Adding countries to Open-XCOM

[MKSheppard]

So I did a very crude hackjob and possibly added Poland. Of course, it broke a lot of things due to my inexperience so far in OXCOM editing, but it would be nice to start adding in other countries, so that Africa is not dominated by the super states of Nigeria and South Africa. 

[Amunak]

I'd actually prefered evenly big areas through the whole world than actual countries. The way it is in x-com now is really weird. If you add all countries, the end-of-month report will become very messy.

[Volutar]

Yeah, and borderlines will fill all the globe, so you will barely see land itself..

[MKSheppard]

You don't need to add *every* country. Just those with sufficiently high GDP/military expenditure ratios to be worthy of inclusion on the Council of Funding Nations.

[Amunak]

I'd actually prefered evenly big areas through the whole world than actual countries. The way it is in x-com now is really weird. If you add all countries, the end-of-month report will become very messy.

This avtually leads me to an idea - since x-com is clearly happening in parallel universe (countries are different, technologies differ, no ufos ever terrorized us, etc.) we might just edit borders / rename countries to make some sensible, evenly-big areas (maybe something simple like united europe, united asia, united north, south america, etc.). It won't change gameplay too much (if at all) but it'd at least make sense (more sense then chosing x random countries and adding them into the game).

You don't need to add *every* country. Just those with sufficiently high GDP/military expenditure ratios to be worthy of inclusion on the Council of Funding Nations.

Personally I don't like that there are many "blank spaces" - I'm not sure but I think that if you shoot down ufo out of these countries they don't raise your fundings/happines? Maybe I'm wrong, but still, it doesn't make sense to have earth made of 20 countries (or how many are there).

[MKSheppard]

I mean, why does Nigeria have a seat on the council of funding nations?

Nigeria spent $1,081 million in 1999 on military expenditures, and had a GDP of $44.25 billion.

Meanwhile, Poland, which spent $6,168 million in 1999 on military expenditures, and had a GDP of $164~ billion isn't on the CFN.

Places like South Korea aren't on the map either, which is inexplicable, given how South Korea was spending $17,300~ million on the military in 1999 (versus $4,000~ for Egypt).

I can understand some of these omissions given the technology in 1999 -- 320x200 screen limitations, memory limitations, and the need to provide enough countries in different globe regions to prevent the player from just defending Europe and the US and calling it a day...

--- posts merged ---

I continue to be impressed by the coding standard of Open XCOM.

The Country funding table....automatically generates a scroll-bar icon and goes up and down using the mouse scroll wheel if you add another country beyond the stock 16!

[LCSand]

I mean, why does Nigeria have a seat on the council of funding nations?

The game plays in the future, so enough time to change the political and economic landscape quite a bit. Also this should be after peak oil and a few crashed bubbles. 
It is a game with a science fiction setting, don't take it too serious. Realism is does not always make a better game.

[moriarty]

if you look in the UFOPaedia, you can see that the globe is divided into "regions" for UFO activity, and if you scroll down a bit to here, that the countries aren't even respecting their own borders for in-game purposes. some even overlap. very weird.

I think it would make sense to do one of two things:

a) add a lot more countries (like, all of them?) to the map, though perhaps not all of them to the funding council

or b) change the in-game political landscape to accomodate larger "conglomerates". perhaps the african states would be allowed one seat on the funding council together?

[MKSheppard]

The game plays in the future, so enough time to change the political and economic landscape quite a bit. Also this should be after peak oil and a few crashed bubbles. 

I think you are confusing TFTD which is set in 2040, with UFO, which starts in 1999. 

--- posts merged ---

and if you scroll down a bit to here, that the countries aren't even respecting their own borders for in-game purposes. some even overlap. very weird.

Morarity, thanks for the map link. Very, very interesting. It shows how there are major missing holes in the global country map.

--- posts merged ---

Here's my crude rendering of what I would add once the game stabilizes.

[Chiko]

Here's my crude rendering of what I would add once the game stabilizes.

Yay! I see me homeland Chile. I like this rendering. xD

[greg77]

being a perfectionist/completionist, i'm somewhat dedicated to replicate the 1jan1999 earth situation on polylines and countries, and to include much more cities.

i've already gathered some of others' work on the subject. i've checked, fixed and severely expanded Hobbes' Terrain Pack v4.1 mod [country names, coords, and the like. not terrains themselves].

i've found some polylines for country borders, i can't remember where it is from and there was no copyright information in the file. i plan to correct it a little and expand it heavily.

the biggest problem is that the funding and graphs screens don't have enough space for long country names. even multi line split would work, as far as i can tell. just think a bit about "commonwealth of independent nations" (shown as "russia" in vanilla). or "democratic republic of the congo". display routines of country/city names on the globe should also support the {NEWLINE} thingy. i think it is already working, just gets cropped both horizontally and vertically for some reason.

