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X-COM Weapons Pack
http://45.55.195.193/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=12995		 Page 1 of 3
Author:  nihilocrat [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 2:54 am ]
Post subject:  X-COM Weapons Pack
I decided it would be cool to combine a classic squad combat game with a modern squad combat game, so I decided to make an X-COM: UFO Defense mod.

Much like the original game, the standard weapons should sort of suck, but still have their uses. I will try and mimic the damage and accuracy values from the original game, with a few changes in places to accomodate for balance issues (example: laser weapons don't have infinite ammo, just big clips). I am concentrating only on Earth-made weapons for now, and then will probably move on to the alien weapons.

Eventually I will probably learn how to make clones, and then proceed to make all
the soldiers from UFO Defense (No Armour, Personal Armour, Power Suit, Flying Suit), but for now there are some vanilla clones which look fairly similar to X-COM soldiers.

I made the sprites by taking the UFOpaedia pictures for the weapons, shrinking them, and sprucing them up a little. Thanks go to Microprose and the original artists!

Please give feedback on anything about the mod. I will take a break on it for now, but I am interested in making the weapons balanced enough to see a lot of use in normal play. Feel free to also give any technical input: currently, for example, the high explosive is pretty weak. I want it to be able to blow open a normal-sized concrete wall but not have much area effect.

Here is the list of weapons I have completed so far:

Starting weapons:

Pistol - Finished
Rifle - Finished
Heavy Cannon (HE) - Finished
Autocannon (AP) - Finished - the magazine offset is messed up, sorry! fixed in next revision.
Rocket Launcher (Small) - Finished

Laser Weapons: Need glow

Laser Pistol - Finished
Laser Rifle - Finished
Heavy Laser - Finished

Explosives / Other:

Grenade - Finished
Proximity Grenade - Finished
High Explosive - Needs tweaking
Stun Rod - Finished

Future versions are available by branching my Bazaar repo. Feel free to make changes to the mod and submit patches to me. I will publish particularly notable revisions in a .zip for convenience.

bzr branch http://nil.cjb.net/X-COM.rte

Attachments:
File comment: the mod!
X-COM.rte.zip [768.83 KiB]
Downloaded 1141 times
Author:  Control [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 2:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
You forgot to attach the mod. There it is.

No real complaints, seems like a basic weapons pack. Don't like the sprites, though. I think it's better to try and recreate a gun in CC-esque style than to shrink a picture.
Author:  CaveCricket48 [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 3:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
Ooh, pretty sprites! I'll try it right now!

nihilocrat wrote:
Laser Weapons: Need glow


If you want to add glows, first get some glow sprites in the Modding Templates topic (in Mod Making),
and add this line to your round code:

Code:
   ScreenEffect = ContentFile
      FilePath = ModName.rte/RedGlow.bmp


And that'll let you have glows on your rounds without using glow-sprites.(Make sure you change the FilePath)
Author:  nihilocrat [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 3:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
Yeah, I do that a lot, sorry.

The particularly observant will notice a 'present' in the pack, as well as a few disabled items.

Does that make just the bullet particle glow, or the entire trail as well? It looks sort of funny if it's just the bullet that's glowing.
Author:  CaveCricket48 [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 3:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
nihilocrat wrote:
Does that make just the bullet particle glow, or the entire trail as well? It looks sort of funny if it's just the bullet that's glowing.


Unfortunately, it only makes the particle glow. I tried placing the glow on the trail, but the game crashed.
Author:  Arcalane [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 4:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
So far so good! The rocket launcher seems a bit underpowered vs juggernauts (and metal stuff in general)? right now, and the rifle's ROF/accuracy is probably a bit too high. I'd suggest making a custom laser reload sound, or alternately balancing an infinite clip with slower refire times and lower damage.

Offsets could do with a bit of tweaking maybe (for sharpaim in particular on the laser rifle) but otherwise things seem to be in order.

