Messages

1

Offtopic / Re: New X-COM-like game: Terran Shield

« on: July 09, 2019, 12:09:24 am »

Looks like it could be quite cool.  I look forward to seeing how it develops. 

Minor quibble on the website: The title of the webpage seems to be just "home" .. would look a little more professional if someone tweaks that. 

2

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: QOL Advanced Option Toggle: Default on-site transport to "Patrol".

« on: June 05, 2019, 02:12:51 am »

Yeah, actually, this is a suggestion I'd like to put my vote behind too.  Sometimes your landing-craft gets there, and you want to wait for daylight before launching the attack. 

Also, often the interceptor will get to a landed craft first.  So you want it to patrol, and immediately attack the UFO, should it attempt to take-off.

So really, when you reach a craft that's on the ground, rather than just having the options to "attack" and "return to base", a third option to "patrol" would be incredibly useful -- for both landing craft, and interceptors.

3

Open Feedback / Re: saucer repair time

« on: June 21, 2018, 03:59:38 am »

Am I the only one to see this as a bug ?

One thing to remember about OpenXCom is that it tries to replicate the experience of the original XCOM/UFO game as much as possible.  So repair times on the plane should take as long as they did in the original game.  If you want to deviate from that, that's when you'll need to mod the game, or tweak its rules.  (both of which are easy to do.)

Personally, I like the way something could be damaged to a degree where it really is going be quicker to build a whole new one than it is to repair it.  Things are bent, parts are damaged, other parts may have taken on shock/heat/etc damage.  If a craft has been badly shot-up, I can bet parts of the airframe will have to be taken apart, repaired, straightened, patched, etc .. then you put it together again, test it .. oh crap, some other part isn't working as it should .. take that out, discover damage you didn't expect .. troubleshoot, repair, test, repeat ..  ..yes, it could take a very long time.

4

Troubleshooting / Re: Mac nightly (latest-currently blanking on build #) doesn't start...

« on: November 09, 2017, 03:03:44 am »

Hmmm.. As luck would have it, I've just done a clean High Sierra MacOS install here.  (So am on 10.13.1 now.)  Thought this would be a good chance to see how easy it is to run the nightlies.  Note: the procedure below was exactly the same when I ran OpenXCom on MacOS 10.12 Sierra.

First one I tried was a nightly I grabbed back in 2016 (around February 2016, according to file dates) .. copied into my user Applications folder, and then did all the prep that I believe has to be done for all the nightlies (at least, for the binary versions -- I'm not sure if the App Builds have some of this self-contained):
Installed Home Brew from their website .. ran the brew install commands from here to get all the SDL components installed ("here" being where you get to after going to the OpenXCom site -> Downloads -> Nightlies -> Apple -> Binary Builds).

So from there I was able to run my old early 2016 binary build by opening the Terminal, cd Applications, cd {your-game-folder}, ./openxcom to run it. ..but because SDL GFX is now a more recent version I got an error "Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libSDL_gfx.13.dylib .. so I get around that by cd-ing to /usr/local/lib/ and typing "cp libSDL_gfx.15.dylib libSDL_gfx.13.dylib" .. and then it works!   (With this old version I'd already copied my Steam XCOM game files into the UFO folder.)

But what we really want is the latest nightly.  Unfortunately the zip, tar, and bz2 binary links from OpenXCom site -> Downloads -> Nightlies -> Apple -> Binary Builds don't seem to work right now, so I went for the app version (OpenXCom site -> Downloads -> Nightlies -> Apple -> App Builds) .. downloaded that, opened the disk-image, copied the app to the Applications folder I made in my home folder, right-click on it and "show package contents" and go into Contents -> Resources -> UFO and dump the contents of my Steam-installed XCOM folder into there.  Jump back out to the main app icon, double-click on it and it all works beautifully.  Wohoo!

