Custom Tilesets & Help

[Volutar]

Small cars and vans - probably yes, but not big vehicles, which are able to occupy too much place, or else they become toys.
Something like that could be nice:
.

The thing is, after rendering of such 3D things, you have to edit it pixel-by-pixel, have to correct jaggedness or even proportions... So it could take even more time than if you draw it from scratch.
You've said there are no good 2d pixel artists? I refuse to believe it. Currently there are no such "vacancies" in this project, so noone is willing to make some nice graphics. Believe me, when 1.0 out - some people with good 2d pixel drawing skills will appear.

[luke83]

I said there are no Talented Artists HERE , currently i am doing what i can but i really only specialise in Cut and Paste .  I have previously posted my stuff on OPENGAMEART trying to get people interested in joining this project and helping me with ART assets ,but so far none have come across that i know of.  Well i hope some more talent people show up , my art is rather bad

Yes a Bobcat would be cool

Tentaculars - I think your doors open the wrong way , i just viewed a TFTD door, it has the Door frame around it also but the door swings other side.

[Volutar]

luke83, there were people drawing upscaled sprites for ufotts... it's too pity they've closed forum. you could look for them in there.
PS: I can draw pixel graphics if I have to.

[luke83]

PS: I can draw pixel graphics if I have to.

Should i just send you a list of what i require for some new maps or what

[Volutar]

After 1.0, probably, yes.

[moriarty]

I think what I've seen so far from Tentaculars is very nice, but it reminds me heavily of the Apocalypse graphics. It looks too 3-dimensional for UFO:EU

Maybe with a few changes to the rendering setup it would look more like the original: less directional light sources to reduce the 3D aspect for example.

I think UFO:EU generally uses very few curved surfaces (for technical reasons, mostly), but it's part of the style, so anything that has too many curves automatically looks out-of-place.

[Ryskeliini]

meh, i aint even pixel artist but more into 3d also with 3dsmax ,but theres plenty of good simple tutorials for isometric pixel art. just doodled this quickly while ago, using this brushset and learning how to use shadeing and lighting in px-art. yes that tanker is bit bland n ugly :p

https://www.nasc.fr/brush/photoshop-pixel-art-brushs-v4/ - brushes
https://kiwinuptuo.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Tutorial-Basics-196016837. - lighthing/shadeing
https://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/093/7/c/pixel_art_tutorial___textures_by_kiwinuptuo-d3d4ufx.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia3exD3JRx8&feature=plcp

... also i think there is plenty of ppl who would like to do pixel art for UFO series. if only they knew that it is possible to do these days. maybe should do some spamming to popular pixel related places and inform ppl?

[Tentaculars]

@luke83

Your're right about that 1 door @ Luke83.  It opens up in the wrong side. I just checked.
I just checked & changed it. The door opens up now correctly and the bathhubs have been resliced.

@Volutar: It is annoying much work thats true but i doubt that its realy much more work than per hand. Tileproportions will always fit, i setup the rendercamera/resolution in a way it will produce a perfect matching 32x40 tile as result. I'll try to upload a new silo without so much noise next days.
I am not so sure about if people will think its "boring" just because their might be some huger tilesobjects. In my opinion its simply freedom of modding.

About the lightning:

I still playing around to get something more close to the comicstyle and the results are quite different.

[Tentaculars]

So far the first results. The upper part shows RGB-Values, the lower part shows result after applying XCOM UFOcolorpalette. Not optimal, but may be a base to work with and modify.

[moriarty]

I guess the cube is the size of one in-game square?

the silo in itself looks good, but I think it has too much detail for xcom I guess it is 2x2 squares, right?

About the ladder: I'm not sure if the ring-like things are supposed to be the rungs of the ladder or those railing-like things that you usually find on high-reaching ladders that are supposed to keep you from falling off. If they are the rungs, why are they convex? if they are the railings, it doesn't look like your average xcom human would fit in there. Also, I'm not sure if I would put ladders in the graphics when the game engine doesn't support anything like those. It will only lead to frustration when people see a ladder and try to make their snipers climb it only to find that it's not possible. (Now if openxcom were to support ladders, that would be way cool, but the mechanics involved might be just a little too much. And I'm not even starting on the animations...)

About the content of the silo: always consider that objects may be partially (tile-by-tile) destroyed in xcom. if somebody were to destroy just one part of the silo, the contents would be expected to spill out - but the game engine doesn't support that. so either we only use empty silos, or they need to contain some kind of solid substance that doesn't spill - which kind of goes against the principles of a silo, I'm afraid

the way xcom works, you always have to consider this tile-based segmentation. if a 2x2 structure has some kind of support structure along the side (or something like your ladder), it is best placed off-center, contained to one of the segments. otherwise, a partially destroyed object features a structural element that has been split lengthwise, which goes against expected behavior. am I making sense? now that I read it again it reads kind of complicated... 

