Somehow i completely missed this, and haven’t seen it discussed here before, so here is a link with the info. A real proper update of the original game many of us love, it sounds too good to miss out on:
Edit: Found out about it from the RPS article about it:
Edit: Found out about it from the RPS article on it:
Will be taking a look at this when I get home tonight, thanks for the heads up.
Thank you, Internet. Can we just get this for all the old Microprose games? We have Transport Tycoon and XCOM. Who is working on Open Covert Action?
Huh, this is what people kept saying they wanted when people talked about spiritual sequels. Once this is wrapped (apparently on 0.9 already), things like graphics updates, better physics, won’t be too hard to implement.
I had a dink around with this the other night and was very impressed with the difference the seemingly minor changes made. Customisable keys, correct speed (so no choppy animations, cursor movement or sounds, hell, I could hear sounds in the intro that I’d never heard before), display options (widescreen! CRT phosphor filters complete with faux screen curvature!), all sorts of gameplay tweaks in the options and countless crushed bugs I’m sure.
My favourite improvement? Single left click to reveal movement path, second click to move. Ahhh, and release. God, the reason I stopped playing the original was because I kept mistakenly moving soldiers around by accidentally left clicking, or more accurately, just missing the hitboxes on other soldiers when trying to switch. So. Many. Times. Apparently, soldier loadouts are saved too.
More info here:
The differences between Open Xcom and the original
Development history including feature integration
I’m currently playing the new XCOM and enjoying it but I do miss a lot of things from the original, particularly free aim and picking up other soldiers’ gear off the ground. Also, getting the jump on aliens.
Yes!
Please!
Make!
Covert!
Action!
“HD”!
Yahoo!
I’ll have to get around to checking this out for sure, even though i don’t really have too many issues with the original game at all (ok well the UFOGold version i ended up finding on the underdog site years back). I bought the Amiga version, the Playstation version and a swanky PC dual pack (UFO+TFTD+guide books for both) version down the years and am just so used to it’s ‘issues’ that i can easily look past them even today. Having said that what your describing does indeed sound like it could really improve the base usability of the game, so yeah on my list of stuff to check out asap and thanks for your impressions.
saw this yesterday and loving it, thanks for posting.
This is pretty cool. Seems to work as advertised too. Just being able to play X-COM at modern resolutions and without having to mess with dosbox makes this worth the download. As an added bonus the aspect ratio of my monitor is 16:10 (1920x1200) which is the same aspect ratio of the original game (320x200). Not that it is of any real consequence as I am most likely to run this in a window anyway, but it’s the little things in gaming that make me smile sometimes.
Thank you for finding this, looks amazing.
Wow, more people should know about this. DLing now.
They finally uploaded a mac app. This is awesome. It’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for – a fixed version of one of the best games ever. Kinda makes all the remakes redundant.
Played it in a window for a while but scrolling seems to be a bit iffy. The arrow keys seems to make the movement jump around, sometimes in opposite directions so putting the cursor to the edge of the screen to ‘drag’ it works best and without issue, if you’re not in windowed mode.
Noticed that you dont seem to be able to rotate the last soldiers in the SkyRanger to be able to get a bit more of a view of the surroundings of the landing site which Im positive that you used to be able to do. Perhaps Ive somehow missed how I used to do this in vanilla.
Started another new game last night to make use of all the options in the advanced options screen such as designing the layout of your first base. Wonderful.
Yep i missed most of those, and had to start a new game also. Now i have a bunch of new stuff active and it really does improve the base game nicely. I’ll run through some of it here:
I’m playing ‘Windowed’ currently, but did start in ‘Fullscreen’. 1280x1024 (for both) seems fine on my 1920x1200 screen. I had the weird scroll issue in ‘Fullscreen’ also, both from the mouse-at-edge-of-screen scroll and using the cursor keys, so there is a small bug here although i only had that occur one time. ‘Grabing and scrolling’ around the terrain works if you get this.
I like ‘Display Filter: HQ2x (OpenGL)’ the best. There are some funky ‘CRT’ settings that kind of reminded me of when i played this on the Amiga (although my screens were not quite as convex as the simulated screens here!). The new display options are very nice and should cover all needs?
In the ‘Advanced’ tab:
Aggressive retaliation = NO (i’m too wussey for this just yet!)
Alien containment limits = YES (a new thing i wish to see doing it’s thing)
Live alien sale = YES (they recommend this if you have the above option on)
Manufacture auto-sale = NO (not too sure about this, i like to do pretty much everything myself)
Allow building queue = YES (works really well with the ‘Custom Initial Base’ option below)
Auto-end battle = NO (I think the ‘battle’ ends when the last alien is down anyway, so not really sure on this option?)
