OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Offtopic => Topic started by: the_third_curry on July 04, 2014, 06:37:26 am
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A quick look at the links on the OpenXcom front page reveals that a lot of Xcom fan projects have gone MIA or were flat out cancelled over the years, many of them before making any significant progress. However, OpenXcom, after years of development, hit 1.0 (and already had dozens of mods while it was still on 0.9) and is now heading to TftD. What do you think has allowed OpenXcom to go the distance?
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It's hard to say, really. I don't think anybody could say exactly.
I'm just glad we have such dedicated devs and a thriving community, and that this project has made so much progress.
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From my point of view, couple of things helped:
1) We created website and forum very soon. As far i remember, i've contacted SupSuper about month after he released code on sourceforge. That way community has been gathering since the beggining.
2) SupSuper attitude towards other developers - he quickly granted write access to repo to Daiky and Warboy. That way they could work on battlescape without delays (reviewing patches, merging them, etc).
3) Nightly builds - releasing new version took much time (as in other such projects), but nightly builds allowed community to track and test recent development. So community had something do discuss, experiment with, etc.
4) Scope of this project - instead of remaking whole game, with 3d engine and arts, SupSuper decided to reimplement only game engine. There are many programmers in FOSS community, but not many artists. Thankfuly OpenXcom haven't needed them. So programmers could see effect of their work immediately.
And most important point:
5) SupSuper - he managed to keep engagement in this project for so many years. There are many FOSS game leaders, which are very active at the beggining, but they are loosing it quite fast. So, big kudos for SupSuper !
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I would also point at the attempt to recreate the original, where-as all of the others I saw tried to "update" the game out of the box.
This meant that OXC had very clear goals which certainly helps when you have people join in, because they can all find out exactly what the game needs to do rather than "well, yeah, we were thinking of some sort of air-to-air combat"...
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The choice of project scope was critical IMO. Going straight for the original game files was certainly a huge amount of work in reverse-engineering, but then it would be no ripping, so the project could proceed and progress "forever".
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3 "things":
SupSuper for starting
Daiky for continuing
Warboy for finishing
honorable mention:
Community for supporting
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4) Scope of this project - instead of remaking whole game, with 3d engine and arts, SupSuper decided to reimplement only game engine. There are many programmers in FOSS community, but not many artists. Thankfuly OpenXcom haven't needed them. So programmers could see effect of their work immediately.
It's especially important because graphics, animation, sounds and music are a critical part of the games atmosphere.
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Everyone else has nailed it:
1.) XCOM itself was a big sell. It attracts people in a way that "open source remake of random game nobody's ever heard of" doesn't.
2.) Limited Project scope -- no trying to redo it in 3D or to fight from the alien side or redraw everything in high resolution. Just simple vanilla XCOM -- and that's hard enough -- a lot of projects only get to the geoscape and then sputter out, much less any kind of battlescape.
3.) Project management was truly open source -- as others have said earlier in the thread - there's been a succession of 'big time' contributors to the code base; along with a bunch of smaller time contributors, allowing progress to be made on a somewhat steady basis over the years.
4.) Steady drip drip of nightlies (Precompiled binaries) to enable those of us who can't code to help bugtest or see if the latest new trick works (or doesn't). A lot of open source projects forget about this part; I think because the larger open source community on the internet views having to compile code yourself as a rite of passage -- "becoming leet".
5.) A decent modding community, with a lot of changes to the code being made (within reason) to cater to modders; like the recent git push:
Warboy, Sat Jul 5 19:26:56 2014
add item limit
configurable in craft rules, does not limit base defenses.
why you people want this is beyond me.
:P
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Given there have been literally dozens of remakes, reboots, reimaginings, reinspirations, rewhatever before us, I'd have to say there was a lot of luck involved. :P But this is probably the biggest factor:
2.) Limited Project scope -- no trying to redo it in 3D or to fight from the alien side or redraw everything in high resolution. Just simple vanilla XCOM -- and that's hard enough -- a lot of projects only get to the geoscape and then sputter out, much less any kind of battlescape.
