XCOM EU More Civilians

[nobody4422]

Anyone else bothered by the fact that "you'll be landing in a heavily populated urban center" but there's never any people around?

 

If possible, later down the line, I think it would be interesting to add civilians to missions other than just Terror, based on the setting. Major urban areas will have a high probability of a large number of civilians, sparely populated will have a low probability of a few people.

 

This would add a sense of urgency and caution to missions. With civilians randomly littering the landscape you have to be careful about using some of those explosives. You also have to move quickly to save them from the aliens. Plus it would just make the world seem a little more alive. It would also be nice to actually save some people during an abduction mission.

 

Just a thought.

[DeMocha]

I find it to be awfully kind of the aliens to ALWAYS crash or land there ships in 'sparsely' populated areas....

 

I also find it amusing when the VIP escort missions have unarmed soldiers or bodyguards.

It would be nice if there was a larger number of missions with more variables in them, like abduction missions where people are actually getting abducted, or VIPs who are actually defended until you reach them, or military bases that are getting attacked but are defended by soldiers, etc etc. The terror missions may as well be the abduction missions with the abduction missions being some kind of investigation type situation.

 

Unfortunately such things likely won't happen until some kind of level editor comes out, and for that matter one that allows adding those levels into campaign.

[fys]

These crash and landing zones are indeed terrible map designs which bore after a few assaults very quickly. A simple farm with barns like in old days would make such a difference.

I’d really love to add a few civilians in any abduction zone no matter if you need to save them or not. These passive army soldiers and bodyguards are a shame too. Gosh, even if they would only miss-shoot all the time, it would add so much more flair. Quite disappointing from such a "star" designer.

Oh well, maybe some ppl crack open map files one day and add at least some passive civilians.

[Trucidation]

I find it to be awfully kind of the aliens to ALWAYS crash or land there ships in 'sparsely' populated areas....

 

I also find it amusing when the VIP escort missions have unarmed soldiers or bodyguards.

It would be nice if there was a larger number of missions with more variables in them, like abduction missions where people are actually getting abducted, or VIPs who are actually defended until you reach them, or military bases that are getting attacked but are defended by soldiers, etc etc. The terror missions may as well be the abduction missions with the abduction missions being some kind of investigation type situation.

Agreed, would do a hell of a lot more for immersion, that's for sure.

[FMod]

If possible, later down the line, I think it would be interesting to add civilians to missions other than just Terror, based on the setting. Major urban areas will have a high probability of a large number of civilians, sparely populated will have a low probability of a few people.

This isn't something that is easy to mod in. Spawn points are limited, so alien spawn points would have to be used. The best one could get is maybe replace a cluster of enemies with a cluster of civilians on some specific maps.

 

These crash and landing zones are indeed terrible map designs which bore after a few assaults very quickly. A simple farm with barns like in old days would make such a difference.

But, if they let people create their own maps - like just about every strategy game ever that doesn't use a map RNG - who would buy the HAWT new DLC that includes not one, not two, but whole THREE maps, 100% GNTD for a whopping 10 minutes each?!

 

The irony is, Bethesda's open modding actually boosts their DLC sales (to speak nothing of game sales), because these DLC add more things to mod, and, as mods depend on them, they become must-have, not a matter of taste. But they have learned from Horse Armor that they have to provide real value in their DLC.

 

And much good has the Unreal Engine done XCOM; the game doesn't look anywhere as good as Tournament 3. I'm quite sure UT3 maps were not only prettier, but a good bit larger too.

 

So, for something close to the good old days, with barns and civilians, the only hope seems to lie in Xenonauts. The game isn't out yet, but there are dozens of user-made maps for it already on the forums, so sure to be more. And it's got civilians, angry farmers with shotguns, regular police, military; just a small factor in some missions, intimately involved in others.

[Jeffman12]

Well, it's not about looks, it's about functionality. UE needs some really heavy screwups to become unstable, and it's pretty modern as far as what shaders and middleware it will tolerate, and it's ideal for modding, I don't think this much progress would have been made already if their engine was proprietary.

 

As for abductions, the green stuff is why you don't see people on the streets, they've all been cocooned in it for easy transport. Clearing the aliens out is the first step in preventing their capture.

 

Crashes are actually very unlikely to hit cities as they tend to want to avoid being shot down, generally speaking. The fastest way to get tracked down is to fly over a city, and then you can be sure the spacecraft would be fleeing, in fact this is actually measured in game by a timer. Not fleeing or destroying its pursuers is a surefire way to get shot down and crash. Furthermore, assuming these aliens have a survival instinct, they'd not want to land in a city as this would likely hasten XCom's response with a more urgent situation, further diminishing chance of rescue, also, any rescue craft sent to the city would likely suffer the same fate.

 

Now, that doesn't explain why you never see humans in crash scenarios, but I'd guess they know better than to investigate when there's a less than covert war going on against hostile ET's.

 

Any other missions? Yes, it would make sense to see people about, unless they have some advanced warning about aliens lurking in the streets, then they'd probably be encouraged and inclined to stay indoors. Being a global agency, I'm guessing XCom has the decency to call ahead when they come to town.

 

Not saying nobody should attempt to make mods in this area, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the game as is in that regard. Who knows? If something comes out, I might try it, but I think the game has plenty of explanation in of itself.

[FMod]

and it's ideal for modding, I don't think this much progress would have been made already if their engine was proprietary.

