Download UFO and X-Com comics

[Slaughter]

Download UFO from Fileplanet:

Looks like Fileplanet have made the Collectors Edition of UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-Com: UFO Defence) available for download. They call it abandonware, and you can get the 8 MB bundle of joy here.

 

In case you are not familiar with the CE edition of UFO, it is the same old beauty compatible with Windows XP. It had a nasty bug that wasn't fixed after it's release however, so you need f0dder's patch to run it properly. This patch is included in the Fileplanet release (ldr_XCOM1.exe), but you need to do one little thing to make it work. Rename the executable (UFO.exe) to "UFO Defense.exe". Then double click the loader (ldr_XCOM1.exe), and the game will start properly. If you need more careful instructions, check this topic. ENJOY!

 

Commander Tommy comics:

The guys over at XComUFO have a comic series going about Commander Tommy. He's not the luckiest commander in the X-Com universe, and Kenny of South Park does come to mind when looking at the strips. So if you feel like reading some goofy X-Com strips, head over to their boards. Here's a few preview strips:

 

[Aralez]

Our forums should have a comic as well!

[Slaughter]

Amen to that! It's a great feature to offer. Sooo, who feels like starting some comics? They could be done for any game we cover, though X-Com is the easiest, since it's graphics already looks comic

[Pete]

I'd nominate NKF after his excellent track record producing quality avatars, artowrk and drawings, but I'm sure he has far better things to be doing

[Slaughter]

I nominate him as well! And since we all live in democratic countries, two to one means it doesn't matter if he has better things to do

 

What should our comic be about? Maybe the ingenious alien commander that is responsible for most of Commander Tommys unfortunate accidents?

[Aralez]

Maybe we could revive the "Laughing Muton" character from the old Xcom-uk.com board ?

[Zager]

Speaking of comics, anybody know where I can find a copy of that comic that came with the Collector's Edition? I lost track of mine a few years back.

[NKF]

You know, a few years back I had this funny idea about making an X-Com-like comic called One Tree Island, where this base is situated on a desert island with one coconut tree (place unspecified - it's just out there). The base ends up being mostly vertical with multiple levels, and the hangar roof is constantly dripping and salt coated as it's literally underwater... While it would be funnier for the doors to actually open and have seawater rush in, I was perhaps thinking of a retracting launch tube-thingy.

 

Basically a very neglected X-Com base. budget - practically nil. Anti-aircraft capabilities would be to have everyone step outside the hatch into the base (disguised by covering it partially with a bush) and use their pistols to shoot down incoming aircraft. (seriously - it's such a rubbish installation that no one wants to attack it - and all the snobby high-tech squads with all their fancy gadgets send their dregs here)

 

---

 

Then there was this other rather amusing idea about the post-Cydonia days, where the psi network has fallen and all the remaining aliens have been rounded up, but three get away. Two sectoids (brothers - one with a really huge cranium but a really tiny body) and a muton - in one small scout flying saucer type thingy (Just imagine the seating arrangements). We follow the adventures of this trio of rather odd oddballs as they try to intergrate themselves into human society and live like normal living things.

 

---

 

But eh, these were all just fun ideas to come up with and fiddle with.

 

But as for actually making a comic... ooh, er. I dunno.

 

- NKF

[Pete]

Oh my gosh, those ideas just ooze talent. I just imagined a really god mickey-take where you could start to zoom in on state-of-the-art Tracy Island, and then have something like "whoops, wrong island" and zip across to this little old base with it's one tree

 

And yes, I imagined the seating arrangements for the second one. The Muton in the back with his knees practically level with his ears. I've been in vehicles like this and I'm no Muton

 

If you ever got the urge, I'm convinced they would be hugely popular. Your style of drawing is most amusing in itself and your ideas are first rate!

 

(Quick guys, egg him on ).

 

Nah, seriously, I imagine you've got other (possibly better) things you could be doing

[Carlos the Jackal]

No chance, Pete, I remember him talking about that to me three years ago

 

Actuallky, NFK, where did all those awesome sketches go?

[Pete]

Ooooh, you just referred to the mysterious and non-existant NFK... try rearranging those letters again

[Slaughter]

That is excellent NKF! I like Pete's idea about starting the comic as well! Would be fun if people could help with suggestions. You know, like:

 

"One of the soldiers is a former gardener who loves that one palm above everything (nothing else grows there, right ). He's not much of a fighter - a coward most people would say - but that was before some Sectoids (who got lost) tried to chop up the palm for firewood. Never in the history of X-Com have such reckless heroics been seen! Suffice to say the Sectoids ran home to Cydonia crying..."

