LW Projects (...after final version #3)

[Zyxpsilon]

Getting very near to an official release of the LW-Pedia_DB version! :smile:

 

It really was a wild ( and tough! ) ride with properly formatting the text strings to fit the limited space available on each of those screens but i think it all turned out pretty well.. see below for a quick sample of the finalized "C03-Objectives" panel. There is a total of 47 textures (512x256 that needed to fit into a restricted 400x200 area) in the TPF file.

The custom INT strings would need to be installed by Spazmo's Mod-Manager program -- or simply be manually copy-pasted.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

http://i.imgur.com/s0SI73q.png

 

 

 

Soon to be uploaded to the Nexus. :wink:

 

EDIT...

 

Well, looks like it is!! http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/637/?

Enjoy!

Edited September 21, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[Dethraker]

Just to attempt to spark up interest and conversation again I thought I'd post some ideas I've been contemplating about "Expanding EXALT" after I finally finish my own mod. I'll start by putting up an updated summary(to my knowledge)

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

#1) LW Pedia:(In Progress, Zyxpsilon)

It's been hinted about in other threads and some players have even requested this kind of feature. In general terms, what you'd get is a new "Research Option" that leads to an hybrid set of screens that develop most ingame data & infos. I've already begun work on a sampling method that uses a "centralized" tech-tree surrounded by areas that contain details, combo-lists & quick access buttons... if i can gather enough interests (or serious development partners), i'll share this stuff.

 

#2) CAMPAIGN SUMMARY:(In progress, Zyxpsilon, Tracktwo, and XMTS)

Written about elsewhere, also. It goes underneath the "Situation Room" menu and would offer players a bunch of statistics on their current games; ...where, what, when -- sort of. Imagine for a minute that everything that occurs is being tracked down and every relevant info can be displayed at will. Amineri has already hinted that such gimmick could be easy to implement. All is needed is the skillsets and minds to develop it.

 

#3) EXPANDING EXALT:(Not started, interest from Krazyguy75)

 

There have been a few ideas suggested for adding to EXALT:

• Adding more Classes
• Placing EXALT as a separate entity that can show up and fight against both XCom AND the aliens
• Expanding weapons, plasma, armors, etc.
• Adding MECs to the EXALT
• Separate them from aliens, no more coordinating, EXALT are war "profiteers"

 

#4) AUTO-RESOLVE OF MISSIONS(Not started, idea presented by Amineri)

 

As Amineri went over there is already code from vanilla that the LW team did not utilize or in her words "somehow managed to not break". So it would be a matter of(and I'm assuming here):

• Creating a UI to choose if you want to "auto-resolve" a tactical mission
• Making sure the auto-resolve doesn't always favor either XCom, or the aliens(and also EXALT if option 3 is added)

 

#5) ALTERNATE TECH AND FOUNDRY(In progress, Dethraker)

 

An alternate choice that will be presented as a 2nd Wave option to allow a "non-linear"(not sure if that is actually the correct terminology, but it's the popular one) tech tree. In other words instead of Ballistics >> Beam >> Gauss >> Pulse >> Plasma, it wouldn't be a determined path.

 

The intent is to "force" a choice between one tech line or another. The plan currently only consists of two choices Advanced Balistics OR Laser, and Advanced MECs OR Expanded Gene Mods. Each choice will unlock several possibilities, but will also lock off the other option entirely.

 

Further Foundry Projects will play a much larger role. The Research will merely unlock the technology, but the foundry(or rather the Engineers) will have to figure out how to implement that tech. Example: Research Beam Weaponry, unlocks "Prototype Beam Laser" and a few Foundry Projects that will unlock subsequent weapon types.

 

ADDITIONAL: Also planning to add a separate ini file that will allow further customization of options by allowing you to select what stats are increased by either a research or foundry project. The DefaultAltTree.ini will have comment tutorials informing everyone what eItem(s) can be used for weapon/armor modifications as well as using a struct to increase said stats by amount inserted. DGC.ini will still define the default starting stats, DAT.ini will only adjust post research/foundry results.

 

 

#6) EXPANDED INTERCEPTOR GAME(In progress/completed?, Pendra)

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/590/?

 

amaciel81 made some interesting concept suggestions(not sure if amaciel81 does any modding), additions to the interceptor mini-game were the first 3 of these.

 

 

#7) ALIEN DRONE AS INVENTORY ITEM(Presented by amaciel81)

 

A clever idea to make drones "capture-able". Since you can bring back weapons from live aliens that you capture, why not be able to "re-purpose" an enemy drone? As suggested you can then have Engineers(or other specific class types, maybe MECs too?) equip the drone as a large item and carry it into the field with them. My concerns:

• Would the drone automatically be placed on the map at map start, or would it be a "use-able" item?
• Would this affect the skyranger capacity in some way?

Personally I really like this idea also, I might try looking into it after I finish my alternate tech tree.

 

#8 ) SQUAD DEVELOPMENT(Presented by SpartanXZero)

 

An idea to create predefined squads and a system that does checks to see if all available squad members are available by selecting the squad's name/title

• I suggested possibly utilizing a duplicated medal system, you can assign a squad(medal) to each member of a squad, with the original medal system you could name the medal so you can potentially name your squad that way
• I think the suggestion was to include a UI for establishing the Squad System, but using the medals all it would do is allow quick assignement of squad members
• You could have 2 different squad assignments(medals) one that you give to your squad leader, the other would be given to each member of the squad(except squad leader
• When you select a squad leader from the barracks to assign to the Skyranger it would then assign the remainder of that squad and do checks for weapons, items, injuries, fatigue

 

 

 

EXPANDING EXALT:

 

This project could be broken up into phases, first phase could be implementing EXALT as a 2nd(or 3rd) entity of competition on the map.

