Messages

46

Work In Progress / Re: [Request] New weapons for TFTD

« on: May 03, 2016, 07:42:27 am »

XOps has an expanded gauss armory mod that has that gauss sniper and autocanon you want.

-Changing gauss weapons to be actual rail guns and thus AP damage leaves the old 'gauss beam' damage to be changed into something else to be used by a new set of weapons. Although "gauss weapons" can legitimately refer to a charged particle beam as well. Lore-wise, I have no idea which particular version would work well under water.

-Stun rounds for the dart gun and riffle seem like great ideas, especially if someone's going to the trouble of re-skinning them.

47

Released Mods / Re: [Craft] [TftD] Baracuda/Manta Upgrades (inspired by Xcomutil option for Xcom1)

« on: May 01, 2016, 09:27:49 am »

Now that looks really smooth!

48

Offtopic / Re: Insane, Impossible Mod Speculation

« on: April 28, 2016, 11:02:20 am »

Xcom-Vs the third Reich

The alien threat has been defeated once and fall all
Or so X-com thought. One last signal fires out from ruins of the alien base. It's destination...
...The past!
The alien masterminds had underestimated the power of humanity. Now they seek to enlist the most evil human of them all to their cause
1936, Berlin. A meglomanic dictator signs a pact with alien forces.
Back in the future, protected by a bubble of residual time energy, the victorious xcom forces return to find a very different earth firmly under the thumb of alien colaborators. They soon end up on the run in a grim cyberpunk dystopia.
Meanwhile in the past, strange flying lights are seen in the sky nicknamed foo fighters. They turn aggressive, unstoppable by the era's early technology.
An international collaboration of scientists and civilian airmen are formed to combat this threat to world peace. They're funded by the league of nations but the free world's governments are weary of war and all to quick to turn to appeasement. By a strange coincidence, or maybe not, they decide to call themselves "X-Com"
All the while, the fuhrer's armies and industry grow like never before as if bolsted by unseen forces. If X-com can't stop the unknown threat soon, the governments of the world are set to throw open their doors to Hitler's tanks in the name of a sham "united front" against the exterterrestial enemy.

-Fight flying saucers with tommy guns and bazookas
-Take the fight to hitler's secret luftwaffe weapons with spitfires and travel all across the globe in a zeppelin
-Race against the Nazi's to artefact sites across the world to stop them getting their hands on left over alien technology
-Research the enemies Tesla scalar field based weaponry. Develop new flying craft of your own and learn the secrets of time itself
-Enter brief time portals to perform covert opperations against the future dystopia ruling the world
-Stop time traveling aliens from abducting and assassinating chosen targets. Find out why the time travelers are singling out specific seemingly unremarkable individuals and why they're willing to slaughter entire villages just to get one person.
-Face against the mysterious psychic powers of the ghostapo and the raw power of the ubermensch created through alien genetic engineering and cloning
-Sectoids are back, acting as advisers and servants to the third reich but always working towards the alien agenda
-Kill Hitler. Kill Hitler's clones. Kill future mecha Hitler

49

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 27, 2016, 12:06:00 am »

Ooh, now I have another unanswered question, is there a limit to the number of nodes I can put on the map? The large UFO battleship/USO dreadnought maps could do with extra nodes to help the AI but I haven't seen vanilla maps go beyond 100. That powerpoint suggests more no-spawn waypoints.