(Oh, before running this newer build, I did go into ~/Library/Application Support/ and deleted the OpenXcom folder, because that was the preferences and saves from my early 2016 build .. always good to start clean.)

So, having the latest nightly app build working, I decided to also try going to the Forums -> OpenXCom Extended+ -> OXCE+ for MacOS .. grabbed the 2017-10-10-OXCEPlus-3.9c.dmg file and installed that.  Same deal as the nightly .dmg file: copy it to the apps folder in my home folder, right-click and "show package contents", Contents -> Resources -> UFO and dump the contents of my Steam XCOM folder there.  Jump back out to the main icon, double click and that works too.  (Note: deleted the Library -> Applications Support -> OpenXcom folder before launching it, to have fresh settings and avoid inheriting config problems, of course.)

Once that worked, i grabbed my Terror from the Deep install from Steam and put that into the OXCE+ and vanilla nightly builds' Contents/Resources/TFTD folder too.  Those tested okay too.

So yeah .. it works for me.  You might want to try the homebrew install as instructed here so it can install the YAML and SDL components.  Maybe that's all you're missing?

If others that tried the App installs without having to do anything with Homebrew first, I'd be keen to hear it.  This is the fourth wipe+install of MacOS I've done in the past week, and I'm not really keen to do it again just to see what components these nightlies *don't* need to run.

The one big problem I did have with the newest nightlies at first was that I was copying my XCOM files straight from my old early 2016 OpenXCOM install at first.  That was crashing straight after the intro video.  So I went back to Steam install game files, that hasn't been touched or patched in any way, and it went okay after that.  {shrugs}  Not sure what the problem was there.

So, I've typed lots of rambling text..  But hopefully it gives the Mac users here a bit of a chance of getting the nightlies to work for them.  Documentation on now to do these on MacOS is a bit thin on the ground (or is often out-dated) when you look for it, so maybe this will help.

5

Troubleshooting / Re: Missing Mods Folder

« on: July 28, 2017, 07:02:50 am »

I've been using the Amiga/PSX fonts pack.  I think I originally got it from here? ..but I think I ended up getting an updated version from here at some point.

I played this game for years on the Amiga (originally on a 14MHz Amiga 1200, which was just painfully slow) ..so these fonts just look right to me.

6

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: obsolete tag

« on: May 29, 2017, 10:45:43 pm »

I wonder if people are thinking about this the wrong way .. forget the weapons-upgrade stuff .. how about stuff that is outside the players control:

Lets think about alternative storylines and mods.. If a player chooses to take a live "race-x" alien, interrogate them, and end up with a dead "race-x" alien, then all options for researching a peaceful solution or alliance with "race-x" are removed from the board.  (With psychic abilities, they are aware that you have killed one of their own, so aren't willing to negotiate any more.)

This obsolete tag could introduce some genuinely interesting game mechanics. 

7

Suggestions / Re: Audio option to mute game in background

« on: April 19, 2017, 03:14:44 am »

Is it the kind of thing that could have a hot-key?  eg: CTRL+M to toggle music on/off?

I too love playing the music, but would like an option to easily switch it off an put on some 'normal' music when my wife starts to tire of it.  (Yeah, I don't get why anyone would tire of that cool soundtrack either .. but she does.)  *sigh* 

Note: I have it playing either the excellent Amiga or PSX music.  I never was a fan of that midi tune, but I heard the Amiga soundtrack so so so much back in the day that is has huge nostalgia value for me.

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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Let me Clear my excess Skyranger inventory after equipping troops in base

« on: March 30, 2017, 01:35:55 am »

That is really cool Meridian.  Cheers for implementing that.

My next game is definitely going to be an OXCE+ game.  (Which probably won't be too far off .. I've almost got the Avenger research complete.)

Thanks!   

