Battle Scape Mode for 'Advance' Interceptor Mode

[Warboy1982]

personally i'd go with 1 or 2 extra sprite sets to represent damage levels, maybe add some animated smoke trails or something, you know, make them less static. hell, have them bob up and down a bit like celatids, and have the relative direction of travel represented by showing jetstreams coming off the craft, and don't allow them to turn, so it looks like they are always moving, making small adjustments for turbulence, flashing their lights and so on.

i'll be happy to lend you guys a hand with the coding, and i will DEFINITELY be including this in my mod branch revival, when we nail the rest of these annoying bugs.

also, if you could modify the base defense screen to be something like the attached image, you win at life.

[pmprog]

I like the base defense idea too, I might see if I can code this if I can get some time

[luke83]

Sounds good to me, i guess that means i need to start pumping out some models

[moriarty]

Are the shaders available outside of the OpenGL implementation?

I meant the same thing we use for 1) the path preview and 2) the colorized x-com soldiers


@warboy: hell yeah! base defense with actual purpose and interaction! although I was thinking that we could also use the same "skyscape" for base defense: a battlescape with perhaps 8-10 height levels, your own base at the center, UFO(s) entering from the side(s), base defense turrets trying to shoot them down while they are approaching...

[luke83]

We should see how both ideas playout.

[moriarty]

absolutely

I have some ideas in mind that might actually make some of the... let's say... "less preferred"... (*cough* stupid *cough* useless *cough* crap *cough*) weapons and craft a bit more useful in this setting.

for example: it would make sense that the human craft, especially the interceptor, only feature forward-firing weapons. the cannon will definitely fire only forward, missiles might turn some degrees to follow UFOs. the firestorm graphics suggest that both weapon ports fire forward, too. the lightning, on the other hand, has a turret - it would therefore be able to fire in any direction (the firestorm makes up for that by being incredibly fast and agile, I guess)

the laser cannon could be re-defined as also being a defensive weapon - being able to target, hit and thereby dissipate incoming plasma globs. which reminds me that the idea of a plasma weapon being a "beam" weapon is complete bullshit, even within the game lore: battlescape plasma weapons fire plasma "bolts", not beams.

of course, this deviates a bit from the original... oh well

[luke83]

Updated Model is on the MODSITE , maybe we should move this discussion out of Suggestions and into MODS....?

"this deviates a bit from the original... oh well "  Well what about the fact that when you attack a alien vessel it can return file , but when you shoot them down they don't actually have any weapons, they just rolled there windows down and start  throwing Sh*t at you.... The reality is half the game would need to be rework as the original is overly simplified  when it comes to craft weapons.

[pmprog]

Yeah, reaction fire in the turn-based sense doesn't really make sense for these sorts of combat.

Edit: I still think a Steambirds style combat would be a nice option 

[moriarty]

Updated Model is on the MODSITE , maybe we should move this discussion out of Suggestions and into MODS....?

"this deviates a bit from the original... oh well "  Well what about the fact that when you attack a alien vessel it can return file , but when you shoot them down they don't actually have any weapons, they just rolled there windows down and start  throwing Sh*t at you.... The reality is half the game would need to be rework as the original is overly simplified  when it comes to craft weapons.

true, there are no weapons in the UFO battlescape maps. that was nice about apocalypse: everything a UFO had was actually there


let's talk about game mechanics for the aerial battles:

-the current "dogfight" is assuming a high-speed encounter with the UFO trying to get away and firing when the pesky humans are coming too close.

for our "skyscape", I would rather have a battlefield with ground at level 0 (or water, for that matter), and several levels of "sky" above (8-10 levels), which represents the area where the UFO(s) and human craft(s) meet.

a craft may leave the battlefield by exiting through any side (perhaps by moving onto an edge-tile, and at the beginning of the next turn the game asks if you want to leave?)

