[ALIENS] The Dalek Invasion of XCom

[Cirius]

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

You're welcome to! I'd hold off until I post the completed sprites though, as they're looking a lot better than they used to.

Thanks for the tips, I'll see if I can make any more headway this evening.

[Cirius]

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.

It turns out that I've been suffering from the exact opposite of what you're saying here. I've discovered the daleks are mounting their fixed weapon as instructed, but are deciding to display a held weapon whilst they do it. I've been presuming this weapon was an inventory item, but it seems to be connected to whatever's listed in 'handsprite' below. I've tried ditching the line altogether, but it seems to be defaulting to a grenade. Anyone know an easy way to get it to display nothing?

Code: [Select]

  - type: GAZER_WEAPON
    weight: 3
    bigSprite: -3
    floorSprite: 31
    handSprite: 104
On a separate note, now the weapon's kind of working, I'll need to find appropriate sounds for it. Is there a list of sound references for 'fireSound' somewhere, as I don't relish the thought of going through them one by one...

[Dioxine]

Uuuh, are you using a Nightly? The handob display for fixed weapons was bugged in 1.0 and fixed later.

AS for sounds, it's best to add a custom one... example:

Code: [Select]

extraSounds:
  - type: BATTLE.CAT
    files:
      14: Resources/Sounds/TankMove.wav

Try a number of 55 or higher (I think) to avoid replacing normal game sounds. As for handob, the only way to get rid of them (except for upgrading OXCom) is to define a blank graphic file, eg:

Code: [Select]

extraSprites:
  - type: HANDOB.PCK
    height: 40
    width: 256
    subX: 32
    subY: 40
    files:
      120: Resources/HANDOB/1EmptyHand.png
      128: Resources/HANDOB/Grenade.png
(this one is from my mod; it makes the default an empty hand, and moves the grenade to the next position - this way allowing me to simply omit the handob line if I don't want the handob, just like you've wanted )

[Arthanor]

That's a pretty dirty workaround. It works well since Piratez is a master mod, but for general mod, that's not a great idea. What about the vanilla grenade? For regular mods, you'd need to redefine its handob too, and then if some other mod has a grenade and didn't bother to make a new handob, suddenly nothing will display. If that makes it into the Dalek mod (such an awesome thing to say!), then someone wanting to play just vanilla+Dalek, or vanilla+Dalek+other mod, needs to deal with that too.

In general, if you don't set a handob for an item, a grenade will be displayed. If you want something else than a grenade, you should define it specifically. It is better regular mod design (where you only change a few things, not for Piratez) to just define an empty frame and reference it in your item declaration if you don't want anything to show.

[Cirius]

Dioxine, you're an absolute star. I've been running V1.0 because I was under the bizarre impression that was the most recent release. I've just downloaded the latest nightly and it runs perfectly, no dirty work-arounds required.

Just ran my first full mission against a single dalek using early game weapons. The devious little blighter took shelter in a barn and managed to take down two of my men before I managed to bring him down. I'm going to have to do a fair amount of tweaking to stats before I'm happy with them, but I'm really happy with the progress I've made today.

Thanks everyone for the help and advice, you've all been great and I can't wait to be able to share this with you all.

[Cirius]

The Special Weapons Dalek emerges from an alleyway.

So, thanks to Dioxine, dalek weapon sounds are in. The Special Weapons terror unit is also-semi operational, but it's currently packing a standard dalek weapon until I can figure out how to get it firing high-explosive rounds. I'm considering giving it a fresh coat of paint as well, as currently it blends in with the standard dalek units a little too well. While canonically a bit odd, I might give it back its imperial colouring from Remembrance.



Terror missions are currently a crapshoot. The daleks are currently managing to get off about six shots each, at a high accuracy. XCOM units are currently lucky to get more than a couple of steps off the boarding ramp before being cut down mercilessly from about four different directions. I love it, but yeah...should probably tone that down a little.

So, things left to do -

Corpse pictures.
Death animations.
UFOpedia entries.

[Hobbes]

XCOM units are currently lucky to get more than a couple of steps off the boarding ramp before being cut down mercilessly from about four different directions.

Smoke grenades are your best friend - pop out one to the bottom of the Skyranger ramp and wait the first turn inside the Skyranger before you disembark - moving units into the aliens sight on the first turn is close to suicide since the aliens start with full TUs for reaction fire.

[davide]

, I was going to make them appear as an Easter Egg in my Piratez mod

+1 for Dalek faction

[Cirius]

Ok, aside from the death animations, work on the Daleks is basically complete. Hopefully I'll be ready for a public release by the end of next week, work depending.

Here's a rather unsubtle clue as to the second adversary I'll be working on...

[moriarty]

Haha, very nice. "See? Armless."

Though not very special from a gaming point of view, since they won't look any different from civilians...

EDIT: Cybermen, on the other hand... or perhaps Judoon?

[Solarius Scorch]

I think Sontarans would look great as X-Com sprites.

[moriarty]

True. Sontar-ha!

EDIT: What about the Mire, while we're at it? Very distinctive silhouette, I guess they would make good pixel art sprites.

[Cirius]

Haha, very nice. "See? Armless."

Though not very special from a gaming point of view, since they won't look any different from civilians...

EDIT: Cybermen, on the other hand... or perhaps Judoon?

Yes, I'm not going to lie, I'm picking up the Autons as a 'quick win' in that it shouldn't take me too long to turn around slightly modified civilians with auton weapon sound effects. The next 'big' project will definitely be the Cybermen, but early attempts I've made on them have looked a little shoddy.

In the long run, I'd love to see Sontarans as well, but that all depends on how much time I've got to put in. If anyone else feels a Whovian itch at any point, they're welcome to take a crack at them or any other races.

[Cirius]

Random question - is the start date adjustable? I'm looking more for an 80's vibe with the mod, so the 1999 start is a bit of a pain.

[Arthanor]

Yup, just look at Piratez which starts in 2601 instead of 1999. Can't remember what the names are, but it's right there in the rulesets.