llunak

I still cannot reproduce, even with a clean install of the Steam version. Are you sure you don't have any local modifications or leftovers? X:CE modifies the geometry of the dropship, so mixing of elements could result in this. Also, does enabling/disabling Skitso's Art Pack change anything?

People generally survive the game by thinking about what they do, paying attention, and learning from their mistakes. For example, all the difficulty levels have their descriptions, and you clearly selected an inappropriate one 4 times in a row despite it not working out for you at all. Barring this and the fact you apparently wrote this while upset, there does not seem to be anything unusual in the rest of the post, so let's ignore it.

It's most likely your local problem.

Not as such, we can't do magic. If you're sure your mod doesn't have modding bugs (-modinfo), then you need to upload what you have somewhere for others to see.

BTW, one more thing for UFO submaps, rather important. Some UFO objects provide recoverable resources, be it alenium, alien alloys, or item items (this can be seen in the submap editor info on the object). New submaps shouldn't break this, so e.g. a lightscout should not provide a power source or excessive amount of alien alloys.

No, it is not. But since I like the idea, if you update the pre-0.35 build, there it is possible. It has to be done manually in the submap XML, there's no UI support for it, but the submap editor will keep this information. The races are from ufocontents/races.xml, mission types can be seen in mission_researches.xml, upppercase/lowercase must match, more items are separated by semicolons and no extra spaces. A submap like this will (possibly) be used only for caesans on either scout or research missions, otherwise it will be skipped. Information on which submap variant is used and if it's being skipped is part of debugging info. <?xml version="1.0" ?><tilemap name="lightscout_layout" width="8" height="14" version="1" alienRaces="caesan" ufoMissions="ScoutMission;Research"> <level>...

E.g. for creating new maps (or submaps) I do not think you need to commit much, it'll be done when it'll be done. And you can consider it a sort of SimCity-like game . Or if you'd prefer doing graphics, there's e.g. the hulls of damaged UFOs, where it'd be nice to have more variations rather than a damaged lightscout always having holes in the same place. And so on.

X:CE does changes to those props, so I assume it overrides your changes if you keep them in the base game. Make a mod out of your changes and it should work. Also, for the same reason you should make your changes using MODMERGE rather than replacing the entire file, or at least use the X:CE files as a base.

Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe in the launcher claims to be X:CE 0.28 (and it probably is).

In that case I suggest at least skimming over the mapping howto sticky in the mapping subforum (which incidentally includes the above information IIRC).

I see. I expect you need this: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9670-Unpacked-Game-Tiles-Required-for-Mapping!

A way to handle this would involve making copies of the relevant floor tiles, changing those, and then getting this layout to use it. Which would probably mean splitting the floor into another submap (the same way e.g. hull is a separate submap) and getting each submap in inside/ and inside_damaged/ link also the proper floor variant. However, in my opinion it'd be better to simply alter the interior layout if you think this looks too bad (but I'm not stopping you if you'd be willing to do the work, I just don't find it worth the effort). Hmmm ... I think that if you make this demo mod into a "full" mod, I'd like to include it with X:CE. The worst technical problem I see is that the version in modinfo.xml shouldn't be so long, because it can't fit the UI . But, given what I wrote above, let me list here some things I think would be good guidelines: I think the larger a UFO is, the more it matters to have more variants of the interior. You did this the right way of starting small in order to try and learn, but small UFOs are simply too small for variants to matter much. On the other hand, fights e.g. in carriers take much longer and so there diversity matters. So while working your way up I recommend not spending too much time on the smaller UFOs. Note that for larger UFOs the command room is marked specially (it's the "Command Room" button, works similarly like "Paint Tile" but is a toggle). You'll also need teleports but I hope you can figure them out easily (besides placing the teleport objects, the tiles also need to be linked using matching IDs, see the bottom buttons row in the submap editor). You might find it useful to reuse objects from alienbase layouts. You cannot use objects from other tilesets directly, but you can copy them. So in order to use e.g. tiles/alienbase/props/UFOwalltube object, copy the _spectre.xml plus all the images it refers to inside to let's say tiles/UFO/copies/alienbase/props/ , and modify the _spectre.xml file to refer to the images using correct paths. That should be enough I think. I'm not a fan of small rooms. The reason the Fire in the Hole mod is not included with X:CE is because I think it alters balance, but primarily because of its small rooms. That was after seeing a YouTube video where the player very easily cleaned up a whole UFO simply by breaching a room with a shotgunner, shooting the possible one alien that was inside before it could do anything, and did this room by room, while the defensive aliens inside the UFO didn't really stand a chance. The defensive alien AI is simply not good at making counter-attacks, which would be probably the only way. I'm not saying small rooms are wrong as such, it may be good to have some to have variety, but I don't think an amount anywhere near FitH would be good for the way the game is now. Speaking of that, apparently the hardest UFO to breach is actually the corvette, because of its entrance. So I think it'd be good to have layout(s) for larger UFOs with similar ideas somewhere, not necessarily again as the entrance. I like things to have their logic and consistency. There are limitations to this e.g. because of technical reasons, but there shouldn't be things which are obviously strange, such as a UFO's command room being on the ground floor, or a maze of rooms done just for the sake of it. With the alien base maps I created recently, the first step I did was always having an idea about what the layout was about and how it fit together. In your first layout, the added wall makes a lot of sense, it separates the technical part. But the second one makes me wonder if the aliens would really build a UFO like that, or if was human thinking that lead to the layout. I'm not saying the layout is wrong, but it makes sense to occassionally do a check, especially with larger maps, whether a map doesn't end up being artificial, "cool" but non-nonsensical, or something similar. Each layout should get at least some practical testing. Besides the obvious reason of finding mapping mistakes, it'd be also good to check things like whether the AI doesn't end up doing something really stupid. Thank you for this and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. If you'll need help with something, just ask.

I didn't say anything about coding, did I? There's a number of things I do for X:CE that involve graphics, mapping, fixing game objects and other stuff that would be nice to get done by somebody, and since there's nobody else to do those apparently, I end up being that somebody to do it, even though I'd much rather spend the time coding.