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Author Topic: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations v0.98  (Read 233514 times)

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #180 on: June 06, 2015, 03:17:52 am »
One of the best I've seen, and the conversion to XCOM palette isn't really that damaging. Finally a paperdoll that does the three-eyed armor the justice it deserves! :)

Offline pilot00

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #181 on: June 06, 2015, 03:53:47 am »
One of the best I've seen, and the conversion to XCOM palette isn't really that damaging. Finally a paperdoll that does the three-eyed armor the justice it deserves! :)

You mean the powersuits? I always thought the goofyness was intentional on one part and the other was due to it beeing prototypes.

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #182 on: June 06, 2015, 01:48:56 pm »
Now back to trying to desperately fix the stupid marathon tech tree. Oh yeah, and making lots and lots of map nodes.   :P

If you need any help with those, specially the last one, just ask :)

PS: I have just discovered the Armor section of this mod... I'm feeling a kid on a candy store :D

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #183 on: June 06, 2015, 11:27:39 pm »
Would you mind if i borrow some of your Armor sprites?

Offline XOps

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #184 on: June 07, 2015, 03:50:21 am »
One of the best I've seen, and the conversion to XCOM palette isn't really that damaging. Finally a paperdoll that does the three-eyed armor the justice it deserves! :)

But I like complaining about the palette :). The Battlescape palette isn't really all that bad. Other than having too many off yellows, it's a pretty balanced selection. The Geoscape palette though is much much worse.

If you need any help with those, specially the last one, just ask :)

PS: I have just discovered the Armor section of this mod... I'm feeling a kid on a candy store :D

Thankfully I found that adding routes wasn't as time consuming as I feared. I got all my routes finished today. Still probably needs some tweaking though.

I do have a question for you though Hobbes. I am getting vector::_M_range_check on some of my maps. After a little testing, they seem to occur on crashed UFO maps. It typically crashes out at the end of the Alien's first move or before the mission even starts. I suspect it has to do with dead tiles, but I am not really for certain. Any ideas?

Would you mind if i borrow some of your Armor sprites?

No problem. Just credit me. Also, if this is for your hardmode mod, I would recommend plundering the Alien High Explosive too. That thing is absolutely brutal. I've had missions where that one stupid weapon nearly squad wiped me.

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #185 on: June 07, 2015, 04:24:28 am »
I do have a question for you though Hobbes. I am getting vector::_M_range_check on some of my maps. After a little testing, they seem to occur on crashed UFO maps. It typically crashes out at the end of the Alien's first move or before the mission even starts. I suspect it has to do with dead tiles, but I am not really for certain. Any ideas?

vector::_M_range_check error comes from using LOFs higher than 11 . TFTD maps use LOF 12 or 13 unavailable in UFO so you get vector::_M_range_check when an unit is looking at the object with those LOFs :)
Thank you.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #186 on: June 08, 2015, 08:26:15 pm »
No problem. Just credit me. Also, if this is for your hardmode mod, I would recommend plundering the Alien High Explosive too. That thing is absolutely brutal. I've had missions where that one stupid weapon nearly squad wiped me.

Hm.. jeah but i need to look at your ruleset first to see what represents what. I do not like that your soldier do not have Helmets on the advanced armors.
I am actually looking for some decent Power Suit or Flying Suit Sprites.

Well Alien High Explosive :D Sound like fun i will give it a testrun ^^.

Offline XOps

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #187 on: June 19, 2015, 06:08:58 pm »
A useful piece of writing advice is to murder your darlings. Well the tech tree is darling to me, but I play tested it and it just wasn't fun. Too many filler techs that add nothing. So that's getting gutted and I am considering starting over with it. Ditto for the crafting system, though I am going to try playing with alien weapon self destruction to see if that can help reduce the sheer amount of micro management a crafting system generates. Basically, those are the two big bug bears that hold this project back from even a beta release. Technically, its playable from start to finish right now. It just isn't fun.

In better news, the new UFOs near completion. After my initial series of UFOs, I did some testing and I still find like 90% of the missions involve scouts. This is partially the fault of me using the vanilla UFO deployments which use a ton of smaller craft. I still need a few more mission specific UFOs. I made a constructor ship which only shows up during the building of an alien base. I also added a destroyer which only shows up during retaliation missions. The cloner UFO is done too and it shows up on infiltration and alien base missions. I still feel like a need a few more. It would be nice if almost every mission had a two specific UFO types.

