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Housing Situation


Pumpkinhead

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I was just thinking of the houses in the game during a Terror Site mission, and based on the unofficial decision of 1 square being 1m, it makes the "houses" about 6m by 6m, and the block of "units" about 12x12... Now I don't know about you people, but 6mx6m is a damn small house by my standards ;)

 

One other thing before I disappear back into the woodwork: Terror Sites are meant to be set in cities, right, and yet the maps look like a quiet little suburb at best... If you're playing a New York Terror Site, you'd expect to be running around amidst towering skyscrapers, wouldn't you?

 

I definately think a FPS remake is in order to fully do terror sites justice :)

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If you're playing a New York Terror Site, you'd expect to be running around amidst towering skyscrapers, wouldn't you?

 

sounds like a great Idea, we could have a 30 part mission where you fight everyware from skycrapers to central park. oh joy

 

:) puf puf.. "how many more stories to this building?"

;) "15"

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sounds like a great Idea, we could have a 30 part mission where you fight everyware from skycrapers to central park.  oh joy

I'm not talking about area size, since UFO seemed to have fairly decent sized maps, but I think the vertical size could have been a little more realistic ;)

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Actually a 6x6m house with an upstairs second floor will cost you over a hundred thousand in Ireland these days - the first house I bought was only 6m across the front, and the living room was a big one at 6m deep, and it didn't have an upstairs.

 

But yes, we're certainly not fighting in the downtown financial district. Hmm - Chrysalids in the subway tunnels, anyone? Or "Die Hard" with Ethereals? "Ho ho ho, now I have a blaster launcher" :)

 

Extra incentive to get flying suits

;) I think we're in the 'teens

(Venkman) Tell me when we reach the 20th floor, I'm gonna puke

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Personally I wish that they'd set it up so that the terror missions had realistic street settings with thousands of buildings in the city with a seemingly endless supply of rooms that could hide aliens inside. Add in thousands of aliens instead of just one or two... and made it so you didn't have to clear the entire city in one go but could make individual swarries into the city to clean out a district or hold ground defensively. The citizens would give tips of where they'd seen alien activity... well that and the corpses littering the streets and building hallways would be a good indication of an alien being nearby.

 

It'd have been something like a mix of MiB with a real world humans-only war where an enemy could be hiding behind any curtain or trash can. And those cryssalids would have made it even more fun since you'd see a 'civilian' heading your way and never be sure whether they were a carrier or harmless.

 

The game would've been so cool that way... almost in a 'V' the series sort of way where humanity tried to fight off the alien invaders in a city already under alien control. Of course the 'win' scenarios of battlefield missions would have had to have been more complex than a simple 'All aliens must be unable to fight further.' into more of a mission parameter setup such as, 'Clear street A of any enemy agents.' or 'Locate and rescue the X-Com personnel hiding somewhere in the skyscraper at the corner of 47th and Main and evac them and your team to the pickup zone.'

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If there was a decent, user-friendly map editor for UFO I'd feel tempted into redesigning a terror site scenario to be more urban-like. Although there are limitations built upon the size, it would be interesting to expand the three-story building so that it would occupy nearly all of the scenario. (like the slums on Apocalypse). Of course, add a lot of civilians and Chryssalids....it would make things much interesting (and harder for sure!)

Another thing could be to increase the penalty received for having civilians killed up to 100 or more points....that way it would really make saving the lifes of the poor bastards essential unless you wanted a -1000 score on a terror mission, even after killing all the aliens.

Or you could just set one civilian, give him a -500 penalty for his death. The mission would be find the civvie before the aliens did and then escort him back to the Skyranger.

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I know what you mean Hobbes... I've been thinking about editing a map to create a scenario where you start off on level 3 then have to punch a hole in a street or ride an elevator down or enter a manhole to get down into the sewer system.

 

Levels 0-2 would be a complex maze-ish set of sewer tunnels that had become infested with H2H aliens and would be in complete darkness requirring either massive RE skill or electro-flares.

 

It would certainly be a new twist to all those rumors of alligators in the sewers... ;)

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I know what you mean Hobbes... I've been thinking about editing a map to create a scenario where you start off on level 3 then have to punch a hole in a street or ride an elevator down or enter a manhole to get down into the sewer system.

 

Levels 0-2 would be a complex maze-ish set of sewer tunnels that had become infested with H2H aliens and would be in complete darkness requirring either massive RE skill or electro-flares.

 

It would certainly be a new twist to all those rumors of alligators in the sewers... ;)

just have the mission be a two parter like in TFTD... have to clear the street level then the sewers... :)

 

-Blade FireLight

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Bladefireight, I've been wondering. I notice that the game reserves the maximum limits for maps to be around 5x5 in area for four level elevation maps and 6x6 for two level elevation maps. However, I also notice that, when your cursor ends up on a different elevation, that it's often on an elevation much greater than the 4 (or in some occasions, when it goes off the map entirely).

 

What if, and this is just hypothetical, what if we expand the map size (just add lots of empty tiles on the end to increase its size for arguments sake) and increase the elevation (in one of the map information files) to something greater than 4? It would be interesting if it could, as it would allow you to make much larger maps than what was originally intended. I mean, with a much higher elevation, you should be able to utilise all your strength to throw grenades without having to worry about it hitting the ceiling of the playing area. (besides, TFTD increased the elevation for 6x6 module areas to four)

 

Mind, back then, the size of the map had to be limited due to memory limitations (2 - 4 megs can only hold so much). But now, certainly memory constraints wouldn't be too much of a problem, right?

 

- NKF

 

edit: If more tiles are added to the map information, the two light maps will probably need to be expanded too.

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Actualy UFO and TFTD use the same table max. UFO just dosent do any 6x6x4 areas even tho it can. (actualy the limit is 36, 10x10x4 maps, but only TFTD ship missions use non square maps.)

 

The Tacical engine used by both games cant handle maps with 5 levels.. it's not the terrain table, routes or item overlay that causse this limit,(they actualy display fine) it's the smoke and static units overlay that gets messed up. Basicly you see flashes of smoke when you scroll the map, and units on the ground and not visible unless they are walking.

 

If your looking for maps with more then 4 levels check out UFO2000 they are curently working on that, using the newest release of MapView.net

 

-BladeFireLight

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Well, as long as the map's a proper cube (or square shaped), the map drawing function should handle it fine (consequently it should render the overhead map right). I don't know about rectangular shaped maps.. my test with the classic isometric map drawing function that can be found all over the place seemed to stuff up on rectangular maps, but it works fine on square maps. I'm guessing it's the same with UFO/TFTD.

 

- NKF

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Rectangualr Battle Feilds work in both games so long as you respect the limits of 36, 10x10 map entries (total of 3600 tiles/level; maps dont have to be 10x10 but must be divisible by 10x10) and no more than 4 levels.

 

So tecicaly you could have a map that is 20x180, have the skyranger and one end of a vally and the alien ship on the other, with sniper post on the hills on either side.. kin of a run the gauntlet ;)

 

-Blade FireLight

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Ah, but the 10x10 block limitation is only for when you piece together the map. But once the battle has started, all we have is a giant battlescape map that can be moulded to our hearts content, and is not necessarily limited to 10x10 blocks!

 

But I suppose it's more work than just sticking a bunch of prefedined blocks of various multiples of 10 together. ;)

 

(I'm talking out of pure ignorance by the way)

 

- NKF

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