X@COM

It's national Adopt an Alien Pet Day!

The psi-amp is ready. I.e., you'll now be able to mind control aliens if you're good enough. The AI will not yet use the the psi-amp on you, as it would be incredibly unfair given your limited resources in the demo missions. I did, however, throw in a psi-amp... "somewhere" in Area 51 and Cataclysm. Of course, it wouldn't be much use without some skill, and there's no base for training yet, so all your units start with a random psi-skill of 2.5~5.0x their base value.




As planned, the psi-amp fit right into the special abilities system, which just needed a menu to enable selection from multiple abilities on the same object, as seen above, though the system is capable of handling much, much more than that. For example:


Yes, those are actual scripted abilities I was playing with to test the system, and they do exactly what they look like they do. (Adding each one only takes a single line of script that sets about ten variables.) So now the engine does intrinsic abilities, and X-COM agents could theoretically one day be learning all manner of psionic skills like firestarting, telekinesis, teleportation, unaided mind control, and MIND BULLETS! Well, whatever you can think of, really.

With the psi-amp done, where mechanics are concerned the X@COM battlescape is now capable of everything seen in the original! (Not to mention all the other features I've added.)

I decided against releasing another R7 update and instead pushed the previously mentioned modding features back to a modest R8, which is on the horizon and closing fast.