Earlier UFO Crash Maps

[Zealin]

Didn't really know how to title this post, (sorry >.<) I looked around on the forum but couldnt find anything regarding this before i asked. Was curious as to why the look of the UFO crashes were changed from this "skidded across the ground" look to the current? I love everything about the game, and I'm not displeased at all, just wondering if maybe there was a design issue behind not being able to do it.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Zealin

[Kiel]

Oh wow. Nice piece of art. I wonder, why these spites were taken away. Or they didn't?..

[kabill]

They don't work for various reasons. Not least, in terms of congruence between the ground that's been crashed into and the ground which displays on the UFO (i.e. you'd need a separate image for every single ground type - concrete, grass, sand, snow, etc. - the UFO can crash onto) and a system in place to coordinate those things which - at least using the existing mapping tools - is no small task.

[Zerodaimaru]

Ya I always wondered about this myself. If the thing was supposedly shot down why is every building around it perfectly fine? Why does the damage on the ship seem woefully insufficient to actually down it. And other stuff like that I could go on about. It's not like I have a problem with the game or whatever (it's literally been the only thing I've played in the last while). But going to crash sites is one of the things that just rips me out of the game thematically. Luckily once the bullets start flying I'm pulled right back in again so it balances out.

My guess is that it was a resource/time thing. A lot easier to make a map that can be used for landing or crashes then to make maps that are one or the other. Also probably a lot easier to build a level without having to add that level of detail to it. I mean the game was already 5 years in development and from the sounds of things it was 5 years of difficult development cycles meaning that the extra time for stuff like this just wasn't feasible. Don't know for certain just speaking from my own software development experience.

~Zero~

[thixotrop]

Have you seen kabills mod "Enhanced Crash Sites"?

It is also within the "Fire in the hole" mod where you can breach the UFO hulls.

Wonder why he didn't mentioned it himself, but maybe he hopes that everybody read his signature.

[Zerodaimaru]

Have you seen kabills mod "Enhanced Crash Sites"?

It is also within the "Fire in the hole" mod where you can breach the UFO hulls.

Wonder why he didn't mentioned it himself, but maybe he hopes that everybody read his signature.

Truth be told I haven't delved into the relm of modding yet, though looking at those two mods (as well as some of the others on offer) I will probably be taking a look after another round or two of vanilla.

~Zero~

[Zealin]

Thanks for responding Kabill (and for your mods!), and thanks Thixo, I do have both of those mods downloaded, but had recently seen those old screens of the crashes and was interested in the change. Kabill, quick question if thats cool - Is this possibly something that you and the guys working on Modular, Fully Destructable UFOs plan to look at further down the road in any way (not necessarily Chris' implementation)? No worries if not, just curious on your thought process after working on the ECS mod =)

Edited July 10, 2014 by Zealin

[kabill]

Is this possibly something that you and the guys working on Modular, Fully Destructable UFOs plan to look at further down the road in any way (not necessarily Chris' implementation)? No worries if not, just curious on your thought process after working on the ECS mod =)

Honestly, I think it would be too much work. The problem is that there's no easy way to corresponding ground types to the UFO images.

E.g. In the image above, the concrete has been torn up. But if the UFO hit dirt, then you need dirt. In a desert, sand, etc.

Even if you made all the different variants (which in principle is possible) you need to attach them to the map. However, you can't do that by attaching them to the UFOs themselves, because there's no way for you to set one type of UFO (with, say concrete) to spawn on one map and a different one (with, say, dirt) on another.

Therefore, you'd have to paint the crash damage directly onto the individual maps and place the UFO spawn point placed appropriately to work with that. That's doable, but one of the features of the maps is that you can put multiple UFO spawn points on them (i.e. use the same map but with a different sized UFO, or the UFO in a different place). However, since you're painting the crash damage straight onto the map, you can't use that faction as otherwise you'll have crash damage where there isn't a crash.

Now, you could break down all of those multiple-spawn-point maps into individual maps with the spawn point moved on each. And there's you're solution. Nevertheless, it wouldn't work with other people's custom maps unless other people added the crash damage straight in. While means you might end up with some inconsistency using custom maps. Not the end of the world, but it means the solution is less than ideal.

