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3.5 x 3.5 Vehicles


aajs

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I thought I would share my thoughts here.

We would love 1x1 and 2x2 and 4x4 vehicles but it will crash the Dropship loading screen if we attempt to move the vehicle....Very sad but we will have to live with that for now.:(

I was going to experiment with rectangular sizes but realised, they will never work in ground combat due to clipping issues. I you turn such an oddly shaped vehicles it will cross over walls and players close by can appear ontop of vehicles making everything look silly.

The games square of tiles is perfect at the angle viewed because vehicle sprites are normally at their widest when facing east or west which is great because the selection square has that sprite sitting across the two corners which is the widest part of the square selector.

However, a lot of us wanted bigger vehicles, so what can be done.....

I have been experimenting and it seems a 3.5 square vehicle is possible just about.

You basically set in up in the geoscope as a normal 3x3 but when it comes to the sprite you can push its size up a little so its actually larger that the 3x3. It takes a lot of x,y positioning tweeks to get it positioned just right, so that soldiers near by don't get clipped. This has allowed my to sneak in some slight larger vehicles.

However it still unfortunately does not stretch to a Tank size vehicle.

APC.jpg

APC.jpg

APC.jpg.f5fff5df51c99ac90d5ae33723ed7228

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Even you could have bigger vehicles, the maps need to support them. 3x3 vehicles mostly stuck at many maps and they need to fire to ground more then to enemy.

Having a huge tank at battlefield would make your soldiers much more useless. Your tank should one shot most of the aliens and aliens should have much bigger vehicles to balance.

Bigger vehicle would be a front line unit and at Xcom vehicles are always support and scout.

Xenonauts got many things to save the day. I mean vehicle and ammo coding made just for vanilla game without thinking future possibilities. I know the engine sucks so if they tried to make a full working code, xenonauts should wait maybe 2 more years.

We need dual weapon first for vehicles and grenade type weapons for vehicles... as you said our only hope is ilunak..

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Well I tried really pushing it now...with partial success.

I know Drages is not going to be pleased because he hates (3x3) Vehicles as they get blocked on all the maps, but as we are stuck with them Its fun to experiment.:)

I don't actually mind that 3x3 vehicles are to big to cover the whole map (Game Balance), but I hate it when you cant even get youre vehicle out of the dropship because there is a tree or lamp in the way.....anyway I digress.

I finally managed to make a tank that is pretty much to scale. (see size against the van)

Its still taking up a 3x3 square so took ages to position all the angles.

It pretty much drives round everywhere without any clipping issue and a solider can walk all around it with any graphical issues.

There are a couple of caveats though if you surround it with your men on all sides, and then turn the vehicle it can end up with people slightly off position, and if you turn the vehicle round with people near to it then they can end up with their sprites a tiny bit larger than they should, be however I think I might live with it cos its still is fun to have.

I kind of wanted to have some big heavy piloted ground vehicles early on before they get replaced with the smaller more advanced remote piloted versions (vanilla ones).

This is a opensource model and I really hope its not based on anything that really exists, otherwise if I release it in a mod I will get spammed because it did not actually exist in the 70's.

tank.jpg

tank.jpg

tank.jpg.9f0c1d39aea8c4d2132389f06bd05d2

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Wow I liked that tank very much. Even I am a bit against for heavy vehicles I am a very big tank fan. It's all about balance. We must find a way to make this big vehicles unique and hard to get. But I think it would be very easy to find a tank for military. But I like tanks and I can use this at my mod if you allow me. But I think the opposite as to get them early. I prefer them to have at end game. I think you should find a scy fy tank too..

For map issues I got an idea. To make everything including cars ( at least little ones.) Crash able by heavy units. Lambs containers everything.. so then having a tank would be very cool. Just heavy armour and androns would crash everything too but I don't see any problem with this.

What do you think about this idea?

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Wow I liked that tank very much. Even I am a bit against for heavy vehicles I am a very big tank fan. It's all about balance. We must find a way to make this big vehicles unique and hard to get. But I think it would be very easy to find a tank for military. But I like tanks and I can use this at my mod if you allow me. But I think the opposite as to get them early. I prefer them to have at end game. I think you should find a scy fy tank too..

For map issues I got an idea. To make everything including cars ( at least little ones.) Crash able by heavy units. Lambs containers everything.. so then having a tank would be very cool. Just heavy armour and androns would crash everything too but I don't see any problem with this.

