UFOpaedia-friendly Celatid [UNIT] [OXCE]

[Kzer-Za]

The UFOpaedia states that the Celatid:

1. appears to detect human brain waves and will move towards a human target even if well hidden;

2. has the ability to clone itself at an alarming rate.

So I decided to give them both these abilities Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.

This mod still has some quirks that I can't (or don't know how to) iron out for now, but they are minor.

1. Since the only way to spawn an enemy during combat is via a weapon, the Celatids are actually carrying around grenades that do nothing more than spawn the clones. These grenades can be picked up from the Celatid corpse. I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now. Fixed.

2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

Other than that it works fine.

I would like to express my gratitude to Yankes for his script language and his explanations on how to use it, and to Meridian and Solarius Scorch for explanations on rulesets.

---

Attached the version 0.9. The first of the mentioned issues is fixed.

[luke83]

Nice work Mate, i will try this out this weekend as i would like to bring it into my OXC Factions total conversuon mod.

[Kzer-Za]

You are welcome to use it

[Solarius Scorch]

This looks pretty swell, thank you! Nobody did the Celatid cloning before.

1. Since the only way to spawn an enemy during combat is via a weapon, the Celatids are actually carrying around grenades that do nothing more than spawn the clones. When these grenades go off, you can see flame as from an explosion beneath the Celatid and smoke above it appearing for a brief moment. If someone tells me how to get rid of these effects, I would be very grateful.

Create an empty X1.PCK entry and use it as hitAnimation. (Empty, or something else - up to you.)
For example I made an EMP grenade with custom explosion graphics:

Code: [Select]

extraSprites:
  - type: X1.PCK
    width: 1024
    height: 64
    subX: 128
    subY: 64
    files:
      80: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Triple_Ripple_exp.png
      88: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Grey_Skull_exp.png
      96: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/EMP_Explosion.png         <---- this one
      104: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Red_Skull_exp.png
      112: Resources/Weapons_Compilation/ExplosionAnimations/Green_Skull_exp.png


Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_EMP_GRENADE
    hitAnimation: 96


2. These grenades can be picked up from the Celatid corpse. I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now.

I think it would be okay to make it totally visible for the player and even recoverable as "Celatid Egg", Celatid Spore" or something like that. Why not?

3. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.

[Yankes]

I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.

Or even make it a game mechanic, spore die 2 turns after host, you need some explosive to kill it (change item armor to be bit lower than in normal items).
And you can manually "kill" it by unpriming it (you can change name of this action to "kill spore").
Item can have different look in inventory when its "live" or when its "die".

[Kzer-Za]

1. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it doesn't seem to be working. If I specify an empty X1.PCK like this:

Code: [Select]

extraSprites:
  - type: X1.PCK

the game just displays the same one-tile explosion as before. If I add a path to a non-existent file, it crashes. If I give it a transparent png I found on my computer, it crashes.

2, 3, and Yankes's suggestion: I would need sprites of these objects for it. And since anything I draw is not even half-decent, I can't make mods with graphics. Maybe if this mod actually finds some users, and one of them would be willing to contribute the graphics...

[Solarius Scorch]

Can you post your code?

[Kzer-Za]

Well, I made only two changes to the code: inserted the piece from my previous message in the end of the file, and inserted hitAnimation in the item description like this:

Code: [Select]

  - &STR_CELATID_GEMMA
    type: STR_CELATID_GEMMA
    size: 0.1
    weight: 0
    power: 0
    damageType: 0
    battleType: 4
    blastRadius: 0
    hitAnimation: 96 # the inserted line
#    fixedWeapon: true
...


[Kzer-Za]

Ah, if I try to add an empty file, then the part with the X1.PCK looks like this:

Code: [Select]

extraSprites:
  - type: X1.PCK
    width: 1024
    height: 64
    subX: 128
    subY: 64
    files:
      96: Resources/UFOpaedia-friendly_Celatid/Blank.png

And I place the specified png to the specified location, of course.

[Solarius Scorch]

I am shooting blind here, but try changing damageType to 3. I doubt 0 would play nice with explosions.

[Kzer-Za]

Yes, changing it to 3 did work!

Updated the attached file.

[Nord]

I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now.

I think assigning

Code: [Select]

    invWidth: 0
    invHeight: 0will help.

2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

You can, for example, give these eggs "armor: 1" and make celatid exploding on death with "power: 2".

Btw, great minimods.

[Kzer-Za]

Thanks, I'l try that, when I get around to it in a couple of days.

[Kzer-Za]

Unfortunately, the second suggestion doesn't work, it seems that the items are dropped only after the corpse explosion takes place. But assigning the zero inventory size does work, so at least these grenades now can't be picked up

Updated the attached file.

[Tiny Wisdom]

Nice work!

It's nice to see the issue of making the Celatid lore-friendly being tackled again.

So I decided to give them both these abilities Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.

luke83 made a good point here that perhaps the cloning rate should vary with the chosen difficulty level otherwise players will either be overwhelmed or underwhelmed (or perhaps just whelmed).

Right now you have it at every 3rd turn and it's possible that might be a bit much.

I'll let you know how I fared after I encounter a Celatid.

2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

I don't think it's an issue. Sounds like a nice surprise.

It's not what you intended but I agree with Solarius that it'd make for a nice surprise.

Maybe make it random?

I think it would be okay to make it totally visible for the player and even recoverable as "Celatid Egg", Celatid Spore" or something like that. Why not?

2, 3, and Yankes's suggestion: I would need sprites of these objects for it. And since anything I draw is not even half-decent, I can't make mods with graphics. Maybe if this mod actually finds some users, and one of them would be willing to contribute the graphics...

clownagent points out here that the Celatid animation sequuence actually consisits of 28 frames and only the first ~8 are used.

So you probably don't need to draw anything as there's a lot of material to work with already.

In fact, the right combination of frames can show the cloning process, whether you want it to be from a live Celatid or a dead one.

As an added bonus, frame 25 shows what looks to be a Celatid Egg/Spore. So you can do something interesting with that as well.