Xcomutil

[Hayashi]

I'm trying to make some sense out of this utility. Is it a mod that makes the game more difficult than default (with the options to change some parameters) or a utility with some cool features.

For instance, if I just select one or two items (such as renaming of soldiers to reflect their current strengths/weaknesses), would the rest of the game be unchanged from the stock game?

 

[Edit, Zombie: moved to XcomUtil forums.]

Edited January 12, 2006 by Zombie

[[NKF]]

Utility with lots of cool features describes it just nicely. Think of it like you would a Swiss Army knife - it's got tons of features that you'll probably not use, but they're there if you need them. It does all sorts of things, really. It tweaks the game in various ways, to make it easier or harder or to just add a bit of spice to it.

 

The setup utility mainly offers a few items you can toggle and a few that you cannot (like knocking out the base walls - although this can be reversed if you backup the map files before installing the utility). This is the quick and easy way of setting up some of the more commonly used game features. It also applies a fix to the difficulty level for the Dos versions of the game (not needed for the CE). It offers a few XComutil specific mods to the weapons and ships. The weapon and HWP mods can be reversed, but not the addition of weapons to your transport ships. There are a few other options like setting all missions in a various lighting levels, removing mind control from the game (or giving aliens without psi mind control abilities), the research help mode that makes it research much harder. You just rerun xcusetup.bat every time you want to toggle the prompted settings.

 

Xcomutil comes along with f0dders loader for CE for the benefit of those with video problems (it works along side XComutil rather than being a part of XComutil). If I'm not mistaken, this is run when you use the runxcomw.bat file for the CE version as opposed to runxcom.bat.

 

XComutil's batch file acts as an in-between tool. The batch file will run the game and will allow Xcomutil to process mission information between the Geoscape and Battlescape sections so that a variety of effects can occur. Such as randomizing map segments, changing the tileset, replacing UFOs (but not objects or aliens), sorting your soldiers by rank or changing the tags at the end of your soldiers' names to reflect their new stats, etc.

 

The command line utility portion of XComutil (which I've found to work even without running the setup program) provides a host of other tools that you can use to edit your savegame files to make them more interesting or for fixing some errors. Such as adding more aliens to the battle or replacing them entirely with a new species, or deleting corpses or extra clips so that the 170 battlescape item limit doesn't cause items to disappear, etc. The utility can also change the difficulty of the savegame, swap units, change country funding. The documentation has information on all the switches.

 

Apart from the initial modifications done by the setup, most of the features can be switched on and off as you please and the game will pretty much run as usual. You may want to keep a second copy of the game if you want an unmodified copy.

 

- NKF

[Hayashi]

I'm really interested only in those features that make game play a bit less tedious, such as the renaming of soldiers to append their stats to their name, sorting them out in the transport, and one or two others. The rest I prefer to have it as it currently is, without any modification.

 

Can the programme just do this, or do I need to back up a few files first, and copy them back later? If so which are the ones that need backing up?

Edited January 12, 2006 by Hayashi

[[NKF]]

Well, most of the game will remain relatively untouched except for the parts that you want, with the exception of one or two things, like the difficulty level fix for the dos version and the knocked out walls in the base map set. If you don't want the base modified, backup the maps\xbase_*.* files before running xcusetup.bat.

 

If you choose to add non-standard weapon hardpoints and transport capabilities to your aircraft, these changes are permanent and cannot be un-set by the utility. So think twice before testing this feature. The difficulty bug fix is also permanent - but, of course, we want that.

 

I've been using XComutil on my copy of UFO CE for a while, and I've switched off all the features and the game's pretty much the same as it always was. I mainly use it for the batch file and the provided modified executables so that UFO CE behaves more like the dos version whenever an unexpected crash occurs (i.e. the game attempts to continue rather than crashing straight to the desktop).

 

But if you want to be absolutely sure, make a second copy of the game and run XComutil on it and find out what works for you.

 

- NKF

Edited January 12, 2006 by NKF