OpenXcom (OXCE) Caffeinated-Reimagining

 Original Xcom (UFO Defence) is a very simple almost sandbox style stratagy game, you are given very little information and are very quickly dropped into fights where you are ill-equipped to deal with and sustain losses.

The art style is very simple, it's quite 60s pulp-scifi, but drawing inspiration from 80s fiction of the time (Alien, )

Scientists have been disappearing, 

1992 A spaceship broadcasts to earth it's coming, it is shot and crashlands in the Congo

Et'goggo/Djinn  (Insp; ET, District 9, Childhood's End): Their mothership crashed part-submerged in the Zaire River in the Congo. Many escape pods litter the equator and Chinese contractors rounded-up these aliens and consilidated them, the US is in talks to have them exported to Hashima Island where US and Chinese interests can monitor the aliens.

You exist to round up these aliens, they can be quite violent.

The Djinn are known for their demonic and insectoid looks, which caused panic throughout abrihamic cultures. What little was known is that seem to be both communists and athiests, which has caused them to be austrisized, they seem to have expected another race known as the Vetusunum to meet them here.

Many of them are slowly falling out of orbit as their supplies run low, the 

IFAA (Islamic Forces of Al-Ard (earth)) wishing to exterminate the Djinn, the LDC (Latter Day Crusaders) and MAS (Mother's against Satan) likewise though with much less access to their target.

In decoding their messages you discover they came to warn, and possibly arm you for a fight against a greater threat known as the XXXX

Soon after the Svart and their Inja (warbeasts) arrive.

The Vetusunum entered hibernation to escape the pla

Inja'imfene (Attack the Block): A mothership crashed part-submerged in the Zaire River in congo, a numb full of exotic warbeasts

The Astromen came to us in the 1970s, they were odd and outlandish, styling themselves like comic-book heroes, they mostly seemed to be a myth, it's partly thought 

pods also scattered along the Equator, mainly around the Congo.

the Chinese have built an artifical island and are trying to communicate with them, the Arabian and Mexican colonies were exterminated by the cartels and extremists with many being sold-off to the USA.

Retro-Drive (Menu)

  One of my old uni friends was working on his game Retro-Drive, I did some light 3d-work revamping the menu. Frankly it started with just doing some arcade machines, but I had some time so I did more work, the game is synthwave-esk and time was fairly limited, but in-game I think it works quite-well.

Christmas modification, I really like the flow better in this scene though it needs tlc in areas 

Arcade Machines (Went with less detail (More in-keeping))

It was pretty fun to have something to do in lock-down whilst my full-time job was suspended for a time, I assisted too with some bug-testing. The game was pretty good, and I'm sure my friend's next project will turn out even better. You can view their project at link...

Misc

 I've not really posted in a while, nor do I plan to post more frequently, however here are some images I've done and some light 3d modelling I did for a friend at uni.

Neo-Cretaceous Britney revamped, she's my old concept of a character
you could play in my old endless runner game.

My Christmas Macaque (Took a while to get form right)

Robo-Tuna, another old design I gave some TLC

Bought an airgun a couple of years ago, did a low-poly design of it.

Dino Pteror : Physics is hard

I've been trying to figure out aerodynamics and gliding, what a drag... But what is drag?

I embarked on a mathematical adventure starring at and repurposing algebra I didn't understand.

Since mid-summer when the game was greenlit, I've been trying to conceive of new mechanics for the game, and improve player control with simple mouse controls. So I got to thinking about simple things I could do with just a mouse to control with, and I became enamored with trying to create authentic 2d glide physics, with the forward tilt controlled by player's mouse-position. And the rest as you've seen before.

It turns out that I'm not naturally gifted in understanding physics, which is a bloody shame, so it has taken me awhile to grasp the basics.

So what I need is to simulate air friction as a force that brings all movement to zero (or where the wind blows), while gravity constantly creates a downward force, whilst the ground creates a friction many times greater than air.

Also the body shape will cause the these frictions to lessen or increase, an acute triangle will only incur a fraction of the air-friction a square will. However should that acute triangle instead fall on one face flat, the air friction will (of course) be much greater.

So this is common sense, but is hard to describe, and even harder to program for someone like me.

The question I am slowly answering is how to fake some sense of those fluid-dynamics, and it is taking a long time. Once it is tackled I feel the base-mechanics will be far more compelling.

Open Xcom : Caffeinated Diversity

So earlier this year I was working on an Xcom mod that I lost some momentum with due to some programming/scripting issues that I have now resolved.

Xcom was/is one of my favorite games I've ever played, OpenXcom is a community modding project, that resolves many bugs and adds many quality of life fixes.

I've often noticed that the randomised unit portrait's selection pool is fairly small and limited, and so I am seeking to add additional portraits to add a bit of visual variety. 

 We'll see where this goes, I may ditch religious headgear, as the naming convention can mean you end up with a Sikh named Mohammed or the like.

I'll update this once there is progress, ideally I'd like to push this as an addition to the vanilla experience.

A 2nd Unexpected Revival

Well this is bizarre, it seems, in it's death throes, steam-greenlight approved a number of projects yet to conclude within parameters that my project has been able to manage.

This is a surprise, but I suppose now it's incumbent on me to do something I guess, we'll see what I can do.

"Neo-Cretaceous Britney" Playable on Czech & Russian Server

To my surprise my university project Neo-Cretaceous Britney was taken and hosted by my friends to the east, even though this was not done with my permission I'm glad the game has enjoyed a wider reception. Czech it out, or maybe try the motherland comrade.

superhry (Czech) -&- igratvonline (Russian)

My impressions upon playing it again, is that the game feels quite sluggish, my project in random generation for Dino-Pteror (WIP) also makes this project seem comparatively primitive.

However it got me thinking that it could use with a quick once over, so I am likely going to dip my toes into polishing up this old project (Time flies!), to be re-uploaded under my own accounts on European servers. Mayhaps with some form of copy-protection, if it doesn't cause any issues.

My plan is to sort out the gameplay, with tweaks to the presentation, the art could always be better, but I think it'd be a black-hole for this simple a project. So the plan is to use some spare Unity FX assets, and apply new scripting techniques to improve performance and gameplay, for use in a remastered build.

Short-term.

• Apply simple universally understood icons to navigate menu.
• Or have language selection by flag
• Put Britney in the background of menu (make it clear what game is about)
• Have incoming enemies spawn a distance away whereby they will meet the player at a vector on their segment of track
• Clean-up UI
• Update code (New unity engine, New techniques)

Stretch goals

• Add new sections of track with ramps, or jump pillars
• Add better cameras with follow AI
• Add intro segment
• Add bikini to britney
• Add more "ads" for variety, randomize their texture rather than have multiple FBX files.