Ultimately, then, it's a very large amount of work and, compared to the ~8 hours or so it took me to make ECS, for me isn't worth the effort (even if I had the artistic talent to pull it off). Yes, it could be done, but whether anyone will care enough to do the work needed to make it happen is another matter entirely.

Wonder why he didn't mentioned it himself, but maybe he hopes that everybody read his signature.

No, I've just been taught by past experience that it's not a safe assumption that people wanting the old crash images will necessary have much interest in ECS.

Edited July 10, 2014 by kabill

[llunak]

kabill: Would some code changes make this simpler to do?

I don't know how mapping works internally, but the crashed ufo is just a .png in assets/tiles/UFO/*/ . So I'd naively expect that it would be possible to add another .png's there which would add the graphics for the debris, one for snow, one for sand, one for concrete, and then arctic would get snow, desert would get sand, industrial would get concrete(*). Even if that wouldn't quite match, I don't think it'd be visually more inappropriate then a crash-landed ufo that looks like somebody just put it there.

As I find this aspect rather annoying, I'd be willing to put this quite high in todo list.

(*) Well, since industrial can have grass or concrete in the place of UFOs, the could probably even find out exactly what kind of tiles is in the place, I don't know if it's possible to do so or if all ground tiles are the same and just look like green or concrete.

[kabill]

kabill: Would some code changes make this simpler to do?

I don't know how mapping works internally, but the crashed ufo is just a .png in assets/tiles/UFO/*/ . So I'd naively expect that it would be possible to add another .png's there which would add the graphics for the debris, one for snow, one for sand, one for concrete, and then arctic would get snow, desert would get sand, industrial would get concrete(*). Even if that wouldn't quite match, I don't think it'd be visually more inappropriate then a crash-landed ufo that looks like somebody just put it there.

As I find this aspect rather annoying, I'd be willing to put this quite high in todo list.

(*) Well, since industrial can have grass or concrete in the place of UFOs, the could probably even find out exactly what kind of tiles is in the place, I don't know if it's possible to do so or if all ground tiles are the same and just look like green or concrete.

Maybe. Here's some thoughts:

At the moment, all the UFOs are in their own submap folder to be used generically across all maps.

The easiest solution, presumably, would be to change this such that each tileset had its own set of UFOs to draw from instead of using generic ones. That way, for example, you have concrete-crash UFOs in Industrial, sand-crash UFOs in desert, etc.

Ideally the map editor would self-select so the UFOs it displays for placement are only the ones appropriate for the tilset being used (i.e. rather than pathing to the generic directory, it looks up the UFO submap folder appropriate for the tileset the map is set as). This is already how the other submaps work in the editor, so it might be fairly easy to borrow/use code from there?

That way, then, when you place a UFO of a particular type on a map, it's using the tileset specific version with appropriate ground.

There's a few (relatively minor) problems with this though:

1) You'd have to rebuild all the maps with the new system. It wouldn't be a large amount of work but it's worth bearing in mind.

2) Any maps not built using this mod won't work.

3) It would be more hassle to mod the UFO interiors, change resources etc. because you'd have to do it separately for every single tileset type.

None of that is critical, but it's worth bearing in mind the costs. It's also worth noting that it's never going to work especially great with the Farm tileset as a result of the large number of different ground types. But you could probably get away with having a generic dirt image for farm which could work both in a field and on grass (and might be tolerable on concrete).

There are, of course, almost certainly other ways you could do this but that to me seems the simplest (as a code layman!). I'd recommend, in any case, holding off until other elements are in place (i.e people to do artwork and mapping) because there's no point wasting your time on it if no one's going to do the rest (and, at least using what I've suggested here, you'd break the game without someone at least willing to redo the maps even without the new images).

Edited July 10, 2014 by kabill

[llunak]

That way, then, when you place a UFO of a particular type on a map, it's using the tileset specific version with appropriate ground.

It seems needlessly complicated to have a complete UFO per tileset. As long as the outside of the UFO is seen, it's just a single image. So I would therefore assume it to be sufficient to have one more image per possible tileset (or terrain) that would only add the modifications for a crash-landed UFO in that terrain and it'd be painted over the stock damaged UFO picture that doesn't have any terrain in it.