9

Offtopic / Re: Phoenix Point - AMA with Jullian Gollop

« on: March 26, 2017, 10:22:39 am »

Just had a quick read through the whole AMA.  I'm impressed with how much he's tried of open-xcom.  Nice to see that going on.  And his ideas for Phoenix Point sound really cool.  I'm getting more and more interested to try that out.  (At the very least I'll throw some money the project's way as a small thanks for the many many years of enjoyment I've received from UFO: Enemy Unknown, back in my Amiga days.)

10

Offtopic / Re: Ufo Enemy Uknown For Zx Spectrum

« on: March 26, 2017, 08:17:13 am »

That's pretty cool to see the battlescape running on the simple ZX Spectrum hardware .. sounds like it needs at least a 128k Spectrum, or the further expanded Russian Pentagon/Scorpion machines to work on.  (according to World of Spectrum)  But impressive nonetheless.  I'd try it if the text weren't all in Russian.

I was even more surprised to see that there were multiple levels and environment destruction.  A shame there were no line-of sight restrictions, but I guess that's a little much to ask.  ..not sure the igloo to everything-else ratio in the ice levels is realistic.

11

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Let me Clear my excess Skyranger inventory after equipping troops in base

« on: July 05, 2016, 01:10:26 pm »

..another quick thought: maybe there should be a number to the right of the arrow (the number of items on the floor), which turns to zero after it's clicked and the items are removed from the Sky-Ranger.  Then there's some useful visual feedback when clicking on it.

12

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Let me Clear my excess Skyranger inventory after equipping troops in base

« on: July 05, 2016, 03:33:49 am »

You know, I was thinking about this thread, and the original suggestion of being able to clear the Sky-Ranger of excess inventory items isn't a bad one.

If someone wants to load up all his soldiers with as many grenades and flares as they can, the easiest way is to throw more into the Sky-Ranger than you need, go to the inventory and allocate them to your soldiers, and ..  there's no easy way to throw the un-allocated ones back, right?  If you mis-count when putting the assorted stuff back individually, you start taking things out of your soldiers pockets, and that's never good.

How about something like this:  A fake item at the bottom of the list you're transferring to the Sky-Ranger/Avenger called "Remove Excess Items" (see image), which just takes things that would be on the Sky-Rangers floor, and puts them back.  Then you can better keep track of what stocks you have, and share the truly precious spares around your other bases as appropriate.

13

Open Feedback / Re: White screen with music

« on: July 09, 2015, 05:01:28 am »

I used to get the white screen when I set Display Filter (in the Video options) to some of the more complex filters.  ..Have you tried deleting the "options.cfg" file from your Documents/OpenXcom/ folder?  That always fixed the white screen problem for me. 

14

Open Feedback / Re: Battlescape ... bugs?

« on: May 27, 2015, 11:03:03 pm »

Interesting points about real-life tanks. ..For gameplay purposes, having vision in the turret seems to be the only practical way to do it in OpenXCom. After all, if the turret turns to face backwards, you need to be able to see backwards to shoot at anything that's there. ..Plus you get options for strafing, if enabled.

I think tank-vision only confuses people who select the "alternative movement methods" option, without fully understanding it; or who have forgotten about it by the time they encounter its effects. ..I'm not sure there's much, from a game-design perspective, that could be done to make it more obvious, unless the sight-cone was shown visually - but that seems an in-elegant solution.

15

Suggestions / Re: Rotated UFOs/buildings + TFTD landscapes to increase replay-ability

« on: May 26, 2015, 01:18:57 am »

What's the name of the mod you're working on hellrazor?  Sounds like a good number of UFO variants really.

Once you've been through the standard UFO layouts a few hundred times, storming the UFO ceases to have many surprises.  Heck, if there was a hole in the roof, I got into the habit of just throwing in a high-explosive, to get it over with quickly.  It would have been cool if the original authors had algorithmically generated a random UFO layout each mission.  That would have added some more tension to the in-UFO portion of the battlescape sequences.

Hmmmm... Algorithmically generated UFO layouts.  That would be an interesting mod to attempt.