9 replies to this topic

[Serge]

Has there been any thoughts about a complete source code rewrite?
I may be wrong, but I'm strongly againsts this. The point is that it will require a LOT of time with the questionable result in the end. Here is a link to an interesting article: http://www.joelonsof...0000000069.html. If you do not like current ufo2000 sourcebase that much, you can always start a new project of your own

What are the goals, is ufo2000 going to be ever fiished?
Our goals are constantly changing (as the world is), priorities do not remain the same over time, some developers join us, some leave. Sticking with a strict development plan does not work here as nobody is working full time on the game or being paid for that. The game evolves trying to match our vision of a perfect x-com remake.

What about geoscape, are there any plans for single player campaign?
Sure. Wanna join us and work on this?

Sprite graphics seems a bit old, what about switching to 3D?
That's true, 3D graphics can look better. Open source and free games lag several years (don't know the exact number) behind commercial titles in all that is related to graphics and video effects. And explanation is simple, improving graphics just costs too much development efforts if you want to get most of the hardware you have at your disposal. For example, back in 1995 the original X-COM worked on i386 with 4MB (or even 2MB) of memory. It was damn hard to implement all this graphics on that hardware. UFO2000 has much less efficient engine, but it is much simplier to develop and maintain too, and it works on modern hardware just fine. The same is true for 3D games, it is just too hard to make the graphics on par with modern top commercial titles, more like the graphics would be about 5 years old (rough estimate). And older 3D graphics was low polygon and butt ugly. Also we need to find a mature 3D library with a stable API and a minimal number of bugs in it, we would like to develop the game but not struggle with the bugs in third party packages. With all that said, 3D frontend for ufo2000 is quite possible, but it is just not worth doing it right now. Let's wait for another year or two.

What about switching from Allegro to SDL?
to be written

More Q/A to be added... Feel free to discuss what is missing or wrong here. Also it is my vision of FAQ, the other developers may not agree with me So we might have to update some information.

Edited by Serge, 09 August 2005 - 10:58 PM.

[faramir_doc]

hey, i thin it's great he idea of single player campaign, but i do not agry at all with the 3D theory....now i have realised that old games, not so old, are the very good ones, and
the 2D x-com graphics and colors are jsut perfect, for me obviously....but obviously it' up to you developers to decide what to do

another thing, i would like to dicscuss the new beta version, but i don't find the right topic (discussion?) where they discuss about it..if someone could put me the link, thanks


Ok, see you guys in next times, from italy, me

[Twilight Owl]

another thing, i would like to dicscuss the new beta version, but i don't find the right topic (discussion?) where they discuss about it..if someone could put me the link, thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

http://www.xcomufo.c...?showtopic=5305

[faramir_doc]

thanks!.

[Llyr]

about the 3d thing....

i am not sure if i would like xcom in 3d...
it would have to be an isometric engine, able to do tiles. and kamera position has to be fixed, top down view. it should be possible to do 3d without changing the feeling of the game, and without changing looks to much.
there's just one thing: going 3d will be much more complex, more and harder work to do...

about the engine: there is no need to wait two year. there is an good (commercial quality) open source (lgpl) 3d engine out there, which is very close to releasing its stable version 1.0 soon after more then three or four years of hard work...

http://www.crystalspace3d.org

ive been watching development of this engine for nearly two years now i think, and i still dream of learning how to use it, and doing my own project with it some day in some not to distant future.
there is some konzept of some game in my head, which is maturing for about six years now and that it is quite detailed already... it will be realised one day or another

uh yeah... ive been watching... there was some isometric engine in crystalspace once, but its development has been droppen, due to lack of interest.

so the possiblities sure would be there... the bigger question is: do we have the skills, time and the will to move over to 3d? somehow i don't think so...
and 3d isn't required neither for the game mechanics, nor for the games feeling... it would be just and only pure eye-candy without any other sense or meaning.

i personally think, that it's a big problem of the gaming industry, that there is put sooo much effort into nice looks and graphics, so that in exchange the fun gets lost somewhere on the way. "dumb but beautifull"... that sells, you know?

edit: one of my favourite screenshots: http://community.cry...et=0&imageId=68

and that cube's nice too, showing the usage of bump- and specular mapping

Edited by Llyr, 16 December 2005 - 06:24 PM.

[brian-o]

hey, i thin it's great he idea of single player campaign, but i do not agry at all with the 3D theory....now i have realised that old games, not so old, are the very good ones, and 
the 2D x-com graphics and colors are jsut perfect, for me obviously....but obviously it' up to you developers to decide what to do 

I would like to see higher resolution sprites , if we stayed with 2d sprites but made them have more pixels, we could make the old style graphics with more detail, or we could use 3d models to make the 2d sprites without having to add 3d code.
if we were making 2d sprites from 3d models, I'd want the ability to add more frames of animation since each frame would be relatively easy to create with 3d models..

I like the single player campaign idea also, and I think it would be good if we knew exactly what it would take to make one..

[Blood Angel]

Sprites ftw. We love the pixels. They make us feel fuzzy inside.

[brian-o]

Sprites ftw. We love the pixels. They make us feel fuzzy inside.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not against pixels, I think there should be more of them..

[Blood Angel]

Sprites ftw. We love the pixels. They make us feel fuzzy inside.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not against pixels, I think there should be more of them..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Clever. But you know what I mean. The XCom style graphics are one of the best things about this game.

[Kraplax]

Hello!
Well, i was looking for a proper place to ask, but failed. So, just decided to post here, in FAQ...

I'm running ufo server in our LAN and find it very convinient, since there are not very much users in the net. The only reason for it is unstability of your server or my network connection, where i bet some proxy server is used... So, here we go with my questions:

1) When the server works it generates .db file. Using forum search I've already found out what kind of DataBase is generated (SQLite3), and even found out how to watch through the DB with the help of sqlite3.exe, but i've got some problem here. I can't get the information in the form of the HTM report as generated on your on-line server. How do i do that? I saw the db2htmlreport.lua file and thought it could help me. I've downloaded lua executables, but couldn't get them work. Could you please give some instructions for noobs? I'm using WinXP SP2, so be sure not to give such advices as "login as root" =)

2) My Windows crashes from time to time and though the game works fine without installation (i mean, if it was once installed in some directory) it's still a beta, so sometimes it's easier to solve the problem reinstalling the whole game and compare two results (the previous game with some bug and the fresh installed game). This way it's easier to understand wat i've added/ changed/ deleted that made the previous version unplayable. But sometimes i forget copying the .db file, so the previous statistics (which is very little, thus so much valuable for me) is left in the old DB. Is there any way to "glue" them? I mean, get the info from old.db and copy it, adding to the already existing info in the new.db?

Well, a little bit clumsy post, but i hope you'll understand it. Please, help me make the game popular =)

PS A little wish - plase, solve that bloody memory leak problem - i'm having up to 1,5GB of swap file when playing this game and running the server. It's just too hard for some of my friends... Hope, the next release will be more stable and less leaky and buggy =)