Messages

16

FAQ / Re: Character names

« on: March 10, 2008, 08:39:09 pm »

...or do we have a list in progress?

i've compiled this from this thread and other sources (see attached).

There are probably inaccuracies, but there is plenty to choose from.

[attachment deleted by admin]

17

Artwork / Re: Replacement textures

« on: March 09, 2008, 08:46:35 pm »

Thanks,

How would you like your name in the credits?

Either or both your actual name and nick name.

18

Feature Requests / Re: Some suggestion for the recuiting of soldiers

« on: March 04, 2008, 07:11:25 pm »

The number of soldiers available is an important difference between difficulty levels.  At higher levels you will have a hard time keeping enough soldiers alive to man all your bases.  An abundance of available troops is supposed to be one of the benefits of the easy difficulty.  It may be true, however that there are more soldiers than necessary at easy levels.

However, assuming that the numbers of potential employees are adjusted properly the best way to deal with choosing employees is simply to make a way to sort and filter the list.

19

Discussion / Re: Nicknames for soldiers

« on: March 04, 2008, 06:40:34 pm »

Right now you can rename the soldier (just like you could in XCOM), but this always felt a little bit strange to me, after all you don't just change someones name in real life.

Then don't.  You are free to rename Jim Smith to only names like Jim "Angle" Smith if you prefer to limit yourself that way.

There's no reason to take away the ability of more comprehensive renaming from those of us who prefer that.

20

Design / Re: 2 questions on human aircraft designs

« on: March 02, 2008, 12:44:31 am »

So my question is: Why should I use these dropships?

Because they are better than the firebird.

The fact that you arm a dropship doesn't mean you have to seek out and attack UFOs with it... but if you are attacked, it's nice not to be a sitting duck.

21

Artwork / Re: Models Needed

« on: February 29, 2008, 05:13:43 pm »

That would defeat the entire point of why I posted this list.

your purpose would also be defeated by potential molders coming to the forum, checking the stickied list, finding the few remaining items of no interest, and leaving, without out having seen this thread further down.

22

Sounds and Music / Re: Preliminary voice samples list.

« on: February 29, 2008, 02:57:29 am »

ven so, I maintain that *five levels* of mental disturbance are overkill. A simple panic/non-panic distinction should suffice.

*shrug*  5 levels is my guess at what the average person could easily distinguish between (assuming a decent amateur actor).  I'd be happy with 3 levels: "confident", "neutral", & "fearful", but (i expect) the code to allow for 3 or 5 levels is about the same as the code for 2 levels.  Why not provide room for the community to do better than you expect, rather than locking things down at the level of minimum functionality?

23

Artwork / Re: Models Needed

« on: February 29, 2008, 02:23:18 am »

We already have a stickied list of Needed Models.

If that list is been fulfilled, it should be un-stickied, and this one put in it's place, else the lists should be merged.

24

Artwork / Re: The Future is... yesterday?

« on: February 29, 2008, 02:19:57 am »

I noticed the "back from teh future"-looks and it put me thinking  if I could help somehow.  Ive got some experience on texturing and mapping for some fps games so Im not totally noob in this matter.

Of course. Take a look at our ToDo lists, or simply find something that's badly done (or absent) in the game and make something to fill that spot.

There's also this thread which has some model needs which i don't think made it into the ToDo list yet.

25

Sounds and Music / Re: Preliminary voice samples list.

« on: February 29, 2008, 12:39:37 am »

I don't see how that is somehow comparing apples with eggs, as you seem to be implying.

The entirety of my last post didn't take.  I edited it to include some hard numbers and other content which you didn't see before making your last post.  However .4 MB per minute vs 10 MB per minute is a big difference, weather or not you consider it "apples to eggs".  (Is that the normal idiom in your language?  In American English we usually say "apples to oranges.")

As for the quality, reduction is most certainly noticeable, same as with music. You may be referring to the fact that human speech remains understandable even at low quality levels.

