For the years I’ve been working on OpenXcom, I’ve gotten a lot of feature requests. A lot.Β I don’t personally comment on everything, for obvious reasons, but trust me, I do make a note of it for future reference. Oh yes, I know all about your suggestions to have an X-Com which starts in a more realistic date and can take place in different planets where the regional map actually changes over time maybe it actually takes place in a fantasy or steampunk or cyberpunk setting and is combined with TFTD simultaneously where you can automatically intercept UFOs in groups based on the lowest craft denominator and you could plot advanced flight paths or even have a more advanced interception minigame and you can have predefined equipment layouts automatically assigned based on a soldier’s stats that you can pick out of a pool or hire mercenaries with better stats but higher cost and they can have various different races and different weapon skills and keep various detailed stats for the memorial room while they’re not getting advanced training and medical attention in specialized facilities and also should be able to melee and use chainsaws and shotguns and flamethrowers and scientists and engineers should be distinct and also a research tree and more advanced bonuses for interrogating aliens and details on research progress as well as auto-sell and crafts should be able to bomb sites on command for a score penalty or the damage the craft does should affect the resulting crew when you go down attacking the site where you should get to pick where your craft lands and there should be advanced lighting and destruction physics which actually cause damage based on the impact and the bullets should be more realistic and penetrate different kinds of terrain or ricochet and have a noise and smell detection system to help track down the last alien that should run towards you after a while and being able to target different body parts and attach to cover for increased defense which they can climb over with grappling hooks while psi attacks should be limited to direct line of sight and you should be able to control all the alien’s abilities and make them your own but only if you specificaly mind control them in these exact circumstances while civilians should be able to fight back and there should be various factions fighting against/for you which you have to please and you actually get penalized by the country and they all serve different interests but you can do missions to get them on your side and everything should be chryssalids and the interface should be flexible for all resolutions but also resize and use a variety of scalers and stay true to the old original or a new modern look while making everything fully customizable through a fully fixed layout and also featuring tooltips and a built-in tutorial and syncing all your settings on the cloud and importing original saves and the rendering engine should support 2D and 3D with 8-bit and 24-bpp while using all the latest new OpenGL features and still support old hardware and it should have multiplayer co-op and competitive with dedicated servers but I actually only like to play in hotseat and you should be able to get drop-in help from various players with different crafts and play simultaneously or turn-based and also you could be the aliens and it should also be like Apocalypse and Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance and Laser SquadΒ and Enforcer also ponies.
But in all this, there’s one feature that stands out. One that’s been requested for years and years, on the forums, on GitHub, on e-mail, on IRC, on my personal messenger, every day, every week, even right now as I am working on it and people just can’t wait because it’s not finished yet and oh gawd. So here it is:
![[07/02/2013] Controls](https://openxcom.org/wp-content/gallery/v0-9/07022013_controls1.png "[07/02/2013] Controls")
![[07/02/2013] Controls](https://openxcom.org/wp-content/gallery/v0-9/07022013_controls2.png "[07/02/2013] Controls")
If you want to scare us, then you made it.
Wall of text looks really horrific )
You, sir, rock.
It’s easy to let feature creep overwhelm you into uselessness. Your good humor and methodical approach are the reason we have something instead of nothing. Thank you for all your hard work.
Nice sentence. π
(BTW, some of those features mentioned i plan to implement in the following days)
You know: it’s easier together! π
“also ponies” – does that mean we’ll get Pony autopsies? Yay!
Just love your “roadmap” description. π
LOL! Man, I can’t wait….
You’ve all done the best job on everything so far. I can’t beleive it! Best game EVAR.
I laughed out loud at “also ponies.” Bronies try to add ponies to everything, don’t they?
DiceMaster is right on the money. I held my breath when the wall of text appeared out of nowhere…
Then I read the title and I dropped my alerted stance…
π Gonna read it now!
very nicely put, sir π LOL
that is so cool, both the form of the post and the content.
now, about the ponies… π π π
Great read! I feel refreshed after reading the whole article! Please please please SupSuper, make it happen for us! I’m already enjoying UD as it is, but with the SupSuper features, it’ll be the perfect game!
I have another feature request: Add ugly changes to the Geoscape map, to keep it fresh and interesting as we’re playing our long games, like nuke symbols of areas that are nuked to hell and slowly adding a polluted color to the Geoscape as time goes by. Maybe the Aliens are polluting our planet to put more pressure on the nations of the world.
