Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming

[ivandogovich]

I thought that personal lighting was only cosmetic for the player and had no bearing on enemy LOS

Edit:  also; Muzzle flashes should only count for fire arms if those get coded in.  So it needs to be a setting that can be tuned per weapon.  X-bow won't flash, nor hammer for that matter.

[Dioxine]

1. No my friend, personal lighting produces real light - and it has to since doing otherwise would require building alternate game physics. Think of it as a flashlight carried by every soldier (you can toggle it by pressing the L key). It is actually irrelevant to actual vision range - a human can see up to 9 tiles in complete darkness.

2. By all means, muzzleflash defaulted to none, defined on a weapon-to-weapon basis (ex. no muzzleflash with bows, but also I think with lasers). ...Suddenly, a niche for 'silenced' weapons appears

[ivandogovich]

1. No my friend, personal lighting produces real light ... It is actually irrelevant to actual vision range - a human can see up to 9 tiles in complete darkness.

Its not the humans... its the aliens/ AI /Enemy that I'm curious about.  If personal lighting is off, is there any way that I am harder to spot?

[Dioxine]

Normally not, since for aliens, their Day Vision (how far away they can see a lit-up target) is equal to Night Vision (how far away they can see a target in complete darkness). But if their Night Vision was lower than Day Vision, it would certainly matter, you'd be harder to spot.

[ivandogovich]

Ah... so humans have  a difference in their day/night vision, but aliens can't see past a dark spot into a light one, because its all the same to them.  So... personal lighting makes no difference in this regard? It doesn't make the player easier to spot.

[Yankes]

1. No my friend, personal lighting produces real light - and it has to since doing otherwise would require building alternate game physics. Think of it as a flashlight carried by every soldier (you can toggle it by pressing the L key). It is actually irrelevant to actual vision range - a human can see up to 9 tiles in complete darkness.

2. By all means, muzzleflash defaulted to none, defined on a weapon-to-weapon basis (ex. no muzzleflash with bows, but also I think with lasers). ...Suddenly, a niche for 'silenced' weapons appears

Dynamic light sources will be hard to do, but I see big potential in that. If I could add muzzleflash then adding explosion and bullet lights will be easy.

[Arthanor]

@Ivan: Personal lightning indeed makes a difference, but as Dioxine says, only for your soldiers since they have a difference between day and night vision. AI always sees 20 tiles so it is like perpetual daylight for them (unless you are in the OXCE, where vision ranges can be set).

You can see the impact of personal lightning in current night vision with your soldiers. For example, walk a soldier up to an enemy enough to light it up, and suddenly other soldiers behind (but within 20 tiles) will report seeing the enemy even though they did not before. It is semi-useful in allowing those soldiers behind to take a reaction shot that they otherwise would have been unable to take because they wouldn't see the target.

In OXCE, fighting a human trader with human vision range, you could have a soldier at.. say.. 17 tiles, which would be invisible to a human (past the 9 tiles of night vision), but if you turn on personal lightning, you are within the 20 tiles of day vision so you become visible.

Having variations for the AI would be really interesting and probably make you play with personal lightning off for most night missions. It also makes walking to a flare, fire or street lamp a risky thing since you would be exposing yourself, whereas right now light doesn't matter. Night fighting would be a different style of play where you stick to the shadows, instead of now where you just get shot up more.

I'm a bit worried about traders though.. They are already relatively easy preys since they "only" have ballistic weapons. If they can't see in the dark as well as the pirates, they'd become really easy pickings, especially since they can't throw flares like us. If they could throw flares, that would be neat though!

[Dioxine]

No worries about the Traders, all Personal Armor guys and better WILL have Night Vision (not neccesarily full 20, but certainly better than unaided mutants).

[ivandogovich]

I think the biggest problem that I have ... is my night fighting with Jagged Alliance 2.  XD  Trying to figure out what OXC doesn't do, kinda melts my brain.  That said, I doubt that the goal should be to replicated JA2 night ops.   OXC is an older game and the limitations are its charm (sort of).  And I trust Yankes and Dioxine to allow for some nicely creative environments.

[pilot00]

I don't know.. even a whole waterballoon doesn't splash that much.. The problem with splash damage is that a near miss is almost as good as a direct hit. I think Yankes has a way to make damage dropoff faster though? It might work well to keep the same damage for a direct hit, but reduce damage to half in neighbour tiles, then it could affect a 3x3 area without being OP (since most of the splash would be absorbed by armor)

Yep that makes sense.

