Topics

16

Tools / OXC-Moderator (WIP)

« on: July 23, 2015, 07:05:53 am »

So, I'm back to working on the mod installer/updater tool - called OXC-Moderator.  I had about a 3 month break due to life circumstances between family moving in for a while and crazy end of school activities.  Anyway, there's a lot of work to do.  The biggest and most discouraging problem I face is the ever changing web pages for scraping until the REST API gets implemented.  So... parsing for mods is a moving target.

Here's the github project:
https://github.com/jgatkinsn/OXC-Moderator

It doesn't do much right now other than parse some web pages - poorly now that it's changed again.  I have a TODO list on the project page for perusal.  I would like to use Kivy as a GUI framework, so I can learn it and maybe support the Android port one day. 

I can only work on this about two nights a week right now, so I don't expect anything fully functional for a while.  This is here to help keep me accountable and keep moving forward.  Until I get a stable REST interface, I'll try to start working on the GUI design.

17

Offtopic / Looking for a co-op squad level combat board game like X-COM? Galaxy Defenders

« on: July 02, 2015, 06:48:11 pm »

Just picked up a copy of Galaxy Defenders and played it last night.  Awesome game! I bring it to your attention, because it reminds me of X-COM in a board game format.  Now, I know there is a now an board game called "X-COM: The board game", but I hear it greatly abstracts away the tactical combat side of X-COM.  It should probably be called "X-COM: The Geoscape simulator board game".  When I think of X-COM, I think of squad level combat.  Galaxy Defenders does this in an awesome way.  You can pick your agents with differing abilities.  You can pick your equipment and upgrade your equipment over time.  You can improve agent's skills and abilities.  The alien A.I. is pretty slick for a cooperative game (there are rules on the website for a player controlling all aliens).  It comes with 12 missions that can be played in a campaign format, so agents carry their improved abilities over to the next mission.  Also, more missions are available for download on the website.

There will be expansions later this year that will continue the story and add cooler weapons and tougher aliens.

Here's a site with some reviews: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/138431/galaxy-defenders

18

Offtopic / Sometimes a loss is very satisfying!

« on: May 25, 2015, 07:41:32 am »

Just an FYI,  I haven't played OXC in weeks.  Been too busy between life and working on auto update script.

So, I start up a Final Mod Pack at SuperHuman difficulty for the first time.  I promptly shoot down a large scout full of sectoids with my starting crew.  I can't recall ever seeing so many sectoids close to my skyranger (like 5 I think).  Even with smoke put down in the first turn, I'm losing soldiers left and right trying to get off the skyranger and patch up unconscious soldiers.   I slowly clear the LZ at heavy losses (grenades were my salvation), and by the time I get things cleared to the UFO door, I'm down to 3 brave rookies ready to breach.  My first soldier goes into the door, and finds a sectoid with his back to him.  Bang, Bang, it goes down.  The rest slowly clear the UFO and realize that there is at least more outside and it's close to turn 20.  I decide to hunker down inside the craft and wait for them to come to me.  At about turn 22, the final sectoid enters the one of the doors (I'm covering two doors).  Unfortunately, I had two soldiers covering the wrong door, so the other goes down after getting one shot on the sucker.  I try to get the last two remaining soldiers into position, but their reactions just aren't good enough as they go down one by one.

It was a tough loss, but extremely fun

19

Troubleshooting / "id" field problem in new mod metadata.yml.

« on: May 17, 2015, 02:00:19 am »

(I did file bug report just in case)
So, I tried to update to the latest Final Mod Pack mod, but OpenXcom couldn't find the mod when loading a saved game. I think I figured out the problem. 

Final Mod Pack 1.5b has this for it's id field in the metadata.yml "Final Mod Pack" which is same as directory the directory name in mods directory. 
Final Mod Pack 1.5.1 has for it's id field "final-mod-pack" which matches the part for the web location on the mod site.  The "id" field is stored in the options.cfg for that mod pack.  So when I try to load a saved game after updating Final Mod Pack, it can't find the mod and disables the mod.


It was my understanding the "id" field in the metadata.yml was for the mod website, so autoupdating feature could be implemented in another script.


Either "id" should be used for local installs or web site updates, but not both.  I think you'll need a new field for website updates, maybe "url".

Reproduction:
Load Final Mod Pack 1.5b.  Verify it loads and save a game with it turned on.
Install Final Mod Pack 1.5.1, and verify the game will not load unless you disable the mods.

Look in options.cfg at Final Mod Pack 1.5b and see id: Final Mod Pack  and then look at it after Final Mod Pack 1.5.1 and it will be "final-mod-pack" like in the website.

20

Suggestions / Smarter Civilian AI?