Before you ask, yes, I have played X-COM. I'm more of an Apoc fan though.
Author:  nihilocrat [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 7:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
Arcalane wrote:
So far so good! The rocket launcher seems a bit underpowered vs juggernauts (and metal stuff in general)? right now, and the rifle's ROF/accuracy is probably a bit too high. I'd suggest making a custom laser reload sound, or alternately balancing an infinite clip with slower refire times and lower damage.

Offsets could do with a bit of tweaking maybe (for sharpaim in particular on the laser rifle) but otherwise things seem to be in order.

Before you ask, yes, I have played X-COM. I'm more of an Apoc fan though.


The small rocket is pretty much a direct copy of the Ronin Bazooka round. I also felt it was a little underpowered.

I'd sooner reduce the power or rate of fire of the rifle, because in the original game its accuracy was only met by the Heavy Plasma and Rocket Launcher. I will try to more specifically compare the rifle and laser rifle to the Coalition Assault Rifle and Ronin M16/YAK47.

Reducing the rate of fire on the lasers sounds like a decent idea, they are a bit high as-is. I like how the Heavy Laser has turned out, but might want to tweak the bullets to be massier but less sharp, so they are better at taking down targets like dreadnaughts or dropships. It's a very powerful weapon, but lacks accuracy and rate of fire that make the rifles better for more frantic combat situations.
Author:  Barat!nha [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 7:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
These look good.
Dl'd!
And the rifle looks cool from the pic!
Author:  Brainwashed [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
It seems you are referring to an unexisting sound somewhere in your lines of code. I get an error about a jet sound.
Author:  undertech [ Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
I wonder if you can gib the projectiles to produce the hit effect from the original game? That's not a high priority though. Will test more later. Looks good so far!
Author:  Heliopios [ Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
The Heavy Laser feels rather underpowered as it is.
Author:  Arcalane [ Fri Dec 12, 2008 11:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
undertech wrote:
I wonder if you can gib the projectiles to produce the hit effect from the original game? That's not a high priority though. Will test more later. Looks good so far!


I can probably get my hands on the graphics used for that if nihilocrat can't.

Also; is it just me or is the H Cannon hilariously inaccurate? Also, I've had it pretty much shoot into the ground a couple of meters away, which could've killed the user if it wasn't for the fact I was using a DSTech Ferratus to make sure it wouldn't get hurt too badly. The Autocannon, conversely, seems too accurate given it's rate of fire.
Author:  ProjektODIN [ Fri Dec 12, 2008 2:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
DRL is reaching a new low--were complimenting sprites that people have made from a cropped and resized image.

Bravo, guys.
Author:  Khyour [ Fri Dec 12, 2008 2:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
So far only one person has complimented the sprites. So there's still hope.
Author:  nihilocrat [ Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: X-COM Weapons Pack
ProjektODIN wrote:
DRL is reaching a new low--were complimenting sprites that people have made from a cropped and resized image.

Bravo, guys.


I'm a fairly terrible artist, so I'm not really going to spend much time on it. My time is much better spent programming games. Ripping the sprites is a bit more appealing to me anyhow, as it feels like I'm running around with weapons from X-COM (not weapons that look like weapons from X-COM) in Cortex Command. The "crossover" feel is a little nostalgic. If you hate my mod, then that's fine, I'm not trying to impress anyone.

I based the H Cannon off of the Compact Cannon and the Autocannon off of the Gatling Gun. I should probably even them out, you're correct that the accuracies aren't right. I might even decide to make the Autocannon more like the Revolver Cannon, since in UFO Defense it was a little more like a full-auto Heavy Cannon and not a gatling gun.

I apologize for any lack of quality in the mod, I made it in the space of about half a week and decided that "release early, release often" was the motto to follow. When I spend some more time on the mod, I'll make a bzr or hg repo and post a link. The particularly interested can then download the latest code whenever I make a commit, or revert to old versions, fork/submit patches, or whatever they want.

Brainwashed wrote:
It seems you are referring to an unexisting sound somewhere in your lines of code. I get an error about a jet sound.


Are you sure you're using Build 22 with Coalition and Ronin "mods" installed? I tried making sure that anything that didn't reference the mod would reference either Base.rte or the vanilla mods.
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