 

Regarding your other suggestion, that would be fun as well! I remember someone told me a story once about a character he played in P&P Warhammer once. It was a Troll character. Only thing not normal with this Troll was the fact that he though he was a Hobbit. Suffice to say that when he came into town with his Hobbit friends (he was very popular with them), trouble was brewing. "You're not a Hobbit..." *insert violence here*. What if the Muton think he's a Sectoid (as if they didn't have enough trouble integrating already ) Seriously though, that would be too wild. But I like the idea of that comic. Would like to see the base one first, but this would be fun as well!

 

::

 

Anyway, I would really love to see one or both of these comics brought to life! We could add them to a comic section of the site, or set up a board for them. In fact, I would prefer both, so people have a place to discuss the comics in addition to having them as part of the site. So if you would like to do this (time permitting) I sure would love it!

[Lurker]

I downloaded the UFO Enemy Unknown CE and did as Slaughter suggested, with the name change.

 

It is the first time that X-Com has played on XP for me. It's nice to have the mouse working right. Some of the old wave sounds are missing in the introduction - minor disappointment.

 

The UFO interception didn't work either. The thing escaped before I could press a button.

 

Now, the worst part for me was that the Auto-Scroll feature in the tactical missions is way out of control -- hyper on a 2.5 ghz system. You get to the edge of the screen to scroll and the game screen jumps all the way to the other edge of the map. There's no way to further decrease the rate of scroll past one, the lowest limit offered by the game. And, the Trigger Scroll doesn't always seem to work using the mouse. The net effect is that the tactical game is unplayable, for me anyway.

 

I think the next step would be to try to turn of the Auto-Scroll, which I did, but then I would have to find a way to scroll using the keyboard. Anyway, without Auto-Scroll, it kind of hampered my ingrained instintual automatic manner of play that I had developed long ago.

[Lurker]

Okay, I couldn't find any way to control the XCom Tactical Mission Scroll with the keyboard.

 

So, I ended up going the SlowDown Utility Route suggested elsewhere on this forum:

 

A whole list of slow-down utilities:

https://www.geocities.com/kulhain/

 

In particular, I like the Turbo Switch adjuster, because it actually works with Windows XP. And, it is Freeware.

https://www.geocities.com/kulhain/turbo.zip

 

Anyway, I run Turbo.exe, and set it from 100 percent down to 40 percent. Then I ran the X-Com loader that came with the CE FilePlanet download that Pete and Slaughter sent us to. Turbo didn't fix the missing intro missing sound wave problem, but the scroll thing worked just fine and so does the interception of UFO's, and I was actually able to play XCom on Windows XP. It worked.

 

So everything seems to work right, assuming that you start with the Abandonware fileplanet download of the Collector's Edition, and make the adjustment of the name as Slaughter suggested, and then use freeware Turbo.exe to slow everything down before launching the game.

[Lurker]

The page went dead or unconnected, so sorry about the double posting.

 

--

 

Edit:

 

Oh, with Turbo.exe, it puts a popup box on the desktop when you run it. You set it to the percentage you want with the Turbo button across the top. And, then when you close it or remove it from the desktop by closing it, it sets your computer back to 100 percent. I liked Turbo.exe the best because it is freeware and because it works with XP. It needed a commandline parameter so that it would automatically set a preselected desired percentage at the time you press the button to run it, but otherwise, Turbo.exe is basically perfect - at least until they find a way to double or quadruple the speed of computers in the next go around.

[Slaughter]

Thanks for the update Lurker. I'll give that slowdown utility a go next time I decide to play UFO. Enjoy!

[Bomb Bloke]

I considered making a comic a while back, but then all my time got dragged into a vortex and now... Uh... yeah.

 

Over at the Through the Looking Glass boards Shevers made a comic. It was more or less System Shock 2, but the ship was populated with the forum members. He ended up animating the whole thing with flash. So, uh, my idea was to do more or less the same thing... :lol:

[Accounting Troll]

Does anyone know what the current legal status of X-Com Acopalypse is?

 

I just came across it on an abandonware site, but I thought Atari still held the rights to it

[Slaughter]

Atari owns all X-Com rights, or at least they did last time Pete checked it.

[Hobbes]

I've said this to Slaughter on another board and I will repeat it here. What Fileplanet is doing by distributing X-COM: UFO is illegal. It doesn't matter if Fileplanet calls it abandonware or if the company has ceased to support the game. The bottom line, and this is copyright law, not just my opinion is that Atari has the rights to the original game and they haven't made it freeware, which in that case would be possible to freely download and distribute it.

The fact that Atari doesn't care anymore about X-COM doesn't give anyone the legal right to distribute it on their site. Face it people, Atari has the rights to X-COM, since they paid for them. They can do whatever they want to the series or completely ignore it for as long the copyright stands (50 years). X-COM fans have no legal right whatsoever to determine what they want to do with the series. And to claim that what Atari is doing with the series is 'immoral', well might be everyone's opinion here but that has no standing in a court of law.

