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New TFTD Sub designs


Gizamaluke

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Hi guys,

 

Been really enjoying the work that has been done on TFTDextender and in the last few weeks I have had a new lease of life with TFTD. I have been working on new Alien sub designs that I hope you guys will like. I have based them on Sea creatures (as per the game) that should have been around that the time of the great cataclysm.

The maps all seem to work pretty well and I have included the route files needed to work them. I haven't experienced any problems with the routes as yet, but I am sorry if there are any bugs with them; I'm not exactly sure how route files work exactly.

 

Maybe there could be some functionality added to the extender to randomly add user made maps whilst playing the game?

 

Giz

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Maps.zip

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Maps look really nice mateteehee.gif

 

"Maybe there could be some functionality added to the extender to randomly add user made maps whilst playing the game?" This would be a nice feature for extender, i hope someone adds it also, Openxcom has support for this but it is only Xcom1 at the moment, i cant wait for TFTD support .

 

banana.gif Keep the Mods coming mate , there are very few MODS for TFTD aroundbanana.gif .

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It'd be easy enough to code up a dynamic ship-swapper (I could adapt the X-COM-ship-switching code I use in my BBMod fairly readily), the only downside I can think of is that it'd be tricky to switch the Geoscape graphics of those ships (the ones you see during interception)... though I doubt anyone'd notice if that simply wasn't done. :laugh:
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I have had a number of issues with the maps I have made. The first major issue is that the Zrbite appears outside the Alien Sub and is not affected by the Ion Beam Accelerators exploding. I have had this issue before with my UFO maps, and I know it is something to do with spawn points set on the map for the Elerium/Zrbite to spawn. However, I don't know how to obtain this information or change the values. Can anyone help? I would be much appreciated.

 

BTW, I am working on a new crab design that is an improvement over the previous one :)

 

Giz.

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Bomb Bloke,

 

We are on the same page with that last bit. I thought about that too and unless you replaced the geoscape interception graphic with a generic coverall one, you would have to change it each time. I don't know the mechanic of such a thing but it seems like it would be alot of work. :(

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Soooo,

 

I was having a problem with one of the maps i made (The squid design) in that terrain features were overlaying on the inside and outside of the alien craft. I figure that it's to do with how the game reads the map files; if there is not enough sub stuff on the map then the engine overlays terrain over the top of existing structures.

 

I have changed the squid map accordingly and so far I haven't noticed any problems with this effect. It looks a little less 'squiddy' because of it's reduced size but I think it's a better map for the game.

 

See what you think:

 

(BTW, If i didn't mention before, *.map files go in the /maps directory and *.RMP go on the /Routes directory)

 

Giz.

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Squid.zip

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Giz, the problem is that the space reserved for the craft is hardcoded.

UFO02 gets a single 10x10 map block, and if your map is bigger than that, it overlaps whatever terrain happens to be there.

The squid works as a replacement for UFO03, but then there's empty space next to it (because UFO03 gets 20x20 reserved space).

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Regarding the Zrbite thing:

 

When you start a battle, the Geoscape engine creates a table of items. The first set is the stuff you opted to bring along, and these are all positioned at the equipment pile point in your dropship. The second set is the stuff the aliens brought along, and these are all placed into their inventories. The third set of stuff is the Zrbite, which is placed where the Geoscape engine believes the Accelerators are - it doesn't check the map files for this information, it's hardcoded into the executable.

 

After that, the Tactical engine starts, goes to the initial equip screen for your soldiers, automatically hands items out as it sees fit and lets you make any changes you feel are important.

 

Hence it doesn't matter what edits you make to the map files, the Geoscape engine doesn't care.

 

There are two ways around this: One is to find the co-ords in the Geoscape engine and modify them. The other is to run custom software in between the time the Geoscape engine hands control to the Tactical engine to modify the object table with the correct co-ords (which is exactly how XcomUtil and my own mods do much of their work).

 

The former method has two major pitfalls in that you'd have no way to have "variants" of a USO available in the game, you'd have to choose one layout and stick with it. The other is that you'd only be able to move the Zrbite, not add or remove chunks of the stuff.

 

So I'd been planning on implementing functionality into my BBMod to check the maps for Accelerators and make sure that the object table respected their positions, though things are a bit more complex if you're changing the size of the USO maps as well.

 

That's a problem for much the same reason the Zrbite thing is: the Geoscape engine gets to choose the map layout, and so it aligns ships with map modules that lack terrain features. But it assumes all those modules and ships are of a certain size, so if you change those sizes it all messes up.

 

Just so happens that I've written code to generate maps from scratch, and that'd solve that little problem with slight modification (because it CAN check the maps for their proper sizes rather then assuming things), but the catch is it's only used by my UFO/TFTD ComboMod (for reasons that likely make sense to you if you consider that it incorporates all of UFO:EU's maps into TFTD).

 

XcomUtil also has its own map writing code, though that'd also require an update to account for alternate craft and Blade hasn't been around for a little while now. :( Still, lemme know if you're interested in randomly loading USOs via my ComboMod. If you're only really fussed about the Zrbite, I can deal with that using my much less intrusive BBMod.

 

(The mods and the documentation about what they actually DO are all in my toolkit, if you're unfamiliar with them).

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Thanks for the feedback guys, that is some useful information right there!

 

I will try then to modify my maps to match. I will check the existing designs and look to incorporating the Zrbite spawn points in there. Given me new things to think about :)

 

Back soon...

 

Giz.

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