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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

New Website - Let Me Present Myself...


Arky

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Hi there!

Just a quick note about my new X-COM site "[url="http://commanderx.xcomufo.com/"]Arky's X-COM site[/url]". My old page Commander X's X-COM page, still on Geocities, has been revamped all over since I hadn't done any updates since 1998!

I'd like to believe that my new site is a different form of expression on the X-COM subject by discussing the philosophy behind the games. So if you have a chance and feel like reading a bit, my new website will be a new option you can consider!

Thank you all for keeping X-COM alive!

Cheers! :beer: Edited by Arky
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Guest drewid
x-com alliance.

Microprose US (at this point owned by Spectrum Holobyte) bought three unreal licenses. (no games planned , they just liked the idea I think) One went to the UK office who decided to do the next x-com using the engine.

Spectrum Holobyte insisted on a 3oo page design doc. detailing everything in the game. it too three months to get together. It was obsolete as soon as it was bound.

Unreal was unfinished at this point. updates would happen regularly, unreal code got changed for no readily apparent reason. and would break much of the game code that had been done, costing a week of more every time there was an update.

SH insisted on one or two demo releases every quarter, plus demos for trade shows. these took a week or more to get together, often using specially written code which was discarded afterwards.

It took a long time to get the squad behaving in a sensible manner, with waypoints and tags for defensive and offensive positions. That was pretty much there with occasional glitches.

After 18 months the team had a lot of levels built, creatures built and animated plotlines finalised, There was much discussion going on about the combat system (which should have been prototyped long before really). That would have been in place shortly afterwards.

The team was also about to freeze the unreal code to stop the pain of updates breaking everything.

SH got nervous and decided to move the project to the States.

The US team re-did a lot of stuff, and took a long time doing it. the coders probably took one look at the code and decided to rewrite it, (all coders do this with other peoples code, it's a reflex action).

A year later it was dead.

Sometime around that time Hasbro bought the company. A year later that was dead too, Hasbro having managed to lose $170Mill in 18 months due to chronic mismanagement (but that's another story).
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[quote name='Arky' date='Apr 26 2004, 02:41 PM']Wow, that's great info. Mind if I add this to my chronology page? Or you already hava this on your page? (I couldn't find info if you have a webpage or not.)[/quote]
Hehe... Arky, just ask him specifically how he knows all that info :)
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[quote name='Micah' date='Apr 26 2004, 04:56 PM'][quote name='Arky' date='Apr 26 2004, 02:41 PM'] Wow, that's great info. Mind if I add this to my chronology page? Or you already hava this on your page? (I couldn't find info if you have a webpage or not.)[/quote]
Hehe... Arky, just ask him specifically how he knows all that info :) [/quote]
Okay, here it comes:

Oh drewid, Senior Project Member, how do you know all this information? Oh mighty great one!
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