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Cosmetic improvements (nonetheless quite important)


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Thread for cosmetic improvements you think would make the game better. Please don't start discussion on what I think. Instead add your own. We want to improve the game, not bicker pointlessly until we lose sight of that mutual goal.

I don't even care about the stats of the wolf armor, but I so enjoy getting it because of how awesomely cool it looks. that cool look is what makes me feel that it's powerful armor and gives me the joy of equipping my guys with it. It's ALL the difference.

These types of thing are very important because the way the player FEELS is basically his game experience, and these cosmetic things make a player feel differently about things happening in the game.

This is much more than of functional importance alone.

For example, it's important for the player to know that the new ceasean is a higher power caesean, and for that you give it a different armor. But it's much much more important for the players game experience to feel afraid and uncertain of this new enemy, and for that the graphics need to be evocative and more than just functional.

So here are things which I think could be done to add, both cosmetically for feeling and for functionality

1) alien shot color --- it's all blue! I think it would make you feel much more 'ow... wtf is that' fearful if suddenly you got an alien shooting an orange bolt at you, or red, corresponding with weapon power.

It's a way to make more advanced aliens seem more threatening in a very simple way (simple psychology)

2) Air-combat graphics are tiny! This is functionally problematic, but also in terms of the feeling it evokes. Air combat feels like it lacks 'solidity' because of the tiny figures. I'm sure than making all combatants in aircombat twice as big will give the game a much more meaty feel

3) recoil for laser guns? why is there recoil animation for laser guns?

4) Reaper looks... too cute. The painting is very very well done, but for me it's just too small to be threatening, and its coloring is a bit too drab and uniform. not nearly threatening enough. I'd suggest using colors that we're genetically wired to associate with mortal danger and not give it a 'one color suit'.

5)

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Shot color can change, you can mod it to be whatever you want.

Reaper color probably won't change, due to the insane number of sprites that would involve.

Air combat graphics might be updated with the UI switch, I dunno. I think they could look better, yeah, but I'm fine with them. Maybe it's the resolution you're using?

I have no idea why lasers have recoil, but oh well. It looks fine to me.

EDIT: Oh, it could be a cooling motion, to cool down the gun. Like, a mechanical release of compressed gas. I dunno, make something up. ;)

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-Smoothed out LOS edges

-Shot down ufos digged in ground (as they were earlier)

-Debris, fire and smoke around shot down ufos

-Better and more random ground damage sprites from grenades etc.

-Line of green squares when moving and aiming is hideous

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Reaper color probably won't change, due to the insane number of sprites that would involve.

I don't know much about sprite editing, but by simply adjusting one or two sliders in photoshop you can easily change the whole look. See the picture I attached, each version is only one slider action in the hue or color levels settings. With photoshop you can do batch editing, so I think it would be possible to load in all sprites and apply the same hue change to each one automatically. This could even allow you to have a few versions to bring some variety, maybe even in stats.

Reapers.jpg

Reapers.jpg

Reapers.jpg.34920d653b4a794a58048764d6ae

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Rotating turret on tanks!!!!! )))

And "Center Time = 5 sec" on any dialog (new research, new manufacture, new something new...) and time 5 sec on tailing ufo's. Actually i think any action except "ignore" should switch timescale to 5 sec.

Also, restore soldiers ammunition after he was reassigned to dropship from hospital (mine havy assult lost all his machineguns somehow, and was equipped with m16 and one clip somehow), yes I know there is button to equip default weapon, but it was hard to find.

Edited by yatagarasu
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1) alien shot color --- it's all blue! I think it would make you feel much more 'ow... wtf is that' fearful if suddenly you got an alien shooting an orange bolt at you, or red, corresponding with weapon power.

It's a way to make more advanced aliens seem more threatening in a very simple way (simple psychology)

I agree with this one in particular.

Simple but effective way of differentiating between alien weapons.

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Hate to sound like i'm nit picking, but if plasma technology if blue or pink or whatever, then why would the same plasma derivative i.e. plasma canon, be anything different form a plasm pistol like red? red plasma yellow plasma, blue... How cheap. Please let's stick to something consistent, would think there might be a slight nuisance of color difference perhaps, but the biggest differences would lie in the shape of the bolt imo.

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Why not? Lasers (which are real) are not necessarily red. They can be blue or green, for instance. And while reality has nothing like "plasma bolts" you see in the game, plasma is indeed of different colors, too. It's usually blue, but you know those neon signs, for example? That's plasma, and can be red or green also. Color of plasma actually depends on the specific gas involved in the plasma creation process.

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cybrbeast, as I don't have photoshop (nor can I afford it), could I ask if you do some shaded spritesheets? I'd like to compare re-coloured verses vanilla in-game, and I can put together the appropriate spectre and alter the associated files to see what "alternate colours" look like in ground combat.

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You can find the spritesheets in /assets/units/ then you have /alien/, /civilian/, /friendlyaitroops/, /xenonaut/. Now.. there are a LOT of spritesheets, so umm... prolly the easiest one to try out would be the caesan or sebillian noncom, as that has one particular set of spritesheets.

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I've recolored the reaper as the purple is what got this started. The reaper is also quite simple to recolor as it is mostly one hue. However, with only slightly more effort you can also do selective recoloring, so for instance only recolor the blue armor parts of the caesan.

Every file in the folder weapon.reaperclaws\ was batch recolored and saved in weapon.reaperclawsNew\ which you can find in the archive at the following link.

https://mega.co.nz/#!QA4hHCTR!QykIUW7ge54ni4rlSMgDRGym4gwBAsc3aDw8JR8YDPw

I guess then it's just a question of overwriting the sprites in the original folder and the game should load them.

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That is true, variations of units will make the filesize explode, but my response was mainly targeted at changing the colors, not making new units.

Reaper color probably won't change, due to the insane number of sprites that would involve.

I was just saying that this isn't really an issue and can be relatively easily changed.

On the other hand I have no problem with large file sizes so I wouldn't mind if modders go wild with variations of units.

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Splitting one color into two is a much more difficult process though, especially since the position of the torso and legs vary with respect to each other when the unit has different poses. Even then it shouldn't take more than a few hours if you carefully split the batch operations.

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