Necroscope86 is now lets playing OpenXcom!!!

[Jstank]

Those of you who don't know, Necroscope86 has recently started a lets play of Open X Com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jPwRWEJ0PE

He is one of the main reasons I discovered XCOM was a thing so I thought I would let everyone know!


Enjoy!

[Meridian]

Fun factor may still save it, but the skill is just poor!
Is he doing this on purpose?
(btw. I have watched his earlier xcom LPs and I don't remember him playing so... badly)

[Meridian]

OK, it's getting better, but skip at least to episode 3, if you are too sensitive.

[Jstank]

He is notorious for not truly understanding the game he is playing. When he played through Diablo II he was unaware for 50 episodes that holding down the ALT button would reveal the loot. But he is a pretty big youtuber and Openxcom will benefit from the exposure.

[Hythlodaeus]

He is notorious for not truly understanding the game he is playing. When he played through Diablo II he was unaware for 50 episodes that holding down the ALT button would reveal the loot. But he is a pretty big youtuber and Openxcom will benefit from the exposure.

This. He's usually so ineffective and incompetent at the games he plays I'm surprised at how popular he is.  The man has been playing X-COM for years now, and he's still unable to grasp basic battlefield tactics like spot n' snipe, using smoke grenades for cover, and so on. He has a good voice though, so I guess it's mostly that.

[ivandogovich]

He has a good voice though, so I guess it's mostly that.

Lol.... yeah.  I was a bit underwhelmed with his tactical grasp. 

   "Laser All the Things"
   "Use Four Men Only"
   "Never Have more than 10 troops"
   "Anyone under 60 Bravery is Worthless"

Not exactly my way of doing things.

But I guess there are different ways of doing things.  I can't wait to see him lose a base, because he has noone home when the Retaliation mission comes knocking.

Cheers, Ivan

[volutar]

I wonder why these LPers are avoiding using Nightly?
Why everybody is assuming that Nightly is "unstable", and "milestone" is anyhow less buggy and more stable? It's total rubbish!!!
Short list of gameplay-related things fixed in Nightly, some of them could even break gameplay (changes since 1.0):

* Fire propagation (fire didn't spread)
* Reaction shooting fix (when alien is waking)
* Barn window stuck (for AI)
* Celatid spit range was not limited
* Craft liftoff timers weren't saved
* Radar ranges were less than vanilla
* Chances for ALIEN crafts to detect XCOM base were more than 10 times less => no base attacks
* Soldier experience allocation was wrong
* Crashes when unit was facing south east
* Wrong TU reservation for kneeling
* AI infinite loop (hangings)
* Added stereo for SFX sounds in battlescape
* Added Inventory templates (equipment screen)
* Autosave fixes (sometimes broken saves)
* Still spawning units if no free nodes left (sometimes no terror units)
* Last armor applying with RMB (in soldier list)
* Vanilla 75/25 gender ratio for xcom1 (was 50/50)
* Crash after AI acting as MCed xcoms with melee
* Landing time for UFO was 5 times shorter
* Blocked vision in diagonal directions
* Free grenade prime for AI
* Tanks disappeared after ufo destroyed (repel)

[ivandogovich]

Great list of improvements in the Nightlies. Thanks Volutar.

As an LPer, I can give you some of the reasoning that I haven't started with the nightly.

First is accessibility. - As an LPer, you kind of want to play something that your audience would have access to, and a Milestone version is a pretty stable target.
Second is Stability.  - You don't really want to beta test in an LP if you can help it, as you can end up with crashes/destroyed saves etc that can end your campaign.  My impression for scanning the forums is that there are bugs that surface in the nightlies from time to time that need to get worked out.  That isn't something you really care to run into on camera.

That said: There are awesome features in the Nightlies, I agree.  Some of these I'd really love access to.  Maybe next time.

Cheers, Ivan

[volutar]

First is accessibility. - As an LPer, you kind of want to play something that your audience would have access to, and a Milestone version is a pretty stable target.

1. Nightly is accesible.
2. Milestone is less stable than nightly, for example, openxcom_git_master_2014_11_17_1232.zip.

Second is Stability.  - You don't really want to beta test in an LP if you can help it, as you can end up with crashes/destroyed saves etc that can end your campaign.  My impression for scanning the forums is that there are bugs that surface in the nightlies from time to time that need to get worked out.  That isn't something you really care to run into on camera.

