The (other) road to 1.0

Technically it’s all the same road. Anyways a lot of people wonder what was left to do after 0.9. Surely it was all done and playable, right? Well, I think the 200+ issues that have been resolved have something to say about that. 😛 But while we come closer to release, here’s some topics I wanna tackle.

Live Stream

Last weekend’s stream was a huge success, thanks to you guys we raised $175 for charity! But I still haven’t filled my quota yet, so this Saturday tune in for more OpenXcom, more mayhem, more gruesome deaths! Should start at around 3pm-4pm GMT, I’ll make a new post when it starts so your feeds notify you.

Terror from the Deep

After 1.0. Got it? After 1.0. OK? After 1.0. Ok that’s that elephant out of the room.

The amount of people requesting this has just been staggering. In e-mail, in chat, in forums, in blogs, in crop circles, in my garden, etc.. Sheesh guys, I thought you all hated it. 😛 Yes, we have looked into it. No, it’s not as simple as you think. However, we do have a new modding framework planned and TFTD will pretty much be its proof-of-concept. So if you thought we were just gonna kick back and relax after 1.0, you thought wrong. And I was really looking forward to that vacation in Hawaii…

Feature Freeze

Yes, we know you love to send us all your amazing new ideas, but if we’re gonna get this done this year we gotta lock down on new features. Every new line of code is a new possible bug! So please focus on testing and keep your pull requests to important-red-alert-priority-fix level. We’ll still be revising existing pull requests and some UI enhancements of our own for 1.0 inclusion, but any other extras will just have to be saved for later. There’s always 1.1! 😉

Known Issues

However, there’s some stuff we simply can’t fix. It’s out of our hands. Really. Like the fact that when asked for an original X-Com copy, most of you just rush to google “xcom ufo defense” and download it off the first abandonware website that you can find. We know, we know, it’s the internet. But most of these have old versions of the game that cause all kinds of fun bugs. So if you’re gonna go that route, save us all the trouble and get it patched.

There’s also some strange bugs with SDL_Mixer. In some systems, the game may crash when changing music track. In Windows Vista and later, changing the music volume will actually change the entire game volume. If you experience these problems, try using a digital music pack like the ones available in the Extras, even try different file formats. While you’re there, make sure you have the latest Data Patch (included with the Windows installer) to avoid any kind of original map oddities and LOF bugs.

17 thoughts on “The (other) road to 1.0

  1. shuuk

    Hi there,
    so is it possible to make the TFTD in HD ? Like UFO – The Two Sides for enemy unknown.

    I still dont know why is it not possible in openxcom but i hope its possible for TFTD 🙂

  2. SoulDestroyer

    TFTD in HD? That means redesigning artwork to include in the game from scratch rather than using the artwork that exists in the original Xcom that OpenXcom uses??
    SupSuper + others, keep up the good work! Maybe include your comments in readme.txt file in v1 release ?

  3. shuuk

    yeah i dont know. I think the devs from UFO – The Two Sides found a way to do this but i have no idea im not a coder 🙂

  4. Papamaanbeer

    hello! great stuff! there is always 1,1 !!! i didnt even think about that! Aplause for all your effords so far, and love for the game! and i loved TFTD (it was the first one in the series i played) id love to stream the game some day soon, is it difficult to install the newest git build,…. ? and if possible notefy us early and multiple times for streams and such, cos i totally missed the weekend donation stream…

  5. Shoes

    Pretty sure the nightly is the latest git build, precompiled. So it’s incredibly easy to stay up to date 🙂

  6. domsson

    Awesome, awesome, awesome. I’m so happy that this project actually made it this far; I was constantly worried it might become one of those abandoned pieces of code. But we’re almost there! 1.0 is just around the corner!

    Thanks so much for all your great work!
    Also, I think that your approach is the best possible approach – staying very close to the original and only including small improvements that won’t change the look and feel, but make the player’s life easier. Great.

