated about this. And yes, TFTD is definitely a lot less forgiving than UFO (which is saying something). With no armor, I go through at least 10 dye grenades a mission trying to keep my guys alive. At this point I just want to finish TFTD so I can move on with my life, haha.

PS - You say armor isn't "crucial," but I am finding it impossible to win an alien artifact mission without it (playing Superhuman). I've failed three of them now.

Spoiler:

Most of my TFTD playing has been before I had access to FAQs, and thus I systematically wrecked my long campaigns with the tasoth commander bug. There is only one time I managed to unlock the T'leth mission.
It was not infuriating because I had absolutely no idea what caused some items to become unlocked, and even the early game is very interesting / challenging. I easily start new campaigns, and stop as soon as I'm bored. This is why I don't mind the end-game being too easy (by the time you have 8 full bases, 100% detection, armor which cancels tactical errors, and trained MCers) : I already know what's the end, so I don't bother grind through it. By this point I play something else or start a new campaign.
You can save scum like crazy to overcome having no armors, but it still locks the technology of alien subs, and you need a Leviathan to enter the final mission.

Ah, see I'm too OCD to give up on a campaign. I won't stop until either I win or the aliens win. Unfortunately I can't win until I finish the research. And I don't save scum so my death count is very very high at the moment ... almost through the first year and the memorial wall has around 250 names on it.

Spoiler:

Well original XCOM made no mention of a Sectoid Leader either in order to get psi, and if you did not get one fairly early on, you would be totally hosed when Ethereals showed up.  But there were discussion boards back then already, and word would get around....

That's partially true, but there are several important differences:

1) You can capture a Sectoid Leader at any point in the game fairly easily so it's not like Deep Ones which essentially disappear from the game.

2) While psi technology is nice, you don't need it to beat the game so not researching a Sectoid Leader won't hold you back ... beating the original game without using psi isn't that hard once you know what you're doing.

3) You don't have to research a Sectoid Leader to get psi, you have to research "any live psionic alien" so you can capture any Ethereal and also get psi tech. Having to research a live psionic alien to get psi tech is also logical where as having to research a live Deep One to get advanced armors and ship building tech is random and makes no logical sense (at least to me).

4) The information you get from interrogations in UFO straight up tells you that you have to research an alien leader to progress in the game so at least there is a hint that researching alien leaders is important (although if you opted for a Floater or Snakeman you wouldn't get the psi).

Point is, the UFO research tree is more logical and non-game breaking than TFTD. You can stumble around with research not knowing what you're doing in UFO and you'll finish the game just fine where as in TFTD, the research tree can stop you all together.

55

Playthroughs / Terror From The Deep Research ... WTF?!?

« on: February 21, 2017, 09:37:06 am »

Is the TFTD research tree the most convoluted thing ever? I finally finished researching Plastic Aqua Armor and expected to immediately move on to the next armor, but upon looking at the research tree, I see I need a live Deep One to move on any further in my research with armor or alien subs.

I cannot imagine the frustration people experienced playing this game before information was so readily available online. Even without the original game's bugs that OXC has fixed, the research tree is just crazy. How would you ever figure all this out on your own? What clues are there? To make such a crucial aspect of finishing the game dependent on capturing a live terror alien only readily available early in the campaign seems random and like a major design flaw.

If you didn't catch one early on, you may never get a chance again considering that later in the game you don't see Gillman terror missions often at all and you're not even getting terror missions if you have global coverage and are shooting down all the terror ships.

I'm in December in my campaign now and stuck. So I'm going to have to stop shooting down alien UFOs on terror missions (alien surface attacks in TFTD) and hope that I eventually get Gillmen again.

Okay that's the end of my rant/venting session. Does anyone want to defend the TFTD research tree? By all means, I'd like to feel better about it if someone has a good defense.

PS - I'm not even against a more complicated research tree than UFO; I like that researching alien corpses is actually important. However, they shouldn't have made such an important research topic associated with an alien that rarely shows up later in the game.

56

Playthroughs / Re: I start my missions with my soldiers holding primed grenades..

« on: February 20, 2017, 03:09:50 pm »

Of course, if a soldier holding a primed grenade is shot, you get a boom right in the middle of your squad.

Yup. Had a complete squad wipe from this once.

57

Work In Progress / Re: How do I reveal all enemy units on base defense?

« on: February 19, 2017, 08:28:31 pm »

You could just go into debug mode and all aliens will be revealed as well as their movements on the alien turn.

58

Suggestions / Re: All against all, or against one only.

« on: February 19, 2017, 07:19:36 pm »

Although my initial idea was to simulate "literally hostile environment": some kind of monsters wandering around, attacking anything they find.

That's a great idea. You could even make it map dependent ... monsters or mutants on some maps or on something like jungle terrain, have dangerous wildlife that attacks aliens and humans.

But I'm also just speculating, not requesting. Having the current feature with civilians that can attack aliens is already really cool.

59

Suggestions / Re: All against all, or against one only.

« on: February 19, 2017, 06:05:38 am »

I can see the appeal of being able to have a three-way battle (instead of 2 vs 1). How else are you going to do Alien vs Predator?

60

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS Release (v.1.0)

« on: February 19, 2017, 06:01:42 am »

It has been a while since i last touched that game but as far as i know this is explained ingame (or in game manual).
Both of those exo-materials love to react with (salty) water.

Actually, it's because we ran out of Elerium, so can't use the alien tech from the first alien war (UFO). From the wiki:

Although interception of the smaller alien subs is a relatively easy matter thanks to the Barracuda
intercept sub, early X-COM tactical missions meet with less than successful results. Most of the
weapons used in the First Alien War are useless without a supply of Elerium-115 to
power them, and weapons based on Earth technology, such as the Laser Rifle, prove
to have no effect against the new aliens or cannot be adapted for underwater use. Aquanauts are
forced to rely on primitive spear and harpoon gun, torpedo launchers, and a small array of
explosive devices, until they are able to research the technology used by the new wave of alien
invaders.