• You can obviously have a 3rd entity on the map because on Terror Missions civilians count as that 3rd entity
• The civilian AI is extremely simplistic, run and hide
• We can duplicate that aspect of a 3rd entity and then use mutators to add in more intelligent AI, or just replace the existing classes that determine EXALT AI

 

Second Phase would be to add in more variety for the EXALT units.

• We could add in more classes, maybe even MECs(though not sure about models)
• Then access to more weapons and items so they could be more on par with XCom

 

Third Phase could consist of writing new code for how the game progresses EXALT outside of missions

• EXALT could become a mercenary group, world domination, etc.
• Create EXALT missions that they run to gain resources much like XCom
• Maybe even have EXALT get strong enough late game to steal our Firestorm technology and have Firestorm vs Firestorm air battles
• With some UI pros maybe we could see an additional section just for tracking EXALT, maybe separate EXALT and Aliens into separate UI screens

 

This would likely be very time consuming, and would probably run past XCom 2's launch to get through all the phases(possibly even to achieve first phase), but as I said, just an attempt to spark up interest and conversation once again.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Dethraker

[LiQuiD911]

If I overcome my lazynes I could make exalt and undercover agent spawn points configurable like wastelandghost's landing zones. Is anyone interested in that?

[Dethraker]

I was having the same issue with laziness for the longest, finally started back up on my mod and hopefully getting close to an initial release. I would love to see configurable spawn points for EXALT and covert ops units.

 

This makes me wonder though, are we to a point where we can create XCom reinforcements the same way that EXALT has reinforcements enter the map(running in from off map), and can we have them all come from the same general area?

[Zyxpsilon]

Welcome back Dethraker,

 

Nice to see you've still got the urge to plan ahead for your tricky Exalt stuff!

 

But as they say, we're *ALL* busy with a variety of concurrent projects that need extra attention. I sooo wish the "Campaign Summary" would gain some momentum to at least put the Graphs feature into some minimal form as we know how complex the real "summary" (third step in TT's rational development projections) mode truly is and that it should be much more involving for coders & alike. TrackTwo has been putting some love into his candy bar "JumpStart" magic tool and it's going really strong and well, AFAIC.

 

I released a temporary LW-Pedia_DB version in hopes that this indirect concept would stir someone's interest in offering their help to start coding the real thingy... cross-fingers! :wink:

 

In the meantime, nothing like reality to bring us all towards our dear goals -- namely, continuing or just completing our precious projects. :D

 

XCom2 will certainly occupy our minds soon enough!

Edited September 28, 2015 by Zyxpsilon

[Dethraker]

Nice Zyx, I might look at what you've done at some point with LW-Pedia_DB.

 

It's nice to be back working on my mod, I recently came into some time off work due to an injury so I've had more time to look at things, though I've also filled the extra time with home projects and more sleeping :D. I'm honestly hoping for an initial release fairly soon, but some technical and personal things are still holding that back.

 

As modders, everyone has their own project they want to work on and give attention to, I completely understand that as I am setting my own as a priority also lol. This was merely an attempt to re-ignite interest, I do enjoy reading about everyone's successes and failures in my free time and the forums have been all but dead lately.

[LiQuiD911]

@Dethraker, my idea is to do a quick hack to move the spawn points of a single exalt map stream and reuse the same stream for all the exalt maps of the same type (extraction/defence) because I can get handles for them by using their actor names (which change from stream to stream). As part of the xcom udk I've extracted the wave system class but I haven't tested if it can stack with an existing wave system on an exalt mission my guess is that it doesn't but it's just a guess. With it I can conjure any alien unit by specifying the walk-in and destination coordinates of each wave.

 

The xcom starting position would not change if I do not salvage parts of wghost's lz mutator. I have more experience with kismet and "map patches" so I'd make it with this method.

 

I haven't had much luck spawning xcom soldiers with custom configured gear because I don't have a good understanding of how inventory works. However I've succeeded in spawning simple soldiers with predefined gear like pistol-only, regular soldier with riffle (gauss in lw) etc.. Their resources must be manualy loaded or they won't apear ingame an/or will crash.

Edited September 28, 2015 by LiQuiD911

[Dethraker]

@Liquid, well that's incredible in itself. Being able to spawn XCom soldiers at all after map load would be an amazing thing to have in a mod, but I wonder again...

 

Could you instead use the model for the soldier that just sits there while the VIP "has all the fun"? And just have them equipped with a standard ballistic rifle? If we can't have XCom reinforcements properly pulled from our soldier roster without hacking the available items a bit then maybe we could have a squad of soldiers come running up to support us, or come running toward "human gunfire" in the hopes of being safely extracted. Just a thought, if possible this could also be used as an alternate means to recruit more soldiers, if they enter the fight and survive the encounter then they are added to your roster.

[Zyxpsilon]

Thus -- reproducing the "recruits" process that occurs immediately after the XCom-BaseDefense succeeds?!? If that "encoded file" can work out - i really don't see why someone smart enough shouldn't be able to exploit it as well.

Indeed, this kind of stuff would open up some interesting storyline concepts if it ever is possible to insert the trick(s) within a few custom scripts and even tag anything to special maps or mission types.

 

BUT -- i'd still want my precious full-blown Campaign Summary gimmick, asap -- though! :D

[GamerChris9]

Is there a thread for 3)., the expanding EXALT project? Because i would love to make some suggestions, and while i am not a modder ^^, i would love to help with ideas and balancing.

ECIT: excuse me, i didn't see that this continued here. But still, i would love to help with this kind of stuff.

Edited October 1, 2015 by GamerChris9