New Ufo2000 Tiles

[nappes]

Obviously the idea was that there would be hi-res units to go with the terrains as well. ^^

 

 

I think these tiles look simply awesome. The more of these new tilesets people make, the more I regret the fact that there is no decent map editor that could make use of them.

 

It wouldn't even need to be particularly user-friendly or anything, actually it shouldn't be that difficult to build on top of the battlescape engine... So that when you press some key combination while in hot-seat mode, you would enter a special map editing mode, where you could load and save map files at will and place tiles on the map using one mouse button and pick them using other. Of course there would need to be keys for shifting between the different object-planes, changing the current tile index etc.

 

The thing with making terrain sets is that the process is pretty tightly-knit with the process of map-making - It's quite difficult to know what tiles are really needed if you can't test the overall workability of the tileset in practice while you're making it.

Edited December 8, 2005 by nappes

[Angry Lawyer]

Map editor... that's actually quite a good idea.

 

*adds it to THE LIST*

 

-Angry Lawyer

[Blood Angel]

talk to DaiShiva about that. He is the current Map Editor king.

[Guest Azrael]

And don't let the fact that DaiShiva hasn't been online since February discourage you to do so

[Blood Angel]

No, don't. Reach him through telepathy. Failing that, try his website.

 

http://www.daishiva.com/phpBB2/index.php

[Kratos]

To Lylr: I like your tiles, but it bashes the "theme" from the original X-com UFO which as far as I can tell, we are keeping. If we followed your really nice realistic theme, we just may have to change our whole ufo2k theme (weapon sets, units, etc.) which would be a very big hassle. I always thought we should keep the original theme because that is what the original xcom was really favorable for graphics-wise (or at least I thought this). I am not telling you to stop making great graphics or anything, but I am just saying that most (or I would think) xcom fans would prefer the original theme. Anyways, keep up the good work!

[Sporb]

so can we officially begin to make hi-rez units and stuff?

[Llyr]

i thought the theme of original x-com ufo was "the real world"... which you defend from alien invaders.

nothing hi-tech, nothing future, nothing space-travel...

 

you start off with simple guns and fight in cities like they really could be, somewhere on this planet.

 

am i wrong?

 

i bash the style of xcom... not the theme!

 

the style of xcom graphics (although they all try to depict the real world, and make you feel like defending it) is not so realistic. but how realistic can you get with 320*200 pixels in 256 colors and just some kilobytes of ram?

there are tiles and you see that this are tiles. they have borders, seams, and they get repeatet over and over again, so you start seeing patterns if you look at a larger chunk of all the same tiles next to each other.

 

i made by intention tiles, that don't look like tiles. my goal was to make buildings that look like beeing made of one piece. yeah thats a change...

 

 

the theme of x-com 1 wasnt futuristic at all. i remember many times running through simple old-style barns and totally normally looking suburbs, with a squad of soldiers wearing flying suits and plasma guns...

if you think futuristic hi-tech stuff like flying suits and plasma guns don't fit into the streets of a city like it was 15 years ago... than you are right.

 

but i can explain that: thats because this hi-tech stuff isn't form earth. its from the aliens, which are far more developed. and x-com simply captured thesed items and copied the technology.

 

so if you ask me, thats what makes x-com to x-com. hi-tech future cities are part of xcom, but far far later than xcom: ufo defense aka ufo: enemy unknown . in the old xcom 1 the theme is the real world, like it was then. and thats meanwhilest 15 years ago, or something like that. i feel that i am true to that theme...

[Sporb]

Thats exactly what im going for in urban set - buildings that look like buildings not boxes - although i havent got any large tiles yet. The problem is the 255 tile limit. it limits you to relatively few tiles when you consider that you have to make 2 of each wall (more if u count destroyed versions).

 

PS: you wont hear me complain about varied tile sets - theres no fun in playing the same boring old futuristic set over and over. A nice victorian set would be just as welcome in my fave map lineup (which includes beachs of narmandy i mite add ) as well as a space aged hover car type setup

 

Coz remember - this aint Xcom, this is ufo2000! its all good!

Edited December 9, 2005 by Sporb

[nachtwolf]

X-com original theme is about the real world, in which aliens invade earth and war forces new technologies to emerge.

But the visual style is a bit cartoony, somewhere between reality, japanese anime and american cartoons (i.e. marvell). You may notice that visual style especially when you look at the intro movie, your soldiers, the ufopaedia and most map objects.

It's all about the blue sinks.

 

As for the style, the map designer has the right of way and having different looking maps adds variety to the game.

 

Drifting the theme a bit simply adds to gameplay, some prefer photorealism, other like cartoons. If a map looks like Myst or Marioworld is up to the designer. Same for the units. honestly I'm on the realism side but I enjoy a good game of worms 2 once in a while .

