OpenXcom Version Released

[michal]

After 8 months of hard work it’s finally here! Be sure to uninstall any old versions first and read the Documentation carefully for any new features.

 

New features:

• Basescape:
  
  • Craft rearming.
    
  • Craft equipping.
    
  • Purchase/Recruit.
    
  • Sell/Sack.
    
  • Base transfers.
    

  [*]Battlescape:

  • Battle turns.
    
  • Item equipping, firing, throwing.
    
  • Environment: fire, smoke, explosions, damage, kills.
    
  • Unit stats.
    
  • Inventory.
    
  • AI Phase 1 (patrol, aggro).
    

  [*]New languages: Czech, English (UK), Polish, Romanian, Russian.

  [*]Support for custom font characters and full Unicode.

  [*]Options.

  [*]Platform-specific folders.

  [*]Partial Ufopaedia.

  [*]Externalized soldier names.

  [*]Nag screen only shows once.

  [*]Swapped F5 and F12 keys.

  [*]Movable caret in text input.

Bugfixes:

 

• Bug in Geoscape pathfinding.
  
• Incorrect language names.
  
• Cross-platform bug when loading PCK files.
  
• Invisible loading errors.
  
• Incorrect mouse events.
  
• Missing strings.
  
• Various UI issues.
  
• Various translation issues.
  
• Bug in craft rearming.
  
• FPS Counter didn’t always show up properly.
  
• Crash sites didn’t vanish properly.
  
• Failing to load a game could crash the Geoscape.
  
• Games weren’t always saved properly.
  
• Monthly report didn’t show correct date.
  
• Crafts in base view weren’t positioned correctly.
  
• Music loading issues.
  
• Various battlescape fixes.
  
• Various performance improvements.
  

And as usual, the known issues:

• Battlescape is still in a “sandbox” mode, so missions never end and anything you do in it won’t carry over to the Geoscape. Take advantage of it!
  
• Geoscape sidebar isn’t translated in all languages.
  
• You can’t minimize dogfights.
  
• UFOs are nerfed to make them easier to intercept.
  
• Screenshots are saved in BMP since it doesn’t require libraries. DO NOT share them in this format, convert them to something sane like PNG/JPG first.
  

Game can be downloaded from official site: www.openxcom.org

[silencer_pl]

Youtube link dosen't work

[Bomb Bloke]

Fixed/embedded. He didn't quite copy across the full link.

[Space Voyager]

Damn, that is a lot of new content! I'll definitely have to try it out!

[silencer_pl]

I am wondering is it worth it to make this project or maybe help guys that do other projects that look more modern and still want to be 1:1 with EU, for example UFO: Cydonia Fall project

[Bomb Bloke]

I'd say it's worth it. Cydonias Fall doesn't yet have a playable alpha out yet, and apparently the devs are starved for artists - I don't think they're using C either, it was some sort of weird scripting language.

 

Two Sides would've been another choice, only its creator has it more as a personal hobby.

 

This one is already more advanced then either, as far as I'm aware. Once the basic engine has been completed, it'll be relatively easy to build mods for it; eg, high-resolution sprite packs and so on (for that "modern" look).

 

One upgrade I'd like to see (of many) would be a 3D mode - like Exult 3D. That was done by slapping 2D sprite data onto the 3D models used to define the game world, and it just so happens UFO also has 3D models for all its 2D sprites (rather more detailed ones then Ultima 7 does, because that simply used them for the purposes of determining whether your character can step from one position to the next - UFO used them to work out whether a tiny bullet would pass through picket fences and so on).

 

But such dreams are a ways off yet...

[Pete]

I'd say it's definitely worth it to stick with this project - the possibilities are endless once it's complete just because it's open source and, fingers crossed, well commented throughout the code.

 

Plus if you read the interview we did back in May, you'll see that this will also solve several issues within the original game itself (although in the interview it says there's little difference between Beginner and Superhuman, which I'd have to disagree with unless he was talking about the original, un-patched version).

[TomVD]

Vanilla OpenXCom will probably be able to load high resolution sprite packs at some point - I have it somewhat working in my sandbox at least. But there are still issues, one of them resulted in the conclusion that we want to go towards using some hardware acceleration, in other words OpenGL (having our software rendering as a fall-back renderer).

