[ALIEN] [WIP] Triffids!

[Wolfstarr]

So after a long hiatus from doing anything to do with OXC I thought I would get back in after watching Day of the Triffids I'm surprised the mutant / alien plant thing hasn't been done already

Anyways here is my draft ufopaedia page along with the spritesheet I am planning to use.  The eagle eyed gamers among you may have fought this beastie before in another game series.

If you haven't here's a hint ... Bad Breath!

[Solarius Scorch]

The more, the better ☺

Is it going to be a terror unit?

[Hobbes]

The sprites are fine but the alien doesn't look at all like the Triffids of the original novel by John Wyndham



The Triffids were also slow to move and relied mainly on ambushing its prey and then using their stinger to render them unconscious with venom before placing themselves over the human bodies and start digesting them. Many triffids were originally 'tamed' versions which were chained to a location with their stingers removed.

[Solarius Scorch]

The sprites are fine but the alien doesn't look at all like the Triffids of the original novel by John Wyndham

Yes, but it is still much closer than any other adaptation of the book. ☺

If it's just loosely based on the concept, then I don't mind. BTW it reminds me of an old joke idea for the Piratez mod: an enemy which looks exactly like a bush, does not move and "zombifies" people into more bushes. ☺

[Hobbes]

BTW it reminds me of an old joke idea for the Piratez mod: an enemy which looks exactly like a bush, does not move and "zombifies" people into more bushes. ☺

I remember this discussion... the shrub that would 'shrubify' unsuspecting units passing by

[Wolfstarr]

Thanks all Defo a terror unit!

Hobbes, I was going for a nod to the triffids as couldn't find any sprite that looks like them but wanted a way to put them in XCOM as a great monster from the sci-fi archives. 

The sprite is that of a Marlboro from Final Fantasy games that has an attack that does status effect damage, so I was thinking of one nighters that spits acid and another that does a melee attack.

Maybe their could be a third unit infects players and turns them into plants.

Would love an alien plant from HP Lovecrafts the Colour out of space to.

[Wolfstarr]

So I can sort out the sprite but wonder which drawing routine I should use, I think the ethereal one could work but the wiki isn't giving me a great deal of information.

As this is my first unit mod I was going to attempt a /sprite folder using multiple single images and believe that the drawing rotine needs 75 images in the order of:

Triffid_001 to 008 - Standing Images - starting at top right and rotating clockwise until 12o'clock
Triffid_009 to 016 - Walking up right x 8
Triffid_017 to 024 - Walking center right x 8
Triffid_025 to 032 - Walking down right x 8
Triffid_033 to 040 - Walking down center x 8
Triffid_041 to 048 - Walking down left x 8
Triffid_049 to 056 - Walking center left x 8
Triffid_057 to 064 - Walking up left x 8
Triffid_065 to 072 - Walking up center x 8
Triffid_073 to 075 - Death animation x 3

Is this correct?

Thanks in advance to all posters

[ivandogovich]

I don't know if this helps, but it makes sense to me.

[Wolfstarr]

I don't know if this helps, but it makes sense to me.

Perfect, thank you

[Warboy1982]

you'll need a corpse sprite for the floorob (which also serves as the "final frame" in the death animation, but is seperate from the spritesheet for the unit)
and as an aside, you'll want to get into the habit of counting from 0 instead of starting at 1

[Wolfstarr]

you'll need a corpse sprite for the floorob (which also serves as the "final frame" in the death animation, but is seperate from the spritesheet for the unit)
and as an aside, you'll want to get into the habit of counting from 0 instead of starting at 1

Thanks Warboy Working on the sprites at the moment, think I've found some nice SFX for the unit but sounds crappy after converting to 8-bit.

[Wolfstarr]

So I am getting there ... sprite editing takes ages!

Looking at the ruleset (I'm using a Celatid as reference) how do I reference it to use the weapon? I can see you define one in items but the STR doesn't seem to be called elsewhere in the unit configuration.

Please can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Warboy1982]

if you're using the nightly build, try using the Triscene as a base, otherwise it's the "livingWeapon" flag that adds automatically equips the unit with an item called RACENAME_WEAPON, where RACENAME is the same as what's listed for the unit, minus the preceding STR_

[Wolfstarr]

Woohoo they are in and work

Please bear in mind that this is designed to work with 1.0 and needs a fair bit of tweaking for balancing and any bug fixes! But I have tested it in a battle scenario and it works.

I did have to use Falko's tools to fix the sprites but was relatively simple to do.

Have fun people! I've included some of my source files if anyone wants to do any tweaking

P.S. F12 screenshot doesn't seem to work on my machine

[Solarius Scorch]

Can I please use them for the "Dimension X" arc in my X-Com Files mod?