Xcomutil - Great Ideas For Any Xcom Project

[ShadowHawk]

XCOMUTIL is a modification for XCOM 1 and 2 that has been continually updated for several years now. It makes playing through the original (and second) game far more fun, or at least less annoying.

 

Since I see no mention of XCOMUTIL on this site, and several of the people in this forum have asked for features already implemented in XCOMUTIL (such as autocombat) I have decided to post it here.

 

Here's the link:

http://XcomUtil.ScottTJones.com

 

which redirects to:

http://members.aol.com/stjones/xcomutil/index.html

 

As of this posting, the latest version was made December 8th, 2002, so it is quite obvious that the author, Scott T Jones, is still heavily active in the XCOM hobby and would probably be open to contact with this board.

 

He's not the greatest at selling his free utility, but it is incredibly useful and really makes the game far mor worthwhile. Check out the page and the documentation for ideas to implement in Xenocide - he may even be willing to join the project.

[Devatar]

Yeah, this guy ROCKS. :alienlol:

 

He can incorporate pretty much anything into x-com games, and he obviously knows a lot about the program.

 

I dunno if he has heard of this project. Anyone care to invite him? (I would do it myself, but I'd like to hear what our development team thinks first.)

[red knight]

Yeah, this guy ROCKS.  :alienlol:

 

He can incorporate pretty much anything into x-com games, and he obviously knows a lot about the program.

 

I dunno if he has heard of this project. Anyone care to invite him? (I would do it myself, but I'd like to hear what our development team thinks first.)

for what i had saw, he must had a lot of Assembler training, working with a compiled program..

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Devatar]

So has anyone invited him? (i'm too shy. )

[obijuan]

so??? has anyone send him a messaage

[Guest stewart]

I e-mailed Scott Jones last year, Micah actually knows the guy (he's been to his house and everything). He may be among us as we speak. I'm sure if he is, he is probably being "quiet" about who he is, as he is an "XCOM celebrity" of sorts.

 

If you have old copies of XcomUtil though don't trash them. There is a feature called FIX which he abandons after a certain version (I forget which). It fixed many of the bugs in XCOM. It was abandoned because a patch was issued from the supplier plus the fixes involved tweaking actual game code. So for legally prudent reasons that feature was abandoned.

 

But if you have a buggy "special" version of XCOM the patch may not work and so an old version of XcomUtil is the only way to fix it. I haven't actually tested it though maybe you can abandon the old version afterall.

[stjones]

I e-mailed Scott Jones last year, Micah actually knows the guy (he's been to his house and everything).  He may be among us as we speak.  I'm sure if he is, he is probably being "quiet" about who he is, as he is an "XCOM celebrity" of sorts.

 

If you have old copies of XcomUtil though don't trash them.  There is a feature called FIX which he abandons after a certain version (I forget which).  It fixed many of the bugs in XCOM.  It was abandoned because a patch was issued from the supplier plus the fixes involved tweaking actual game code.  So for legally prudent reasons that feature was abandoned.

 

I guess you could say I have been hiding for a number of reasons, all of them related to the rules imposed by my employer. It is not nice to work on things outside of work. I had to deal with the corporate lawyers just to get permission to continue working on XcomUtil after version 2.0 got reviewed in one of the computer magazines. In January, I changed jobs inside the company and I am now working on Open Source projects. When I saw Xenocide on SourceForge last week, I immediately filed a formal request to work on it and I got written permission on Monday to join the project.

 

In reference to the comment about the FIX command: FIX was removed in version 7.3, but not the function. XcomUtil just detects the version of the game and automatically applies every bug fix that it can.

 

Now that I am joining Xenocide, I will try to ensure that all of my XcomUtil features appear in Xenocide. Many of them are already in plan for Xenocide, because they fixed bugs or limitations. For example, there is no need for my autoequip feature if you can equip soldiers at the base like you can in XCOM3. I plan to push for AutoCombat to be added as soon as possible, because it will allow us to quickly develop a complete game of Xenocide WITHOUT a Battlescape program. That should greatly aid the testing of the Geoscape piece.

[Guest stewart]

Nice to have you aboard. I recall once seeing a base map and route file #21. The file was just open floor with connecting hallway walls. Is that your work?