Xenonauts: Community Edition discussion

Can mod description tell us exactly which changes needs modified exe file ?

Gaud, could you sticky this please.

It's done.

If you are still looking for suggestions I would love to see the two fire modes for weapons have the same possible functions.

Burst fire could have aim levels and single shot mode could be allowed to fire multiple bullets per shot.

Then move the bulletcount flag to the aim level so that each time you right click you could fire an extra bullet, or five.

More detailed ramblings on this old thread:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3930-Allow-burst-fire-and-single-shot-to-work-the-same-way-for-balancing-and-modding?highlight=fire+mode

I know that it may be a bit late now but here is an issue TD encounter last night while he was testing our experimental dev build with Community Edition that we merged

- The Solver's Community Pack has a single issue, when you load a saved GROUND combat the engine fail to show the mouse corsair (I believe he meant on mouse cursor ).

Whoa, interesting

Love your work Solver

I have installed this just for the kills on the results screen, and air combat speed buttons.

Great work!

So about some other features.

Soldier ranks:

The problem here is that this is not really something friendly to modders. Rank behaviour would be difficult to control through XML, so it's easy enough to remove the current behaviour of course, but what then? There's some potential for improvement though, at least because the number of ranks is currently partially hardcoded.

Tilesets:

What Lt_Parsons wants is high on my own wishlist. I'd like to move the tilesets and their corresponding mask colours to the XML files so that modders could independently add tilesets. As always, there are a couple of places in the code that make this more difficult, and by that I mean there are parts in the Geoscape that would have to be rewritten. But I'd like to tackle this.

Alien missions:

Adding new types of alien missions seems simple enough (famous last words here). But I am again not sure what use modders could make of them - the unique logic for each mission (supply missions land at alien bases, air superiority seeks out aircraft, etc.) basically has to be in the code.

Soldier ranks:

Change the whole system, make it exp. based, after each lvl up give the some skills points, let the player choose how to use them.

That would be A LOT of work, but also improves gameplay a lot, and an exp table with xml is easy to mod.

Tilesets:

Yes we need that, also important for different missions

Alien missions:

We can do a lot here, remember xcom apoc? Fighting against alien friendly humas for ex? We can do su much here ^^

Alien Missions

Perhaps a range of fairly broad parameters could be set, which when combined in different ways can create missions types.

for example, you might have...

setLandingGoalType: Terror missions and bombing runs have a specific "goal" which occurs when they complete their enRoute phase and initaite the mission (land). For Terror types, the goal is "survive a Xenonaut attack or remain landed for X hours". You could set up a parameter that governs what happens when a UFO stops wandering about and lands to complete a goal, rather than simply land. Examples could include:

setLandingGoal: kill("20"). This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they kill 20 civillians

setLandingGoal: survive("20"). This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they surivive 20 turns.

SetLandingGoal: protect("leader",20) This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they protect a specific alien for 20 turns

And so on, and so forth. I have other ideas for other parameters, but I think you get the idea.

Please keep in mind that my current goal is to fix acknowledged bugs/issues and to give modders more capability by ehancing what's possible in XML files, and so on. I will not, at least for the time being, make changes that automatically alter the gameplay intended by Goldhawk, so I won't for instance remove the rank-tied-to-skill system.

Max, a question for you also, about those TU-draining weapons. How should they work? I see three options.

1. Drain TU immediately, to be restored at the start of next turn. It works like that now, and it is kinda useless. The only thing TU-draining ammunition does effectively then is to decrease the probability of reaction fire.

2. Apply a penalty to the next turn's TUs. This makes the weapon useful as it actually affects how much the enemy unit can move/shoot the next turn, but it may also be a bit counterintuitive as the effect is not immediate as is usually the case with weapons.

3. Both of the above.

Hey Solver, I had some odd issues with my improved tree stumps mod. I modified tile graphics and out them in tiles/Farm/props/ where they belong, they display fine in level and submap editors but the game still uses vanilla gfx. Could you check the code why they don't work as they should. Or am i missong something?

Option 1 isn't that useless as aliens which reaction fire will drain TU if they hit and if you combine reaction fire with an AOE it's more effective. But it isn't super awesome as the effect is highly situational and pretty pointless from a player PoV. Option 3 could be considered OP, again thinking of alien reaction fire+AOE, but then you've got armour, setting low values etc. etc. so I think that both an immediate drain and a next-turn drain would be the best way to go, and if that's too difficult, a next-turn drain is the next best way to go.