 

I agree most of the game, especially the menus, buttons, background and navigation should reflect the visual style of x-com but I don't think one photorealistic terrain among the other ones could ruin anything.

 

Different is good, too different scares people off

Edited December 10, 2005 by nachtwolf

[Llyr]

yeah, if you dont like the style of em, just don't play my maps

[Sporb]

Different is good, too different scares people off 

 

Wait til u see my abstract tileset ppl will run screaming from their terminals; eyes bleeding and minds warped

 

I promise that it will be the most messed up set avaliable once finished. Small children will cry when they see it

Edited December 10, 2005 by Sporb

[Blood Angel]

Different is good, too different scares people off 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Wait til u see my abstract tileset ppl will run screaming from their terminals; eyes bleeding and minds warped

 

I promise that it will be the most messed up set avaliable once finished. Small children will cry when they see it

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I like it.

[Llyr]

picasso maps? i dunno...

 

but m.c. escher maps sure would be damn cool

 

http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW389.jpg

Edited December 10, 2005 by Llyr

[Llyr]

added even more detail to my already far to detailed tiles, by adding more 3d-looking effects, since the old tiles looked a bit to flat, i thought.

i also startet to heavily increase color saturation, to make the tiles more colorfull and therefor a little bit more comic-style.

tiles should look more 3d and less greyish now.

 

this is some first shot:

 

i did not yet edit the tiles for better repeating behavior, which is especially well visible for the street floor tiles.

 

i borrowed nappes soldier and dared to "smooth" him a bit...

 

i also tried to show some broken tiles

 

Edited December 10, 2005 by Llyr

[nachtwolf]

Awesome!

 

I would like to suggest that road and grass could use some color adjustement (road is blue? and grass is too pale IMHO, try darker and more saturated, shifting the hue to yellow a slight bit)

 

Other than that it looks very good! building is very very nice looking, so is the sidewalk!

 

When can we play it?

 

BTW, as we all know... if we start slowly remaking higher resolution version of most original x-com terrain and units, we would be able to maintain the original games look and terrain without relying on any copyrighted material.

 

Ok this is a lot of work but hey, it's worth doing.

Edited December 10, 2005 by nachtwolf

[nappes]

I suppose it would be possible to make original replacements for all the X-Com units and thingamabobs and making a nearly identical, but non-copyrighted clone of the same concept, but I just don't find that a very interesting idea, mostly because I never thought the story was the strong point of the X-Com series... And you don't really need aliens to explain why people are running around with guns and shooting each other. That happens every day in the real world and I doubt Sectoids are to be blamed for that.

 

BTW, one workaround for the map editor issue would be making some kind of tool that converts .png-tilesets into the old X-Com format, just to be used with DaiShiva's map editor. Then you could port over those maps to UFO2000 and use the nicer looking .png tiles for rendering them in-game.

 

2Llyr: Nice work, although I must point out that attributing the lunarsuit skin to Sporb is somewhat inaccurate, even though I did base it loosely on his idea.

[Llyr]

oh sorry... it was you who postet that pic ^^

 

mixed that up somehow

 

edit: editet that ROFL ROFL

Edited December 10, 2005 by Llyr

[Sporb]

lmao - theres no way im responsible for that lunar suit, im not that good! my concept is vastly different and never eventuated, although the Zombie has direction frames complete

 

EDIT: the lunar skin is good though he kinda walks like a clown

 

@ llyr - try using some real life textures for the road and grass

Edited December 11, 2005 by Sporb

[Kratos]

Wow, I misjudged these hi-rez tiles! Keep them coming! Edited December 11, 2005 by Kratos

[Llyr]

@ llyr - try using some real life textures for the road and grass

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

they are... took the shots yesterday just through the open window of my room. the street got much more saturation, thats why it became that blue, otherwise its just street, not much detail to see there

 

the grass lost all its detail in the scaling process, since details were so tiny. it isn edited thogh, except for the few pixels overlapping the borders i made.

 

but i don't mind about these tiles for now. these two simple floor tiles can simply be redone..

 

my problem are the buildings. as you can easily see on the pic everythings to small (compared to the soldier). but its true. windows take only half a tile and the two sides of the door are only one tile alltogether. and there comes the problem: these tiles are now scaled rather true to their original dimension. but they need to have twice as much width without changing their height... i fear this would rather look distorted...

the door could possibly made as ufo-door like the slide doors, but with both sides opening out, instead of sliding. but theres no way to stay with the windows as they are, for one important reason: windows and the walls inbetween may not be on one tile, because the walls won't give cover to sight then. and while it might look better that way, it poses a real problem when it comes to playability

 

i think i should go for some walk now... many of the pictures i took last time make trouble with lighting, shadows and angle. i need to take more care of that... only problem is, it would be best to take the pictures top-down so perspektive looks some more correct... but i don't really feel like breaking into houses and climbing onto their roofs oO

[nachtwolf]

The unit comes from inventory pic. If we scale a powersuit up that much it's about 10% wider and 10% shorter but it still looks big.

