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[v1.5/X:CE] Fire in the Hole! Destructible UFO Hulls (v1.3.3)


kabill

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Fire in the Hole! Destructible UFO Hulls and Dynamic UFO Assaults (v3.0)

Features:

- Destructible UFO hulls! Certain parts of UFOs can be damaged and destroyed, allowing you to make additional entryways into a UFO.

- Rooftop Assault: Units can now land on and move across UFO roofs. In addition, larger UFOs possess one or more sections above ground level which can be destroyed to allow access. Buzzard and Sentinel armour therefore have additional uses when assaulting a UFO.

- Enhanced crash sites: Damage marks have been added around the UFOs and fire and smoke effects added too. Sometimes UFOs will already have damaged hulls as a result of the crash, and internal damage to the UFOs can result in destroyed rooms.

- Breaching charge weapons for penetrating UFO hulls. While their size and weight make them unsuited for combat, they will destroy UFO hull sections and other props in one go. With only a small radius, soldiers can be deployed nearby to attack as quickly as possible. (Information on how to use the Breaching Charge is contained in a Xenopaedia entry in game).

For previous discussion about the mod, here is the original concept thread and here is the previous release thread.

Known Issues:

The mod is 100% stable, but there are a number of minor issues that I will list here. If you encounter any bugs, please post in this thread or PM me.

 

Major:

- (Very) occasionally, Landing Ship UFOs demonstrate some odd issues with LoS between floors and the hull on the upper floor flickers on and off when moving for no apparent reason. This appears to be a vanilla bug which has a habit of manifesting with the Landing Ship for some reason. Hopefully XCE will fix it one day. - I think this is fixed now.

Minor:

- Sometimes if the UFO has just been caught on the edge of a soldier's vision, you will reveal the hull sections and UFO doors without the rest of the UFO hull. There's nothing I can do about this; it happens with UFO doors in vanilla too.

- The level immediately above the top level of a UFO often has invisible barriers which cannot be moved through (shooting is fine so far as I know). It is always possible to fly up and over these (although the mid section of the battleship is a bit tight in places). There's some technical reasons for this so I can't make it not happen; it should have practically no impact on gameplay.

- There appears to be a single tile flying around a battleship which reveals a single tile inside the UFO. I don't know exactly what is causing this so I can't fix it. It should have no game impact in any case, as the tile revealed is impassable unless you have destroyed the relevant hull section. (I think this is fixed now)

- Some plays have reported heavy lag due to the smoke and fire around crash sites. If this is problematic for you but you still want to play the mod, I have uploaded a variant (available above) which turns the smoke and fire off.

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Download:

Fire in the Hole v3.0

ALSO, DO NOT RUN THIS MOD WITH THE ENHANCED CRASH SITES MOD! FIRE IN THE HOLE ALREADY INTEGRATES ADDITIONAL CRASH DAMAGE SO ENHANCED CRASH SITES IS NOT NEEDED.

Install Instructions:

To install, either:

1) Unpack the zip file into assets/mods; or

2) Install using the mod manager in the Xenonauts game launcher

Alternatively, for Steam users, you can install the mod via Steam Workshop.

However you install the mod, make sure you set it to 'active' in the mod manager.

Uninstall Instructions:

To uninstall, either:

1) Delete the mod's folder from assets/mods; or

2) Uninstall using the mod manager in the Xenonauts game launcher

If you installed using Steam Workshop, you should also unsubscribe from the mod (otherwise it will keep re-downloading). Note that simply unsubscribing from the mod will not delete it; you must also delete the mod using one of the above methods.

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Appendix:

Tips:

- The breaching charge is used like C4. It cannot be thrown, however, so you must drop it next to the prop you wish to destroy.

- The breaching charge has a + shaped explosion, allowing you to stand soldiers diagonally from where it is dropped without risk of being harmed.

- Destructible hull segments can be highlighted using the free-aim mode. When the UFO hull is not displaying, the lighter areas around the UFO shadow's edge indicate where breaches may be made.

- To destroy hull sections above ground level, fly next to the segment and drop an activated breaching charge next to it.

- To destroy roof sections, you must drop a charge on top of the relevant section (at the moment, there's no good way to identify these sections; I'll think of something at some point that will make this easy).

- Fire inside the UFO cannot be moved through unless you are wearing Predator armour (if it's working as I think it should; I've not tested this!)

Acknowledgements:

- Special thanks to Skitso for designing the breaching charge images (and for sparing me the whip!).

- Thanks to Tactical Dragon and Gijs-Jan for AI related tips.

