Ol' Stinky

Is your dropship below 100% fuel? That's when it prevents me from shifting them around.

You can turn off rocket launcher reaction fire by going into [your xeno install folder]\assets\weapons_gc.xml. Do a search for weapon.rocketlauncher and look for reactionModifier="0.5". Change it to reactionModifier="0", save, and you should be good to go. I agree it shouldn't react fire, though, seems wrong.

How about a "map info" button on the ESC menu, during a ground battle? Or (probably more likely) some sort of miscellenous info screen, so that along with game version, average FPS and whatnot, there'd be a field for the name of the current map.

The other three paddock doors allow soldiers to move through them both way. However, while you can move through a paddock door travelling north, you cannot move through it going south. I think there's also some weirdness with paddock_# walls disappearing at T-junctions when the map's loaded ingame, but I can't pin it down other than paddock_D# walls always seem to be involved when it happens. It might be a case of my inexperience with/incompetence at map editing; take this with a pinch of salt.

Yeah, that'd be sensible. I'll just bung 'em into one zip from now on and just update that. I'll do that when I get home. Edit: Okay, done. The variants are separated from the other maps. I've also added a third arctic map. Download.

Yeah, they're cool. I haven't posted 'cos I don't have anything to add, you're not talking to yourself here. (:

Whoa, I've only used the level editor this version, so I thought it was meant to look like that...

Huh - I set my smoke grenades to do 0 stun and they don't interrupt movement. So, um, technically, is that a bug?

Edit: you don't need to read all that. Here's a download for map pack 1. Link. 22nd May: I'll be leaving this lot as map pack 1. The maps are probably of an okay-ish standard - well, maybe. I'll be trying to make better maps with map pack 2. Link. --- 16th May Been trying to squash issues with existing maps and found that desert map 1 had no valk spawn point. This has been fixed. --- I made a thread on Friday kinda asking for help. Well, I got it, so it seems weird to keep posting maps in a thread about being a noob; especially when there's a perfectly good map list thread already. I think I've graduated from "terrible" to "adequate", but why not try a map or two and judge for yourself? Only lightscout and scout/corvette maps so far. I've included variations on the same map in each pack - these usually change where the UFOs are, where spawns are, and layout past the deployment area. So the difference between Stinky_Desert_Lightscout_60x60_1A.xml and Stinky_Desert_Lightscout_60x60_1B might be that the UFO's in the top left corner, and instead of having a warehouse/office/hanger in the way, it's a delivery area with a warehouse and zones for shipping containers. If that's not to your taste, simply install only one of the maps. I'll probably work on just the inital maps from now on though, I think I bit off more than I could chew producing a bunch of decent edits in a reasonable timeframe. Please let me know if I've done something daft like put wrong maps in the wrong .zip, given a wrong link, or similar. --- Desert map 1, lightscouts and scouts/corvettes: 60x60. The aliens attempt to raid a remote airstrip. --- Desert pack 2, lightscouts and scouts/corvettes: 60x60, 2 variant maps per UFO size. A secret facility hidden in the mountains. --- Arctic tileset pack 1: 60x60, 3 variant maps per UFO size. A remote observation facility that was never intended to defend against an attack. --- Middleeastern tileset pack 1: 60x60, 6 variant maps per UFO size. The outskirts of a town. The aliens simply landed inside the exterior wall. --- 13th May Arctic tileset map 2: 60x60, Lightscout + Scout/Corv. The quickest route also happens to be the most dangerous... --- 14th May Arctic tileset map 3: 60x60, Lscout + Scout/Corv. An expedition's base comes under fire. --- Middleeastern map 2: 60x60, Lscout + Scout/Corv. They think they can hide in this condemned building. --- Farm map 1: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. Pick your poison: approach from the exposed bog on the west, or the eastern route through the thick forest that the UFO devastated. --- Farm map 2: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. Hayfever. --- Farm map 3: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. Marshland. --- ME map 3: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. This would be a nice part of town if not for the alien invasion force. --- 15th May Desert map 3: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. The aliens hide in the canyon, hoping that they can evade detection. --- 17th May Industrial map 1: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. Freight or flight. --- Industrial map 2: 60x60, Lsct + S/C. The barrel factory. This is where the magic happens. --- 19th May Town map 1: 60x60, Corv/Land. This is the first map where I've used submaps. There's the 6x10 houses for the civs, and a GP's clinic. I also put in two random-mazda props (that, if I'm right, have a much smaller chance of putting down a cyan car than a brown, blue or yellow one). There's still a couple of graphical glitches, but the actual gameplay should be fine. I think I'm getting the hang of the sub-ed now, by and large, and I have a few ideas for what I'm going to do with it next. --- 21st May Farm map 4: 60x60, Lsc. + Sc/C. Farm map 1: 70x70 Des/Cru/Land. This one's a start at making a bit of a pseudo-random map. Buildings need to be done, but random fields are in (and all the map consists of). Okay, got some buildings in (~10 variations). Farmhouses will be their own submap, these buildings are generic stables/barns/sheds etc, although propless at the moment. --- 22nd May Farm map 5, 6: 60x60, Lsc + S/C. Farm facility buildings now have a light sprinkling of props, and the ones in my maps have a 50% chance of not appearing at all. Hopefully this makes the same map feel a bit more varied, rather than there always being a building in the spot. Farmhouses are in; these buildings are certain to spawn. They have cramped interiors, but most of them reward you for securing them with precious roof access, or at least walls on higher levels that can be easily shot through to make your own sniper points.

