My First Mod: well modding a mod...

[Jstank]

I was browsing through the mods that I had running. Specifically the combat armor mod, rail gun mod, the gauss rifle mod, and the thunderstorm mod. I made a few minor tweaks so that it makes them a little more useful.

I am not a programer but I was able to do some useful and interesting things.



First Tweak.

Combat armor mod:

items:
    costBuy: 10000 * Now doesn't cost an arm and a leg
    costSell: 5000



Second tweak: Standardization of Gauss and Mass Accelerator AMMO.

 - STR_GAUSS_SNIPER_RIFLE
        compatibleAmmo:
      - STR_GAUSS_RIFLE_CLIP  * because crafting 8 bagillion types of ammo at the beginning of the game is a pain in the ass and takes way too long making gauss tech kind of too much of a pain in the beginning of the game to bother with. Therefore I went through and standardized all the gauss ammo except for the craft weapon heavy weapons and explosive weapons obviously. I did the same for Mass accelerator tech.


THUNDERRANGER

I then got creative and created the Thunder ranger. I used the Thunderstorm mod things and
 - type: STR_THUNDERSTORM
weapons: 2
Then I went into the UFO fighter transport extender file and did this...
STR_THUNDERSTORM (CHANGED FROM STR_INTERCEPTOR)
    soldiers: 10
    vehicles: 1
    battlescapeTerrainData:
      name: AVENGER
      mapDataSets:
        - BLANKS
        - AVENGER
      mapBlocks:
        - name: AVENGER
          width: 10
          length: 20

So now my thunderstorm will appear as an avenger on the battle field but it only can equip 10 soldiers so the avenger is still way better and the skyranger can still hold 14. (though it does looks rather silly sitting there with all that extra room. LOL

I would have loved to modify the sky ranger to make it shorter to accommodates 10 soldiers like the PLANE accommodates 6 but but I couldn't figure out how to download the MAPVIEW TOOL. So the AVENGER was a work around.

I also noticed murmurslaserRifle looked a bit dull so I added some bling


And Finally I added a scope to the Mass Accelerator Sniper Rifle because it looks way too similar to the regular rifle.





Sorry if you can't see the sprites, I don't think I know how to post a picture. Thanks to whoever posted about GIMP that thing is awesome and i will never use paint again...

[Aldorn]

Nice job, I like your Rail Rifle and Rail Sniper

Sorry if you can't see the sprites, I don't think I know how to post a picture. Thanks to whoever posted about GIMP that thing is awesome and i will never use paint again...

Try PNG format ?

I would have loved to modify the sky ranger to make it shorter to accommodates 10 soldiers like the PLANE accommodates 6 but but I couldn't figure out how to download the MAPVIEW TOOL. So the AVENGER was a work around.

Did you mean to have a SkyRanger with only 10 soldiers ? I tried this for you, test it a while before
I think "Terrain" is not useful (except for modification purposes), so first try without it
I let you rename files and make it work with your mod

PS : I think Darkestaxe is more skilled... Perhaps ask him

[Jstank]

great success!!!! It now works pretty much as intended. Thank you very much for that. I wanted to clarify I can claim only 5 % of the new sprites as I only modified them slightly IE I added the scope to the mass accelerator sniper and added the little red blob thingy on the laser rifle. I will post the original sniper sprites as comparison.

[Jstank]

I also was playing around with an idea for a towershield. I was thinking it would be a full set of armor with high damage resistance in the front with normal resistance on the side and back. I made up some concept art. It would cost a bit of alien alloys.

[yrizoud]

The problem is the battlescape sprites : Body parts and held items are drawn in a specific order, I made some tests and couldn't find a way to represent a shield.

[Jstank]

What if it was a part of the sprite itself. You could just animate the char with the shield in hand on the actual character sprite. Just take a guy and add the shield in there.