The best phone call you have ever experienced was at quality rate far below an 10MB per minute OGG.  Was it noticeable?... probably if you tried to notice... but that doesn't mean it detracted from the experience in any way.  Similarly the textures are noticeably pixilated at close zoom, and are models are noticeably made of polygons... is that a fatal problem?  Or in the area of sound also, why shouldn't we make a reasonable compromise between quality and file-size/speed?

I really think we should drop the panic levels because, as I said, I don't see the point in having them.

Simply because it will take a kill the dramatic atmosphere, if a spooked soldier, who is on the verge of homicidal panic... sounds just as in-control as he always does.  Sound is one of the most effective way to convey a mood in a game. People will instinctively believe vocal cues over the numbers.
But feel free to record/acquire samples without different panic levels.  My plan can accommodate that.

26

Sounds and Music / Re: Preliminary voice samples list.

« on: February 29, 2008, 12:01:32 am »

105 samples per voice set

105 is the outside, insanely optimistic number of samples.

Also please note: you are using 2 mutually exclusive arguments.
1) there are too many samples, it will take forever to get a complete set
2) we will get too many complete sets, and the DL size will be too big.

In OGG format, this would be about 10MB (based on my observations from the music folder - see David01.ogg, almost 10MB for 2:41, though there are more efficient ones in there)

While we will want to keep a high-quality unprocessed version of the vocals samples with the project, we only need to ship reasonable quality versions (with radio effects perhaps).

I don't use OGG a lot, but it is supposed to be roughly comparable to ACC and MP3.  If so, 10MB per ~3 minutes is audiophile quality, significantly better than what you would get with most downloaded music services, which would weigh in around 1MB per minute.  However the human speaking voice can be compressed smaller than music without noticeable loss of quality.

The professional sounding audiobooks i listen to are generally recorded at 64pbps.  I wipped up a vocal OGG at that rate and it came in at .4 MP per minute.  At this size, the blue-sky scenario of 12 full sets would weigh around 17 MB.


If we ever get to the point of having sound sets in alternate languages, i think they could be downloaded separately, to avoid a game bloated with content most players won't use... but that won't be an issue for some time.

27

Sounds and Music / Re: Preliminary voice samples list.

« on: February 28, 2008, 10:18:32 pm »

I think that's not a good idea. Especially with the variations and panic levels, the amount of samples will be out of control, and it'll take ages to record all of them for just a single voice set. Not to mention that it will put a big strain on the game download size.

A sound clip saying "roger", "alien spotted", or "i'm hit!" etc. is really quite a small file. Assuming an average length of 2 seconds you can fit 90 such comments in the same number of kilobites an average 3-min song would take up.
I calculate it would take 105 comments to fill out all the talk-circumstances Winter has provided with 5 panic levels and 3 random variations of each one.  Size is not an issue.

But more importantly who cares if it takes ages to record them all?  This plan works even if we never get a "complete" set.  We don't need them all, the filename is hierarchically organized, so the game can easily pick the most appropriate clip from those available.  This approach deals gracefully with incomplete sound sets (a natural circumstance in FOSS).

Besides, i didn't think up the idea of "variations and panic levels"... it's implicit in the quotes Winter has provided.  I've just provided a organized way to deal with them.  It can get really annoying when the soldier says "yes sir!" in precisely the same way every time you tell him to move.  Random variations in sound responses have been part of gaming since (or before) Warcraft... it's not an extravagance.

28

Feature Requests / Re: feature sujestion: blood on off option?

« on: February 28, 2008, 08:06:43 pm »

it's not implemented in 2.2, but i've provided alien colored bloods and black oil for machines.  It might make the game more parent-friendly... but will make it look better, which was my main point.

29

Design / Re: Medikits

« on: February 28, 2008, 06:45:39 am »

* Not to mention that it would be much more difficult to design a body part damage system...

* Sounds good to players... but how would it affect you when the aliens shoot you... you want to let a measly pot shot that normally wouldn't kill you be a head shot for an instant death?...

IMHO those are the argument-ending points.

30

Feature Requests / Re: feature sujestion: blood on off option?

« on: February 28, 2008, 01:04:26 am »

"pics" is directly in "base"... unless maybe you have an old version.

Do a search anyway, up to 2.2 the file should be called "blood.tga"