Reskinning Step 1 : Duplicating game objects

[Drakous79]

Post the list please :)

[johnnylump]

In spoiler:

 

 

 

Cuba

Peru

Chile

Colombia

Venezuela

Guatemala

Ecuador

Portugal

Turkey

Denmark

Finland

Czech Republic

Romania

Hungary

Austria

Kenya

Tanzania

Morocco

Algeria

Ethiopia

Thailand

Taiwan

Philippines

Indonesia

New Zealand

Vietnam

Iran

Saudi Arabia

Pakistan

Bangladesh

Malaysia

Kazakhstan

A few countries I'm sorry to leave out (Ghana, Bulgaria), but I checked this list against how many new unique name sets we could add without overhauling our expanded name lists function again.

Edited November 23, 2014 by johnnylump

[Drakous79]

Should be flags ordered in the texture as in the list? From left to right, row after row. Or alphabetically?

[Zyxpsilon]

Gosh... it's sooooo tough to determine a "politically" correct gathering of new Countries to integrate. Kinda like your list though, JL.

 

If there are some code restrictions or other concerns which would tend to either limit choices ( 32 is the maximum, right? ) or allow for more versatility, i'd have some suggestions if you don't mind.

 

UN is a must -- if anything it could serve as a general safety valve when controversy strikes hard in the player-base.

 

The trick with balance (and foreseeable future "espansion") could be that some continental levels diversity is better than inserting neighboring Nations. Considering the Council-16s and their rational "zones" of influence (indirectly - Satellite coverage too, btw) -- i'd have to mention how a pool of sub-nations nearby could receive special status in gameplay terms. Panic impacts, funding sources, mission locations being just three principles out of maybe more that should be pre-considered in a larger scope when deciding who to discard or include.

 

Then again -- there's highly various people's preferences.

 

Take those for example; Estonia, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Latvia, Libya, Madagascar, Panama, Qatar, Somalia, Syria, Switzerland, Tibet, Uruguay, etc.

Nothing minor or implicitly wrong-right about any... they are just "available".

 

If only some random function could be made, it would solve many issues. As it could be referred as the rational reason some were choosen (or not) by LW team. But if it's too complex, just stick with your instinct, JL. Having more is the key here... not if that or this wasn't acceptable to the most.

Edited November 23, 2014 by Zyxpsilon

[johnnylump]

Indonesia was a major omission, updating list (removed Zimbabwe).

 

I'd add a generic XCOM flag, too, I suppose (your choice how to design, Drak). Amineri tells me 32 isn't really a hard limit, but if one has to go to make this work well, I'd drop Kazakhstan.

 

I'll have to defer to Amineri about the ordering.

 

@ Zyx: I've tried to hit the major and regional powers, big population states, and a few where I'm guessing there are more likely a greater number of XCOM players. I left out countries that are having civil wars or something close to it right now, as well as extremely closed countries that would be very unlikely to contribute to an international project of this nature. Limits to the number of namelists our current code can handle was a deciding factor in several cases; I'm not prepared to overhaul our namelist code yet again.

 

Ultimately, though, this is just storytelling, not gameplay, so I would hope no one would have their feathers ruffled.

Edited November 23, 2014 by johnnylump

[Drakous79]

Okies.

 

I wish it was easier to change textures, considering custom user flags. I don't think people would install UDK and create new textures and add them to new package . Maybe the way to go is to put one blank flag how Firaxis did it, feed enum with one custom entry and let players use TexMod to insert flag of their choice to the texture of 32 flags.

 

Edit: Is LW played on consoles too?

Edited November 23, 2014 by Drakous79

[johnnylump]

 

Edit: Is LW played on consoles too?

 

No, not possible.

 

The problem with a custom country enum is that it will still have to have hardcoded default references to soldier ethnicity, language and a namelist for generation. I can just include them, but they won't be easily moddable.

[wghost81]

johnnylump, I can mutate character generator into new class with new config and int files. I already thought about it, considering how many people like expanded namelists. :smile:

[Zyxpsilon]

As long as i will still be able to use TexMod to provide custom "versions" of my own (or for my Re-CLR packages)... i'm alright with anything anyone can think of! :wink:

I'll let Drakous79 design a custom XCom flag ( for now :smile: ! )... but, i already have some wild idea for it -- interested?

 

PS; Was able to switch LW newest defaults Honduras & Bosnia with Colombia & Turkey (personal decision) rather easily. Names & Language were approximately matched anyway. So it isn't all that hard to fiddle with those provided certain EW coding principles are maintained for files access. As you may know, i use different graphics for Armors (Oval symbols) and Barracks List (Button-like)... i would then have to rebuild all of the new assets accordingly.

 

PS2; Wasn't there some weird coding obstacle to use a specific slot on Flags.DIF (1024x1024) texture file? IIRC, it was the empty black (#31) between Honduras and Bosnia on your LW-Version. Maybe that's old stuff though.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Zyxpsilon

[Amineri]

Flag ordering within the 4x8 grid can be pretty arbitrary. The U-V offsets are configured in DefaultContent.ini, a la :

Flags=(Country=eCountry_USA, U=0.0, V=0.0)
Flags=(Country=eCountry_Russia, U=0.25, V=0.0)
Flags=(Country=eCountry_China, U=0.5, V=0.0)
Flags=(Country=eCountry_UK, U=0.75, V=0.0)
Flags=(Country=eCountry_Germany, U=0.0, V=0.125)
...

Of course when the ECountry enum is expanded, the new enums won't have pretty names.

 

My basic plan is to module separate the fractional/integer components of the U value, using the integer to specify which flags texture to load, and the fractional part to specify within that flags texture. So if 2 additional flag textures are added (making 3 total, or 96 flag spots available), valid U values would range from 0.0 to 2.75.

 

The primary issue I'm dealing with now is actually the strategy game-flags. These are set up in the UICollection_Common >> gfxXComIcon.XComIcons.XComFlags sprite, which is a 351 frame sprite with flags icons defined at particular frames using particular GFX labels. There's only frames for 37 countries (e.g. there is a frame for Pakistan, but currently no texture). Further these textures are only 128x64 resolution, and some of them look particularly bad.

 

I'm hoping XMTS will step in and help out with some GFX modding to XComIcons to allow the use of an Unreal Engine Texture2D path instead of a sprite/frame label, and further that they can be set up to use 256x128 pixel textures (which would match the resolution for the armor flags) but scaled down.

 

Once the strategy flag textures get set, I think the general plan will be to create a single new texture file to contain both the strategy and armor flag textures. The armor flag textures could have mipmaps and a custom tfc creates if someone wants to go that far.