[luke83]

As for water leaking out of a destroyed item , simply create a Destroyed  Sprite with a small pool of liquid at the base, this is already done on the Alien Entertainment item.

As for the Ladders , i would love to see Openxcom to support them, i thought once about using a Alien Level change MCD and adding a Ladder to the graphic , you would just teleport between levels like normal but increase the TUs used.

As for his work looking too 3D for EU , well maybe we should use them for the NEW Openxcom Game i mentioned in another forum , Xcom meets Fallout.

[Tentaculars]

@ moriarty :No the Cube was simply a help to setup the lightsource as the cylinder. Top is bright,front is medium and right side is darkest.

The silo is currently sized 2x2 tiles @ 3 Floorlevels.



About the "realism discussion"

This is realy strange in my opinion. Very common an often seen in many discussions.

Sometimes realism is used to support an opinion and sometimes its used to fight it off . Just as it serves
Xcom simply doesnt support many things and nobody will get disapointed.  I was not when i could not climb through windows or jump over hole. This is not a new game that claims to be very realistic, so it does not make so much sence to pick on those missing features. If you shoot an alien undewater shouldnt be there a blood trail or swiming organs above his corpe ? Is that realistic ? Who cared about that when he played TFTD for example. Why don't grenades bounce of walls or why you cannot  "bowl/roll" them down a stair.
Why can't you climb over halfmensized objects ? There are desks and chairs in the game. Why cant you open or sit down ? Does that add any importance to the gameplay ?

Well here is the answer : they're just cosmetic objects, that's what theyre suposed to be.


That does not mean that climbing up a ladder f.e. is wrong. I think that would be a nice idea to add.
I just dont like the discussion if something is good or bad just because it fits realism or not. In another discussion you're talking about fistfighting aliens which sounds ridicoulus in the first place ->

"hey i am fistfighting of a lobsterman, then im buttkicking a biodrone (cyberdisc)".

My opinion:

If there are any posibilies to bring that into game and make it somehow (rarely) usefull whitout makeing aliens look like weaklings/fools - why not. Question is more: is there space for it so it  adds to the gameplay experience.

[moriarty]

I guess you are right about the cosmetic objects like chairs that have no functional value. although in a battle I'm more likely to climb up a ladder in search of a sniper spot than to sit down in a chair

(also I'm not the one who wants to add tons of melee actions to the game - I was actually trying to tone that discussion down a notch, because I also think that true melee actions against aliens are ridiculous.)

I'm sorry if my criticism sounded a bit harsh. I was trying to make constructive suggestions. I wasn't trying to say that it looks too real in general, but that it will probably look weird when standing in a battlescape next to one of the original xcom objects, because it has a different style. as I mentioned before, your style reminds me of apocalypse

the main point I was trying to make is that in xcom, most larger objects suffer from the tile-based object splitting approach. just think about trees that not only look weird when parts have been destroyed, but also just hang in the air if you shoot away the trunk. same with streetlights. (there's something that could use some improvement in openxcom...)

for your silo, look at the support structure underneath (is that eight-sided or six-sided, btw?): if you destroy parts of it, you will have horizontal struts ending in mid-air. maybe the structure could be changed so that each individual tile still looks functional without the others?
the ladder could be moved to be completely in one tile, so that by destroying the silo partially you will never have half a ladder (split vertically).

[luke83]

the main point I was trying to make is that in xcom, most larger objects suffer from the tile-based object splitting approach. just think about trees that not only look weird when parts have been destroyed, but also just hang in the air if you shoot away the trunk. same with streetlights. (there's something that could use some improvement in openxcom...)

for your silo, look at the support structure underneath (is that eight-sided or six-sided, btw?): if you destroy parts of it, you will have horizontal struts ending in mid-air. maybe the structure could be changed so that each individual tile still looks functional without the others?
the ladder could be moved to be completely in one tile, so that by destroying the silo partially you will never have half a ladder (split vertically).

 It would be great if this "FLOATING Object" issue could be handled someway in Openxcom by some intelligent programming by Daiky, it doesn't need to be Xcom Apocalypse good , just basic functionality .

[Volutar]

Well.. My 2 cents about REALISM...
First of all - xcom is The Battlescape, it's simply LaserSquad2 + Geoscape added later.
So XCom battlescape is turn-based, thus already unrealistic. As for model I perceive it something like advanced chess, with set of rules which have not very much common with reality. So why adding some "realistic" features should be considered dozen of times before trying to integrate into what I better call "classic gameplay". I presume some of them could be added and really must be added, but with pretty thorough consideration. I wish it not to become some casual bullshit game from one side, nor hardcore game.
I believe this Game should have very simple and not very long list of logical rules, though quite diverse game situations as consequences of combinating of different actions and objects (and probably AI). That should create alot of "fun" and even a moments of discovering.
I know there will be number of nerds which will make those rules estimated and described, but with really complex formulas of influence on each other, that may become a) not easy task; b) unnecessary. That (b) will be specially true, if game will create those rules on every "new game".