"Ideal"? UE3 is among the least moddable engines ever created.

 

Bethesda's CE or Gamebryo, Valve's Source, CryEngine, all are more than an order of magnitude more moddable. The only major engine I recall that's worse than UE3 for modding is Frostbite. And then it's not really major.

[Jeffman12]

UE3 modding tools were released along side the game, UT3. The engine itself is free to use, as an attempt to compete with Unity. Speaking of, Unity games don't tend to be mod friendly, and it's one of the bigger engines these days. If you take a look at bethesda's games, they're less supportive of Total Conversions and has a drastic loss in stability when modded too heavily. Source engine has been losing mod support steadily over the years in favor of indie game development, unless you plan on using the depricated versions, furthermore, you're more likely to see standalone mods that act as total conversions instead of minor changes unless you intend to replace models or sounds, maps don't qualify as mods, in my book.

As far as I know Cry Engine seems to be the best where accessibility versus compatibility is concerned.

 

UE3 is known for being less than user friendly in the coding and mapping departments, but one of those has already been tackled by XCom modders, it seems.

 

Proprietary engines, such as Frostbite's usually tend to be the worst except in cases where ease of modding is a focal point of the game's development. Case in Point: Bethesda's CE/Gamebryo.

Little known fact: Epic Mickey was made in Gamebryo.

Edited December 8, 2012 by Jeffman12

[FMod]

If you take a look at bethesda's games, they're less supportive of Total Conversions and has a drastic loss in stability when modded too heavily.

I've played TC for Morrowind, TC for Oblivion (Nehrim), and there's more than one TC for Skyrim coming - also restoring Morrowind's RP system. How more supportive of TC can you get, short of shipping a naked engine with SDK?

 

Yes, it's less stable if you install 100 large mods made by 100 different people without any communication - but with any other game you simply won't be able to install that many mods of that size. Most games support just 1-2 simultaneous mods, any more break one another. Unless they're completely tiny and affect completely different aspects of the game.

 

 

Source engine has been losing mod support steadily over the years in favor of indie game development, unless you plan on using the depricated versions, furthermore, you're more likely to see standalone mods that act as total conversions instead of minor changes unless you intend to replace models or sounds, maps don't qualify as mods, in my book.

Models, textures, sounds, maps. What else do you want modded? That's pretty much what comprises the whole game.

 

 

UE3 is known for being less than user friendly in the coding and mapping departments, but one of those has already been tackled by XCom modders, it seems.

To an extremely limited extent and with a ridiculous amount of effort. You can't even add new abilities to an item. You can only increase the number of charges. Or you can swap class abilities, but you can't change them or add two choices to major (I think) or... you get it, just about anything that is more than a few bytes changed.

[Jeffman12]

I've played TC for Morrowind, TC for Oblivion (Nehrim), and there's more than one TC for Skyrim coming - also restoring Morrowind's RP system. How more supportive of TC can you get, short of shipping a naked engine with SDK?

 

Yes, it's less stable if you install 100 large mods made by 100 different people without any communication - but with any other game you simply won't be able to install that many mods of that size. Most games support just 1-2 simultaneous mods, any more break one another. Unless they're completely tiny and affect completely different aspects of the game.

Yes, not saying they aren't possible or that they haven't been done, but some games/engines are more open ended in that regard. See Source circa 2002-2007. ModDB is absolutely glutted with TC's for the Half-Life series, but true, they did release an SDK with all of the bare essentials of the engine. My point is: So did Epic with UE. There's less than Source, but considerably more than Bethesda's titles. I'd say they tend to compete with Cryengine in so far as level of custom content per mod versus number of mods available for each.

 

Models, textures, sounds, maps. What else do you want modded? That's pretty much what comprises the whole game.

I should clarify, source maps can work anywhere. Sure, some functions depend on what game you're playing it with, but you could very easily create a map that functions perfectly in both L4D and CSS, just make sure you BSPZIP the content that both games don't have in common and make sure you have survivor spawns as well as CT and T spawns. Objective ents and brushes would be ideal for playing the map in CSS, too, but if you don't include them, the game will work like TDM. There's rarely any functional limitation that would make a map only load in a particular game when it comes to Source.

One could argue models could, too, but you need animations to have the same names for them to work properly, on say, weapons or character models. Either way, that sort of falls into content replacement which is what I consider more of a precursor and/or component to more strictly defined modding, such as adding the portal gun to HL2. Basically: Is it replacing something(Sounds, models), is it an addon(maps), or is it new content that changes the way the game is played(mods)? When it comes to XCom, I'm more inclined to think of texture/sound/model replacements as mods as they require more work than just dragging and dropping new content into a folder, unlike Source games.

 

To an extremely limited extent and with a ridiculous amount of effort. You can't even add new abilities to an item. You can only increase the number of charges. Or you can swap class abilities, but you can't change them or add two choices to major (I think) or... you get it, just about anything that is more than a few bytes changed.

Mind you, this is likely because Firaxis didn't intend to allow modding but didn't do everything they could to prevent it, like obfuscating the game executable. I do hope they release tools and become more supportive in the near future, but before hearing that there was an XCom Nexus page, I never expected to see modding to have come this far for it. Not because of the engine, but because studios aside from Epic, themselves, don't tend to support modding to its fullest when they use UE. It's definitely a conscious choice on the devs' behalf.