Makes You Think - Sooner or Later

An explanation of what this submod has been going through over time and what it is now

Especially in the beginning I used XPZ to my advantage when I was learning OXCE-based modding and pixel art in general, so stuff were added to the submod that I didn't directly intend for Piratez (in terms of style and lore) but for the whole community - I just didn't know a better way to store and share them then.

If I were to start now, I would do generic sprites to the vanilla palette and only the specially targeted ones to XPZ. I messed up at the beginning when I didn't care to understand, but there was a lot going on at that time and I tried to keep up as best I could.

So, now with hindsight I decided to split the submod into two different packages:

Stuffiez
Includes all pirate style mods and remodels,
also polished and modified map assets

Stuffiez - Realistic Weapon Models  [New]
A bunch of quite common handguns etc
that I made years ago as practice moved here

Now that the main folder is gone, you need to download the zip file (and either continue with less modded items or add new submod for the experience via the Mods menu).

Thank you for reading :)

ps. Most of my sprites use XPZ palettes, so the damage is pretty much done and they should be remapped and modified back to vanilla with a good program if they are used in such a mod.

Natural Born Skitters - Still Missing Two Legs

While picking some Giant Spider quick battle missions,
I edited the animations and pixels of its ant-like sprider [sic] sheet.

No worries, it's still as rough as it should be :P

Reorganized Autumn Play - Here I Go Again

 I've been blissfully busy developing my own campaign for OXCE, but started anyway a fall run for the good old Piratez (this has already seem to become a tradition) and converted my RGBA color Mechtoid paperdoll sprite to indexed.

I also flexed a bit my polishing skills with Military Police - which still used the darkening vanilla palette and had messy details.

Stuffiez  is cleaned from the unnecessary duplicates

and updated to a newer version number.

Chilly Village - Snow Blindness Surgery

 Quickly and slightly polished Snow Village map assets done👍 Spotted some illogical unusualnesses while playing, so I decided to try fix things a bit and then ended up adding minor customization for fun ❄️

Insect Instincts - Size Matters

 Long time since I’ve edited body sprites,
Giant Cockroach was fun to polish and reasonably worthwhile.

...and now I would like to monster more!

Barbie Jungle - Everyone Has Got a Secret Side

Polished and detailed Neo-Jungle terrain.

I think Barbie™ would approve of my choices!
(Well, she must have seen worse)

+ Currently editing, little by little, the other jungle assets with some buggy mapblock paths and tile messiness. Hopefully a polished tropical XPZ experience awaits at someday! 👍

Outlined Quiddity - Inspire a Boost

 Not actually submod related, but after some vague experiments converting hand drawn vector artwork to pixels, I was surprised how well rough black outlines works in 32x40 size.

(My ideas were nonsense as usual)

Hopefully someone can get any kind of OXC modding inspiration out of that. Concept might not be good for detailed tiny stuff like battle items, but something simplified goes.

Personally I would like to use this style for spritesheeting, because to me it’s more interesting and handy way to create pixel art from scratch than full raster progress. Needs mainly just precolored basic line art drawings - what I have done for ages.

Winter Forest - Early Spring Cleaning

 Another XPZ cold terrain set for Snowiez. Originals had some dangerously messy spots especially at night-time and once again I had problems to see how to point&click..😕 It took half an hour to edit the grass and thicket more obvious. Later I put some extra time to polish the rest of the tile sprites with custom detailing style, so now the map has a dangerous, but cute fantasy gamey world look. Aww, now destroy it with laser!

PS - I’m not going to touch ROADS_SNOW terrain at this time,
also FORESTSWAMP_SNOW terrain is not yet included

War and the City (WIP)

Warcity to be ‘polished’

 Reverse working with dis and fucking up everything what I already polished. Yep - it’s like unwork actually. Original reuses basic intact terrains, so I'm gonna/wanna separatize almost all files except URBANWAR and add dem in via ruleset. They'll be written in battlescape savegames, but that's not too bad.👍

...MADDECOR(_WAR) terrain is still unfucked :(

Original Urban II - Old and New Outcomes

 City terrains (also known as ex-vanilla Urban) polished. They share the same store and some furniture tile sprites with the Village terrains, but if someone still wants to make them differ even more from each other, it’s possible because both use separate files (plus a new FRNITURE_CITY version just for City tileset)

Phew! I’m so glad to release my year old experimental pixel art practical work with the same terrains. They finally got their use as customized kitchen and furniture sprites, also polished storage structures and big boxes were already waiting. Wohoo!

There was an additional MADDECOR terrain which tiles aren’t generally used in City mapblocks. It has now few tiles to which I remodeled besides all polishing and copy-paste work. Take that, Mad Decorator!

