Men in Black | Cover Alien | Gazer Alien | WIP new thing

[XOps]

Indeed. New crafts should really be made by 3D artists; I'm almost tempted to learn some 3D tool myself, it would be much easier (and way better result) to draw them, Apocalypse's crafts are mostly made of simple shapes. You just have to render deactivating the perspective (AFAIK it should be possible).

I'm going to use UFO walls; I'm just trying to come up with new, Apocalypse-style, noses, but turning off "perspective" in my brain and minding the tiles (be sure that things fit reasonably within them), is damn hard.

I can recommend Sketchup. It's free and pretty easy to learn. That's what I used to make a new craft (see pic below, though it still needs some touch ups). The hard part is chopping up the 3D model in photoshop. Perspective is kind of tricky, but the ISO view got it close enough and the rest was touched up in photoshop. Taking it apart though and turning it into tiles is really freaking hard.

[robin]

Woah, you're good.
I actually thought about Sketchup too; I tried it once when it was still Google's, it's indeed easy but I'm also totally noob about 3D.
I don't know, I think I'll probably keep drawing them directly 2D .

[NoelBuddy]

I can recommend Sketchup. It's free and pretty easy to learn. That's what I used to make a new craft (see pic below, though it still needs some touch ups). The hard part is chopping up the 3D model in photoshop. Perspective is kind of tricky, but the ISO view got it close enough and the rest was touched up in photoshop. Taking it apart though and turning it into tiles is really freaking hard.

And now my using an isometric rendered video game as an excuse to practice 3d drawing comes full circle.. er full sphere rather.  Like the work, any recommendations for someone who's comfortable using sketchUp but hasn't attempted anything like this before?

[XOps]

And now my using an isometric rendered video game as an excuse to practice 3d drawing comes full circle.. er full sphere rather.  Like the work, any recommendations for someone who's comfortable using sketchUp but hasn't attempted anything like this before?

If you are trying to make something as complex as the craft I did, then my only advice is be insane  . Out of all the things i modded, adding that craft was the absolute hardest thing I have ever done in terms of XCom modding. The most difficult part was trying to wrap my brain around what part of the craft was at what level on the battlescape. Otherwise I would advise making sure that parallel projection is active in the Camera menu and then activating the ISO view. This gets you very close to the battlescape's perspective. However even then you will need to make some adjustments in photoshop Other than that, try to keep the model very basic. Most details are going to be lost when shrank down to XCom resolution anyway. Best just keep it simple.

Woah, you're good.
I actually thought about Sketchup too; I tried it once when it was still Google's, it's indeed easy but I'm also totally noob about 3D.
I don't know, I think I'll probably keep drawing them directly 2D .

I would still recommend playing with 3D modelling. Even if you don't use it directly, it's a great tool to figure out lighting and perspective. I also use it for concept design. I think 3D would be great tool if you give it chance. Regardless your stuff will be awesome anyways. It always is 

[NoelBuddy]

...then my only advice is be insane 

EXCELLENT!! That's my chief qualification!

[robin]

Still looking quite messy.

[jackstraw2323]

@LeBashar:
To avoid crashes, you need to add spawning animation to any unit that spawns another unit (starts in the same place on the spritesheet as normal death animation, requires as many frames as the deathFrames parametre, analyze STR_SNAKEMAN_ENGINEER entry & COS_2.png in Piratez for reference), like the flesh coming off a Zombie and a Chryssalid coming out frames are a part of Zombie's spritesheet. Otherwise you might try setting deathFrames to 0. Hope it helps

This seems like the most apropriate place to ask. I've been working on this for a mod, and while I can get it partially working there are a couple of issues.

1. Specab: 3 for the unit indicates it should respawn. However, turning this on means that the original unit doesn't appear. I.E. i never see the zombie, it just goes straight to the crysalid.
2. If I swap out the spawn unit for the zombie, the unit will spawn, but the game will crash on turn end. Has anyone else had luck recently with this behavior? Is there some missing setting I'm not getting?
EDIT: It would seem that the model provided by the Zombie unit works provided you make the spawned unit a live_terrorist and give it a built in weapon. Still not sure about the respawn behavior at this time.

[new_civilian]

Still looking quite messy.

Boy, those are cool! 

Make sure you release them once you consider them unmessy! 

[robin]

just a couple of little fixes and the industrial tileset is finally dooneeeeeeeeaaarrrrgh

[robin]

another one two three

[robin]

Battlescape assembled (randomly, like any usual battlescape):


Edit:
Anything larger than 10x10 is automatically considered a "Large Block", in relation to map generation?

[davide]

for OpenXCom 1.0  large block are only 20x20

[HotIceHilda]

New crafts look interesting, in the future if you improve you should try to make the XCOM craft shown in the intro. You would of thought someone would already made a mod of it. Also, have you implemented the ability to research Cydonia or Bust from a gazer commander or cover alien commander  yet?

[robin]

Cult maps look definitely more messy than warehouse.
Guess I'll have to use map scripting to improve them.

Now I just to go over all the ruleset again, fill all the holes, playtest a bit, .. argh

[robin]

with map scripting i can now basically make apocalypse maps (not exactly 1:1 but whatever).