Most projects immediately wanna make X-COM but better (can you blame them? have you seen the Suggestions forum? ;)). But making X-COM alone is a huge ordeal, much less the implication that you can totally make a much better X-COM with all your grand ideas and it's gonna be so great you guys!!! So in the end you either end up with:
- An abandoned game that looked quite promising but never made it to the finish line.
- A released game that falls short of its promises and ends up fading into obscurity as fans cry once more "you just can't beat the original" and go back to vanilla. :P
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- A released game that falls short of its promises and ends up fading into obscurity as fans cry once more "you just can't beat the original" and go back to vanilla. :P
i say you can beat the original.. you did it!
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i say you can beat the original.. you did it!
Sure !
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Given there have been literally dozens of remakes, reboots, reimaginings, reinspirations, rewhatever before us, I'd have to say there was a lot of luck involved. :P But this is probably the biggest factor:
Most projects immediately wanna make X-COM but better (can you blame them? have you seen the Suggestions forum? ;)).
This.
I was involved with UFO2000 a few years ago and to me the whole project went down after it was decided not to use the original files as default but instead make up all new sprites, weapons, etc., to prevent any future copyright issues. All of the sudden it stopped being XCOM and just turned into a multiplayer turn based game.
Plus, everyone had their own ideas of what would be just awesome to add to the game: flamethrowers, multiple rocket launchers, Magnum 44s, etc and you had a ton of weaponsets that was very difficult to balance.
Truth is, most ideas being tossed into the Suggestions subforum are great for mods but should not to be included in the build and should always be optional. Interface tweaks are usually fine but the moment you start adding new maps, weapons, units, missions, etc., you are moving away from the original game. And that causes more people to go rather than attract more people.
And I feel that even the current options available should be reduced, or at least, there should be a limit. Because when you get to a point where you have 100 options no one has time to try them all, and even if you try them all, you'll most likely find out that they aren't balanced against one another. Or, in other words, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).
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And I feel that even the current options available should be reduced, or at least, there should be a limit. Because when you get to a point where you have 100 options no one has time to try them all, and even if you try them all, you'll most likely find out that they aren't balanced against one another. Or, in other words, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).
As of now, there are 549,755,813,888 ways to play Openxcom judging by the Advanced options (should have put that number in the trailer.) I think that the options are more or less done for now, all of the recent additions (the new features brought in from XcomUtil and UFO Extender) are listed in the mod section instead of as options.
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As of now, there are 549,755,813,888 ways to play Openxcom judging by the Advanced options (should have put that number in the trailer.) I think that the options are more or less done for now, all of the recent additions (the new features brought in from XcomUtil and UFO Extender) are listed in the mod section instead of as options.
Please don't put that number in the trailer.
For me as a player that number is meaningless and scary - I will never play the game 549 billion times to try all of them, nor I would ever try to do that, the same way that I don't try all of the 1000 different kinds of toothpaste in a supermarket.
Just keep this in mind: having too many choices is counterproductive and will move away more players than attracting new ones. Because with 549 billion possible combinations it's impossible for anyone to make a conscious choice and deciding about options becomes meaningless, because each additional option you choose dilutes the effect of the previous one.
I'll repeat what I said above: choose 20-30 of the best options to be included and move all the rest to mods.
Look at the Enemy Unknown 2012 remake and its Second Wave where there are only 16 options available, or look at Civilization 5 where the starting options are 10-12. This isn't a flaw on Firaxis thinking but quite the opposite - a good developer knows that the more options you have the less meaningful they become.
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Just keep this in mind: having too many choices is counterproductive and will move away more players than attracting new ones.
Hmmm... I don't know.
Did you ever play Worms 2? Did you ever try customising it? I loved every aspect of tweaking the gameplay. What happened when I bought the Worms Armageddon - you can pick power 1-5. meh. Being able to decided how much spread from the minigun, and how many bullets it contained made for some interesting battles.
