Map Mods

[Terawatt_99]

here's my first, a super-transporter for X-com, capable of carrying 60 troops

 

https://members.shaw.ca/uselessness/assault1.jpg

https://members.shaw.ca/uselessness/assault2.jpg

[BladeFireLight]

Interesting concept..

unforuntely that map would not be technicaly feasible to be used ingame.

 

-BladeFireLight

[Jman4117]

BFL: Would that be because of the 10 x 10 maps?

 

Terawatt: If you made it two levels inside, it might could be scaled down enough to fit the map.

[NKF]

Just a note to anyone making X-Com base floorpan modifications:

 

Because of the base disjoint bug for modules placed in the right-most column of the base building area and the bottom-most row, there's one workaround that I'd like to suggest:

 

Install doors in the six tiles that the game normally knocks out for the connecting corridors and remove the dirt 'object' that occupies the tile.

 

The game should replace these six tiles when creating the base proper, but the doors should remain in the areas affected by the base disjoint bug.

 

- NKF

[Terawatt_99]

just a note, it's a mod of the avenger, not the hangar (which i'm actually working on right now as i speak) and i made it so that it fits into the same tile space as the regular avenger (now if i could understand the technobabble relating to placing spawn points in the editor, i'm pretty sure it would work...) the hangar is just there for show, it looked kinda lonely if it was just the transporter on a black backgorund...

 

edit: and @ NKF: wtf? in english?

(sorry, i'm not a programming type, i have no idea what a base disjouint bug is, or anything else, i just like mapping things that look cool )

[NKF]

The base disjoint bug is the bug that causes some base modules in your base to be isolated from the rest of it. You might have noticed some modules that have walls where there shouldn't be one. XComutil works around this by removing the walls completely so you never have this problem -- although in my current version (rather outdated), it does make the base look rather crude with bare bits of dirt sticking out of the walls where panels are missing where the base modules connect.

 

And now, I wasn't using programmer's jargon. But I would have to if I were to explain why exactly it's happening.

 

I made this diagram a while back to show which base slots are affected just for reference:

 

https://www.geocities.com/nkfarma/temporary/bdb.html

 

- NKF

[Terawatt_99]

oooh, ok, i see now... yeah, i don't really know much about base combat, since the only base they ever try to attack in my current game is guarded by three plasma defences, two fusion ball defenses, and a grav shield... :angel:

 

anyways, here's that hangar mod that i was speaking about earlier (which i now know how to fix to avoid the base disjoint bug)

https://members.shaw.ca/uselessness/hangar.jpg

https://members.shaw.ca/uselessness/hangar2.jpg

[NKF]

Why are there barrels stored upstairs? It looks like it would be rather tedious for the hangar crew to drag them upstair all the time.

 

Otherwise, quite good. It's a pity you can't put any of your existing troop transports in a base map. On second thought, you wouldn't be able to use it.

 

Oh, for the hangars, the first 10x10 area never gets built in the lower right corner (at least, not normally) or the right or bottom-most map edge, so it shouldn't be affected by the bug, but the upper right and lower left corners are still affected.

 

I just realised that if the walls that get knocked out are replaced with doors, the left and top-most edges of the map will have a lot of small 3x1 or 1x3 'closets'.

 

I think I should give this a try (replacing the walls with doors). It's just so hard to encourage a base attack when you really want your base to get attacked.

 

- NKF

[daishiva]

which is why you get a hyperwave decoder and when you see a battleship doing a base attack, you save that game, so you can test out your base maps

 

maps are lookin good, its good we have people around that know the details of map bugs, cause i didnt know about this bug

[BladeFireLight]

I'm sorry if my techno babble is hard to understand.

 

If you have any questions about the placement of routes, just let me know.. I will create a FAQ and update the manual to make more sence.

I just need to know what was confusing.

 

good work on the maps.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Rexxx]

If you have any questions about the placement of routes, just let me know..

 

-Blade FireLight

I found your description of the rmp-files extremely helpful. I never would have thought of the limitations of the path finding routines e.g.

 

Well, you asked for questions. Here they come :

 

Node Settings: Spawn:

Is it possible that higher numbers (e.g. 8:spawn) mean lesser probability of spawning?

