Hybrid game

[endersblade]

Both tftd craft and usos could cross land. Interceptors required water to shoot them down, but the personnel craft could land on land (terror missions, etc). But all craft could at least fly over land.

I think it would be easier to mod tftd for this purpose. Find out what is preventing air interceptions and disable it, so you can shoot UFOs and USOs down over land. We wouldn't need both interceptors and barracudas, the 'cudas could perform both roles.

Would need some way to distinguish UFOs and USOs, so land crew don't show up underwater and water types on land (mostly things like tentaculats and jellies) because land types aren't adapted to underwater, although most of the underwater types can survive on land.

As far as equipment goes, tftd has everything covered already. Some weapons are flaaged to only work underwater; remove the flag, and the weapon sets are basically identical. However, you could basically double the research tree by going something like base weapons - laser - gauss - plasma - sonic. Same with armor sets to some extent - waterproofing power armor shouldn't be an issue, lore wise, but really tftd has it covered. It's mostly just a gfx preference. But the "flying" tftd suits would need to function on land, as currently lore wise they use some sort of water jet system to get around. Make it grav based and problem solved.

Combining research tech shouldn't be hard. While each game has equivalents (elerium - zerbite) you could still research both and both could still lead to separate but similar research.

I think the hardest part granted I'm not a coder so I have no idea, is going to be the UFOs. If a UFO crashes on land, begin mission. If it crashes in water, it's lost. If a USO crashes on either, begin mission but disallow certain alien types on land missions. Or, substitute the land versions. Chryssalids for tentaculats, maybe cyberdiscs for jellies?

Integrating both land and water types in alien bases on land could be a thing too. Water bases would need water types only.

Xcom bases could be on land or water, as base missions underwater are always 'dry' anyway. Craft are amphibious at this point, so they could be stationed at either.

Picking an ending, or integrating both could be an issue for sure. I think t'leth should be taken out first, then Cydonia. Clear them out locally then go for the home world. Or just stick with Cydonia. Taking out t'leth and still getting water aliens would be strange, but cutting them out after the mission could potentially cut off certain researches.

There is no reason to over think things. These games use a lot of hand waving already to make things "work". Trying to be ultra-realistic will make the game a pain in the ass to code and probably not a lot of fun to play.

Laser weapons could work underwater, as it is just a beam of light. Since we currently do not use laser weapons IRL, we have no grounds to say " they flat wont work because reasons". It is advanced technology in a game, I could probably come up with half a dozen reasons why it could make sense.

Plasma is energy. I don't see why a ball of energy couldn't be fired underwater. Especially since gauss tech works in tftd. It's explained as being energy as well.

Sonic would work on land. Sound waves travel better in the water, sure, but again, they already function on land in tftd.

For the sake of ease of use, personal armor from UFO would be dropped in favor of the armor from tftd, as it is already amphibious.  The same could be said about power and flying armor; while tftd armors obviously look different, they perform the same function. It is just down to personal preference on gfx. I happen to much prefer the yellow armors of tftd over the robots of UFO.

Merging the items isn't all that much of an issue, since again, most tftd items and weapons function on land. The auto cannon, rocket launcher and blaster shot launcher in tftd do not, but that should be a simple fix.

[Firestorm]

This discussion could go on forever without any progress being made. Every person has their own views on what needs to be done to merge the two games.  People are sweating over small stuff.  T'Leth or Cydonia?  Personally, I absolutely could not care less.  I play X-Com for the journey, not the destination.  I have no interest in stopping the aliens once and for all.  I just enjoy policing the Earth and keeping their activities here in check.  What happens when you shoot a UFO down over water?  What difference does it make?  You're assuming that the more land-based aliens breathe our atmosphere, or that they even breathe at all.  I reviewed the UFOpaedia entries on the non-robotic EU aliens, and there's nothing saying conclusively that they do (And even if they did, aren't we changing things simply by merging them?)  The Sectoids' nose and mouth is almost vestigial at this point, the floaters' respiratory system has been completely replaced by life-support cybernetics, and none of the Ethereals' organs seem to function at all in the first place. Why are we assuming these creatures can't survive underwater?  I mean, for all we know, they breathe water vapor, and can just as easily metabolize it in its liquid form. The Sectoids are even mentioned as having aquatic ancestry, after all.

I'm not trying to start another argument on these things, I'm simply saying they're not relevant steps to make a hybrid, and everyone will have a different take on how they should be implemented anyways.  Keep it simple.  You want to make a hybrid game?  You need to do two things.  Just two.

1.  Allow for the possibility of underwater bases and missions.
2.  Solve the color palette issues.

I know that neither of those problems are any small task, but you accomplish that, and I guarantee you that within a month, you'll have a dozen different versions of a hybrid game, thanks to the modding community.  Pick your favorite and call it the "official" one, or just cherry-pick and hybridize them to make your own "best" version.

I won't comment too much on solving point #2 above, since I don't know too much about the innerworkings of XC or OXC, except to say that I won't mind if it involves changing the colors of TFTD.  Personally, I've always felt its palette was far too... cartoony, for lack of a better word.

As for the first point, that's relatively easy.  Allow for a custom World.DAT to be used, one that allows twice as many textures, with a depth assignment to each of them. Anything that's done over a non-surface depth texture (and doesn't have an altitude assigned to it) is marine-based.  Then you simply have to create one (or two) variables for everything to declare if it's normal, marine, or amphibious.  That's the time-consuming part, because you have to give that variable to EVERYTHING.  Weapons, armor, craft, craft weapons, base facilities, aliens, even soldiers and UFO's (For those who seem to thing there should be a distinction between soldiers and aquanauts, and UFO's and USO's, personally it's all the same to me). Even alien trajectories need to accommodate both depth and altitude, to distinguish between a UFO hovering over the surface of the water or a submarine lurking below it. 