Here's a FAQ about abandonware explaining exactly that. And here's the Berne Convention, which is an European treaty regulating copyright law. Or you can look at the U.S. Code that deals with Copyright.

Now, if you find anything on those laws that mentions or authorizes abandonware, please inform me because I have one fanfic that I've love to try to publish....

[Slaughter]

Thank you for the information Hobbes. Good thing to have the links to the law, as I am not knowledgeable in the rules of abandonware.

 

That being said, I will not remove the link to the Fileplanet download for several reasons. We will not host it here, but I will promote the download wherever I go. Here's my reasons:

• IF Atari did care, they would probably sue Fileplanet and whoever else is hosting it. Since they haven't, I take that as a sign they do not care or have other reasons for not taking action.
  
• These games have been released in several magazines and the likes legally. I am sure you are right they paid royalties for it, but once you put it on a PC magazine CD it WILL be distributed all over the place.
  
• We are not hosting it, and thus not doing anything wrong. They can't be angry with us for linking to a file at the worlds largest legal download site (or at least one of them).
  
• The games are not available for sale anymore, and only way to get it legally is trough places like ebay. I want as much people as possible to play the games, to make sure the interest in them live on and grow.
  
• This is a personal observation based on reasoning rather than fact: I think Atari LIKE the fact that people host the game. There may be many reasons they are not selling them anymore, but the most likely one in my opinion is that they can't really earn much on them and that it's a hassle to support them, being so old and all. If sites like Fileplanet can spark a new interest in the franchise again however, Atari have everything to gain from it when/if they announce their next game in the series. So why not give everyone permission to host it and download it? Well, once you do you can't control it anymore. It's freeware, and that can most likely never be reverted. Thus, saying nothing is the best way in their opinion.
  

[Hobbes]

Just playing the Devil's advocate

 

Actually, I've been looking at the Fileplanet and the corporation that owns it, IGN, sites and they clearly aren't just someone's website, so my guess is that you are probably right, especially since they have paid services.

But it puzzles me that they don't have any thing on their site about copyright and they call it abandonware, which is bizarre knowing how that term is usually used by organizations of corporations as an illegal activity. It would make more sense not to call it freeware or abandonware but simply distribute it, if they have Atari's consent.

But if they don't, then they are risking themselves a major lawsuit (especially since they offer paid services), and Atari can also get angry at this site. By posting a link it can be argued that you are helping to commit a felony by promoting it.

 

Just my 2 c.

[Slaughter]

Just playing the Devil's advocate

I'll keep my eye on you dark one

 

But if they don't, then they are risking themselves a major lawsuit (especially since they offer paid services), and Atari can also get angry at this site. By posting a link it can be argued that you are helping to commit a felony by promoting it.

Yeah, it could hurt them if Atari decided to take them based on the distribution being illegal. And I guess you're right about me committing a small felony as well if so, but how could I know a site as large and "respected" as Fileplanet would host illegal files?

 

On a more serious note, I've e-mailed Fileplanet about this and they didn't seem sure. People can upload files to them, and even if they check them all, mistakes can happen. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

Just my 2 c.

Always interested in hearing others opinion, and I enjoy a good argument

[Bomb Bloke]

Meanings change depending on what people use them for. Most people think 'UFO' means 'space ship with aliens', for example. Don't get me started on the meaning of 'hacker'. It hardly surprises me that the term 'abandonware' would be treated in the same way, given how few people actually know what it means to begin with.

 

There is two types of abandonware - assumed (illegal) and official (legal). Some developers release their games as official abandonware. For example, when Sony bought Psygnosis, they released all the stuff it owned so that anybody could download it (as they were more interested in the PS). Thus, games such as Destruction Derby, the first couple of Discworld games, and even most of the Lemmings series are legal abandonware.

 

Games which aren't sold officially for a period of five years or more are considered unofficial abandonware, and are distributed on the basis that it won't financially damage any company. This sort of abandonware is illegal.

 

Either way you look at it, the early X-Com games are abandonware, but whether it's legal to download or not depends on the copyright holders. Abandonware simply isn't an official term yet. *shrugs*

[xzooma]

Dear Slaughter

 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You've made my day!

 

New to the forums but I've been a fan of Xcom since PcGames or was it PcGamer put TFTD on their demo disc back in 95. All this hoopla over Aftershock has got me itching to play the old school games. I bought all the Xcom titles (expect enforcer and missed the boat on email-X) back in the day but lost all the discs. Now I can calmly wait for the US Q1 06 release of AS.

 

Thanks again!

 

P.S. is did they make a windows version of Terror? Or a patch to make it run smoothly on XP?