Messages

16

Released Mods / Re: UFOpaedia-friendly Celatid [UNIT] [OXCE]

« on: September 06, 2019, 08:47:39 pm »

Concerning the crash with the CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON; that's strange, I tested  it on a nightly version 5.6.1 (v2019-08-03) and on 5.6.2 (v2019-08-28), both didn't crash. Maybe something was temporarily up with OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15? Besides, I created this weapon by simply copying the rule of the original CELATID_WEAPON and decreasing the power and accuracy, since I wanted the clones to be slightly weaker than full-grown Celatids. So, maybe it was removing of

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extraSprites:
  - type: X1.PCK

that fixed the issue? Though in my installation I didn't have problems with that.

Technically what I had were 2 separate crashes with the same reason given.

The first crash happened on the 3rd turn and was fixed by removing the extraSprites section.

After that, the second crash happened on 4th turn and was fixed by defining livingWeapon.

I find it strange myself that this fixed it.

A couple things though... why is the extraSprites section there? X1.PCK contains the grenade animation which isn't used here. From what I see that section should be removed irregardless.

At first glance, the ruleset reference suggests that defining lvingWeapon won't work since it requires the "grenades" be marked as fixedWeapon which mean they can't be dropped but when I tested it, the cloning process still worked.

Could you please check if this issue is there with the latest nightly?

For the record, whatever is linked here is what I consider to be the latest OXCE "nightly". If you are building from scratch or using an unlinked version you'll probably only have a handful of people who will experience your mod as intended.

Which, incidentally, is why when I tested your Chryssalid tweaks, they all spawned dead.

Edit: I did some digging around and found https://lxnt.wtf/oxem/#/Extended which is labeled as "Latest version(s) for Linux" in the main post but also contains builds for Windows.

Either the main post should be updated or anything newer than 5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15 are "nightly nighties" and it might be a safe assumption that most are not using it.

Strange that in my case everything is working, but to be on the safe side I replaced in CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON "bigSprite: 60" with "bigSprite: { mod: xcom1, index: 60 }".

I reverted my changes and used this instead and everything worked as intended.

I still question the extraSprites section though.

I'll let you know how I fared after I encounter a Celatid.

That said... since I had some times I went quite a few rounds with your Celatids and I think 3 turns might just indeed be balanced.

However, I think the primary Celatids should act more like rear commanders. This means removing psiVision from the primaries and giving it to the clones instead. This prevents the primaries from charging towards possible targets and thus increases the possibility that they'll survive to create more clones.

But to make the primaries somewhat opportunistic, the primaries should be marked with sniper while the clones should be marked with spotter. This means that the primaries could potentially attack what the clones see.

I get that you are want the Celatids to be UFOpedia-friendly so if you are opposed to removing psiVision from them, consider reducing it by a bit less than half (like say 6) and take it as though the primaries are more resistant to human brain waves.

Just my two cents.

17

Released Mods / Re: UFOpaedia-friendly Celatid [UNIT] [OXCE]

« on: September 05, 2019, 09:01:26 pm »

I think the difficulty is already factored in by the amount of Celatids originally spawned in the map. Where on one level you would encounter 1 Celatid, on another you encounter, say 4. Each of them creates a clone every X turns, so the amount of clones is already proportional to the difficulty level.

This is a good point that slipped my mind.

I used the battle generator to test it out but after the 3rd/4th turn the game crashed with the following error:

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[FATAL] A fatal error has occurred: Invlid surface set 'BIGOBS.PCK' for item 'CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON': not enough frames
Either OXCE-5.6.2-1e89df63f-2019-08-15 isn't enough or you are missing something trivial in CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON.

Concerning the unused frames: that's a good idea, but can you explain how to use them? Since I can't draw, I didn't bother learning how to use existing sprites either. Also, there is the issue of the embryo sprite for inventory.

Download and extract MapView2 (also called OpenXCOM.Tools) from here.

Copy CELATID.PKG & CELATID.TAB from UFO\UNITS (so you are not directly modifying the game files) and open CELATID.PKG with PckView which is bundled with MapView2 (also called OpenXCOM.Tools) by navigating to File > "Open Pck (terrain/unit)".

When you are successful, you'll see something like this.

Now for some technical stuff, Celatids use drawing routine 9 and are in constant animations.

Referencing the relevant code here and here shows that their living sequence is hardcoded to start on frame 0 and end on frame 7 (8 frames altogether), whereas their death sequence simply starts on frame 25 and is limited to 3 frames by default (e.g. the death sequence could probably be from frame 25 to 50).

This means that to create new animation sequences for drawing routine 9, you need to define frames 0 to 7 and then frames 25 to 27 (i.e. frames 8 to 24 can be blank since they will be ignored anyway) and unless you increase the number of death frames (i.e. deathFrames).

PckView is surprisingly powerful and can accomplish this with relative ease.

Ok, for this I can repaint a stun bomb into green, perhaps. But I still would need a PNG of a stun bomb.

PckView lets you paint with pixel precision.

Just copy BIGOBS.PKG & BIGOBS.TAB from UFO\UNITS and open BIGOBS.PKG with with PckView by navigating to File > "Open Pck (bigobs)" where you'll find the stun bomb on frame 38.

Actually, you know what, I made some time and attached some proof of concepts (just to show it can be done). I only consider the repainted stun bomb "final" but the clone animation sequence from the Celatid egg/spore could definitely be more seamless.

Note: I used ImageMagick to turn a sequence of PNG files into GIF format since PckView can't do that. For the game you can just have a custom pair of PCK and TAB files.

Edit: I was able to fix the crash by replacing:

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    builtInWeapons:
      - CELATID_CLONE_WEAPON
with:

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    livingWeapon: true
and removing:

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extraSprites:
  - type: X1.PCK

18

Released Mods / Re: UFOpaedia-friendly Celatid [UNIT] [OXCE]

« on: September 04, 2019, 07:42:13 pm »

Nice work!

It's nice to see the issue of making the Celatid lore-friendly being tackled again.

So I decided to give them both these abilities Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.

luke83 made a good point here that perhaps the cloning rate should vary with the chosen difficulty level otherwise players will either be overwhelmed or underwhelmed (or perhaps just whelmed).

Right now you have it at every 3rd turn and it's possible that might be a bit much.

I'll let you know how I fared after I encounter a Celatid.

2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.

It's not what you intended but I agree with Solarius that it'd make for a nice surprise.

Maybe make it random?

I think it would be okay to make it totally visible for the player and even recoverable as "Celatid Egg", Celatid Spore" or something like that. Why not?

2, 3, and Yankes's suggestion: I would need sprites of these objects for it. And since anything I draw is not even half-decent, I can't make mods with graphics. Maybe if this mod actually finds some users, and one of them would be willing to contribute the graphics...

clownagent points out here that the Celatid animation sequuence actually consisits of 28 frames and only the first ~8 are used.

So you probably don't need to draw anything as there's a lot of material to work with already.

In fact, the right combination of frames can show the cloning process, whether you want it to be from a live Celatid or a dead one.

As an added bonus, frame 25 shows what looks to be a Celatid Egg/Spore. So you can do something interesting with that as well.