Hey Solver, I had some odd issues with my improved tree stumps mod. I modified tile graphics and out them in tiles/Farm/props/ where they belong, they display fine in level and submap editors but the game still uses vanilla gfx. Could you check the code why they don't work as they should. Or am i missong something?

I am thus far unfamiliar with the graphics and tiles part of the code. I understand you had to add it to an atlas to make it work, is that not supposed to be necessary? Does this only happen with the farm tileset?

My understanding is that it should be enough to put them in /tiles folder and the game should prioritize that instead. Not sure about other tilesets and if it works like that anymore after gh introduced tile atlases...

I'm not sure it was brought up before, but could you look at penalty for damaged props on the Xenonaut base defense? I am uncertain whether it is working correctly.

Would it be too much work to have a pop up and go to 5sec every time a ufo lands? I'm constantly seeing my interceptor circling around landed ufo and burning it's fuel in fast forward and returning to base before I can react and press pause.

Hmm yeah, that's a fair point. I have my finger on the spacebar usually, but it can be a bit annoying.

Hmm what about implementing constructible highly customizable weapons? Let's say there are "rare" alien weapons which appear once every X number of missions and you don't sell these at the end of the mission. Each of those alien weapons can then be used to disassemble and assemble unique Xenonaut weapons using the parts defining a number of characteristics of the weapon (base damage, range, accuracy, TU consumption, number of pellets, or maybe even some unique parameters that differ from all conventional weapon types) The player then can't mass manufacture these and if the unique weapon is lost in say an explosion, you need to construct another or use the "generic" types?

I know this contradicts the current logic of the game but it could probably add some more diversity in your arsenal while also providing a little extra incentive to do more ground combats and look forward to them, avoiding the growing tiredness of going through the same objectives again and again.

Hello Solver,

Thanks for replying. I have a request and I don't know how hard it will be to implement. If it possible, can you please return back in to the workshop "Aircraft Weapons" and "Vehicle Weapons" categories? And if possible add XML hooks, which allow us - modders to add custom workshop categories or/and change already existent workshop categories?

Thanks again Solver!

Can mod description tell us exactly which changes needs modified exe file ?

All of the changes so far require the modified exe. That is because I am doing changes that are impossible for people without source code access.

Possibly important question: If a mod is built using files from the Community Edition build, will it be compatible with non-Community Edition Builds? While I can't see why someone wouldn't want to upgrade to the Community Edition if they're interested in using mods, it's something that might come up.

Also, I'm totally going to have to keep noting version compatibility on the mod list thread, aren't I? So close to getting rid of it, too!

Possibly important question: If a mod is built using files from the Community Edition build, will it be compatible with non-Community Edition Builds? While I can't see why someone wouldn't want to upgrade to the Community Edition if they're interested in using mods, it's something that might come up.

Also, I'm totally going to have to keep noting version compatibility on the mod list thread, aren't I? So close to getting rid of it, too!

It is,I made compatibility patch for XNT:ID and it works like charm.

Awesome, that's useful to know. I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of maintaining multiple builds for vanilla and X:CE, so not having to do that is great.

Alien Missions

Perhaps a range of fairly broad parameters could be set, which when combined in different ways can create missions types.

for example, you might have...

setLandingGoalType: Terror missions and bombing runs have a specific "goal" which occurs when they complete their enRoute phase and initaite the mission (land). For Terror types, the goal is "survive a Xenonaut attack or remain landed for X hours". You could set up a parameter that governs what happens when a UFO stops wandering about and lands to complete a goal, rather than simply land. Examples could include:

setLandingGoal: kill("20"). This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they kill 20 civillians

setLandingGoal: survive("20"). This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they surivive 20 turns.

SetLandingGoal: protect("leader",20) This would initate a mission type where the aliens win if they protect a specific alien for 20 turns

And so on, and so forth. I have other ideas for other parameters, but I think you get the idea.

I'd also love to see "Hold this outpost" survival type mission where you are handed a strategic position you must use to kill waves of rushing aliens, probably also employing a stationary tank/missile tower. Don't know if that's possible at all.

Kabill, compatibility will of course depend on what the mod does. Mods built on the Community Edition can require it to implement certain features, of course. So if you implement civilian-rescue funding bonuses or reflexes-enhancing ammo, those things will simply not work without CE.

Also vanilla may fail to load CE savegames.

Ooh, something else of interest comes to mind; is there any chance we can add extra flexibility to the stat-increase triggers during missions?

I know there's a fair bit of contention over how comically easy some stats are capable of being increased (TU, STR, ACC) while others barely get an increase once in a blue moon (Reflexes, Bravery). Being able to set up additional triggers beyond the hardcoded ones might be useful.