 

But it will be better to keep the expectations as low as possible, not promising heaven and earth to everyone and then disappoint people. As a side-effect we need to cope with the "what is the added value of this?" comments for a while We also don't know what exactly will happen after 1.0. There is still lots of fun stuff that can be implemented....

[Knan]

Cool. Planning on fooling around with this a bit.

[Pete]

Cool. Planning on fooling around with this a bit.

 

You need to treat her like a lady!

[Knan]

Fun. Some line of sight / fog of war troubles and misscaled explosions, but lots of sectoids to splat in the traditional rookie ammowasteful way. Promising. Armor, health, shooting comrades by mistake and fatal wounds is in and working. No vulnerabilities/resistances to types of damage yet, and no panicking / berserkers.

 

Shouldn't take long, though. Looking good!

[michal]

Finally, after almost a year of intensive work, OpenXcom 0.4 is ready.

 

New features:

• Basescape:
  
  • Research screens.
    
  • Manufacture screens.
    
  • Soldier improved stats.
    
  • Tank equipping.
    
  • Armor equipping.
    
  • Wound recovery.
    

  [*]Geoscape:

  • New globe shading.
    
  • Craft pathfinding now uses great circles (more accurate).
    
  • New radar detection formula (more accurate).
    
  • Terror sites.
    
  • UFOs of all sizes.
    
  • Tied research requirements to everything.
    
  • UFOs in dogfights fight back.
    

  [*]Battlescape:

  • Abort screen.
    
  • Debriefing screen.
    
  • Battlescape save game.
    
  • Panicking units.
    
  • Skill increase and promotions.
    
  • Ranged based accuracy is now optional (see UFO Extender for details on Ranged Based Accuracy).
    
  • Minimap.
    
  • Flying units.
    
  • Grav lifts.
    
  • Optional pathfinding preview.
    
  • Medikits.
    
  • Laser weapons.
    
  • Large units.
    
  • Motion scanner.
    
  • Alien deployment rules.
    
  • AI taking cover & throwing grenades.
    
  • Damage to items.
    
  • Mind probe.
    
  • Stun rod.
    
  • Show/hide battlescape layers button.
    
  • Rough battlescape artefacts salvaging functionality.
    
  • Added civilians.
    
  • Added support for skyranger landing on non 0-level.
    
  • Added support for multiple craft/ufo maps.
    
  • Psi Amp.
    
  • Added support for more alien races.
    
  • Load Game button.
    

  [*]External rulesets.

  [*]Added entries for most entities in the game.

  [*]New Battle screen.

  [*]Options screen.

  [*]Startup logging.

  [*]Game icon and logo.

  [*]64-bit version.

  [*]Support for multiple data folders.

  [*]Support for XDG specification.

  [*]Support for user soldier name pools.

  [*]Various new options (see docs).

  [*]Debug mode.

Bugfixes:

• Two duplicating ammo bugs.
  
• Wrong rocket launcher hand sprite.
  
• “Not enough time units” during alien turn.
  
• Bug where alien weapons are given to the soldiers.
  
• Target mode is canceled when switching unit.
  
• Reserve time unit button is reset when starting new turn.
  
• Minor drawing glitch visible when walking down the skyranger ramp.
  
• Geoscape sidebar didn’t show up on first start on some languages.
  
• Bug with line of sight inside UFOs along diagonal walls.
  
• Bug with pathfinding inside UFOs along diagonal walls.
  
• Aliens not black when in undiscovered terrain.
  
• Issue with turn and shoot.
  
• Too many reaction fires from autoshot (each shot had a chance of a reaction shot which is wrong).
  
• Unit selection arrow showed up during alien turn.
  
• Double sliding door didn’t open when walking diagonally.
  
• Energy usage not calculated correctly.
  
• Missing text in Monthly Report.
  
• Ground items showing up in soldier’s hands.
  
• Improved interface performance.
  
• Bug with seeing through undiscovered floors.
  
• Updated the Rank Bonus values used to calculate soldier “value”.
  
• Apply changes to the base / soldier name when user presses OK.
  
