Raakku

I tried out making a simple river and cornfields. As I don't know if water is going to be added at some point this river is just unpassable, undestroyable tiles. maps, tilegraphics and spectres: http://www.mediafire.com/?iw1qz44db6732

Here's what I would suggest: simplify the the round UFO shape to Dodecagon (12-sided) and make the UFO tiles from blocks of 2x2, you need one for each straight edge and one for each corner, that means only 24 blocks. If you drop the straight edges you can make 16x16 tiles UFO (from inside 12 tiles), with all the pieces you can make 18x18 tiles UFO (inside 14tiles) and you can grow it however you want with increments of 2. to these 24 you can make special ones, but the point is that you can re-use them with different bigger UFO:s and make them possibly destroyable with only 48 different pictures (24 for undamaged and 24 for damaged). Here's few pictures I made with the submapeditor and blocks I rendered so you can see what I mean:

That's a good way to nerf them while not making them useless pea-guns, I didn't even think of that.

It looks really nice, fading the tops of trees is a clever way to portray a forest. Forest and/or jungle sure would be nice in the final game.

EDIT: (added this so my post is not only moaning) The view blocking front part of the UFO becoming opaque would be nice, the roof would be invisble as with the buildings etc. I also would rather see something on place of the walls than just black gap. /EDIT I'm not rescaling anything, I'm just suggesting changing the height at which the UFO exteriors are cut. The soldier would not be shown through the wall because the floortiles (some of which would represent the missing top part of the walls) would block it. If the height is not the problem with using blocks of few tiles to build the outer parts of the ship, what is? The tactical view is not in any specific scale, it's more like a symbolic representation, on wich everything is a bit shorter and wider than in real life. And if I would have to guess some exact size for the the tiles, they would be more like 3m high than 2,2m as all the one floor buildings are one level high. But as I said, it's symbolic and doesn't matter.

Yeah, let's install few automatic machineguns with motion detectors to the mainstreet while trying to rescue panicking citizens. What could go wrong? Ofcourse building a sentrygun could be unlocked by researching a captured "live" drone so that could explain why they can be programmed not to shoot at friendly units. I think more of a problem would be if the sentryguns would work like any other item in the game and the player coud carry dozens of them to missions and create "walls of fire". That would quite surely break the balance of the game. Or the sentries should be nerfed until they're practically useless. Or they could be made like units and you could choose either one tank or four sentries and at that point they should be able to move around on their own and they would end up resembling more like mini-tanks than sentryguns.

Hahah, Great idea.

I don't know does the game make any distinction between different types of attack. If it doesn't I think I'd rather have destroyable than immortal wheat, even with bullets. If there is difference, incendiary ammunition/laser/plasma/explosion would be the way to destroy wheat.

Really hard to say because I practised using the submapeditor at the same time. Drawing was quite quick, I think I used many more hours with the spectre editor.

I made a replica of the little UFO from the enemy Unknown. Animated sprites for the reactor and computer screen didn't work in the game (they work fine on submap editor) for some reason, so I used stills. maps, tilegraphics and spectres: http://www.mediafire.com/?anjxd143e7fjo

Make the UFO walls opaque when a soldier is next to them, it works fine with Chinook. If I understood right, the problem with the outer hull blocks (that you have used to make the UFO:s until now) and the reason why you are considering making the outer graphics of the UFO as "facade" is that that there is not enough "space" for the blocks to curve on Z-axle before the roof begins and you want the UFO:s to keep their flat appearance. It can be solved by simply lowering the height of the ufo walls, both interior walls and the hull blocks and drawing the missing part of the outer SW and SE walls (or blocks) as extensions of the roof tiles. On one-level UFO:s there wouldn't be a problem with the top pieces of the walls "missing" as the gap couldn't be seen under the roof tiles. On two-level UFO:s you can extend the bottom of the outer SW and SE walls on level 1 to mask the missing part of the walls on level 0. Other option if you want to have two-level-high rooms inside the UFO is to make the inner walls full height, but also make four special inner walls with sloping tops: one for SE, SW, NE and NW, that way they wouldn't "stick out" through the seams of the outer wall blocks.

