[Total Conversion][WIP] oXc - War of Shadows v0.92

[jackstraw2323]

Successfully overrode the Alien Missions percentages so my first race shows up. Needs more testing but looks promising. Also lost 4 soldiers, but I was being careless. More balancing needed. Also need to look at alien weights for the individual ufos, as the unit mix may have not been what I wanted at this stage.

Added graphics for Warboy's shotgun, but haven't implemented yet. on OSX the rule for a handob folder vs a single sprite crashes the game, so I rerolled into a single PNG file. Added the Sniper rifle, but needs tweaking. Feels sort of inaccurate at the moment and my damage vs armor/health numbers may be off. So I need to decide if the units need to have lower baselines or if the rifle needs higher output. Still feels a bit random that a hit vs. a standard human wouldn't bring them down.

Research tree is starting to coalesce, but needs tweaking I'm sure. Feels like the mechtoids contain the bulk of the tree, and they are potentially the 1.5/2 wave of aliens, but capturing one will prove difficult.

Need to think more on armor, I want there to be an extra tier but I'm also trying to keep the game at about the same length as original. Still trying to figure out how to limit or remove lasers from the game. They feel unbalanced a bit to me. Unlimited ammo is very unrealistic at current tech levels, so maybe clip based versions are the answer, but I also want to close them off from the beginning of the game. Considering tying them to the advanced batteries from the mechtoids. That feels right to me, but might seem like too much of deviation to others.

[jackstraw2323]

Background/storyline/setting are starting to develop well. I've now got good reasons/explanations of equipment differences due to economic and geopolitical considerations. I also like where some aspects are headed because I feel that it doesn't conflict with x-com apocalypse storyline, and possibly compliments. TFTD never sat right with me, and now that I'm older it feels like a wasted opportunity from a story perspective.

Both Alien Alloys and Elerium are known items in this universe, but in general too expensive to use. I will probably allow a few classic items to be manufactured (plasma rifle, maybe the blaster bomb) but in general the lower costs of the new research tree/materials should make them a better alternative for most cases, though as I'm currently conceiving you could save your cash and outfit a squad in the classic gear at immense cost.

Ideally the configuration of the new aliens and their gear will provide enough variation to make this more than x-com plus some extra weapons.

[jackstraw2323]

Need to finish the rule and deployment, but got my mechtoid HWP sprite done.

[jackstraw2323]

ugh. Knee deep in balance issues. Trying to get progression and armor/weapons/challenge right and i have a spreadsheet of armors vs weapons. I guess this is FUN? things feel out of whack at the moment. Need to do some tweaking on lasers as they just feel lame. Armor boosts are an interesting avenue, needs more research.

[jackstraw2323]

Feeling a bit better about progress. Got to do some fun sprites for the cult priest / high priest. Not sure if that's just a pallet swap yet. Also created my Ethereal Cultists with drawing routine 21. Shortened up a plasma rifle from XOPS work for my plasma carbine. Pretty happy with how it came out. Thinking I need to be conservative with sprite creation. Most of the heavy lifting is in the new units and the ufopedia sections. Weapon sprites are plentiful in the wild so I should consider using what's out there unless there's just nothing appropriate at all.

Starting work on the MKII jaeger as well, should be a bit faster as I'm not animating walking for a flying unit. I think Sleepers and Mechtoids are basically functional at this point. Fungoids are probably as well, though like the sleepers there's a bit of sprite tweaking I'd like to do.

Considering changing the rule for the infiltrator since the drawing routine doesn't include aiming arms. I could manually include the arms and artwork for a single weapon and just make it a living weapon that's also recoverable. Though saying that out loud now would complicate my research/manufacturing tree as the weapon is intended to be terrestrial in nature. I could make it some kind of alloy version, but that's not really something I've planned on to this point, and I think it might be necessary complication for a sprite that's good enough as it stands.

As far as aliens go. Still have my final boss to construct, and the whole set of Chimeras to generate. I think I can get away with a simple tweak for the Minotaur, could recycle the hallucinoid for the siphonophore since we're talking related families, and then I only really have to do the routine for the Drone, which I could cheat on a bit since it's flying and has no real legs. See Tentaculat for an almost complete lack of animation or moving parts. Actually that's not a bad idea, looks like facings plus one animation frame for movement. Still I'd prefer to have a couple of extra animation frames so maybe something like the floater would be more appropriate.

[jackstraw2323]

Starting to mine some E.U. materials as well. Lookie what I made from a simple down-sample. Could use some refinement, but this is a good start...

Working on my Ethereal Leader using the EU version as a model. Mostly just involves creating the helmet sprite and some additional robe trim. Coming along nicely. Still need to figure out how I want multi form to work, and what those transformations should be or look like, but I've got some ideas.

[jackstraw2323]

Whew. Final boss form 1 and transformation done. Form 2 may take a bit because there's more total custom sprites to do. But flying unit so no walking animation thankfully, also no weapons held so that's easier as well. Not totally happy with the first part of the transform around frames 4-8 but I was starting to rush. Probably need to figure out my transform art routine on form2->3 so I back back port elements to form 1->2

[jackstraw2323]

Forms 2 and 3 drafts done with basic rule implemented. Still have to tweak but that was a big chunk. The only remaining custom alien unit is the drone.