Checked/fixed MCDs, set variations to deathIDs and customized data values a bit. Three mapblocks’ (#36-38) unwalkable tilemap bugs (water on grass) were also fixed.

This is my semi-serious contribution for the 'finished' XPZ megamod assets and I just can't improve the vanilla 90’s vibe better than this (btw, now the '00s) even with the new palette.

As intended - it's still the same terrain set, but a slightly modded version.

Modified City Copies - Welcome to the Jungle

 Rolled right away to City terrains, where tile sprites are quite the same as in Village. (And actually, IMO, it's reasonably funny also as a vanilla lore-wise way to still have the same original 90's stuff all over the place👍)

Current mood: submodding megamod's battlescapes more clear for tactics

Village Pillage - Rural Logical Mindset

SLAVIC VILLAGE terrains polished

CHANGELOG:
- fence gates recolored to be better spottable/observable
- "A-are there monsters in the fields or just night vision illusions?"
- shadows of the flipped sprites changed to from right-to-left
- tiles’ armor values slightly raised -> now gals with low strength or crappy guns
  might not break their way through obstacles so easily (early game problems)
- pixel art fixes/edits and color adjusting
- new destructed floor tiles and more variation in deathIDs
- couple custom detailings and remodels
- wooden walls click visually together in multiple floors
- size reductions and grid position pushes
- double-checked MCDs (and in there made some LoFT changes)
- additional rough road TU costs
- strong structures/ruins are walkable content
- tractor has rounded corners allowing walked diagonally around
- one mapblock's (#50) one tile was changed to get a free lane
- big tree’s tiled sprites have many new suitable tilemap building possibilities, but
  are they all really needed - I cannot say 🤔

PS. There are some unused shop/store tiles, so maybe those could be placed
  in some big mapblock (rural marketplace may not be possible, but..?)

Rules of the Style - Always are My Ways

 Submodding VILLAGE terrains for funz - and also because of need for variety to solely naturalish battlescapes lately. Working with manmades hopefully generate custom ideas for populated areas as well, which would be nice.

👣 I’m slowly developing my step-by-step to XPZ's terrain editing:

1. If plans include customization, then create duplicates of terrains that are used generally around the mod’s tilesets and add files in via ruleset
2. Swap vanilla palette (if used) to delicious or some special
3. Remove unnecessary color mess and clean/fix a bit
4. Recolor the used last color's shades (these baddies glow in night vision) to the corresponding first black & white color's shades
5. Check and rework shadows, highlights and contrasts
6. Add details, remodelings and redesigns
7. There are three colors that lighten in NV, all in all 48 color indices, so, use them wisely for some Piratez styled night vision glowing effects

And finally, steps that rule them all..

• Make sure that the tile fits as well as possible with other tiles
• Compose new ideas, possibilities and enjoy work done💯

BTW, one terrain PCK was corrupted, but I got it opened via old MCDEdit👌 Wohoo!

Mountainous Plains (Part I) - The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

 First updated Mountainous/Plains terrains patched into XPZ v.N4 (by Dioxine) to be played as quick battles (Snowy/Dead), globeTexture landing zones and a part of the campaign's other cold climate missions.

How the edited tile sprites affects to the ogs: SNOWIEZ.webp👈

Just words for warning⚠️When playing, at first glance you may got a overdose 😨shock😵 with the details, but I assure/hope that it will give away after you get used to and tiles should move more to background, where they belong.

See you at the next terrains!

PS. I noted that with the PCKs it's possible to build empty cave systems. So, these are kind of like Dwarf Fortress tilesheet assets without any real content, but - hey, maybe they have already been in there and vanished, and now the caverns are full of nothing.

Ratman Houndback - Never Have Fever Than Four Legs

   --->[SUGGESTION]

 Sometimes (in early pogroms and whatnot assaults) light weighted Ratmen armed with short-range bows could be seen riding Blood Hounds, making them capable of long dashes to powerful secondary melee attacks with a good armor.

While concepting, I already polished Ratman Brigand body sprites.

Deadly Mountainous - Higher Grounds

COMING "SOON"

 I’m submodding X-Piratez's MOUNTBD/PLAIN maps! Already on the go with the PCKs which I seem to work most carefully at start, but I'll try to speed up and use more rough styling. MCDs are also getting personal flavoring customization and couple fixes here and there. I'm modding mapblocks as well (mainly making all things clearer), but firstly I try to get released all dem polished tilesheets in small sets:

Snowy/Tundra, Dead, Eroded, Tropical, Muddy/Mud, Sandy/Sand, Arboreal

✍️🏔️👍

Snowiez - New Sub-submod Project

Started working with a new sub-project, named/labeled: Snowiez 

to-do

• polished XPZ's snowy terrains (as warm-ups)
• custom-made terrains, mapblocks and rulesets
• new playable Quick Battle maps

to-do II (next level shit)

• rulesets for globeTexture landing zones
• cold climate race with custom units and items (!!)
• mission (ufo) mapblocks (!)

