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

[yrizoud]

bulletproof vest receiving 90% AP damage and 110% HP damage, I guess.

But IMO, don't give a choice to the player if he doesn't have the information to take a decision.
Before mind probe is used, alien lifeforms are complete unknowns, it's impossible to know if they resist 7 shots because high armor, high hp, or luck. Humans are expected to be consistent to their role and appearance, but this is limited by the graphics and flavor design :
- military types can logically have access to ballistic protection, but be drawn as camo clothed anyway.
- *straining eyes* is this blue thing a Nirvana t-shirt or a bulletproof armor ?
- *thinking* is this important church guy naked under his robe, or wearing plot armor because game reasons ?

[Solarius Scorch]

I could add 20 more damage types already today, it's a matter of few hours... but they would be fundamentally no different from any other existing damage types (i.e. you couldn't do anything brand new with them as far as I understand)... I just don't understand how adding another type helps you?

Well, new damage types would mean new "elements". This would allow me to balance weapons with armour. If for example you add "HP damage" (hollow point) as 11th type, then I can make some weapons that currently have AP damage (generally, pistols), add appropriate resistance to units (good res for mechanical units regardless of armour, bad res for most living units) and therefore make the armoury more varied/realistic. (There are other bullet types too, I only give these two as extremes.)

Is it worth it? Some players say yes, as they are pointing out inconsistencies in the weapon behaviour that boil down to this problem. In my opinion no, if it's just to differentiate between AP and HP bullets; I can live with unification of firearms. But being able to define new damage types would be invaluable, since you could have many new weapon types that are currently impossible or need to be incorrectly classified as one of the basic 10 damage - for example, electric damage as plasma. This would be so rad.

@Yrizoud: yeah, good points. I wouldn't make it this unclear to the player though.

[Meridian]

Let me repeat that once again, because I think you didn't understand what I said.

In vanilla OXC, a few damage types (stun, smoke and incendiary) have some special behavior... but the rest is totally identical (there's no difference between AP, Acid, Plasma, Laser, Melee, ...).

In OXCE, Yankes unhardcoded all of this and now there is no difference between them at all. You can make AP work as Smoke, or Incendiary work as Plasma. As far as I understand, the only thing we need the damage type for is the display the name of it to the user in the Ufopedia and to define resistance to it on various armors.

Back to your 11th type... why on earth would I hard-code a new damage type to do only health damage... if all available damage types already can do health damage if you tell them to (actually it's not damage types, it's actual ammo items... as I said damage type is just a name).

So if you need:
a/ different translation for your new damage type
b/ or different armor resistances to your new damage type
... I can make a few for you (let's say 5 new?).
But they would be bare, without any special effects (just like plasma, laser, AP, acid, ...).
And I would even call them DT_11, DT_12, DT_13, etc. to prevent confusion that they actually are hardcoded to do something specific in the code.

@Yankes: if you're reading this, maybe you can confirm/disprove what I just said.

[Solarius Scorch]

Frankly, I don't understand some parts of your post (the fact it's Friday evening is probably responsible, at least partially). Are you saying I can already add another type of damage that would correspond to a new unique resistance type?

I'll give an example. Let's say we're importing Deep Ones from TFTD to UFO (I mean the white transformed humans). Deep Ones use electric damage to attack. This damage type would be decent against non-armoured humans, excellent against machines and poor against most types of armour, which is expressed in resistance value against electricity. How would I go about it?

These questions are also aimed at Yankes; if you read this, please respond.

PS. This issue is one half of the damage mechanics improvement plan Dioxine and I have devised, the other half being multiple damage types per attack (see Solar's Wishlist for details).

[Meridian]

Frankly, I don't understand some parts of your post (the fact it's Friday evening is probably responsible, at least partially). Are you saying I can already add another type of damage that would correspond to a new unique resistance type?

No, I didn't say you can add new damage types
Only that you can modify the existing ones as you wish... and perform "special" effects (like e.g. hp damage) by other means.
Special effects are not hardcoded in OXCE anymore; and don't depend on damage type (other than backwards compatibility with vanilla, which you can override too if you wish).

