Author Topic: Altoid aliens - All sprites are free to use!  (Read 74601 times)

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Altoid aliens - All sprites are free to use!
« on: September 21, 2014, 07:37:25 pm »
I greet you everyone!

After a long mocking and criticising others (well, not did this, but it sounds good and really badass) I decided to try (let me repeat: TRY) to make a minor, two more badboys mod for OXC. I done with graphics, texts and the ruleset, only one problem left (apart from the sound issues):
Why do I ever get big black cubes with a simple hand on battlescape?! Unit spritesheets have good size and palette. But background colour is black and since it is indexed I find no way to make it transparent.
Could someone help me? I use MSpaint and PhotoShop 7.0 CE (shall not upgrade). Could someone correct my spritesheet and tell me what the hell did I wrong (apart from the obvious "everything")?

If I did everything well, the zip file is attached. If not, I put it up to MediaFire. And sorry for the graphical chaos in the zip! The two problematic files are Altoid.png and Crabman.png.
Thanks for all the helps!

P.S.: The high numbers (1001, 1002) in the ruleset is direct. This way it is compatible with every existing mods (if I understood well the mod-system and the yaml-language).
« Last Edit: December 17, 2015, 09:43:09 pm by Duke_Falcon »

Offline Falko

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2014, 07:44:14 pm »
one way to fix the transparent color0-pixel for one image
go here https://falkooxc.pythonanywhere.com/sprites2png
set "amount of columns: " to 1
and upload a zip with one image in it

Offline NoelBuddy

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2014, 01:43:05 am »
I use CS6 and have had luck with the pallet robin posted here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1557.msg30946#msg30946 https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1557.0;attach=10581

Opened yours up and loaded the Battle.act from there and it looks like it will work.

I hope you don't mind I went thru and made some adjustments to their UFOpedia entries too:

Spoiler:
      STR_ALTOID_UFOPAEDIA: Altoids are the specialized deep-space navigators of the alien forces. While they have an almost identical appearance like the Sectoids Altoids are devoid of any psionic skills. They seems, however, as independent members of the aliens hive like society as they showed strong and proud individualism during our researches. Indicating possible amphibious origins their movement seems cumbersome on dry land but they are powerful swimmers.
      STR_ALTOID_AUTOPSY_UFOPAEDIA: These creatures have a frail body, similar to the Sectoids, but they bear some unique features. The eyes and the brain are very developed, displayed in their keen aiming skills. All specimens we have seen so far had internal sexual organs what indicates two things. They reproduce sexually and they are like earthling reptiles or amphibians what explains the aquatic-origin signs they bare.
      STR_CRABMAN_UFOPAEDIA: These towering giants are nothing more than brute bodyguards and bullies often allied with Altoids. Their pincers can crush strengthened steel and their blows could rip even a car apart. Their behavior is purely predatory and they controlled via long training like our dogs. Although they are unable to use weapons they are seemingly able to shoot lasers from their eyes. Wish you met rarely with these beasts.
      STR_CRABMAN_AUTOPSY_UFOPAEDIA: After the autopsy and genetic examinations we can clearly say this thing originates from Earth! It seems the aliens collected some crabs and played with their genes and risen them upon special drugs and enzymes to grow them such a big giants. Their internal is a mass of nothing, much just like earthling insects. What appear to be it's eyes are actually two special bio-luminescent organs which produce it's laser blasts. Their eyes are actually on the en to their two long antennae. Crabmen have a strong, rigid carapace, rendering them immune to HE damage, and are resistant to stunning due to their complex nervous system.

Mostly rewording, but big changes to the crab men as you seem to have given them laser weapons but in the description you talked about them using grenades.

« Last Edit: September 22, 2014, 03:07:04 am by NoelBuddy »

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2014, 12:19:12 pm »
Quote
one way to fix the transparent color0-pixel for one image
go here https://falkooxc.pythonanywhere.com/sprites2png
set "amount of columns: " to 1
and upload a zip with one image in it
Does it work with entire sprite sheets?