What do you think about this idea?

Please feel free to use this Tank. It is a free downloaded one so you have to give the author credits in your final game etc, but that's no problem. I will package up my mod tonight with what I have, and that way you can experiment with the few things I have made before committing to a decision.

I love your tank crashing over vehicles idea....In fact when I was driving my new tank around that's exactly what I wanted to do. Just crash through the other cars in the way on the road.

In my mod, I managed to change things so when you start the game you have a garage with one vehicle in it. This feels like a slightly nicer start to the game for me.

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Nice.. as i said maybe you can find more scyfy units for both aliens too.. watching a fight against our tanks and their big fellas would be nice..

Wow, what an amazing idea. You have given me a great scene in my head.

Now I have to make it. I am going to make some giant alien creatures.. They will be so tough that if you soldiers engage them alone in the open they will get severely beaten.

Anyway that's going of topic....

Here is the link to my mod as is with the vehicles so far...

http://www.mediafire.com/download/012wj05okbijasz/ChoicesPart6.rar

They need to be researched at the moment but are available for research at the start and can be produced pretty much instantly.

I have decided to split out my vehicles in my mod into 3 Types.

Scouts - Vehicles with low armour but very high AP (To stop them overpowering everything they will have only defensive weapons)

Medium Armoured - These will be lightly armoured and be balanced for speed and armour

Heavy Armoured -These will be Heavy armoured extremely slow moving vehicles that soak up damage..(Namely the tanks)

Not sure If I am going to have many big hi-tech tanks in my mod, but I will actively look for them when I am searching for my vehicles. If I find anything that might fit your requirements I will post the link here.

Edited by aajs
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Just thought I better mention something here as I think a number of other people want to mod in larger tanks into their games.

the reason you can kind of cheat and get a 3.5 / 3.75 tile vehicle onto the map is not is not just down to clever positioning of the x / y values in the spectre files, but also the vehicle when facing east or west has to be narrower at the bottom like this: \_____/ that's how you get past the soldiers walking over the front of the vehicle. as they get toward the back of the vehicle they are behind so it does not matter that the vehicle is encroaching on a square it shouldn't. Naturally a tank with tracks fits that shape anyway. I have not tried it, however it should even be possible to include tanks with long Cannons, however the vehicle would need to be heavily offset on the x axis. additionally it may will definitely have clipping issues if it gets too close to a high wall, again you may decide to live with it.

Also if Max is reading, I have to report that my rectangle of doom testing fell a bit flat as it crashes the drop-ship like all the other non 3x3 experiments. So my armoured assault bikes are out....:(

If height is not an issue, though then I might actually make some mini mechs for fun later, however this will take ages to make them in Blender as they will need a least basic animation for the leg movement, however I think I might be able to manage it now I have had my latest round of tuition with Soulfilcher. (frames and stuff). Anyway cant see what tactical advantage it would give to the game but for immersion it would be fun, if the enemy had a few big mechs or Giant aliens etc. If we go down this route we would have to break a few mapping protocols, as we would probably need some big open maps with only small alien craft in order to free up lots of ground space.

Edited by aajs
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Just posting here to hopefully pick up a bit of feedback.

In my other mods on researching an item, I would always return the prototype back to the main base for evaluation.

Effectively giving you a free item.

My question is, should this be the case for researched vehicles? or do with think that's a potential game balance No No?

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I am reading! Height may be an issue, as this was brought up previously with the idea of the Andron Juggernaught that was canned following difficulty in implementing it over several height levels. I suppose you could make it pseudo-high. The sprite could appear to be more than one level high but in fact is not, but wouldn't that have problems with clipping same as before?

Regarding the question in your latest post, I;m guessing it would depend on how potent the vehicle is. A free murder wagon which tramples all before it might be a bit much to give for free.

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Regarding the question in your latest post, I;m guessing it would depend on how potent the vehicle is. A free murder wagon which tramples all before it might be a bit much to give for free.

Aaah good point, in fact I forgot about that, If some of my vehicles end up a bit OTT in the balance scales, I could always make them really expensive and difficult to produce..

In fact that actually answers my question nicely. I will just give away a free scout vehicle prototype on completion of research. The rest they are going to have to pay for.

