This needs fixing 
UFO Enemy Unknown is an experience everyone here should take part in, so get the original and download OpenXcom to go with it and I can guarantee you will likely end up attempting to delete the game multiple times after that stray grenade wipes out your entire team, or your blaster bomb carrier gets mind controlled, etc
Hooray for difficulty! Jokes aside, anybody who has played FXCOM or many different TBS games will enjoy this (Once you get used to the UI 
)
2 Likes
Whatâs OpenXcom for? Havenât picked anything related to OgXCom in ages!
It is a great game cause I could still not do it.
I am a developer, not in games but in microcontroller stuff. And in NO WAY I could do what they did on those old machines. They did that in a quality that is great. (And yes I am Aware of the balance issues)
Having done software stuff all my life when I see a modern games I am like: âoh, this is how they did that.â Or maybe âyeah this is cool, but, well this hardware is a beast so not a problemâ
Modern games do not focus on âwhat could be possibleâ. For UFO they had NOT huge RAM, no space on harddrives and somehow, I still could not figure out how, they made it feeling so big with that old hardware.
The quality of the game compared to modern games was even better and they had NO modern quality methods and I guess they did not have a big team.
HOW DID THEY DO THAT?
And for Phoenix Point I am expecting that they take it to the next level: enemies that âlearnâ from my playstyle and try to counter it, forcing me to do different strategies.
The problem with that is not that it is not possible. The problem is that it has to be scaleable to the difficulty level and make different kind of people with different skill levels enjoy the game.
So I backed it⌠still waiting for my name to be on the soldiers list 
2 Likes
OpenXcom is a freeware program that takes the datafiles from XCom and runs the game on modern machines with bugfixes and increased number of options
1 Like
Itâs a fan-built engine that uses the OG data files but is designed to run on modern systems without needing DOSBox, fixes bugs, and allows for easy modding. And let me tell you, thereâs a TON of mods out there.
I donât know if theyâve officially released 2.0 yet but the nightly builds also support TFTD. I know that v1.0 doesnât so if youâre wanting to use it for TFTD also then make sure you get the right version
1 Like
Iâd expect PP backers to have a higher than usual share of older gamers, who actually DID play XCOM back in the day.
While I would undeniably love this, turn based games IA tends to be a problem, especially when stuff gets complicated with multiple skills to take into account, objectives and the like. Take the example of Cyanideâs Bloodbowl, the AI has to built a reasonable game plan accounting for 211 models able to move freely on a 2615 pitch, every unsafe action is decided by a dice roll and failure is turn ending, forcing you to play in a specific sequence. While the AI isnât piss poor, itâs not exactly overly challenging either, and I donât blame Cyanide for this as I have yet to see a smart AI doing this.
OGXComâs AI was very smart either, but the guys who coded it sure were, and managed to make it look smarter than it was, which is no small feat. IIRC it works by mapping routes on every generated map and assigning aliens to different tasks, such as guard, search and destroy âŚ
If PPâs dev can fake the alienâs ability to adapt intelligently to PPâs tactics and weaponry while maintaining a semi-decent AI, Iâll call it a win!
2 Likes
Donât forget that the aliens got to cheat. The second that they saw ONE of your units they were able to see ALL your units, plus they know right from the start their Psi strength without actually needing to use the Mind Orb. Hence Blaster Launcher shots into units not actually seen and them always targeting the troop with the weakest Psi stat.
On the flip side the AI is also intentionally handicapped in UD, TFTD, and FiraXCOM. If they werenât they would just chuck grenades all day every day and win via attrition (especially UD and TFTD grenades). I did a Superhuman Apocalypse playthrough and let me tell you, the explosive spam is real (especially those heat seeking boomeroids) and freaking sucks. Would have cost me the playthrough if I wasnât a save scumming scrub, and even then there was a point I was down to 8 wounded soldiers, 4 of them critically wounded (one shot kills), and no available soldiers for recruitment.
Pssst we were all teens, but in days of Sinclair, CBM and later on Amiga/Atari/Mac
Its tough to tell kiddos everybody laughed at PC at those days
No faking, keep it real!
1 Like
Maybe I was raised âwrongâ but I was raised that they were all PCs with Windows just being another type of PC back then. Wasnât really until the âMac vs PCâ commercials that I saw a delineation between them which really drove me up the wall and made me feel like those who bought into the commercials were just uninformed hipsters to put it nicely.
