*gasp* It's so beautiful!

[Teks]

You know. Openxcom doesn't look like much on the outside. Bug fixes, and compatibility are great but its not really a sell, ya know, but wow. On the inside. It's just perfection. To think how much money fixaxis could have saved just by adding you guys to the payroll, and saying "Go!"

Well...I guess that would be true if companies still believed there are gamers with the capacity for thought which yearns for something more then % bonuses and giant campaign tutorials...

Anyway, I've lost a couple days already to my new campaign. Experienced mode, moderate ruleset tweaks to keep it fresh, added the mainstream mods. I just gotta say. The bug fixes changed the entire game.

• Smoke grenades are actually useful because the particle limit has been lifted
• Prox grenades actually work now (if I could ever figure out where to place them)
• no item limit, so I can actually bring in those complex loadouts I scheme up
• the ability to control whos in front of the transport
• and on and on and on.

Simple fixes, but now I can pull off all those strategies that just never really worked before. I just... I just...
It's so Beautiful!

I just finished taking my first landed battleship from the snake people. I thought. "Oh good snake people. They are chumps. Aren't they the ones who have that giant naked dog thing as a terror unit?" No...They are not. Sneaky freaking Crysallids almost got me a couple times. Hell, I found one in the smoke two spaces away from one of my scouts. Which brought forth bad memories of my last mission when I lost my captain to a similar situation. Fortunately at this point I have some pretty badass soldiers. I got him, and managed to take the ship with no casualties, which is amazing since I almost always lose someone precious...

Oh, and I can't forget my first terror mission with those floating UFOs on day 10ish. So many casualties. I had to finish one by detonating high explosives at my poor soldiers feet or risk losing far more.

I was so dissapointed by the new xcom. All their talk about 'preserving the feel of xcom' and all they deliver is a squad-based arcade shooter prioritizing 'cool factor' rather then 'fear factor', and then they leave it completely deprived of creative space. No sandbox, no hidden mechanics. Just a pile of flat % bonuses for meeting certain objectives. Bleh. The real kicker was the soundtrack. The sound of music tracks stolen from the UFO series felt like spit in my face. It broadcasted the lack of empathy toward real x-com fans, who were never impressed by the UFO series in the first place.

Call me crazy, but I think games like x-com, MOO, and CIV actually made me smarter when I played them as a child, and that the passion I have for these old games is not just about nostalgia, but rather an innate desire to be mentally challenged rather then visually amused. I wonder if these modern remakes will ever unseat the throne of the classics even as time takes its toll.

Especially because there are guys like you out there who are willing to spend your free time completely reviving them just because you want to. If I ever see any of you in person I'm gonna hug you. I don't care if your a homophobe or a germaphobe. Your getting a hug, and thats final.

[Warboy1982]

*sniff* thanks.
this is what makes it all worthwhile.

[luke83]

Call me crazy, but I think games like x-com, MOO, and CIV actually made me smarter when I played them as a child, and that the passion I have for these old games is not just about nostalgia, but rather an innate desire to be mentally challenged rather then visually amused. I wonder if these modern remakes will ever unseat the throne of the classics even as time takes its toll.

Thats funny , i often ask myself the same question, thats why gamers today are a very simple bunch.

[Mr. Quiet]

That was a wonderful read. Still some good gamers around. Wish the majority of gamers were like you.

Anyways, I watched the PowerPoint presentation given by the mastermind himself Julian Gollop at one of the conventions. Wish he would do more, I'll watch them all! I think developers and publishers worldwide should be forced to watch that presentation and take an Exam on it. Failed the exam? Take it again or you'll never work here again, because he explains very important details which are missing in most video games today. People need to be inspired by his way of thinking. Forget the money... Forget the money... Well he did make some money off the game, but it's well deserved, for once.

[Teks]

Heh, I read that article and it got me thinking too much.

You know the plus side of falling off a cliff?   Eventually, your going to stop.

