Messages

16

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [Bug] Melee reaction priority

« on: July 14, 2022, 02:31:37 pm »

Thanks.

I think that gunbutts are modded behavior, so it shouldn't apply to pure games either way...
Then again, I also think that priority should've been implemented as a "strict" priority, instead of the current "only if it's the same type of weapon and attack", because it would provide for a less confusing user experience. But I digress.

Modded relative to OpenXCom, not the original engine; and even in the original engine, adding rifle butts was just a matter of putting the attack option back in, because it was removed last-minute to the point that even the manual has it as a feature in the screenshots. (You could even do it by merging them with a stun rod!)

Honestly, I think it would be best to make this a toggle, like with extended reload costs - the default is 15 TUs to reload no matter what, but you can choose to add the TUs it takes to move the ammo to your off-hand to reload costs if you want.

17

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: [Suggestion] Unit Teleport

« on: July 14, 2022, 02:23:35 pm »

Interesting idea, really. Problem is - AI will never be able to use it. And AI SHOULD NOT be able. Xcom principe can be ruined with such thing.
When writing it, i get in mind another cool idea, possible letal for gameplay: once i make a typo and give movementtype: 5 to unit.
This unit can move, but lose no TU and, what is most important, became able to move through walls.
So, if possible to fix TU spending, we can begin creating our own army of ghosts.

Bosses being able to teleport could be fine if done properly. (The Chosen in UFO Defence? Sounds good to me!) Also generic units if they can't attack afterwards, given how hyper-lethal classic X-Com combat can be. (Check your flanks and you get free Reactions exp! Don't and you get shot in the arse!) If you want to see a fair example of unlimited enemy teleportation, look at Fire Emblem Gaiden/Echoes. The Witch enemy class can teleport anywhere on her movement phase, but the AI specifically limits how it uses that teleport so it doesn't always gank your squishy healers and magic-weak armour knights. That probably wouldn't work with Extended's AI, but there are other ways to make it work.

If it's bosses, that could force players on their toes even when they have elite PSI-troopers, because the boss could decide to take one out if you let the enemy spot your hidey-hole. Or you can flip the script and have hero units as well, in case you feel like having a climactic final showdown where X-Com have to hold the line against swarms of mooks that would overwhelm the heroes while you also control a few overpowered heroes that can kill the bosses who would utterly cream your normal soldiers.

18

OXCE Support / Re: [Suggestion] Dead pilots in the Memorial?

« on: July 14, 2022, 02:13:13 pm »

Sure.
Should they be KIA or MIA?
Should their corpse count as recovered or not recovered?

When in doubt, make it a mod option. It could be based on luck (pilots dying after ejecting versus being blown up with the plane) or damage (what if the pilot somehow is the vehicle - if that's not possible now it might be in future -? Mods with magic could have wizards using flying magic to ferry around soldiers or fight UFOs or whatever, or it could be a robot soldier that doubles as an interception fighter - you'd want KIA versus MIA to maybe tell the player if the corpse was recovered, and it could be based on overkill damage) - or even something as simple as land = KIA, water = MIA.

Of course, implementing that on the codebase level is more work.

19

OXCE Suggestions Archive / Re: [Suggestion] Counter civilian stunning exploit

« on: July 14, 2022, 02:07:25 pm »

Hardest part will be - to teach AI to attack an item. Because unconscious people are items, not units.
Much easier will be mod, giving negative score value for inconscious civilians, as it is for dead ones.

I prefer the exploits being a part of the game (for UFO and TFTD at least) - it wouldn't have been too difficult to program Terror Missions to lose you a minimum of 1000 points on mission failure even in the original DOS engine. It could have been hardcoded: IF mission_status = fail OR abort AND mission_id = terror AND points_lost <1000 THEN points_lost = 1000. Imagine TFTD without being able to bail out of Lobsterman terror missions before you even have the Not Small Launcher or the drills researched. The difference between an exploit and an intended advanced strategy can be as simple as a developer realising something and leaving it in, like Melee's Wavedash.

As for mods, a better approach may be to make the civilians more like Fire Emblem green units, and balance the aliens around them actively supporting X-Com in the fight. That said, an optional AI behaviour to execute or capture downed enemies ("Civilians" are player-allied AI) could be very useful. Imagine Mutons smart enough to pick up unconscious X-Com units and drag them away somewhere so they're no threat when they revive. (And maybe mission failure or abort leading to MIA units could spawn Retaliation battleships if your guys are psi-weak enough!) After all, the aliens want to capture unconscious units as much as X-Com do, at least story-wise.

20

OXCE Support Y-scripts / Re: Drugs that restore / give time (tu)

« on: July 12, 2022, 12:25:53 am »

It work only because of in what order files are loaded. Usually game load in same order and it work fine but other times (different OS or load from zip) it change and break mods that used it.

At least I planed that this feature work exactly as Filip H said, aka, every file that use tag it should have declared them too in same file.
Right now only when next sub mod is load list of declared tags is reseted but it should be for each rule file too, I probably can't fix it now as it would break too many mods.

Why not deprecate it for a few editions, and warn modders (and users) on startup. before switching to "lmao no I won't load this crap" in a few updates?

This screams of undefined behavour, and that could be bad bad bad if the programming stars align in all the wrong ways. Even if it doesn't give ACE within OCXE's privilege layer (not implying that that's in any way likely, but tweezers have done more) it would ultimately save modders a crapton of headaches when someone with an esoteric setup eventually breaks something.