I'm talking about flashbangs' reliability to suppress here, not problems with lobbing and the like. When you set the range for them to 50, I figured that'd sort the unreliable flashbangs out a bit. When I saw them fail when playing 18.4 I figured at first that maybe it was simply that their suppression value didn't overcome the alien, which would be fair enough. To be sure, I changed the flashbang's suppression value to 999 in weapons_gc.xml - enough to blind pretty much anything! I'm still getting duds, though. Look at the screenshot below: The elegantly circled soldier threw a flashbang right at the lizard's feet. The lizard ignored it and used reaction fire. The soldier at the bottom's there so you can gauge distances easier. I've also possibly seen flashbangs fail because they land "inside" a prop, like rock cover, and it doesn't look like the explosion comes out of the prop. That could just be the bug above happening, though, I can't be sure.

If you go to save a map and make a mistake, if you press CTRL+Z to undo the mistake in the save prompt textfield, you undo your last action in the editor, too. It's not a big deal, but I thought I should report it anyway. Windows Vista, 64 bit.

I'm not using that, I have the map I'm testing and use a save where I'm just outside the battle. I don't know why I was so confused about how the walls fit together. I'm fixing 'em now. Edit: I've put a new version of the maps up in the OP. They should be a bit less terrible now. Second edit: After uploading the second version of the Middle Eastern maps, I whipped up a small map for the desert tileset. I've edited the OP. Hopefully the ME maps are now actually acceptable, with no more mucked-up walls for example, although I suspect there are still gameplay problems. I've tried to apply the lessons learnt from day 1 (thanks, Moxar). First of all, although I still float a vague idea of what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to plan it a bit more carefully. In the ME maps I wanted to do "outskirts of a village under attack", but didn't really consider LoS, LoF as I should have done. This time, I've gone for a base that's under attack from the aliens - original, I know - and its three sectors shouldn't lead to any silliness with snipers. I've also gone right ahead and not focused the aliens, civs and local forces in any one spot. Edit: I ended up making the lightscouts 60x60 as well, despite thinking it was a bit too big. It was a bit too cramped going down to 50x50, so that's that.

Wow, brilliant. Thanks for the feedback! As for spawnspots, I was trying to make it so you can't predict where they're going to be - I know with the default maps that after a while, you know that there's an alien hiding behind those rocks up ahead. I probably went too far though, I'll scatter them around a bit more. I'll admit, the civs spawning there all the time was me seeing whether the not-random spawning bug was limited to aliens or not. There's about six spawnspots for those guys, but they always seem to be down by that 5x5 house when I run it. I'll scatter them, too.

Maybe there could be a hidden modifier, based on difficulty level, affecting the number of aliens on light scout/normal scouts. So for the first number of fights against a lightscout, you only face four or five aliens. Something like: Easy: 3 low number alien encounters Normal: 2 Hard: 1 Insane: 0 I've increased the number of aliens you get in the scouts because otherwise, the game gets boring really fast.

Download Stinky Maps 2 here which contains 71 maps as of the 2nd of September. Map pack 2 contains: 17 farm maps (12 60x60s: 6 for Lightscout, 6 for Scout/Corvette; 5 70x70s, Cruiser/Landingship) 15 arctic maps (10 60x60s: 5 for Lightscout, 5 for Scout/Corvette; 5 70x70s, Cruiser/Landingship) 5 town maps (60x60, Corvette/Landingship) 4 industrial maps (1 40x50 and 1 40x80, Lightscout; 1 85x40 and 1 60x75, Scout/Corvette) 30 desert maps (6 Lightscout, 6 Scout/Corvette, 6 Landingship/Cruiser, 6 Carrier, 6 Battleship) (Original post follows.) ----- I'm having a go at making maps. Today's the first time I've even looked at the level editor. I'm not very good at it. But if you want more maps, you might as well give these a try. Note that I haven't extensively tested them. What I'm doing is making one map, then altering it rather than completely redoing it. As a result, the area around the dropship is the same on all maps. However, the alien's ship moves around (it's always at the top, though), and buildings/scenery changes. Alien spawn points are also different on each map. This is to try and make encounters feel a bit more random than they are at the moment, even if the not-random-placement bug is a major factor in that. It's also to try and prevent the "learning" of levels. It's certainly not because I'm a lazy git. If you see any muckups, please post about it here. A screenshot would be great! Also, the ground is boring, yes. I'm naff at making it look good. Sorry about that.