Or maybe it was just that overly literal me was technically correct (after all they ARE all âpersonal computersâ) and my parents simply didnât feel like trying to correct me. I mean how do you tell a kid that heâs technically right but yet still wrong?
1 Like
You are.Personal Computers and IBM PC are same.PC was just cloned, cheap and accelerated by 3rd party enough and other were to closed in their minds and capitalistic approaches.
But somewhat, lost 8/16/32-bit PCs had a soul, identity, community, different real applications and games. So I really like to see CPC has got a multitasking these days, CBM128 and Speccy quite few revamps, Amiga a lot of FPGA and some NG love, Atari rebreath in Amiga Vampire. But gaming remains on Windows and Xbox and PS4 (too bad Nintendo died as well as SEGA), and I am glad for SteamOS under Linux there (and elsewhere on Linuxes 
Just as proof of concept
A500+ Board, ECS indivision, Vampire V2, EmuTOS and MintOS
or
SymbOS
This is a short video to demonstrate, that pre-emptive multitasking works well on a 8bit machine from the 80ies. This is SymbOS running on an Amstrad CPC-6128. Itâs running in the WinApe emulator, but the machine isnât speeded up at all, so itâs the ORIGINAL performance of the 80ies 8bit machine you see here! The memory is expanded to 576KB (compatible to the CPC6128 specifications of 1984). For the second part of this demonstration (video play) you need an IDE-harddisc (SYMBiFACE II card). Please keep in mind, that even here the 4Mhz Z80 is still doing ALL the work (copying every single byte to/from the harddisc and to the screen)!â
Mac?
Fastest Mac is still Amiga + Vampire not 030
MacOS X / iOS were great, but seems to be degrading.
Not sure the term PC was already used for older gen computers. Even beyond commodore and Amstrad CPC, the first time I used a computer was a Thomsonâs TO-7 used to teach me the basics of programming in âlogoâ.
Most games shackle their AI to some extent. Fps limit the amount of enemies that can engage you from the flanks and rear, MarioKart and its clones adjust the speed of the enemy according to our performance to keep the challenge constant, RTS games limit their micro abilities âŚ
Some of these tweaks make sense and are unobtrusive, some others feel cheap and obnoxious. I like my games to challenge me, they donât really have to feel overly fair either (with the exception of my pet peeve, battle preparations cancelled by forced cinematic, Dragon age was the worst. Meet big bad mage, spread out to avoid probable AoE, take a step forward, cinematic ensues, your party gets auto re positioned in default placement, eats fireball)
1 Like
I backed it as well for basically the same reason, that the team will be able to produce quite a product with todayâs possibilities.
1 Like
I wouldnât have gotten properly into UFO if it werenât for OpenXcom as I came a little late to the party on that one, but itâs so nice to be able to play the original game as it was intended with the addition of all the extra features and general quality of life stuff it adds.
I actually played Xcom2012 before I played UFO and I can say truthfully that I never went back again after playing UFO 
1 Like
Ouch, right in the nostalgia 
If I remember correctly, when starting the Shapeshifter emulator on A1200 (with Motorola 68020) there was an option to emulate the 020, or 030 CPU. When selecting the better one, it was possible to run emulated Mac version of Warcraft 1 (that required the 030 CPU) on the Amiga, having a physical 020 CPU.
1 Like
Yes, they were home micros and personal computer. That one is only made by IBM and with ISA bus and Intel XT CPU, and a bad one.
Exactly and since Mac Classic stopped at 040 and jumped to 603 PPC, skipping great 060, fastest Mac is now Amiga with 080 Vampire bringing 060+ speed to Mac Classic.
People may laugh, but having Photoshop 4, Quark, Illustrator, X-Wing, Warcraft 3 ⌠on Amiga is a great joy. And much can be done even its 90s software.
Too bad. Kill that brain!
1 Like
My thoughts exactly. Iâll have to check the possibility of returnin to the OG XCom, since I never quite finished it
1 Like
Holy crap, itâs been so long since Iâve seen the ending scene of UD that I forgot about those ships. They really remind me of the Wraiths from Starcraft and I wonder if they pulled their inspiration for them from XCOM.
2 Likes
My only issue with the New XCom, that seems to have been addressed in XCom 2 was that the enemies were literally dropped in the path that you are heading. Many times I would literally see them drop down out of no where. The 1994 XCom had full roaming creatures from the start of the map. You could hear them opening/closing door and what not. Not a big deal, but just like the timer system in XCom 2, it was just one of those small items that I didnât like. PP is looking to be a fantastic game taking the best from the all.
2 Likes