X@COM

Strange guy has finally released his mech warfare mod, Union.

The target, a garrison town controlled by the United Planetary Federation, has already been bombarded prior to your arrival, but the enemy presence is still strong. Lead a mixed squad of Union troops including infantry, special forces, and mechs to clear out the opposition.

I've played this one several times already, and it's full of good old mech-blasting, tree-stomping action. Torch infantry squads with mech-mounted flame throwers, use laser targeting to call in artillery and air strikes, launch disposable rockets carried by special forces, switch some mech shields to different modes depending on the situation, and (lots, lots) more.

Of course, you need to be careful lest an effective assault is turned into horrible losses in the blink of an eye when a unit of patrolling mechs finds you exposed at the wrong place. One of my more recent runs was going swimmingly, having already taken out five enemy mechs and a few infantry before a flamethrowing mech emerged from the darkness and melted one of my own to scrap. In that same turn I'd thought I could sneak up behind a soldier manning his mounted heavy machine gun, but ran out of TUs right before getting to him--he swiveled it around and opened up, blowing through both that guy, the door behind him, and my other special forces guy providing cover outside. (I got sweet revenge with my snub-nose cannon, which caused a *much* bigger explosion than I expected, much to my satisfaction ;p)

Here most of the fires have already died out after the advance across town.

Starting squad in one mission, labeled.

Best run so far.

In a way, this mod is a little before its time, as Strange guy has included a lot of interesting mechanics, details, and lore which aren't accessible within the game itself. Seeing how the game still lacks support for in-game reference information, you'll want to at least skim over the accompanying README-Union.txt file to get the most out of this mission. (Several times I've considered supporting that feature immediately, specifically for Strange guy's mods which generally have a lot of detail, but due to the level of integration necessary and the fact that the HUD isn't ready yet, from a development timeline perspective it's better to put it off rather than have to rewrite it later.)


R9.3

I've also taken this opportunity to upload the latest build: R9.3.

The most notable features (as seen in the previous post) are the new map labels, animated explosion AOE previews, a new explosive priming interface, and glowing indicators for primed explosives. See the change log for a complete list.

Union uses R9.3 so you'll get to see all these features in this mod as well.

10101 has done it again and brought us another mission from the original X-COM. Remember scurrying through malls, shops, gas stations, and warehouses searching for civilians before the aliens found them, only to hear the screams of their death when you're too late?

Yep, it's a terror mission.

Like the Farm mod it has high replayability given that you can start with different squads and craft, and face off against different randomly chosen races (intel will tell you which at the outset, in case you'd like a different opponent).

While it's probably not too difficult to at least survive this mission, getting a reasonable score is an entirely different matter.

One advantage you'll have compared to the original game is you can press 'n' when a soldier is facing a civilian to have them follow that soldier, and even lead them to an evac zone if you want to get them off the map (to make room for bigger explosions, of course ;p).

Another change from X-COM is that the Lightning squad can carry sniper rifles, described here by 10101:

• Light Sniper Rifle:
  Weakest of the sniper rifles. Only slightly more damage than a normal rifle. Slow but accurate aimed shot and a snapshot like the rifle, but slightly slower (best snap of the sniper rifles). Eight shots per clip.

• Laser Sniper Rifle:
  Superior to the light sniper rifle in everything but the snapshot which is horribly inaccurate as you have to aim while waiting for the beam to charge. Damage ranges between laser rifle and heavy laser. Unlimited ammo like all laser weapons. 

• Heavy Sniper Rifle:
  The mother of all sniper rifles. Due to its bulk the snapshot is both innacurate and slow. Aiming takes even longer than with the other sniper rifles (90% TU) and you have to load each bullet seperately. On the other hand it is the third most accurate weapon in the game (after the blaster launcher and the HWP-blaster) and its damage is as high as other explosive weapons (approximately equivalent to an alien grenade or small launcher).

We've so got this--an Avenger carrying four tanks, and two mutons with their backs facing us... (First tank rolls down the ramp and is shot to pieces by plasma fire from a different angle.)

10101's Farm mod has also been upgraded to X@COM R9.1, which fixes the ambient sound bug on restarts.


REXPaint update: X@COM's ASCII art editor is almost complete--the only bit remaining is its built-in file browser, so the next post will most likely introduce the new development tool and its features.

