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Author Topic: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike  (Read 55868 times)

Volutar

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #45 on: September 19, 2012, 11:49:40 am »
No multicolored tiles... bah, that's kinda gross. Why not? Dwarf Fortress have no problem with using nice multicolored tiles.

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #46 on: September 19, 2012, 12:05:09 pm »
Yep, colored in engine, so you can specify the color you want in the settings, or reuse the same tile in many places using multiple colors, without having to redraw it. The glyph files are monochromatic, but do allow alpha shading. I've attached one of the font files so you can see (they're all in the data/fonts directory)--all the map characters you find in the game is derived from that one .png (or one of the other fonts, depending on which you use).

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #47 on: September 19, 2012, 12:08:34 pm »
No multicolored tiles... bah, that's kinda gross. Why not? Dwarf Fortress have no problem with using nice multicolored tiles.
It's an aesthetic. Multi-colored tiles would ruin the old terminal feel, which I insist on keeping intact because without it, you may as well play the real X-COM, or eventually OpenXCom ;)

Volutar

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #48 on: September 19, 2012, 12:59:18 pm »
Kyzrati, huh, I believe quite a HUGE difference will stay between xcom/openxcom and x@com with even colored tiles. Why wouldn't you let aesthetic be modded?

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #49 on: September 19, 2012, 02:58:25 pm »
True, I thought of that after I made the comment... In terms of mechanics, I am going to be pushing in a lot of different directions from the original. My bad.

I do, however, want to maintain the console/terminal aesthetic, as the style goes well with the theme I'll be working with, which isn't yet apparent to those watching the project because I haven't announced exactly what my final goal will be in this regard. It'll star to become more apparent around 0.2~0.3-ish.

I can also give a much better reason for the limitation: The entire engine is designed around the console terminal concept, whereby you have a character of a certain color over a cell of a certain background color. Why would I do this? I can animate hundreds of thousands of particles and cool effects very quickly, and do it all without the GPU. The spritesheet implementation means it's quite easy to add sprites instead of letters, but changing it to use a multi-color sprites turns it into a basic tiling engine, which loses the speed advantage and is no longer compatible with the particle layering which is going on in the background.

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #50 on: September 19, 2012, 08:22:38 pm »
Michal: I put up that new video I was talking about (though having played, you've already seen most of what it contains).

Offline michal

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #51 on: September 19, 2012, 09:07:40 pm »
Video added to post on main site.

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #52 on: September 20, 2012, 04:01:46 am »
Ah thanks, I don't even have it on my own site yet, ha ha. (Awaiting more content to put in the next post.)

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #53 on: October 13, 2012, 10:59:34 am »
Posting about the new R8 release so michal doesn't have to ;)

Offline michal

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #54 on: October 13, 2012, 12:44:00 pm »
Nice, so now we will see plenty of mods? ;)

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #55 on: October 13, 2012, 12:46:20 pm »
More in the future I'm sure, once the engine gets more powerful, but for now you'll definitely be seeing at least a few. Doom will be one of the first, I hear, with more to follow.

Offline michal

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #56 on: October 14, 2012, 02:29:02 pm »
Any ETA for linux version? ;)

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #57 on: October 14, 2012, 02:38:24 pm »
You asked that 10 posts ago ::)

Would putting it somewhere on the roadmap appease you for the time being? ;)

It does cross my mind occasionally... did just earlier today, in fact (no kidding!).

One day I will summon the courage to dive in, I promise.

However, I'm afraid that day will not be "soon."

Offline michal

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #58 on: October 14, 2012, 02:42:12 pm »
Hehe, yeah, but i wanted to know specific date ;) So probably not following weeks but maybe in couple of months it will be possible?

Until then i guess i need to try playing with wine sometime ;)

Changing a subject - asking just out of curiosity - why you decided to use plan text files for data? Why not xml, json, yaml or smth like that? Were there any particular reason?

Offline Kyzrati

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Re: X@Com - Xcom as roguelike
« Reply #59 on: October 14, 2012, 02:52:09 pm »
Yeah, it'll be months at the earliest probably. And that's just where I *try* it. I also have to actually get it to work ;)


About the text files, I don't like to be restricted by other formats, since writing your own format is always more flexible. No convenient tools for parsing, true, but I can write my own when necessary.

I'm also obsessive about proper formatting and making things look exactly the way I want them to, so I like the generally cleaner look of my own files (which are tab-delimited files, btw, easily imported into spreadsheet software for analysis).

Since I use notepad++ with my own syntax highlighting scheme (as you've seen), scripting is also fairly easy in text mode.