I think I got overambitious with this version, I tried to put in everything I wanted to and still didn’t have enough time for everything… oh well, there’s always next time. As usual, remember to get rid of any old versions and saves (they won’t work!) and read the Wiki. Screenshots and builds for other platforms will come later.

New features:

• Basescape:
  • Research screens.
  • Manufacture screens.
  • Soldier improved stats.
  • Tank equipping.
  • Armor equipping.
  • Wound recovery.
• Geoscape:
  • New globe shading.
  • Craft pathfinding now uses great circles (more accurate).
  • New radar detection formula (more accurate).
  • Terror sites.
  • UFOs of all sizes.
  • Tied research requirements to everything.
  • UFOs in dogfights fight back.
• Battlescape:
  • Abort screen.
  • Debriefing screen.
  • Battlescape save game.
  • Panicking units.
  • Skill increase and promotions.
  • Ranged based accuracy is now optional (see UFO Extender for details on Ranged Based Accuracy).
  • Minimap.
  • Flying units.
  • Grav lifts.
  • Optional pathfinding preview.
  • Medikits.
  • Laser weapons.
  • Large units.
  • Motion scanner.
  • Alien deployment rules.
  • AI taking cover & throwing grenades.
  • Damage to items.
  • Mind probe.
  • Stun rod.
  • Show/hide battlescape layers button.
  • Rough battlescape artefacts salvaging functionality.
  • Added civilians.
  • Added support for skyranger landing on non 0-level.
  • Added support for multiple craft/ufo maps.
  • Psi Amp.
  • Added support for more alien races.
  • Load Game button.
• External rulesets.
• Added entries for most entities in the game.
• New Battle screen.
• Options screen.
• Startup logging.
• Game icon and logo.
• 64-bit version.
• Support for multiple data folders.
• Support for XDG specification.
• Support for user soldier name pools.
• Various new options (see docs).
• Debug mode.

Bugfixes:

• Two duplicating ammo bugs.
• Wrong rocket launcher hand sprite.
• “Not enough time units” during alien turn.
• Bug where alien weapons are given to the soldiers.
• Target mode is canceled when switching unit.
• Reserve time unit button is reset when starting new turn.
• Minor drawing glitch visible when walking down the skyranger ramp.
• Geoscape sidebar didn’t show up on first start on some languages.
• Bug with line of sight inside UFOs along diagonal walls.
• Bug with pathfinding inside UFOs along diagonal walls.
• Aliens not black when in undiscovered terrain.
• Issue with turn and shoot.
• Too many reaction fires from autoshot (each shot had a chance of a reaction shot which is wrong).
• Unit selection arrow showed up during alien turn.
• Double sliding door didn’t open when walking diagonally.
• Energy usage not calculated correctly.
• Missing text in Monthly Report.
• Ground items showing up in soldier’s hands.
• Improved interface performance.
• Bug with seeing through undiscovered floors.
• Updated the Rank Bonus values used to calculate soldier “value”.
• Apply changes to the base / soldier name when user presses OK.
• Incorrect globe zoom levels.
• Incorrect UI strings.
• Incorrect colors in Battlescape UI.
• Crash when starting mission on back side of globe.
• Endless number of soldiers in Skyranger.
• Clicking visible enemy units clicks other stuff too.
• Fixed lazy ground inventory arrangement.
• Aliens do not suffer from fatal wounds anymore.
• Improved straight line pathfinding in battlescape.
• Fixed unable to hit unit on stairs.
• Fixed drawing hidden object’s outlines.
• Fixed pistol aiming position.
• Fixed HWP rank image.
• Fixed no LOF error issues.
• Fixed issue where unit stopped walking when not seeing new alien units.
• Fixed alien reaction shots costing no TUs.
• Camera centers on selected unit on battlescape start.
• Fixed battlescape kill counter not working.
• Fix cursor hiding and scrolling during AI turn
• Fix camera scrolling into dark infinite and beyond
• Fix unit FOV calculated before AI reaction shot.
• Fixed “alien floating error”.
• Fixed walking under skyranger.
• Fixed firing XP from explosive ammo.
• Fixed active weapon display.
• Fixed issue with dead alien count.
• Fixed autoshot of HE ammo issue.
• Save turn number in savegame.
• Fixed free autoshot ammo.
• Fixed wrong UI colors.
• Updated translations.
• Fixed craft loading bug.
• Fixed crash with invalid savegames.
• Fixed savegame list not being sorted.
• Game no longer crashes if no sound device is available.
• Crafts that are outside of base no longer show in base view.
• Fixed globe not redrawing properly sometimes.
• Fixed various data loading bugs.
• Sell screen now decreases item quantity.
• Fixed craft pathing bugs.
• Fixed bug in command-line parameters.
• Various performance improvements.
• Added fallback if no soldier name pools are available.
• Fixed radar detection.
• Fixed some bugs in globe.
• Fixed inventory crash with certain armor types.
• Fixed crash with loading DOS sounds.
• Fixed battlescape buttons responding to wrong mouse button.
• Improved mouse click handling.
• Fixed Language dialog having wrong height.
• Game no longer crashes if language isn’t found.
• Game no longer crashes if User directory is unavailable.
• Game now shows an error if no languages are available.
• Fixed various bugs with text strings not fitting.
• Fixed text caret not always aligning properly.
• Fixed crash with UI buttons.
• Fixed Intercept string not always showing correct stats.
• Fixed colors in Target Info and Items Arriving windows.
• Fixed various savegame bugs.

Known Issues:

• There’s no Geoscape AI, alien spawning is completely random.
• UFOpaedia is incomplete and not tied to research.
• Dogfights are missing functionality.
• Not every ingame item is implemented yet.
• Geoscape sidebar isn’t always translated.

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.

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.

Update: April fools! (as if you couldn’t tell) Click here for the original post. Continue reading →

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.

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.

Crisis averted. Also courtesy of Ufopaedia.org, I’ve moved all our documentation to a nice and friendly wiki, so it’s easier for everyone to access and ignore all in one place! And you can add your own helpful information like compiling on obscure platforms and what not. If you’ve got any feedback about it, let me know.