Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

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Tanalbi
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Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by Tanalbi »

I wasn't far behind when it comes to Long War suggestions, i see myself imaginative when it's about adding content to a videogame, but not thoughtful of how hard would it be to do, because i don't know so much programmation a Johnny and Rachel do. But here's my list of content that could have been in LW.

-Limited Tactical armor: This one could had been as a Second Wave option. Now, both Tac Vest and Armors are limited and can be lost, forcing soldierts to go in either their traditional clothes (Shirt, pants and boots) you can see them in the Barracks, or the leather jackets they use in Covert Ops. Could have been possible, if you ask me.

-Limited ammo, X-COM-like: Now, this could have been a big pain in the arse, because it requires too much programming if you really wish your soldiers' ammo is limited, requiring them to be equippe with an ammo magazines item that allows you to reload your weapon too many times until you eventually run out of ammo. Again, this could be a good SW option.

-Hit option: Because i just think, Johnny himself considered this. I mean, it is very likely to happen, you can use the break windows animation to emulate your soldier hitting an alien who it is at a close distance, VERY close.

-Pulse weapons SFX being replaced by Particle Cannon SFX: I remember talking about Johnny about this, and he liked the idea. I think i commented that Laser and Pulse weapons have the same SFX, and that it would need to change, but he said it would be either hard or impossible, for some reason i can't remember, but yeah, it could have been awesome.

-Exhaustion: This is also kind of cheesy. Instead of having a soldier wounded if sent to battle with fatigue, why not instead displaying "Exhausted" (In purple color) on the debrief screen? It could be a good idea, but then again, hard to do.

So... what do you think about my ideas? You can comment your ideas here if you wish.
"The prefect true curves of a woman are her smile"
Amineri

Re: Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by Amineri »

Noganeto1 wrote: -Limited Tactical armor: This one could had been as a Second Wave option. Now, both Tac Vest and Armors are limited and can be lost, forcing soldierts to go in either their traditional clothes (Shirt, pants and boots) you can see them in the Barracks, or the leather jackets they use in Covert Ops. Could have been possible, if you ask me.
The main problem with this, I think, is that the animations are stored in with the model file. Although the character movement animations are actually stored with the weapon model file, not the character model. This is why he had to get rid of using upsized regular soldier laser weapons with the MECs -- the regular soldier movement animations in the laser weapons were getting applied to the MEC skeleton, which looked pretty messed up.

For similar reasons, we couldn't expand the look/range of SHIV weapons, because the SHIV movement animations were attached to the weapon. Although it was worse because the game would actually hang if you equipped a SHIV with an LMG and moved it. Ah, well.
Noganeto1 wrote: -Limited ammo, X-COM-like: Now, this could have been a big pain in the arse, because it requires too much programming if you really wish your soldiers' ammo is limited, requiring them to be equippe with an ammo magazines item that allows you to reload your weapon too many times until you eventually run out of ammo. Again, this could be a good SW option.
Yeah, we probably could have hacked in some sort of limited number of reloads, but making it somehow meaningful is tough. Plus soldiers would have to some sort of backup for when they run out of ammo. Doing it right would probably mean a drastically expanded inventory system, and some sort of manufacturing/purchasing of limited ammo clips -- a lot of micro. Xenonauts had limited ammo, but it was only limited by the backpack space and weight, and the corresponding systems in XCOM aren't granular enough to support something similar.
Noganeto1 wrote: -Hit option: Because i just think, Johnny himself considered this. I mean, it is very likely to happen, you can use the break windows animation to emulate your soldier hitting an alien who it is at a close distance, VERY close.
Right, we did bounce this idea around for a quite a while. Technically I think it could have been done -- the issue was primarily narrative. How much damage should a basic rifle butt attack (the only thing we have an animation for) do, when a fired burst is doing 3-5 damage? Really the only answer that makes sense is "ONE". In which case it's an awful lot of working adding something that is basically useless.

We ended up adding the sawed-off shotguns in order to add something a bit more "reasonable" -- they basically fulfill the role of a melee weapon.
Noganeto1 wrote: -Pulse weapons SFX being replaced by Particle Cannon SFX: I remember talking about Johnny about this, and he liked the idea. I think i commented that Laser and Pulse weapons have the same SFX, and that it would need to change, but he said it would be either hard or impossible, for some reason i can't remember, but yeah, it could have been awesome.
This one I'm not sure of, JL must have looked into this one. :)
Noganeto1 wrote: -Exhaustion: This is also kind of cheesy. Instead of having a soldier wounded if sent to battle with fatigue, why not instead displaying "Exhausted" (In purple color) on the debrief screen? It could be a good idea, but then again, hard to do.
In LW for Enemy Unknown, we were able to add an additional status for Exhausted vs Wounded.