 People look at society like its concrete. "Thats just the way it is." A statement which really undermines the reality that in so many ways we are diving head first into completely uncharted territory, and there is no going back. Theirs little doubt we're going in way too fast, and society will have to adapt when it hits the ground.

At the moment, while we all struggle to adapt to these rapid changes around us, the idea of playing really easy games that constantly gratify us has real appeal, but I like to think society is pretty self-correcting. Eventually people are going to lose interest in this, and these huge gaming companies lack the ability to adapt as quickly (or at all).

You'd think it'd be the opposite. That huge corporations with vast resources would be able to predict and adapt to changes in society. Well, I say, tell that to microsoft. The company that considered itself a monopoly just a few years ago, and now struggles to find any place it can keep a foothold in future tech.

No, most likely big gaming companies will dig their own graves. It's inevitable really. Noone realistically can afford the games they are producing today, and yet they continue to raise the cost to make their product so that it can win the visual competition. We're already seeing the $50 for a new game standard go out the window. My friend payed a total of $240 on borderlands 2 after all the expansions, extra content, and a second copy so his girlfriend could play in the other room. This trend will derail itself. The only question is when.

So combine rapidly increasing costs with a society rapidly losing interest in superfluous graphics, and tell me where we are in the next 10 years. Probably here. where we've always been. Playing X-com.

[Murmur]

I registered an account to pretty much say the same thing, so I figured I'd just post in here instead (Long post warning).

The original XCom came out when I was 9 years old, so I kind of missed out on it then. But in the year 2000, PC Gamer magazine had a disc with a bunch of older classic games for free that they sent out with one of their issues. XCom was on it. At the time one of my favorite games was Jagged Alliance 2, so I figured I'd try out this XCom game since it was another tactical turn based strategy game. Ever since then, I have been hooked. XCom is one of the few games I always come back to and never seem to get bored of. I just love games that lay out the rules for you and then say: "Have at it", and that was one of my major problems with Firaxis's "remake".

When I first heard about Firaxis's game, I got really excited. Especially how they kept going on and on about staying true to the original. All of the screenshots and videos looked super slick. I thought to myself: "My god, XCom? Looking like this? I'll never need another game again!". I preordered the game as soon as I could and excitedly waited until I could play the damn thing. Needless to say, when it finally came out, I was let down. It's not a bad game for what it is. And it sure looks fantastic, but all the complexity of the original was gone. And I think my biggest problem was that I felt railroaded down a path that the plot demanded. I didn't want a plot focused game out of a new XCom, I wanted a sandbox like the original. To be able to go at my own pace. I should have seen it coming I guess. The closer we got to release the more I had read about things they had taken out or changed. Removal of TU's, class based soldiers, but I was too excited. I kept telling myself that it would be fine.

And it was fine. Just fine. I wanted amazing though. So after that let down I had to play the original again, and that's when I found out about the Enemy Unknown Extended mod. I thought it was awesome.  All the little fixes and tweaks made the game so much more enjoyable, and I was perfectly happy with it. I thought that it was the definitive version of XCom, the version I will always play.

That is until I discovered OpenXCom. This is the XCom I had always wanted. And this is the version I will be playing until the day I die. You guys took my favorite game of all time, removed the annoying bugs, added in the great optional features, added modding support, and let it run perfectly on modern hardware. And even though to me that sounds like it couldn't possibly get better, you guys are adding more things in all the time.

There aren't any words to describe how grateful I am for all of your hard work, so these ones will have to do: Thank you. Thank you for everything you've accomplished. I hope you all feel truly appreciated by others like me that one day feared they may not be able to play their favorite game. And not only that, but now we get an improved version of that game.

Thanks again, and keep up the fantastic work.

[shere]

Hello everyone,

As it seems this expands to a praise Open X-Com Thread, i might contribute here.

I want to thank you guys here for this really, really awesome project. I just returned a few minutes ago from Cydonia, completing the game, na, i cannot count how many times. Still awesome, unbeatable (well, maybe by JA2, but thats another story). It's good to see, that other people are out there that keep turn based strategy alive.

