Has much changed in the past 5 years?

[theophilos]

So I really enjoyed watching the Lewis and Ben playthrough, but they played it 5 years ago. Is the mod changed much since then? I heard one person complain that there is a lot of content bloat at this point. What would be ones response to this? Is there definitive versions to play, or only the latest build?

Also, is there any discord or other places to talk about the mod at? I am very excited to try out the mod and lose horribly! A big cudos to the workers of this mod!

[Juku121]

Well, L&B finished something like three years ago, not five. Still, I think it was somewhere around the 1.x era, so a lot of stuff has been added and tweaked since then. Maybe not enough to change it beyond recognition, but still, quite a bit. Were e.g. mansions, named dogs and advanced soldier types even a thing back then?

Yes, the mod can be grindy and take a long while to complete (in RL time) and occasionally sodomise RNG-screw you just for fun. If that's not your cup of tea, steer clear. But if you compare it to a certain other mod , the bloat is still within reason.

I don't see much reason not to play the latest, perhaps even the development snapshot from Github. Unless you want to add to the madness via submods, but that's another can of worms.

The Discord got dismantled, but there's a Matrix now.

[theophilos]

Oh I havn't finished their playthrough, but on video #69 they updated to 0.9.6

How does advanced soldier types effect the game compared to it's absence? NAmed dogs... well they can rename the dog's names if that's what you mean  mansions I don't recall if they had, I do remember them dying horribly starting on top of some square building that was then attacked by lots of grenades and a tank by cultists outside, could this be the mansion?

Also reading some of the threads, some people mention cults having planes now? I don't recall seeing that in their videos,

thanks for reply, would you say this is the best place to talk at for now? I have never used matrix

[Juku121]

Advanced soldier types are kinda-sorta like soldier classes in nuCom, except less about skills and more about raw stats and special qualities (flight, psionics, ability to be resurrected or wear special armour, etc).

I guess named dogs date back to 0.4-ish, so that's moot.

Not sure about mansions, 'square building with tanks' isn't unique to those. If L&B didn't get regularly intercepted by cultist aircraft on the globe, and assault the source of said craft in a mission with a large building and a bunch of smaller buildings around that, plus a bunch of maids running around, then I guess they weren't dealing with mansions.


I imagine Matrix might be the best place to just chat. I don't use that, so I don't really know. There's also the OXC (not mod, not OXCE, just OpenXcom) Discord, and people post on the X-Com subreddit and Steam forums sometimes. This forum here is nice because it's more organised than chat-oriented media, especially for reading up on things (and it has a lot of accumulated knowledge), but it's not particularly high-traffic nor responsive.

[Raptor29a]

Let's see changes: the golden academy, adv sick bay (great for plasma burns), ordering dim X expeditions, MiB moon base, the mansions, transformations (zombie, cyborg, spartan, oylmpian, Infernal), Hybrid's helix psion (combat increase), dogs getting armor (and preatator transformation), ghost missions, and the doomzone chaingun.
There are a lot more but this is what came to mind, oh and moon nazis.

[Solarius Scorch]

I understand that you wanted a distilled version, but it won't hurt to check the changelog.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5427.0.html
(or https://github.com/SolariusScorch/XComFiles/blob/master/X-Com_Files_readme.txt if you prefer the text format)

It has all the details on what was added in each version.

[theophilos]

Hello. thanks all for replies! Seems nice, I am going to attempt to install...!

Also I like the "WE MUST DISSENT", after having playing a lot of Alpha Centauri lately!

btw, is a regular install of UFO DEFENSE enough to run the mod and openxcom extended? Or will I need to install it in a special way outside of steam, or does it also require an expansion like terror from deep?

[Solarius Scorch]

Hello. thanks all for replies! Seems nice, I am going to attempt to install...!

Also I like the "WE MUST DISSENT", after having playing a lot of Alpha Centauri lately!

Great game! Well, the game part is a bit disputable, but it's a fantastic piece of sci-fi.

btw, is a regular install of UFO DEFENSE enough to run the mod and openxcom extended? Or will I need to install it in a special way outside of steam, or does it also require an expansion like terror from deep?

You don't need TFTD, only the first game.

Also, I really recommend using the unreleased version from https://github.com/SolariusScorch/XComFiles/archive/refs/heads/master.zip - I'm pretty close to releasing it officially, and there seem to be no errors.

[Juku121]

Or will I need to install it in a special way outside of steam.

Yes.

Spoiler" AC offtopic":

Great game! Well, the game part is a bit disputable, but it's a fantastic piece of sci-fi.

