Author Topic: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?  (Read 15067 times)

Offline michal

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X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« on: May 26, 2010, 05:45:53 pm »
Hello,

Some time ago i've found a project on google code. There isn't many information about it, but it may be similar to openxcom, because it uses data from original game.

Maybe it would be good to contact authors of that project and point them to openxcom. I know, that supsuper doesn't want to form a team, so i'm not proposing merge of projects, but maybe it would be possible to share information about algorithms, data files, etc.

Or maybe this x-com-reloaded could use some code from openxcom? ;) But it may be too soon for that.

Anyway, i don't know how to contact authors :P I don't see any mails to them. Anyone has an idea how to do that?

Here's link to that project:
https://code.google.com/p/x-com-reloaded/

Offline luciderous

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2010, 11:01:21 pm »
Wow, good job on spotting that project. It would seem to be quite young and thus I am pretty sure its author is oblivious of SupSuper's effort. I hope both devs will find a way to help each other, if only not to duplicate their efforts.

Offline SupSuper

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2010, 03:07:35 am »
Damn michal, you have quite the skill for finding fresh new X-Com projects. ;) I've finally had time to properly look into this project, code and all, and I must say it's kinda scary.

Even though neither of us has ever heard of or contacted the other before, and have developed our projects completely independently, there are a whole lot of similarities between the two, both in goal and in code. Funny old world.

Sadly I can't seem to find any contact methods either, although someone seems to have posted there about it: https://code.google.com/p/x-com-reloaded/issues/detail?id=1#c0

Offline michal

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2010, 09:18:38 pm »
Supsuper, if you want to contact them, you can do it by email https://code.google.com/p/x-com-reloaded/issues/detail?id=1#c4

If you will decide contacting them, please write if you found some way to cooperate.

Offline michal

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2010, 08:49:03 pm »
If you're interested there's a topic about that project on xcomufo (unfortunately you need account there to read it):

https://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=242034790

Offline SupSuper

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #5 on: June 04, 2010, 12:51:12 am »
I've contacted the author. Both projects will pretty much keep running their course as they are now, since any kind of merge would be incredibly tricky, but we'll try and help each other out if necessary. :)

Offline luciderous

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2010, 07:33:14 am »
Sad, yet not unexpected.  :-\
Well, let the best one remain. My hopes are with you, SupSuper.

Offline michal

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2010, 07:02:32 pm »
Sad, yet not unexpected.  :-\
Well, let the best one remain. My hopes are with you, SupSuper.

Why best one? I still hope that those two projects can coexist. At now they are going same direction - implementing original gameplay. But maybe in future there will be differences, so we can have more variety.

Offline luciderous

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2010, 10:13:46 pm »
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Why best one? I still hope that those two projects can coexist.
Because there in no conceptual difference between them, and since any complex system leans towards a redundancy decrease, the community will eventually deem them as competitors. And for good reason - why would anyone use two painfully similar game engines if one is more developed, more actively maintained and less buggy than the other? Only one of them will stay, and bear in mind that it is not my evil wish - only an observation of the way things happen. Thus the whole "merging" initiative in the first place. It should be obvious that the time and efforts of one of the developers are going to be wasted in the long run, given current attitude.

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But maybe in future there will be differences, so we can have more variety
Variety is futile if there is no solid basis to build on. Trust me, I've seen this often while following Master of Magic recreation efforts. There were literally dozens of enthusiasts each one starting their OWN project from scratch. And where are those projects now? Abandoned. Instead of joining hands, the devs selfishly insisted on their sole importance and eventually failed. It only pains me to see the same pattern repeat over and over again.

Offline michal

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #9 on: June 05, 2010, 01:53:50 pm »
Only one of them will stay, and bear in mind that it is not my evil wish - only an observation of the way things happen. Thus the whole "merging" initiative in the first place.

Yeah, i've also have observed many open source projects which had similar attempts to each other. And many have died because authors couldn't cooperate. This can also happen here, but maybe it won't.

It should be obvious that the time and efforts of one of the developers are going to be wasted in the long run, given current attitude.

I wouldn't say that. Because even if one project dies, it doesn't mean that time and effort of developer has been wasted. Maybe from our point of view - players. But still, writing such project can give developer much experience in game coding.

Personally, i would be very happy if SupSuper and x-com-reloaded author could join forces. But we can't force them and i respect that they can have their own vision - how code should be written, how everything should work.

So only time will tell what will happen. Maybe both of project will be successful, maybe one or maybe both fail (i hope this won't happen).

Offline luciderous

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2010, 12:01:33 am »
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But we can't force them and i respect that they can have their own vision
I totally agree. Wa can't and we shouldn't force them to anything, however there is nothing wrong in trying to persuade them that this is only for their own (and everyone's) good.
Still, you are an optimist, but I like that. Let's hope for the best.

Offline SupSuper

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #11 on: June 06, 2010, 12:55:40 am »
I can see your point. From a fan's point of view, we just want someone to remake X-Com (or MoM or whatever) and we don't care how they do it and why they do it and just get more annoyed by more unfinished projects. :P

While you could just probably have one project for that, in most cases, each project has their own take or approach or things they'd like to see in a remake, and each project goes a different way even if they're all trying to remake X-Com at heart. A lot of people aren't encouraged unless they make the project their own special thing which they have input over, and wouldn't really work getting together with other projects with different goals. Forcing different teams to merge might just make the end result even less productive.

What the players end up choosing is another matter. Different strokes for different people and all that, otherwise we'd only have a single program for every single task. ;)

In any case, while OpenXcom and X-Com Reloaded don't have that problem since they are pretty similar, they're still very early in development and might go different ways eventually. Plus everyone codes their own way, so code isn't really "mergable". You can try to learn from it and apply that knowledge in your own project, but at this point, for both projects to merge one of them would pretty much have to throw their code away and work on the other. A noble goal maybe, but there's no way I can force anyone to do that, we all love our projects dearly. Maybe if we had met up earlier things would be different. I hope you understand. :)
« Last Edit: June 07, 2010, 04:47:12 am by SupSuper »

Offline luciderous

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #12 on: June 06, 2010, 11:35:11 am »
Yes, I understand. Thanks for clearing that up  ;)

P.S. By the way, it seems that X-COM Reloaded is not cross-platform, at least not yet. Discovered it by skimming through "main.cpp" and subsequently failing to build the program on OSX (in part for the same very reason).
« Last Edit: June 06, 2010, 05:19:04 pm by marabus »

Offline michal

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2010, 07:47:40 am »
Just FYI - i've been looking at that project from time to time. Author didn't commit anything for more than one month. It looks kinda dead for now.

Offline Yataka Shimaoka

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Re: X-com-reloaded - another project similar to openxcom?
« Reply #14 on: July 28, 2017, 06:40:07 am »
This project has really died out, no doubt. Such a good promise too, and their start date is far more earlier than openxcom