Old DOS xcom3 modding pictures and ufopedia

[Mutonbrain]

Hi there!

After having to divert my focus on other things for a few years I now returned to xcom3 with doing a little mod on it.
I added half a dozen of new weapons, but I cannot seem to get the images correct in PEQUIP.
I use XED to import 256 color BMP, but the colors go wrong. I assume I have to use one of the xcom3 palettes in GIMP with a custom 256 color PCX.
But I have little idea how to get that done. Help would be appreciated.

For the ufopedia text I still have to get to it. Any information on how and where to edit that text would save me some time.

Additional information:
The mod does aim at making the game much harder, especially keeping up the challenge in the mid and late stages where the toxigun and shields made it very easy to win.
I am just starting to test out if things work as designed, but the scrambled colors of the new weapon pictures are a nuisance.

[Zombie]

16 hours ago, Mutonbrain said:

For the ufopedia text I still have to get to it. Any information on how and where to edit that text would save me some time.

The text files are in the UFOPAEDI folder in a file called PAEDI.MT. How to edit? I always used the command prompt but hex editors should be fine too. I think the Apoc'd editor by j'ordos should be able to edit the text files too (among a ton of other stuff too).

- Zombie

[Mutonbrain]

Thanks for the help! I've seen the Ufopedia file is plain text and the .mti file holds byte indexes for each entry. Could not find something in Apoc'd to edit the ufopeadia text, but I'm running a Apoc'd that is several years old.
But the .mti file was easy to understand and so I wrote a tool that does write a new one upon reading the text .mt file. So I can now edit the text there.

The images still resist my attempt at fixing the color. Today I will see if I can isolate the file that xcom3 does use for a palette and then I maybe can copy the color set for GIMP.

[Mutonbrain]

I found out. The game uses the colors of "agentequip.pcx". There are 2 of them. 1 for city, 1 for tactical combat. They use different colors, though. Means colors of items in PEQUIP.PCK will look different in each part of the game.
The colors can be used by taking the PCX as baseline and import any artwork into that file. Then cut and export as indexed PCX.
XED has no problem to import these newly created indexed PCX.

[magic9mushroom]

On 11/18/2023 at 9:22 PM, Mutonbrain said:

The mod does aim at making the game much harder, especially keeping up the challenge in the mid and late stages where the toxigun and shields made it very easy to win.

I think nullifying the Toxigun's ability to pierce shields mostly does the job on the Battlescape, because without an easy shield-piercer (and neither stun grenades nor psi are easy) you lose all your looted shields and have to build your own (which is very slow). The bit that needs more effort to fix is the Cityscape, since the aliens' late air game is rather anemic (the idea of Escorts stunning your craft for the capships to blow up is nice, but non-escort-tasked UFOs almost never fire their weapons so the capships do not actually capitalise on it, and besides that there just aren't enough FASes and Escorts to put up much of a fight) and you also get giant bucketloads of money from Cloaking Fields which gets you permanently out of money troubles.

[Mutonbrain]

Agreed. The UFO numbers and mission profile got adjusted. Among tons of other things.
Money and getting agents killed are now constant problems thru the game. Quite a challenge to the end compared to vanilla.

I also added a total of 8 new firearms to the game. And of course the dimension destabiliser does damage.
This is quite on the edge of what can be done with the vanilla DOS game and a few "irrelevant" items had to drop out to make room. Brainsucker launcher and motion tracker, etc.
If that "Force Web" would spawn I could add 1 more. But it won't appear in game if my agents equip the item in that slot.

What I do not get working is the Ufopedia entries for the new items. Some pages for the "unused" items do not show the description text, so I tried to include it in the PCX image.
The colors for the headline are unusable in game though.
I used GIMP to import the artwork into an original PCX to keep the palette of the vanilla PCX, still the palette seems to change and with it the color of the text displayed in the ufopedia.

[magic9mushroom]

On 4/9/2024 at 8:58 PM, Mutonbrain said:

Agreed. The UFO numbers and mission profile got adjusted. Among tons of other things.
Money and getting agents killed are now constant problems thru the game. Quite a challenge to the end compared to vanilla.

I also added a total of 8 new firearms to the game. And of course the dimension destabiliser does damage.
This is quite on the edge of what can be done with the vanilla DOS game and a few "irrelevant" items had to drop out to make room. Brainsucker launcher and motion tracker, etc.
If that "Force Web" would spawn I could add 1 more. But it won't appear in game if my agents equip the item in that slot.

What I do not get working is the Ufopedia entries for the new items. Some pages for the "unused" items do not show the description text, so I tried to include it in the PCX image.
The colors for the headline are unusable in game though.
I used GIMP to import the artwork into an original PCX to keep the palette of the vanilla PCX, still the palette seems to change and with it the color of the text displayed in the ufopedia.

I find the brainsucker launcher quite flavourful. It drives home the idea that the aliens aren't really thinking about this properly at the start, expecting to get little/no resistance and thus equipping their beachhead with an infiltration tool (as brainsuckers are the key to The Real Alien Threat) rather than, y'know, a weapon. There's a lot of UFOpaedia entries noting that they slowly shift away from infiltration toward combat and eventually to sheer spite with Overspawn and the Apocalypse Mission.

They also keep you on your toes tactically, adding enjoyment and also blocking off certain tactical options (1-man squads, in particular, are effectively closed off because brainsuckers from launchers come from unexpected directions and frequently won't be seen/targetted until they're on someone's head).