At the same time, yes, you can get lost in the customisation, and spend longer tweaking than playing.
But just because there's a large number of available options, doesn't mean you have to - or even should - play them all.
I would never turn Ironman mode on, and argue that that can be mimic'd outside of the game without needing to be coded in; but I won't knock the game for having it.
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are you talking about options or mods?
there are GUI/sound/technical options and options that change gameplay
unfortunately in OXC its all a bit mixed up
e.g. there are not gameplay relevant options mixed with gameplay relevant ones
like:
play intro
autosave
mousewheel speed/increase
infoscreens
invert drag scrolling
inventory stats
enhanced soldier sprites
smoth bullet camera
confirm fire mode
supress panic message for aliens
disable autoequip
skip next turn
save pre primed grenades
...
[some only slightly game play releavant options]
realistic globe lighting
field promotions
building queue
...
if you get rid move these options somewhere else there is not that much left in regard to options
and if you talk about mods getting rid of existing possibilities for modder is just stupid
if there are 300 mods out there +30 (binary) options you have 2187250724783011924372502227117621365353169430893212436425770606409952999199375923223513177023053824 options to play a game
are you now scared more?
anyone should see that creating random numbers that way is not helpful
i can agree that the option/medscreen needs an overhaul .. not sure whats the best way to do it especially with the limited screen space have
there are perhaps 10 game play relevant options
alien weapon self-destruct
psi strength improvement (never tried it)
override LOF
instant grenades
ufo extender accuracy
sneaky AI (i plan to test it some day)
TFTD manufacture rules
psi strength evaluation
storage limits for recovered items
so there is options for
GUI/Information (inventory stats)
convenience (confirm fire mode, build queue, autoend battle)
slightly gameplay relevant (globe lighting, alien bleeding, force craft launch)
gameplay relevant (TFTD damage, instant grenades, override LOF)
game play-changer (extender accuracy, sneaky ai, ...)
at least a better ordering of the options according to relevance is doable.. so now we have to agree what option goes where that should be easy ... HAHA ;D
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are you talking about options or mods?
Options. There's no limit to mods since it's up to the players to choose and install them. :D
there are GUI/sound/technical options and options that change gameplay
unfortunately in OXC its all a bit mixed up
This is my experience as well with the options under Advanced button.
e.g. there are not gameplay relevant options mixed with gameplay relevant ones
like:
play intro
autosave
mousewheel speed/increase
infoscreens
invert drag scrolling
inventory stats
enhanced soldier sprites
smoth bullet camera
confirm fire mode
supress panic message for aliens
disable autoequip
skip next turn
save pre primed grenades
...
if you get rid move these options somewhere else there is not that much left in regard to options
Those should be kept as long as they don't affect gameplay. But stuff like:
* Savescumming
* Aggressive Retaliation
* Custom initial base
* Force Craft Launch
* Sneaky AI
* Etc.
These all change the gameplay, sometimes very drastically.
i can agree that the option/medscreen needs an overhaul .. not sure whats the best way to do it especially with the limited screen space have
there are perhaps 10 game play relevant options
alien weapon self-destruct
psi strength improvement (never tried it)
override LOF
instant grenades
ufo extender accuracy
sneaky AI (i plan to test it some day)
TFTD manufacture rules
psi strength evaluation
storage limits for recovered items
so there is options for
GUI/Information (inventory stats)
convenience (confirm fire mode, build queue, autoend battle)
slightly gameplay relevant (globe lighting, alien bleeding, force craft launch)
gameplay relevant (TFTD damage, instant grenades, override LOF)
game play-changer (extender accuracy, sneaky ai, ...)
at least a better ordering of the options according to relevance is doable.. so now we have to agree what option goes where that should be easy ... HAHA ;D
Your 10 relevant gameplay options are a nice attempt :)
I think that a nice idea to decide might be to just call for a community vote for choosing the 10-15 gameplay options that should be included using something like https://doodle.com/ (https://doodle.com/). You list all of the options there and set it so that you can only vote in 10. Afterwards you get the 10 most voted by the community, keep/add them and move the rest to mods.