If you need a unique resistance type, I will have to create it for you.... that's point b/ in my previous post.

I'll play with that over the weekend and prepare an experimental version for you with a few more generic damage/resistance types added.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks. Yeah, I understood I couldn't mod new damage types as such, but maybe it would be possible to emulate it via clever use of scripts and such.

What would be best is if it was possible to add new damage automatically, so for example I enter "damageType: 16" and the game simply recognizes it as damage type 16, so if there are 17 or more resistances listed in the armour entry, the game automatically chooses 17th resistance to counter the damage (and if not, it assumes 100%).
But it's probably too complicated, so I'd be happy with just some new damage types beyond the vanilla 10. How many? It's a complex question; if we stay true to the original design, in think another 10 would be more than enough.
Or a way to emulate it with scripts, but it'd probably cause hell with things like Ufopaedia display, or my own understanding of ruleset.

[Yankes]

[ps]This post lost value after Solarius Scorch replay, but I spend too much time on it to dump it to trash :>[/ps]

Let me repeat that once again, because I think you didn't understand what I said.

In vanilla OXC, a few damage types (stun, smoke and incendiary) have some special behavior... but the rest is totally identical (there's no difference between AP, Acid, Plasma, Laser, Melee, ...).

In OXCE, Yankes unhardcoded all of this and now there is no difference between them at all. You can make AP work as Smoke, or Incendiary work as Plasma. As far as I understand, the only thing we need the damage type for is the display the name of it to the user in the Ufopedia and to define resistance to it on various armors.

Back to your 11th type... why on earth would I hard-code a new damage type to do only health damage... if all available damage types already can do health damage if you tell them to (actually it's not damage types, it's actual ammo items... as I said damage type is just a name).

So if you need:
a/ different translation for your new damage type
b/ or different armor resistances to your new damage type
... I can make a few for you (let's say 5 new?).
But they would be bare, without any special effects (just like plasma, laser, AP, acid, ...).
And I would even call them DT_11, DT_12, DT_13, etc. to prevent confusion that they actually are hardcoded to do something specific in the code.

@Yankes: if you're reading this, maybe you can confirm/disprove what I just said.

99% confirm, 1% is `TileEngine::blockage` that handle specially propagation/tile blocking of explosion with damage type none and type smoke, hard to say how big effects this have on game play. I simply miss this part when I did unification of damage types.

Frankly, I don't understand some parts of your post (the fact it's Friday evening is probably responsible, at least partially). Are you saying I can already add another type of damage that would correspond to a new unique resistance type?

I'll give an example. Let's say we're importing Deep Ones from TFTD to UFO (I mean the white transformed humans). Deep Ones use electric damage to attack. This damage type would be decent against non-armoured humans, excellent against machines and poor against most types of armour, which is expressed in resistance value against electricity. How would I go about it?

This will be solved by Meridian when he add this "DT_11", only difference to other damage types will be from what position in armor resist table its will read value.
If this is still confusing let me elaborate:

in OXC damage type and damage behavior are link together.
Damage type define what position is read in `damageModifier` in armor. (we can name it resistances)
Damage behavior is how units starts interact with damage, e.g. "do only stun is applied?", "it is ignoring armor?".

in OXCE I split this two things, now damage behavior is part of item (`damageAlter`) and is independent to damage type.
Only moment they interact is when you set `damageType` on item, after that `damageAlter` will have default values same to damage behavior linked to that damage type in original OXC.

When Meridian add new damage types then only real difference will be that `damageModifier` in armor will have more possible values:

Code: [Select]

damageModifier:[1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0] #old
damageModifier:[1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 13.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0] #new
and now item with `damageType:10` it will do 13 time more damage to that armor. Difference to `ToHealth` is that latter apply to all armors.


For multiple damage types per attack will be possible in 3.4 (3.3 will be around next week finished). But this will be done by scripts.