EDIT: While I'm posting, more WIP images

50

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 25, 2016, 05:02:03 pm »

Still learning more about nodes, with some tips from hellrazor. Been put into practice and tested in the nearly complete very large USO (pictured). Still rechecking and adding to the vanilla variations. On the new USOs, I've been looking at the missions and the number of times each USO/UFO class can appear as a wave:

Probe: Survey, Escort, Cruiser
Interdiction: Survey, Survey, Escort, Cruiser, Cruiser, Hunter, Hunter, Dread
Resource Raid: Survey, Escort, Cruiser, Heavy cruiser, Heavy cruiser
Infiltration: Survey, Escort, Escort, Cruiser, Cruiser, Battleship, Supply, Dread
Alien base: Survey, Escort, Cruiser, Supply, Dread
Surface attack: Escort, Cruiser, Battleship, battleship
Retaliation: Survey, Escort, Cruiser, Dread
Supply: supply

Or in terms of how many times a USO/UFO will appear as a unique wave:

Survey: 7
Escort 8
Cruiser 9
Hunter 2
Heavy cruiser 2
Battleship 3
Supply 3
Dread 4

Assuming you wanted to keep the number of UFOs/USOs the same and similar enemy/loot numbers, a really ambitious new ship mod could replace each of those occurrences with a unique ship. Or to put it another way, each mission has it's own unique ships. The hunter and heavy cruiser already only appear on their specific mission. Now I won't go that far but it's a good guide for what kinds of new ships to make. More cruiser sized ships basically, and some escort sized ones if I can think of enough things to do with that small space.

51

Work In Progress / Re: Farming

« on: April 23, 2016, 11:16:05 pm »

Animals as tiles will looks like lifeless obstacles rather than alive unit.
Terror mission in farm. But... As I understand without modifications to source codes animals will counts as civilians

"Commander, the council has decided to reduce their funding as Xcom was unable to protect five sheep in norway"

52

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 22, 2016, 08:40:29 pm »

So my current design plans are to keep the outer hull completely identical to the original ships so you shouldn't be able to tell which variant you're up against until you open the doors. The inside should keep to the general design patterns such as having the bridge near the top (removed an earlier pattern with a lower bridge). Apart from that, I usually gut the interior and start fresh, going for new tactical challenges rather than balance. There's a cruiser variant for example that opens up into a large chamber right away which is a different challenge from the tight corridors and blind corners of the default set up. Whether that's easier or harder is going to depend on your set up. This is different from my original plan which was to balance the same kinds of tactical challenges so that progress through the USO 'feels the same'.

The dreadnaughts are currently giving me the most trouble because they're large, but not for the reason you'd think. While play testing them they often feel empty, especially on lower difficulties (I got one case where only 10 aliens spawned on Veteran!). I want to play with the nodes to try to get more clustering at certain points and I might have to make aliens ignore some of the side rooms to avoid the 'find the last alien' game.

I'm also making some entirely new sub designs which do a few things different: The gunboat is a small USO (cruiser/large scout sized) designed to act as a fire base while you have to fight your way across the top of the Battlecruiser before you can even get inside. Made a new MCD with mirrored sub components too although I haven't used them yet.

Survey: 3
Escort: 3 (plus 4 mirrors)
Cruiser: 4 (plus 5 mirrors)
Heavy Cruiser: 4
Hunter: 3
Battleship: 3
Dreadnaught: 3
Fleet Supply: 4

1 New small USO class
2 New medium USO classes
1 New Large USO class

To do:
1 New small USO
1 New Large USO
2 New very large USO
UFOpedia and interception images for new subs
1 More dreadnaught variation
Improve fleet supply designs
Tweak the nodes for the dreadnaught designs
Re-check all the earlier designs
Release

53

Released Mods / Re: [MAPS] Eight new 20x20 Farm Terrain Mapblocks

« on: April 18, 2016, 05:56:13 pm »

More additions to the old farm terrain has to be good. Looks a lot more rural and less built up this way.

54

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 18, 2016, 02:05:47 pm »

Thanks for the info! Honestly even with this knowledge though I still have a hard time predicting how the aliens are going to behave. Often I find the aliens following node importance too well and becoming too predictable. I've found having a single high importance node with lots of links to less important ones works well.

Just to check, as long as the LOS (fog of war isn't revealed) is good, LOF should be good too? Because I can check to see if visibility is leaking through walls easily enough, but if there's a bug that let's someone shoot through walls without revealing the tiles, that seems harder to catch.