Quote
Mostly rewording, but big changes to the crab men as you seem to have given them laser weapons but in the description you talked about them using grenades.
Oh, shit! I forgot to change the holodrone attack... I want them use melee but it sounds good in the description to throw grenades. I am very beginner and have no real clue how to change attack methods (melee, grenade throwing - 2-3 mayhaps) or damages (laser, plasma, psionic and such) that is why I did not implemented the chrystal sword yet (although the graphics are ready). I try to progress but extract and learn mega-rulesets is not easy.
And I shall try the palette you mentioned. Hope that will solve the future transparency problems... And thanks for the pedia correction aswell. I did not really polished that so far just make something to test in-game. I shall use your correction (the laser-eyes exception) if you agreed to do so.

--- posts merge ---

Graphics are fine now untill they not move. More precisely the Crabmen have some problem. Whenever they come to move the game crash.
I attached the current ruleset. Can anyone help me with that? Correct it and\or tell me what did I wrong and how it must be done? And is there any list of what numbers mean what in aliens' attributes?
For example how can I make Crabman to walk like Chryssalid and use melee attack? And so on...
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 09:14:30 pm by Solarius Scorch »

Offline NoelBuddy

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2014, 06:56:57 pm »
. I shall use your correction (the laser-eyes exception) if you agreed to do so.

I would be honored.

Huh, I wasn't even getting it to load, so I went thru the ruleset you posted last night and hammered this one out from that, so it won't have any changes you've made between the two postings.

I re-organized the extraSprites so you'll have to adjust those if you use this, but it seems to work.

If you want to move like the Chrysalid you'll have to adjust the sprite sheet to avoid floating limb chaos (muton drawing routines that you are currently using have empty space where kneeling legs would be, Chrysalids drop those slots completely)

Not sure how much of what I did was fixing problems and how much was just adjusting it so it looked how I thought it should look, most of what I did was adjusting spaces, adjusting capital/lowercase letters to make them consistent and reordering the parameter entries so they matched the order in the ruleset reference.

Here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Ruleset_Reference_%28OpenXcom%29 is a great reference for rulesets and should answer most of your questions.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2014, 07:15:32 pm by NoelBuddy »

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2014, 08:27:11 pm »
Wow!
Thanks a lot! It works now! I tested it in an instant battle. Still interesting the laser-shot but I think it could be change.
Where I gave 1001 and 1002 as value you set back 101 and 102. What does that do? This mean still the highest number of alien ID? I thought give 1001 and 1002 shall make Altoids compatible with FMP... Were I wrong?

Offline NoelBuddy

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2014, 05:08:54 pm »
Where I gave 1001 and 1002 as value you set back 101 and 102. What does that do? This mean still the highest number of alien ID? I thought give 1001 and 1002 shall make Altoids compatible with FMP... Were I wrong?

You'll have to check with SolarisScorch about the FMP compatability, but in my understanding when the program adds a new ruleset it adds 1000 untill it finds a range that isn't used, so two separate rulesets won't conflict that way unless one is really huge(over 1000 items added).  I keep the numbers around 100 when fooling with things just to keep track and only worry about renumbering them if I want to combine two things in one ruleset.

AFAIK the only list of numbers you need to keep track of is these https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Ruleset_List_Order_%28OpenXcom%29  which control what order things show up in the menus
« Last Edit: September 23, 2014, 05:12:17 pm by NoelBuddy »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2014, 06:52:27 pm »
Every ruleset is indexed separately, so two or more rulesets using the same numbers for file reference won't conflict with one another.

At your service. :)

Offline Falko

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2014, 08:04:46 pm »
so two or more rulesets using the same numbers for file reference won't conflict with one another.
... if the file id numbers are below 1000

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2014, 08:07:19 pm »
... if the file id numbers are below 1000

.....yes. But that was said before, no? ;)

Offline NoelBuddy

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2014, 08:24:50 pm »
.....yes. But that was said before, no? ;)

 ::)  Ahhh.. that's where I picked the habit up from.  I remembered it as a "Best practices" but couldn't remember why it was.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 12:55:36 am by NoelBuddy »

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #11 on: October 09, 2014, 08:20:44 pm »
OK. I try to keep alien IDs as 101, 102, 105 and so on... Then it will compatible with FMP for example or XenoOps?
Or it better to implement it (mayhaps) into FMP if the whole thing is ready (maybe) just to have everything in one place...