Remember those eerily vacant farms? Wading across cornfields and searching barns while looking for the UFO crash/landing site? Modder 10101 has done an excellent job of recreating that experience in his aptly-titled mod "Farm".

This mission varies widely in scale since your squad lands in either a Skyranger, Lightning, or Avenger and begins with tech-level appropriate equipment as you face off against any of the possible UFO types including the scout, harvester, supply ship, terror ship, or even a massive battleship. (It's an impressive job considering the current limitations of the modding system.)

HQ will notify you of the class of UFO at the site (which may be either crash-landed or on the ground carrying out its own mission) and you can opt to press F10 to randomize the mission. As usual, beware facing off against against psionic races since they won't hesitate to mind control your soldiers with perhaps dire consequences for squadmates...

While the experience should be very similar to the original, at least one tactical difference I noticed while playing is that you'll be able to smash through hedges instead of always shooting your way through (jumping over low walls and fences would've been another option, but we decided to postpone the parkour functionality). Then of course there's the fact that we have gravity in X@COM, so you can literally bring down an entire barn with explosives if you like, or collapse upper floors by shooting out lower walls.

Get it on the files page, of course.

Can you guess what's on top of those four round things?

Ever wanted to play a deep tactical fantasy game based on the great X-COM mechanics? Answer: Yes.

"A Rookie's Tale" is exactly that and much, much more.

Our protagonist, Victor Wade, alien-fighting soldier turned interdimensional traveler, suddenly finds himself in a world guided by magic rather than science. How he got here we've already seen, how he gets back is another story.

Not every story will be the same, though. To call this mod a single mission would be an understatement. Perhaps "epic single mission" or "game-in-a-mission" might be more appropriate. Making full use of the engine's greatly expanded and improved mod support, Rookie's Tale is a highly dynamic experience that shows much more of what the engine can really do--the R7 scenario Cataclysm was an interesting experimental introduction to the new dynamic content system, but barely touched the surface compared to the variety you'll see in this mod.

Victor is not alone, at least not for long. As he explores the world he can recruit party members from the local population (you control them this time around) and take them along on the search for a way home. There are seven standard character classes, each with class-based special abilities, and a host of other unique characters that may come to Victor's aid. On your travels, you'll talk to NPCs, recover artifacts, topple paranoid warlords, stop rampaging ogres, repel goblin invasions, uncover demon-worshipping cults, delve into ancient ruins, open interplanar gates, pilot gnomish inventions, loot treasure troves, face (or run in fear from) liches, demons, and dragons, and a whole lot more. Okay, maybe not all at once, but you'll definitely use magic from among 50+ arcane spells and holy incantations (mostly of the fun and interesting kind, not a bunch of cookie cutter direct damage stuff), along with 25+ special abilities. Under the right circumstances, your allies will even raise levels to gain better stats and more abilities. And be on the lookout for others, friendly or not, who may have made the dimensional jump as well...

The fantasy setting is obviously not original. It's D&D meets X-COM meets my imagination (that last one can be considered the glue--or crazy glue depending on your perspective). This is both intentional and necessary at this point because X@COM is still lacking UI support for providing detailed info about objects/units, so I'm trying to rely on your existing knowledge to help you get into the game, and [maybe] survive. Don't worry, there is plenty of unexpected content of my own design to catch you off guard, but having your traditional RPG hat on while you play won't hurt.

So this mod brings X@COM somewhat closer to a more traditional roguelike setting: fantasy RPG with lots of interaction. Thus you can:

• quaff potions,
• harvest herbs,
• set and disarm traps,
• use scrolls and magical artifacts,
• read magic tomes and cast spells,
• find secret doors/stairs...

There are a good number of emergent possibilities given the large number of utility spells, abilities, and items, some with side-effects you may or may not expect. In any case, there's usually more than one way to overcome (or circumvent) whatever obstacles you encounter, of which there will be many. Experiment. Depending on your circumstances, you could even be faced with what could be called a "get creative or die" scenario--this mod is not a hackfest, but if you're not on your toes it will become one, and Victor and company will be on the receiving end.

Unlike previous scenarios, the maps generated are a lot more organic: forests, sloping hills, caves and the occasional structure as opposed to roads and buildings on an obvious grid. Each one is generated from a large collection of possibilities, giving you many unique starting areas and different ways to accomplish Victor's goal. Even if one journey starts similar to another, I can guarantee you the similarity will end there as you explore the map.

