Author Archives: SupSuper

*tumbleweed blows by*

Hello! It’s been… a while, hasn’t it?

*dodges tomatoes thrown at him*

Ok, I know there hasn’t been any real update in months. Here’s the gist of it. Most of this time I’ve been busy with university, it’s really stressing and time-consuming and after months of going nuts over coding at school I don’t really feel like coding much at all when I get back home. On the bright side I’m almost finished with my MSc. Anyways I have my last exam tomorrow, followed by a week off everything to clear my head, relax and hopefully get me back coding.

What does this all mean to you? OpenXcom v0.4 will be coming out this July! That is a promise, if I don’t finish everything I planned I’ll just pack it up as-is and move on. I know in an open-source project “version releases” don’t really mean much given you can just grab all the latest stuff off the source code, but I like having these clearly-defined milestones to mark the progress of the project, with a whole bunch of new finished features (instead of just in-progress stuff) all properly packed and prepared for the common user.

OpenXcom v0.4 will feature a lot of new things since the last version, with special thanks to our great community for always lending a hand. Research, manufacture, medkit, motion scanner, tanks, debriefings, armor, terror sites, rulesets, tons of bugfixes and more! A new website might be revealed! I might spontaneously explode! Stay tuned. 🙂

P.S. To everyone contacting me stressing out over the server, relax! We’re not going anywhere! We appreciate the concern but our terrific server admin NineX has got it all under control, the donation drives are not a desperate last resort, just regular reinforcement so all these X-Com websites keep running without a hitch, and so far they’ve been doing splendidly. If you have any further concerns, please contact NineX directly.

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Forum registration problems

Due to the abundance of spam, we have to take a very zealous approach to forum registrations. If you are having trouble, make sure your account doesn’t look like a spammer. Answer the questions and CAPTCHAs correctly and avoid filling your profile with links or using very generic info that make you look like a spammer.

If you are still having trouble (account not activated, posts not working, etc.) feel free to contact us with your account name and other details of the problem so we can have a look at it and fix it.

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The Ninex.info Server Team is once again in need of your help.

The server is currently hosting Two projects: “UFO: Alien Invasion,” and “OpenXcom.”
To continue providing hosting services we will need to raise funds for the coming year, to pay for both the service and possibly some new hardware, or a new server computer altogether, especially if such services are to be provided free of advertisements on the project websites.

In addition to the three projects mentioned, we also host additional programming and development tools for the community, including a snapshot autobuilder for OpenXcom, and a buildbot for UFO: Alien Invasion.
We also welcome new projects that are freely available and preferably open-source in nature, and hope to continue to provide tools for the community to grow, but we will need your help and support to do so.

Please consider a donation for our cause, which you can give via the following link:

For European Users (EUR):

For USA Users (USD):

We sincerely thank you for any support you provide.

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Community spotlight

Despite the current engine limitations, some fans are already planning for the future and making mods for OpenXcom in our forums, which I’m sure most of you don’t check (shame on you :P) so I’d like to highlight some stuff here:

– New Terror Mission Map Blocks

Sick of the same old terror site? Want some variety in your life? Well Luke83 brings us  a pack of brand new map pieces to spice up your terror sites. They’ll even be playable in v0.4!

– Hostile gangs and civilians

Remember all those times you happily blasted civilians out of your way? What if they actually fought back? Luke83 poses a dangerous dilemma for X-Com players everywhere.

– Aliens inventory

What if you could see aliens’ inventory? It… probably wouldn’t be that interesting, but regardless, luke83 has whipped up some inventory graphics just in case.

– New weapon graphics

Not enough weapons for you? Here are some interesting variations made by Chiko.

– HWPs suggestions

Have HWPs gotten too cold and lifeless for you? Do you wish you could make them more personal, change their weapon slots, maybe give them legs? Well Chiko has got you covered.

Note that most of these are just concepts, but they do give us ideas on what to add in the future. What about you, got some interesting ideas? Have you made custom maps, sprites or other mods for X-Com and would like to see them carried over to OpenXcom? We’d love to see what you got and support any fellow modding communities out there, so spread the word and show us what you got. 🙂

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The road to 0.4

Ok I’ve been staring at this New Post box for hours now trying to come up with something to write about, looking back, going WOW THIS IS REALLY BORING, repeat. It’s really hard to top Nuke Pistol, you know?

But I don’t wanna keep you in the dark. After all, development is still happening. Honest! Look at all those… words! I’ve been getting rid of everything possible in the colossal almighty XcomRuleset.cpp and moving it out to external files. So no more this crap:

However, there’s no telling what I might be breaking as I do this! So, I’d like everyone to specially test the latest ruleset-based code, you know play the game as you would normally, and make sure there’s no regressions (things that worked before but now don’t). If you’d rather have some fun, you can always play with the ruleset and make your own nuke pistols or something… though I’m not held responsible for whatever crazy things you break then. 😛

So, what more do I have planned until v0.4? Well just finishing the rulesets, implement mission generation, maybe add in an Options GUI or something, and that’s it! I know I know, this doesn’t sound like much, but think about it… have you looked at the roadmap? We’re over half-way done! Most of the Geoscape, Basescape and Battlescape features are done! We just need to put in all the missing content, the weapons, the aliens, the missions, the scoring, etc. Which is probably still gonna take a while… but whatever, I’m excited! And you should be too!

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Breaking changes for Windows developers

Just a heads-up for all the OpenXcom Windows developers. I’ve restructured the project structure to support both x86 and x64 builds, and updated all the dependencies, so next time you pull the latest code it probably won’t compile until you update everything to match. Make sure to clear out all the old dependencies and built files (bin\, deps\ and obj\ folders) and get the new pre-built dependencies. They include the new SDL 1.2.15, SDL_mixer 1.2.12, SDL_gfx 2.0.23 and yaml-cpp 0.3.0, both for x86 and x64 systems. Everything seems to still work on my end, so let me know if you experience any trouble.

The Eclipse and CodeBlocks projects were also dropped from the codebase  since they were hardly used and changed based on people’s individual configurations. If you use these IDEs I suggest just making your own local project.

Developers for other platforms don’t need to worry as you probably aren’t affected.

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Cross-platform maintaining

If there’s anything I’ve proven to myself time and time again, is that I’m not good with Linux. Sure I can install it, use it, maybe play around with a bit if it’s got enough GUIs, but it all reeks of beginner. All I can do is pack an executable in a tarball when there’s a million people out there thet can make fancy packages and distributions and what-not.

So, I’m dropping my Linux testing and binary builds (I don’t think they ever worked anyways).  Instead, I’m welcoming all the Linux enthusiasts to help maintain OpenXcom on their favorite platform of choice. This isn’t a serious commitment, just make sure to test it regularly and let us know of any issues, or even help distribute it by making builds, creating fancy packages or spreading it among your repositories. If it’s good I’ll even place your builds on the Downloads page and credit you.

This doesn’t apply to just Linux though, OpenXcom is a cross-platform project and I love to see it running on new platforms. If you’re good at porting to some esoteric platform or just optimizing for lighter devices, don’t be shy, share your experiences on the forum and help spread OpenXcom everywhere!

Update: There is now a new section on the forums to post and discuss your own builds, and I will try to inform you of upcoming stable releases there. I also welcome you to contribute to the Compiling section on the wiki with instructions for your particular platform/IDE/etc.

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