Solarius also gave a controversial idea that EVERY plasma/laser weapon should be setting targets on fire with a powerful enough hit

I think this is too much. I mean The actual heat produced might be enough to litteraly cook the portion of the body been hit, but to set it on fire? I dont think so. It would require costant repeated hits in synch to do that. An increased chance to do crtitical wounds I can see, but fire setting?

[Dioxine]

So the first build is ready (list of changes below). I might post it soon, yet I'm getting persistent terrain crashes on:
- Railyard
- Urban
- Civilian's Expanded Farm

Not sure what's going on with this, maybe the engine is more prone to crash than it once was (Exanded Farm crashes are something new). I might also try to fix these terrains, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to identify the problem, and this will definitely derail the production process anyway. I don't know anything about map scripting, for example. I'm quite sure the terrain is the culprit here, as vessel recovery missions seem to go flawlessly on other terrains.

From my testing, the "melee & throwing costs stamina" system isn't a big burden, it seems to be softly curbing some exploits, if anything.

0.91
- Updated to the new mod format
- (Extended Feature) Melee attack and throws with two-handed objects suffer Accuracy penalty if the other hand isn't empty
- Crafts can carry up to 4 weapons now (most do). Not every weapon fits every slot, though.
- Craft weapons have been broken into three main types: 0: cannon, 1: heavy gun, 2: missile.
- Spike Rockets and 105mm rockets +5 km range
- Landing lights removed from craft not to interfere with the new system of night operations
- New Craft Weapon: Seagull Missiles
- New Weapon/Research: Nuclear Demo Charge
- Melee & Primitive weapons overhaul, welcome to a more complex system
- Incendiary weapons cause massive Morale damage (proportional to HP damage caused)
- Primitive weapons (melee, bows, etc.) now use up Stamina on all attacks
- Bows & Fuso Knives governed by Throwing skill for accuracy & damage
- Many weapons like Blowpipe or Molotovs etc. use Throwing skill instead of Firing for accuracy
- Throwing stuff uses up Stamina
- Using of VooDoo rod costs Stamina and causes Stun damage. VooDoo rod has a limited range (16).
- Demonic weapons cause some fun effects, are governed by VooDoo
- Sawed-Off has faster reloads
- LACC is more accurate
- EP munitions cause increased Stun effects
- Canister Gun and Acid Flask have less power but eat away armor even without a penetrating hit.
- WP Grenade no longer a proxy, causes a lot of damage now
- The IED replaced with a much more affordable good ol' Landmine
- Proxy Grenade more powerful, requires research
- Baby Nuke & COV are much more spectacular with extra fire damage
- Stun Grenade has a larger blast radius, suppresses enemy ability to Reaction Fire (if any damage is dealt).
- Molotovs -10% Accuracy
- Panzerfaust & Satchel Charge bit cheaper
- Beverages can be used on oneself (healing another has a priority, so just face away).
- Demonic Essence hit anim/sound fix
- Stun Grenade anim fix
- Imps & Hell Barons are immune to Bleeding
- Added melee dodge to Pirate & enemy armors (usually replacing most or all Melee Res)
- Night Vision values depend on the type of armor/enemy now (most enemies can't see in the dark as well as UFO's aliens).
- Attempted fix for those who use Psi Str increase (should not increase above 50 now [new soldiers can have 25-60], so if you use this option, you can make everyone a decent psyker but you won't be able to "cheat". Hopefully.)

[Arthanor]

Man that sounds cool! I especially like the flashbang stun grenade! I gotta hurry and finish my game so I can start over once you release this!

- Beverages can be used on oneself (healing another has a priority, so just face away).

Gals! No drinking in the face of thirsty people! Show some decency when chugging down the rum!

[pilot00]

- Attempted fix for those who use Psi Str increase (should not increase above 50 now [new soldiers can have 25-60], so if you use this option, you can make everyone a decent psyker but you won't be able to "cheat". Hopefully.)

Fun fact: If you try this in the current version, you get above 50. After you turn it off, it settles back to 50

Overall very promissing and interesting update. Cant wait to finish my run and get my claws on it.

[Zharkov]

This morning, I thought how cool it would be, if the Humanist’s bases were in the old xcom style. Somehow, I imagined the Humanist faction as an xcom remnant, still bitter they failed to protect humanity. Then, I woke up and went to work. Well, Dioxine, you made it into my dreams.

The naming of the Humanist faction embodies the combination of creativity and sarcasm I absolutely love in your work. I cannot wait to see, how you will make use of all the new modding options. Please keep it up!

[GrandSirThebus]

I lessened the saturation on my weapon sprites. They maybe be more suitable for the Piratez mod now.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3650.0.html