Messages

31

Fan-Stuff / Re: A Realistic Backstory for the Aliens

« on: August 26, 2017, 11:47:36 pm »

Indeed. Does seem fitting, though I am a rather jaded person due to my open minded way of thinking in most cases.

As for the lore. From what I've gathered by playing the game over the years, most of the aliens are not only altered but enhanced by cybernetics or other such artificial stuff like a floater's lower body swapped with a large device that also gives ability of flight. It is rather strange that sectoids and ethereals are pretty much the only ones without major artificial alterations, same goes for some of the pets/terror units more or less but that goes for all pets that can be tamed to be part of something without artificial means of control, that and mind control can be easily used also to command them and perhaps even without directly controlling their bodies/brains but give them mere mental info of what to do and what they'll get for doing it to motivate and move them.

Sectoids and ethereals could very well be a governing part of some alien government where they are the overlords of. From slavers to enslaved life forms who are subject to be changed into some cybernetic units of workforce and/or warfare. The massive brain entity in X-Com 1 could also very well be not the only one around if beings from other star systems are concerned and since they probably all have long lifespans and/or immortality, time doesn't seem to concern them as much as they have enough time to be patient and observing, X-Com merely threw an unexpected wrench into their (slow) operations thus forcing them to be assertive, quick and cruel. Throwing everything to win and gain control over another enslaved species.


In my own spin-off personalized story/backstory of my Gazer commando is that he's essentially in a rogue group along with other gazers who have managed to get control over the overlords for a short period and escape along with majority of high-end advanced tech, willing to sometimes turn themselves into customized cybernetic super units just to fight against the draconian evils that is sectoids and ethereals and whatever else is at the helm of the proverbial slaver whip, to demoralize the overlords with shock and awe attacks by singular units from ground and EVA commandos to unexpected destruction of fleets by said commandos in superior and faster spacecrafts to drop in and out, leaving little trace thus making not only the X-Com fighting for freedom but also a small branch of aliens willing to help the X-Com.
That is why my avatar currently is one of the main gazer commando's face. And I must stretch again that what I just wrote about gazers is purely of my own fan-fiction basically, to keep myself interested playing as them.

32

Fan-Stuff / Re: A Realistic Backstory for the Aliens

« on: August 23, 2017, 04:11:59 pm »

Oh, yeah, X-Com: Interceptor only just now remembered it. Last time I played it was also years ago and I remember reading the ufopedia there after tachyon blasting the hostiles inert in hopes of getting more stuff to put into research and manufacture. I was better at flying the X-Com craft with the over-sensitive mess of the controls of the game than actually managing stuff across the RTS-esque game map.

I never had that ability. I think not having it is a sign of genius. =)

Heh, thanks. Does seem like so as I can think of various stuff from one thing after another thing faster than I'm able to verbally say or write to keep up. I find myself tad too often unable to translate my thoughts over to words, takes longer to say than to think.

33

Fan-Stuff / Re: A Realistic Backstory for the Aliens

« on: August 20, 2017, 06:52:43 pm »

No, no no. By "Large alien brain" I meant the one you destroy in the first game's last mission and as for the tentaculats, my mind wandered back when I played it and I played it with a super squad so that mind control alternative molecular control in TFtD failed each time the AI used it on my troops (that or I used some kind of cheat tool as I usually do to make my troops immune.) but tentaculats, they covered the ground's tiles fast in each turn and even my super squad was in a real detrimental outcome once a tentaculat got close and used its attacks.

And also by "molecular equipment using armored backup-infrantry" I meant my super squad, a branch of it using that molecular control tech to take control over the tentaculats as fast as possible to give my self room and a break to think whenever I saw them either approaching or around a corner hiding.


Good grief.. am I losing the ability of how to put things into words or something!?! *strong headdesk*
Anyhow despite that I just needed to respond what I meant exactly, I'm interested to see where this lore will go as there has never been to my knowledge a backstory of the game's hostiles apart from ufopaedia entries.

34

Fan-Stuff / Re: A Realistic Backstory for the Aliens

« on: August 20, 2017, 03:24:21 am »

Read everything in this topic yesterday. Interesting lore stuff I must say! Not often at all when I feel somewhat at home.

