Author Topic: Playable alien and flyable UFO projects  (Read 26139 times)

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2016, 01:08:11 am »
Paint.NET is what I use.

Offline Starving Poet

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 265
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2016, 08:17:14 am »
Paint.net does not work correctly with indexed palettes.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2676.0.html

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2016, 08:43:51 am »
Thanks. Wondered why the other mod crafts worked (used them as base to set up my image files) but mine didn't. I may seem lazy with doing searching but that's because of the fatigue. Gonna try those paint tools out.

Yup, copied my scout's base image over to a base image file of a mod craft with mtPaint and instantly the ingame color issue is seen but, ugh. Can't paint something small without zooming in.

Nevermind, but still. For now i just slapped Firestorm's id on it for geoscape and ufopaedia still retains the custom picture of it from battlescape.

This is in the ship's ufopaedia:
« Last Edit: July 29, 2016, 11:03:03 am by Droggarth »

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1510
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #33 on: July 29, 2016, 01:10:46 pm »
The crash happens because the game can't place any XCom units on the map.
It's because the floor block isn't calibrated to spawn XCom units.


I fixed it by swapping the tile out for a Skyranger tile. You could alternatively edit the characteristics of the purple tile to make it able to spawn Xcom units, but you'd want to make a copy tile because if you edit the original tile like that you could have soldiers spawning in the alien ship, or cause a crash.

Here's a working mod using the Skyranger tile:

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #34 on: July 29, 2016, 02:20:00 pm »
It's because the floor block isn't calibrated to spawn XCom units.


I fixed it by swapping the tile out for a Skyranger tile. You could alternatively edit the characteristics of the purple tile to make it able to spawn Xcom units, but you'd want to make a copy tile because if you edit the original tile like that you could have soldiers spawning in the alien ship, or cause a crash.

Here's a working mod using the Skyranger tile:

It's nice to see a third person to do it. Hobbes and I already did it in a way so the regular small scout should remain separate from the modded useable/playable one thanks to MCDEdit and MapView route nodes.

On an off note. I'm so worn out today thanks to modding frenzy and updating my OpenXcom install to the latest nightly from 1.0 and also today I realized I can dig up my TFtD install from somewhere on the hard drives and get it running with OpenXcom but that's something for much, much later because I feel like I've just gone through a literal modding hell to the point I'm just happy thinking about the fact that I can boot up the game, start a new campaign and get my Gazer (even though it's and armor, atm) and customized advanced small scout nicknamed "Fhyr" that I made quite OP in terms of stats.

Why OP? Personal gaming reasons coupled with minimizing mental health issues plus I love the idea of one man playable alien army in games. After all I am a being who loves using the Thargoid ships through cheating in Frontier First Encounters (yes I'm that anal about NOT playing as a human, even renamed the OpenXcom mod called Terran Plasma Weapons mod to Furian instead of Terran so I could have different set of OP plasma weapons and not be irked by the human name thing, no offence to the creator of the mod).
« Last Edit: July 29, 2016, 02:31:34 pm by Droggarth »

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1510
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #35 on: July 29, 2016, 11:16:30 pm »
Someone should probably make a super easy mode for people with difficulty playing under normal conditions. I sure could have used that when I was younger. Maybe I'll make such a thing.


Several years ago, I used an attribute editor for Warcraft 1 to make the game playable--I buffed the stats of human units slightly and nerfed orcs slightly. The only tough part at that point was the mission where your humans go up against other humans, but I was able to beat it when I realized the human AI over-uses clerics and ignores archers, so I buffed archers and nerfed clerics.

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #36 on: July 30, 2016, 05:32:50 am »
Someone should probably make a super easy mode for people with difficulty playing under normal conditions. I sure could have used that when I was younger. Maybe I'll make such a thing.


Several years ago, I used an attribute editor for Warcraft 1 to make the game playable--I buffed the stats of human units slightly and nerfed orcs slightly. The only tough part at that point was the mission where your humans go up against other humans, but I was able to beat it when I realized the human AI over-uses clerics and ignores archers, so I buffed archers and nerfed clerics.

Interesting. I myself like to do it by maxing out/making the character invulnerable in a normal or hard setting, I like having clever/aggressive AI but at the same time a unit/character that cannot be killed and just mow down the opposition. That's just what I consider to be fun, anything too challenging/competitive and that's where my issues with gaming start and it always jolts to crud from there. Trust me I've tried playing games legit and afterwards I feel like driving my keyboard through the monitor or doing a similar harmful thing elsewhere.

Major edit to the original post. Made my own take of the small scout available finally in hopes of getting the geoscape graphics in too and non-messed up ingame ufopedia entry.

EDIT: Nevermind. Had a crash and the cause was one of my attempts at making alien soldiers that I forgot in somewhere. Crash happened while saving a game.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2016, 05:55:44 am by Droggarth »

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1510
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #37 on: February 10, 2017, 08:11:13 pm »
Trust me I've tried playing games legit and afterwards I feel like driving my keyboard through the monitor or doing a similar harmful thing elsewhere.
I often feel the same way. Usually it's due to the binary nature of punishment in the game. You're doing fine until suddenly you're dead, and you have to retry the spot a few times and die again each time until you figure out what mistake you supposedly made.

