Base Design Brainstorming.

[red knight]

Gangsta is right, the battlescape is already free form, so implement it from the grid base or from the free form base is exactly the same... And a Freeform base with only squares is a grid base anyways....

 

The only problem of the free-form base (and in finer grids) is how to avoid the problems stated in early posts, all of them with game mechanics that, when changed, can have nefarious consequences.... Like too easily defended bases (base defense is not challenging anymore, and it should be).

 

What we have here is a classic trade-off, we make a simplification and risk a little more effort to change that later on V1.x, or dont simplify and make game-mechanics changes that can potencially gives up a better or a worse product (50/50 probabilities), and harder to program... It sounds like a classic computer programming trade-off. What should we do?

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest stewart]

If we can do EVERYTHING in the allotted time then fine. I'm not against free-form per se, I'm concerned about all these improvements being done at one time throwing back the release date. Red Knight is right though, bases are already easy to defend putting in long tubes will make it easier, no matter how smart the AI.

 

R_K do I understand your explanation correctly that what you discribe as "free form" is the same thing as what I was discribing as "fine grid"?

[red knight]

I hope this post will be useful to understand the problems and terminology used...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest stewart]

If I understand the drawing then we are talking the same thing; the boundries of stuff are on the grid that corresponds to soldier locations. I was interpreting "freeform" as no grid for soldier locations, whatsoever (which would allow among other things diagonal walls and absolute free soldier movement).

 

If I understand your drawing then facilites are built similarly to SIM CITY or Dungeon Keeper. There is a 1x1 "unit" of each type of facility and you decide how big to make it by making the facility x by y units in size.

 

Do I understand this correctly?

[red knight]

The Dungeon Keeper model is one of the best facility creation models out there... but as i had stated before (because of the problems involved) i dont think it would be suitable for a game like this... In DK you dont know where the foe would come, so base defense degenerated cases has a purpose, in Xenocide you will know from where they are going to come, in DK the opposing forces can modify the layout too so you have to be aware of that, in Xenocide it is static... all of that make Xenocide's Base Defense very easy, the opposing forces cant do anything against a player with a well designed base...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest stewart]

I know what you mean. If you've ever tried the defense setup I suggested in the strategy/tactics forum you know that XCOM bases ALREADY are pretty easy to defend. With freeform you could make the base impenetrable to actual human players; what chance does any AI have unless you let it cheat (yes I know those 6 blaster bombs hit me straight in the chest but I'm okay . . . just like last turn).

 

Perhaps departure from "Corse Grid" bases should be considered for beyond v1.0?

[Guest drewid]

noobie question here.

Is the plan to make the geoscape base view 2D as the original or 3D?

[red knight]

noobie question here.

Is the plan to make the geoscape base view 2D as the original or 3D?

We are already working on that, as far as we know the original one works... Anything else is experimental in nature... With Freeform bases (ala Dungeon Keeper) there are a lot of problems in gameplay mechanics (their are explained in a post below).

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Guest drewid]

OK. We should get the envmodellers working on Base blocks.

If it ends up being 2D then we can take renders to use for extra lushness.

 

-Drewid

[Deimos]

OK. We should get the envmodellers working on Base blocks.

If it ends up being 2D then we can take renders to use for extra lushness.

 

-Drewid

IIRC Fatal Error was starting to work on baseview models, but he's been really busy with his exams recently.

[tamat]

First of all say hi to everybody, I'm trying to enter on the Xenocide team, meanwhile I'm reading this posts to propose some ideas.

 

Well, first of all, every decision concerning bases must be decided taking on account the 3D engine than must render the battles, and this must be the same for attacks to bases and attacks to citys or alien bases. Then every decision must be taking bearing in mind this.

 

Freeform bases (gridless)

 

- The bases are made using complete prefab rooms with totally architecture freedom, like maps of quake.

- the rendering can be made using portal rendering.

- Special objects like cameras or turrets are only items to add on the scene.