That should work, shouldn't it, or what am I missing?

[kabill]

It seems needlessly complicated to have a complete UFO per tileset. As long as the outside of the UFO is seen, it's just a single image. So I would therefore assume it to be sufficient to have one more image per possible tileset (or terrain) that would only add the modifications for a crash-landed UFO in that terrain and it'd be painted over the stock damaged UFO picture that doesn't have any terrain in it.

That should work, shouldn't it, or what am I missing?

Possibly. You'd have to add in a system which places the crash-overlay image on the map, though, as well as a way of ensuring that the overlay will be concealed when the interior of the UFO is revealed (like the UFO hull is). Not sure how easy that would be to add in, though, as at least the first point seems to run counter to how the map editor works (as it's all submap based).

Ok, then, so this is how I imagine your idea working:

Each tileset has a "crashed" submap folder which contains folders for all UFO types (e.g. crashed/lightscout; crashed/scout etc.). In each of those UFO type folders, there's a submap which contains the relevant overlay for the UFO submap.

When loading the map, the game then loads the tileset specific crash overlay and places that as an additional submap in exactly the same place as the UFO spawn has been placed. That way, as you suggest, only the crash overlay is tied to the tileset.

That seems like it might actually be fairly simple to code. It would also mean it could be implemented without existing artwork as you could just add in empty submaps.

Also, it would make it compatible with the modular UFO system if that gets implemented since its still submap-based (I don't think a single image would work with the modular system due to hull destructibility).

[Zealin]

Thank you guys so much for discussing this further! I believe this would be a worthwhile addition, as it gets us one step closer to what it seems Chris wanted for the game originally. (Along with adding to the overall beautiful look of course!) I am willing to donate to this cause if needed, as I have no problem compensating the work involved. (I assume I can afford it, if its on the easier side to code as you mentioned) Although I also realize that if it turns out to be easy, me offering funds might seem like I dont know what Im talking about, but I just felt that I enjoy the game, and missed out on the kickstarter so rewarding someone for this work being done seems the right thing to do. I feel odd though, like I'm just trying to "throw money" at the game, so I'm sorry if Im coming off wrong here, I just wanted to be helpful really, and can think of no other way to truly do my part at this point towards a game system I'm passionate about, despite my low post count in the forums. I have no experience in any of this, so it would be my way of contributing. I can also help with testing, should the need arise.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Zealin
Better Explanation

[Zealin]

Actually, perhaps this is something I could work on? I know you guys have a million and one things to do with X:CE and your own projects, and I'm pretty serious about this. I dont know if its more difficult to keep pointing me in the right direction when I ask a question as I go along, but maybe Ilunak or Kabill (in your spare time) can get me started and give me tasks of things I can do. I've familiarized myself with Xenonauts' files, so maybe this is possible? I figure it cant hurt to ask, even If Im out of my league here.

This should probably be in the modding section now that I think about it, sorry =/

Edited July 12, 2014 by Zealin

[llunak]

What you could do would be to create images adding the crash-landed effect to UFOs.

If you go to assets/tiles/UFO , the ufo subdirectories have .png files showing damaged UFOs (for example, there's assets/tiles/UFO/lightscout/light_scout_hull_se_damaged.png). You'd need to create one .png adding crash-landed effect on grass, one on show, etc. (I think it'd be simpler to have one generic image and then create appropriately colored copies out of it). And this for each UFO type.

You could do this by copying the UFO damaged picture and adding the effect to it, but I think it might be technically better if the new images were just overlays (i.e. they'd really add just the crash-landed effect of heaps of ground around, etc., the UFO itself wouldn't be there, the game would merge the two pictures on use). I don't know if you know how to use a graphical program like Photoshop or GIMP, but this could be easily done by opening the UFO picture, adding another transparent layer on top, drawing the effect into the layer and saving only the layer.

If this sounds doable to you, start with something simple, like the light scout, when you're done, tell me and I'll add the code that would use the new image, to see how it works in practice. And if that would work, you could create all the remaining pictures and create a mod out of it.

