[ALIENS] The Dalek Invasion of XCom

[Cirius]

Thanks, I'll try and put up an upload for anyone interested in trying them later tonight.

I haven't had the chance to integrate them into the ruleset, so they're currently just a texture replacement for the Ethereal, (hence why they're holding weapons), but it's a start.

Once I've got the ruleset figured out, we'll see about the possibility of adding them as a separate race altogether.

[UPDATE: 08/05 21:30] There you go - Download link added to first post.

[Cirius]

Provisional work on the UNIT SA-80 infantry rifle has begun. As the standard medium range weapon of UNIT, the SA-80 will be equipped by the vast majority of your forces.

It is designed to be an accurate weapon, but somewhat slow to fire. As a result, it is capable of firing single or aimed rounds only.

Unless I change my mind, that is.

(And yes, I know it currently looks absymal.)

This week I've been thinking a little more in depth about the UNIT forces. I'm planning to make soldiers a little more disposable for this conversion, so soldier costs will be decreased accordingly.

With more troops in the field, I can also afford to make them a little more vulnerable. Gone will be the anime-armours of the late game, replaced by simpler kevlar and military-grade flak armour. They'll protect your troops a little more from glancing shots, but ultimately if you're caught in the open, you can kiss your grunt goodbye.

[Warboy1982]

while this looks nice, i don't feel the green quite suits the xcom aesthetic, perhaps something like this variant might make a better basis:

https://world.guns.ru/userfiles/images/assault/as22/sa80-iw.jpg

also the carry handle/iron sight looks to be a tiny bit too far forward, maybe too long, i'm not sure

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_80_yaznP3lM/TTh1Q5aKqkI/AAAAAAAABcs/W3sBsgWloYs/s400/SAA_L85_1_L.jpg

you can probably see what i mean.

[Cirius]

while this looks nice, i don't feel the green quite suits the xcom aesthetic...

also the carry handle/iron sight looks to be a tiny bit too far forward, maybe too long, i'm not sure

you can probably see what i mean.

I agree about the green. It was the nearest i could find on the Xcom palette, but I'm still not 100% happy about it. On the other hand, I'm not planning on keeping many, if any of the vanilla weaponry, so matching colours with the rest of them is a bit irrelevant.

I think you're right about the carry handle, I'll move it back a couple of pixels and see if that makes a difference.

Like I said, work in progress, learning as I go...

[Cirius]

I'm a little happier now. I toned down the green's coverage of the weapon and added a little additional detail. Still not perfect, but I'm happy enough with it currently to put it aside and move on to the next weapon.

[Warboy1982]

that's more like it.

[Cirius]

Two years later...



Holy christ, I actually got them working properly. Just call me Dave Ross.

I was chatting yesterday with someone about Doctor Who and XCom and suddenly realised I had an unfinished project just sat waiting on my desktop. Three hours later, and I've got the things actually working.

I say working. They're in game and trundle around, but I'm currently trying to get them functioning with built-in weapons. I'm  tempted to just fudge it and give them invisible guns, but presumably there's a way to actually have weapons built in to the creatures, such as the cyberdisk etc that don't appear to carry anything?

[Meridian]

This is great.... I really need to start reading this forum... like everything, to the very first post.

[Solarius Scorch]

I'm  tempted to just fudge it and give them invisible guns, but presumably there's a way to actually have weapons built in to the creatures, such as the cyberdisk etc that don't appear to carry anything?

Sure it is. I'm not sure how to help you in any way other than just "copy what you can see in other rulesets", at least not before you ask specific questions. In my Recycled Alien Collection mod there is a race of Cerebreals (using Tentaculat sprites) who all have built-in weapons; maybe try to examine it.

On a side note, it depends on the writer and so on, but I am worried if any weapon seen in X-Com could hurt a Dalek. Hmm, actually if you used OpenXCom Extended, you could give them constant regeneration (each turn as long as they're alive), but I think it's getting way too far at this point.

[Cirius]

Thanks! I'll have a poke round the Recycled collection this evening to see what I can piece together.

Is it possible to implement creature specific weapons? Eg a Cyberman always packing a cyber rifle? I did ask when I started on this and was told no, but that was over two years ago, so I'm  hoping it might have changed.

The daleks are currently pretty heavily armoured, but slow as hell. You can outflank them pretty easily, but yes, cracking them open is pretty tricky. I'm thinking they'll be pretty few in number, with a slave race of some sort to do the most of the usual fighting. We're talking more 1980's daleks than anything too recent - before the Time War made them over-powered and nigh on invincible. A well aimed rocket will toast one pretty easily.

Thanks for the help.

[Solarius Scorch]

Is it possible to implement creature specific weapons? Eg a Cyberman always packing a cyber rifle? I did ask when I started on this and was told no, but that was over two years ago, so I'm  hoping it might have changed.

In normal OpenXCom no. In OpenXCom Extended yes - you can define alternate alienDeployment for a specific race.

The daleks are currently pretty heavily armoured, but slow as hell. You can outflank them pretty easily, but yes, cracking them open is pretty tricky. I'm thinking they'll be pretty few in number, with a slave race of some sort to do the most of the usual fighting. We're talking more 1980's daleks than anything too recent - before the Time War made them over-powered and nigh on invincible. A well aimed rocket will toast one pretty easily.