That's actually a concern I had about moving to higher resolution. Proportions are trickier.

[Exo2000]

OK , so ive been tinkering with some tiles for ages but ive finally come up with a set that works - The set will be a futuresq version of the current ufo map City. The main theme im trying to accomplish is a mix between old and futuristic. The set will hopefully has a similar look to the movie Bladerunner and will be dirty, ugly and glowing with lots of neon.

 

Below is a little example of what im trying to acheive.

 

any comments on how i can make it look bettr wouls be appreciated

 

Very Apoc-Slum.

[nappes]

BTW, one workaround for the map editor issue would be making some kind of tool that converts .png-tilesets into the old X-Com format, just to be used with DaiShiva's map editor. Then you could port over those maps to UFO2000 and use the nicer looking .png tiles for rendering them in-game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To think I have delayed this for so many months... How vastly stupid I have been! All I had to do was to convert the tileset into 256 colours and use pckview to make a .pck of it to be used with the map editor.

 

 

The terrain is still far from finished, but at least now I can start working full steam on it. Don't complain about the evident bugs in the screenshots (like the disjointed rampway thing), I know about them and they will be fixed.

 

And no, it's not really playable yet, the tiles don't have any special attributes assigned to them, you can walk and see thru the walls etc.

Edited December 15, 2005 by nappes

[Sporb]

somone make an oil rig

[Exo2000]

There's an oil rig esque set in TFTD. :wink1:

[Blitzen]

Could some one tell me the size of tiles that x-com uses? also the angle is it 45 degrees?

[Blood Angel]

Isometric, billy. That means 120 degrees between perpendiculars.

[nachtwolf]

I'll be working on making this :

 

EDIT : FOR 3D Tile shapes (LOS map)

 

A small tool with pretty basic functions, probably webbased, either flash, shockwave or javascript. Will include a few tools to "paint" the tile and a textarea which will give you the needed output for the LUA file, which will update realtime and which you can then copy paste in the LUA under shape.

 

The painting will be done level by level (1-12) and will be like drawing the slice of terrain at that height.

 

I'm not started yet.

Edited December 30, 2005 by nachtwolf

[Sporb]

is there anything you cant do

 

sounds just the tool we need

Edited December 30, 2005 by Sporb

[nachtwolf]

Working on it, it's a first version but it works like a charm. I'm not 100% sure about the LUA output but if I got it correctly it's all good.

 

It's javascript based. works well in firefox, and explorer, not tested elsewhere.

 

Help included.

Edited December 30, 2005 by nachtwolf

[nachtwolf]

Here's a first version, already quite powerful and time saving.

 

I can't upload it since my host seems down so I included the file directly.

 

Here's a copy of the help window :

HOW TO USE THIS TOOL

 

A tile has the following size : width 16 x depth 16 x height 12.

16 x 16 being the grid on the right, 12 being the levels on the left.

 

In the battlescape, the tile grid would be seen from the bottom left. That means the tile grid is tilted 45 degrees clockwise to make editing easier.

 

To make a tile transparency shape, select a level to edit. Then paint the tile grid. Color means the object is filled at this location. Edit all levels until you have the desired 3D shape.

 

TILE UNITS GRID

Click on any unit to fill or empty it.

 

TILE LEVELS

Change the level you are editing.

 

MAKE SQUARE

This allows you to make a full square by clicking on one corner and then selecting the other corner. The area between those corners will be inverted. Only works on the current level.

 

INVERT LEVEL

On the current level, all filled units become empty and all empty units become filled.

 

CLEAR LEVEL

Resets the current level to empty units.

 

LUA SHAPE OUTPUT

This is what you have to copy paste into the LUA file to have the entire current tile.

Copy this when you are finished and paste it into your LUA for the desired tile.

 

KNOWN ISSUES

Netscape (4 & 6) doesn't support the onclick handler on the div tags, I unfortunately noticed this when I finished the whole thing, so I regret to say this tool is not compatible with Netscape yet. I recommend you use mozilla firefox.

 

When you click a square, you may select the empty text in it, this is annoying but necessary for a stand alone html file. It does not affect the functionnalities in any way.

 

You must activate javascript in order to use this tool.

 

If you encounter a bug, or have ideas for new features, please contact [email protected]

 

CREDITS

This javascript map tile tool for UFO2000 map making has been designed and programmed by Nachtwolf (Vincent), email: [email protected]

 

Enjoy map making !

tilemaker.html

Edited December 30, 2005 by nachtwolf

[Sporb]

is there a way to import and compile tile graphics?

[nachtwolf]

is there a way to import and compile tile graphics?

