[UFO MEGAMOD] Reaver's Faithful Megamod

[Lord_Kane]

I fixed it! Changing the walls to various bigwall types worked exactly as I expected. Apparently I wasn't updating it correctly before.

Wall fix update released, along with upgrading the Lightning, Heracles, and Stalker maps to the same version I have in my mod in development, that way there's less chance of me releasing a mod update with mismatching map and tileset which I may or may not have previously done.

Update thoroughly tested by awake me, so should be much more bug-free than any other recent updates.

I will test this and annoy you on discord!

[ubai]

Just wanted to say thanks for this mod, it is great fun! So far, I have to say that your mod has the best difficulty balance and is the only one I would consider for iron man mode.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Thanks! I did indeed have iron-man mode in mind with this mod. It has always bugged me that 90%+ of my reloads are due to game bugs and not user error. I try to ensure that the player is given enough communication and control such that it ideally eliminates as much internal error as possible. That being said, I won't play iron man mode even on my mod!

I have also been working on more balance updates and adjustments in my upcoming mod, so I'll probably eventually do a balance pass on this one. A few things are still out of balance. Let me know if you find any!

[ubai]

The main thing I have noticed is that laser rifles and pistols are no longer transparent in the inventory UI, but you may know that already.

Thanks!
Matt

[Lord_Kane]

thats a bug with how oxce uses transparency I have attached a fix that will be part of my mod (which is a mod of reavers mod, but more on that later.)

[The Reaver of Darkness]

thats a bug with how oxce uses transparency I have attached a fix that will be part of my mod (which is a mod of reavers mod, but more on that later.)

I think it might be a bug with how OXC uses transparency. Some of my textures were bugged, and I never found out until I started playing in OXCE. Sure enough, I check the images, and they don't have a transparency set.

But I had thought I fixed them all.

edit: I'm not experiencing transparency issues with my laser sprites in-game even though they display without transparency in photo viewer. However, when I install your fix sprite, which looks correct in photo viewer, it causes a lack of transparency in-game.

edit edit: I found out why. Your fix image uses color index 255 as transparency. Image editors and viewers usually recognize this, but openxcom ignores the image's palette and uses its own.

[Lord_Kane]

I think it might be a bug with how OXC uses transparency. Some of my textures were bugged, and I never found out until I started playing in OXCE. Sure enough, I check the images, and they don't have a transparency set.

But I had thought I fixed them all.

edit: I'm not experiencing transparency issues with my laser sprites in-game even though they display without transparency in photo viewer. However, when I install your fix sprite, which looks correct in photo viewer, it causes a lack of transparency in-game.

Its for OXCE not OXC, I noticed that too, its weird, I think OXC and OXCE have different means of handling transparency.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Its for OXCE not OXC, I noticed that too, its weird, I think OXC and OXCE have different means of handling transparency.

No, I'm seeing black boxes when loading it in OXCE. Above, in the edit edit, I explain why. Your image won't work for normal OXC or OXCE, and if you have a version of OXCE in which color index 255 does work for transparency, you should update, also tell Meridian about it.

edit: I fixed it such that it looks right both in-game and in photo viewer. I copied the image into a file that had the correct transparency setting, and put in the correct palette including index 0 as green. I'll put up a new version of Faithful for it eventually but it looks like I might have a lot more of these to fix first.

[Lord_Kane]

No, I'm seeing black boxes when loading it in OXCE. Above, in the edit edit, I explain why. Your image won't work for normal OXC or OXCE, and if you have a version of OXCE in which color index 255 does work for transparency, you should update, also tell Meridian about it.

edit: I fixed it such that it looks right both in-game and in photo viewer. I copied the image into a file that had the correct transparency setting, and put in the correct palette including index 0 as green. I'll put up a new version of Faithful for it eventually but it looks like I might have a lot more of these to fix first.

