Messages

31

Coding / New Campaign Intro Sequence

« on: July 25, 2009, 06:47:14 pm »

I was never quite liked the broad, neon-on-black scrolling text intro to the campaign. While the text is well-written, it was not nice to the eyes, and the scrolling looked jumpy on my system.
So when someone mentioned that the .UFO files are easy-to-understand scripts, I gave it a try and made my own.

It's a first attempt, using only media from the game, and I haven't found any way to keep the text from stretching to the sides of the screen.
(Does anybody know how "enlarge" works?)

Still, I think it is quite an improvement. Just replace the ufos/seq_intro.ufo from the ufos.pk3 with this one.

32

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Re: Whoa! Game-Crashing bug...

« on: July 25, 2009, 12:31:28 pm »

Yes. I'll see if i can reproduce it if there is demand, but atm I'm playing with the .ufo scripts.

33

Artwork / Re: Artist required for UFOPaedia images

« on: July 24, 2009, 06:08:06 pm »

As far as I am concerned, go ahead. I haven't started, nor will I be making anything for the next few weeks.

I would ask Sitters (whoever he is) if he can give you the latest models, or whether they are still up to date. Maybe he even has some concepts... I doubt Navarre and Connor are supposed to look the same.

From what I saw and heard there is work being done changing the models of humans, but I have no overwiev as to which ones are concerned.

...hopefully somebody else has.

34

Discussion / Re: How you can help to speed up the next release?

« on: July 24, 2009, 05:41:45 pm »

I have a suggestion, or rather a request, in order to speed up the speeding up.

Would it be possible to assign a contact person to each point on the todo list?
That is, an name or link to whoever made the last changes / largest contributions to that area or simply has an overview of the state of things. In short, the person to connect with if one wants to contribute to a certain point.

I know that this is open source and everybody can go and make changes as he wishes. Still, I for one like to talk to people before I go about modifying their work, and nobody wants to waste time on unnecessary (parallel) developments because they didn't know it was already being done.
And while it is possible to find out these things by searching and asking in the forums, at least having a name makes things easier imo.


Alternatively, a pinned "most recent state of things" in each dev forum might help new people like me in their orientation, if someone is willing to keep those updated.

35

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Re: Whoa! Game-Crashing bug...

« on: July 24, 2009, 10:25:24 am »

My soldiers were able to walk through civs in the dev version, but I thought this was a feature.
Because in 2.21 they often blocked doors and stuff, which at times prevented me from defending them.

I suppose if that enables them to walk through each other, an attempt to adress a civilian at a place where there are two causes errors.

36

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Re: Electro lasers

« on: July 23, 2009, 10:51:28 pm »

It worked for me in R25186.

I once got one with the rod and two with the EL, and ended up capturing two (because containment was at 8/10).

37

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Re: Alien seeing from the obstacles

« on: July 23, 2009, 10:49:00 pm »

I'm experiencing that too.
It affects many maps, but especially the front region of Harvester UFOs. They shoot the walls from the inside, giving away their position and sometimes wasting all their ammo.
Definitely Africa (also happened with the top left hut), Tropical UFO and Farm (also one corner of the house, the one with stairs leading down).

Win32, XP SP3.
UFOAI 2.3 R25186 Debug version from July 16th, downloaded.

38

Artwork / Re: Human Head Model Proves A Headache...

« on: July 23, 2009, 10:35:51 pm »

Special missions at histsorical locations would be nice, though those maps will not be used a lot.

And as for asking the people... I think making players protect "some very wealthy software company CEO" called "Will Windows" should suffice.
But like Phil said, I don't believe this kind of stuff has any priority.

39

Design / Re: My comments on the design/gameplay

« on: July 22, 2009, 02:35:31 pm »

I hope u get to see more folks soon, Taman is definately the tip of the iceberg.

Yeh I've played 2.21 and seen the others, and I expect them to show up sooner or later. The thing is that I've done quite a lot of missions by now, including base attacks, and so far every single one was 4-6 unarmored Tamans with Kerrblades and plasma weapons. (July 84, on normal diff)

After killing about a hundred of them, they simply fail to strike fear into my well armored, laser-sniping squads... So unless this occurence has something to do with AI testing or such, I would prefer to meet some other / better equipped enemies earlier.

Maybe I should just ignore some of the UFOs, of which there are plenty. And for some reason I can sell/recover them all, even the wrecked bits. Unfortunately the UFO yard I built doesn't work yet.

Apart from that (and the occasional bugs and crashes) I'm having a good time. Reaction-firing aliens at the start of a battle are nasty.

I hope u become another active member of the forums here too!

Looks like it. At least until next week, when I will be too busy touring the world. That's why I'm eager to get some ideas written down, even though I don't have the big picture yet.
I'm looking forward to getting back here by the end of August, though.

And thanks for the warm welcome. You're a friendly bunch.

40

Artwork / Re: Human Head Model Proves A Headache...

« on: July 22, 2009, 11:03:07 am »

Mr bill gate or donald trumph

Make those infected civilians please.

41

Artwork / Re: Artist required for UFOPaedia images

« on: July 21, 2009, 11:54:47 pm »

Hmm

Now that I tested it, maybe turning "stretch screen with 4:3 ratio" off is really better. The globe is perfectly spherical now... and even though that's also not quite correct, it's probably how it was meant to be. So it was all stretched.

Though things do feel a little cramped in comparison (especially the soldiers seem rather thin) and I don't really like the black borders. But Navarre looks a little better.

Another stupid newbie mistake I didn't fail to make - just to help you make the game more accessible for new people of course.

In that regard, the way it is written, I understood this option to be "stretch the arrangement so ratios remain the same as in 4:3"...
English is not my native language, though.

42

Artwork / Re: Human Head Model Proves A Headache...

« on: July 21, 2009, 11:28:32 pm »

An intriguing thought.
Though I do not like spreading pictures of myself on 'net, it would be an honor to appear in the game. If that is really going to happen.

The only problem would be that if all the soldiers end up being people who contribute here, who am I going to send in first?

43

Artwork / Re: Human Head Model Proves A Headache...

« on: July 21, 2009, 05:11:29 pm »

I think the eyebrows may still be a little too prominent. Also, the chin and general space around the face seems rather wide, but that may be a result of little hair.

It definitely looks like some people do, just not very "average" yet. The thing with faces is that we are so used to reading them in every detail that it is hard to say what exactly looks odd...

Maybe it's too symmetrical. That's another thing that often separates artifical faces from real ones.


And I don't know if it is any help, but I found that playing around with the face generator from Fallout 3 made me more aware of the things that make people look different, like how far apart their eyes are, and what change causes what effect.
Different face shapes are a good way to differentiate people with otherwise similar features, for example.

44

Feature Requests / Re: Antimatter storage

« on: July 21, 2009, 03:30:41 pm »

You would have to find a good reason why it is unavoidable to store those amounts of antimatter (10g = 30+ Hiroshima Bombs according to "UFO Theory") in the bases. Maybe because anywhere else would be impractical - or even more irresponsible?

But please do... I like the idea of "defending it at all cost", too.

45

Artwork / Re: Artist required for UFOPaedia images

« on: July 21, 2009, 12:18:11 pm »

Well I do use widescreen resolution, but everything else looks normal. Compare it with the frame.

Screenshot was taken simply be print screen. This is how it appears here.