It might be more balanced game-wise, but on the other hand I think a bit charm point for the Daleks is that they are totally uniform. But I'm not really sure what's best, I'm sure you're better qualified.

[Cirius]

I've done yet another pass on the dalek shape, as I'm still not 100% happy with it. It looked a bit big, and diagonal movement didn't quite line up right. Getting there though.

I also spent an hour this morning doing a few recolours and a special weapons variant. (WIP, and apologies for the blur, it was a quick resize job for clarity.)



To be honest, I'm not having much luck with the ruleset which is irritating me slightly. Using a modified Gazer ruleset I've managed to get the daleks in game, but I can either have them packing conventional alien weapons, which looks a bit odd, or I can have them completely unarmed. Ideally they'd use an internal weapon system, but I'm struggling to get it working. Ho hum.

Nevertheless, I'm a firm believer in sharing work, so once I'm fully happy with the dalek sprites I'm going to open them up to everyone to do whatever they want with, under the request that you let me know if you release anything, purely so I can learn from it.

[Solarius Scorch]

If you put your code here, people will be able to help you, we have a great community with some people having become very skilled over the last two years. I think just pasting your code here

Code: [Select]

like this would be enough for now.

[Cirius]

Question - am I limited to only applying fixed weapons to TERRORIST types, because that's going to restrict me to only being able to field daleks on Terror missions, surely, unless I do some serious jiggery pokery?

I've attempted to add a fixed weapon type into the gazer code that I'm working with,

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- type: STR_GAZER_WEAPON
    weight: 3
    bigSprite: -3
    floorSprite: 31
    handSprite: 104
    bulletSprite: 6
    fireSound: 11
    hitSound: 19
    hitAnimation: 36
    clipSize: -1
    power: 85
    damageType: 4
    accuracyAuto: 28
    accuracySnap: 28
    accuracyAimed: 28
    tuAuto: 10
    tuSnap: 10
    tuAimed: 10
    battleType: 1
    fixedWeapon: true
    invWidth: 2
    invHeight: 3
    clipSize: -1
    recover: false
    autoShots: 1
And also modified the race to include 'livingweapon: true'

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units:
  - type: STR_GAZER_SOLDIER
    race: STR_GAZER
    rank: STR_LIVE_SOLDIER
    stats:
      tu: 50
      stamina: 80
      health: 70
      bravery: 80
      reactions: 45
      firing: 58
      throwing: 65
      strength: 49
      psiStrength: 50
      psiSkill: 0
      melee: 76
    armor: GAZER_ARMOR0
    standHeight: 19
    kneelHeight: 15
    value: 16
    moveSound: 108
    deathSound: 10
    intelligence: 4
    aggression: 2
    livingWeapon: true
    energyRecovery: 40

All I seem to be getting is a bunch of unarmed daleks wandering around looking bewildered... any ideas?

[Dioxine]

1. From my experience, if your race is called STR_DALEK, you need to name your fixed weapon DALEK_WEAPON (No STR_ !) - the weapon is added based on the

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race: STR_DALEK portion under the unit entry. It will be then added to any and all units which have their race set as STR_DALEK, regardless of any other considerations. Living weapon: true is not needed, but it is useful - it will make sure the Daleks have no grenades, as it will make them ignore equipment section in the alienDeployment. Rank: STR_TERRORIST is basically irrelevant, it neither does limit deployment in any way or forces any specific behaviour. You can have a race made of terrorists only, or without any terrorists - what counts is the position on the race list, from 0 (assumed to be Commander) to 7 (assumed to be second terror unit).
An example would be:

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alienRaces:
  - id: STR_DALEK
    members:
      - STR_DAVROS
      - STR_CULT_OF_SKARRO_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK
      - STR_DALEK

Do not confuse Race: in the unit entry with the AlienRaces: above. Alienraces are simply sets of units, used for deployments, they have no bearing on how the units behave, or how they're armed, etc., and the name of the race has only bearing on what will be displayed on the Hyperwave Decoder's screen.

2. Make sure your Daleks are indeed unarmed, or they're just pretending. Fixed weapons are not displayed in any way - you can only tell if it shoots or not.

3. Instead of tying a weapon to a race, a weapon can be also added using the "built-in weapon" system. Example:

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  - type: STR_LOBSTERMAN_TERRORIST
    race: STR_LOBSTERMAN
    rank: STR_LIVE_NAVIGATOR
    stats:
      tu: 45
      stamina: 60
      health: 90
      bravery: 110
      reactions: 25
      firing: 50
      throwing: 40
      strength: 75
      psiStrength: 50
      psiSkill: 0
      melee: 80
    armor: DEEP_ONE_ARMOR_P6
    standHeight: 22
    kneelHeight: 14
    value: 20
    deathSound: 8
    intelligence: 3
    aggression: 2
    energyRecovery: 22
    builtInWeapons:
      - LOBSTER_CLAWS

If you want 2 weapons (Plunger of Death!), you can have either both systems working simultaneously, or no race weapon at all, just 2 builtInWeapons. A word of warning, though - the AI can only handle 1 ranged and 1 melee weapon; if it has more than 1 of either, it will be only using the one that has lower TU cost.

4. I have your Dalek sprites laying on my disk for many months now, I was going to make them appear as an Easter Egg in my Piratez mod