 

Load shape from LUA is something I plan to do next.

I have a little precision to make tho, this tool is designed for use with the LUA terrain not SPK or MCD. Compiling is not necessary since it's used directly by the LUA, for an example look at moonbase.lua

 

This tool is supposed to help design custom terrain with custom tiles and is only intended to make a LUA 3D shape for a tile, not to be a full map editor, sorry! I might try for more map editing features but it would be a separate map editing tool.

Edited December 30, 2005 by nachtwolf

[Sporb]

http://usera.imagecave.com/sporb2000/Vectorsettest1.jpg

 

Hee hee hee, i like this set. Made to look like the old 3D vector shapes of old. Retro

 

EDIT: also painfully easy to recolour for a Virtual reality/tron type set.

Edited January 4, 2006 by Sporb

[Exo2000]

Spiffy. Combat Simulator, Anyone?

[Blood Angel]

It's like Tron, but good.

[nachtwolf]

That's how I see the matrix in shadowrun

[Sporb]

whats the use of having all this nice green terrain if you dont have the guns to match?. there will be a new weapon set to accompany the terrain. a not entirely serious one at the.

 

Bricks anyone?

[Blood Angel]

whats the use of having all this nice green terrain if you dont have the guns to match?. there will be a new weapon set to accompany the terrain. a not entirely serious one at the.

 

Bricks anyone?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

for bashing people's heads in? Shweet. I was actually thinking that having a matching playermodel would be more important.

[Exo2000]

whats the use of having all this nice green terrain if you dont have the guns to match?. there will be a new weapon set to accompany the terrain. a not entirely serious one at the.

 

Bricks anyone?

 

for bashing people's heads in? Shweet. I was actually thinking that having a matching playermodel would be more important.

 

Indeed.

 

You'd have to have all sorts of funky digital/scifi weaponry...

 

Digital Destabiliser!

Reformat Beam!

WinNT Remote Install!

[Llyr]

sorry for the break guys, but my job totally gets a pain in the donkey during december (since im working in the bureau of a large freight company, and all companies get crazy about their deliveries for xmas-market, especially nokia where up to 50 tons of mobiles are produced every day !!! during december...)

 

ill be back on making some tiles right after enough of that snow has gone (so that it doesn't mess up any pictures anymore ^^)

[Sporb]

So far, Ultra-green terrain is almost done. with the help of nachtwolfs tile tool it should be but a short time before the thing is ready to go. Except for mapping which is still a pain. You'll be pleased to learn that there will be various computery related objects on the battlefeild. binary digits, noise and various other things

 

The weapon set is also coming along. so far ive got (thanks to ppl who helped with names):

-De-frag grenade

-Emoticannon

-(Melee) Judo-chop, haymaker, prod and eye gouge (

-5 1/4 inch disc launcher

-Raster Blaster

-Toaster bomb

-spear of destiny gun

Edited January 7, 2006 by Sporb

[Blood Angel]

The weapon set is also coming along. so far ive got (thanks to ppl who helped with names):

-De-frag grenade

-Emoticannon

-(Melee) Judo-chop, haymaker, prod and eye gouge (<spelling?)

-5 1/4 inch disc launcher

-Raster Blaster

-Toaster bomb

-spear of destiny gun

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Trojan proximity mine?

[Exo2000]

The weapon set is also coming along. so far ive got (thanks to ppl who helped with names):

-De-frag grenade

-Emoticannon

-(Melee) Judo-chop, haymaker, prod and eye gouge (

-5 1/4 inch disc launcher

-Raster Blaster

-Toaster bomb

-spear of destiny gun

 

Trojan proximity mine?

 

Worm "cloaked" proxy mine?

 

(hard-to-see or invisible battlescape image ^^)

[Kratos]

My suggestion here is to add a custom map set first IMHO. New weapon sets can always be implemented later. But I won't stop you from making cool weapon sets guys. :wink1:

[Sporb]

Utilising Nachtwolfs fancy new "Tilemaker ™" Tron is almost (but not quite) complete. Im going to release it after i make the maps and finish the wepon pack. BTW looks great.

 

Heres the Tron theme which is hosted at Dmusic (you will have to scroll down to find it) which you can temporarily insert into the new music folder as the battlescape theme if you so desire.

[Blitzen]

Okay just an Idea for the Green set.... you should have various tiles look like htere is "code" "falling" down them like in hte Matrix.... so like lamposts would be animated with it and then animate the walls with it... It's be really cool.

[Sporb]

already done

[Exo2000]

Okay just an Idea for the Green set....  you should have various tiles look like htere is "code" "falling" down them like in hte Matrix.... so like lamposts would be animated with it and then animate the walls with it... It's be really cool.

 

 

already done

 

 

Sporb is, as usual, one step ahead of the game.