Skyranger/APC creation thread

[NKF]

Portals or slits along the side of the side walls are definitely in the plans. As for the exit: rather than have the back lower down like a ramp, how about having it open up like doors? Could make them like barn-windows that you can see through and derive some, if not perfect, protection.

 

If this reaches completion, would it be possible for the tool that sets up the APC on the map be able to selectively place HWPs (if present) in different locations from the standard troop positions? See, I was thinking that since you can't create a weapon for the vehicle, why not have a HWP-mount (you can think of it as that) on the roof where the first HWP on the ship starts? Just imagine 'opened' clamps around the HWP. Sounds a bit silly, but this is a made-up APC rather than a real one. I was having trouble trying to fit 3 HWPs into the planned interior floor space (5x3).

 

That's just one of many ideas I'm throwing around at this stage. Still wanting roof-access as its key distinguishing feature. Actually, is it possible to include grav-lift features in the troop transports? I just recalled the hatch on the top of the intro-interceptor. Would save space rather than use a ramp or stair setup.

 

- NKF

 

edit: Crumbs. It just occurred to me that foot access to the roof might unearth one game engine problem if troops walk off the sides or front. They'd fall 'into' the walls. That's not particularly good. Not so bad for the far wall, but the near wall or the front of the vehicle, they'll end up 'in' the vehicle. You don't see this happening normally in the game as you don't often have foot access, and flying suits can't fly down into walls. Wonder if making them behave like a slope would solve the issue? Of course, you'd be able to walk all over the APC then...

[Bomb Bloke]

Portals or slits along the side of the side walls are definitely in the plans. As for the exit: rather than have the back lower down like a ramp, how about having it open up like doors? Could make them like barn-windows that you can see through and derive some, if not perfect, protection.

The problem with "real" doors is that I'm not confident I can make them "work". For some reason, the weird door on the Lightning has so far proven unfixable - you'd think it'd be simple, just make sure the "door" flag is set, or just copy the door functionality from a UFO - but it simply refuses to open. Troops just walk right through it.

 

If this reaches completion, would it be possible for the tool that sets up the APC on the map be able to selectively place HWPs (if present) in different locations from the standard troop positions?

Yes, quite possible.

 

I was thinking of using an INI-file system, where the config file specifies which craft the maps are intended to replace, and how the troop layout works. Wouldn't be hard to set some of the spawn points as "tank only", meaning that the roof would be the very first spawn point, but no soldiers would appear up there.

 

That's just one of many ideas I'm throwing around at this stage. Still wanting roof-access as its key distinguishing feature. Actually, is it possible to include grav-lift features in the troop transports? I just recalled the hatch on the top of the intro-interceptor. Would save space rather than use a ramp or stair setup.

It's never been tried, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. It'd be subject to all the animation-based limitations of a regular grav lift, of course (either it'd have to animate all the time, or not at all), so you wouldn't be able to make it look/act like a conventional elevator.

 

edit: Crumbs. It just occurred to me that foot access to the roof might unearth one game engine problem if troops walk off the sides or front. They'd fall 'into' the walls. That's not particularly good.

Placing invisible elevated floor tiles within the sides may help avert this. Any soldier falling down will land on these, giving the appearance of a one-way slope (that can be walked down, but not be used to walk back up).

[chiasaur11]

Weird how many glitches still are impossible to fix after all these years and all of the editors and suchlike.

 

Interesting.

[NKF]

The game's definitely a gltich-fest. Stil, some of them weren't really glitches - it's just they weren't designed for the lengths we want to take them to.

 

Regarding the doors, real functioning doors would certainly be a lot of fun, but realistically fixed 'open' doors will have to do. Not sure a working door can even mimic a see-through window.

 

As for the lift, I think a ladder on the side should suffice.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Not sure a working door can even mimic a see-through window.

Doors are made up of two tiles - the one you see when it's closed is swapped with the one you see when it's open. Any animations attached to doors only play when they're opening (as opposed to other tiles, where they play all the time). They're also slightly better lit then other tiles during night missions, for some reason, but other then those three peculiarities, they act the same - so yeah, you can have doors that act like windows.

