UFO upgrades

[luke83]

just been playing around with modding the wall sprites to be more like normal walls but still have the shape on the back. This would mean i would need to change everything! so far i dont like this plan 

[Yankes]

Do like Conti-k show, you need "cut" part of wall to fit it. Look closer to your last image. If you move wall 4px left or right they will look correct, but you will lost part of sprite. Usually you will not see difference because this part is hidden behind  next wall segment. Only problem will be with door or holes in wall.

[luke83]

Just did a test in game, yep i need to cut shape from door   Should of read the other posts better On the plus side they animate correctly  I was trying to bring them far enough forward so i could keep the shape , but still trigger the animation correctly.

Can we not just tell it this sprite is wider then the others

ok so IF i cut part of the wall to make it work , are the purists going to come knocking on my door as is everyone happy to live with this, this is why i have been looking for other options.


Below is just another example of my wasted efforts , not sure why the other wall cuts itself short , must be something to do with draw order.

[Yankes]

Doors sprite should have that part you cut out from wall. This is because then this new part will hide place where wall is cut.

Btw it will be great if every sprite could have 4 version in every direction. this will allow rotating map in game (To work proper OX we need have 4 walls in one square, this is for that rotating dont change game logic)

[luke83]

OK so if no one complains about the flat Doors as suggested by Conti-k and repeated (because i am stupid) by Yanks i will just do that , it will make things a lot easier for me to get started.

 Please let me know If you wont accept this , there is no point me spending Months building lots of different UFOs if no one is going to use them.  Also note, i still need to fix the glitches in Urban Maps before i give these all my time

[Yankes]

I didnt see your last screenshot before.
I think you move your walls in wrong direction. You need move it even there is no place for it in sprite.

[Volutar]

Wall sprites are not enough. You cannot overcome limitation of 16x16x24 voxel model. Outside walls are objects with convex outside parts. And they can be easily made for south and west outer walls of UFO (which are part of tiles), and cannot be made for north and east outer walls.
It requires entirely new engine paradigm. None of these "extentions" will work for seamless and symmetric UFO map layout and pathing.

[Yankes]

Yes wall voxel cant leave box, but we can move wall to next box. Its now done in case of E & S walls. They use W & N ones.
In my solution to create W & N walls we will use E & S walls that current dont exist.

small exmaple (# <- voxel, | <- line that divide two tiltes )

normal E wall:

Code: [Select]

      E|      E
<- 1 ->|<- 2 ->
      #|
      #|
      #|
      #|
      #|
      #|
#######|#######
ufo E wall (In fact W wall for game):

Code: [Select]

      E|       E
<- 1 ->|<- 2 ->
       |#
       |##
       |##
       |##
       |##
       |#
#######|#######
now you can have additional wall inside ufo that can be easy destroyed:

Code: [Select]

      E|       E
<- 1 ->|<- 2 ->
      #|#
      #|##
      #|##
      #|##
      #|##
      #|#
#######|#######


[luke83]

Yanks - The last image was added after your reply, but is from earlier in the day.

Volutar -Please correct me if i am wrong, IF i make the North and West walls like NORMAL House walls and use FLAT doors  and leave the south and east walls and original UFO doors the same MAYBE i can create a entire set by adding some shorter  length walls in the middle to join them all together.  This would make map making alittle more harder but if i can the desired result it would be worth it.

Its the middle of the night here and i have been up for hours with my child with a Fever so maybe i am not thinking straight, but if it make sense in normal day light hours i will make a prototype of my plan as Hopefully the issues with Pathfinding i mentioned earlier will be solved ( solider walking through door frame). You should also be able to position your men outside the ufo   

 One way or another i NEED rotatable Ufos for my Fantasy Xcom experience   Maybe i should not be so overly critical , the original designers did not seam to worry so much about this. All there panels have flat backs even when used as a WALL

[Volutar]

Yankes, south and east outer walls already moved to next tile. And they are made as "wall objects" so no units can stand outside of these walls.

I've already posted about this issue in topic of  suggested pathfinder.
On the left image north and west outer walls looks like "X". The reason of that kind of placement and status is the fact, that voxel object is limited by bounds of the tile. If they (Gollops) had voxel (loft) object beyond limits of tile - they would make these walls far straight and easier.

[Yankes]

Isnt this because they need cut corners? (now some speculation ) usually you need only one wall between two spots. then because adding 2 additional walls will increase memory need by 2 times they decide to use only W&N wall. Next when they try create ufo get this problem what we have now
we can afford to have more walls in game. with that outer W&N walls will work exactly like current outer S&E walls.

and remember if voxel of your object dont have enough room in one title you split your object to additional ones. now only problem how you will store this in game.
right now we can only have one object per title (without walls and floor) but why we need stick to it? we could have 5 or infinite number of possible object in one title   of course we shoudnt overdo it because game would run 1fps

[Volutar]

First of all, authors decided there's no need to have north AND south wall for each square tile. South wall actually is the north wall of southern tile.

Second thing, they needed to implement outer walls, which are simple walls with one exception - they are protruded to one of sides, so there are 4 outer walls types. Since they are limited to 16x16 (one loft slice) and cannot go outside of this square, they have to use other tiles, and they have chosen to use "object" tile as north and west outer walls. And by the way, there is an issue with inner "panels" and outer walls being adjacent.

Because of this units are unable to stand near these walls, and this is real gameplay flaw which have to be eleminated. And maps are "hardcoded" to be as they are, without a chance to be rotated.

The way of eleminating this is:
1) Implement "diagonal" wall flags for wall object MCDs (to make them passable by diagonally NE/SW or NW/SE).
2) Implement different map format, which will have 4 walls per tile, not 2.
3) Implement "rotated tiles" table (4 tile IDs for every direction of every tile).
4) Update very map block to fit new map format.
5) Ask Daishiva to update his map editor for handling new map format (which obviously will be in text-form)
6) Fix UFO ship maps and base blocks, and change every outer "object" wall tile to "advanced" wall tile and make them symmetric (computer screens and panels not only for 2 walls, but for 4).
7) Update functions of walking and pathfinder to handle these changes. Update renderer to handle 4 walls per tile (render order must include south and east walls after others).

After these changes map blocks could be rotated for any of 90/180/270 degrees direction, and units could be able to move along any of outer walls. And battlescape view will be rotatable as well.

[luke83]

Just wanted to post these here also , basically so far i have reversed the way the mapblock where created , Front 2 sides are OBJECTS , back 2 sides are Walls. Not sure IF this will ever lead to anything long term but it worth investigating.  I would love to find a way to join the original tiles to my custom one to give max flexibility but i think it would look funny

[luke83]

ok SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS , CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHERE THESE UFO PICTURES ARE STORED IN THE ORIGINAL GAME FILES?

ALSO ARE THESE THE SAME IMAGES USED IN THE UFO DOGFIGHT SCREEN?

[SupSuper]

ok SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS , CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHERE THESE UFO PICTURES ARE STORED IN THE ORIGINAL GAME FILES?

ALSO ARE THESE THE SAME IMAGES USED IN THE UFO DOGFIGHT SCREEN?

They are stored in GEODATA\INTERWIN.DAT.

Yes they are.

And no need for caps.