• Incorrect globe zoom levels.
  
• Incorrect UI strings.
  
• Incorrect colors in Battlescape UI.
  
• Crash when starting mission on back side of globe.
  
• Endless number of soldiers in Skyranger.
  
• Clicking visible enemy units clicks other stuff too.
  
• Fixed lazy ground inventory arrangement.
  
• Aliens do not suffer from fatal wounds anymore.
  
• Improved straight line pathfinding in battlescape.
  
• Fixed unable to hit unit on stairs.
  
• Fixed drawing hidden object’s outlines.
  
• Fixed pistol aiming position.
  
• Fixed HWP rank image.
  
• Fixed no LOF error issues.
  
• Fixed issue where unit stopped walking when not seeing new alien units.
  
• Fixed alien reaction shots costing no TUs.
  
• Camera centers on selected unit on battlescape start.
  
• Fixed battlescape kill counter not working.
  
• Fix cursor hiding and scrolling during AI turn
  
• Fix camera scrolling into dark infinite and beyond
  
• Fix unit FOV calculated before AI reaction shot.
  
• Fixed “alien floating error”.
  
• Fixed walking under skyranger.
  
• Fixed firing XP from explosive ammo.
  
• Fixed active weapon display.
  
• Fixed issue with dead alien count.
  
• Fixed autoshot of HE ammo issue.
  
• Save turn number in savegame.
  
• Fixed free autoshot ammo.
  
• Fixed wrong UI colors.
  
• Updated translations.
  
• Fixed craft loading bug.
  
• Fixed crash with invalid savegames.
  
• Fixed savegame list not being sorted.
  
• Game no longer crashes if no sound device is available.
  
• Crafts that are outside of base no longer show in base view.
  
• Fixed globe not redrawing properly sometimes.
  
• Fixed various data loading bugs.
  
• Sell screen now decreases item quantity.
  
• Fixed craft pathing bugs.
  
• Fixed bug in command-line parameters.
  
• Various performance improvements.
  
• Added fallback if no soldier name pools are available.
  
• Fixed radar detection.
  
• Fixed some bugs in globe.
  
• Fixed inventory crash with certain armor types.
  
• Fixed crash with loading DOS sounds.
  
• Fixed battlescape buttons responding to wrong mouse button.
  
• Improved mouse click handling.
  
• Fixed Language dialog having wrong height.
  
• Game no longer crashes if language isn’t found.
  
• Game no longer crashes if User directory is unavailable.
  
• Game now shows an error if no languages are available.
  
• Fixed various bugs with text strings not fitting.
  
• Fixed text caret not always aligning properly.
  
• Fixed crash with UI buttons.
  
• Fixed Intercept string not always showing correct stats.
  
• Fixed colors in Target Info and Items Arriving windows.
  
• Fixed various savegame bugs.
  

Known Issues:

• There’s no Geoscape AI, alien spawning is completely random.
  
• UFOpaedia is incomplete and not tied to research.
  
• Dogfights are missing functionality.
  
• Not every ingame item is implemented yet.
  
• Geoscape sidebar isn’t always translated.
  

Windows builds are available here (other platforms will follow soon):

https://openxcom.org/index.php/downloads/

[Space Voyager]

My compliments to the team! I'd also like to apologize for the delay at posting this.

[Thorondor]

An abundance of improvements and fixes land with Open XCom's handy v0.4.5 release.

[Space Voyager]

Wow, that is one long list... I wonder what is left to be done at all!

[michal]

Just a little update.

 

As of today evening, OpenXcom should be finishable

 

Yeah, that's right. You can play from beggining to the end 0.5 hasn't still been released, but you can try git build.

[michal]

OpenXcom let's play:

 

[Pete]

Holy crap!

 

I'm a bit behind on my reading here, but well done on completing the end-game! Looking forward to the official 0.5 release

 

Just checked out the list of things left to do (further down this page) and it looks like you're nearing the end - good work!

[Thorondor]

https://openxcom.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/logo.png

 

Redesigned website, fresh twitter account and, most importantly, new version 0.9 has finally been aired today.

 

::

 

Read all about the latest version here, and to have it invade your PC get it here.