You do that, and the community will find its own way to merge things, items, technologies, plot.

Done. And done.

[Arthanor]

1- TftD has land terrors, water "events" and water missions. EU has land terrors and land missions. Since the same program (OpenXCom) will be able to handle all of these, I see no reason why the program wouldn't be able to handle any combination of these as well (underwater terror being the odd one, but there's really little to terrorize down there any ways).

2- Just recolor either the EU stuff to use the TftD palette, or, more likely, the TftD stuff to use the EU one. Right now, with minimal work, one could produce an OpenXCom-TftD bastard version that has all the races, equipment, weapons and very similar maps to TftD.

- Most aliens are already in the Alien Recolor mod
- The equipment is easily recolored (the XAE Power Armor uses TftD Ion Armor sprites, for example)
- Gauss weapons graphics have been used already, I suspect the Altoid mod uses sonic weapons.
- The tech tree/UFOPaedia entries are easy to reproduce too.
- You can recolor most of the maps, except you can't force OpenXCom to link stuff unless it is roads, nor put water at the edge of maps like in TftD terrors. No ships either. But the TftD port map is already used in OpenXCom, without the water edge.

The only thing you'd be missing are some tricky things in maps (position specific things) and water mechanics like bases in water, intercept only in water, battles underwater with depth having an impact on light, bubbles (although those have been done), etc.

[AndO3131]

If all goes well, there will be no need to recolour anything. Tests have already proven that https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1312.msg12665#msg12665. It just requires time.

[Arthanor]

So it's rendering graphics with different palettes at the same time? With a flag in the item/armor? That's pretty cool!

[yrizoud]

I wonder how it can handle the night transitions  At the moment it's simple 256-byte color map

[AndO3131]

I wonder how it can handle the night transitions

@Yankes made special blit function. It's not exactly as in original UFO, but it does the job. Not tested on underwater maps, tho.

[ThatDude]

To make sure we understand this is a co-operative effort, money will be shared. So doable the income and you decide which base gets what and when.

Oh yes that sounds like a great idea, maybe even with a multiplayer co-op mode where only one player can use aquanauts and underwater stuff while only the other player can command above ground troops and gear.

[AndO3131]

A bit of work is done. I've used Combat Armor and Gazer aliens mods for testing purposes. First screenshot is for reference and comes from nightly build. Aliens color and combat armor color on second screenshot are similar to normal versions. Second screenshot comes from version build from this source code.

[chaosshade]

Obviously there's some bugs to work out, but that's pretty cool!  Keep up the good work!

[kikimoristan]

you can easily make a hybrid game by using most xcom1 data to make  an xcom2 mod

you will build underwater bases only but the rest of the game can play out like xcom 1 including land aliens, land battles, land only hwp and so forth. you can even have a whole new faction of aliens if you wish as land aliens. you can even code all xcom1 artifacts and special materials to be recovered from crash sites with a bit of magic. i've done it in my deep aliens mod where i added xcom2 data as a mod for xcom1 . i gave up cause tftd was around the corner.


problem with that is i personally like xcom 2 better. is much more tactical as some things work only in water, you have aliens that  behave differently on land vs in water or even enemies that don't go in water, and you got land missions and sea missions you got various ocean depths and night and day cycle on land , you got boat attacks, artifact sites and so much more. i don't really want xcom1 into my xcom2. i want new content for xcom2 cool new mods.

[doctor medic]

Gazer look like a fitting terror unit for some of the tftd aliens,if that case thought it would need some of its art to change.

[yhe1]

Now that support for TFTD is coming along, is it time to restart this discussion? I vote for a vanilla approach first, with UFO alien unable to survive in water and destroy both T'leth and cydonia.

[AndO3131]

Let's wait for stable OpenXcom 2.0. Devs still add/modify some parts of game mechanics.

[GreatEmerald]

Looks like there's a camp that wants, as coined here, a "linear hybrid" (which is easier to achieve), and another camp that wants a concurrent/full hybrid; from the latter, some want to retain the logic as established in the original lore or that is realistic, while others would rather ignore it.

I definitely would rather see a full hybrid. And at first I thought that lore and logic should be preserved, but I see endersblade's point. The original lore is just a bunch of handwaves, and it just gets in the way of actually having fun. Since it should be first and foremost fun, allowing everything sounds like a good starting point. Adding restrictions can be done at any point later, after all.

So you'd have all kinds of weapons that work in all environments, all craft could land everywhere, all aliens survive all crashes anywhere. That allows for a lot of variability, which is ultimately what one would like to see.

For the balance: when taken directly, the TFTD weapons are in fact worse than EU weapons. But the effectiveness of EU weapons underwater could be decreased (or the defence against them for aquatic aliens would be higher, and vice versa).

Having a limit for the number of bases is not an issue. You'd have a lot of facilities that work the same way: labs, workshops, general stores, crew quarters, alien containment are all the same, so it doesn't take any more space than usual. You might need to have different radars for UFOs/USOs, but that's about it.

I'd have all soldiers be marines, with them automatically equipping diving suits when going to an underwater mission (the stats for coveralls and diving suits are the same anyway). Power Suits and Flying Suits seem waterproof already; Personal Armour is a bit of a stretch, though.

And have both T'Leth and Cydonia. I'd say T'Leth as a prerequisite to Cydonia; and when T'Leth is destroyed, continue as usual: it's not like all aquatic aliens die instantly, there are still leftovers. Maybe just limit alien base production.