[kabill]

Do you have any artistic ability? The major work is going to be coding (which is llunak's territory, unless you happen to have any aptitude there) and creating the artwork. The mapping side of it is pretty simple by comparison (and there's nothing to be done there until everything else is in place anyway).

[Zealin]

Okay been re-familiarizing myself with photoshop and the new elements for the last few hours (its been over 10 years). I believe this is possible for me. What would help me tremendously is if there is anyway I can get the full size old crash .png's for which ever craft and terrain Goldhawk has done. Not only would this be a reference, but I may be able to pull the terrain damage and use modified "pieces" as the extra layer. This would speed up the process, otherwise I have to learn how to recreate the "painted over" look, which might not be that hard if anyone with experience can give me some tips. So far I've only seen old screens of the light scout crash in concrete and grass/dirt, but at a small resolution. The higher res of those would be a great boon and a good starting place. This is just a thought I had basically, but If not I do plan to create new art.

Edit: Whoops, I think someone mentioned they were painted into the actual maps back then or am I mistaken? If they are, is it possible to get the old crash map assets in some capacity?

Edited July 12, 2014 by Zealin

[Zealin]

Still needs alot of work and maybe some trim, but heres a basic layout. Questions: Can xenonauts and aliens easily move over the rocks by the door area, since this would be a separate aesthetic layer or do I need to cut that down. Second, how far beyond the ship should I be aiming as I add this debris? As I'm not a mapper, I'm not too sure how much room I have to work with, and how best to mesh this with the submaps. I plan to do more detail work, but before I continue (and probably redo this from scratch) I wanted to show that I'm at least trying =)

Also is there a way to move this thread to the modding discussion, or should I just recreate a thread there? Didn't want to make unwanted clutter, but I do want the other major modders to input their thoughts.

Edit 2: Now that I think about it , I suppose this mod would be obsolete if you guys ever do the modular, more circular UFO's, so what are your thoughts on that? Personally I really do dig the alien aircraft that GH created, so I'm ready to go full steam on this mod if its a good idea. I'll get better as I go along so thats a plus!

Edited July 13, 2014 by Zealin

[kabill]

The size of the submaps is one of the issues - on most it's pretty tight so you won't be able to get a good trail. It could be solved by making the submaps bigger, but that would require replacing them on the maps as well (which might be required anyway, depending on the system adopted).

Also, note that the crash damage might want to be separated from the actual UFO hull. This depends on the mechanism used to place it, but it's worth keeping in mind. Also, all the UFOs are SE facing (i.e. the mirror of the above image).

Modular UFOs will be an issue - and this system won't work with the modular UFOs. Ideally, the crash markings would be modular to fit with that, but this is probably more complex and a bit difficult to do until something is finalised with the modular UFO system.

All that aside, I like the above image a lot. The rocks in front of the doorway aren't a problem per se, but it will look a bit rubbish with soldiers moving through it I think. It would be possible to set up that area as a wall that can be vaulted over, but that implies cover bonuses which might make assaulting the ship even more easy. For what it's worth, the entrance to the light scout is concealed in flight, so for the door to move into place it would probably displace any debris in front of it anyway.

[llunak]

Basically what kabill said. See what I wrote how the image needs to be done. The one you posted is mirrored and already has the UFO in it, so it won't work when the game will simply superimpose this on top of the damaged UFO image (and that's all that will happen, it will be just painted over, so you're limited by the image dimensions, and rocks at the door will look odd since they'll be visible but otherwise ignored).

[Gauddlike]

Does the suggested system mean the level editor will need reworking as well to allow the extra crash tiles to be placed?

[llunak]

No. As I said, it'll be just another image painted over. At most the editor may have a option for specifying terrain to have the image match the ground, if the default wouldn't look good.

[KevinHann]

I don't know how rational this would be, but what about taking all Modular UFO hull spectres and reworking them to add a "crash effect border" assigned to each one as a possible workaround for adding this feature to Modular UFOs, too?

[llunak]

Wouldn't the same approach of overlaying another image(s) over the hull image(s) work?

[KevinHann]

Wouldn't the same approach of overlaying another image(s) over the hull image(s) work?

I can see no reason why it wouldn't, providing it's drawn precisely to work with them.