So this is normally the part of the post where I show you screenshots of the diversity of maps, revealed in their entirety. But seeing as this mod is really about exploration (you even earn points for it), and there are quite a few secrets and surprises out there, screenshots could spoil some of the fun for those of you who are going to play. That said, a post without any screenshots just won't do, so here are some relatively innocuous and generic excerpts:

Checking out the local village for potential allies. Hint: They're all in the tavern.

Heading deeper into the forest.

Crashing a party. Definitely uninvited.

Spelunking. At night. With Giant Web Spiders. Oh, and about seven other kinds as well.

I'll also be posting an in-depth guide with gameplay details later. After all, unless you play a *lot*, you almost certainly won't see/find everything anyway, so it may be a fun read :). Because it will no doubt include some major spoilers, I'll wait on that until you've had a chance to explore the world yourself a bit first. EDIT: This guide is now available here.

Until then, here's a guide to the essentials (definitely read through this before playing!):

• Most terrain/environment objects can be manipulated ('n')--i.e., almost everything is searchable/usable. (I was going to use the same feature to enable manual talking to NPCs as well, but decided to make conversation automatic on walking up to someone, if they have something to say.)
• Most units have special abilities ('z'). Some may be passive and thus won't show up on the list--I'll tell you about those in the guide, others probably have restrictions on their use. Party members that raise levels also gain new abilities.
• Lots of items are usable ('u'), especially those represented by '&' (no different from Cataclysm). Use them.
• Special/magical armors may imbue the wearer with new abilities (some passive, some must be activated with 'z'). Remember you can remove/exchange your armor now! (Though note that party members are unlikely to be able to wear armors named for specific units, or those for non-Human anatomies.)
• You start with only one unit, our hero Victor, and can always gain a few allies in your immediate vicinity; others can be found elsewhere--you generally just walk up to blue NPCs and they'll join you. Allies in the starting area can only be recruited by Wade himself.
• Victor Wade must survive to "win," since this is his story, after all. Keep him safe. If he dies you can continue playing to explore the map and earn a better score, but won't be able to see the cool ending and learn what happens next.
• Every map will have at least one area with a powerful enemy, which you should avoid until you've gained enough allies/weapons/spells/items to have a chance of defeating (warning: in some maps that enemy will leave their starting area).
• Despite the lack of UI info to confirm your intuition, assume that weapons you'd expect to be better actually are.
• If you have any non-controllable allies following you (like certain summons/servants), press/hold 'F' ("friendlies") to highlight them, even if outside your FOV. (This is a change from the 'C' key used in earlier versions to highlight only civilian followers in Cataclysm.)
• Probably the most annoying thing about using spells/abilities is that if one is red on the list, it won't tell you why (instead giving you a stupid message saying you can't use any abilities at all, which may or may not even be true). If not because you lack sufficient TU/EN (which should be obvious because it shows the numbers), it's almost certainly because you're missing a spell component or focus required to cast that spell, or don't meet some other special condition like the cooldown wait time. Re-reading the tome(s)/book(s) you find to be sure you know the casting requirements for each spell will help clear that up.
• If you have enough screen space (1280x960), you'll notice I included a new fantasy style text font which will be loaded by default, but you can always switch back to a different font or smaller window. There's actually a second fantasy font choice at that same size, but I don't think it looks nearly as good. Note that if you have a slower computer the larger window size can slow down the game as the engine is not yet optimized.

So get out there and come back with a tale for us! Share stories in the comments, Bay 12, or the forums, and if there are enough interesting ones I may highlight them in a future post.

Note: A Rookie's Tale does not come with the standard X@COM download. As a mod, you'll find it as a stand-alone program under the mods section of the files page.


Technical/Modding Addendum:

So to re-cap why I'm modding my own game (which may seem like an odd thing to do during alpha development): Rookie's Tale is an example of the wide variety of content you can include 100% by mod--every bit of content you see is scripted in text files that are parsed and run through the X@COM squad-based tactical simulator which sits on top of Rogue Engine X (the same engine that runs Cogmind, which kicked butt in this year's RotY poll, btw).