- Thanks also to Silencer who has been invaluable in providing feedback for the mod.

- General thanks to to all those who have expressed enthusiasm for the mod and thrown in suggestions/ideas.

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Install Instructions:

Download the mod and unpack the "assets" folder into your Xenonauts game folder. When prompted about overwriting files, agree to all overwrites.

I am new to Xenonauts and this is my first mod install, is there a reason you have it install this way instead of using the built in mod loading functionality in the launcher? I may end up starting to write mods (I ended up doing it for kerbal space program and minecraft) so I was curious.

Edited by leftler
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I am new to Xenonauts and this is my first mod install, is there a reason you have it install this way instead of using the built in mod loading functionality in the launcher?
I think it's because the mod launcher wasn't a high priority, and it really isn't needed; more important things were sorted.
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Great work on the mod brother :)

Question, kabill. Is there a way I can use just the "destructible ufo hulls" parts of your mod without adding the rest? I don't want to use the re-designed ufo's, I just want to be able to blow holes in the current vanilla ones. I never knew until now there was no way of blowing a hole in a ufo to make an alternate entrance since I still haven't gotten far enough to see the last tier weapons. I figured it would be like the original x-com where you just needed a more powerful (mid to end game) weapon to breach the ufo hulls because standard human weapons weren't powerful enough.

I can't believe they didn't add a way to just blow a hole into the side of a crashed ufo by default. I've blown up doors before and even shot them with machine guns until they were destroyed so I just figured I'd eventually be able to do the same to standard hull pieces once I had the fire-power.

I should have paid more attention to the forums over the last few years so I could have protested against not being able to blow a hole in a ufo.

I can see why we can't from a design perspective as it would make things tough on the AI, but then again, that should have been thought of from the beginning.

Edited by RavenX
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It's difficult mostly because of the way the UFOs were implemented in the first place. Because they're all a single image, there's no easy way to make them destructible (as arrogant as this might sound, I honestly don't think one could do much better than what I've achieved in this mod, using the same set of resources).

Vanilla layouts are something which has come up a lot. The reason why I redesigned them was to try and make hull breaching a valuable strategy as I felt the vanilla layouts would be too easy otherwise. In retrospect, I'm not sure I did a very good job with this but I'm not sure the vanilla layouts would be much better. I have been slowly working on revised layouts which are a bit more like the vanilla ones, but that's on hold now because of this:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10974-Modular-UFOs-Discussion-and-Suggestions

If the modular UFO idea goes anywhere, Fire in the Hole will become redundant and the game will work how you actually wanted it to work in the first place. As such, it seems like it would make sense to focus on that unless it becomes obvious that it's not actually going anywhere.

In short, then, it's not possible (at least, not easily) and I'm not looking to work on it in the near future as there are alternatives which might render such efforts unnecessary.

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Kabill, I don't know if it is a game bug or your mod bug, but take a look. Try to move Pistol from the belt while carrying LMG and having breach charge in backpack.

xenonauts 2014-07-04 21-35-34-85.jpg

Also please change Corvette :P It's too frustrating with the aliens opening doors two tiles away and the corridors are tighter than virgins....

xenonauts 2014-07-04 21-35-34-85.jpg

577e7d06312fd_xenonauts2014-07-0421-35-3

Edited by silencer
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Kabill, I don't know if it is a game bug or your mod bug, but take a look. Try to move Pistol from the belt while carrying LMG and having breach charge in backpack.

I'm going to assume that this is a vanilla bug, with the caveat that it almost certainly never matters because there's no other item the same shape as the breaching charge. I know when Mikhail was doing inventory space modding in Magnum-Nauts he had some issues with auto-swapping equipment which seems to use some buggy logic when it comes to checking available inventory space. So there's probably nothing I can do about it other than change the shape of the charge.

(I'm assuming that this didn't have any serious effect like making the items unmoveable or anything? So long as it's not breaking the game, it doesn't really matter. But if it is, I might need to consider changing the shape of the charge to avoid it causing issues).

Also please change Corvette :P It's too frustrating with the aliens opening doors two tiles away and the corridors are tighter than virgins....

It sounds like the UFO designs are currently doing precisely what they were meant to do in the first place, then!

(That's not necessarily a good thing, mind. I want to try it out myself before making any changes, though, and I've just not had time to play recently.)

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No they are movable. Also I had a first CTD, but can't be sure if it is the mod or game itself. It might have been related to alien reaction firing on a soldier when he was standing on the breached tile.

::

It's not the layout that is bad, it's too many rooms. The entrance and the back of the UFO is ok, but the sides are nightmarish.

