Messages

31

Offtopic / Re: What do you think has caused OpenXcom to succeed?

« on: July 15, 2014, 05:50:11 pm »

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"

32

Offtopic / Re: What do you think has caused OpenXcom to succeed?

« on: July 15, 2014, 03:07:16 pm »

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.

33

Open Feedback / Re: Forum feedback

« on: July 14, 2014, 11:17:01 am »

1) The colors are just from a free SMF theme, I have no idea how to customize them. I'd love to replace it with something else but it's hard to find something free that fits the site and isn't blinding on the eyes though. If you find a better alternative feel free to let me know.

hehe, yeah, I've been looking for something for the OpenApoc forum, the one I have at the minute is okay-ish, but I'd still like a nice one.

Edit: Oh, I got mine from
https://www.colorizeit.com/browse/24/smf-20-themes.html

34

Offtopic / Re: XCOM: Enemy Unknown(the new one) in Humble Bundle

« on: July 14, 2014, 11:07:13 am »

I find it odd that you still have to pay a fair whack to get XCOM:EU, but the newer XCOM game - The Bueau: XCOM Declassified - you can get for whatever price you want.

35

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 14, 2014, 11:03:02 am »

Please post some news here, for us too, who are too lazy or busy to follow many forums.

Okay, but it won't be as often, or as much

36

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 11, 2014, 06:39:52 pm »

More teasing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQGvXrLUW44

I'll try and keep most OpenApoc stuff over on the other forum now

37

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 11, 2014, 09:36:30 am »

but in my opinion there is the true risk that community
cannot support an other project in this moment.

As Bomb Bloke said:

Apocalypse, on the other hand, is an entirely different game, so one way or another it'll need a new starting base. And it doesn't really matter when that project starts, as odds are there are coders available now who aren't interested in working in the current OpenXcom project, and odds are there are coders working on that project who won't be interested in moving on to Apoc later.

38

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 10, 2014, 11:00:33 pm »

BTW do you will reuse some code form OpenXcom? Mostly operating system handling. Lot of work was used to made it portable and would be waste if you do it again form scratch.

Probably not. Firstly, I'm planning on using Allegro instead of SDL. Allegro is already available on Windows, Linux, Pandora, and Android. I'm a lot more familiar with it, and it does a lot more than SDL out of the box.

Gamewise, there isn't really all that much overlap on the projects. The file formats are completely different; Apoc Cityscape is nothing like UFO's Geoscape; Apoc's Battlescape requires realtime support.

The portable aspect will be there in OpenApoc, don't worry about that.

Edit: And thank you to everyone for their feedback

39

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 09, 2014, 10:56:33 pm »

Hmmmm....

https://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/topic/10969-openapoc/#entry134611

I have no answers

40

Tools / Re: MAPVIEW upgrade

« on: July 09, 2014, 09:26:26 am »

Hello there

I would like to contribute in the coding.

I saw
https://sourceforge.net/p/xcmapedit/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/dev/
svn checkout svn:https://svn.code.sf.net/p/xcmapedit/code/trunk xcmapedit-code
https://github.com/pmprog/OpenXCOM.Tools/trunk

I wanted to learn about how the routes are stored.. but there was too much hairy scary code.

I noted that the routes arent working in this new version, but like more the pmprog version

Reviewed the code and I think it needs some structural improvements like:
1- Error handling.
2- Organize some of the classes by functionality.
3- Separate and reuse code.

Anyway let me know if I can help

PS - Didnt experience any problem installing and running the code

Feel free to fork my repo (btw, there's no "/trunk" on the end), as it has a few changes luke83 asked for in.

One of my plans was to do some of the improvements you suggested, but time and motivation were issues.

Luke also PM'd me an error he was having, I've not even looked at it yet, but if it's something you feel like you want a shot at, I (or Luke) can send you on the information

41

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 09, 2014, 12:46:54 am »

Probably better to have a seperate header and set of forums on here, though.

Possibly, I did think about that, but at the same time, these boards are for OpenXCOM, and I don't have any ownership of OXC or these boards.

At least on my own server I can make any changes I require

42

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 09, 2014, 12:11:05 am »

In case anybody is interested, I've set up a forum for OpenApoc here:

https://openapoc.pmprog.co.uk/index.php

43

Programming / Re: New Feature: Infinite base sizes, POLL

« on: July 08, 2014, 01:52:52 pm »

The bit that made me like this idea was that if you wanted a 4x4 base, it would be cheaper than a 6x6 base, which would be cheaper than a 10x10 base (for example). So this opened up the ability for you to afford more bases, just with fewer stuff in them.

But I can understand why Warboy doesn't want it.

44

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 08, 2014, 09:44:14 am »

No, but he's been active for years on https://www.strategycore.co.uk/ in the forum section. He hopefully still is.

I meant he has lots of knowledge, he made many mods including the amazing Roadwar and the brilliant editor Apoc'd and probably knows more about the inner workings of Apoc then many others.

Thanks, will keep those in mind.

I don't think PCKview loads the new Apoc formats, but they are documented: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Image_Formats_(Apocalypse)

How the hell did you find that? I'm sure I searched ufopaedia... obviously I just did a bad job... hmmmm... doesn't bode well

There's also the abandoned remake's code: https://github.com/hallor/ufo/tree/a60e23bed768c95a7992098e20f1e96611fe593f/unpacker

Has anybody built this remake? I keep meaning to try it. But I couldn't find any loaders... ahhh, that's because they were (re)moved from the current master (I can't seem them under here)

So, should we already make a board for OpenApocalypse?

I was going to stick one on my website, but I guess it saves people having another forum login if you want to. There's not really much to put in it yet though.

In case anyone is wondering:

I'm using VS2008, and Allegro 5.1.6 instead of SDL. Allegro gives me some nice tools that I prefer over SDL's offerings. I also have built me a standard framework that I use in most of my projects, however, I think I need to change it for Apoc (it will frameskip to run the game at a constant rate, but with the collapsable buildings, it'd be better the game slows down than skips).

Source code can be found at https://github.com/pmprog/OpenApoc

45

Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: July 07, 2014, 11:30:26 pm »

HAve you spoke to BombBloke, i am sure he has looked at the formats before as his toolkit can export them...

Nope, have you got any contact details? does he visit these boards?

or j'ordos, he is also a font of apoc knowledge

Got the fonts bit sorted, as you can see from the screen, but thanks anyway