to make the battle a bit more interesting, maybe there should be terrain like hills and canyons as well as clouds? otherwise the battles will soon get boring. clouds may sound like an obsolete thing, seeing as modern fighter craft even now feature augmented reality vision with sensor data that can easily penetrate cloud cover, but perhaps the alien alloys and advanced electronics reduce the battle to the "good old" visual battles of the first world war? that would let us get away with sight-blocking clouds and aerial maneuvers that actually have an impact on the battle - if you can position yourself inside a cloud but right at the edge, you have a clear advantage.


the conventional aircraft (interceptor, skyranger) do have VTOL capabilities, right? because otherwise we need to deal with craft that can not actually stay still but instead have to move each turn.

UFOs should have no problem doing erratic turns, standstills, vertical ascension and descension, whatever. gravity-wave propulsion does have its perks.

[xracer]

Yeah, reaction fire in the turn-based sense doesn't really make sense for these sorts of combat.

Edit: I still think a Steambirds style combat would be a nice option 

I always though that was one of the best implementation of aerial combat for a simple yet involving playtime.
It is a minigame but you can control your ships give them different turning rations also you can add the human factor and if the pilots are intro... (wait this is part of the game i dreamed off)

Any way giving ships different types of firing styles will be nice also, some can only fire forward (mainly human ships) while other can have a larger range.

[moriarty]

I like the steambirds controls, too - if we could implement that while still keeping the x-com look and feel, that would be great

Basically, that would mean plotting a movement path and then letting the units move simultaneously while firing automatically, right? Do you think that would be possible at all using openxcom's battlescape? Perhaps limiting it to 1 level, so the pathfinder doesn't have to deal with vertical movement?

[pmprog]

It could be possible with battlescape. You'd have to override the "pathfinding" based on the craft's direction and speed to keep flying "realistic" (in a loose sense).

Weapons fire would be the biggest problem for lining up shots in the grid, though you could add a bit of flexibility so you don't have to aim your interceptor directly at the ufo (after all, certain angles will be impossible). Shots can still be range restricted. You can hack over the blaster launcher code for "homing" missiles.

[moriarty]

I would assume a firing arc of 45-60° forward for the interceptor weapons, including the initial firing direction for the missiles - although they should be able to follow the UFO quite a bit.

@warboy: how hard would it be to create a preliminary version of that? a 1-level battlescape with flat ground (maybe all grass for now), where we can play around with the mechanics: next step would be to "adjust" the pathfinding so that the movement behaviour feels more like flying. I'm wondering if we need to restrict it to 1 level or if it would work just as well in a "true 3D" space. of course the path-preview would need to be adjusted to show the heading, as well as show the path in the air...

I guess we'll see if classic turn-based works for this, or if simultaneous turn-based is so much better that we have to go there

P.S. for the record: if anybody wants to make sprites for this: what I did, in order to have a working model with existing game sprite mechanics, was to take the xcom_0.pck and replace the legs with my interceptor model. all other body parts I replaced with transparent sprites. if you replace the body, it will actually bob up and down while moving (part of the walking animation) or move down when you click on "kneel". also, the legs are animated for walking, so I could include a jet engine "animation" that plays while the interceptor is moving. I guess in the future we will handle this differently, but for now it seems like a valid hack

[luke83]

I think simultaneous turn base would be the best , later on i would like to see that rolled out into the Normal battlescape ( Yes i know , i suggested this before )

Halfway through modelling the skyranger , Honestly that is a really weird shape aircraft...( maybe i am just interpreting it wrong).

[moriarty]

Halfway through modelling the skyranger , Honestly that is a really weird shape aircraft...( maybe i am just interpreting it wrong).

you are using the battlescape craft as a model, right? I agree that it is weird. most of that is probably because of the battlescape limitations the skyranger doesn't look like a VTOL-capable craft at all. it's more of a cargo-filled tube with very short wings attached

at least the available images (UFOPaedia, battlescape and basescape hangar top-down sprite) look very similar. that's more than you can say for the firestorm