- Construction dificulty are medium. Every room have one or multiple doors where you can connect corridors with the lenght than you want, also you can connect elevators. If you dont connect a corridor the door are only a wall.

- Game system cannot use a grid because its imposible to determinate where are a cell on a free architecture room.

- All the game system changes, from discrete to continuous world, where every direction is posible and distances are measured on meters, no cells.

- Colision detection are little complicated and pathfinding are really complicated

- Scenarios can be really detailed, with diagonal walls, ramps, and complex forms.

- Walls cannot be broken.

 

Valoration: Difficult

 

 

Freeform using little grid

 

- Total freedom to design the base, scenarios can be made placing cell's prefabs, like a concrete wall, a door, a bed, a jail, etc.

- There is no concrete rooms, a room are only a container of elements, where every elements determine the functionality of the base. Or maybe when the room structure is ready you can convert to a concrete room like hangar or labs and then place the special room elements.

- Render maybe little complex, particulary the oclusion algorythm to optimize. Maybe using octrees.

- The colision system are really simple, like the pathfinding, because the floors grid have a representation of the positions where players can move around.

- Construction are complex, but more configurable, you can place every item as you wish, rotating, moving, etc. The ingame base editor can be the same than the level editor.

- Walls are destroyable, useful to city enviroments where soldiers want to destroy a wall using explosives.

 

Valoration: Interesting

 

 

Defined form (Big grid)

- The base are made of big grided prefab rooms.

- Render using portal rendering, relatively easy.

- Appearance more acordly to the kind of room (on hangar can be misiles stored, load's robots, etc).

- Pathfind dificult but not like gridless, collision are more accesible.

- Construction really easy, only place the rooms but are not configurable.

- Walls not destroyable.

 

Valoration: easy.

 

 

Hybrid between Littlegrid and biggrid

 

- The base is the same as the little grid but the rooms are premaded, using little prefabs.

- User only place the rooms and maybe the corridors. Not configuration posible.

- Same system than the original XCOM game.

 

 

Well, I hope than this explanation are usefull.

Sorry but my english is little poor, I'm spanish.

[mamutas]

tamat made strong point: bases will be presented in the base design screen as well as in the battlescape. if base editor is opted to be a 3D, than it will not look nice if you will not be able to recognize the base you have created in the editor, when it will be displayed in the battlescape. the presentation should be darn similar, otherwise it will look very odd.

 

so, for me it simplifies the situation: the base editor should be either 2D or it should look like zoomed out battlescape. lets look at the latter, as the former is trivial and not very interested.

 

are there going to be any freeform buildings in the battlescape? i think (unless i am totally of the base here ), no, there are going to be only rectangular structures with wall parallel to the unit movement grid. so, that rules out the freeform base building.

 

then, i am thinking 'how would i built a base, if i would be the engineer', considering that construction must be fast and secret. i see the cheapest way is to prebuild modules somewhere else and then assemble them at the place. so the modules then, must be with standard and well defined connection points (read doors). there could be more connection points when actually could be used (read sealed doors). the construction will be performed under the ground, so there must be flexibility allowing to alterate design, in case of unforeseen circumstances. with all that said it looks, like the base editor should have fine grid (meaning a module wall is longer than on grid cell). what if grid will be based on unit movement grid and the base modules are scaled appropriately? there would not be complete freedom in placing of the modules, as they need to connect somehow, so the possible connection points should be attached to each other. with that layout there is a possibility, that some connection points must be connected with tunnels.

 

in order to limit base defense (we need to care for the aliens fightability ), there could be restrictions on number of connection points per module to be open. for example, there must be 3 open doors per module, other wise base design is not valid. also, if there going to be a long tunnel, then after each X meters, it must have an entry from the ground (for some fire safety reasons, possible ). thus you would have a base design fitting your style, but still challenging to defend.