those countries that likely had too low contribution could be omitted from the funding and graphs sections, but not from the globe itself. the fundingCap property could be used as a semaphore if the given country should be included in the funding screen or not. certainly a country with a fundingCap of zero does not have a reason to be included there.

another great idea is the zoom parameter for cities. it is already mentioned in the ruleset reference, but i checked the code and it seems to be still hard-coded as:
polylines show at zoom levels 1+
country names at zoom levels 2+
city names at zoom levels 3+
https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/blob/master/src/Geoscape/Globe.cpp
Globe::drawDetail()
beginning at line 1242

i also need suggestions on a number of topics.

for example, "usa" is shown as a single country, but the european union is not. i understand that the connection is a bit different between the states of usa from the connection between eu members, so eu members can decide about their level of funding separately while usa states are too 'united' for that. but what about african countries? their contribution may be a bit low when measuring them one by one, but could easily add up to something useful if treated as a whole, or as several communities (possibly the communities could be used for regions, too). the "organisation of african unity" still existed in 1999 (replaced by the african union in 2001, but it is still the future when the game begins). i've already made a list of african countries for the globe, and some for funding, but it will not be possible to fully develop until the zoom function gets activated.

what about north korea? i would say that north korea is not contributing to the xcom project, but south korea does. but i need the opinions of others, too, so please.

[Hobbes]

the biggest problem is that the funding and graphs screens don't have enough space for long country names. even multi line split would work, as far as i can tell. just think a bit about "commonwealth of independent nations" (shown as "russia" in vanilla). or "democratic republic of the congo". display routines of country/city names on the globe should also support the {NEWLINE} thingy. i think it is already working, just gets cropped both horizontally and vertically for some reason.

I've learned that it becomes easier when you accept the game's graphic limitations and go instead for 'how it looks good' rather than 'how it should be according to something'

those countries that likely had too low contribution could be omitted from the funding and graphs sections, but not from the globe itself. the fundingCap property could be used as a semaphore if the given country should be included in the funding screen or not. certainly a country with a fundingCap of zero does not have a reason to be included there.

This means that there would be two different groups of countries, with the vanilla ones more important than the new ones. Why does the mod need to have two different country types?

another great idea is the zoom parameter for cities. it is already mentioned in the ruleset reference, but i checked the code and it seems to be still hard-coded as:
polylines show at zoom levels 1+
country names at zoom levels 2+
city names at zoom levels 3+
https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/blob/master/src/Geoscape/Globe.cpp
Globe::drawDetail()
beginning at line 1242

This was originally added more than two years ago when the Terrain Pack had over 200 cities and it simply looked too crowded in certain zoom levels. It worked for the city names but it didn't remove the city markers, so it didn't really solve the issue (I ended up solving it by limiting the number of cities to 144 and a better geographical distribution). Eventually it got removed from the nightlies but the reference is still on the wiki.

for example, "usa" is shown as a single country, but the european union is not. i understand that the connection is a bit different between the states of usa from the connection between eu members

A 'bit different' is wrongly underestimating it because they can't be compared to US states. EU countries are sovereign countries like the USA. They have their own armies and international agendas, some belong to NATO and others don't. And when the White House wants to talk to someone important in Europe it calls London, Paris or Berlin, not Brussels.

but what about african countries? their contribution may be a bit low when measuring them one by one, but could easily add up to something useful if treated as a whole, or as several communities (possibly the communities could be used for regions, too).

Using countries as regions is... challenging. Just try it out yourself

the "organisation of african unity" still existed in 1999 (replaced by the african union in 2001, but it is still the future when the game begins). i've already made a list of african countries for the globe, and some for funding, but it will not be possible to fully develop until the zoom function gets activated.

what about north korea? i would say that north korea is not contributing to the xcom project, but south korea does. but i need the opinions of others, too, so please.

I have already considered in the past to add more countries to the Terrain Pack, but then decided against for a number of reasons. But I still remember the main ideas I had thought to apply:
* Add either 16 (double of original countries) or even less
* Each region gets the double of the countries it already has on vanilla, with a few exceptions

There is also some considerations about possible additional Council members here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Council_of_Funding_Nations

[Slaughter]

X-COM was very visionary in its Funding Council, one could say. I mean:
USA
Canada
Brazil
United Kingdom
France
Spain
Italy
Germany
Russia
Egypt
Nigeria
South Africa
India
China
Australia
Japan

That's pretty much the rolodex of post-Cold War players. You easily could add a few more countries, like Turkey, Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea and Israel. nuXcom just got rid of a few injusticed european nations and added a bit more non-europeans.

It would be great to see more non-european countries, through. Usually, Europe or North America are where you want to start X-COM.

btw, I'm surprised nobody ever did a "region bonus" mod, like in nuXCOM.

I think there was a extra nations mod but it had problems and stopped developing. Also it didn't balance funding nation income yet.

btw, if there are more countries, should't Infiltration Missions be come common for reasons of balance?

Personally I'm always against those boring "space-filling empire" areas because that's both unrrealistic, BO-RING and generic.