[ALIENS] The Dalek Invasion of XCom

[moriarty]

did you replace all alien sprites? the original sprite data is segmented by body parts, so you would need to replace all alien arms and legs with transparent sprites, and replace the "walking animation" sprites with appropriate-facing Dalek sprites as well (otherwise they will disappear while moving).

did you use pckview for replacing the sprites? perhaps you can post a screenshot of the overview so we can figure out what's going on.

(more possibly helpful information here)

[Warboy1982]

you could always define them to use the civlian/ethereal drawing method, their spritesets don't include arms or legs.

[Cirius]

Thanks guys.

Here's the current PCK as it stands.



I've currently only replaced the torso/head sprites up in the top right, as I figured as they were always visible, I'd be seeing them show up straight away in game. However, the alien is now completely invisible, aside from his weapon. The dalek pops up periodically, but the angle it faces seems to be unrelated to the sprite I've erased.

I appreciate I'll need to erase the rest of the limbs at some point, but since adding the dalek sprites, I don't even seem to be seeing them either.

[Cirius]

you could always define them to use the civlian/ethereal drawing method, their spritesets don't include arms or legs.

Hitting exactly the same problem with using the Ethereal spriteset.

I've replaced ALL of the Ethereal sprites, apart from the death animations. The sprites are rendering correctly, but in completely the wrong situations. When the ethereal moves, it plays the death animation in a loop, despite the fact I never changed the death anims. I'm beginning to suspect it's a problem with PCKView correctly saving the PCK after I make changes to it, as I can't for the life of me see what I'm doing wrong here.

UPDATE: Yes, there's definitely something weird going on with PCKView. I tried to replace the pistol texture, and after saving and trying in game, every single weapon had screwed up royally.

[moriarty]

hmmm... okay, wait... you have replaced half the torso sprites, and the first set of moving legs animations.

so basically, you should see a dalek with secotid arms and legs when facing right, left, down or up (diagonally, for in-game-tile purposes) and a normal sectoid for the other directions. you should also see a dalek when moving in the right-up direction ("north" in the mini-map).

from my experience with the Interceptor for the skyscape alternative interception mock-up, you probably shouldn't use the torso at all. why? because the game is hard-coded to have the torso bobbing up and down while walking so simply replace the "standing-still-legs" (frame 17-24) instead, and make the torso sprites transparent blank, as well as all arms.

I can't really see why your version should be all weird in-game. the frames look fine in pckview. perhaps you didn't "replace", but "deleted" and "inserted" instead, and now the indexes are wrong? try clicking on the frames in turn and watching the number in the lower-left corner of the pckview window... if the numbers are not in order, something was messed up

[Cirius]

Perhaps you didn't "replace", but "deleted" and "inserted" instead, and now the indexes are wrong? try clicking on the frames in turn and watching the number in the lower-left corner of the pckview window... if the numbers are not in order, something was messed up

Nope. Indexes all read exactly the same as vanilla xcom.  This is really putting a downer on things, as I've absolutely no idea what's going on here.

[moriarty]

can you post your modified sectoid.pck so I can have a look at it?

[Cirius]

Knock yourself out.

I've added the original sectoid files, the ethereal files I tested and also the bigobs file I added the pistol to. All are suffering from the same apparent problem.

https://www.mediafire.com/?a7hk4l5v9q8alo4

[moriarty]

okay, I just took the sprite frames from your .pck file and replaced them in a fresh sectoid.pck, and everything is working as it should. I don't know what's wrong here, but now it's working.

which version of pckview are you using? mine is reading version 1.5 and it's the one that came with mapview.

I've attached the weird dalek/sectoid for you to try... it's a "mostly-sectoid-but-sometimes-dalek-with-sectoid-torso-and-head-superimposed"

[Cirius]

I'm using 1.41 apparently, no idea where i picked that up. I'll try downloading 1.5 to see if it makes a difference.

[moriarty]

yeah, I have 1.41 on my PC too, but it keeps crashing on me, so I'm using the other one instead apparently, it also fixed some other problems.

you can get mapview here

[Cirius]

And we are in business. Thank you so much for your help. Now the work begins in earnest...

[moriarty]

you're welcome

[luke83]

Looking GOOD

[papamaanbeer]

looking amazing