Waladil Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 (edited) Allow me to introduce what may well be the very first globe mod for Xenonauts: The timelines. I'm going to open by telling you guys that it's not, honestly, that cool. It's a simple change to help commanders plan battle times by adding 24 evenly spaced "hour" lines on the globe. How does it work? Well, it takes a little work on the commander's part (like all good things in Xenonauts, this requires skill!) Let's say you want to clear a crash site, but it's night there and you really hate playing night missions. So you just need to find out how long it'll take to get there (which Xenonauts provides already in the form of a dropship ETA), and then count that number of hours eastward. 4 hours = 4 lines. As soon as the terminator has passed the noted point, you've got a day mission. Now, I know that everyone has a version of this they already do. We ballpark it, estimate how many hours it "looks" like. However, using this would dramatically increase the accuracy of your ballparks. Although I admit it wont give you 100% precision, it's a big improvement. I was clever enough to not do this all by hand, but set up a set of autocommands to do it for me. (If you've never looked, the Geoscape earth picture is split into 80 separate image files ) One advantage of this method is that now that I've done all the legwork I can make variants really quickly. So if you've got a color request, I can oblige. I'll admit, this currently suffers from a kinda major problem that I don't know if I can fix: The lines are very visible at day but nearly invisible at night. It has to do with the way everything's built in, and it would take a better image editor than I to play with things like color masking. I will see if I can find a particular color and line thickness that finds a sweet spot between being visible at night and not being super-annoying during the day. Gray lines: Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/10o855t9c7if0oy/HourLinesGray.zip Teal lines: Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyvajw1v093pdg0/HourLinesTeal.zip White lines: Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8pwemuaasme3h80/HourLinesWhite.zip Double thickness (2 pixels) teal: Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e04hezjj8djtzow/HourLinesTeal2px.zip (The difference is a lot clearer when you open the image in a new tab) To install, download your preferred color and find your Xenonauts\assets\earth directory. Backup the 80 geoscape images there, then extract the mod packs there. IMHO the teal lines are probably best, because the white ones are somewhat annoying and the grays are nigh-invisible. Feedback in the form of compliments, criticism, and requests/suggestions is very much accepted. Feedback in the form of death threats is less so. If you want to issue a death threat against me, find a better reason. There's plenty, you just need to look a little bit. Post edited to add screenshots as requested, white version, and 2 pixel teal version. Edited May 17, 2013 by Waladil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ol' Stinky Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 I'm going to open by saying you're wrong, and your mod is cool as hell. Thanks for doing this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sathra Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 A screenshot of the map with both versions would be lovely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 Screenshots would indeed be nice. However, bear in mind that the current Geoscape is not the final one. There's a new map coming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giovanni Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 Just tried it, looks good! Good Work, Waladil! IMHO it would be even better if you could draw the lines to be semi-realistic time zones, even if it would be a bit less intuitive to read. Something like this, for example. (I know it's more complex to do, it's just an idea I have in mind -- maybe one day I'll mod it myself) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waladil Posted May 17, 2013 Author Share Posted May 17, 2013 (edited) Added a couple screenshots. I was going to originally, but my copy of Xenonauts kept crashing and I was too tired to try and suss out the problem last night. Today I took another look at it, and turns out Xenonauts will crash very aggressively (on the main menu after a few seconds) if there's any unrecognized files in the earth directory. Extra folders with extra files is fine though. This was true for both compressed .zip files and also .ahk files (which are basically .txt files that I used for doing this). So don't leave spare files lying around, it will crash things a lot apparently. Thanks a lot for your kind words, everyone, feels good to get props. As for future changes in the map, I should be able to adapt to future changes pretty easily, thanks to automation. EDIT: Added a couple new versions in different colors and thicknesses. I'd appreciate feedback on which are nicest to play with. Edited May 17, 2013 by Waladil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orangehat44 Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 Just tried it, looks good! Good Work, Waladil!IMHO it would be even better if you could draw the lines to be semi-realistic time zones, even if it would be a bit less intuitive to read. Something like this, for example. (I know it's more complex to do, it's just an idea I have in mind -- maybe one day I'll mod it myself) Silly Giovanni... devs cant mod their own game that would break the space time continuum. And if you break that... xenoauts might have already been released or hasent been thought up yet, then your picture starts to disappear in photos like back to the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snozy Posted May 25, 2013 Share Posted May 25, 2013 I hope new Geoscape will be more interesting because you see the whole map. i want to see many things going on like i say in the past time about countrys doing evil to each other or crazy weather effects linked to alien actiivitys, maybe the weather will be part of the battlescape. I wish for such little things and i like the timezone in the map too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gauddlike Posted May 26, 2013 Share Posted May 26, 2013 You see the whole map in the current one if you are out at the maximum zoom level. The rest of the items in the post won't happen. They are outside of the scope of this game. The changes are cosmetic to fit it in with the rest of the new UI, not added fluff functions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frontspac Posted June 2, 2013 Share Posted June 2, 2013 Good mod. The colours look pretty nice from what I can see in the screenshots. Yeah, Snozy, that'd be a whole other level of game mechanics. That said, I do hope the new map has country borders and names (possibly as an optional overlay) as well as some additional cities. Also some tweaked geography. I know this probably doesn't matter to most of the user-base, but to me the Pacific Northwest looks really weird without Vancouver Island. As it stands now, aside from cosmetic changes, is there or will there be a way to way to modify the world map at all? I could see, in the future, some dedicated fan making a megamod that adds more countries, cities, and accompanying maps and tilesets. I'm curious how do-able that might be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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