Battlescape Resolutions

[Xenophobia]

I love what you guys are doing, I just wish it was further along! There are too many people that seem to be trying to remake X-Com but they always put in too much of their own unique stuff and it ends up ultimately ruining the product I am looking for, which is a pure X-Com remake.

If I as a big fan of the X-Com games could come here and tell you what I am expecting out of this project (and have been pleased by so far), it would be please don't make any changes that will change how the game plays. The only things that should be changes should be ease of access, such as support for higher resolutions and the ability to zoom in or out of the battlescape, saving soldiers weapons. Don't try and balance the game or add new shots or change the research or what not. Just give us a base, an updated bugfixed open-source original X-Com games and then people can mod their fine tunings and balance from there.

I love the original X-Com and the only thing I wish to see is support for higher resolutions. A battlescape interface that doesn't take up 1/4 of my screen and the ability to see more of the map on my screen at the same time.

[Daiky]

Hi,
In fact, increasing the resolution of the battlescape area is not *that* hard, but there is also the problem of the resolution of the GUI...

 The graphical user interface department is more SupSuper's area of expertise, but as I see it, the user interface components are not really ready for it. All GUI components, like buttons and textfields, are given an absolute, hardcoded position relative to the topleft of your screen. Made for resolution 320x200 only.

 If you would increase resolution just like that, you get all of your components somewhere in the topleft half of the screen.
To fix that these components should be positioned a bit more dynamically.
But that also only can work if the positions of buttons,etc are relative to a parent component that has some "alignment" setting.
For example, the battlescape interface has to be aligned in the bottom-center, leaving two gaps to the left and right of it. And the buttons/text/etc on it, should have relative positions from topleft of this interface-area instead of absolute positions from screen topleft.

I bet it's somewhere on SupSuper's unofficial todo-list, but certainly not very high priority
But yeah, it has been asked for before, so I guess openxcom will see this feature one day.

[Xenophobia]

Well I will say that whatever the guys over at "X-Com The Two Sides" have done they seem to have made the battlescape pretty much perfectly like I would imagine it. The only problem is they have made so many changes from the original with the UI and the rest of the game that I am just not interested in it.

[Volutar]

The only problem is they have made so many changes from the original with the UI and the rest of the game that I am just not interested in it.

Same here. I won't accept such radical UI change. Though mouse wheel for level changing is nice.

Also I must notice that Battlescape UI could be just scaled up proportionaly, to avoid pixelhunting with high mouse sensitivity when trying to hit into smaller UI buttons.

[hellblade]

I agree with Volutar

If you don't want to change the GUI, then just double / triple every square block of the gui i.e. turn 1 square into 4 / 9 squares.  And then respectively doubling / trippling the viewing area of the battlescape.  So you upgrade the resolution without changing much gameplay.

[SupSuper]

The whole resolution issue is pretty debatable. There's always two ways you can take on higher resolutions:

Resize the view area

This keeps all the original graphics in the original format, and has the benefit of providing a much wider view than the original resolution could provide. The problem is, like Daiky mentioned, it takes a whole lot more interface work to make everything fit dynamically with just an increased view. And if it's kept consistently across screens, it doesn't have much of a benefit outside of the Battlescape, Geoscape/Basescape would become largely empty (you can see this in UFO2000). It also tends to make everything "smaller" (specially if you're in full-screen) since the original size is preserved, so sprites look smaller the higher the resolution gets.

Resize everything

This is the approach modern games take. Everything stays the same but the higher the resolution, the higher the size so the higher the detail. Obviously this doesn't work for OpenXcom since we just have the same small original graphics, but it does make everything easier to see. It's also much easier to implement, just resize the whole screen, maybe even throw in some fancy scalers. The downside is you stay stuck to the "original resolution", everything just gets bigger and pixelier.


There's probably people that like it one way or the other, or even both! I'll try to make OpenXcom support both sides eventually.

[hellblade]

Well I will say that whatever the guys over at "X-Com The Two Sides" have done they seem to have made the battlescape pretty much perfectly like I would imagine it.

Absolutely agree.  But I heard they are not going to use the graphics due to copyright issues or something.  Once they're finished they'll replace it with newly drawn graphics.  What a complete waste!!!  You think we could scavenge their graphics before they're in the dumpster?   Without breaking any laws?

[Smegma]

I would like one change: The ability to see soldier stats when equipping a craft and the ability to equip a craft while examining the soldier stats. This is a design flaw in my opinion and it makes no sense not to combine those two screens.

[Daiky]

I would like one change: The ability to see soldier stats when equipping a craft and the ability to equip a craft while examining the soldier stats. This is a design flaw in my opinion and it makes no sense not to combine those two screens.

I guess you mean "when equipping a soldier", and not "when equipping a craft" ?

[Smegma]

I would like one change: The ability to see soldier stats when equipping a craft and the ability to equip a craft while examining the soldier stats. This is a design flaw in my opinion and it makes no sense not to combine those two screens.

I guess you mean "when equipping a soldier", and not "when equipping a craft" ?

When you enter the "equip craft" menu, you can choose what weapons to mount on the craft, the soldiers to be transported, the equipment to be transported, and the armor suits that the soldiers can have. In the soldier's menu, you can view their statistics, equip them with armor suits and rename the soldiers.

The most annoying thing about strategically equipping a craft with soldiers is that you can't view their stats. In order to find that out, you have got to switch between the menus or rename the soldiers to a barcode name. It's very simple to code, given that the button objects already exist.

Also, since this is a source code, why not add the music that came with the playstation version of the game. It's only a million times more immersive. Or at least give the users the option to choose between the 'old' music and the 'new' one. If no one has it, I can upload it somewhere. How's that sound?

[Daiky]

Ok, I get it now.

I always use the playstation music in openxcom, just put the mp3s  in the music folder and name them properly.

The music is copyrighted, although xcomufo.com is hosting it already for download, so don't bother uploading them


edit: I removed the direct link to the page, just search and you will find.

[BlastHardcheese]

So you want it going from this:


To this?


Would look awesome in fullscreen. Slightly smaller HUD would be better though...

[Daiky]

I like your soldier name 

Michal once posted this screen as an idea for hi-res screen battlescape:

(note that the GUI actually scales with it, which makes sense)

[Xenophobia]

YES!

Either one of those actually would be so amazing. The UI size honestly doesn't bother me too much, though admittedly I like the one where it scales just because you can see more of the screen. But the UI is not a dealbreaker as either of those pictures would be an improvement imo. When playing the old X-Com the old resolution kind of is, though.

Stats on the equip screen make sense. But again, that is just a UI ease of access thing. I wouldn't want to game changed, but just be able to have the option to make it "easier to play".

Hell maybe just make these things optional? That way you still have the original game for those that want it, but these improvements would be available.

Just so long as you don't change the gameplay and keep it to UI (and don't change the UI like UFO:TTS did) it would be perfect.

Editedit:

Also, if you can make the resolution higher so that I can enjoy playing x-com, I will test the crap out of it for you. Need anything else? You want a coffee from down the street? I am yours.

[R]

On a relevant topic of resolutions and such:  I take it that after v1.0 we will start implementing Higher resolutions.  If so, the menus will have to edited as well. 

Do we plan to make any changes to the menus itself? Or will everything stay the same just polished to hell (or heaven in this case) and back?