[OLD] Old OXCE discussion thread

[Dioxine]

I think an option to have all the sprites fully illuminated regardless of the master light level would be totally cool :3 (you can shoot them normally, anyway... just can't tell who they are even if you soldiers see them... and more importantly, with NV mechanics, you want to turn the flashlights off, and then you can't see your own soldiers...)

[Arthanor]

Yeah! That looks awesome in the dark. Could we have enemies glow red, soldiers blue and civilians green when they are in the dark but spotted. That would be a great UI improvement.

Also, maybe a glowy sprite when something is spotted but not displayed because the ground tile isn't sighted? I hate those cases of "alien in sight but we'll only show you its shade when you put your cursor on it even though it is in broad daylight".

[Dioxine]

I'd rather prefer full color sprite than some blue, red or green approximations... we're not limited by the technology, are we? And even if we were, soldiers should be red and enemies blue, do'h!

[Solarius Scorch]

But we already have a colour code established in OpenXCom - for the minimap! Aliens blue, civilians red, your guys yellow. If anything, we should stick with this, otherwise it'll be confusing as hell!

[Arthanor]

Ah.. yeah, Solarius wins the color coding design competition Makes a lot more sense that way.. And I think it'd look cooler for night fights than actual full color sprites, just gives a night vision techy sweep feel.

That being said, full color sprites when the alien is seen but not the tile would be even better, yes. There is no reason not to display an alien that is in sight.

[Solarius Scorch]

Ah thanks.

Another idea is, how about, when the user turns off the lights, the entire screen goes monochrome? (The actual colour to be decided.) I mean it's displayed like on day vision, but in shades of just one colour.

[Arthanor]

hum.. that could be cool too. Maybe monochrome very shaded green, with glow effect on units?

[Solarius Scorch]

hum.. that could be cool too. Maybe monochrome very shaded green, with glow effect on units?

Yeah, I agree green would probably be best. As for units glowing, maybe - experiments would be needed.

[Yankes]

Hold Your Horses :> Doing some global recoloring will be painful because you would need do it for all armors.
I don't have plans do custom recoloring for full screen because it will very easy hit performance limit.
Form good news I plan option for switch body parts of sprite using script. You will able change at last dying animation of unit based on look.

[Dioxine]

Hold Your Horses :> Doing some global recoloring will be painful because you would need do it for all armors.

I've made 32 paperdolls for all my armors, I'm not scared

[new_civilian]

What about a way of blocking researches when doing another research. e.g. having to actually DECIDE about going for e.g RAILGUNS or going a different techtree. and NOT having both of them. This would make for real decisions and less cluttered manufacture/research screens. 
and what about the new soldiertypes of the latest nightly? 

[Yankes]

Blocking research will be tricky, only way I see that can be do is block other research when you start new research project.

And for solders, right now I'm ignoring what happening in nightlys because I'm doing different things in my branch.

[Dioxine]

Mutually exclusive research paths would be retarded in any sci-fi setting, the science doesn't work that way, but such a function could be really handy if someone wanted to make a sword & sorcery setting... While we're at it, random production results when? :3

[Arthanor]

Falko had a good idea with this. For example, to get either laser or gauss as a early gun:

- Advanced Weaponry research project: getOneFree: Laser Weapons OR Gauss Weapons

-> Player randomly gets one but not the other, representing the scientists making a breakthrough in either one of the fields instead of both at the same time.

If you want to make both eventually available, you can make a "Laser Weapons Gauss unlock" which gives Laser Weapons and has dependencies on having developed the whole Gauss tree, representing the scientists getting another idea for weapons tech after perfecting the first breakthrough.

It's actually quite nice and an interesting way to mix up how the game progresses. You could even make it so that "Advanced Weaponry" unlocks either the pistol or the heavy weapon, making it so you either develop the high power system which needs to be big, or the miniaturized system because you haven't yet figured out a big power source.

[Dioxine]

I like that one, but to have something like that, you'd 'only' need to fix how getOneFree works... (I mean, repair the bug that causes all researches with 'getOneFree' be available w/o prerequisites unless blocked by requiresItem); but I think the bug can be circumvented (research Advanced Weaponry 'lookups' research str_trick_or_treat tech, which is blocked by 'requiresItem' and has 'getOneFree' on Laser Weapons and Gauss weapons).
But this are vagaries of science and the goodness of random, not the kind of moral choice civilian wrote about (don't get morals into my science! shoo!