Playing milestone == playing betatester of year ago.

The fact is "Milestone"/"Stable" is ACTUALLY a beta of april'14, and you have lot more chances to hit old bugs and gameplay flaws which were fixed long ago.

Stable!=Milestone.

[ivandogovich]

1. Nightly is accesible.

I see your points.

I think what I mean accessible, is that its not a moving target.  Its not changing the build from episode to episode if you know what I mean.

Cheers, Ivan

[Meridian]

But there are also big and "dangerous" changes in nightlies... just look at the yesterday's Map Scripting commit. I will definitely wait a few weeks/month now until people can report all the problems (hopefully none, but seeing the amount of changes I am a bit skeptic).

I think there is a nice compromise too... why not releasing an official update with installer (e.g. openxcom v1.1) after some time (let's say 1-3 months) when enough relevant bugs are fixed and some minor features introduced; but BEFORE any major changes or refactorings are done.

Being a developer myself, I believe the development team can say a lot better, which nightly can be "promoted" to an official update and which is only for the hardcore beta-testers. We -- mere mortals -- are clueless.

[TaxxiDriver]

Well, there indeed seem to be some bugs keep coming up(which is inevitable in some sense, btw), but personally I haven't met with a single bug that forced me to abort the entire game yet(actually, not even a tiny pickle hasn't bothered me). So I think the nightly version is really really stable .

Actually, when I first came here, I was very confused about the official publish and the nighty for the lack of explanation about the difference between the two. Now I'm using the latest nightly, and I still sometimes get confused since nightly just offers so much but actually stable enough to be called the 'standard' version IMHO, so I find no reason to use the official version, really. That being said, I think Meridian's suggestion makes sense.

I also understand some LPers choosing the 1.0, though.

 

[Jstank]

Before 1.0 came out I had to plead with LP'r Metal Canyon to upgrade to .9 which was basically 1.0 - .1. He did not realize that the nightly existed. The first few episodes were painful to watch as he was struggling with a few basic bugs that were since patched out. The biggest being the apparent infinite reaction fire problem that plagued my early LP attempts. Once I explained how to upgrade to the latest nightly he was generally impressed of the amount of improvements the nightly implied. These big time LPr s do a lot of games and they don't have the knowledge of a hardcore follower of openxcom has.

When I first started doing LP's (season 1) I started with the first stable build. People in the comments had to beg me to upgrade to the latest nightly which I did by season 3. I was hesitant at first but then very impressed by the improvements. I was hesitant because I didn't want to break the flow of the LP. I had to sit and learn how to upgrade to the latest nightly, which I did after a small amount of effort. It is not automatic to use the latest nightly. I can see how some of the bigger LP'rs will gravitate to the most stable build for obvious reasons. I feel that this pattern is simply natural human behavior.

The bigger you are the less you are going to respond to comments and therefore the less likely you will listen to suggestions to upgrade to a nightly. I feel like Necro has actually done a decent job of downloading several mods that interest him which is more effort than playing vanilla. This is credit to the Mod sight and its success/ ease of use. I will sit back and laugh at his lack of tactical expertise and enjoy his commentary. The LP is good for the project as it will bring fresh wave of interest.

That being said I think Necro has lost some heart in my opinion over the years. His descriptions on his videos are generic and he pre records dozens of episodes at a time. Not only does that make it seem as though he wishes to only promote himself and not the game he is playing it also disconnects him from his audience. This is very sad as he is very good at his commentary

Someone who has not lost even a quater of a heart is Kisokia. The myth the man the legend. I know we all want Kisokia back in XCOM!!! Lets all do a KIOSKIA dance right now so we can enjoy that epicness once again!

[Hythlodaeus]

Oh yeah, Kikoskia is great. He doesn't pre-record any of his stuff (actually uses a microwave timer for keeping track of video length), doesn't save-scum and actually reads comment suggestions. I doubt he will ever do OXC though. He is generally very purist and I don't recall him ever running any old game using a source port or remake. He uses straight dosbox, even when playing stuff like Doom.

[Jstank]

He has done Baldur's Gate enhanced edition. So we should keep our fingers crossed.