 

Or you could, if I thought I could get the doors to work at all.

 

Kinda-sorta worth mentioning is that the Avenger has door tiles hidden away in its MCD/PCK files. I can only actually seeing them in use many years ago; I'm not sure what version of UFO that was in, or if XcomUtil had something to do with it, but they didn't work either. Acted much the same as the Lightning's door.

[NKF]

It would be the XComutil expanded Avenger that put them back in, I've never seen them in the vanilla game. Don't suppose the game operates the doors by way of hardcoding them in, like the way they attached special functions on certain obdata.dat slots? I'll go with the fixed open doors for the time being.

 

Sorry folks, today I'd set myself the goal of installing side windows, create the ladder and turret well as well as 'weather' the outside of the tank by way of sprinkling some slightly lighter/darker pixels into the paneling. But have been lying in bed with a cold all afternoon. I'll have to set aside some time to complete the individual tasks over the week.

 

By the way Bomb Bloke, what would be the best way to store all the tiles once I'm done. By way of individual files or on a single sheet?

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Don't suppose the game operates the doors by way of hardcoding them in, like the way they attached special functions on certain obdata.dat slots? I'll go with the fixed open doors for the time being.

Knowledge of how MCD records work is unfortunately still spotty. I'm fairly sure the answer is in one of the unknown offsets; frankly, I've just never put in the work to come to a conclusive answer as to why they don't function, and how to fix 'em.

 

Sorry folks, today I'd set myself the goal of installing side windows, create the ladder and turret well as well as 'weather' the outside of the tank by way of sprinkling some slightly lighter/darker pixels into the paneling. But have been lying in bed with a cold all afternoon. I'll have to set aside some time to complete the individual tasks over the week.

No rush; making yourself work is no way to fight off a cold...

 

By the way Bomb Bloke, what would be the best way to store all the tiles once I'm done. By way of individual files or on a single sheet?

Whatever's easiest for you, I guess - easiest for me would be a pre-made PCK file, but I'm quite happy to build that myself. Just make sure it's obvious what the "transparent" colour is supposed to be, don't go using any weird file formats (eg PSD), and it'll be fine.

[Thorondor]

@NKF:

 

Really unique stuff and looking good by the way you're putting it together.

 

::

 

Wishes of a swift recovery!

[Munkeylord]

if it helps, i found all of my old stuff. including 2 different ships i made that still work kinda with position changes, kinda looked at them a bit last night... i couldnt even tell you how i did it now though. nothing is really working for me as far as tools and utils atm

[NKF]

Had a rather productive afternoon. Blinged up the APC a bit. About 19 - 20 unique tiles so far, will probably need about 10 more unique tiles to complete it.

 

 

I haven't built the rear corners or open doors yet, but that's the right interior length I had in mind. Also that raised lip along the edge of the exit was done to fake the fact that the inside of the APC is level with the ground.

 

Still deciding on how to decorate the last 2x3 rear roof tiles. More stowage, a slightly raised cab or maybe even the 'opened' HWP clamps.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

'tis a thing of beauty!

 

I'm probably not much good for ideas on what to go on top. All I can think of is "giant turret".

[chiasaur11]

Giant turret sounds like a recipe for disappointment when you can't shoot the aliens with it.

 

Hmm. Maybe some Sectoid noggins with Xs through them? I'm a bit strapped for ideas here too.

[NKF]

A Jolly-Roger-esque Sectoid head with crossbones?

 

I must admit that I am itching to put weapons on this things, from a main cannon or a more conservative machine gun turret, a heavy machine gun for the observation hatch in the front, smoke grenade launchers, anti-tank rocket launchers strapped to the side, etc, etc. Alas, they would indeed be a recipe for disappointment.

 

- NKF

[j'ordos]

Looks great! How is that ladder going to work though? Will the tile next to it be a grav lift? (edit: just read the thread properly nevermind) No ideas for the last tiles, I'd go for either a turret or a raised cab.

[Invertin]

For the top, maybe something like this

 

https://www.army-technology.com/projects/gepard/images/gepard1.jpg

 

But without the guns. Some sort of Radio signalling thingy. I dunno, just a thought. That way, we have something cool looking without the disappointment of the gun not shooting anything. Add some flavour text about it watching for the alien ship taking off during the mission or something, and hey presto.

