progress / milestones / wishlist

[moriarty]

I was looking around the main page and the forum searching for info on the current progress, and maybe it 's just my inability in finding stuff... but: what's next?

openxcom is running great in my opinion, of course smaller glitches and bugs will always show up, but right now I'm at a point where I would seriously consider switching over from x-com to openxcom for casual gaming, especially since I can also contribute by play-testing that way.

I love the globe day/night terminator line shading a lot better than the original, and the pathfinding preview too... plus all the other little improvements.

okay, but here's the catch: to really enjoy playing openxcom, what I would really appreciate is actually salvaging stuff from the battlescape. I don't necessarily need research right now, but loot management would allow for actually playing the game for a while, with the economics involved - you know, shooting down UFOs, looting the stuff, making money by selling it, building new bases with the money.

could you please please please pretty please include that real soon? and while you're at it, tell us what the next milestones are? the forum has gone awfully quiet in the last few weeks... I don't know if everyone is playing Diablo III, has vanished into RL or is still in shock because of all the new E3-info on "XCOM:Enemy Unknown" 

[michal]

Roadmap is here:

https://openxcom.org/index.php/about/

Many things from 0.4 are already done. After that, 0.5 should give us pretty playable game.

OpenXcom development activity is very variable in time - inactive months / active months. Now were in inactive months. I hope soon it will change - SupSuper will have summer break at university.

[luke83]

I also hope development on the game will pick up again soon, i always try to keep the forums active by posting the progress of my mods , maybe you could try your hand at this whilst you are waiting for the developers to return in force. 

[Daiky]

It's looking like I finally have a calm weekend ahead, so if I can really sit down and code for a while on battlescape stuff, for example salvaging items, that one seems doable.

[michal]

Cool Will it be possible to research and manufacture salvaged items? And see ufopaedia for them?

[Daiky]

I don't know, I'm only the battlescape guy, for me the game ends when the skyranger heads back to base :p We'll have to see what happens.

[nullzero]

openxcom is running great in my opinion, of course smaller glitches and bugs will always show up, but right now I'm at a point where I would seriously consider switching over from x-com to openxcom for casual gaming, especially since I can also contribute by play-testing that way.

Thats exactly how I feel, so more two thumbs up for salvaging equipment, since its a small change that improve the replayability a lot, and thus keep us users happy.

[moriarty]

oops, thank you michal, totally overlooked that one. I only looked in the menu on the right, and forgot about the top menu 

and Daiky, salvaging stuff would be really great. of course, that only makes sense if it actually transfers to the base afterwards    that brings up an interesting point: the original game magically transferred the items to the base at the end of the battlescape mission. are you planning on doing it differently? like, storing the items in the skyranger for the transfer back, so they only appear in the base once the skyranger has landed? this would also give an explanation for why the skyranger cannot land at two crash sites without going to the base in between - they put all the stuff in there, and have no more space for anything else

[hsbckb]

and Daiky, salvaging stuff would be really great. of course, that only makes sense if it actually transfers to the base afterwards    that brings up an interesting point: the original game magically transferred the items to the base at the end of the battlescape mission. are you planning on doing it differently? like, storing the items in the skyranger for the transfer back, so they only appear in the base once the skyranger has landed? this would also give an explanation for why the skyranger cannot land at two crash sites without going to the base in between - they put all the stuff in there, and have no more space for anything else

I strongly agree with that.

[moriarty]

if we think this a bit further, for later versions / mods you could also imagine the aliens trying to shoot down your skyranger on the way home

that would make for an interesting challenge... trying to protect your slow-flying-far-range skyranger with the fast-moving-short-distance interceptors in order to bring that captured Alien Commander back home for "interrogation"...

[Daiky]

Suppose you bring a plasma pistol with you to the battlefield and throw it on the ground somewhere and also a plasma pistol has dropped from a killed alien.
At the end of the battle all items are recovered and put on the crafts inventory:
- plasma pistol : 2 pieces.

The craft arrives at the base. What should happen? 2 plasma pistols to the base's inventory? No, because one plasma pistol came from the craft's inventory and should stay on the craft. The game doesn't know this anymore at that point.
That's the reason why items that will be on the base's inventory will be put there already at battlescape debriefing.

So I'm not going to fix that right now, because it means a lot of coding on geoscape side and I'd rather leave SupSuper decide on that too.

[Daiky]

There is a new git build :-) It should have some basic battlescape salvaging. But know it's rough, it's a start. For example, I've noticed that the XCOM corpses get salvaged too, and you can sell them like alien corpses, but for 0$ :p Also capturing live aliens don't work. And for now you can use alien artifacts even if you haven't researched them. So please don't start logging these things as bugs.

[moriarty]

cool, thanks Daiky! about your previous post: I see your point, but how do you do that anyway? Let's assume that your 10 soldiers carry one "Heavy Plasma" each. one soldier dies. 3 Aliens that carried "Heavy Plasma"s were killed. the game finds 9 "Heavy Plasma"s equipped on your soldiers, and 4 on the ground. What happens? I can think of two basic scenarios:

1) The craft loadout is saved beforehand: The Skyranger is assumed to be equipped with 10 "Heavy Plasma"s, and any leftovers are assigned to the base. If that's the case, you might as well put all 13 "Heavy Plasma"s on the Skyranger - back home at the base, the actual amount is checked against the previously saved loadout, and the rest ends up in base storage.

2) Everything that a) your soldiers carry or b) is on the floor of the Skyranger at the end of the battle stays in the Skyranger's inventory, and everything else is moved to base storage.



both have their advantages:
in scenario 1), the Skyranger ends up equipped exactly the same way as before (unless something has been used up and isn't available at the base either, so you get a message like "not enough xy to re-equip squad: OK / go to equip screen").
also, if any equipment is used up or destroyed, it will be automatically replaced from storage - grenades, ammo, even weapons that have been dropped and then destroyed by explosions.

in scenario 2) your soldiers are given leave to keep that big alien gun they picked up in the middle of combat - so if we actually want to have soldier-specific equipment, this might be the path to take. problem is, if your soldiers carry around alien corpses at the end of the battle, they might end up staying on the Skyranger too, so there would have to be some kind of flag that tells the game which items to keep and which to place in storage at all times.

what do you think?

[Daiky]

What I do now is: every item that xcom brought to the battle is marked "xcom property", a new flag I added. When battle ends, xcom property is moved back in the skyranger inventory, the rest is placed in the base inventory.

[michal]

Thanks Daiky, it's nice to see new feature in OpenXcom