PC Gamer Scoop on TFTD

[Zombie]

One of my recent finds for my X-COM collection was a near-mint copy of the March 1995 issue of PC Gamer which has a 2 page article on it with a bunch of screenshots. A lot of these can be found at XCommand, btw. Perhaps this magazine issue is where Byron got the pics in the first place?

 

So, take a look at this pic:

 

https://xcom.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/images/x2x7x6.jpg

 

This is what Byron says about it:

 

Now this is interesting... A Shark-like alien? Sharktoid? Sharkman? I don't want to know about this alien's close combat capabilities!

From the caption underneath the pic in the magazine, it says this:

 

No, it's not the dreaded Landshark - it's another one of the invaders' hideous mutations.

Anyone know if the name of this alien is supposed to be called a "Landshark"? (Drewid, you worked on art for TFTD, know anything about this)? It looks like it is carrying an upside-down Gauss Pistol or something. This alien looks a lot scarier than the cutesie battlescape-rendered Tasoth, that's for sure. ("Awww, it's a seahorse!" compared to "Crap, its a shark... with a gun!!! ") Though, if the battlescape Tasoth looked anything like it's UFOpaedia entry, it would be a lot more scary too.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

It's near impossible to get a picture that "perfect" via a scanner. The aspect ratio, resolution, and angle are precise. The colour depth'd probably be accurate too, if it wasn't a JPEG. Far more likely PC Gamer ripped them from XCommand then the other way around; either that, or they got 'em from the same place (take another look at the magazine, see if you can spot the same compression artifacts!).

 

It was a long time before I came to respect the Tasoth. I only ever saw them as a slightly gauss-resistant alien who sometimes came with those pesky psychic Tentaculats. It was quite some time before I worked out that those bigass floating brains were not, in fact, TFTD's equivalent of the Ethereal.

[Zombie]

It's near impossible to get a picture that "perfect" via a scanner. The aspect ratio, resolution, and angle are precise. The colour depth'd probably be accurate too, if it wasn't a JPEG. Far more likely PC Gamer ripped them from XCommand then the other way around (take another look at the magazine, see if you can spot the same compression artifacts!).

Surely XCommand didn't exist way back in March 1995 though... did it? There are no compression artifacts in the magazine pictures either. The pic in the magazine is bigger than the one at XCommand. Reducing the dimensions normally makes a better looking pic, no? Finally, the "arm" of the alien sticks out into the page in the magazine. Scanning, then resizing and recoloring the background would make a pic much like Byron's. I'll need to do some scanning of my own anyway so I'll check out if I can reproduce the effect. Shouldn't be too hard.

 

It was a long time before I came to respect the Tasoth. I only ever saw them as a slightly gauss-resistant alien who sometimes came with those pesky psychic Tentaculats. It was quite some time before I worked out that those bigass floating brains were not, in fact, TFTD's equivalent of the Ethereal.

Is this page at the X-COM wiki omitting this info? Me thinks it is.

 

Anyway, Tentaculats aren't too bad as you'll only see them on the larger ships/underwater terror sites or alien bases. Most missions they aren't present so it's just the Tasoths (or Lobbies). The psi attacks from the Tasoth Squad Leaders can be troublesome though.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

XCommand in 1995? I really dunno, back then I was still running Windows 3.11 and had never heard of "the internet".

 

I reckon it's been around since before I joined XTC though (keeping in mind that was probably before the year 2k hit).

 

Reducing resolution only makes a "better looking" pic if you use anti-aliasing. Otherwise you just get weird jags and imperfections. Unless, of course, the source image was originally upscaled from the resolution you want to downscale to... and then only sometimes.

 

Likewise, upscaling can be made to look better with smoothing effects and fancy systems such as 2xSai.

 

In this case, Byron's image is 320x200 - the same resolution as all the artwork we see in the games. It's highly unlikely the original artists bothered to draw a higher resolution version, given that there are no signs of anti-aliasing.

 

For example, check out the three white lines that make up the "sparkle" around the eye - they're a perfect single pixel in width, with no bleed from or into the Sharkticon's dark skin. Good luck maintaining THAT, let alone without a modern scanner. There are also quite a few other pixel-width lines that go on a perfect horizontal/diagonal/vertical angle, something that's also hard to copy off a printed page.

 

Re the Tentaculats, I really did lose most of my respect for them when I discovered the Tasoth's secret. Hence you can get some idea as to the contempt I feel for Chryssalids (which can't fly).

 

(Er, um, what bit of info were you referring to re the wiki? The Psy thing? The Gauss thing?)

[Zombie]

XCommand in 1995? I really dunno, back then I was still running Windows 3.11 and had never heard of "the internet".

 

I reckon it's been around since before I joined XTC though (keeping in mind that was probably before the year 2k hit).

You were but just a wee lad back then, eh? BTW, way back in 1995 I had a organic chem teacher who was heavily into the net at that time. He had us (the class) go on almost every day to do research. Back then there wasn't much on the internet except educational institutions. A year later I designed and coded my personal webpage for an English project. That's how big the net grew in a year! XCommand's archived news goes back to 2000. Does that date sound about right for the site's inception?

 

Reducing resolution only makes a "better looking" pic if you use anti-aliasing. Otherwise you just get weird jags and imperfections. Unless, of course, the source image was originally upscaled from the resolution you want to downscale to... and then only sometimes.

 

Likewise, upscaling can be made to look better with smoothing effects and fancy systems such as 2xSai.

 

In this case, Byron's image is 320x200 - the same resolution as all the artwork we see in the games. It's highly unlikely the original artists bothered to draw a higher resolution version, given that there are no signs of anti-aliasing.