[NKF]

Actually, sensory or radio equipment might just work. A radar dish such as the one on that tank wouldn't be too out of place either.

 

- NKF

[NKF]

Renamed the thread since it's not just about the brainstorming anymore.

 

Progress so far:

 

 

I'm almost done with the exterior. I have started work on the exit corners, so those are still in progress. The raised roof at the back mainly needs some additional furnishing, like the doohicky that I've yet to design to go into that mount on the far side. May end up with a basic radar dish. That mainly leaves the doors to be done.

 

The interior will need some work eventually. At the moment, it's rather uninteresting. Also noticed that it's actually a 6x3 interior space. That would be perfect for 3 HWPs inside.

 

If I'm still under the tile limit when I've finished, I might be able to make the entire outer cladding out of unique tiles. This way I could introduce a very basic two tone camouflage scheme. Something to consider after it's done.

 

 

- NKF

[Thorondor]

It's looking better and better with every iteration. Very nice, NKF!

 

::

 

Keep up the good work.

[NKF]

Had a bit of free time, so managed to complete all the major exterior cladding for the APC. Effectively complete, but I anticipate probably one or two more iterations before it's (visually) ready to go.

 

 

About 36 unique tiles so far (out of the Skyranger's 63). My next step is to make all the front half of the roof tiles unique so I can do similar panel seams like I've done on the back half. That radar is a separate piece from the mount, so I might try and doodle a few more technical doohickies and see which one works best. Then there's the interior to tidy up. Would vertical handrails like those found in buses for standing passengers work? Some of the excess floor space needs to go along the far wall as well.

 

edit:

 

Come to think of it - that radar looks like a miniature mad-science-y death beam. That's certainly not the case.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

It looks more impressive every time I see it, but I have to ask - Are the purple tracks staying? Or are they just a placeholder?

 

Vertical handrails might look a bit weird, given that they'd just be hanging in mid-air. And there'd be a lot of them. Maybe if you only had them hanging down the visible interior wall on the left side of the vehicle.

 

You could, perhaps, have some grey/black/brown track marks on the ground behind the vehicle, fading off after a few tiles (keeping in mind the entire thing, including any external bits, has 10x20 tiles of space to play with). It should be possible to superimpose stuff like that on top of whatever terrain happens to be there ("landing zone" modules are intentionally kept mostly featureless). You could also have an animating exhaust or somesuch, if you wanted (just so long as the tile count of the animation is divisible by a power of two, and no more then eight frames).

[NKF]

I wanted to see if I could get away with it. I'm going to put the APC more in line with the tracked HWP, so they'll have to be switched to gray. The hubs could go tan. On that same note, I think I will recolour the radar dish the with the gray/blue colour band to set it in line with the ones used at the base.

 

Track marks would be a nice touch. Could be done by way of a series of parallel lines and crosshatching them with transparency pixels to fade them out. Getting them the right shade is going to be the tricky part so that they blend well with the various terrain types.

 

The hand rails would just be on the far wall. I had planned to put them down by each of the frame ribs. One other opton is to just put a long bench along the wall. I will need to raise that part of the floor as I need something to give the impression of the track housing for other side of the APC.

 

- NKF

[NKF]

Sorry folks, haven't had an update-worthy update in a month. Just posting this mainly as a reminder to myself that it's a live project. I haven't had much time to work on this or on any of my other hobbies recently. Basically I've overextended myself a bit, and work has been tough going this last month, so catching up with everything is rather slow.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

Don't rush yourself on our account, but I'm still looking forward to it!

[Bomb Bloke]

 

A note on creating the sprite sheet; I might have an easier time of doing that (as I could build the basic "shape" of the thing using LOFTemps in the MCD file, then use my LOFTerrain proggy to spit out some templates as to how the "real" sprites should be split up). Though some cross-sections of the APC would still be handy.

[NKF]

Do you have a copy of the GIMP installed? I could send you my working file. All the tiles I'm working on are in different layers, and you can hide and unhide the various tiles to see the basic shape.

 

- NKF