I know Crabman is... Well, not matter, since so far it seems OXC and OTFTD shall be two separate things... I mean... I do not know but I think these were separate things so use tftd sprites in oxc mods is not a big trouble.

Altoid race with belonging species:
Altoid


Crabman


Probe


--- posts merge ---

A few technical questions

- What are the IDs of the original UFO sprites (small scout, medium scout...)?
- If I define in waves for alien mission types the vanilla UFOs (STR_SMALL_SCOUT, e.g.) then I define weapon loadout for it it will affect all such small scouts in the game? How can I make to use vanilla UFOs where a special race\crew use special weapon loadout?
- In weights for alien missions what does the numbers (1,2,3) indicates? The first month where they appear? And if not how could be set up when does an alien race first appear?
- Make only clips manufacturable for captured alien weapons is possible or the game needs the weapons also able to manufacture?
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 09:15:33 pm by Solarius Scorch »

Offline Arthanor

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2014, 03:33:01 pm »
1- Look under "ufos:" in XCom1Ruleset.rul, you will find all the UFOs defined there. The IDs are pretty obvious (ex.: small scout = STR_SMALL_SCOUT)

2- I suggest you look into Haral_Gray's Mechtoid mod, or Robin's MIB mod, both of which define new races, new race exclusive weapons and race exclusive missions. I think the way it works is that when you define a mission, you define what weapons aliens on that mission will have, so you would need to define, say, Altoid-Research, which only Altoids conduct and on which Altoid weapons are used. This won't change anything for any other mission, so the regular aliens won't change.

3- The mission weight represents the relative chance that a given mission is picked for a given month in a given region. Looking at the ruleset, I would guess that the game first picks a region using "regionWeight", then picks a mission using that region's "missionWeights", then picks a race according to the "raceWeights" of that mission.

That means you can't prevent one of your Altoid missions from being picked in January, the fix to that is to give raceWeights to sectoids and/or floaters only for the early months, then switch to Altoids later. In the mission's raceWeights, the first number (ex.: "0:") is the number of months since January (0 = January itself), then the weights represent the relative chance of that race being picked. I don't think it is percentages, but rather if I say "STR_SECTOID: 3" then "STR_FLOATER: 1", then I have 3 times more chance to see sectoids. If I use 4 & 3, then I have a bit higher than 50% to see sectoids, etc.

4- You can make clips manufacturable without the weapon, you just have to not define a manufacture project defined for the weapon.

Offline NoelBuddy

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #13 on: October 10, 2014, 07:35:56 pm »
Here is a very basic ruleset I made to be a template for featuring new alien races with their own weapon sets.  It features two missions using clones of the default craft that you can alter the weapon sets for without giving them to every alien.  They will appear as Alien Research and Alien Terror missions, the only tells being they won't generate a terror mission and it will be weird when the first harvester shows up on an alien terror mission.  They don't include Terror/Base Defense/Base Assault/Mars missions because those can't be altered without changing it for everybody.

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Re: Altoid aliens
« Reply #14 on: October 12, 2014, 09:52:41 pm »
Here is a very basic ruleset I made to be a template for featuring new alien races with their own weapon sets.  It features two missions using clones of the default craft that you can alter the weapon sets for without giving them to every alien.  They will appear as Alien Research and Alien Terror missions, the only tells being they won't generate a terror mission and it will be weird when the first harvester shows up on an alien terror mission.  They don't include Terror/Base Defense/Base Assault/Mars missions because those can't be altered without changing it for everybody.

Thanks! It helped a whole lot. I just need to copy-paste the already written alien mission types and the weapon strings and done! Soon I implement into the ruleset.

--- posts merge ---

Some more technical trouble. I want to add blue ray projectile for the new alien weapons. I used the XenoOps red laser sprite as a sample to create it. How could I set it up for the weapons to use them as bullet\projectile sprites?
The spritesheet is 105x9 where x and y dimensions set up as 3x3 (in ruleset) where the top line is the shortest (for pistol) and bottom is the longest. How to use it?

Some new pedia-things:
Disruptor weapons (pre-req to research captured alien weapons):


Alien military:


Alien society:


Alien experiment:

« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 09:16:34 pm by Solarius Scorch »