 

EDIT: I just thought, that if aliens would have some creatures/machine which would dig from room to room, then that would be cool! Imagine the situation: your men are standing next to the door, waiting for aliens to come and BOOM! :uzzi: back wall has been blown through and couple of cyberdisks are shining behind the digger

[red knight]

Tamat, even though you are completly right on the stuff you has posted, in the design doc it sais we are going free movement on the 3 axis (BSP wont work good for dynamically generated battlescape, cause BSP are good for offline optimized maps like in quake... dont know about portals, have to research on that) ... The thing about the grid or no grid is in base layout (geoscape) not on battlescape, there is where the biggest gameplay issues arise, take a look at a scanned picture in this same thread it would help you understand the current discussion...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[mamutas]

Regarding the picture, then in my opinion 'finer grid degenerated case' is the most attractive. However, I think even this option might require usage of tubes, because there would be sutiations where you will not be able to place buildings next to each other, but really wanted to connect them. That is what I tried to describe in my post.

 

Also, if there is a concern about very strong defense of long-tube base, then it could be easily fixed with additional entrance points (workshop or lab ventilation system for example) allowing aliens to sneak into the base.

[Guest drewid]

I think I am right in saying that a portal renderer wouldn't be any advantage with this viewpoint. You would have to be IN the base for it to work. I'm going ot be mocking up the baseview screens using the x-com1 coarse grid, but the layout system will be adaptable to any.

 

The models in the geoscape base view and in the battlescape will be the same, so will the layout.

Also the rooms will be fixed sizes, eg. a hangar will always be the same size, which keeps everything easier to design and implement.

 

Doorway positioning could be step two of the build process. Like rollercoaster tycoon, ->

 

position facility,

position door/link 1,

done? y/n?

position door/link 2

done y/n?

 

sort of thing.

 

One branch of coding theory advocates the "what is the simplest thing that will work right now?" process.

Lets get the simplest thing working, but bear in mind that we might want to change grid resolution later, so while we are coding we don't exclude those possibilities.

[Breunor]

I agree on using the simplest method for version 1 and modifying it from there. I suggest sticking to the original room dimensions and using the fine grid system, but for version 1 rooms snap to the grid as if it's a coarse grid system. The use of tunnels is convenient for the defender, but then you get to implement all that for the alien bases as well, then it's not so fun. It's something that can be worked on after a working version of the game is ready, and can be implemented if a fine grid system is used. Having soil or other filler between underground chambers is probably not the preferred method of underground engineering due to hydraulic pressures, but I don't know. Having a long series of chambers connected by long tunnels is great to defend, but what about daily operations? Everybody would be on bikes to go from their bed to the toilet, let alone getting work done. It just makes sense to stick closer to the original layout to start.

 

I like the idea of choosing where doors are placed as you install facilities. I may not want a door in every wall of a central room, you could design long tunnels of rooms with door palcement, yet stick to a square layout overall. As long as every room has at least 1 door, and at least 1 path to the access lift, but that requires extra coding compared to 'if there's an adjacent wall, make a door'.

[mamutas]

One branch of coding theory advocates the "what is the simplest thing that will work right now?" process.

This is the golden rule for the first releases always. Better stick to that, or Xenocide will never be finished.

[tamat]

I think if base design are really powered with lots of options like items, kinds of rooms, kinds of doors, etc, we can make the base battles more important than in XCOM saga where base incursion are anecdotical and only occurs on latest years.

 

Think on it, like medieval castle sieges, player can create really reinforced base as his headquarter and left the others no really importand functions.

 

Player design the base placing turrets, traps, armorys, hard walls, etc.

Every items have a price, and there are more expensive item but with better funcionalitys.

Then players can invest on research better base complements not only for outdoor combats but inbase combats to guarantee the winning always that combats.

 

Powering that we can make situations like aliens attacking bases to rescue corpses, destroy ships, kill scientist, retrieve tecnology, install spy elements, etc.

 

I think than this can be really interesting.

 

P.D: Using bold text the reading are more confortable and it's easiest to find information

[red knight]

I think we should keep it simple (at least for version 1), i dont want (and i guess all of us) end up like Battleship 3000 AD...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[tamat]

I think we should keep it simple (at least for version 1), i dont want (and i guess all of us) end up like Battleship 3000 AD...