Also add a news feed feature for immersion. At the end of every month, you can watch new pixelated clips of a foreign newscaster talking about the UFO phenomenon. Since the media is controlled by elites, they’ll never talk about the X-COM project, they know better not to mess with our organization. We have informants everywhere, lol!
Anyways, my brother and I are going wild with out imagination after reading your long article, and our dreams can come true! I’m gonna let my cousin know too, he’s been watching OpenXcom for a long time.
Hah! π Greaaaat post. Loved it. And yes.. Control settings would be the most badass addition EVER! You guys rule on so many different levels. Thank you!
That is AMAZING!
Screw personal equipment layout, I can adjust the time compression using keys!
It’s like The Sims. Only, … very different.
There are still some new features missing in that text…
1. new building: costume factory – disguise your soldiers as aliens, so the enemy won’t attack them anymore
2. new item: Reese’s Pieces – since E.T. we all know that aliens love this candy. Soldiers can place them on the ground to lure aliens out of their hideout
3. new alien item: money – we all know that humans love money. Aliens can place it on the ground to lure soldiers out of their hideout
4. new soldier skill: magic – shoot fireballs, turn sectoids into frogs, turn snakemen into…humanmen ?
5. new fraction: lawyers – XCom and Aliens can hire them and sue each other for killing, trespassing and defamation. The war of the future is not fought on ground or in the air, but in the courtroom !
Together with all those other ideas we would have the perfect XCom !
but but… you forgot is that the ships are power with unicorn blood!!!!!
LOL!
Thanks for all your hard work.
I hope you know how much your project is appreciated by the community.
If you ever need cash, you just have to put up a PayPal button and I’m sure you’d get a significant response.
This made my day!
I fully support luring aliens with candy. Sure is better than alien food.
But some other request – I repeatedly tried to register to the forum but never got a reply.
I’m glad you’re devoting most time to the game but if you find the time please process my request.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
@Hourai: Your forum account should be fixed now.
If anyone else has trouble signing up on the forums, just email us your forum username and we’ll sort it out.
Yess!
Thanks, I’m glad I can contribute now.
Best choice!!! KeyBOard Kontrols are a MKUST!!
Do not believe for one second that nobody reads your GIT updates.
Big thank you. We all know where lottery wins are going to pour in to hire that 20-50 man team that can actually realize a great number of those features.
The only new feature I wish for over the original XCOM is fewer bugs and crashes. Bug patches take precedence over new features. Thank you for all your hard work toward that end
Oh hell…
The GIGA-CHANGE-LIST of GIT-Build 2013_02_11_1659.zip is left empty! π
Brr…
This way so many things we developed (and all of mine) are remain hidden from a lot of users. π
It broke the Git Builder. If you wanna manually rewrite the log yourself, be my guest.
Already working on it π
Not so fast Solus, I got a few additions of my own b4 it’s perfect…
1. Kill-cam: zoom in on dying aliens and soldiers and rotate around them in 3D mode, blood flying, dismemberment, and different aliens should have different guts when dismembered.
2. Secret Pony Portal: once discovered on the geoscape, it allows you to switch to the pony homeworld and invade it. If you open the portal then aliens will attempt to invade as well, the race is on.
3. Harem facility: Keep soldier moral up with customizable hotties that wear only what you want them too, and various clothing items for the Harem can be collected from stores on terror sites.
4. Battle-mech clusters: 4 captured sectopods and 2 hovertanks assemble into a ship on geoscape that can be deployed to a geoscape site, where they dissassemble back to sectopods and hovertanks. You control the site in FPS mode and switch between mechs.
5. Dinosaurs. Nuff said – π π π π
6. Terrorships, Battleships and Avengers can directly engage T-Rexs in interception mode, this can result in a T-Rex crash-site if the terrorship/battleship is crashed landed. Aliens and soldiers that are outside will randomly get gobbled by the T-Rex.
7. After Cydonia you take control of the alien bases, at this point you build a powerful force of UFOs to defend Earth from the alien counter-attack.
8. Dragons invade the geoscape 2 months after you control cydonia if your still alive from the ongiong alien counter-attack. Dragons work like T-Rexs but they will activly hunt down any craft/UFOs in their detection radius, or move to a city and begin burning it.
9. The dragons have a home-world and must be defeated apocalypse style through the portal they came from.
@SupSuper: I’ve done it. Have you got my message?