It always crashes when I try to resize using the "side" tool. It occasionally crashes when I use the "W/H" method. I think it's when you increase the size of the map in one direction, but lower it in the other. Windows vista, 64 bit.

The shrub_block prop moves one tile northeast when heavily damaged. This can even cause it to move outside the map. Blasting it a second time destroys it for good, no movement. You can see I used the shotty guy for the demonstration, but this happens with the machinegun as well. I believe that as well as moving off the map, it can go into other objects (I saw one shrub_block move into a wall). Unlike its bigger brother, shrub_cover works normally. --- This next one's probably already known. The prop (EDIT) market_stall_cover_2x1_UD has one instance that isn't working properly: the picture can explain it more clearly than I can. It's only the spice stall that acts this way, the fruit stand is working fine.

I think this is the first tactics game where I've mashed a button. I'm such a clutz that sometimes I accidently move a poor soldier into certain death and slam the space bar for all it's worth. "Panic button" indeed...

Sometimes an "apply" button appears after using the "..." to select a default tile. Clicking this causes the whole level editor to crash. Windows Vista 64-bit. I originally edited this into the other thread, but I can't update that one's title; I didn't want to risk this going unreported. Sorry folks.

What the...! I'm sure I tried that in 18.3 and it didn't work! Alright, another suggestion. Maybe this forum needs a "facepalm" emote...!

I don't know whether you want level editor bugs reported, but I'll leave this here just in case. After closing the level viewer and returning to the level editor, clicking on the tiles in the level editor crashes the program. This happens with any tileset I tried - at first I assumed the problem was with my industrial tileset (since I messed around in there), but it's happening with any of the other tilesets too, and those are untouched by me. I have to have the program crash on me if I want to have a look at the level, restart the level editor, and load. I'm using Windows Vista, 64-bit.

Yeah, there's a case for using tanks in X-Com, but using a handful of rookies to scout instead was fine. Rookies were a bit more adaptable (flares, smokes, stun rods), and cheap as hell. If all four of those rookies died, you'd break even from killing eight aliens, and turn a profit on plasma pistols etc. All X-Com forces had the same vision iirc? It's been a while, but I think it was around 18-20 squares. If one approach was better, whether it was tank or four more soliders, it certainly wasn't as big of a deal as +1 vision is in Xenonauts.

It feels odd that the choice from old X-Com - more rookies or a tank? - isn't much of a choice, though. I like controlling eight guys instead of six and a vehicle. I don't mind the vehicle being a viable alternative, but that's all it should be. To use a similar analogy to yours, if I don't give anyone sniper rifles then yes, I should miss out on a useful niche that gun fills. However, that's a choice because it allows me to bring a machinegun for even more suppression, or explosives to destroy cover, etc. If the devs see this and decide that the only way to win is to make the sniper rifle a vital gun that you can only take one of, that's a design failure: they've stripped out an option and it makes the game that little bit more shallow. On another note, I wish soldiers that reaction fire wouldn't trigger on enemies out of range. This is going to be especially annoying if they crack down on out-of-range accuracy

I thought that the crosshair not being visible when targeting certain objects/specific tiles on the ground by using CTRL might be a deliberate decision. I noticed that at least for objects, the crosshair is still around though - but its position is dependant on the item in question. Here's a screenie of what I mean. The map is the arctic one with two buildings in the middle (one of them blue, usually with a civvie inside) and a super snow plough dealie. The crosshair's in the bottom right, and I'm targetting the rock in the top left. I guess a typo happened and now the crosshair appears at the wrong co-ordinates or something: it's usually offscreen entirely, I reckon, as opposed to the crosshair not being created at all.

It'd also be nice to be able to select more than one guy at a time on both equip and personnel pages, so you can mass transfer soldiers on or off chinooks, or designate a new batch of rookies to be (say) heavy weapon class instead of riflemen. I imagine it'd be useful in the new UI as well. Also, being able to double click a soldier's name on the personnel screen and the game takes you to the soldier on the equipment screen. Imaging checking that Cpl. Jim has made a full recovery, you now want to make sure he wasn't stripped, so you merely double click his name and you don't have to spend time looking for him on the equip page.