I've remembered seeing it for the first time back in 1996, someone handed his floppy disks to me. I kept the game since then, playing it occasional, but always wished i could enjoy it without using DosBox, having the better music (since i cannot use the AWE64 back from those days anylonger).

I cannot express how grateful i am for Open X-Com. Every time i play, it remembers me of summer and winter nights spending with a friend playing X-Com back in then 90s.

Just keep up the work and i'm looking forward to what the future might hold.

Best Regards and death to the alien invaders, fellow X-Com Commanders out there!

[Align]

I've been trying to promote this to a guy who's already comfortable with xcomutil and ufoextender, made a bunch of screenshots with comments, and it just made me want to give thanks to you guys for making the best game bester.

[kharille]

Yeah, wish I spent my 50 US dollars on a donation here rather than buying xcom when it came out.  Might come up in a desperation sale for 5 US at some point in time.

Hm...  I know the people who defend it are a sensitive bunch...  better drop a smoke grenade....

[android]

I've really gone off games now that i dont have the time i used to, but ill never stop playing Xcom. Never.
Add in the fact it can be modded, tweaked, expanded etc and you get an ever changing progressive development engineered by the people who actually play it. I'm learning codes just to help out and try my own at a mod
Xcom and SimCity are two games that may just keep exanding (esp. with their 'inferior' new versions) and may start becoming limitless as technology advances.

To boldly go where wherever the hell we end up

[SupSuper]

*sniff* thanks.
this is what makes it all worthwhile.

Seconded.

[Daiky]

this is what makes it all worthwhile.

Thirded.

[MadMelvin]

Joining the chorus of thanks here. In my memory, XCom was always this really great *concept* that never really worked out quite right. In 20 years nobody was ever able to fix it, or copy its feel. Nobody could make it perfect.

I can't really put into words how much I love this old game, now that it's finally done. I've donated a few bucks so far but you deserve a whole lot more.

[Phezzan]

I totally agree with everything above.

My elation over the Firaxis remake turning to sadness over its simplification...

Joy at being able to mod the game, not just with a hex editor, but to add new weapons, tanks, anything.
More Joy at being able to tweak the source code to add/remove/change all those other little things.

Come to think about it... I've been waiting for this game longer than any other. 
(although a decent Master of Orion successor is a close second)

Thank you SupSuper, Warboy, Daiky and everybody.

[darkestaxe]

"Well...I guess that would be true if companies still believed there are gamers with the capacity for thought which yearns for something more then % bonuses and giant campaign tutorials..."

I think OpenXcoms success along with that silly MMO with the cubes everywhere are making developers and publishers take a step back and look at game development differently. I'm convinced the market for complex open-ended games has always been there, it never even subsided, and that was never the problem, but now publishers are finally figuring it out.

Here's the problems though:
1. When person x buys a new game they know what the trailer looks like and what footage of the game looks like, not how the mechanics work out.
2. Complex games can fail to and usually do, and it's extremely difficult to know until after months have gone into development that it's not working. Railed shooters always sell enough to cover costs if the trailer is badass and they don't intentionally cheat their customers.
3. Games are being designed and developed with the graphics/art quality they intend to have in the finished product, rather then completing the mechanics in cheap prototype graphics. This exacerbates problem 2, making it cost millions of dollars.
4. The design of the engines and tools for modern 3D engine based games are clunky, awkward, and extremely complex. If you're an expert with these tools and you don't believe me, then just try making a Doom II like level in a source-engine game, or make a scenario in the SC II editor. Most games don't even have tools like those.


But ya, when I first saw the firaxis devs address issues of the new x-com being dumbed down they said something like "I wouldn't say we've dumbed anything down. There are many aspects we've streamlined to remove excessive micromanagment but we've been very careful to ... blah blah blah" My heart sank because I knew that what they thought was excessive micro-management was what I called "X-COM".

OXC is the lasting hope for X-COM, all the rest would have just died slowly without it. OXC provides more then just a better way for us to play the original, its a base-point for future spiritual successors to actually have a chance at success.