But what I propose is not more work, only keep in mind this posibility when make base design brainstorm because every problem have more than one solution but one can be the solution to improve this posibility on v2.0

 

And as I say on previous post the level editor can be the same as the base editor with a few diferences, it solves problems like programme two editors.

[mamutas]

All tamat suggestions are great, but they are really out of the initial version scope. I absolutely agree, that those features could and should be encountered for, but I am afraid developers will be carried of with details away from the main goal.

 

I think, that first release must be really close to original XCom. If not for other reasons, than just to polish out the engine. The original XCom gameplay is lots of fun and everyone know that. The only thing it lacks now, is a good look.

[Guest drewid]

I agree. the suggestions are good, but lets get v1 working first . It may be that we have time to try some of these before v1, and coding should be done with that in mind.

 

this thread should probably be documented, with the doc split into split into "strict x-com1 remake" , "high priority wishlist" , "low priority wishlist"

[Guest stewart]

It's looking like the v1.0 base will be the familiar 6x6 grid but with nice 3D graphics thing.

 

It's the easiest to make, plus it doesn't throw the game mechanics to the wind.

[Breunor]

Did I hear the word Documentation? I'll cut and paste the suggestions on this thread into the very-alpha stage Version List document I have lurking somewhere. I'll get it up on the web site and reply in here when it's ready for ridicule, er, comments.

[[[Micah]]]

I absolutely agree, as I have from the beginning, that v1 should be as close to the original UFO Defense as possible. Breunor, keep up with the good work of documentation and try to keep track of these ideas for future versions.

[Breunor]

I've compiled what info I could scrape together here. I'll be getting this to Mr. M. D. Gibson Esq. hopefully tomorrow, so I will try to edit this message as soon as the location changes. I have little clue where many of these items stand in the great scheme of things. Please let me know, 'o Great Coders, if there's consensus on where these items should be sorted to. The best bet is to PM me regarding it, but posting here would help keep 10 people from telling me the same thing.

 

As I hear from people I will reorder items and add to them as well.

[Guest stewart]

It's too early to talk about v1.0+ yet since v1.0 hasn't been defined.

[Breunor]

This document is mostly for keeping track of ideas in a succinct format for future reference. Everything not in version 1 gets tossed into version 2+ for now. There will be a link through the FAQ to this version list so people can see what's being considered. It's not intended as a wish list, but rather for items that sound good, just not right now. As more consensus develops regarding version 1, that can be documented in this document. It's more for the general public's use I expect, as the programmers will certainly have their own specific documents through SourceForge or something similar.

[red knight]

I think it is ok to have that kind of Wish document, a plus is that we can start to say "Look at the wish document, it is already there".

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[mamutas]

Oh! Finally! At least! The real documentation!

 

Umm, am I the only one here who whines about formal documentation?

[Guest drewid]

What sort of documentation are you looking for?

[Sweep]

Hi Breunor.

 

in v 2.0 release, is it possible to consider a fusion of Xcom and TFTD as a possibility ?

 

I mean having underwater missions if an alien ship crashes in the ocean etc...

[mikker]

we have discussed that, but i cannot remember the resuts...

[Guest blaa]

Hi Breunor.

 

in v 2.0 release, is it possible to consider a fusion of Xcom and TFTD as a possibility ?

 

I mean having underwater missions if an alien ship crashes in the ocean etc...

Technically, I don't think it would be much extra work to include that in v1.0, the challenge here is game mechanics/design.

 

The underwater races are just more races, equipment is just more equipment, sites are just more landscapes. Throwing that in might balance out more of the benificial goodies that people are thinking up for the X-Corps.

 

How about if the you folks try to think of how you would include TFTD in the real XCOM. For whatever reason, today or the very near future the brain and the dreamer launch their attacks together. Obviously, 1999 Xcom couldn't buy all the stuff that 2040 Xcom can buy at the start of the game. Think about it from a game design perspective.

 

When we're nearing the ready date for v1.0 it may not be much more work at that point to throw it in.