I mean, for instance there is the Custom Initial Base option, but then the game comes included with XComUtil's Starting Defensive Base, Improved Starting Defensive Base and Starting Improved Base under Mods (which doesn't make much sense for a game to have Mods already included when it's released). Do we need 4 different types of starting base included in the release build?
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I mean, for instance there is the Custom Initial Base option, but then the game comes included with XComUtil's Starting Defensive Base, Improved Starting Defensive Base and Starting Improved Base under Mods (which doesn't make much sense for a game to have Mods already included when it's released). Do we need 4 different types of starting base included in the release build?
Heh, when I wrote the custom start base code, the other options didn't exist. I did wonder if it's worth leaving in, but Warboy and SupSuper told me it was quite a popular feature.
That said, rather than having them as seperate options, it could be made neater by having a "Starting Base" option which you pick from "Original", "XCU Defensive", "Improved Defensive", and "Custom"
That way, you retain all the functionality, but not as many "options" ;)
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Moving some options to mods is interesting idea, it will allow for moder define precise how game should work. Many mods have some disclaimers like "best work with options ...". Even if end player loose some option he can always become moder and enable it himself.
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I thought the absurdly large number in the trailer would be rather humorous than scary, I mean it's a pretty typical joke to insert in a game ad (or pretty much any ad today).
Anyway, I do like the idea of moving gameplay options to mods. There are two reasons for this:
1) It means more features will become moddable by moving the code to the ruleset.
2) As a modder, you will be able to enforce the use of some gameplay options with your mod if you feel it's necessary. For example, Piratez are build along the idea of capturing live "aliens" and UFO Extender Accuracy, yet there's no way to ensure the player chooses these options. It's not about forcing the player to play the game as they want, but because reading several lines on which settings should be enabled seems to be way beyond the capabilities of an average user. :P
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putting option in mods has disadvantages like:
how do you manage if one mods enable an option and another disables it
do i have to guess whats actual my game behaviour?
if i look at the current options i do not see an obvious candidate that says "hey i want to be a mod instead of an option"
there are some things you can put in a mod if you really want to like
tftd manufacture rule (a new manufacture property)
live alien sale (SellCost for live alien-item !=0)
explosion height...
others like sneaky ai, tftd damage formula are 100% not a mod
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putting option in mods has disadvantages like:
how do you manage if one mods enable an option and another disables it
do i have to guess whats actual my game behaviour?
I guess it's the same as with other conflicts between mods... You just need to control it. There's not much that can be done here. But if it's modded, it'll also be less binary I guess. For example UFO Extender Accuracy: in one "mod" (I mean vanilla), accuracy drop for auto fire is 0, while in another (UFO Extender Accuracy) it's... well, whatever the value is; but there would probably be more values possible.
if i look at the current options i do not see an obvious candidate that says "hey i want to be a mod instead of an option"
I think there are some, though it's also a matter of taste.
there are some things you can put in a mod if you really want to like
tftd manufacture rule (a new manufacture property)
live alien sale (SellCost for live alien-item !=0)
explosion height...
others like sneaky ai, tftd damage formula are 100% not a mod
Agreed!
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I guess everyone should write his own options and compile his own sourcecode. Also everyone should have his own mods that are dependent on his personal version of X-Com and won't work with anyone else's.
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and anyone should make stupid comments to avoid determining reasonable solutions
Edit: i admit perhaps here in "why is openxcom great"-thread is the wrong place for such
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As Solarius suggested, the "549,755,813,888 ways to play Openxcom" was a jab at the sort of silly, excessive statistics that get thrown around in commercials and ads. For Enemy Unknown, Firaxis could easily have tallied up their 4 difficulty levels, ironman mode, and 12 Second Wave options and legitimately claimed that there are 131,072 ways to play Enemy Unknown. It is true, but it's meaningless - who's going to play a game that many times? I don't find a stat like that intimidating though, it's just ridiculous.