55

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 16, 2016, 03:59:29 pm »

I have been checking the maps in debug mode to observe their behavior and check line of sight (reset visibility and have a soldier with unlimited TU run around checking things. Sometimes I'll shoot an alien with cheaty powers)

So far I've been using node importance to point out some of the nice ambush points I've been putting in my ships and keep someone in the command centre. I think I've got it so they'll pop their head out of doors and duck back in if no one's there, but it's not certain. Been looking at UFO's large scout and supply ship in particular for that. I set up separate test mod just to see how some of the AI behavior works. Had a look at the Excavator, that's pretty neat. I'll have to experiment more to see what I can do and take a look at.

So far I have four Fleet Supply Cruiser Variants and four Cruiser variants... plus mirrored versions of all the Cruiser plus vanilla! I'll have to look them all again more closely, especially as I learn more node stuff.

56

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT] Improved Skyranger

« on: April 16, 2016, 03:39:58 pm »

Slide doors on a skyranger would be awesome! One of the reason's I like the Triton so much.

57

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] USO mods and some Resources (Update April, 14th)

« on: April 14, 2016, 11:22:29 pm »

Ah, vanilla bugs! Civilian already has a mod with triton reskins. And I can always try it with the leviathan, which still crashes except I have even less of a clue why:

[14-04-2016 21:13:04]   [INFO]   OpenXcom started successfully!
[14-04-2016 21:13:04]   [INFO]   requested file not found: ANIMS/LOGO.VID
[14-04-2016 21:13:13]   [INFO]   Attempting to set display to 1024x768x32...
[14-04-2016 21:13:14]   [INFO]   Display set to 1024x768x32.
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   A fatal error has occurred: code 0xc0000005
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   0xa970d0 SDL_FreeWAV (??: 487)
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   0xa970d0 SDL_FreeWAV (??: 487)
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   ??: 487
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   0x770c3378 BaseThreadInitThunk (??: 487)
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   0x778c989f RtlInitializeExceptionChain (??: 487)
[14-04-2016 21:13:22]   [FATAL]   0x778c989f RtlInitializeExceptionChain (??: 487)
[14-04-2016 21:13:23]   [FATAL]   Crash dump generated at C:\Users\Blank\Documents\OpenXcom\14-04-2016_21-13-22.dmp
[14-04-2016 21:13:31]   [FATAL]   OpenXcom has crashed: code 0xc0000005

58

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] USO mods and some Resources (Update April, 14th)

« on: April 14, 2016, 02:36:25 pm »

I can't get the city terrain to work. Openxcom just crashes, giving out a log, what looks like the important part is here:

[14-04-2016 12:21:43]   [INFO]   Bad node in RMP file: ROUTES/TRITON.RMP Node #2 is outside map boundaries at X:10 Y:9 Z:1. Culling Node.
[14-04-2016 12:21:43]   [FATAL]   A fatal error has occurred: code 0xc0000005

Just upgraded to the latest nightly build in case I was missing something but same thing. I'm guessing it's having trouble placing the Triton down? Has anyone else had any trouble running it?

59

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 13, 2016, 04:46:08 pm »

Good news! I've worked out how to create tentaculat camping spots, just like in alien activity sites!

And worked out the cause some of the odd behavior that was causing aliens to abandon ship and rush out at maximum TU. Nodes set to type: Large or rank:Civ-scout seem to cause these problems.

60

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD][WIP]More USO Variants

« on: April 12, 2016, 05:09:52 pm »

I could probably do away with the copy-pasted patterns of alien entertainment and reanimation true. What I was hoping was a player would recognise the layout of the cargo hold of the original, and immediately check upwards for the overlooking balconies. They should expect a long range fire fight with enemies on different floors just like in the original. Confusion is something I want to avoid. Familiar but different more what I'm going for.

But yeah, I want to experiment with the right kind of design and play testing these before I go and tackle a bunch more designs. Next step is seeing if I use the nodes to encourage the aliens to use sniper and ambush points more often.