On the battlescape side of the new UFOs, I have done a bit of testing on that too. Many of the UFOs hover on the battlescape so boarding actions must take place using grav lifts. This makes the initial breach more difficult on many UFOs. The Battleship is ground level, but still a freaking death trap. Supply ships are easier to clear, but harder to approach now since aliens are constantly popping out of its side doors to take potshots.
I also think I fixed my M_range_check issue. One of my tiles reference a non existent dead tile. I haven't gotten a crash since then.

Also in good news, I finally managed to make some really good new alien weapons to replace the older more vanilla models.

Unfortunately, these new alien weapons make the XCom plasma weapons look lame, so I may end up having to replace those down the road too. I still need to replace the small launcher and blaster launcher though. I think the aliens are going to get something a little better than the small launcher, but the blaster launcher will probably just get a reskin. I also want to add some more elite weapons for the late game aliens.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #188 on: June 19, 2015, 07:33:25 pm »
I play tested it and it just wasn't fun. Too many filler techs that add nothing. (...) Technically, its playable from start to finish right now. It just isn't fun.
Thanks for the status report, and IMO it's not bad news, except for you :) It shows that you won't stop there, when you're not completely happy with it. Keep sculpting this baby!
"It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove."
A. De St Exupery

Offline NebulaM78

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #189 on: June 20, 2015, 06:40:36 am »
Also in good news, I finally managed to make some really good new alien weapons to replace the older more vanilla models.

Unfortunately, these new alien weapons make the XCom plasma weapons look lame, so I may end up having to replace those down the road too. I still need to replace the small launcher and blaster launcher though. I think the aliens are going to get something a little better than the small launcher, but the blaster launcher will probably just get a reskin. I also want to add some more elite weapons for the late game aliens.

Well, regarding the XCom plasma weapons, shouldn't it be a given that they look lame? After all, they are hastily reverse-engineered from existing alien tech. If anything, maybe you should use the vanilla skins as the prototypes, then your reskins as superior versions. How does that sound?

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #190 on: June 20, 2015, 02:26:41 pm »
A useful piece of writing advice is to murder your darlings.


Words of wisdom :)

Quote
Well the tech tree is darling to me, but I play tested it and it just wasn't fun. Too many filler techs that add nothing. So that's getting gutted and I am considering starting over with it.

I had the same experience with Redux, where I decided to remove half the new techs since they didn't add anything new.

Quote
In better news, the new UFOs near completion. After my initial series of UFOs, I did some testing and I still find like 90% of the missions involve scouts. This is partially the fault of me using the vanilla UFO deployments which use a ton of smaller craft. I still need a few more mission specific UFOs. I made a constructor ship which only shows up during the building of an alien base. I also added a destroyer which only shows up during retaliation missions. The cloner UFO is done too and it shows up on infiltration and alien base missions. I still feel like a need a few more. It would be nice if almost every mission had a two specific UFO types.

Something to consider is that the scouts make for quicker missions. If you change the balance and include more medium/large UFOs then the fights will take longer and can become a chore.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #191 on: June 20, 2015, 03:59:03 pm »
About the tech tree, jeah filler techs are kinda lame, i think i solved this rather nicely. It is important that new techs should actually give the player something. I mainly used them as initial topics for entire trees, to give hints, some lore and i made them rather cheap compared to the techs following them. Removing ufo types is not a goodthing. I actually put in more ufo types then in vanilla and used them logically. E.g. fighter ufo from solarsnewufo, it replaces medium scouts on infiltration and retaliation missions.

Offline new_civilian

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #192 on: June 27, 2015, 05:35:00 pm »
In the available download version the Muton Guard is missing as a live soldier item, causing some nasty CTDs at mission end.
Apart from that easily fixed bug, no problems so far. Love the Overlord and Energy-Alien!  :)

Offline XOps

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #193 on: June 29, 2015, 05:13:11 am »
In the available download version the Muton Guard is missing as a live soldier item, causing some nasty CTDs at mission end.
Apart from that easily fixed bug, no problems so far. Love the Overlord and Energy-Alien!  :)

How did you manage that? I didn't make a live alien for the muton elite guards because they are only present on the very last mission where there is no recovery of any equipment since it's the end game. Oh well. I'll add an item entry in the new version just in case. I'm glad you like the Overlords. They were a pain to sprite.  :)

Offline new_civilian

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Re: [BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations Mod
« Reply #194 on: June 29, 2015, 02:34:41 pm »
How I managed that? I simply modded them into my current game  :)

The sprites are excellent as are the ufopedia-pictures. Good work.