[Arthanor]

Hi! Started playing again today, and I had an epic encounter with 2 reapers. My first thought was: "What?! Those are real aliens!" but there were some civilians, so I decided to try (btw, integrating some of the advanced civilians features that allow XCom agents to save civilians would be cool, and for that reason, 2 extra "evacuation" tiles at the back of the van, maybe one at the back of the car, could be good).

After killing my first reaper, I decided to go all Jurassic Park on the second and catch it. After what I deemed to be enough "softening fire", I moved 3 agents with stun batons (still haven't gotten around to buying tazers, silly me). 1 agent with a HKMP5 was providing cover fire, since sometimes it feels like you can make an alien rethink their advance if they are under fire. When the reaper got close enough, agents moved in, whacked it, and the HKMP5 finished the job (enough stun damage applied, you can apply proper damage and lower HP below the stun damage done). Woot! Captured reaper! But nope.. alien dies because of no containment 

If it's a wild reaper, presumably it can live in the wild? Why can't I keep it in animal pens?

[Solarius Scorch]

If it's a wild reaper, presumably it can live in the wild? Why can't I keep it in animal pens?

Yeah, it's an omission on my part.
I give you my permission to manually add a living Reaper to the save.


EDIT: coming soon!

[HelmetHair]

Catacombs? 

Oh, HEEEEELLL NO!

What next?

Ass cancer lolipops?

Why do you hate my agents so much... oh god.

You better add something like a Saiga 12.

Excellent work.

[ohartenstein23]

Love the guy staring at the camera with the sniper rifle (at least, that's what I assume it is since you're re-using XOps' hybrid sniper rifle sprite) - "Caves, and you give me *this*?  Thanks, commander.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks for the kind words people! Here's the new version: https://www.mediafire.com/download/syfuoqso0t2va3m/OpenXcom_XFiles_0.3.1.zip

- Fixed broken Ufopaedia entries for the new prison facilities.
- Some Ufopaedia updates.
- More Cyberdiscs in Cydonia.
- Slightly increased Zombies aggression.
- Added new city blocks by Civilian.
- Added stat caps on Gym training.
- Gym is a bit less efficient.
- Reduced effective ranges on pistols.
- Added Concussion Cannon with ammo to the T'leth weaponry.
- Leather Coats are now buyable and require Personal Protection.
- Hidden Caves arc started.
- Fixed a random fatal crash on Black Lotus Witch interrogation.
- Fixed too many Zombie missions bug.
- Fixed a small error in the DAWNURBAN12 map.
- Added missing Tasoth researches.
- Some new minor stuff.

[Arthanor]

Woot! Cool stuff coming What would you think of a reaper sprite without armor? To make it look really wild.

[Solarius Scorch]

Woot! Cool stuff coming What would you think of a reaper sprite without armor? To make it look really wild.

I'd love it, and the same goes to Salamandron.
Unfortunately, Falko's tools recently disappeared, so no more new big units for now...

[Arthanor]

Editing the sprite sheet should be doable any ways, but I don't have tools to fix up the palette after I mess things up. I'll look into it any ways. The sprite work will take a while any ways.. Hopefully by then, Falko's tools will come back. They were really useful.

Another thing: I got a rifle, SA-80, which I don't know much about, and apparently my scientists refuse to work on. If you think there is a reason why I shouldn't be able to buy more (or more ammo for it) by simply researching it, that's fine. But it'd be nice to get some info on what it does. I would suggest a system where you have one STR_RIFLE_SA80 research topic with "needitem: true" for the gun so it can be researched and tells what it does (ie gives a ufopaedia article, the equivalent of taking it to a firing range for a bit of time, I'd guess?), and a different topic, which has the dependencies of the current one, and is what is needed to buy the weapon and ammo (what actually takes more time as you have to setup the contacts, permissions and logistics). It makes sense in Piratez to not be able to study advanced guns when the gals are in the stone age, but for modern rifles in XComFiles it is less logical.

Also, thanks for the live reaper