It's also a great game. AFAIK, the planetology part has never been truly replicated, at least not in a 4X or similar game. Where it failed was balancing and AI. There have been some fan patches to the latter, and the former was eminently moddable, but vanilla gave rise to certain memes for a reason.

[theophilos]

Ok I will use that version instead! Yes, I really like how prophetic Alpha Centauri seems to be

Do you think it would be best not to use the extra names submod to not break anything?


As to the "yes", when I installed xcom from steam years ago on my desktop I think I installed it in a seperate area outside of program files, is this necessary here?

I assume to run the mod, I must launch openxcom extended with the mods in the correct folders and enabled? BTW Is there any "manual" sort of place to see what are recommended settings/hotkeys/other such things like utilizing special features added such as searches and other shortcuts added in the game

[Solarius Scorch]

Do you think it would be best not to use the extra names submod to not break anything?

Uhh, I don't know what exactly it does, so I can't say. If it only changes agent names, then I suppose it should be safe-ish?

As to the "yes", when I installed xcom from steam years ago on my desktop I think I installed it in a seperate area outside of program files, is this necessary here?

The installer should ask you about the original game files and copy them. If not, you can simply copy them yourself into /OpenXCom/UFO location. Not having it in Program Files makes things better.

I assume to run the mod, I must launch openxcom extended with the mods in the correct folders and enabled?

Well, yes, generally.

BTW Is there any "manual" sort of place to see what are recommended settings/hotkeys/other such things like utilizing special features added such as searches and other shortcuts added in the game

There are in-game articles in the mod, they should be enough.

[theophilos]

Here is the mod I apologize, https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/x-com-files-names

I only had hesitation because it states it has dynamic nationalities based on region where base is, and I saw in the readme for the upcoming version that some regions were added (serbia?), so I wondered if things might conflict in the dynamic naming

I did see this error pictured with the game, only using the x files mod, the extra names mod, and expanded soundtrack

Stating that flag/67-southafrica.png could not be found

I only got this error after turning off "Lazy Loading"

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By the way, my screen resolution is 1366x768, but when I put that in the game everything is quite stretched and blown up. Do people have any recommendations on video settings? Often when I see videos , especially on battlescape the art is not blown up too bad yet can still see a lot of the environment. Is this what the scaling option is for? I apologize I am not very good at understanding resolutions

I remember when I played Star Control II I had to download a black screen to run to hide the desktop!

EDIT:

When I click a button as described in the screenshot, the game just closes, I only started getting this error after I turned off "Lazy Loading" setting, but now I can't get back in to turn it back on or turn the other mods off! I will see if there is a techinical issues area to post on

[Juku121]

Do you think it would be best not to use the extra names submod to not break anything?

Apparently, it is. Report the issue to Ostrich-Hungry on mod.io, I guess? Although it's not as clear-cut, since it'll conflict with some version, either the WIP one or the current release.

As to the "yes", when I installed xcom from steam years ago on my desktop I think I installed it in a seperate area outside of program files, is this necessary here?

Program Files can sometimes be screwy, since it's a protected directory. Don't know if it's truly necessary, though.

BTW Is there any "manual" sort of place to see what are recommended settings/hotkeys/other such things like utilizing special features added such as searches and other shortcuts added in the game

Forced and recommended settings: open up 'vars_XCOMFILES.rul' in a text editor and look for 'fixedUserOptions' (enforced with an iron fist) and 'recommendedUserOptions' (turned on upon activation of the mod, can be freely toggled later).

Hotkeys have pedia articles. A more comprehensive list of 'secrets' can be found here.

Most other stuff is either self-explanatory or can be found by fiddling with advanced options.

By the way, my screen resolution is 1366x768, but when I put that in the game everything is quite stretched and blown up. Do people have any recommendations on video settings?

Is this what the scaling option is for?

Use windowed or borderless mode.

Scaling is there to provide 'zoom', indeed. Multipliers are straight up what it says on the tin, multipliers to the original 320x200 resolution. Personally, I use 480x300 for Geoscape (slightly zoomed out, allows you to see some extra UI and the base UI isn't as "in your face") and 3x for Battlescape (about as zoomed in as you can be - to see the details - while still seeing a reasonable amount of the map; I guess 2x might be better if you want more of the latter). Well, since your resolution is smaller than mine, perhaps 2x is indeed the way to go.

When I click a button as described in the screenshot, the game just closes, I only started getting this error after I turned off "Lazy Loading" setting, but now I can't get back in to turn it back on or turn the other mods off!

Delete your options.cfg, or edit it and change either lazy loading or active mods.

[theophilos]

oh good idea thank you!! I will try your suggestions