Progressing…

Plasticine Looper - Inside Jokes via Potty Humor

Shapes like ↑those↑ are my absolute favorite these days. 😀
I could spend whole evening editing just this kind of stuff

Bloody Messy Puppy - Such a Happy Smiler

 Redder Blood Hound sprites (minus pedia) now included. Unit’s gfx used darkening (vanilla?) palettes which made them almost fully shadowed in mod. I also fixed wrongly placed frame pos/orderings in spritesheet, added some new details and polished the originals as well.

Conspiracy Theory Alien's Sex Life - Are They Helping Us or WTF?

Reticulan- Technician | Sectogre | Siren | Elder

 Played for the first time a run where I met these gene engineering cuties more than once, but this wasn't the first time when I ended up submodding almost an entire race at once.

…but could it be the first time when I surely used right palettes??? 🙃

Ahoy - Details in Sight!

Guild Air Sailor - Aeronaut fantasized

Reticulan Peon - Mind polished

Church Matron - Religious superheroized

S'up? - Killing Devices Named After Their Designers

After a little break with other projects and games, I decided to rerun da mod yo and remodel the Submachine Gun to a bit more Uzi style.

Versions Come & Go - Overhauling is Progress

X-Peasantz is no longer downloadable!
Thanks to Dioxine for incorporating it into the main mod. 👍

--> Reorganization done for Stuffiez and leftover spritesheets
(Mud&Camo) from Ex-Peasantz added in + a new brimmed hat version of Shepherd.

Peasant Mania is Over - Long Live the Peasants

X-Peasantz [LEAKED_NUDES] finished!

Bye-bye, Peasants!

I did ALL what I planned. Well, almost.

 At the start I was enthusiastic about remodeling mud armor's paperdolls, but as time passed, I came to a conclusion that it would be okay to leave them untouched. Original peasant models are still visible there and I think it’s not a bad thing. Anyway, it WOULD have been fun to draw muddy peasants with leafy branches sticking out and moss lumps here and there... but no, because it ALSO would take that time and effort what I currently need somewhere else and that's the real reason why to move on. If the original Mud is still there after years and years, I may roll up my sleeves and finish the job!

So, maybe it's:

Au revoir, Peasants!

Edit: Ah, Dioxine already did dem 😎

Ratman’s Best Friend - They are All Monsters Out There

 Noice, I managed to release my first ever custom extraSprite item for Stuffiez. It replaces reused Doge's body graphic for the 👉Guard Dog🐕 and looks more like that beast in the spritesheet. I'm happy about it OK.

Hybrid Warfare Unit - Here is Something in Eyes

 Bugeye – remodeled - bam!  This was on my constantly growing to-do list for half a year, but I’m glad I gave him/her/it a proper thought-out and didn't redesign all the sprites as I first planned. A guy who wears a leather jacket with work coveralls gotta be a character in post apocalyptic fiction. 👍

😶👽😬👽😝👽😎👽😍👽😙👽😋👽😆👽😲👽😮👽😵‍

Another Servant - Their Ufos Have Stewardesses

 Guild Hostess - for some reasonable reasons, her legs were different color than her face and she walked around barefooted. Followed by Dioxine's wishes, I modified all unit sprites for this little lady.

🛸"Prepare for kill off, please." 😊

Maid's Lure - Served and Seduced

 Modified the Maid /PEA walking to mince-ing like, because it’s funnier when some outfits are not only armor values to wear, but also a role.

Spritesheet and a modified floor corpse added to Peasantz. Animation is carefully made and all nuances can be sensed even with faster frame rates.

Bandit Lovers - At Their Finest Before Death

 Ruffian and Troublemaker - at first I didn't plan to modify this couple, because the originals were so badass (Highwayman is IMO the badassest), but I had the mood for editing some inventory images and then, while playing, came across these mfs' love💕bunker.

What I did was only minor cleaning and polishing at best. What rly matters and makes a true improvement - is the remodeled Mutant Egg!

Hunter - The Prey Becomes the Savage

 Update for the Peasantz released! Includes two new spritesheet modifications, reorganization and fixes. I’m working in short sessions with this, so big things happen slowly, but eventually anyways. 👍