[OLD] Old OXCE discussion thread

[bladum]

Can I assign a custom icon based upon mission type/ufo type?

For example. In my MiB mod there's a custom mission type called "STR_MIB_BASE" (which employs a custom ufo type "STR_MIB_BASE_LANDING"). Can I assign a custom icon to one of them, so that, on the geoscape, this mission are visually differentiated from the regular ufo ground site?

(The ability to differentiate visually -thus making them immediately recognizable- custom missions form regular ufo ground/crash sites, would be quite useful I'd say).

So far no, i just implemented my idea from previous post, which is custom ID for UFO crashed / landed / flying and for x-com crafts

But this is very nice idea to have mission types shown on screen if they are known.

Problem is not technical one but graphical one. I think we do not want to have 10x10 sprites as game is designed for 320x200. Can you design all those graphics in 5x5 area ? If yes, i will do it.

[bladum]

Another simple idea regarding base defense:

1) Let defenses facilities have number of shots per wave with default value of 1. Each is calculated separately but can be weaker then original. Grav shield works as usual. Main reason is to differentiate different buildings as standard ones are very similar to each other. Expected value of damage would be the same. Now buildings differs mainly by sound as they are not even shown on base defense screen.
2) Would be nice to have information about damage done to alien ship in percentage, not just info about hit / miss.
3) When mission starts and UFO is damaged then kill proportional number of aliens based on damage. 10% of destroyed hull would mean 10% of killed alien units during battlescape. They can be just killed after mission is generated with bodies exist on the battlescape. This could be configurable by a flag / option "Lethal base defenses" as a bool.
4) Set delay between weapons are fired per facility as for now this delay is hardcoded to be 250 or 333 ms.
5) Let facilities consume ammo if defined. If no ammo is available in stores then add message "No ammo". Default value would be no ammo is required.

2a) If percentage information about UFO is impossible then at least create a more advanced UFO status that could be displayed in future on other screens. Now its just DESTROYED / CRUSHED / LANDED / FLYING. 

100-90%   no damage (at least we know that UFO is tough)
70-90%     light damage (at least we know we done some damage to UFO)
50-70%     medium damage (at least we know that it is closed to shot down UFO)
below 50% -> normally is crushed but here would be heavily damaged until destroyed

I know this base defense is very very very small part of the game but on the other hand all those customizations are very simple to implement in single file.

Other thing is would be nice to have a flag for an item that says "IS DESIGNED TO BE THROWN". This would reduce range or / and arc of thrown items that are not designed to do it by some percentage. By default all items are designed to be thrown so no modifier is applied. For example grenade has weight of 3 and high explosive of 8, but the second one never was designed to be thrown, which means for purpose of throwing we should treat its weight not as 8 but as 12 for example.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

i wrote custom images support for ufos for land / fly / crash states. What do you think about those images ? Can someone interested made better version with assumption that each sprite should not be larger then 5x5 for example ?

Thanks

I can draw you some. I think you should go larger than 5x5 though. Anything smaller than 9x9 is difficult to see in the higher resolutions, and the originals are already 3x3 so might as well make a worthwhile change.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Here I have the 9 geoscape icons I could think of rendered in 9x9 resolution. I made three versions:

1.) standard high-resolution
2.) classic low-resolution (built for high resolution setting)
3.) stylized (courtesy of my mediocre art skills)

[bladum]

nice, but idea was to create different icon per x-com craft and alien UFO including different images for crashed / landed and flying states Using just different icons is possible even without this customization in vanilla game.

[Yankes]

I thin is better to stick to small graphic 3x3 or max 5x5. Another thing is to use different shapes not size to represent different crafts.
Something like that:

Code: [Select]

>small scout (3x3)

 #

>medium scout (3x3)
 #
# #

>large scout (3x3)
 #
# #
 #
>somthing diffrent (3x3)
###
# #
 #
>biggest alien craft (5x5)

 # # #
  # #
   #



[The Reaver of Darkness]

nice, but idea was to create different icon per x-com craft and alien UFO including different images for crashed / landed and flying states Using just different icons is possible even without this customization in vanilla game.

Ah, I guess I misunderstood.

Howabout this:


I made most of them 5x5, but a few are different:
small scout: 3x3
medium scout: 4x4
supply ship/terror ship: 7x5
battleship: 7x7

I think you can tell which is which. I made inverted crash sites because those look more like the familiar X and also like something destroyed, but then I made non-inverted versions for better recognition so you can use whichever you like better.

[bladum]

actually if craft / ufo is not 3x3 or 5x5 then it will be drawn not in the middle of sprite, this will look strange when combine with line that shows craft path.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Well it's a bit difficult to make convincing icons that small. Here's some icons to represent the five UFO sizes (along with the X-Com craft from last time):


This leaves the very small at 1x1 but if you can add transparency, you can make it a 3x3. Or if you leave it 1x1 it should still display approximately correctly.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Another simple idea regarding base defense:

100-90%   no damage (at least we know that UFO is tough)
70-90%     light damage (at least we know we done some damage to UFO)
50-70%     medium damage (at least we know that it is closed to shot down UFO)
below 50% -> normally is crushed but here would be heavily damaged until destroyed

I know this base defense is very very very small part of the game but on the other hand all those customizations are very simple to implement in single file.

I think this is a nice idea. I'd go a step further and make it so that partially damaged UFOs drop fewer alive troops into your base. Or perhaps some of the times you get attacked, they use a smaller ship. Without any update like this, base defense facilities are useless until you have enough to shoot down a ship, which means that missile and laser defense are pretty much useless altogether.

Perhaps your base should get attacked much earlier in the game and more frequently, by small craft. With a missile defense or two, you could knock the smallest ones out of the sky and focus only on those that matter.

[bladum]

another small thing

unit aggression level current options:

Code: [Select]

0 = mostly passive
1 = balanced
2 = mostly aggresive

what about adding this:

Code: [Select]

-1 = total passive, does not move at all
0 = mostly passive
1 = balanced
2 = mostly aggresive
3 = total aggressive, always try to move to enemy at all cost and energy

This would be nice to have for static x-com tower defense units or suicide / berserk alien units.

[Warboy1982]

you can already do that. those are just the vanilla values.

[bladum]

sorry Warboy1982 i think i need to check sources first before posting

on the other side, even when i am tech person i do not want to know how the sausage is made not kill all the fun from playing the game

[Warboy1982]

hah!

[bladum]

is it possible to merge extended version into vanilla with additional flag that turns features on / off just like other advanced features (not mods) like UFO extender ?

and why not ?