Reaver, I am using the latest version!  and the only things broken in megamod (and mine initially ) for me where the laser bigobs everything else was fine
here is some screenies using the latest oxce + my fix:

something funky is going on, either we arent communicating properly or I am missing something....(both are extremely likely considering its me here)

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Reaver, I am using the latest version!  and the only things broken in megamod (and mine initially ) for me where the laser bigobs everything else was fine
here is some screenies using the latest oxce + my fix:

something funky is going on, either we arent communicating properly or I am missing something....(both are extremely likely considering its me here)

I don't know what's wrong with OXCE and I may not have the latest version, though mine is pretty close to up to date. The fact that you aren't experiencing the issue with other images in Faithful means that the image fix I provided should work both for you and me, and anyone else, because it doesn't have any format changes from the other images that work. My original laser image had a format problem in which the image's palette listed index #255 as transparent, instead of 0. It worked fine because I used 0 for background anyway. Your fix switched the background to index 255. Any version of OXCE in which it worked would be one that checks the transparency indexing on the image, rather than assuming #0 is transparent, which I'm pretty sure is not what it is supposed to do.

My fix will work because it keeps 0 as the index color for the background and sets the palette to treat 0 as transparent.


In summary:
Original image
Palette index 0: opaque
Palette index 255: transparent
Background color: 0 (opaque)
XCom index 0: transparent
XCom index 255: opaque

Your fix
Palette index 0: opaque
Palette index 255: transparent
Background color: 255 (transparent)
XCom index 0: transparent
XCom index 255: opaque

My fix
Palette index 0: transparent
Palette index 255: opaque
Background color: 0 (transparent)
XCom index 0: transparent
XCom index 255: opaque

[Lord_Kane]

I don't know what's wrong with OXCE and I may not have the latest version, though mine is pretty close to up to date. The fact that you aren't experiencing the issue with other images in Faithful means that the image fix I provided should work both for you and me, and anyone else, because it doesn't have any format changes from the other images that work. My original laser image had a format problem in which the image's palette listed index #255 as transparent, instead of 0. It worked fine because I used 0 for background anyway. Your fix switched the background to index 255. Any version of OXCE in which it worked would be one that checks the transparency indexing on the image, rather than assuming #0 is transparent, which I'm pretty sure is not what it is supposed to do.

My fix will work because it keeps 0 as the index color for the background and sets the palette to treat 0 as transparent.

It is working, but so did mine, so I don't know whats going on.

[Yankes]

I could say I'm culprit, in 5.1 I do lot of reactor and unify graphic bitting in most cases. But then I test it I saw that some mods have used incorrect indexes on some no battlescape graphic and I get "Great Idea (tm)": "I will fix it of you". On load I check if palette have transparent colors and if it not on index 0 then I swap it with 0 to fit general convention in code that 0 mean transparent.

As I see, you relay on old behavior to fix incorrect graphic and with this "fix" I un-fix your graphics.

Currently working combinations:
No-transparency: index 0 used as transparent
Transparency at 0: only index 0 work as transparent
Transparency at other index: engine will try fix palette, all pixels with this transparent index will be converted to index 0 and it will be set transparent.

There we had case where index 0 was used as background and index 255 that have transparency set, this triggered my code and it swap 255 with 0 making all background opaque.

[Meridian]

Morale of the story: Stick to the official format.

Official formats are:
1. "no transparency"... the only true xcom format... in which the game represents your non-transparent color index 0 as transparent
2. "transparency on index 0"... this is not the original format, but it is fully compatible and most people use it because it looks nicer in external image editors/viewers

Any other format (e.g. transparency on index 255) is NOT officially supported and whether it works or not depends on time of the year, and 20 other random factors... don't risk it.

I will discuss with Yankes how to align the "side effects" with OXC again... but I strongly recommend using official formats... it's the only way to be sure it works everywhere and for everybody.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

The problem is that mtpaint ignores the transparency setting and has no way of fixing it. The only way for me to fix a broken image is to copy its pixel data into an image with correct transparency. I had to figure this out in order to understand why all my images were getting broken.

I appreciate the change, though, thanks Yankes. My images would have wound up working correctly in the first place if this change had been made prior to my work.

[Lord_Kane]

Weirdness, because I am just using photoshop to edit this stuff, oh well I guess if it works it works
just fix it as the problems come I guess.