[redrat9595]

Just wanted to pop in and say you have an awesome looking mod here. Don't be discouraged by the lack of posts from other users; I'm sure quite a few people are keeping their eye on this. I really like the art style, by the way. It's nice and unique while still looking like it belongs. I thought it reminded me of Supreme Commander at first, but I can't quite figure out where my brain thinks you got your inspiration from.

If you need any help, let me know. I probably can't help much with sprites, but I'd be willing to do some of the dirty work as far as rulesets go if you'd like. Either way, best of luck with development. I'm looking forward to messing around with it in the future.

-Red

[jackstraw2323]

It's a blend of influences, with some stuff from the latest xcom rolled in. I wanted to try and have it feel like it belonged in the same universe. Thanks for the encouragement, I sort of figured I'd see more comments once I released something officially.

If you'd like to help there's definitely lots to do still.

Research tree is only partially baked
Economy will need to balanced
Ufopedia has to be written/implemented
Missions/deployments need work/balance
Haven't thought much about maps yet, but would like to do some work there.
Need to rebalance air combat and put in some other transports

My TODO.md and readme.md cover a lot of my plans if you do want to get involved. Or you can pm me about what kind of mod stuff you're interested in doing so I can figure out what I could pass off.

[jackstraw2323]

Ha, I thought I was close on finishing unit sprites. Then I remembered I have several armor types to create. Trying to use some mash up stuff to save myself some time, but when it comes down to it there just has to be more custom work done so that the sprites don't look crummy.

Need to make or finish
Drone Draft 1 done.
Personal Armor New - Might use recolor
Marsec Personal Armor - Need a recolor to match Moriarty's reds
Bio Armor - mashups and custom additions
Heavy Armor - mashup and custom additions. May get Minotaur sprite improvements out of this.
Psi Dampner - personal armor recolor/torso tweaks
Jaeger MKII facings and animations.

[jackstraw2323]

Clearly pushing some limitation of the rules. Now that I know based on other forum posts about aliens shunning grenades until turn 3, it explains why my terror units with blast radius appear docile at first. Also flying melee units seem to not be particularly interested in attacking anything which makes a certain amount of sense since with one exception all melee units were walkers, and that exception pretty much goofed around rather than attacking a lot of the time.

Balance issues to worry about later. As of last night all of my alien groups exist and have basic sprites. There's some tweaking I want to do, but that's mostly aesthetics there. So I guess that's a milestone towards a ver .1 release

[Jo5hua]

Great idea! Also be sure to post on this mod on the modsite. Almost all the traffic the modsite gets (which is significant) comes from the Openxcom.org main menu link. Lots of people may not be checking the forum, and going straight to the modsite. This should help in drastically increasing exposure of your mod! Let me know if you have any questions. I might need to start a new superhuman playthrough with your mod.

[jackstraw2323]

As soon as I've got something that's more concrete I plan on putting it on the mod site. As it stands now, even though I've finished a lot of sprites I'm probably in the 25% complete range. Early enough that if someone wants to go to the repo and download the rules and graphics to test out the alien deployments they could, but there's not really enough structure baked into a new game at this point. I've been making good progress on my remaining sprites, so I'm hopeful that I can switch to programming rules/balancing the game with the pieces I'm putting on the board, but at the moment I'm just one guy working on this in his spare time, and I'm basically creating an entirely new game. The mechanics may be similar but a lot of the assets are new, and the rules are all completely different.

[jackstraw2323]

Been hammering away at my sprites, and I've got several armor sprites finished with prelim rules. Anti-Psi / Psi armor was easy / fun and I'm pretty happy with the results. Organic was a quick modification of Deep one sprite, but I think it looks pretty good. Looks sort of like a master chief/gas mask helmet with some streamlined armor. Heavy Powered Armor took forever and I'm not thrilled about the sprite, but it will do for now. As a side bonus, the work on HPA improved the minotaur sprite substantially. HPA is certainly interesting from a rules persective. I've created several weapons with ridiculous weights 40+ so they are impractical for regular soldiers to carry.  The powered armor provides enough of a strength stat boost to make carrying them viable, but the armor also incurs a small TU penalty because of bulkiness. It's going to take some tweaking but so far I feel like I'm starting to create several armors that have tactical significance, and there isn't necessarily a "Best" armor at this stage. I'm sure something will emerge once the rules are final, but I don't think it will be like power armor/flying suit where if you have the resources you should put everyone in flying suits.

Need to go work on my TODO.md file to see where I am on milestones.

Still need to create my version of antigrav armor, and planning on grabbing shadics better PA for my baseline PA that you can manufacture.

Edit: Interesting. Looking at various source material for mash up items, and looks like the snakeman torso is a pretty close match for space marines and jump packs. Possible that the source artwork started that way based on some of the other materials released by the creators. I'm torn between using that because it would be quick and adapting the personal armor since this is supposed to be a lighter flying armor and the mash up would look a little bulkier than the original flying armor. But I'm also concerned that I might be using too much of the same look so changing it up would be good too.

In the interest of time I should probably take an attitude of done is better than good in some cases. I can always revisit the artwork later.