Edited by silencer
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So...the LMG has decided to ignore the fact that there's no room in the bag, and superimpose itself over the charge? What a stubborn git.

You might be onto something there kabill - it could be the shape of it. Probably because there are no vanilla weapons of that shape (2x5) - I bet if it was 5x2, it would have been alright, and the lmg would make its way to the floor.

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Kabill, could you check this save? I'm constantly getting CTD, when trying to approach from the blown side wall.

Choose soldier 1, deploy charge, after charge blows up, move soldier number 6. I get CTD every time. I don't know what is causing it, so I am holding off as a bug report.

I'm only using FitH with Lore+ that changes anything in the game.

[ATTACH]4760[/ATTACH]

s6.sav

s6.sav

Edited by silencer
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I'll check it when I can, but I'm working today so might not be 'til tomorrow.

Can I check what version of the game you're running? Just so I know what to test it with.

@All those who care about the mod at all: hopefully I will have next weekend free so I'll be looking to update the mod to the most recent game/community edition versions then. I might add in some other changes as well, depending on time.

Edited by kabill
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@silencer: Apparently "might not be 'til tomorrow" means "I'll have a look before I start work"

Good news! It's not the mod. It's to do with the tree next to the hull segment that gets destroyed. It looks like the tree has the collapsible tile variable checked (guessing from the destroyed tile image it leaves behind) which is notorious for causing crashes. To check this, I loaded the save and simply shot the tree without damaging the hull at all and got exactly the same crash.

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I think it might have something to do with the location of the soldier when the building-collapse function is called. That, or it's a function of moving close to the location after it's happened (when you moved the soldier before hand, did you try moving them back over to where they started once the charge had gone off?)

In terms of fixing, I think that's likely to be a community mod thing now. At the very least, I think it would be wise simply to go through the spectres and remove all of the collapsible tile checks from them. Collapsible buildings are cool, but really not worth stability issues.

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I found another potential bug. At night mission in landed Corvette some opened doors don't close. Unfortunately I forgot to make save middle game, but can provide with one from the beginning. If you can't recreate it I could send a video.

I don't know if it is related to night mission or maybe landed UFO. Probably landed. Or maybe Androns like to walk through the doors? I couldn't close the doors manually.

I know that you've made a mod that leaves the opened doors open, so maybe something was uploaded to non modified version?

mpc-hc 2014-07-07 07-56-44-06.jpg

[ATTACH]4816[/ATTACH]

s4.sav

mpc-hc 2014-07-07 07-56-44-06.jpg

s4.sav

577e7d08e6c54_mpc-hc2014-07-0707-56-44-0

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Strange. The door spectres for all the UFOs are shared, so if it's not working properly on one then the same door type should not work properly in any UFO. Also, the mod doesn't actually modify the interior UFO doors (unless you use the non-auto-close pack.)

I'll check it out on the submap anyway to see if I can spot the problem. Thanks.

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It's not currently compatible with X:CE v0.24, no. I am planning to update, but it probably won't be 'til this coming weekend.

In the mean time, I'm pretty sure you could make it compatible simply by installing the mod over XCE v0.24 EXCEPT FOR GAMECONFIG.XML. Then, open up your gameconfig file and change the power core explode chance value to 100.

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It's not currently compatible with X:CE v0.24, no. I am planning to update, but it probably won't be 'til this coming weekend.

In the mean time, I'm pretty sure you could make it compatible simply by installing the mod over XCE v0.24 EXCEPT FOR GAMECONFIG.XML. Then, open up your gameconfig file and change the power core explode chance value to 100.

That easy, really? I'll give it a try.

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Kabill, could you help with that?

Its my post to TD XNT:ID mod thread

"as i understand, the balkons appear because kabills interior ufos redesign, yes?

well 2 features, from landship.

they are really crazy 2nd flour killers. they saw my soldiers from 2nd flour and i doesnt even any.

Even more - no area view - the field of balkons, that must show down flour is black.

And second - i stormed andron landship - whom-how... but its crazy (not because they react... just there too low for aliens to react - 2 andron soldiers on 1st flour downed near the gates and 1 on the second besides officer bodyguards pinned in the back room).

But! I even doesn't see the only one defending andron, that stands between 2 balkons in the center of 2nd flour - why? No LoS problems there where! Opened area - just balcon bordeur! Maybe lets tell about it to kabill?"

plus as i remembered for now - strangely, but doese the doors of second flour landship - are not lookable through them? Could you look? I doesn't see through them, as standart doors

Edited by Kirill Selivanov
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