What do you think has caused OpenXcom to succeed?

[the_third_curry]

A quick look at the links on the OpenXcom front page reveals that a lot of Xcom fan projects have gone MIA  or were flat out cancelled over the years, many of them before making any significant progress. However, OpenXcom, after years of development, hit 1.0 (and already had dozens of mods while it was still on 0.9) and is now heading to TftD. What do you think has allowed OpenXcom to go the distance?

[Qpoter]

It's hard to say, really. I don't think anybody could say exactly.

I'm just glad we have such dedicated devs and a thriving community, and that this project has made so much progress.

[michal]

From my point of view, couple of things helped:

1) We created website and forum very soon. As far i remember, i've contacted SupSuper about month after he released code on sourceforge. That way community has been gathering since the beggining.

2) SupSuper attitude towards other developers - he quickly granted write access to repo to Daiky and Warboy. That way they could work on battlescape without delays (reviewing patches, merging them, etc).

3) Nightly builds - releasing new version took much time (as in other such projects), but nightly builds allowed community to track and test recent development. So community had something do discuss, experiment with, etc.

4) Scope of this project - instead of remaking whole game, with 3d engine and arts, SupSuper decided to reimplement only game engine. There are many programmers in FOSS community, but not many artists. Thankfuly OpenXcom haven't needed them. So programmers could see effect of their work immediately.

And most important point:

5) SupSuper - he managed to keep engagement in this project for so many years. There are many FOSS game leaders, which are very active at the beggining, but they are loosing it quite fast. So, big kudos for SupSuper !

[pmprog]

I would also point at the attempt to recreate the original, where-as all of the others I saw tried to "update" the game out of the box.

This meant that OXC had very clear goals which certainly helps when you have people join in, because they can all find out exactly what the game needs to do rather than "well, yeah, we were thinking of some sort of air-to-air combat"...

[yrizoud]

The choice of project scope was critical IMO. Going straight for the original game files was certainly a huge amount of work in reverse-engineering, but then it would be no ripping, so the project could proceed and progress "forever".

[Yankes]

3 "things":
SupSuper for starting
Daiky for continuing
Warboy for finishing

honorable mention:
Community for supporting

[Sturm]

4) Scope of this project - instead of remaking whole game, with 3d engine and arts, SupSuper decided to reimplement only game engine. There are many programmers in FOSS community, but not many artists. Thankfuly OpenXcom haven't needed them. So programmers could see effect of their work immediately.

It's especially important because graphics, animation, sounds and music are a critical part of the games atmosphere.

[MKSheppard]

Everyone else has nailed it:

1.) XCOM itself was a big sell. It attracts people in a way that "open source remake of random game nobody's ever heard of" doesn't.

2.) Limited Project scope -- no trying to redo it in 3D or to fight from the alien side or redraw everything in high resolution. Just simple vanilla XCOM -- and that's hard enough -- a lot of projects only get to the geoscape and then sputter out, much less any kind of battlescape.

3.) Project management was truly open source -- as others have said earlier in the thread - there's been a succession of 'big time' contributors to the code base; along with a bunch of smaller time contributors, allowing progress to be made on a somewhat steady basis over the years.

4.) Steady drip drip of nightlies (Precompiled binaries) to enable those of us who can't code to help bugtest or see if the latest new trick works (or doesn't). A lot of open source projects forget about this part; I think because the larger open source community on the internet views having to compile code yourself as a rite of passage -- "becoming leet".

5.) A decent modding community, with a lot of changes to the code being made (within reason) to cater to modders; like the recent git push:

Warboy, Sat Jul 5 19:26:56 2014
add item limit

configurable in craft rules, does not limit base defenses.
why you people want this is beyond me.

 

[SupSuper]

Given there have been literally dozens of remakes, reboots, reimaginings, reinspirations, rewhatever before us, I'd have to say there was a lot of luck involved. But this is probably the biggest factor:

2.) Limited Project scope -- no trying to redo it in 3D or to fight from the alien side or redraw everything in high resolution. Just simple vanilla XCOM -- and that's hard enough -- a lot of projects only get to the geoscape and then sputter out, much less any kind of battlescape.

Most projects immediately wanna make X-COM but better (can you blame them? have you seen the Suggestions forum? ). But making X-COM alone is a huge ordeal, much less the implication that you can totally make a much better X-COM with all your grand ideas and it's gonna be so great you guys!!! So in the end you either end up with:
- An abandoned game that looked quite promising but never made it to the finish line.
- A released game that falls short of its promises and ends up fading into obscurity as fans cry once more "you just can't beat the original" and go back to vanilla.

[Falko]

- A released game that falls short of its promises and ends up fading into obscurity as fans cry once more "you just can't beat the original" and go back to vanilla.

i say you can beat the original.. you did it!

[Aldorn]

i say you can beat the original.. you did it!

Sure !

[Hobbes]

Given there have been literally dozens of remakes, reboots, reimaginings, reinspirations, rewhatever before us, I'd have to say there was a lot of luck involved. But this is probably the biggest factor:

Most projects immediately wanna make X-COM but better (can you blame them? have you seen the Suggestions forum? ).

This.

I was involved with UFO2000 a few years ago and to me the whole project went down after it was decided not to use the original files as default but instead make up all new sprites, weapons, etc., to prevent any future copyright issues. All of the sudden it stopped being XCOM and just turned into a multiplayer turn based game.

Plus, everyone had their own ideas of what would be just awesome to add to the game: flamethrowers, multiple rocket launchers, Magnum 44s, etc and you had a ton of weaponsets that was very difficult to balance.

Truth is, most ideas being tossed into the Suggestions subforum are great for mods but should not to be included in the build and should always be optional. Interface tweaks are usually fine but the moment you start adding new maps, weapons, units, missions, etc., you are moving away from the original game. And that causes more people to go rather than attract more people.

And I feel that even the current options available should be reduced, or at least, there should be a limit. Because when you get to a point where you have 100 options no one has time to try them all, and even if you try them all, you'll most likely find out that they aren't balanced against one another. Or, in other words, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

[the_third_curry]

And I feel that even the current options available should be reduced, or at least, there should be a limit. Because when you get to a point where you have 100 options no one has time to try them all, and even if you try them all, you'll most likely find out that they aren't balanced against one another. Or, in other words, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

As of now, there are 549,755,813,888 ways to play Openxcom judging by the Advanced options (should have put that number in the trailer.) I think that the options are more or less done for now, all of the recent additions (the new features brought in from XcomUtil and UFO Extender) are listed in the mod section instead of as options.

[Hobbes]

As of now, there are 549,755,813,888 ways to play Openxcom judging by the Advanced options (should have put that number in the trailer.) I think that the options are more or less done for now, all of the recent additions (the new features brought in from XcomUtil and UFO Extender) are listed in the mod section instead of as options.

Please don't put that number in the trailer.

For me as a player that number is meaningless and scary - I will never play the game 549 billion times to try all of them, nor I would ever try to do that, the same way that I don't try all of the 1000 different kinds of toothpaste in a supermarket.

Just keep this in mind: having too many choices is counterproductive and will move away more players than attracting new ones. Because with 549 billion possible combinations it's impossible for anyone to make a conscious choice and deciding about options becomes meaningless, because each additional option you choose dilutes the effect of the previous one.

I'll repeat what I said above: choose 20-30 of the best options to be included and move all the rest to mods.

Look at the Enemy Unknown 2012 remake and its Second Wave where there are only 16 options available, or look at Civilization 5 where the starting options are 10-12. This isn't a flaw on Firaxis thinking but quite the opposite - a good developer knows that the more options you have the less meaningful they become.

[pmprog]

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.