    I wish I could contribute some code, but I’m still in the very beginnings of learning C++. I’ll get there eventually, so hopefully the project is still alive then. If so, I’ll try to fix a bug or two! 😉

    Keep it up and thanks again!
    And simply ignoreAwesome, awesome, awesome. I’m so happy that this project actually made it this far; I was constantly worried it might become one of those abandoned pieces of code. But we’re almost there! 1.0 is just around the corner!

    Thanks so much for all your great work!
    Also, I think that your approach is the best possible approach – staying very close to the original and only including small improvements that won’t change the look and feel, but make the player’s life easier. Great.

    I wish I could contribute some code, but I’m still in the very beginnings of learning C++. I’ll get there eventually, so hopefully the project is still alive then. If so, I’ll try to fix a bug or two! 😉

    Keep it up and thanks again!

  7. domsson

    Oops, I somehow doubled the contents of my last comment… ah, anyway, can’t say ‘thanks’ too often, right? 😀

  8. Volutar

    Hey continuers.
    Few words from me if you don’t mind.

    1. It is quite possible to get into 24bit without losing this special “xcom night” shaded look (yeah, I’ve found a way).

    2. SDL_Mixer issue could be fixed long ago with getting rid of midi sounds, you know I made adlib vanilla music player, which could be integrated into project. And I gave it to hmaon, so please don’t say about “strange bugs” anymore. They are not strange, they are known, and way of avoiding them is also known. (Don’t make that SDL_Mixer a RL version of “enemy unknown” lol) 🙂

    3. Before 1.0 hit it would nice if you check fire/throw accuracy and throwing distances if they close to vanilla (it would be a shame to see these silly inconsistences fixed only after 1.0). Because I have strong feeling that they aren’t even close.

    4. Good luck with expanding engine to handle TFTD. It’s quite easy, if you really know what you’re doing. Hope you could fill that knowledge information gap that ufopaedia and every other source has.

    Keep it up.

  9. jacques

    I would say the reason for haveing an open x-com version of TFTD is that the only other mod that fixes any of the problems with the game is the xcom unif. However, that mod only does so much it fixes technical stuff and makes gauss weapons actually worth something. I would say that if you guys could impliment the same type of things that you have for openxcom into TFTD then it will make the game a little less hated.

  10. forever a rookie

    The two funny bugs: “cannot land on an alien base” and “krysklad must not die”, have made me buy the original game from Steam. The available patches don’t seem to be enough to rectify the ancient leaked+cracked+widespread UFO: enemy unknown up to the canonical level of XCOM: ufo defense. Anyway – the price alone is excellent, but for me (a paranoid backward bum in Europe without a credit card) it was a bit of an obstacle to find a suitable payment method… until someone else pointed me to the pre-paid PaySafeCard, which can be purchased at local gasoline stations, newspaper stalls etc. Worked like a charm. Then I frowned a bit when Steam downloaded a few hundred megs of junk, just to download that 20meg archive with Xcom… but finally I was done, extracted the legally purchased Xcom, reinstalled OpenXcom 0.9 using the data, and voila: the savegames where I was stuck suddenly worked 🙂 I immediately plundered an alien base, and gutted a few chrysalids (actually I stunned one just to see if it works). Ahh the joy. And there are many more things to research, many more alien butts to kick…
    While I was fumbling through the Steam directory structure, I tried running the original Xcom wrapped in DOSbox. Yay, what a simple welcome screen. OpenXcom is already miles ahead. It felt pretty cozy to go back to OpenXcom, and erase the whole pile of Steam bloatware from my system. I have a backup of Xcom and I have my login credentials to Steam…
    Kudos to Steam and to the author of OpenXcom.

  11. Silly Filly

    I find it hilarious that you post links to the bug tracker while it requires an account to view anything there. I wanted to check what’s the general status of the development (after getting 3 months of Sectoid-only missions and thinking it’s a bug…) but even though I only wanted to have a look, it says that I need to “log in” first. Could you fix that so viewing doesn’t require an account?

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