Messages

16

Work In Progress / Re: [TFTD]Terrain Expansion

« on: June 03, 2016, 10:27:52 pm »

The sewers do give me ideas for something more ambitious, that'll have to leave for another time. I'm having fun with the mapscripts and two new coast tiles for the polar island: a smaller island with either a lighthouse or bare rock. The script will place one of them on either the east or west edge of the map, with a chance of none at all. Changed the lighting how I wanted and changed the alien spawn points again: they should be scattered fairly evenly across the map with only a very few high priority spawns.

Play testing on superhuman has been difficult:


Simple canal implemented for the urban beach map and size increased to 60x50

17

Work In Progress / Re: [TFTD]Terrain Expansion

« on: June 02, 2016, 11:30:48 pm »

Oh, The Thing was totally another inspiration which is why I didn't go for the ultra modern space age look (using TFTD's pipe terrain or some of robin's tilesets). I'm pretty sure I put 'huskie kennels' in my initial notes.

May need some more bits to make a good canal, this kind of asymmetry is  going to bug me although technically probably okay:

Other potential ideas, more made difficult by elevation issues. I'm picturing this terrain as something like miami or LA beachside:


A more involved seaside town would be great. One of the issues I've noticed is the TFTD coast areas don't actually get used a lot either because there's little tactical value or because aliens just don't spawn there. There's like only one tile out of the 8 coastal tiles from the port terrain that ever seems to get used in my game and the island coast tiles are also known as the most annoying map tiles ever. And I haven't worked out how to give my own coastal tiles much value either, other than the beach being that place where civilians go to die.

18

Work In Progress / Re: [TFTD]Terrain Expansion

« on: June 02, 2016, 10:19:59 pm »

Yeah, I was looking at a bunch of those Antarctic stations for inspiration. Just designed another large 20x20 building for a 'proper' main building looking at this one:



Also added a normal version of the dig site entrance to the terror sites for more variety. Reinforced the helipad with a thick central support for more realism, plus breaks up the terrain.

For the beach, I guess you're suggesting something like this?:

Potentially the Beach Urban could spin off into it's own new thing although to be honest I only intended it to be a quick and dirty way of giving the urban terrain a nautical theme to make it fit in with TFTD better.

Things to do:
Play with the frequencies of map tiles in the mapscript
Adjust the lighting
Adjust the spawn points (ever torn about making the aliens start in the best positions vs keeping it unpredictable vs logic)
Playtest

19

Work In Progress / Re: [TFTD]Terrain Expansion

« on: June 02, 2016, 09:56:17 am »

First thing to note is the new terrain; Polar Island Research Station. It uses UFO's polar terrain and the Polar-mountain tileset but most of the map tiles seen in game are completely new. The mapscript for it determines the mix of natural to urbanised tiles. Play testing of it so far hasn't revealed anything truly remarkable about it in my opinion unfortunately. It might be worth playing with the spawn nodes and have more aliens bunker up inside the buildings instead of starting outside the doors ready to burst in and slaughter the civilians inside? There's also an experimental artefact site version in which scientists discover things under the ice best left undisturbed. It might worth converting back to UFO and dropping the coast tiles. It probably wouldn't be too hard to make a desert reskin.

The Urban beach came about because I didn't think the plain urban terrain suited TFTD enough. I need to make it bigger but that involves changing other things to but it's on my to-do list.

20

Work In Progress / [TFTD]Terrain Expansion

« on: June 02, 2016, 09:46:40 am »

This is a collection of new terrains and maps for Terror from the Deep, some original, some integrated from other mods, and some originally intended for UFO. So far it also makes a few modifications to the geoscape with new cities and a few changes to the regions and countries. Current status is a work in progress with testing still to be done, especially on the gameplay and thematic sides.

List of terrains:
    -Polar Island Terror
    -Polar Island Artefact Site (unused in game)
    -Seabed-Mountain
    -Industrial Port
    -Urban Beach
    -Commercial

Changelog:

0.1
    -Polar Island Terror terrain with experimental above ground artefact site
    -North atlantic region extended south
    -Alaska extended into north pacific. USA extended to cover new york and bermuda
    -Fed Korea replaced with Pan Pacifica centred around Hawaii, Free China given former territory
    -Added some new cities around the atlantic and poles
    -Converted and modified desert-mountain  into seabed mountain
    -Added small chance of plane, galleon, pipes, and msunk on all geoscape textures.
    -Optimised routes for several atlantis and mu maps
    -Integrated additional artefact sites by Civilian
    -Extended Atlantis and Coral with new maps
    -Converted terrains: Comercial
    -Modified Urban into beachfront with new beach tiles
    -Converted Alien Hive terrain as alternative to alien colony level 2
    -Converted Industrial as additional port map with new coast tiles
    -Integrated additional liner ship maps