Things on layer 1 are drawn later/on top of things on layer 0, for excample if a sofa is on layer 1 and floor tile on layer 0, the sofa covers the floor, but of the floor tile is on layer 1 and sofa on 0, the floor covers the sofa. Layers 2 and above seem to cause problems with covering the soldiers. Layers don't affect "height", only how things are displayed. Levels are for Z-axle or height, like for making a house that has multiple floors. Just draw a floor on as many levels as you want, but make sure that each floor is drawn with layer 0. You can make things like furniture that span over several tiles on X- or Y-axle, but not on Z-axle.

Well, they are pretty. Pretty people don't have to know how to do anything except be pretty, that's why they were hired. That's what the movie producers think atleast, I believe.

Yeah, new SW:s got both space princessesses, alien furrys AND xenocide and mass murder of children... Great stuff for kids!

Naming the new hope as IV was just a marketing trick, Lucas had absolutely no idea about the "first three" films when he made it, only later when money started to pour in from doors and windows he started to spew crap how he "planned it everything already in the seventies".

Destro, did you get the hedges to show properly? If you didn't make sure they all have the same Sort Point value. The Layer should be 0 for floor tiles and 1 for everything else, if you use Layer 2 or bigger they will get drawn on top of soldiers and other things. With Sort Point value you can sort the visibility when two sprites are fully or partially on top of each other and either one could be drawn on top. For example: if your SE and SW outer walls have lower Sort Point value than your inner walls you can be sure that they are drawn correctly on top and you dont have the edges of the inner walls "pushing through" the outer walls.

Ice "walls" (looking like ice that wind has pushed upwards) for arctic that can be shot and become half-high ice heaps. High wheat/corn tiles for farm that offer cover (with the logic that it's hard to try and hit someone who's hiding in high grass) but gets destroyed with first hit. Big trees that block line of sight but can be shot through (with maybe 50% chance to hit the tree). Bus/train that can be entered in town missions, they would be three tiles wide from the inside with one tile for walkway and pairs of seats on the sidetiles for cover. Windows on sides to shoot through and the first/last tile of the bus would explode when shot (I don't remember where they have gas tanks).

Almost everything Star Wars related produced nowadays is complete and utter bullshit and it had has been for over a decade already. Eventhough I liked the original trilogy (mostly) I would happily ignore the new SW games/programs/whatever otherwise but they are producing so bloody much SW stuff that they are eating the markets from fresh, good IP and forcefeeding the crap to consumers.

Or Jack Bauer interrogating an alien?

Only measuring of time that matters is the one that my bank is using to count the interest for my apartment loan.

So does the soviet town consist of one neo-classic governmental building and tons of identical grey concrete shoe-boxes for the happy workers? Because that would be realistic.

Chris, great to hear (read) that. Thothkins, http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3527-Proposed-Development-Roadmap It reads there painted so I would guess painted/drawn 2D graphics. 3D rendered screens in a 2D game would feel so... Theme Hospitalish... I don't think they would go through all that trouble of handpainting over tilesets just to use 3D rendered pictures in research screens... atleast not without tweaking them by hand.

I was quite suprised to find out that I got to shoot down only six, maybe seven UFO:s during the whole game on classic difficulty... it just felt like the game was feeding me landed UFO and terror missions following some premade plan. It was so bad that the whole geoscape sreen started to feel strategically useless and more like a "next mission" -button. The world map on the situation room screen was much more useful as the satellites were sent thru it. I quite liked the tactical combat, the missing action points were not nearly as bothersome as I had feared... though I would have liked if there would have been two proper actions to choose from for each soldiers turn: move+move, move+attack, attack+move, attack+attack and lastly no move+special attack. Also it would have been nice to be able to change the pistol (only useful for sniper or weakening aliens for capture) to heal kit or stun gun... item management was quite overly limited.

I hope when the alien autopsy report pictures are added, they will be proper autopsy pictures of the aliens laying on a cold steel slab with their guts opened, brains exposed etc. The miniscule pictures of the aliens' wireframe models on the autopsies in the new X-COM:EU just reminded me how I disliked the pictures of X-COM:Apocalypse as they were just the aliens sawn in random bits and pieces, floating in the air. In the original UFO:EU I especially liked the sectoid, who looked so happy in interrogation picture and sad on the pathologists slab.

I think chief O'Brien had that kind of switch.