Instant grenades = YES (genius! And works perfectly, really adds a decent advantage to the side that uses grenades as it opens up a new situation right away)
Show death notifications = YES (just so you always know when one of your guys dies, right away)
Pathfinding preview = YES (a nice green line you will take to your destination, no more guessing and running out of TU’s! Very awesome)
Range-based accuracy = YES (I’m just hoping this applies to the Aliens as well! But a nice ‘realism’ added feature i’ll get to like)
TFTO manufacture rules = NO (seems ‘cheaty’ as it buffs your production ability? I could be wrong)
Airborne transfers = NO (how do you transfer an aircraft while it is in flight?)
Force aircraft launch = YES (means you don’t need to wait for fully refueled or rearmed status, but that can cost you! A desperate ‘realism’ gambit)
CUSTOM INITIAL BASE = YES (in capitols as this is so huge, so make sure you have it selected. No more painful destruction of your first base, build it from scratch. Super!)
Globe tilted lighting = YES (i guess why not?)
Play intro = YES (one of the best intro’s in gaming history - off course you need to re-watch it for the hundredth time (it’s like the original Star Wars movie in this!))
Show geoscope funds = YES (adds Funds info to the Geoscope = useful)
Inventory stats = YES (can see a few more stat details in the inventory and loadout screens)
Sneaky AI = NO (as with ‘Aggressive retaliation’ i’m too scared to try this, just yet)
Strafe setting = NO (?X-com is not an fps or realtime? Confused by this so left it ‘off’)
Inverted drag-scrolling = NO (maybe this might fix the odd scroll issue? I’ll try the ‘YES’ option at some point to test it out)
Allow psi-capture = NO (setting it on means all mind controlled aliens become captured status aliens and maybe too powerful late game?)
Explosion height = NO (this sounds interesting, and seems to give a depth height to damage from explosions which could be cool, will try later)
Even with all this new stuff it still remains the deep, complex and tough X-com game that Microprose gave the world. No pandering to the i-phone/console generation (that apparently hate deep and complex?), this is still the dogs bollocks, just much more so now. Works perfectly, no need of slow-down programs, many of the UI issues dealt with. Very awesome work and i’m back in X-com once more with a hankering for an Ironman play through.
I think the sneaky AI can be interesting, Zak:
sneakyAI When enabled, AI avoids exposing themselves to player whenever possible.
This looks promising. I’m surprised the text doesn’t look better. Usually those HQ2X filters or whatever clean it right up. And are the bullets supposed to be that slow? I also had problems with mouse edge scrolling.
Hmm I’m having trouble remembering back that far. Does 320x200 on a 4:3 monitor look the same as 1920x1200 on a 16:10 monitor? Were the graphics “pre-compressed” so that went they were expanded to 4:3 they looked normal? Maybe OpenXcom handles all this for you to make the aspect ratio of all the original assets look correct.
Is there a setting for when a ufo flees a battle. In the original, they would remain on the geoscape until they were out of range. In this one, they never show up after the battle.
I have auto end battle on.
Essentially what it does is automatically go to the end turn screen as soon as you finish firing IF that dead alien was the last one. Instead of waiting for you to deal with the rest of your troops and press the end turn button. Personally I like that it speeds up the battle even just a little bit although it does take away a bit of the tension.
@ TurinTur, i’m getting killed enough without the aliens being extra sneaky! (as you will see from my screenshots) Maybe later i’ll look at the AI buff options.
@ Tim James, it seems to scale everything just right. At the resolution i listed using on my 1920x1200 screen it looks pretty much as it did back in the day, that is with the HQ2x filter which just smooths out things a little (maybe too much?) in the bigger res aspect. But yeah you have a bunch of very comprehensive options that means most folks will get it looking good enough, although it is always going to look pixelated due to it’s base graphics settings.
@Nesrie, i’ve not seen an option for that. So are you saying if you disengage a UFO it simply disappears for you? Or just when the UFO chooses to flee (and uses it’s speed to outrun you)? I’ve not had that happen yet but will keep a lookout for it.
@Kalil, ah ok that makes sense, and i can see the use of it, i’ll have to switch that on as it could be handy for the late game especially.
Ok i’m going to try and post some screenshots showing a few of the new options and a bit of tragic info on my second playthrough (when i had used some of the new options).
Overall this seems a great modernization of the old game, even with the odd funky screen scrolling issues (they are not constant, just fiddly).