I like to change games to preserve the challenge while eliminating the struggle, perhaps by giving the player character(s) more hit points or more time to respond. I've been reasonably satisfied with the toughness of X-Com troops since I am able to use tanks to distract enemies, and also a dead soldier isn't a game over. But there's still a part of me that never likes seeing a soldier be fine one moment and dead the next.

One thing you could do is give your unit low armor but high health and resistances. Then there's still a challenge because you want to avoid being hit, but if you slip up and get hit once, it'll just tick off a bit of HP and you try not to do that again.

You might also toy with using two units. I get not wanting a whole squad, but there's also something to be said for being able to sweep the map. I rarely struggle to find the last alien because by the time I'm done sweeping the map, none have had a chance to slip through.

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Need Firestorm to have alien Scout's battlescape appearance
« Reply #38 on: April 17, 2017, 08:05:33 am »

(Droggarth: Rest of the post I've read.)

I get not wanting a whole squad, but there's also something to be said for being able to sweep the map. I rarely struggle to find the last alien because by the time I'm done sweeping the map, none have had a chance to slip through.

I'm no more interested in challenge in any game anymore so the concept of challenge and competitions just do not compute for me anymore. If I was able to play as the aliens of X-Com 1, I'd just wreck the whole human planet without a second thought, I just hate humanity in general, I hate challenge, I hate competition and I loathe being stuck in a human body. With that rant out of the way now...

I do use more than one unit in a larger craft but that amount is very small as I have one unit inside my spacecraft as a mind controller whenever my commando unit sees hostiles to reveal if there are more hostiles around the seen hostile, and then I have a second unit somewhere who is there for support, either with mind control if the main mind controller unit has depleted its TUs or if my main commando in combat has still hostiles around and is out of TUs or needs some stamina rest. And it is mandatory for me to first edit all three units of mine with very high stats to make them jack-of-all-trades and skip the whole level-up chore entirely to keep my own sanity intact.

I have tried the high health thing long ago but it puts the wounded unit(s) on a long recovery time and I need my alien commando quickly back in action so I avoid the whole issue by having very high armor points.

Anyway, this got off-topic and right now I'm not sure what is on-topic as I haven't visited this site for a long while now.

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: [WIP] Playable alien small scout projects (Title change)
« Reply #39 on: February 08, 2021, 01:12:18 pm »
Added missing craft files to my version 0.3 because previous versions were missing that crucial substance due to my at-the-time stressed out state. Good grief, why didn't nobody mention this!? Yikes, I could've fixed it ages ago! :o

Anyhow here's a working (I hope) attachment of my mod, please let me know this time if it works or not. Checked it on my end and it works (then again I use older version of OpenXcom so I'm not sure as I'm not that tech-savvy due to some mental problems).

I've also tweaked the craft's hangar sprite with Aseprite in my current version. And.. to keep things tidy for now, I've added my Gazer Armor mod. Both that and the Fhyr ship are cheat mods basically because that's how I usually roll.


All that aside, I'm not quite the person I was 3 years ago. The old me was too stressed out and angry way too often.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2021, 05:49:01 pm by Droggarth »

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Playable alien and flyable UFO projects
« Reply #40 on: February 08, 2021, 04:53:33 pm »


Added some shading to it and made shadow look a bit better.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2021, 05:10:55 pm by Droggarth »

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Playable alien and flyable UFO projects
« Reply #41 on: February 09, 2021, 06:12:16 pm »
Thanks! Though my modding skills aren't good enough for some large overhaul. I'm still struggling with making a custom pyramid ship be able to spawn onto battlescape without giving errors. So far it's the routing I have the most issue with, errors seem to be saying the game is not able to spawn xcom units onto it.

A comprehensible short guide to making routes for custom ships would be nice.

Offline Solarius Scorch

  • Global Moderator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 11408
  • WE MUST DISSENT
    • View Profile
    • Nocturmal Productions modding studio website
Re: Playable alien and flyable UFO projects
« Reply #42 on: February 12, 2021, 02:38:58 pm »
A comprehensible short guide to making routes for custom ships would be nice.

Perhaps you can find some info here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7664.0.html

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1510
    • View Profile
Re: [WIP] Playable alien small scout projects (Title change)
« Reply #43 on: February 23, 2021, 07:53:28 am »
All that aside, I'm not quite the person I was 3 years ago. The old me was too stressed out and angry way too often.

I'm glad to hear you're doing better! I've had my fair share of hard times, and happy to say I have mostly been doing better also!

Offline Droggarth

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 55
  • Xenophilic Mutant Commando
    • View Profile
Re: Playable alien and flyable UFO projects
« Reply #44 on: May 03, 2021, 03:18:43 am »
Perhaps you can find some info here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7664.0.html

Uh,that Mapping_manual.pdf file there can't be downloaded due to 404 error. :-\

I'm glad to hear you're doing better! I've had my fair share of hard times, and happy to say I have mostly been doing better also!

Thanks! Though my brain hasn't improved much as I'm already having a headache trying to make routes work with that old MapView for a prototype alien craft. Currently I haven't bothered with making a unique looking ship yet, I only have only the bare essentials set up for a new ship with placeholders put in place for modding which is why it looks exactly like the small scout (that bigger one) as I'm trying to understand routing with no results. Game just keeps crashing, unable to spawn X-Com units and I'm no longer sure what the hezmana it wants at this point. The WIP mod file of mine is under this post, feel free to explain it to me in layman's/caveman's terms as I'm at the edge of frustration and at the edge of my wits here. :(