Aliens questions

[Manoil]

I have my doubts as to whether or not I could actually do it, but I'm considering making a minor mod to FoT that would include Alien drones and several new guns. But in brainstorming, I still need questions answered and system possibilities defined that otherwise hinder any possibility of progress.

1) The Alien drones would obviously need acid blood. Is it possible to make drone corpses hazardous places to stand or walk through, as well as cause splash damage on death? The acid blood would also decrease armor values and cause constant damage when a unit has the "Acid Burn" state, similar to the poison state, but unlike the poison state, Acid burns can wear off over time (unless I'm mistaken and poison can be naturally healed over time without use of medical supplies).

2)Drones would have claw swipes and tail slashes for their left-hand unarmed weapons, which would be two different animations. The right-hand would be a headbite, which would be largely powerful and require something like 8-to-10 action points.

3)The M41 pulse rifle, with the underside grenade launcher, would obviously need functionality of its secondary. I know this question is on many people's minds and has been under debate for a long time, but would it be possible to, rather than make grenades cost a large amount of bullets, make switching from primary to secondary fire actually switch between different weapons? By that, I mean that the M41 would collectively exist between 2 guns that both have only one firing mode, using the same sprites and same animations.
The first, defined as the rifle, fires some kind of bullet type (to be researched and chosen later on), and the second, defined as the grenade launcher, fires a grenade type derived from the M80's grenade rounds.
The two separate weapons would switch by right clicking on the weapon, just as switching between firing modes is usually done. Can it be done?

4)Does anyone know yet what the angles and lighting properties of FOT sprite standards are? If I'm gonna make an alien, gun, etc., I want to make sure it looks legitimate enough to be mistaken for an in-game image.

5)Does anyone have any suggestions on content? New entities I planned on making included:
-Alien Drone
-Alien Queen (MAYBE)
-M41 Pulse Rifle
-(Pulse Rifle Ammo)
-(Pulse Rifle Grenade)
-SVD Dragunov
-New FN P90
-Tactical MP5k
-Colt .45 Long
-M82A1 .50 Cal Sniper Rifle
-M1 Abrahams Tank
-Stinger Rocket Launcher

I don't think I'm going to make facehuggers, or eggs, for that matter, because it would require numerous other states and sprites that are very likely not within my power to attain. Otherwise, I'm open to most ideas.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

20th Century Fox are very protective of their IP by all accounts, especially with new Aliens games on the way. So you'd be better off doing an Aliens inspired mod rather than a direct conversion. Have you found an aliens model to convert to a sprite, or were you planning to make one? If the latter I'd suggest reproducing the Wanamingo aliens from FO2 and killing two birds with one stone.

But on to your questions,

1. Yes to an extent. You'd need to set up a deathtrap entity to do acid damage, then give each drone an individual tagname and have a trigger to move the deathtrap to the alien when it's dead and switch the deathtrap's object script state on (ticked). You'll need a copy of the deathtrap for each drone on the map, all with individual tag names as well. There's no actual acid damage in the game, the super soaker did energy damage but there is a gas damage type which is unused and can be renamed acid. It wouldn't cause a damage state, just do regular damage though you could have the deathtrap follow the drone around with a preserved trigger and then have the deathtrap turn on when the drone is injured (give the drone high resistance to whichever damage type you use) for that extra danger.

2. Yes there's four animations for unarmed attacks, called creatively one, two, three & four. One and two are used usually for kicks and punchs (or snaps in the case of critters) and three and four for special attacks. The cyborg general is the only sprite I can think of off hand that uses all these animations, check it out in redviewer.

3. The only way to do that is to have two seperate weapon entities, one taking only rifle ammo and the other grenades, and equipping them both then switching between equipment slots. Though that would be rather cumbersome.

4. You've asked this before, To_an has made some nice weapon sprites, including ground images try getting in contact for advice.

BTW there's an unused Deathclaw egg sprite sprites/critters/DeathClawEgg.spr which is very alienesque.

[Manoil]

20th Century Fox are very protective of their IP by all accounts, especially with new Aliens games on the way. So you'd be better off doing an Aliens inspired mod rather than a direct conversion. Have you found an aliens model to convert to a sprite, or were you planning to make one? If the latter I'd suggest reproducing the Wanamingo aliens from FO2 and killing two birds with one stone.

But on to your questions,

1. Yes to an extent. You'd need to set up a deathtrap entity to do acid damage, then give each drone an individual tagname and have a trigger to move the deathtrap to the alien when it's dead and switch the deathtrap's object script state on (ticked). You'll need a copy of the deathtrap for each drone on the map, all with individual tag names as well. There's no actual acid damage in the game, the super soaker did energy damage but there is a gas damage type which is unused and can be renamed acid. It wouldn't cause a damage state, just do regular damage though you could have the deathtrap follow the drone around with a preserved trigger and then have the deathtrap turn on when the drone is injured (give the drone high resistance to whichever damage type you use) for that extra danger.