« on: April 07, 2015, 06:39:17 am »

Even though I'm thoroughly enjoying OpenXcom in so many wonderful ways, there is one thing that frustrates me: stupid civilians with no sense of self preservation

For one thing, it breaks the "immersiveness" of the game to the point you almost don't care that much about protecting them.  They're so unrealistically stupid or oblivious across the board that it annoys me partly because they're practically impossible to protect.  I could probably handle it better if a small percentage of the civilians in a terror site were clueless, but all them...ugh.  Maybe an algorithm as simple as look around and run away from any aliens they spot might be a good starting point

I think it would be cool if there was an option like "Sneaky AI" for civilians... maybe called "Smarter Civilian AI"?.

Until then, I'll do my best to keep them safe while I roll my eyes at them

21

Programming / Any interest in more CI builds?

« on: March 20, 2015, 08:03:29 pm »

I was playing around with travis-ci and got it working on my "branch" of OXC.  Took a while get it working on Ubuntu 12.04 (travis VM's) because of outdated yaml-cpp libs.   This is only for linux, but OSX support can be added into the build config file (I don't know OSX though). 

Here's the results:
https://travis-ci.org/jgatkinsn/OpenXcom

Here's what the script looks like:
https://github.com/jgatkinsn/OpenXcom/blob/travis_ci/.travis.yml

Unfortunately, I looked into available options out there for free CI hosting of Windows builds, but haven't had much luck.  I think you have to pay for VisualSudio Online CI builds for C++.  However, I could see Travis-CI  being useful for developers on windows machines by allowing them to see if their latest checked in changes broke on linux builds (and/or OSX after support is added).  Or let linux developers know that the build is broken on the latest, and they can submit fixes.


BTW, building this from the default instructions on UfoPaedia for AutoConf/Cmake will not compile.  I have to turn off warnings as errors to get this to build.  Is this desired to have warnings not treated as errors?

22

Programming / Plans for migration to C++11?

« on: March 18, 2015, 04:01:55 am »

I saw a post on the mod portal asking contributors about OpenXcom's tech choices back in 9/2014, but I couldn't see any responses to it.  The topic of my interest is C++11 support.  I know at my company we're seriously considering migrating to it, particularly for a new platform.  Full support for it is almost here from a GCC perspective(I think regex is due in 5.0), but I don't know how far along MSFT Visual Studio is (I don't use it myself, because we use GCC/CLANG and some other commercial C++ compiler for embedded systems).

So... are there plans for migrating OpenXcom to C++11? 

I'm certainly be interested in helping out with it, because it's kind of low level migration at first (like use "auto" in some places - iterator declarations for example) and can be done incrementally.

23

Programming / Version of doxygen documentation

« on: March 17, 2015, 03:57:07 am »

Quick question -  Is the Doxygen documentation of OpenXcom on that I found linked on ufopaedia literally 1.0 or is it close to the nightly? (actually here https://openxcom.org/docs/html/)

24

Offtopic / OpenXcom and Tactical RPG's

« on: March 11, 2015, 05:25:44 pm »

One of my favorite turn-based tactical games back in my youth was SSI Gold Box Series.  Something that started my nostalgia kick recently and eventually got me to buy X-COM was playing the Buck Rogers 25th Century “Countdown to Doomsday” CRPG.  I really liked the skill system and that there was space combat in Buck Rogers, and the sci-fi tactical combat was definitely different from the D&D versions (lot more ranged weapons similar to X-COM).  However, it fell kind of flat in some ways.  I couldn’t figure out why, until I started playing X-COM.  The tactical combat is SO MUCH RICHER!  One example is that using cover really means something in X-COM, and the attempt of using cover in Buck Rogers was very very poor and way too abstract.  I won’t go into a detailed analysis between the two, but suffice it to say that Buck Rogers tactical combat is to X-COM is what tic-tac-toe is to Chess.

Anyway, it got me to thinking (I know, I can’t help it) that OpenXCom’s battlescape engine could be married up to a RPG system.  I think it would be cool to create a “tactical” sci-fi RPG with OpenXcom. I can’t help but wonder what Buck Rogers would be like with a better combat system.  Someone might claim that X-COM has RPG elements(you’re playing the role of the organization’s commander), but I should probably clarify my definition.  My definition of CRPG is a game where you take a group of characters of varying abilities and use them throughout a “campaign” or “adventure” to win the game.

What is everyone’s thoughts of seeing a more RPG’ish game with OpenXcom as a starting point?  How would you envision it? 

25

Suggestions / ModPack Installer

« on: March 03, 2015, 05:55:08 pm »

So, one of my bad habits is I tend think.  While on a relapse, I thought about what would be a nice feature to OpenXcom that would make it even more accessible.  I thought that it's kind of hoky how mods are installed, so what does everyone think about a "mod" installer for OpenXcom?

I could possibly pull this off externally from OpenXcom in fairly short amount of time.  I'm quite handy with Python.  I was thinking that we could come up with a descriptor file inside the mod(yaml, json, ini... don't care), that the installer can use to know where to put stuff into OpenXcom.  Maybe also keep track of mods installed with another file located in OpenXcom.

Later on, it could be built into the executable and made into  a menu on one of the "Options" screens.

Useful?