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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Id Like To Help Too


TimberDragon

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Hi,

 

My name is Tejay (TimberDragon), I've been a fan of X-Com games since they appeared way back when... Since then i have attempted to help on many differant X-Com based projects. As you guys may know, there seems to be some type of Curse with these projects as they never seem to get finihsed and slowly fade away :)

 

I have visited ufo2000 many times over the years but was not overly fussed on just multiplayer, But it seems you guys are planning "At some stage" to implement single player mode.... this interest's me greatly =b

 

Also the fact that you are now replacing the old crappy graphics with kick donkey new ones motivates me to speak up.

 

I do have some experiance with Isometric tile based games, I have moderate modelling ,textureing and texture creation skills and a deep love of all things X-Com.

 

I also already have 'most' of the tools needed so i took the liberty of producing some examples using the Photoshop tool provided on this forum.

 

post-3566-1141714278_thumb.png

post-3566-1141714295_thumb.png

post-3566-1141714304_thumb.png

post-3566-1141714312_thumb.png

 

These are original texture produced for the LastHope mod for Half Life 2, some of you may of heard of this project in the past, if so then you will be pleased to know that some of the project team have reformed and are working on this as we speak.

 

There is a great deal more detail in these texture's, but at this resolution its not obvious.

 

Unfourtunatly where to go from here is a bit sketchy for me but im a quick learner if anybody wants to work with me.

 

Im a residenet on freenode so i will reamin Lurking on the very quite IRC channel #ufo2000.

 

Well if you got this far i thank you for your time.

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Tejay Penfold (TimberDragon)

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i like em, the problem is that there is no map editor :( Keep up the good work though and one day, we will be able to map using custom tiles.

 

EDIT: you can still map using a Hex editor (Ask Nappes) or using the Mapview tool but for that you will be retircted to Xcoms pallette

Edited by Sporb
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Isn't Nachtwolf making a java-based map editor?

 

Java-SCRIPT even lower tech :P

 

It's a bit on hold ATM due to lack of time...

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How does the LUA format effect the maps, i may be completly off track but i was under the impression that LUA files let us use diiferant palettes?

It seems the info about the LUA implementation is some what fragmented... Its a bit strange to see it in use, as i use LUA on another RTS project but there is no similarities in the usage at all.... well aside from the .lua extention :)

 

Also, i noticed that there is a link to the PCKViewer v1.20 somewhere on the forum, but i cant seem to find it.. im trying to get hold of a curretn palette to see what colours there is too use. or at least see how badly there ones fall apart on conversion :)

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Actually the LUA format, or more specifically, the PNG image format allows us not only to use palettes which are non-standard to X-Com, but frees us from clumsy old-fashioned palette indexes altogether. Welcome to this millennium and the wonderful world of Truecolor. :)

 

PCKView and MapView, the two programs I used to create the Moon Base terrain (as opposed to being HC and using a hex editor like Sporb incorrectly suggested) are both available on DaiShiva's website.

 

BTW, welcome, and if you need a rundown of what is currently being done in the way of graphics, refer to this thread on the bug tracker. It gives links to other threads covering pretty much all the currently active graphical tasks and may be the best place to start if you're thinking of contributing to this project.

 

EDIT: Some more links that may be of use:

A thread detailing the workings of the LUA tileset format.

Nachtwolf's very handy tileset editor.

Edited by nappes
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Wonderful :) Thanks for the info and thanks for the welcome :)

 

Personaly im a big fan of PNG soon they will include animation support directly in PNG and i think it will obliterate almost all other formats :)

 

The moon base is very cool by the way, i was playing a quick match (both sides) on it last night

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PCKView and MapView, the two programs I used to create the Moon Base terrain (as opposed to being HC and using a hex editor like Sporb incorrectly suggested) are both available on DaiShiva's website.

 

YAY! nappes proved me wrong! because up until now ive never ever written anything that wasnt 101% the absolute truth! <_>

 

Would it be possible to map using Mapview and then swapping the tiles out for new ones? or converting the old map file after constructin somhow?

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Would it be possible to map using Mapview and then swapping the tiles out for new ones?

That's essentially what I did. My method involves making a parallel 256-colour PCK version of the tileset to be used with the editor (in addition to the truecolor PNG that is used in the game). Since the only thing about the tiles that gets saved into the map file is their index number, you only need to make sure that the tiles are in the same order in the two versions of the tileset bitmap.

Edited by nappes
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Also, i noticed that there is a link to the PCKViewer v1.20 somewhere on the forum, but i cant seem to find it.. im trying to get hold of a curretn palette to see what colours there is too use. or at least see how badly there ones fall apart on conversion :)

 

http://area51.xcomufo.com/files/PckView120.zip

 

Use only this version to change the .pck files or they will become unusable by the game engine.

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thank you the viewer it is super handy,

 

I used it to take out some tiles for guides and i have attempted to set up 3D templates so its easy to render out hundereds of tile sets easily :)

 

Only problem is testing them, ive tried playing with the tileset editor.. but i dont think thats what i need... or i just cant understand how it works... one or the 2 ;)

 

Either way, these are rendered 3D models, placed together by hand.... im not really sure how well they line up becuase putting them together by hand is some what biased ;) meaning if there is a gap, i can just push them toghether because i cant really tell how its suppose to sit.

 

See the example below

 

post-3566-1141907523_thumb.png

 

the original hills at the top of the image are only there so i could see how the rendered version compares to the old version... graphicly the new ones are cool (Even if they are a bit too yellow)

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Sorry, i should of been clearer, by 3D templates i mean preset models that can be used with 3D software to render tiles, All that you need to do is add a new texture and press render. all the lights are set up as well as the camera angle.

 

Most 3D software packages can share some file types, so i can save these as one of them and share it with other 3D users.

 

If thats ok of course?

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Sorry, i should of been clearer, by 3D templates i mean preset models that can be used with 3D software to render tiles, All that you need to do is add a new texture and press render. all the lights are set up as well as the camera angle.

 

Most 3D software packages can share some file types, so i can save these as one of them and share it with other 3D users.

 

If thats ok of course?

 

that would be very useful, can you save em in .obj?

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Yes i can export them as .obj, but there is 2 things first :)

 

1) Ive got to finish setting them up and testing to make sure they render correctly the first time... there is no point releasing templates that when you finish rendering you must spend half the day fixing the problems... So it will be 100% before that.

 

2) Im trying to get some friends from another project to build a simple tile previewer for release here also.. which will be very handy for making tiles... Of course if a programmer from here would like to take up the challenge, then that would be cool too B)

 

Either way, keep watching this space for futher updates :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

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