2. Yes there's four animations for unarmed attacks, called creatively one, two, three & four. One and two are used usually for kicks and punchs (or snaps in the case of critters) and three and four for special attacks. The cyborg general is the only sprite I can think of off hand that uses all these animations, check it out in redviewer.

3. The only way to do that is to have two seperate weapon entities, one taking only rifle ammo and the other grenades, and equipping them both then switching between equipment slots. Though that would be rather cumbersome.

4. You've asked this before, To_an has made some nice weapon sprites, including ground images try getting in contact for advice.

BTW there's an unused Deathclaw egg sprite sprites/critters/DeathClawEgg.spr which is very alienesque.

Thanks for the heads up. I'd intended to use the AVP2 alien model, along with the animations included for the mod, but I've never even heard of Wanamingo aliens. Did he do something similar?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Don't you remember these critters from FO2? IIRC someone made a model of them for Thorgrimm's civ mod.

[Manoil]

Don't you remember these critters from FO2? IIRC someone made a model of them for Thorgrimm's civ mod.

Aww, naw man. These won't do. I intend on the acutal thing, not something close. I have the models and some sound effects from AVP2, and I wanna try to make sprites for FoT from them. I'd rather do that than just add in wanamingos from Fo2, even if that would be considerably easier.

[rabidpeanut]

Hasn't fallout's bleeding anus been raped enough?

[Manoil]

Hasn't fallout's bleeding anus been raped enough?

Weren't you banned?

[Manoil]

Anyway, what I'm trying to figure out is some way alien blood could be damaging without having to make a giant set of complex triggers for every level.
I'm thinking, like... every time there's a bloodsplatter, the puddle is damaging to touch. I mean, there has to be SOME way to add in the damaging variable to the core text files, and have it a standard occurrence, rather than do it every level.
Isn't there some way, even if it means giving the variable with a negative or zero-value to every other blood and corpse entity?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

There aren't any 'core text files' well not in the sense you mean.

Good news is you can set up the triggers for the first map, and then save and import them into every other map, before adding level specific triggers. If you use the same set of tagnames on each level that'll save you a lot of work.

Bad news is I've just tested it and the move unit trigger doesn't work with deathraps so you'd have to divide each map into small zones with a deathtrap in each one. Then have a trigger to determine where each drone dies so the right deathtrap can be turned on.

[Manoil]

...aw hell naw.

There's gotta be another way... but from what things sound like, it'd have to be fairly drastic... to the point of altering some serious shit.

There's no way in hell that it's impossible; it's just gotta be complicated.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Serious shit indeed, like re-writing half the engine. You are talking about not only getting the game to recognise a special art effect as an individual location on a level but then to do damage if an actor entity comes into contact with them.

Even if that wasn't against the EULA do you really think it would be easier than just setting up a few triggers and copy pasting them, then exporting them to each map?

[Manoil]

Serious shit indeed, like re-writing half the engine. You are talking about not only getting the game to recognise a special art effect as an individual location on a level but then to do damage if an actor entity comes into contact with them.

Even if that wasn't against the EULA do you really think it would be easier than just setting up a few triggers and copy pasting them, then exporting them to each map?

It's never walking the path that's the challenge; it's knowing how.

And does the EULA matter if I'm not selling or reproducing my change?

EDIT:... matterafact, if it came to modify the engine itself, you'd also be able to make specifications about what gun modes use what ammo types... Another issue becomes possible. Am I developing the mad-doctor syndrome or does this really seem [difficult but] logical?

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

You really think you're going to be able to implement all that without the source code? Mad-Doctor definately.

Anyway since moving the deathtrap doesn't work there's a very simple if time consuming method of doing this within the editor.

Divide your map into loads of small zones, each with it's own deathtrap in the middle. Presumably if you are going for the Aliens feeling your maps will be lots of tight corridors and dark tunnels, rather than wide open spaces? If so this isn't really a lot of work, maybe three to four zones per corridor at least. Then you'd just need one simple trigger copied as many times as you have zones.

Condition
Team 2 has more than 0 deaths at Zone 1

Action
Set Deathtrap 1 script state ticked*

Then just copy and edit that to Zone 2 Deathtrap 2, Zone 3 Deathtrap 3 etc.

Once you've done one map you can export the triggers and import them into another map just copying or deleting if the map has more or less zones than the first.



*ticked meaning there's a tick in the check box.

[Manoil]

And you think it's virtually impossible to attain the source?