[old]Lets release a new "stable" build

[darkestaxe]

Or get rid of the idea... at least until 1.0

It's misleading to newcomers and the current release isn't really serving any purpose. It's kinda like - we have this complete, updated, mostly debugged total re-implementation of the good ol X-COM1 that we're ironing out the last few wrinkles from. However what we're showing to the world is this thing that says:

Look, we've got a spinning globe, with bases, and we made even more progress on the battlescape. We even have place-holders for the ufopeadia and graphs, and it all has the original look and feel. Here in another year or two we might even have a version that lets you play x-com without having to install dos-box. Well ok, I guess that's probably not going to happen, but we haven't given up yet and neither should you.

Unfortunately we had to go get real jobs about 8 months ago, and since Firaxis/2k made that other X-COM we just haven't been all that interested anymore. But at least you know your not alone in thinking the good ol X-COM is still worth playing.

Anyway here's what we had before, well, we don't really want to say it... Hey, want to try out one of our test builds? They're really fun!

[luke83]

i thought they where working on getting the next stable build out thus the lockout of any new features so they could focus on BUgs.

[xracer]

i really just wanted them to put a build update monthly so that people see that work is being done, when people come and see the last update a year ago, becuae that is the main download people get discourage and not stick around.

It will be nice if they simply release a "monthly debug build update" this will say we are working hard in squashing all those bugs come play the game

[darkestaxe]

i thought they where working on getting the next stable build out thus the lockout of any new features so they could focus on BUgs.

I had thought the feature freeze was over like 4 days after the announcement since new features kept getting added, but I looked at the commit history and its fixes for weeks.

At any rate my thinking is that the crowds of casual fans are coming around right now from XCOM2012 and Blizzard Entertainment is looking enviously at our unyeilding commitment to excellence and they're thinking to themselves "I wish we could be more like that and only release G2Gs instead of crap!"

For each new fan that makes an erroneous bug report for the 'stable' version without realizing that we all play git-builds, 110 people clicked on the stable, noted the date, and shed a single tear for the death of the project. They did not pass GO the forums, they did not collect $200 a git-build, they went directly to Jail facebook to check their messages.

We could at least have a little notice like "2013 new version soon guys!"

[Warboy1982]

i'm pretty satisfied with the stability and lack of bugs at this point.
there are still a few hiccups in the system (according to the bug reports) but i'm unable to replicate any of them, and as such, am unable to fix them. either they're system-specific, or they're just extremely rare.

[papamaanbeer]

people dont understand that its not 1.0 and trash talk your work. i hate those people

[darkestaxe]

I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone trash talk OpenXcom, it's not really an issue we have to worry about.

0.4.5 came out back in November (I think), had a functional battlescape with AI (only sectiods and half the weapons) and the geoscape seemed like a prototype. As a whole the game was completely unstable and lacked enough functionality to be fun as a game.

This discussion was a couple weeks before 0.9 came out. Even if OXC was still at about the same spot today I'm pretty sure everyone would still be supportive and thankful for the amount of work and unpaid hours that have gone into it.

My graphic description above isn't inspired by any rudeness we put up with here on the forums, it's based on these little gems:
X-COM: Alliance
UFO: Cydonias Fall
UFO: The Two Sides
This thing Michal found
Project Xenocide
and many more...

And those are just X-COM remakes/rebuilds that died.