Through years of sometimes playing X-Com 1 and then 2, I've always considered ethereals and sectoids to be allies with each other unless it just seems like it is. Considering that the sectoids are the first ones to appear on the X-Com radars the first time in the game, can't help but feel that the ethereals might very well be the ones pulling all the strings apart from the large brain entity.

Either sectoids needed to to gather the intel first themselves on the ground to figure out which slave species to send as warfare tools or it could be the other way around as in that the ethereals being responsible for sending in inferior psionics in first to see what they can or could do. Still a grey area for me though unless I consider the fact that the second game has aquatoids and no hint of ethereals what-so-ever other than the lovecraftian terrorizing horror unit (Tentaculat) which made even me stay away from those at least 10-20 tiles away if I had no molecular equipment using armored backup-infrantry yet.

TFtD was/is a kind of game where I had to rethink my approach to hostiles to make my small super squad matter again with hiding, saving TUs for enemy turn in case a lucky reaction fire opportunity from my side and once I spotted something extremely dangerous I either shot at it from a safe distance or took control over it with the TFtD's psi-gun alternative to also visual-sweep the area from the alien's side if in-case there's more of them over yonder and if I had the chance I used the opposition's own forces against them.

And good grief.. don't get me started when I ran into both Tentaculats, Bio-Drones and Hallucinoids along with their masters all at once in the cursed 2 to 3 part battlescape mission progressions.. and then there's always that one last hiding foe in some unknown damn corner or a closet. x_x My experience of course with TFtD goes back long before OpenXcom supported the second game so I played it with Dosbox and so I have not played it for years now and have kept to playing the original instead from time to time.

In-game around-the-corner alien sledgehammer head-smack surprise shenanigans aside. I've always been interested about the aliens of the game and what actual story and backstory they could have.

35

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: April 17, 2017, 08:05:33 am »

(Droggarth: Rest of the post I've read.)

I get not wanting a whole squad, but there's also something to be said for being able to sweep the map. I rarely struggle to find the last alien because by the time I'm done sweeping the map, none have had a chance to slip through.

I'm no more interested in challenge in any game anymore so the concept of challenge and competitions just do not compute for me anymore. If I was able to play as the aliens of X-Com 1, I'd just wreck the whole human planet without a second thought, I just hate humanity in general, I hate challenge, I hate competition and I loathe being stuck in a human body. With that rant out of the way now...

I do use more than one unit in a larger craft but that amount is very small as I have one unit inside my spacecraft as a mind controller whenever my commando unit sees hostiles to reveal if there are more hostiles around the seen hostile, and then I have a second unit somewhere who is there for support, either with mind control if the main mind controller unit has depleted its TUs or if my main commando in combat has still hostiles around and is out of TUs or needs some stamina rest. And it is mandatory for me to first edit all three units of mine with very high stats to make them jack-of-all-trades and skip the whole level-up chore entirely to keep my own sanity intact.

I have tried the high health thing long ago but it puts the wounded unit(s) on a long recovery time and I need my alien commando quickly back in action so I avoid the whole issue by having very high armor points.

Anyway, this got off-topic and right now I'm not sure what is on-topic as I haven't visited this site for a long while now.

36

Released Mods / Re: [Craft] X-95 Blackbird Hybrid Interceptor V0.5

« on: August 01, 2016, 03:11:05 am »

Woah, not into planes or non-alien stuff but I gotta give this one credit for being unique, especially in the battlescape.

37

Offtopic / Re: Phoenix Point: next new game by Julian Gollop

« on: July 31, 2016, 12:03:21 pm »

It better have TUs (time units) and an endgame pressurized combat/astronaut suit with built-in exoskeleton along with layered alien alloy plating aka Power Suit and Flying Power Suit.

Go figure why I don't play the "remakes".

38

Resources / Re: Altoid aliens - All sprites are free to use!

« on: July 31, 2016, 03:38:11 am »

Ohh. That first set of alternate Sectoids/Aquatoid beings plus Striders and Armored Floater? Yes please!

A question: Can one make a new X-Com alien soldier? I've already tried it but I'm missing something as upon going into viewing the soldier from the soldier list the game crashes (I already know what causes inventory crash as it seems to want all human genders and their variations specified with the same inventory image which I can do without when it comes to playable alien units).