21

Help / Re: metadata.yml documentation [SOLVED]

« on: July 12, 2022, 12:11:50 am »

Can you have a mod have multiple master mods? Such as a mod that specificially targets UFO and TFTD, but not conversions - or one that targets UFO or TFTD plus certain total conversions that still use their assets, such as X-Chronicles?

22

Released Mods / PS1 Assets: X-Com UFO Defence

« on: July 03, 2022, 09:06:43 pm »

These mods already existed, but they were in the old database, so I reuploaded them and fixed the cutscene mod to properly play the mission abort cinematic. Now all they need is a good upscaling, but my little laptop isn't really up to that task.

23

OXCE Builds & Ports / Re: OXCE for the RG351P (and other rk3326 based retro handhelds running Linux.

« on: June 20, 2022, 07:38:00 pm »

I updated the post to reflect that.  Also, never ever enable opengl or it will become unusable (immediate crash back to ES) and you will have to manually edit the .cfg file to disable opengl.  As for keyboard/mouse input that is one of the things gp2keyb is for, emulating a mouse using the l1/r1 buttons and analog stick.  Also, one of the reasons I waited to release it for so long was that I was waiting for text entry mode in gp2keyb to become stable and be fully working so you can rename your troops.

It has been added to portmaster so just install it from there and it should work.

Bonus points if you map the controls to match the PS1 versions of UFO and TFTD.

24

Recycle Bin / Re: Can't move units, time units really low.

« on: June 20, 2022, 07:28:10 pm »

The problem is that new game battles use soldier types that you transform into during normal play. Those soldier types have no min/max values for TU, stamina, etc, so they end up with a value 0 + some small random value.
Recruited normal soldiers have valid value ranges, so it doesn't matter for the campaign.
See here for more details.

If all else fails, you can edit your New Battle squad by manually modifying the YAML file to give them actually workable stats.

25

OXCE Support / Re: [Discussion] Falling damage and Goomba Stomp

« on: April 24, 2022, 07:53:19 pm »

The pathfinding does not account for hidden units.
So, in theory, you can use the fog of war to "order" a stomp... but the likelihood it actually happens in very VERY low:
a/ as you walk the fog of war will likely disappear, unless you make yourself or the enemy vertically tiny (to prevent seeing them from diagonally above)
b/ even if you somehow manage that, there's still 8 neighboring tiles, where the enemy will be pushed before it would be stomped

Another, almost equally hard to do attempt, is to blow up just the floor below a unit and let it fall on another unit (that cannot be forced into any neighboring tile).

But you are correct, stomp "mechanic" is designed only as means of preventing 2 standing units occupying the same tile.
If it happens, enjoy it, you've won a small lottery

To be honest, I like it the way it is.

If you want to add more features here, make them optional/configurable please.

It's not? Maybe I'm getting the Mandela Effect; I distinctly remember using the move previewer to scout crashed UFOs.

26

OXCE Bugs / Re: Broken translation (UNEXCOM)

« on: April 24, 2022, 07:49:13 pm »

I started playing the unexcom mod. The mod itself has a translation into Russian. But the vanilla things, research and the interface remained in English. Can you tell me how to russify everything? As far as I understand I got so that the vanilla game in English while the mod itself in Russian

If there's no Russian language option in OXCE's settings, someone will have to make a Russian script for vanilla content. Anyone who understands both English and Russian could do that. (There should be; otherwise the mod is putting Russian text in the English language notations. It's not difficult to mod language strings into OXCE or regular OXC.)

If this mod is only in Russian, it's likely that you have your language set to English, and it's the mod that's falling back to Russian because it has no British or American English to default to.

27

OXCE Suggestions Archive / Re: [Suggestion] Medikit Priority

« on: April 24, 2022, 07:46:10 pm »

The game tells you if the recipient of healing is the user of the item, another soldier, an ally unit, or an alien. Until you can specify your target, paying attention to the tooltip that tells you is important. [Self] for the user, [Friendly] for another soldier, [Neutral] for an AI ally, and [Enemy] for... well, the bad guys. Just a gameplay tip for anyone frustrated.

28

OXCE Support / Re: [Discussion] Falling damage and Goomba Stomp

« on: April 24, 2022, 07:31:51 pm »

btw currently there is Goomba Stomp, this happens when unit can't avoid falling unit, when this happens unit below will be instant stun.

Neither you nor the AI (ally or enemy) can order stomps to happen, they can only happen due to the ground a unit is standing on ceasing to exist without having an appropriate Fly or Swim movement type. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can even use the fog of war to order stomps, because the pathfinding accounts for hidden units too. So the stomp mechanic isn't an actual intended attack, but merely an error handler to prevent two units from occupying the same space. Just KO the unit with the lower Z value

29

OXCE Builds & Ports / Re: [Question] Is anyone still using a 32bit Windows version?

« on: February 08, 2020, 05:37:20 pm »

I still do, because the one time I was able to get a proper upgrade, it crapoed out on me very quickly. So my poor laptop keeps limping along with a slowly dying hard disk.

30

Released Mods / Re: Self Medkit Heal [OXCE]

« on: January 02, 2020, 06:07:15 pm »

Updated for the new OXCE syntax... provided I didn't really mess it up (which I shouldn't have)