CREDITS:
Hobbes - Many terrains created and compiled for Area51/Terrain Pack
New_Civilian - Mu and Atlantis artefact sites; Adaptation of Urban for tftd; Additional liner maps.
Robin - Human suit civilians, adapted by Hobbes
Bagirov - Industrial terrain design (originally developed for UFO2000 via Area51/Terrain pack)
Solaris Scorch - additional maps and tile images for Commercial terrain
Dioxine - tile images for Commercial terrain and civilian sprites
Tentacular- tile images for Commercial terrain taken designed for other mods

USAGE:
This represents old work that may need updating although it might also work just fine. Credits may need looking at again.
For my part, my intention was to create resources that can could be freely used within the openxcom community. Any work that is my own (especially original .RMP and .MAP files for Polar Island) can be freely used by anyone, as long they do not prevent others from doing the same. Any work based on other peoples work in your own work, adapted or otherwise, including UFO and TFTD, should be used at your own risk

21

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD]Extended Facilities

« on: May 30, 2016, 09:19:09 pm »

Oh excellent! Thank you. I can pull out some clean images from mapview to add to the backgrounds and version 1.2c has been added to the first post. Although I haven't quite gotten a perfect translation between the battlescape and ufopedia pallets. I have no idea how they managed to make the doors red so I did that manually.

22

Programming / Re: Alien Psi Bug / Psi Question

« on: May 28, 2016, 01:20:49 pm »

Important note: the effectiveness of psi attacks is also affect by distance so if your psi weaklings in the skyranger are too far away, your jedi master soldier can technically be the better target. That could be affecting your tests.

23

Playthroughs / Re: Oh Shit Moments - Why i love XCom :>

« on: May 27, 2016, 10:08:14 am »

X-Piratez - Pogrom (terror) mission. Actually feeling pretty good about this one with an experienced team of gals and some new weapons to try out. Gave as good as I got and saved a few nearby civilians from their immediate threats. It came clear I didn't have enough girlpower to win a war of attrition and too many of my soldiers were either dead or unconscious. Time to grab the wounded and regroup my scattered forces back at the transport. And that's when a cyberdisk pulls around the corner between me and safety (that's the oh shit moment).

When desperation hits, what else is there to do but have a girl in rags face down an alien flying tank with nothing but a bow and arrow?

Only one gal made it back to the transport, under heavy fire and psi attack

24

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD]More USO Variants

« on: May 26, 2016, 05:58:40 pm »

Well those things are cargo, the aliens need to move them in and out. You see them on the supply cruiser too. Sometimes the blockade runner is empty and the second floor is free, other times it's packed to brim with cargo. Doors don't serve a gameplay purpose but I don't think I'd make sense to replace them with walls for example.

25

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD]More USO Variants

« on: May 26, 2016, 08:45:57 am »

Level 3 has a few changes to alien deployments as well so you might notice something. Bombers in particular.

And it's true, I've has quite a few errors while modding because I hadn't copied over the latest versions of files. On the other hand, the current set up requires the mods be placed in the correct order (so III should appear below II in the list).

26

Open Feedback / Re: TFTD question: That unarmed gillman

« on: May 25, 2016, 06:51:39 pm »

They also get replaced by more terror units on mixed crew missions.

27

XPiratez / Re: Grenades & Explosives - advice appreciated

« on: May 25, 2016, 05:03:30 am »

Any chance of having them explode when the timer runs down, even if they're in the inventory? Because that's how I thought it worked way way back. Which opens up new deadman's switches which do only explode when dropped but can't be thrown. I would have once put this suggestion down to fantasy but it's amazing what I've already seen.

28

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD]More USO Variants

« on: May 25, 2016, 12:17:57 am »

I could try to make the instructions clearer. They're very much not inclusive, Teeming USOs III & IV especially are just additional options for II. I could make them inclusive in the next version (or stand alone to put it another way), the file size isn't a huge issue and it's less likely to break things if they're in the wrong order.

29

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD]More USO Variants

« on: May 24, 2016, 09:43:15 pm »

Actually the mod does change the original supply cruiser map, specifically to fix some visibility errors with 2-story walls and general node improvement.
Did you install the blastproof patches for the original maps I posted? Because if so, I think I broke something else while I was trying to fix that. I'll have to look again at all the maps. I was getting so close to finishing all the vanilla variants.

30

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98F - 13 May - Airbus Adventures

« on: May 24, 2016, 09:30:25 pm »

It's the Combine!


(Okay, I have been having fun with this mod after a couple of false starts. I still feel a long way from getting my own Bonaventura. My greatest scientific achievements have been attaching a knife to a gun and getting metal armor)