aliens

Author Topic: Upcoming mission changes  (Read 36929 times)

Offline SupSuper

  • Lazy Developer
  • Administrator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2160
    • View Profile
Upcoming mission changes
« on: February 06, 2015, 04:07:06 pm »
As some of you might have heard, we're working on major changes to the mission infrastructure in order to accommodate TFTD's crazy mission variety in OpenXcom. However there's no way to do this without a lot of drastic changes to the ruleset data which will not be backwards-compatible, so I figured I'd give you an early warning, as they will be rolling out in the nightlies soon.

The bad news: This will break some mods! Mods that have customized alien missions or world data will very likely break until they're updated to the new standards. Certain map mods might also be affected.

The good news: A bunch more features for modders!

- Globe markers (the indicators for bases/crafts/sites/etc) are customizable.
- Globe polygons can have one or more associated terrains (eg. different maps depending on the world region).
- Mission zones (eg. cities) can have one or more associated terrains (eg. different maps depending on the city).
- Terrains can have different probabilities (eg. 30% FOREST1 40% FOREST2 20% FOREST3).
- Sites are no longer restricted to terror sites.
- Sites can have custom names, markers, deployments, alerts, etc. (eg. port/island/ship/artefact).
- Missions can have different probabilities.
- There can be multiple missions of the same type (eg. multiple types of terror missions).
- Missions can spawn sites directly (instead of requiring UFOs to spawn sites).
- Missions can customize the wave behavior somewhat (instead of always being hardcoded that Terror Ships spawn Terror Sites, etc).
- Sites can have different durations.

Our priority is TFTD support though, so don't take this as an excuse for extra feature requests.

If you're planning on using any of the upcoming features, note that they will be very volatile and likely to change until we've ruled out every issue. However the more people testing them, the sooner that will happen. :)

Offline Hobbes

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2101
  • Infiltration subroutine in progress
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2015, 05:43:20 pm »
- Globe markers (the indicators for bases/crafts/sites/etc) are customizable.
- Globe polygons can have one or more associated terrains (eg. different maps depending on the world region).
- Mission zones (eg. cities) can have one or more associated terrains (eg. different maps depending on the city).
- Terrains can have different probabilities (eg. 30% FOREST1 40% FOREST2 20% FOREST3).
- Sites are no longer restricted to terror sites.
- Sites can have custom names, markers, deployments, alerts, etc. (eg. port/island/ship/artefact).
- Missions can have different probabilities.
- There can be multiple missions of the same type (eg. multiple types of terror missions).
- Missions can spawn sites directly (instead of requiring UFOs to spawn sites).
- Missions can customize the wave behavior somewhat (instead of always being hardcoded that Terror Ships spawn Terror Sites, etc).
- Sites can have different durations.

*mental orgasm*  8)

Quote
Our priority is TFTD support though, so don't take this as an excuse for extra feature requests.

Me? *hides list of unfulfilled requests* ::)

Quote
If you're planning on using any of the upcoming features, note that they will be very volatile and likely to change until we've ruled out every issue. However the more people testing them, the sooner that will happen. :)

Where do I sign in? :D

Offline robin

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1216
  • ULTIMATE ROOKIE
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #2 on: February 06, 2015, 05:59:45 pm »
welp, stop adding things!

Offline Align

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 196
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2015, 08:48:40 pm »
Sounds like it'll be very useful for the MiB mod.

Offline SupSuper

  • Lazy Developer
  • Administrator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2160
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2015, 02:13:09 pm »
The new mission stuff will go up on Git soon, so I figured I'd give a break down of the changes ahead of time to avoid any unexpected surprises. It's probably gonna get real confusing, so feel free to ask any questions you have (it'll be clearer once the updated ruleset is up).

Changes to globe terrain

- Region cities and mission areas have been combined. This is because keeping them separate just leads to redundancy and confusion (mission areas are what the game actually cares about, the "cities" are just visual indicators on the globe). Worse, in TFTD not every mission takes place in a city. In fact, a "terror mission" can be completely different depending on the area it takes place in!

So where before you had this:
Code: [Select]
cities:
  - name: STR_LAGOS
    lon: 3.125
    lat: -6.5
  - name: STR_CAIRO
    lon: 31.25
    lat: -30
  - name: STR_CASABLANCA
    lon: 352.375
    lat: -33.5
missionZones:
  ...
  -
    - [3.125, 3.125, -6.5, -6.5]
    - [31.25, 31.25, -30, -30]
    - [352.375, 352.375, -33.5, -33.5]

It's been reduced to this:
Code: [Select]
missionZones:
  ...
  -
    - [3.125, 3.125, -6.5, -6.5, -1, STR_LAGOS]
    - [31.25, 31.25, -30, -30, -1, STR_CAIRO]
    - [352.375, 352.375, -33.5, -33.5, -1, STR_CASABLANCA]
If the zone has a name, it'll show up as a "city" on the globe. The -1 is the new associated "texture" (more on that below).