[Breunor]

Hey Sweep.

 

Game design would be key to how much is included in the game. I haven't played TFTD in quite a while, but IIRC the equipment/weapons you used were different from UFO Defense. Harpoon gun versus rifle, that type of thing. So if you have to respond to both threats simultaneously, there's twice the equipment to buy and store, etc. Also twice the research on new things, so the alien threat would need to progress a little slower as well so you can keep up tech-wise.

 

I could see making upgrades for your transport to make it submersible and breathing aparatus for the soldiers wouldn't be an issue. Maybe there's just a couple weapons to add in at first, like dart pistol/rifle/harpoon. Additional base facilities would be designed, like sonar station, aquatic hangars, etc.

 

Perhaps a good option would be to have the TFTD side of things start up after a certain amount of game time. Say, 1 year into the game the aliens start developing underwater bases and attacking from that realm. There could be end-of-month reports that talk about increased attacks on shipping as the hint that you should start defending there. By staggering the start of the TFTD half, you have time to place starting bases for land defense, then follow up with ocean defense further into the game. I think you'd be spread too thin otherwise.

[mamutas]

I like Breunor's idea. I, actually, wanted to propose something similar to myself.

 

I suggest that there would be some advanced weapons/crafts which could be used both under water and above. Without that, the player would end up with twice as many things to manage as if it would be one environment only.

 

Also, I have never finished TFTD, so I do not know how does it end. Do you get to fly (swim?) to another planet too? There are no seas on Mars, though...

[Guest blaa]

Nah, full fledged combined attack from the aliens right up front. It would balance out a lot of the goodies we're thinking up for the human side. Besides REAL humans are devious and cuniving and crafty and so on. What's our poor AI to do?

[Breunor]

Well, I don't know just how many new ideas were going to get put into v1 which would put the player at a huge advantage. If there is a decided edge, why not adjust the difficulty settings to make it a little tougher, or give aliens better stats for accuracy, movement, health.

 

Bases can only cover so much area, and it's expected that it's mostly land you defend in v1. If you have to cover the entire planet from the very start, I expect all the alien activity will result in countries dropping funds much faster. You can't protect everywhere until later into the game. So if people want all the aliens to attack from the beginning, at least adjust the countries' reaction to alien activity so they don't go nuts in the first couple months. And remember, people who've played this game for years may know exactly what to do and how to do it for this setup, but the average new player typically has a hard time with the original game. If we increase the difficulty a great deal to make the veteren players happy, there will be plenty of people who get their butts kicked on easy who say, what's the use? It's not fun to lose constantly, I'll play another game.

 

Here's a compromise: Set the date when TFTD aliens enter the scene based on difficulty. On the easy setting, they don't show up until 1 year into the game, all the way to superhuman, where they show up on day 1. Just example time frames. You then include an aquatic branch in the research tree for those areas, and you have to research submersible craft early on to do anything to TFTD underwater sites. You could also have 2 new interceptor weapons, depth charge and homing torpedo. Allows the interceptor to "shoot down" underwater UFOs, even if you can't send troops there yet. Then you adjust how many hard points are on the interceptor so it can respond to either air threats or water threats, giving it 4 weapons instead of 2, but make them exclusive so you can't put 4 avalanche on it or 4 depth charge, just 2 of each. Once you research submersibles, your transport can take troops to crash sites underwater for clean up. You can start the game with dart guns and harpoons, and research more as you go.

 

Personally, I don't think invading aliens are going to waste their time making hidden underwater bases when they can just come in from outer space. Perhaps later on, the more advanced bases are underwater, since they know we don't know much about the oceans. So they put their forward command post underwater to stage their raids. The player has to destroy the main underwater base to catch the alien commander, before learning about the Mars base.

[mamutas]

Great ideas. I definitely think that TFTD must be mixed with UFO, but I would do it in v2. It would be easy to do: more models, some code tweaks. But for v1, that is going to be hard. Not from coding/drawing point of view, but it will take lot of time to do all the art and special effects.