Also since Striders seem to use the same legs as Gazers from the Gazer Alien mod. I really wish they had a kneeling set of legs.

39

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 30, 2016, 05:32:50 am »

Someone should probably make a super easy mode for people with difficulty playing under normal conditions. I sure could have used that when I was younger. Maybe I'll make such a thing.


Several years ago, I used an attribute editor for Warcraft 1 to make the game playable--I buffed the stats of human units slightly and nerfed orcs slightly. The only tough part at that point was the mission where your humans go up against other humans, but I was able to beat it when I realized the human AI over-uses clerics and ignores archers, so I buffed archers and nerfed clerics.

Interesting. I myself like to do it by maxing out/making the character invulnerable in a normal or hard setting, I like having clever/aggressive AI but at the same time a unit/character that cannot be killed and just mow down the opposition. That's just what I consider to be fun, anything too challenging/competitive and that's where my issues with gaming start and it always jolts to crud from there. Trust me I've tried playing games legit and afterwards I feel like driving my keyboard through the monitor or doing a similar harmful thing elsewhere.

Major edit to the original post. Made my own take of the small scout available finally in hopes of getting the geoscape graphics in too and non-messed up ingame ufopedia entry.

EDIT: Nevermind. Had a crash and the cause was one of my attempts at making alien soldiers that I forgot in somewhere. Crash happened while saving a game.

40

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 29, 2016, 02:20:00 pm »

It's because the floor block isn't calibrated to spawn XCom units.


I fixed it by swapping the tile out for a Skyranger tile. You could alternatively edit the characteristics of the purple tile to make it able to spawn Xcom units, but you'd want to make a copy tile because if you edit the original tile like that you could have soldiers spawning in the alien ship, or cause a crash.

Here's a working mod using the Skyranger tile:

It's nice to see a third person to do it. Hobbes and I already did it in a way so the regular small scout should remain separate from the modded useable/playable one thanks to MCDEdit and MapView route nodes.

On an off note. I'm so worn out today thanks to modding frenzy and updating my OpenXcom install to the latest nightly from 1.0 and also today I realized I can dig up my TFtD install from somewhere on the hard drives and get it running with OpenXcom but that's something for much, much later because I feel like I've just gone through a literal modding hell to the point I'm just happy thinking about the fact that I can boot up the game, start a new campaign and get my Gazer (even though it's and armor, atm) and customized advanced small scout nicknamed "Fhyr" that I made quite OP in terms of stats.

Why OP? Personal gaming reasons coupled with minimizing mental health issues plus I love the idea of one man playable alien army in games. After all I am a being who loves using the Thargoid ships through cheating in Frontier First Encounters (yes I'm that anal about NOT playing as a human, even renamed the OpenXcom mod called Terran Plasma Weapons mod to Furian instead of Terran so I could have different set of OP plasma weapons and not be irked by the human name thing, no offence to the creator of the mod).

41

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 29, 2016, 08:43:51 am »

Thanks. Wondered why the other mod crafts worked (used them as base to set up my image files) but mine didn't. I may seem lazy with doing searching but that's because of the fatigue. Gonna try those paint tools out.

Yup, copied my scout's base image over to a base image file of a mod craft with mtPaint and instantly the ingame color issue is seen but, ugh. Can't paint something small without zooming in.

Nevermind, but still. For now i just slapped Firestorm's id on it for geoscape and ufopaedia still retains the custom picture of it from battlescape.

This is in the ship's ufopaedia:

42

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 29, 2016, 01:08:11 am »

Paint.NET is what I use.

43

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 29, 2016, 12:46:50 am »

Ah. Curious about what those pictures showed. I myself did a few more polishes to the useable small scout outside of battlescape. Mainly added an ufopaedia entry and three images where need be but I ran into this with one of them:

How it should appear:


The issue:

How it appears wrong with sprite id of 22 (only non-crashing sprite id). Sprite in that picture is a different version of the sprite I made, that's why the shadow textures are missing but that's beside the point as the colors appear all white and not grey and purple.

