New to Project UFO:AI, Long time player of X-Com!

[AmbushMartyr]

Hi everyone!
  I wanted to give a brief introduction as to who I am and why I'm here. I was thumbing through a few sites trying to find the next greatest MMO to play and thought, they just don't make games like they used too. I started reminiscing about all the fun games i played over 15 years ago. Out of nowhere I controlled my first thought on the game that had all IMO, fun, excitement, intrigue, and strategy at its best. That game was none other than X-COM UFO Defense! I remember I bought it for the first gen Playstation and played it so much the game wore out literally! Good times good times! After a few years that past I had somehow lost that game and looking back knowing what I do now, I wish to god I had kept it under lock and key!

I soon found a Collectors Edition on EBay for $20 and scooped it up to once again enjoy the intense strategy that only X-COM could give....
that is, till I found this game! With the hassle of finding the mods to run the collectors edition in DOS and limited to a number of features to a extent, I ran into this project and read over all it had to offer. I barely got past the first page and hit the DL button asap! Boy was I surprised at how well you have recreated, even better, the excitement that X-Com used to give me! I just wanted to say that I'm happy that this project was created and that I'm in love with the game in a new light! Wonderful, wonderful work has went into such a great game and I'm tickled to death I found it here! Thanks so much for bringing the spirit of these types of games back to where they belong! I'm looking forward to seeing future clients I know will be packed with 3D goodness! I cant wait!

With that said I say Hi, and thank you for letting me be apart of this wonderful games community!

I have a lot of questions that I'm going to try and find answers to within these pages, but one I would really like to ask right out is, is there anyway to take the model skins and be able to somewhat do your own modifications perhaps? I have no coding experience at all, but a bit in Photoshop. I wondered if there was a way to import the skins and possibly change colors or do a complete make over, or if that's even allowed?  Thank you in advance and looking forward to being apart of the community!

PS> Yes, I did vote for the choice awards! Matter of fact I got my brother and my older cousin to vote for the game as well! lol!

[Mattn]

hi, and welcome

thanks for your nice feedback.
you can modify a lot of stuff in the ufoai world - even the skins, you just have to uncompress the pk3 files (which you can open with winzip [they are just zip files with a pk3 extension]) - then change into the base/models/ directory. There you can find the skins that are used.

If you want to include new weapons and stuff like that, head over to our wiki - there is a contributing and a scripting section (where you don't need any coding experience for)

you can modify them to whatever you like, if you keep them only for yourself. If you modify them and release the changes to other players, you also have to release the source files (photoshop files) to the community.

You can also have a look into our svn repository (see the wiki, too) - even compiling the most recent version of ufoai yourself is no magic (see wiki coding and compiling the source articles). It's quite easy to get the source and compile it. that way you could also help us by reporting bugs in the recent code changes or the new features we have implemented.

If you have any questions, feel free to join the irc channel and ask.

[BTAxis]

That said, we can use different models or skins for the main game - especially soldier heads and faces. If you think you can help out in that area, you're more than welcome to.

[AmbushMartyr]

Right on, big thanks guys for the help and answering my questions, I really appreciate it. I unzipped the pk3 files and randomly chose a skin which was named something like "Spider". I checked out the jpg for it and tried to guess what went where but only was able to make out what seemed to be part of its head, the rest is chinese to me, heh.

Is there a specific way to actually see the skins (as if it were on the model) and edit them in PS without using the 3D models? Im not sure I can figure out what goes where on the models just by looking at the jpg. Im not even sure Im making any sense at this point lol. Anyway, I appreciate it if someone might have a good idea (or point me to some beginner tutorials somewhere on the subject) how I can go about reskinning in a way that will let me actually see how the skin fits on a model, yet lets me "paint" a new picture of what it should look like with accuracy. Thanks again, and I hope that mess made sense to someone, heh.

[BTAxis]

I'm moving this thread to the artwork section. It's more likely to get the responses you want there.

[Mattn]

you can do this in the game - there is a ufo script file that is called seq_modelview.ufo

edit it and change the model to the path you want to show.

then start the sequence with "seq_start view" from the game console

[AmbushMartyr]

Ok, Ill give it a try, thnx Mattn and Axis for the help I appreciate it!