Re: The X-Com Files - 3.5: Whispers In The Dark

[krautbernd]

...but do we really need more of those little monsters?

[Solarius Scorch]

I have also redone the default giant spider inventory image and moved all the templates 6 pixels to the right so they don't overlap the weapon boxes. There's something funky going on with the colors - i have used the standard battlescape palette, but the colors always come out a bit lighter/brighter in the mod. If you can point me to the right palette to use i'd happily redo them (or other image files for that matter).

Wow, that was fast! I'll review it ASAP. And don't worry about the palette.

Don’t forget I posted some spider frames in the resources section that would fit the HWP frame

I haven't forgotten I just don't know what to do with them yet.

[krautbernd]

Wow, that was fast! I'll review it ASAP. And don't worry about the palette.

Yeah, but can you tell me which palette xcomfiles actually uses for these (or for the Ufopedia articles)? Because i've been working on the Ufopedia background image and some of the colors are off, but the rest are identical.

[Solarius Scorch]

Added the new spiders to the mod. Good work!

Yeah, but can you tell me which palette xcomfiles actually uses for these (or for the Ufopedia articles)? Because i've been working on the Ufopedia background image and some of the colors are off, but the rest are identical.

It's a bit complicated:
- stuff which appears both on the battlescape and in the Pedia (bigobs, paperdolls) use one palette (paleta)
- stuff which appears only on the battlescape (floorobs, handobs, unit sprites, terrain, etc.) use a very similar palette (battle); bigobs not used in the pedia (like human corpses) can also use it
- standard Pedia articles use a different type (ufo-research); in OXCE, you can also use custom palettes for this
There are also separate palettes used for other stuff, like the basescape, backgrounds etc.

Attached the three palettes I mentioned.

[krautbernd]

Yeah, GIMP apparently can't handle photoshop palettes. Nevermind, it's not that important as long as i know that using the normal palettes is ok.

[Solarius Scorch]

Version 0.9.7 is released!

0.9.7:
- New briefing music tracks.
- New Staff Inputs (one by BTAxis).
- New Ufopaedia articles.
- New facilities: X-Com Virtualized Headquarters, Drone Bay (two variants).
- New units: X-Com Roboturret (two variants), Osiron Elite, Red Dreamsprite, David Vincent, Gertrude Ellison.
- New armor: Astral Armor.
- New items: Dream Blade, Delicious Cake, First Aid Kit (former First Aid Kit renamed to Medipack).
- New missions: David Vincent's Secret Shelter, Ambush of Alien Abductors, Osiron Hidden Warehause Assault (all by Finnik), Crazed Antmen Village, Horrors of Antarctica, Dreamscape Journey.
- New Forest mapblocks (by Finnik).
- New Farm mapblock (by Finnik).
- New Alien Base mapblocks.
- Enhanced Pink Desert terrain (by Nord).
- Buffed Medical Bag.
- Enhanced vanilla UFO sprites (removed useless black masking).
- New paperdolls for Giant Spider variants (by Krautbernd).
- Enhanced Aquatoid paperdoll (by Nord).
- Added special colours for smoke and stun explosions.
- Overhauled alien mission generation system (moved everything to scripts).
- Refactored the laser weapons tech tree.
- Increased Osprey range.
- Technomads are now guaranteed to give Cyberweb Manufacturing.
- Rebalanced the UAC Rifle, the M60 and the BlackOps LMG.
- Pickaxe now has separate modes for digging and hitting people.
- Disabled armor modifiers on extreme difficulty levels.
- Some underground maps now are properly lit at night.
- Changed rank 4 of the Ethereal race to Soldiers.
- Most cave missions are darker again, as daylight vision was kicking in.
- Removed grates from the Vampire Castle (by Dioxine).
- Heavy Cannon and Auto-Cannon now open the M.A.G.M.A. arc (like the Light Cannon).
- T'leth Embassy now requires Underwater Operations.
- Ethereals are more fire resistant.
- Fixed unarmored dog armor values.
- Fixed enemy hybrids' excessive night vision.
- Fixed the Knockout Grenade.
- Fixed the Prison mapblock.
- Fixed Flame Spider explosion.
- Fixed Cleric of Apocalypse animation.
- Fixed the lack of mission rating below -1000.
- Fixed a crash on the Cydonia or Bust article in Japanese.
- More fixes of Undersea City buildings.
- Minor fixes.

[null-painter]

So, not too sure if this is the appropriate place for this post - perhaps should be in OXCE thread or piratez, (or not even mentioned at all)?

I'm having trouble getting piratez and xcom files to co-exist *nicely* on my linux machine...  this may also happen to Windoze users, can't confirm that myself. I can manage to play both games if I maintain two copies of everything, so maybe this isn't worth any developer time or hassle.

Also, I'd be happy to write a short post for stickying somewhere about how to make both work on a linux setup if that would be most useful (I wasn't able to find much info about this by searching, as the instructions tend to be for windows users).

Details:

OXCE binary uses a (user-specific) file @ $HOME/openxcom/options.cfg. This seems to be modified when OXCE is run somehow.

If xpiratez and xcom files are both placed in the mods folder of a linux OXCE install (https://lxnt.wtf/oxem/#/Extended), there is no mention of openxcom files in options.cfg - those gals hog the spotlight, I guess.  This means a user can't run openxcom files.

If the linux OXCE binary is moved into the xcom files folder (https://openxcom.mod.io/the-x-com-files), just replacing windows .exe it is possible to play easily.
However, adding xpiratez mods to this setup does not make piratez selectable from the mods menu. I guess the men in black redact the config file?