While the options vs. mods issue may merit further discussion, it's more of a matter-of -onvenience issue at this point than a playability issue. Could the options stand to be cleaned up and reorganized some - probably, but everyone would have their own ideas about how it should be done (as this topic is starting to demonstrate.)
Hobbes, I don't think your fear of overloading the player is baseless, but I'd imagine most new players are probably going to either go with just the vanilla settings until they learn the game or ask around the forum for recommendations. While the many options and modibility are selling points of Openxcom, the game itself doesn't make any effort to push you toward changing the default options. To me, the advance options and mods are something like Second Wave, they're there to give some more variety and customization for people who have experienced vanilla.
i admit perhaps here in "why is openxcom great"-thread is the wrong place for such
Yeah, this thread is derailing pretty badly.
To tie it back into the topic, I'd say that the fact that we're debating the layout of the options menu as one of the bigger issues of the game is a testimony to the success of Openxcom. Option layout preferences are a pretty big step down from base disjoint bug and 80-item limit.
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To tie it back into the topic, I'd say that the fact that we're debating the layout of the options menu as one of the bigger issues of the game is a testimony to the success of Openxcom. Option layout preferences are a pretty big step down from base disjoint bug and 80-item limit.
Agreed. I'd never expected to be going back to the OG so soon after getting completely hooked on the remake since it came out, even less be modding it.
To me evaluating a project is not a matter of answering the question 'why is it successful?' but rather, 'how it will be successful in the future?' But that's another issue that might deserve another discussion :)
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The options/mods/enhancements debate is a huge prickly issue with the dev team right now and we're internally discussing what to do about it.
Long story short, while OpenXcom was founded on vanillaness, supporting options was inevitable given the history of the original X-COM (Xcomutil/Extender/MapEdit/etc). However they were never given that much thought, given the focus was getting X-COM done. But now with 1.0 over and the huge community increase, they've become more of a development nightmare and source of community attrition. For every 1 person that's happy with the way things are there's 10 that have got their own differing conflicting opinions. Things will have to change. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
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Things will have to change. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
One question that might help you guys is precisely to determine: what is your next goal after 1.0? And something else to consider: all projects have an end.
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The options/mods/enhancements debate is a huge prickly issue with the dev team right now and we're internally discussing what to do about it.
Long story short, while OpenXcom was founded on vanillaness, supporting options was inevitable given the history of the original X-COM (Xcomutil/Extender/MapEdit/etc). However they were never given that much thought, given the focus was getting X-COM done. But now with 1.0 over and the huge community increase, they've become more of a development nightmare and source of community attrition. For every 1 person that's happy with the way things are there's 10 that have got their own differing conflicting opinions. Things will have to change. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
So, we're at point of diverging into different versions of OpenXcom...
It creates a question of what to do when one wants to use options created by different people.
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Hmmm... I don't know.
Did you ever play Worms 2? Did you ever try customising it? I loved every aspect of tweaking the gameplay. What happened when I bought the Worms Armageddon - you can pick power 1-5. meh. Being able to decided how much spread from the minigun, and how many bullets it contained made for some interesting battles.
At the same time, yes, you can get lost in the customisation, and spend longer tweaking than playing.
But just because there's a large number of available options, doesn't mean you have to - or even should - play them all.
I would never turn Ironman mode on, and argue that that can be mimic'd outside of the game without needing to be coded in; but I won't knock the game for having it.
Yeah, I think the important part of this is that you have to be careful how you present the choices to players so as not to overwhelm them. OpenXcom has been good about this.
It might be better if we categorised the advanced options and consolidated them a bit at some point, but at least the complications are properly hidden away. :)
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Hobbes after reading your post, I got this awful feeling inside. I don't want to know the answer to that question. It's too soon to ask! Feels like watching the end of an awesome movie, or when it was time to leave the amusement park, a feeling I haven't felt since I was little.