 

For example, check out the three white lines that make up the "sparkle" around the eye - they're a perfect single pixel in width, with no bleed from or into the Sharkticon's dark skin. Good luck maintaining THAT, let alone without a modern scanner. There are also quite a few other pixel-width lines that go on a perfect horizontal/diagonal/vertical angle, something that's also hard to copy off a printed page.

Could have been a retouched image as well. I frequently have to recolor/rebuild parts of scanned images for my X-COM collection. But there is that black bar underneath the image of the alien. There is a black bar underneath the one in the magazine too for the caption. This can't just be coincidence, can it?

 

But I guess it's possible Byron got it from one of the folks at MicroProse. I heard from NKF that he had all sorts of contacts with them way back then.

 

This "Skarkman"/"Landshark" concept was most certainly a precursor to the Tasoth. I mean, look at how similar the UFOpaedia entries are:

 

https://www.xcomufo.com/usopaedia/pics/big/shot0078.png

 

The arm sticks out onto the graph background just like the Landshark, and the blue streaks in back of the alien are really similar too. Wonder why they replaced it? The concept was very cool.

 

Re the Tentaculats, I really did lose most of my respect for them when I discovered the Tasoth's secret. Hence you can get some idea as to the contempt I feel for Chryssalids (which can't fly).

 

(Er, um, what bit of info were you referring to re the wiki? The Psy thing? The Gauss thing?)

No the fact that Tentaculats are not listed as a underwater companion to the Tasoths. It only lists the above ground "friends".

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

Way back in 1997 ~ 1998, we congregated around X-Com Apocalypse central. That was around the time Interceptor was in its inception and I think we went all the way through its release. Dave Ellis posted pretty danged frequently back then. I remember how the mouse control was introduced in the game.

 

Then there were the porn banners and that marked the end of the site. Byron opened XCommand, and we moved there. And indeed, he had some pretty good connections and managed to get quite a lot of interesting material.

 

Much fun... much fun.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

The shark might've seemed a bit cheesy perhaps. Also note that about a year before TFTD came out, the children's cartoon "Street Sharks" (one of the many TMNT rips) started airing.

[Zombie]

One of my recent finds for my X-COM collection was a near-mint copy of the March 1995 issue of PC Gamer which has a 2 page article on it with a bunch of screenshots. A lot of these can be found at XCommand, btw. Perhaps this magazine issue is where Byron got the pics in the first place?

 

So, take a look at this pic:

 

https://xcom.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/images/x2x7x6.jpg

Mystery solved! I just uploaded a TFTD Slideshow to our files section today which was originally put together by MicroProse. In it is a bunch of really rare screenshots including one of the "Landshark". Good stuff, I highly recommend downloading the slideshow to see what might have been.

 

All of these pics are at XCommand btw, which suggests Byron just saved the pics into a different format from the slides instead of having an actual alpha release of the game. Too bad, I was hoping an alpha existed somewhere.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

All of these pics are at XCommand btw

Or not -

 

Account for domain xcom.strategyplanet.gamespy.com has been suspended

It seems the site still exists in the way back machine (the pics from the slideshow are here), but I'm not sure how complete it is (or if this "suspension" is permanent or not - though I can't imagine that it was brought about for any reason other then inactivity and general obsoleted-ness).

 

Still, it might a good idea if I was to package the entire thing into a ZIP for offline viewing.

[Pete]

To be honest I'm surprised it's remained up this long - I worked on The Last Outpost when it was still back on Gamespy's hosting and they do say something along the lines that they frequently review sites and remove them after several months of inactivity. XCommand was up to a few years of non-X-COM activity wasn't it (aside from the message boards)?

 

At least cyke's AllianceX is still up! I've still got to copy all that across to this site yet... something I've been meaning to do for, oh, nearly 7 years now

[Zombie]

Gee, XCommand must've just expired because it was working a few days ago when I looked at the Alternate versions page. I might have been the last person to visit it. Hope it comes online again.

 

@Pete: Yeah, there wasn't any activity on XCommand since at least 2005 when I was collecting X-COM links for Slaughter. Glad to know AllianceX is still up. Is cyke still around at TLO? There are some things on AllianceX which are missing. Maybe he has them yet?

 

- Zombie

[Tepid tasoth]

Zombie, that slideshow is awesome! Thanks a lot for uploading it!

That migthy shark guy looks actually really fancy. I aslo somewhat like the graphics of the Lobsterman (well I THINK it's a lobsterman anyways).

[Pete]

Zombie - pretty sure I've got a copy of the entire site somewhere. I could get FTP access to what's there now too, but between copy & paste and archive.org I'm not in any great rush to grab it all.

[Zombie]

Zombie, that slideshow is awesome! Thanks a lot for uploading it!

That migthy shark guy looks actually really fancy. I aslo somewhat like the graphics of the Lobsterman (well I THINK it's a lobsterman anyways).

You're welcome. I'm glad someone finds it interesting.

 

I actually like the Lobsterman in the slideshow better than the one currently in-game too. It looks more... "real" for lack of a better term.

 

Zombie - pretty sure I've got a copy of the entire site somewhere. I could get FTP access to what's there now too, but between copy & paste and archive.org I'm not in any great rush to grab it all.

Good to know it all exists yet. Hope we can get all of cyke's stuff moved over and incorporated into this site sometime (time permitting of course).

 

- Zombie

[Pete]

It is something that's been on the cards for 5 years - I'm thinking after thge other bits I'm working on are out of the way we can sort that out as there are quite a few good bits and bobs that we definitely don't want to lose!