crash site don't feel like crash sites

[Wizard_Hat]

i was playing the game doing a landing ship crash site when it hit me, The doesn't look like a huge servery damaged UFO just crashed here, more like It gently landed there if not always there. I'm not asking much just using the scorched earth tiles and fire around the craft, maybe on industry map destroyed upper stories of build just something to make crash site look and feel like crash sites.

[TornadoADV]

Previous builds a long time ago had that. But it required a ton of unique art assets for each UFO on each map type. So it was removed.

[Gauddlike]

It has crash landed rather than impacted in a fiery ball of burning flames.

[Planetus]

I loved how heavily damage UFOs could have walls and ceilings missing in the original X-COM, so my units could get in more easily and shoot at enemies without opening the only doors. I'm missing this a lot in the new game.

[Grazgul]

Xcom-EU did a fairly good job of crash sites. Having some impact markings around the sites would be quite cool.

Some easy ways to add a crash feel could be:

Setting a nearby building on fire

Cratering around the ship (it didn't feather touch, the reason it's in one piece is because the ship is so structurally advanced)

Damaged objects in the internal (roughed up canisters ect)

Setting the ship partially below ground to simulate heavy impact

busting up the ships outer armour (scratching and some crumbled metal would be cool)

Pieces of the ship lying around the map

Some of them are a lot of work and generally the alien ship has managed to land soundly according to the descriptions. I don't know if the devs would want to commit the resources.

[Irishguy117]

The problem with adding details like that is the maps are randomized, the UFO has a number of possible spawn points. X-com EU was able to do crash sites like that because the UFO was always in the same place on their very limited number of maps.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Irishguy117

[Commissar Pancakes]

I don't know if the devs would want to commit the resources.

They already tried. It's just that the maps are semi-randomized (different cells in preset locations to mix things up a little) enough that to implement stuff like that would increase the workload and size of the game exponentially.

Mainly due to Xenonauts' 2D sprite artwork. 3D is simply easier to do.

[Wizard_Hat]

they could use the scorched earth texture that the pulse laser leaves on the ground add damage to buildings missing walls ceilings smoke, fire that sort of thing

[Gauddlike]

Not without a lot of work.

The UFO submap is square (or rectangular depending on ship type) but kept as small as possible to conform to the shape of the craft it represents.

This means there is little space around the edges to add anything, including the scorched tiles.

Making this submap bigger would mean reserving more space on each spot a UFO could spawn on a map.

Resizing them now would mean all current maps would need to be examined and potentially rebuilt.

The UFO submap replaces any non ground tiles it overlaps so sections of buildings or props are removed.

If they overlap a building then only the parts that are touched by a UFO tile are removed.

That means you could have a UFO crashed into a building but the upper floors remain perfectly intact while the bottom floors are just removed as if they were never there.

To change that could require coding in mechanics to check for these removed tiles and somehow decide where to place rubble as well as deciding which tiles should appear damaged as this function is not present in the game.

Any tile that left some kind of rubble when destroyed would also need to be removed completely anyway as that rubble could appear inside the UFO when it had no way to get there.

Personally I would assume only the very nearest buildings would have a change of being damaged anyway so it would also need a method of determining which spawn point was used so that some buildings could be replaced with a damaged version while others were left untouched.

Either that or random placement would have to be removed and maps 100% hand crafted so damage was more authentically placed.

Smoke and fire are great when they are tied to something.

They look a little odd in the middle of an otherwise untouched field though.

The UFO hulls cannot be damaged because of the way they are used in the game as well as their size outside of the areas you can walk on.

It was much easier in the OG as the craft were basically boxes so a single wall was all that separated any area from the outside world.

To copy that functionality would be difficult in this game.

As the breakfast food above mentions it would be easier with a 3D game but very difficult with this 2D engine.