I never heard about the "idea of the Andron Juggernaught" before.. maybe I can search on it in the forum before beginning a whole load of experimentation that has already been done. :)

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Erm, another thing Max if you are not too busy.

I may be imagining this but did you post a couple of weeks ago about a ground combat sprite that you was having trouble with.

If it was you, then you maybe able to shed some light on my issue, or hopefully whoever it was will stumble across my post.

Anyway I just created a new particle effect as I did not like the way the flashbang particle effect works when scaled up into a rocket based version. So I just created a nice little animation set...(Well acceptable any way).

However it was just to small for my liking, so I just double the size of everything and SUPRISE when its activated in ground combat my animation is the same size... (Scaled down to the size of the original). Is there anyway to fix this?

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Oh sorry. I did not make that very clear... I have Not fixed it..

However big I set the sprites the animation is still that same small size.. It kind of shrinks it down to a size that is fixed and not the radius of the settings. I guess I can live with it, but would have been nice if it was bigger.

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Okay here is the last vehicle in my mod, the combination of old and new..

On one hand its a fully automated attack robot powered by a sealed alenium reactor. On the other hand we loaded it out with miniguns firing depleted alenium warheads...

lastvehicle.jpg

I wonder if I will actually finish this today.

I think there is actually room for 3 more vehicles, however this will do for now as its not the vehicles that's the problem, its making all the weapons and particle effects that's the killer.

lastvehicle.jpg

lastvehicle.jpg.3b1049b3cf869f20e1daa8d7

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I can handle all the fire and particle effects you need.

This last one would be very nice for a andron squad.

Oh in My Mod I gave that vehicle to the goods guys cos its got tracks and miniguns...

I just need to place my vehicles in the right places now and rename the vanilla and its ready for some play testing.

Meantime I am going to post some links that you might fit what you want....

When scouting for free models I learnt not to use any .3ds models as apparently the format is not that standard.

So I try to keep to .blender and .obj formats... There are a couple of other I have had success with..

Anyway here are lists...(I ignored any I have already used)

Jeeps

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/46446

APC & Light Armour

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18568

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/39052

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/48865 (Wooo Hope this not too big)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66733

Tanks

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/79690

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/73989

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/70678

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/4564

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/13625

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18528

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18543

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18673

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/20875

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/46770

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67739

Futuristic

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/77885 (needs some weapons)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18665

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/51751

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/52838

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/57702 (Not Rendered)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/57783 (Not Rendered)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67567 (Nice)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/68704 (Nice but not Rendered)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/79773 (Not Rendered)

Hover & Drone

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/75404

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/75754

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66686

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/68978 (Very Nice)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/73587

Droids (minimal to no animation required)

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/65166

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/22718

That's everything that is high enough quality on the blender swap site...

However if you were considering mechs or things you can animate then you will have to browse through the site yourself.

Should keep you busy for a while tho.

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  • 2 weeks later...

*Whistle* Wow, I didn't know people are still working on new things in Xenonauts. '3.5' vehicles definitely sounds fun, and helps to simulate 'tougher' vehicles.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this helps, but when I was doing my first vehicle mod, the Rhino Heavy Tank, the cannon barrel was too long in certain angles, mostly northwest and northeast. (I still don't really have a grasp on the maximum vehicle borders since all vehicle sprites in the game have no uniform size) So I sort of 'cheated' by shortening the barrel in blender and the solution is solved.

Glad to see some fresh new faces on the modding community.

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Xenonauts got a huge potential about modding. I even think Goldenhawk gave up about this game too soon too. I know they worked for years and at some point they just wanted to stop. But i think if they wanted to work some more and they can bring up a good expansion with many good aspects, better code, more modding tools, more softcoded material and more. After these Xenonauts could have some good expansions or DLC's like more weapon, vehicle, resistance system, ammo system, enemy within like things, more missions, more ufos, research branches more of tons of things. CE is a proof of this. I can't imagine what could be done more if there was some more ppl with Ilunak. Yes the engine is crap, but it's not an excuse as i see what Ilunak can do about it alone.

And about tank barrels, i realy dont like short barrels.. I realy like the tank at LordJulian's avatar, but i wish it has a longer barrel.

And about mods, people don't come to game developer forum if they do not have a serious problem mostly. The modders should put their mods on steam and mod websites like nexusmods after their mods are at beta state.

Edited by drages
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  • 3 weeks later...

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