[OXCE] Why was my suggestion rejected?

[Meridian]

Hi all,

every now and then, ideas and suggestions appear that I reject right away.

I don't reject these ideas, because I don't like them or because I don't like you.
On the contrary, I have implemented (or merged) features I (personally) don't like; and also for people I'm not best friends with.

The rejection comes from the fact that they are not in scope of this project (OXCE).
You can read more about the project scope here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5251.0.html

I'd like to explain a bit more, what these reasons are (and give a few examples), so that I can just point to this post, whenever I reject something.
Roughly, there are 4 categories:

1. Changing game experience

OpenXcom (and OXCE) has an ambition to provide the original xcom experience.
Of course, you could say there are many small exceptions already, but there are no big exceptions, and I won't be the first to make one.

Don't ask for features like:
- getting rid of palettes and support true colors
- bringing UI to FullHD era (and have a complete basescape UI in one screen or something like that)
- and so on...

OpenXcom is a 320x200x8 game and anything that cannot fit into that won't be done.
So please don't ask for "just one more button above Intercept button on the Geoscape", you're wasting your time.

2. Changing high-level game concepts/models

OpenXcom is not a generic game engine (it's not Unreal Engine or anything like that).
The advantage is that modding is VERY EASY (relatively speaking) and can be done practically by anyone.
The disadvantage is that highest-level game framework is fixed.

Many concepts are so fundamental that they can't be changed without changing practically everything.
These are actually hardest to understand for an amateur, and sometimes sound absurd, but that doesn't change how things are.

Examples:
- there are only 3 factions in a battle and adding even 1 more (or even only changing the behavior of the existing 3) means changing everything
- scientists/engineers "don't exist individually", they can't defend the base (and vice versa soldiers can't help with research no matter how smart they are)
- HWPs "don't exist individually", they can't gain experience no matter how nicely you ask
- armors "don't exist individually", soldiers are not actually wearing their own piece of armor... they just know what type of armor they are wearing
(with the exception of left/right/rear/front/bottom armor values that are temporarily tracked during (a single) battle, the remaining 95% of armor attributes cannot vary from soldier to soldier wearing the same armor type)
- weapons/items "don't exist individually", you cannot paint your favourite soldier's gun yellow, and keep other soldier's guns (of the same type) blue
(for same reason, the weapons cannot stay partially loaded across multiple battles)

There's of course much more, I just wanted to show you the game from a different perspective.
Things you know from real world don't work in the game until implemented... and we implemented only what was necessary (or thought would be nice to have).

PS: nobody made a Matrix yet, game always has a simplified model of reality
PPS: past decisions impact future options (if you want to remain backwards-compatible... which I do)

3. Changing high-level game mechanics/laws

The game mechanics are complex and complicated!
How many of you knew the game actually has a 3D engine below the 2D battlescape?

I know many hate the "No line of fire" message, I hate it too!
That doesn't mean we should change it... the game was designed and implemented with particular "laws of physics" (illustratively speaking) and they are correct in the game's world,
even if they don't 100% match the ideal laws. Btw. most of the time the game IS right. Only a small percentage of your daily rage-quits are caused by imperfect laws of physics.

Making "laws of physics" moddable to a degree is feasible, but highly impractical... the most probable outcome would be buggy, inconsistent and unmaintainable code.

Examples:
 - Battlescape: gravity, smoke, lines of sight/fire, reaction fire, pathfinding, high-level AI model, ...
(e.g. don't ask for "shooting from eye level")
 - Geoscape: various event triggers, event frequency...
(e.g. don't ask for Research completion checks every 5 seconds (instead of once a day); weather simulation; or geoscape time not stopping during active dogfights)

4. Too invasive changes

This point actually includes all previous points, but there are other things too.

The goal of OpenXcom Extended -- as the name says -- is to extend, not to rewrite.
I want to keep merging OXC features, and for that we need to be compatible at least on the highest level.
So changes that would make merging impossible are just not going to happen.

Example:
- adding multiplayer support


PS: even if your suggestion doesn't fall into any of the categories above (and thus is not automatically rejected), I have personal priorities and tastes and some ideas will just stay on the waiting list forever...