Bomb Bloke Posted March 23, 2009 Share Posted March 23, 2009 I don't suppose anyone can remember off the top of their head, what the dimensions of the barracuda/manta craft are when they appear in tactical missions? Note that this is only even possible under XcomUtil. I wouldn't mind knowing what the craft look like. Screenshots would be nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 23, 2009 Author Share Posted March 23, 2009 I don't suppose anyone can remember off the top of their head, what the dimensions of the barracuda/manta craft are when they appear in tactical missions? Note that this is only even possible under XcomUtil. I wouldn't mind knowing what the craft look like. Screenshots would be nice. The maps are 10x10x2.Screenshots here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 I can only imagine that shot of the Manta is an error on Daishiva's behalf; hard to believe Scott would've had it using the Avenger tileset in the actual game... Too much work for absolutely no benefit. Thanks though. ... Aw man, turns out I don't know the Firestorm dimensions either. Ah well. Don't really need to know it right now and I can't imagine it being more then 1x1 anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 24, 2009 Author Share Posted March 24, 2009 I can only imagine that shot of the Manta is an error on Daishiva's behalf; hard to believe Scott would've had it using the Avenger tileset in the actual game... Too much work for absolutely no benefit. Well, I have tried replacing every X-COM craft with the manta. Even tried the Triton in TFTD. The actual layout is the same as the one I posted, except from the lightning, where it does not realy make any sense...My guess it is modelled after an alien craft type. ... Aw man, turns out I don't know the Firestorm dimensions either. Ah well. Don't really need to know it right now and I can't imagine it being more then 1x1 anyway. 10x10x3. It also seems to be modelled after an Alien Sub type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted March 24, 2009 Share Posted March 24, 2009 The XComutil Manta uses the Hammerhead tile set if I remember correctly. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Oh dear. The first test did not go well. Nevertheless, I found the results amusing and informative. I didn't actually know it was even possible to point the game at bogus MCD files (and don't yet know how I managed to do it here). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 26, 2009 Author Share Posted March 26, 2009 Yes! It has began!! I would have been surprised if the first test was just right! I always do when this happens to my programs and it makes me more suspicious that I have done something wrong, if it works the first time correctly.. I am very excited that you have began the testing phase of the mod. If I can be of any help, I will happily help.Especially anything involving coding and alpha/beta or gamma testing ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 It's funny how a little sleep helps the brain. I woke up with the realisation that yes, I did know exactly what would cause that error message. Heh. Maybe I'm starting to get old. Anyway, I've actually been coding the thing for over a week now. Still has a ways to go yet, but it'll certainly need testing once all the basic functionality is in place. Edit: Aw man, it looks like the urban maps are a little more complex then I thought. Certain modules (such as the service station) look really wrong unless placed right next to a road. Guess I'll have to do a bit more research into those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NKF Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 It's possible there are a few adjacency rules the game uses when building an urban map. Like laying down the road first, dropping the service station adjacent to the road, then fitting the other map blocks in where possible. Perhaps before the game does this, it compiles a list of modules it wants to include in the map as well (5 north-south roads, 5 east-west roads, 1 crossing, 1 service station, 1 warehouse, 1 large park, 3 town houses, etc). Whatever the case, XCOM's urban map generation must have some set of rules attached to what gets placed in what location on the map. XComutil's random urban maps for example just don't look right compared to one generated by the game - not counting the roading issue. - NKF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Indeed. If you check out the roads, you'll notice they have a light grey border around them - the footpaths. That's obvious enough. But if you check out the service station (and a few of the other buildings), you'll notice they have the same border. The station is a special case though, 'cause if you look at it, there's a little entry way on the left hand side of it for cars to come in on: Implying it should only be placed directly to the east of a north/south running road. Whether or not that's actually the case I dunno, but sticking the modules around randomly certainly looks wrong (even if I've got the roads themselves right). Luckily I have about a couple of thousand sample maps logged, so it probably won't take me too long to work out the rules. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 Any update on the progress so far? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 Need to code the stuff to make it work seamlessly with the game, then scribble out some documentation. Will probably have a working copy done in a couple of days. (I notice that TFTD USOs really don't like flying over land that much). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 30, 2009 Author Share Posted March 30, 2009 Need to code the stuff to make it work seamlessly with the game, then scribble out some documentation. Will probably have a working copy done in a couple of days. (I notice that TFTD USOs really don't like flying over land that much). Counting the seconds... That last note got me thinking though...Any details?My guess(well, I lke trying to ID a problem even with minimal clues), is that they prefer a water path instead of a land one to reach a destination...Even if the land one is shorter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Well, I started a new game and built a base in the middle of a larger continent. Fast forwarded, the terror missions turned up as usual but I got no radar contacts at all. Mind you, I didn't bother building the large sonar arrays. You could always try it yourself. The geoscape files are back a page or two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 31, 2009 Author Share Posted March 31, 2009 Well, I started a new game and built a base in the middle of a larger continent. Fast forwarded, the terror missions turned up as usual but I got no radar contacts at all. Mind you, I didn't bother building the large sonar arrays. You could always try it yourself. The geoscape files are back a page or two. How much did you fast forward? I have noticed not having radar contacts for 2-3 months without large array sonar in veteran difficulty. It can be that they have made it to avoid big land chunks, so that the player can actually down them. However, if the terrain is declared as "sealike" trerrain, this shouldn't be a problem, since the game would think it is actually sea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 It depends how the game is checking the sea/land divider. Aside from the polygons, there's also a "territories" map built into the executable itself that I reckon it's using. (Luckily, it doesn't seem to use this to determine when a craft should change depth). I went a couple of months in several trials. You can't really go much further then that without losing the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted March 31, 2009 Author Share Posted March 31, 2009 It depends how the game is checking the sea/land divider. Aside from the polygons, there's also a "territories" map built into the executable itself that I reckon it's using. (Luckily, it doesn't seem to use this to determine when a craft should change depth). Map build in into executable... ...Let's hope it does not interfere with the moving issue... The aliens are supposed to do abduction and infiltration missions, and these should be based on land in any case... I went a couple of months in several trials. You can't really go much further then that without losing the game. Perhaps you should try building a large array and see the detection rates. Even better, build more than one Or try begginer level(?)....I remember getting more detections at that level. Even better, do both. EDIT: If you do not have enough time to run extensive tests, I can help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted April 3, 2009 Author Share Posted April 3, 2009 Will probably have a working copy done in a couple of days. Not meaning to put any pressure on you, but, according to my seconds counter there are already lots of seconds that have passed since the "scheduled" ETA......Is everything going well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomb Bloke Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 ER WELL I had it more or less done and then I "put it all together" and it didn't work. That was a few days ago and I haven't touched it since. Pure laziness. But I think I've just worked out why; The mod itself is fine, there's gotta be a problem with the thingy I wrote to work around a problem with TFTD's split executable (it doesn't throw error codes). Assuming I'm right it should be ticking over nicely within an hour or two. Just a primitive version, mind you, but it should basically work. (It doesn't help that Firefox has eaten over 200mb of my RAM and I've been seeing some PERFORMANCE ISSUES over the last few days... *grumble*mumble*) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunder_Gr Posted April 3, 2009 Author Share Posted April 3, 2009 I hope you will include the source with the mod, also. Please?I would like to mess around with it. also. Be sure I will notify for everything I find out, I do not plan to steal your hard work. I wouldn't mind to have a version that does not work with the CE version, since I have the DOS version . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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