Battlescape development

[Daiky]

I'm happy to anounce first visible results of the unit drawing code I have been working on lately.
As you can see, it is currently only drawing the heads of the soldiers.
The drawing routine works 100% on a rule-based parameters system, so it's as flexible as it gets, nothing hardcoded. This means in the future easy implementation of other units, or more advanced unit animation, etc without code changes.
The downside is, for every unit you have currently 63 parameters to configure, which can become even more later on.

Other stuff I have been working on:
- reading of RMP files = spawnpoints of aliens on the map, and later on for AI pathfinding
- moved MAP and RMP file loading to ResourcePack
- Soldiers are positioned on the proper tiles inside the skyranger
and in between I'll get that soldier summary panel on the bottom look right.

[Daiky]

Rene: "I can't believe X-Com send us out here without any equipment at all... a scouting mission they said. But what if there is really some alien activity over here?"
Sarah: "Well, then I run as fast as I can back to the Skyranger. By the way, I'm catching a cold walking around on this ice and snow."
Rene: "Come over here, let me warm you up."

revision 206 to play with basic pathfinding

[Daiky]

I'd like to announce that battlescape milestone 6 has been reached.
- XCom soldiers inside the skyranger spawn on the battlescape
- Soldiers can be selected either clicking them or with the "next soldier" button, selection is indicated with yellow arrow.
- Basic soldier stats are shown in the small info area
- Pathfinding is implemented: soldiers walk around avoiding obstacles (most of the time :p)
- Right click - look at functionality.
- Center-on-soldier button.

Milestone 7: (todo)
- Fix pathfinding bugs.
- Add battlescape sounds.
- Add laser rifles.
- Add floaters to test your laser rifles on.

[pmprog]

Wow, you've seriously put some effort into this! Makes me feel like I've been away too long.

[liamdawe]

Some fantastic work going on and i sure do appreciate it, cannot wait to fire it up on Linux and play it natively when this is all done

[Daiky]

Thanks, I'm happy to contribute to the project.

[liamdawe]

How's the work going?

[Daiky]

Okay, little slower lately due to other projects, social activities and sickness. But this weekend is totally empty, so expect an update on sunday evening Either involving items in the battlescape or sounds in the battlescape - don't know which one yet 

[Daiky]

BTW, I still found a terrain render bug...  I can't believe no tester has reported it yet

[bramcor]

I have a backlog of battlescape bugs that I just haven't gotten around to posting yet .. been a bit busy lately, you see

I have also observed the rendering problem for corners where wooden fences meet! Which make me think that it is likely to be the same for all other tiles that meet in a corner in the same manner (walls in houses, hedges and whatnot)

[Daiky]

I thought I just commit the stuff I have at the moment.
So rev.219:

- added Soldier footstep sounds
(- added BattleItem class )
- fixed automatic view level position when walking
- fixed rendering issue of two walls in a corner

[liamdawe]

As always I appreciate the work you are doing, please keep it coming

I will get around to some testing over the festive period

[Daiky]

just an update for the latest stuff I've been working on:
- bug in pathfinding when walking down the stairs in a barn is fixed
- added the feature where you click behind the stairs to go up the stairs to the next level (reported by bramcor)
- added opening doors feature + ufo door animation + their sounds
- under-the-hood change: The BattleSoldier class (which was a descendant of BattleUnit) is going to be removed and the BattleUnit class gets a "faction" attribute (player,hostile,neutral). This makes more sense, especially when things like mind control (should be as easy as setting the faction attribute to another value) are coming into play.

I see you already thinking: hey, what happens if you start a battlescape mission with all aliens set to faction "player" and all xcom soldiers set to faction "hostile"? Yeah, then you can play the aliens side.
And yes, there is also an (un-used, un-implemented) faction "friendly", which are non playable characters that will attack hostile units :p (I'm thinking of civilians that pick up a shotgun and try to defend their home from aliens).

edit: more under-the-hood battlescape changes (if anyone is interested in this, I don't know :p). Procedures like map generation and placement of units in the SavedBattleGame class are moved to a new utility class BattlescapeGenerator.

[Daiky]

First aliens sighted in openXcom !

I have done a commit. But for people who are not compiling themselves, I have uploaded a little video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spn3DbrrEKE

[SupSuper]

Yay, more frontpage material!