Because I know the engine best, it made sense that I create an extensive mod to both make sure everything actually does work (Cataclysm only used a subset), and provide examples for other modders to learn from. In fact I myself even learned a hell of a lot doing this, since it's a very generic system which can do things I never planned nor expected. (It's alive!) I'll be posting a lot of the tips and tricks I found on the forum so other modders can make their own missions more expressive, too.

On the coding side, the dynamic content system was fleshed out considerably as I encountered little things here and there (everywhere...) where adding just another setting or two could open up a whole new range of possibilities. This eventually resulted in a massive number of internal changes/improvements. My changelog since the last release (8.2) is crazy long--not much for the public changelog, though, and no major new features, so this isn't R9.

One of the more noteworthy non-technical improvements that came about as a result of this mod is different FOV shapes, set by race. Armors can also modify the wearer's FOV and sight range, such as restrictive medieval armor or high-tech armor with extra sensors that pass on more information about the surroundings. In Rookie's Tale, the few armors that do this will warn you with a message, and you can always check your FOV visualization ('f').

There's a heck of a lot more that could be done with this mod, and it could easily be expanded into a true full game given more map chunks (which would make for fewer chaotic maps due to a wider pool to choose from, thereby enabling finer control over what pieces are placed near what--I didn't actually use that feature) and even more interactivity with objects and NPCs, but I have to stop somewhere.

If you would like to make your own fantasy mod, you could always rip parts from Rookie's Tale, or just use all the data objects to create a different scenario by creating new areas (though that's probably the most annoying part until we have a proper map editor).

Also a heads up: There's a WH40k mod in the works now. Interested players can check it out on the forum and give it a run to provide the author with some pre-release feedback if so inclined.

Special thanks to all the forum members who helped playtest this mod prior to release, especially 10101, our resident binary German :) Seriously, without him I wouldn't have been able to both test and fix all the issues we resolved and still release on time. With so much content to play through, though, there could be some issues we didn't find. Report them and they shall be fixed. I'll even throw in some new areas in the update.


A Rookie's Tale is actually the first in a four-part series following Victor before he makes it back to Earth (the other three parts being sci-fi/alien), though I doubt I'll actually go through with the others. Anyway, Now that I've gotten my fantasy fix and made good use of it, next we're back to your [ir]regularly scheduled tactical sci-fi program[/game].

We have our second full mod, this time from Draxis!

Lead a semi-randomly outfitted squad of fully-armed soldiers to take an alien base in Assault. Quite a nostalgic mission, as the design is based on the original alien base assault from X-COM! Most of the gear is standard, though you may have access to the flamethrower as well, which will come in handy if the chryssalids get some of your guys.

Check out some maps generated by Draxis' mod:




I played several games, and in the last was on track to win without losing a single soldier, if not for my own Wolfgang's stupidity. Just before taking the command center the squad used a stolen small launcher to fire back into the darkness from where we were taking heavy fire; advancing forward we found a pile of unconscious snakemen bodies, yay! After everyone passed that spot, Wolfgang decided to do away with the bodies before moving on (didn't want to risk any of them coming to, nor waste time picking up all their weapons). Prime alien grenade for immediate detonation... forget to leave enough time to get around the corner... ka-boom, Wolfgang joins the pile of snakemen bodies.

Get your own copy from the files page!

And we have our first total conversion by Andrew Sundberg! (maker of Cataclysm+)

Take control of a party of orcish raiders as they put the smack down on a human town, or die trying. The party is led by the warlord himself, supported by grunts, archers, a varg, and the oh-so-deadly Elder. Face off against guards, adventurers, mounted knights, mages, monks and more. And don't forget to slay some peasants!

Here is my gang of orcs after having cut a bloody path through the town, now preparing to break into the graveyard crypt to find out what's in those sarcophagi: 


And here were the results of my last test run (I didn't even use my fuming vials!):
Not quite as good as my first run using an earlier version, but Aggression got a bit more difficult since then :)

So go get some Aggression on the files page, and if you'd like to discuss it feel free to join us on Bay 12 or the X@COM modding forum.

This mod wasn't too long in the making--most dev time was consumed by tweaking and balancing, then it sat around in the incubator forum while playtesters gave it a spin (and I've been waiting to upload it since the primary server is down). Expect even greater work from Andrew and other modders in the future!

Note: The primary server is still down, so the site looks a bit weird without its proper fonts and images, including the background image... Downloads are fine though, since I've set up a mirror.