- Instead of terrains being associated to globe textures, now globe textures are associated to terrains. Why? Because that's how TFTD does it. :P There's a new texture definition for this, example:
Code: [Select]
globe:
  textures:
    - id: 0
      terrain:
        - name: CULTA123
          weight: 40
        - name: CULTA456
          weight: 60
          area: [0, 360, -90, 0]
In this case, when a UFO mission starts on globe texture 0, there is a 40% chance of CULTA123 being picked and 60% chance of CULTA456 being picked, however CULTA456 will only be used if the mission is within the north hemisphere (area).

Additionally, textures can be used for mission areas, for example:
Code: [Select]
globe:
  textures:
    - id: -1
      deployment: STR_TERROR_MISSION
    - id: -2
      deployment: STR_TERROR_MISSION
      terrain:
        - name: NEWCITY

You saw before that the default "cities" have texture -1. So when a mission takes place, it will spawn a STR_TERROR_MISSION site. You can use this to create your own mission types (eg. TFTD port/island/ship/etc). You can also specify your own terrains, and they will override the deployment terrains. You could use this for example to have european city terrains, asian city terrains, etc.

So, to sum it up:

id: Texture ID, matching the one in the respective globe polygon / mission area.
deployment: Alien deployment to use for this texture if it's used in a mission site (optional).
terrain: List of possible terrains for this texture:
- name: Terrain ID.
- weight: Weight to use for selecting this terrain (optional). Don't have to add up to 100.
- area: Globe area this terrain applies to, in [longitudeMin, longitudeMax, latitudeMin, latitudeMax] format (optional).

The old terrain "textures" and "hemisphere" are obsolete.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2015, 02:15:03 pm by SupSuper »

Offline ivandogovich

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2381
  • X-Com Afficionado
    • View Profile
    • Ivan Dogovich Youtube
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2015, 02:24:59 pm »
<snip>
So, to sum it up:

id: Texture ID, matching the one in the respective globe polygon / mission area.

<snip>

So any Texture ID that is -Negative, is a mission texture?  with a -1 being the only default mission in the game as currently designed?

Offline SupSuper

  • Lazy Developer
  • Administrator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2160
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2015, 03:57:50 pm »
So any Texture ID that is -Negative, is a mission texture?
It's just a convention, I wanted to avoid conflicts with the globe textures.

Offline Solarius Scorch

  • Global Moderator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 11465
  • WE MUST DISSENT
    • View Profile
    • Nocturmal Productions modding studio website
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2015, 04:16:31 pm »
Christmas is coming early.

Even though I will cry while learning this. On the other hand, there's good information in this thread, so maybe it won't be so bad.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2015, 04:20:36 pm by Solarius Scorch »

Offline Hobbes

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2101
  • Infiltration subroutine in progress
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2015, 05:02:34 pm »
:)

Offline robin

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1216
  • ULTIMATE ROOKIE
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2015, 05:06:02 pm »
brb, winning some lottery so I can just mod 24/7.

Offline kikimoristan

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 647
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2015, 06:06:06 pm »
NO WAY!!!! NOOOO WAYYYYY. I already have a mod and ship ready for this I just couldn't spawn missions on water. So no port or island . but now i can. This is cool.

« Last Edit: March 02, 2015, 06:24:18 pm by tollworkout »

Offline jackstraw2323

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 206
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2015, 06:14:41 pm »
Associating the alien race to the terrain is very interesting. You could have a terror specific version of the race with different weights, or additional units that only get deployed for the terror mission. I suppose you could also combine tftd and ufo, and limit all the Tftd units to water and vice versa.

Offline kikimoristan

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 647
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2015, 06:22:39 pm »
to implement it fully you need to be able to have custom globe textures then poly the water using those textures . right now is probably hard i'd wait until full TFTD support is implemented. but means in latest nightly you can have custom missions which is awesome.  that's a game changer.

the only other problem is limiting functionality of equipment/units in different terrains. this is probably in the works.

I'd hold on a hybrid until full TFTD support of these two is implemented.

but yea great work custom terror missions would be really useful indeed.

Offline Falko

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 802
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2015, 11:58:58 pm »
wasnt there a zoomfactor for cities?
ist that not in the new ruleset anymore?
or can we sort the cities into big/medium/small cities and declare on what zoomlevel what marker shows up?

Offline Hobbes

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2101
  • Infiltration subroutine in progress
    • View Profile
Re: Upcoming mission changes
« Reply #14 on: March 03, 2015, 12:07:23 am »
wasnt there a zoomfactor for cities?
ist that not in the new ruleset anymore?
or can we sort the cities into big/medium/small cities and declare on what zoomlevel what marker shows up?

There is but it only applies to the city labels, not the red markers.