Ack, the tiny retro one is barely seen so here's a close up view:

44

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 28, 2016, 09:03:53 am »

Also: @ Droggarth.  Just a little introduction.  Hobbes is probably one of the most experienced map makers in the community and knows the ins and outs to an incredible degree (Also a long time curator of the Terrain Pack, and now author of the Area 51 mod). .  Hellrazor is another prolific map modder, with great attention to detail and the ability to spot bugs and make improvements in maps.  He would be a great person to learn from, and may be able to help you over new hurdles that you may run into.  Hellrazor has his own Hard Mod Difficulty mod, but he continually tinkers with maps.

This is quite some impressive news for me, last time I modded X-Com was years ago, it was less than ideal and there wasn't much info going about and if there were any on the websites I still ran into some problems for the things I needed to do but still managing to use a XComApoc tool to make a soldier (or was it armor? can't remember) to a permanent Anthropod was quite an achievement for me to the point I've forgotten how I even did as it was seemingly irreversible.

Heh, think I saw some of your beginning videos of X-Com 1 and TFtD a few years ago, memory is in the grey due to meds I was taking. Found something calming and yet entertaining to watch X-Com let's plays on Youtube especially when around the corner was a bunch of aliens ready to trigger-happy with the plasma and oh dear, did those moments crack me up, even in my own plays in X-Com and TFtD, I find that one corner with a party and I'm not invited and go "yikes..".

Anyhow, good to meet you folks and thanks for mentioning/introducing the two guys more. As far as map making goes my main interest is in spaceships and things that are alien and fly, just happens that the ships in X-Com games usually are stationary map pieces in battlescape but still awesome.

Hi Droggarth,
welcome to our little community here. Unfortunately we still do lack a proper How to Section for useing the map view. It can be quiete tedious to use.
Feel free to ask questions if you like. Sometimes they also have been answered.
So searching never hurts.
Route Nodes for example are a important part in map making, because they control the aliens movement patterns.

I wrote a description about them here, is the screenshot still visible?

If you have question feel free to ask ahead. For specific question also feel free to catch me on the IRC. Ot

Hi, Hellrazor. Aye, was kind of noticing that with the nodes on the Abductor and its grav lifts. Sad to say though but the screenshot(s?) in your post are not visible.
Never used IRC but when something comes up, I'll just dive into it and ask. Anyhow, I really should get some sleep because this modding frenzy kept me up from yestarday morning to today's morning.

[Spoiler]

45

Work In Progress / Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance

« on: July 28, 2016, 04:27:22 am »

Thank you so much. Like I said, you just motivated me into modding X-Com further and push myself past my own mental problems today. Just learned/figured out how to add existing or new map entries to MapView. Looking at non-garbled unaltered UFO1A right now, for some reason it is UFO_01a there by default and is missing the UFO1 entry (hence the garbled mish-mash of walls), think my patched dos install of X-Com might be interfering with that a bit, not sure. Definitely helps to have a updated MapView from the forums as some of the features that were originally missing weren't there yet so I was a bit biased due to old ugly memory of it I guess.

Alrighty, triple awesome. Got the pod to show up with all its own data in MapView, I see what you did with the nodes, I wasn't as through as I was just copying the default crafts and failing and I think I see why. Also good to know that lifts in fact do work for X-Com craft too. That is.. just so much awesome. I been.. I'm speechless. I been wanting and then needing for years to somehow mod the thing in or at least get some basic knowledge to do it myself as the more complicated things are the more prominent my mental health gets and its the main reason I just have so much struggle with modding when I really want to and things are seemingly overly complicated, eh. Just speaking of a fact and not seeking advice for that as yesterday/today made me overcome a major obstacle.

Thank you, Hobbes. From the bottom of my heart.

To commemorate this truly momentous occasion of you finally getting the alien small scout to actually be a separate craft which means a great deal to me since childhood. Cue the music:

Spoiler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2W1Wi2U9sQ

Around 2000-2003 was the time I first saw/played X-Com. So yeah, more than 10 years ago since I wanted that alien craft. Means a lot to me.

Alrighty, another update about an hour later. Couldn't resist. Had to replicated what you did to know for sure if I had gotten it too eventually. Used both MCDEdit and MapView to turn UFO1 and its counterpart UFO1A files into a functioning useable alien craft in game with its own nickname "Fhyr". Reverse engineered the Pod so to speak. So much feeling like 1812 Overture Finale music. Again thanks!