Unfortunately, when Enemy Within came out, the enum list for soldier status had been reworked to include MEC Augmentations and Gene-modding. The enum is passed through native functions, so we can't just expand it. I ended up hacking the fatigued status into the "end" enum value, so there just wasn't a way to add the separate Exhausted state. I totally would have ported it over from LW EU if there had been a way.
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Schweineschnute
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Re: Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by Schweineschnute »

From a players' perspective (my own to be precise :D )
Noganeto1 wrote: -Limited Tactical armor: This one could had been as a Second Wave option. Now, both Tac Vest and Armors are limited and can be lost, forcing soldierts to go in either their traditional clothes (Shirt, pants and boots) you can see them in the Barracks, or the leather jackets they use in Covert Ops. Could have been possible, if you ask me.
What use would that have had? I mean, micromanaging stuff is fun to a certain degree. When you talk about implementing a feature which requires you to select your operatives shoes or send them out barefoot for me personally a line has been crossed :D In all seriousness, why should the default body armour be limited? What kind of international alien fighting paramilitary organization would run out of basic tactical gear and send their guys off in a t-shirt? I understand that the more advanced armours you create in your base are really unique, special and the finest mankind can muster. If you have four power armours in your storage, that's four existing on the world. But the stock military/SWAT gear shouldn't be able to run out. And yes, I always found it questionable that the original UFO Defense send your guys out in jumper suits that wouldn't even help resisting conventional weapons.
-Limited ammo, X-COM-like: Now, this could have been a big pain in the arse, because it requires too much programming if you really wish your soldiers' ammo is limited, requiring them to be equippe with an ammo magazines item that allows you to reload your weapon too many times until you eventually run out of ammo. Again, this could be a good SW option.

-Hit option: Because i just think, Johnny himself considered this. I mean, it is very likely to happen, you can use the break windows animation to emulate your soldier hitting an alien who it is at a close distance, VERY close.
Would have been cool, even if only as a SW option. Since the original did it I would support it. In that context, melee weapons/attacks would have had some kind of justification :)
-Pulse weapons SFX being replaced by Particle Cannon SFX: I remember talking about Johnny about this, and he liked the idea. I think i commented that Laser and Pulse weapons have the same SFX, and that it would need to change, but he said it would be either hard or impossible, for some reason i can't remember, but yeah, it could have been awesome.
This is something, from a player perspective, that would be nice. I'd like to see unique effects for weapons and weapon types, new weapon models and such, but from a developer point of view this is a lot of work for little to no gain. Creating fx or models from scratch and make them work with the game probably is a nightmare. :D
-Exhaustion: This is also kind of cheesy. Instead of having a soldier wounded if sent to battle with fatigue, why not instead displaying "Exhausted" (In purple color) on the debrief screen? It could be a good idea, but then again, hard to do.

So... what do you think about my ideas? You can comment your ideas here if you wish.
I think we all would have liked the EU status here but as @Amineri pointed out, simple technical limitations. Nothing can be done about that :(
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Tanalbi
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Re: Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by Tanalbi »

Makes sense, but i was just trying to add some difficulty to the game, specially by the limited armor and ammo part.
"The prefect true curves of a woman are her smile"
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Schweineschnute
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Re: Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by Schweineschnute »

I get that, but there's, at least I think so, a point where "more difficult" just comes into that weird area where, in essence, you'd get the same effect by either halving your money outright via .ini files or reducing soldier health. I don't know if the longing for extreme difficulty through probably rather annoying micromanaging just is worth the effort, especially if those changes are hard to justify by logic. If you already play with ease on the higher difficulties playing with full repair costs and random loss of items so even if you complete a mission half your gear in unusable afterwards just for funzies maybe it just means you mastered the game right here :mrgreen:

In spirit of the topic, though this is not really something gameplay related, I'd have welcomed slight reskinning of the soldiers so they don't sport comically huge national flags on their back any more but maybe move it to an arm patch and display the X-Com embleme on the back instead. I always wonder what information value that big flag could possibly have, especially when the organization is all about cooperation. The flag itself is fine, but not so huge :D
codorra
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Re: Some stuff could have been but weren't because they might be hard to do.

Post by codorra »

Amineri wrote:
Noganeto1 wrote:
Noganeto1 wrote: -Hit option: Because i just think, Johnny himself considered this. I mean, it is very likely to happen, you can use the break windows animation to emulate your soldier hitting an alien who it is at a close distance, VERY close.
Right, we did bounce this idea around for a quite a while. Technically I think it could have been done -- the issue was primarily narrative. How much damage should a basic rifle butt attack (the only thing we have an animation for) do, when a fired burst is doing 3-5 damage? Really the only answer that makes sense is "ONE". In which case it's an awful lot of working adding something that is basically useless.

We ended up adding the sawed-off shotguns in order to add something a bit more "reasonable" -- they basically fulfill the role of a melee weapon.
Except with muscle-fiber density... Imagine a kick from a guy who can jump 4-5 levels vertically in Power Armour... :D
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