Ideally, it would be possible to have both in the same mods folder and switch between in the mods menu?

Are there significant problems with having a two folder setup?

1. My options.cfg file is shared by both "versions", which I thought would make me lose my preferred options, when switching games (I use "auto end battle", arrows and TUs on path, and "smooth bullet camera" - which aren't on by default). However, this isn't the case somehow - those settings were preserved between the two mods somehow? Maybe I'm just totally insane  .

2. I have to maintain two copies of  OXCE, UFO, and TFTD files on my machine (I guess TFTD isn't needed, though?) Not too big of a deal - these aren't huge files.

3. What happens if a user enables someting in xcom files that is verboten in piratez and switches games? I didn't want to try it.

At any rate, thanks all of you for making awesome games for us lurkers!

[ohartenstein23]

Hi null-painter, I use both mods on a linux system and don't have to maintain two copies of everything, though that is generally easier if you don't want to do some reconfiguring work. Also this is an issue for anyone running multiple, exclusive mega-mods.

You can use command line options to specify which configuration, data, and user files are read when the OpenXcomEx executable is run. For example,

Code: [Select]

/path/to/your/OXCE/install/OpenXcomEx -user "/path/to/your/OXCE/install/user" -config "/path/to/your/OXCE/install/config_piratez"
will tell the game to look for mods and saves in the "user" folder in your OXCE install and the options.cfg file found in the "config_piratez". If both XCF and piratez are in "OXCE/user/mods", then you can set the game to run piratez when the options.cfg in "config_piratez" is passed to the executable, and run XCF for another options.cfg placed in a different folder. I keep a set of bash script files to run the game with different options.cfg files for each set of mods I play.

If you wanted to keep two separate OXCE folders, you could use a symlink to the UFO/TFTD files if you didn't want to maintain multiple copies of those folders.

[Solarius Scorch]

There's a nasty bug in one terrain... I'm uploading a fixed version right now, but if you already downloaded 0.9.7, you can just replace the files attached.

[HT]

Version 0.9.7 is released!


- New facilities: X-Com Virtualized Headquarters, Drone Bay (two variants).
- New units: X-Com Roboturret (two variants), Osiron Elite, Red Dreamsprite, David Vincent, Gertrude Ellison.
- New armor: Astral Armor.
- New items: Dream Blade, Delicious Cake, First Aid Kit (former First Aid Kit renamed to Medipack).
- New missions: David Vincent's Secret Shelter, Ambush of Alien Abductors, Osiron Hidden Warehause Assault (all by Finnik), Crazed Antmen Village, Horrors of Antarctica, Dreamscape Journey.

It took you years, but finally we have a X-COM adaptation of The Thing, yay! Flamers not included though. Can you still do the mission if you got rid of the monster missions already?
Actually, can you still do the special cult missions (aka "Capture Mister Wang" and so on) if you got rid of the cults already?
Also, you can build the improved headquarters without having to research it first (or at least it happens so in my save).
As for the robo-turrets, they're expendable bots, but sadly you need to build a specific building for that instead of recycling a "defense facility" like Piratez does. Do you need to buy special ammo for the Gaus/Minigun drone variants though?
Interesting dream mission, I didn't expect something like this for XCOM. However, from what I understood, you need to have the PSI-user hurt in order to use the healing item on him/her*, right? Since the enemies here are meant to be the user's inner demons, does that mean that killing everything means your agent became mentally perfect? 


*We probably need different sprites for female agents and Hybrids though, as otherwise it looks odd.

[Solarius Scorch]

It took you years, but finally we have a X-COM adaptation of The Thing, yay! Flamers not included though. Can you still do the mission if you got rid of the monster missions already?

Yes, it's not related to monsters.

Actually, can you still do the special cult missions (aka "Capture Mister Wang" and so on) if you got rid of the cults already?

Yes, destroying the cult doesn't mean destroying all its members.

Also, you can build the improved headquarters without having to research it first (or at least it happens so in my save).

Hmmm... Might be a bug. I'll check.

As for the robo-turrets, they're expendable bots, but sadly you need to build a specific building for that instead of recycling a "defense facility" like Piratez does. Do you need to buy special ammo for the Gaus/Minigun drone variants though?

No, you don't have to buy/make the ammo.
And Piratez still require more buildings

Interesting dream mission, I didn't expect something like this for XCOM. However, from what I understood, you need to have the PSI-user hurt in order to use the healing item on him/her*, right? Since the enemies here are meant to be the user's inner demons, does that mean that killing everything means your agent became mentally perfect? 

Maybe not perfect, but better

*We probably need different sprites for female agents and Hybrids though, as otherwise it looks odd.

Eh? They've always had different sprites.

[Meridian]

- Fixed the lack of mission rating below -1000.

Mission rating was not fixed, only month rating as far as I can see...

... and only until -9999... but what about poor us, who get even worse score?

[HT]

Eh? They've always had different sprites.

I see. It doesn't work too well with the battle generator, that's the issue.

[Solarius Scorch]

Mission rating was not fixed, only month rating as far as I can see...

Yes, I made a mistake.

... and only until -9999... but what about poor us, who get even worse score?

This bug has been fixed already.
(I released this screenshot first )

[null-painter]

Thank you for your help, ohartenstein23!

Those command line options work great. I now also have two shell scripts to run the two games - much cleaner!