 

Will an alien spawned on a spawn node (2:soldier) inside the ship travel to a 0:Civ-Scout node outside the ship?

 

About Outer walls you mention "adjustments need to be made to insure that units can pass around the far side of the ships". Can you explain what these adjustments are?

 

Thanks in advance.

R.

[BladeFireLight]

Node Settings: Spawn:

Is it possible that higher numbers (e.g. 8:spawn) mean lesser probability of spawning?

in a word... _no_

 

I have tested some 8000 spawns.. the 0 is not spawn everything else get's the same results... totaly random... (at least as well as the C++ rand() can do )

 

Will an alien spawned on a spawn node (2:soldier) inside the ship travel to a 0:Civ-Scout node outside the ship?

also... no

 

this is why the TFTD ship maps dont have exit links.

About Outer walls you mention "adjustments need to be made to insure that units can pass around the far side of the ships". Can you explain what these adjustments are?

 

the north and west outer walls of a ufo only work in a content square... if they are flush with the edge of the map a unit will not be able to walk arround.

 

for example if the defaul medium scout (the + shaped one) was flush with the north west corner then their would be a route node accessible only by flying units... if a floater was to camp there when you dont have flying suits...... you get the idea... with a 2 level mod the problem could not be soved with a gernade..

 

Hope I did not make it even more complicated.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Rexxx]

More questions:

 

How important is the value for "distance"? What will happen if I enter a value too big or too small?

 

How did you test your (ship) maps? Just putting them in the game and play? Using Xcomutil's prompting or the VIS flag?

 

Thanks again

R.

[Jman4117]

Question about spawning Xcom units:

 

How do you spawn your units in the landing craft at the start of a mission? The maps only show a point at the eqipment pile. And there are no spawn points like there are in the bases.

[BladeFireLight]

Geoscape places the units based on the ship location and ship type.

 

however Xcomutil alwase resets the units if a ship is present. and it's config file alows for reconfiguring the unit placement and number of unit's onbaord.

 

check xcomutil.txt for detail on how to do this.

 

Maps with not xcom ship use the spawn points set to xcom.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Bagirov]

https://mypage.bluewin.ch/xcom/DESERT.gif

I found a solution to mix different tile sets. It is a little bit difficult to explain, but it works in this example for urban and desert tiles. So it must be possible to create completely new mapsets.

[BladeFireLight]

Creating new "Terrains" is posible.. however Their are some major limits with the games engine.

 

There is a limit on the number of Tiles in a Terrain (MCD enterys)

the basic formulat is that you add the number of Tiles used for the xcomship + the number of tiles in the UFO ship + the number of tiles in Terrain + 2 (for blanks.mcd)

 

if this execds the limit Tactical crashes.

 

If you change thing son the fly then tactical has no clue what was used last time. and you get a corupt map when you load a saved game.

 

Their are three ways to use new Terrain.

1. copy over files.

2. PCK/MCD Adding

3. patch Tatcial

 

Nigher one folves the problems above. and all of them do work. however overwriting files can be messy, MCD adding can crash tactical, and patching tacitical is a problematic at best.

 

Over coming the save game issue (only used if your truely 'adding' new terrains) requires a method of automaticly applying a terrain, and finding a way to know what it was when you reaload.

 

I'm working on a new Battle Field Generator to over come all theas problems.

 

-Blade FireLight

[Bagirov]

I will try to explain my method :

Desert.mcd has 42 records, Urban.mcd has 111. So I copyed the 42 desert.pck tiles to the first 42 urban.pck tiles using the good old dos pck.view. Then I renamed urban.pck, urban.mcd and urban.tab to desert.pck, desert.mcd and desert.tab. Using daishivas pck.view I overwrited the rest of the tiles with tiles from other tilesets. Some of the map files looked a little bit strange. I corrected that with map.view. Last step was to correct the terrain attributes of each tile with MCDEdit.

Unfortunately it is not possible to load an ufo map because of exceeding the limits.

That would be true...

 

also your MCD's for the desert images would be missing the corect LOFT and other Map Control Data that fits with the images

 

-Blade FireLight

[Bagirov]

Well, thats`s correct ! I have to change all the LOFT and the other Map Control Data with MCDEdit. Very laborious work