Author Topic: Alien randomizer  (Read 4634 times)

Offline NiceMicro

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Alien randomizer
« on: September 02, 2021, 06:39:23 pm »
Hi!

I will never forget the first time when I played the Area 51 mod and first met the phaser android and spent ungodly amounts of ordinance just to take one down and then taking the corpse home for analysis and figuring out their weakness.

I am afraid that the fact that all mods need to hard code their aliens, might reduce the enjoyability of replaying the game.

Is there anyone out there who would be interested in an alien randomizer? Maybe a Python script you run before starting the game, that selects from a pool of different options the final aliens. Maybe you have three different stats + ufopaedia entries for sectoids, and the script choses one and puts it in the mod directory, so you don’t know which one you got when you start the game.

This would of course require multiple meaningful descriptions and meaningful stats for multiple aliens, and probably on a mod-by-mod basis, so I wouldn’t want to do it alone, but if others are interested, I’d be happy to collab on this idea for the basic game or the more popularly appearing added alien species.

Unless of course if something like this already exists and I just missed it, in which case please point me to the direction.

Offline The Martian

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Re: Alien randomizer
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2021, 07:11:50 pm »
This may be what you are looking for:
OXCE Randomizer (By Filip H)

Quote
A simple randomizer mod for OXCE.

The following aspects are randomized:

    Alien equipment
    Armor values and resistances
    Item accuracy, time unit cost, power, and damagetype
    Weapon clip sizes
    Weapon bulletsprites
    Item and deathsounds
    Alien Stats

In addition Alien race weights have been removed, and soldier starting stat ranges expanded
Installation Instructions
This mod requires OXCE

   1. Copy the zipped folder into your mod folder and unzip it, delete the zipped folder
   2. Open the mod folder and run the program "OXCE_Randomizer.exe" (the program does not notify you when it runs, you can look at the values in ruleset files if you want to make sure it worked), this is required to randomize item and armor stats
        The Randomizer program requires Java Runtime Environment to function, if you do not have the required version, the program will direct you to the download page for it
        The Randomizer program currently only works on Windows operating systems
   3. Launch OXCE and enable the mod in the mod list

Made by the Inventorum Development Team

Discord: Discord.gg

Offline NiceMicro

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Re: Alien randomizer
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2021, 01:59:10 am »
Thanks!

It looks interesting, however not exactly what I am looking for (and I also don’t run Windows).
I will take a look, it might be a good starting point.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Alien randomizer
« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2021, 02:25:31 pm »
You can randomize what alien races appear by modifying the alienMissions. This will cause every mission spawn (and all of its waves) to have a different randomly-selected race.

Code: [Select]
alienMissions:
  - type: STR_ALIEN_RESEARCH
    raceWeights:
      0:
        STR_SECTOID: 50
        STR_FLOATER: 50
      2:
        STR_SECTOID: 33
        STR_FLOATER: 33
        STR_SNAKEMAN: 33
      4:
        STR_SECTOID: 25
        STR_FLOATER: 25
        STR_SNAKEMAN: 25
        STR_MUTON: 25
      6:
        STR_SECTOID: 20
        STR_FLOATER: 20
        STR_SNAKEMAN: 20
        STR_MUTON: 20
        STR_ETHEREAL: 20

Exactly what you're asking for I think can be achieved through some clever work with arcScripts. You could make the game select an arcScript at the beginning which locks the player into a pre-researched research project which unlocks the ability for certain alien races and mission to spawn. It would be a lot of work.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2021, 02:30:04 pm by The Reaver of Darkness »