A talented development company called Nightbird Games are in the process of remaking the classic game UFO: Enemy Unknown (that's X-COM: UFO Defense to those in the US) under the title UFO: Cydonia's Fall



The team are doing a fantastic job with modelling our beloved alien foe and faithfully recreating the look of the original game right down to the Geoscape and other interfaces, but are looking for more people with the following skills - 3d Artists, Animators, GUI Artists, Concept Artists and Movie Artists. If you can help with any of these roles, head on over to the UFO CF jobs page.

Never ones to miss an opportunity, StrategyCore will be conducting an exclusive interview with the UFO CF team soon, so keep checking back regularly for updates!

Apologies to all that this post took so long to get written - events conspired against me!

In addition to the interview, we'll also be putting together pages soon in our Projects section to answer the most commonly asked questions and go into a bit more detail about the project.

In the meantime, if you have questions which you'd like us to cover in our exclusive interview, please post them here along with your comments!

Looking forward to the interview. I love UFO:AI but it misses the original X-Com look and atmosphere

The Geoscape looks smashingly X-Com, really impressive.

I must admit, the modelling and texturing is first rate. Looks brilliant.
If I wanted to be really picky, I could say I'd have liked a little more artistic licence rather than a straight copy of the original designs. Especially with things like the rifle, which I always found to be a goofy looking design, or the skyranger, which always felt fine for a helicopter, but far too small for a supersonic airplane.
But then again, I'm very curious to find out how things like the heavy laser or auto/heavy cannons will look in full 3d (I'm wondering if that long thin rifle next to the grenades may be a heavy cannon?). The interceptor looks amazing.....like a cross between an f-16 and a mig-29, no?

OOH! And the power armour! I reaaaally wanna see that fully realised.
Should be interesting to see if they do a straight port of the personal armour or not, though.....

All in all, great stuff. Moar!

The original X-COM theme...finally a project that made one, and an impressive one if I may add.

@Alpha Monkey: X-COM doesn't need to be remade, it looks great as it is.

Indeed, I'd say one of the greatest mistakes open source remake attempts is not following X-Com's theme, I mean, they do nice stuff instead, but if you're going to remake such a game, you could at least follow its line and make something decent.

I understand people's need to make something original and new, but if you're aiming at remaking a game, you could at least stick close to the original, after all, that's what people want.

The artwork of this game is simply stunning, but I'm wondering, are all these concepts or actual game screenies (geoscape) ?

I hope it manages to capture all the elements from the original that keeps us going back to it. One thing about sticking close to the old material, us older fans know what to expect from it, an any improvements they add will only make it better.

I think I'm going to buy this game even if my PC cannot run it.

- NKF

I don't think something like this can be sold, copyrights and all.

It's a fan project is it? Oh well, like all the other promising projects, will have to keep an eye on it anyway.

- NKF

I dunno how the copyrights work for these things exactly, however, I have to wonder whether the game now being available as abandonware now would make a difference to the legality of using intellectual property (artwork and such) in a third-party mod such as this.

X-Com is not abandonware, Take2 owns the copyrights and has renewed them, IIRC.

Heh, that answers that then.

So, in that case wouldn't it strictly speaking be a bit iffy to do a full-blown remake, legally speaking?
I'm sure I can think of plenty of mods being squashed by the lawyers in the past for similar reasons. Bloody better not happen here.

Truth is, I think no one is really certain about it.

As I see it, it makes sense if something that is released for absolutely nothing, it's legal, what should be illegal is you making profit out of breaking the copyright. But I don't see how a law would apply to someone making something and distributing it freely, let's hope these guys have it figured out.

We'll be posing these questions in our interview as well.

I'm not entirely sure what the copyright covers, but as in the case of Half Life 2 mod Fortress Forever which is a professional, fan-made remake of the original Team Fortress Classic, Valve (who own Half Life) don't seem to be intrested in closing it down - and they're ven bringing out Team Fortress 2 a month after Fortress Forever si released!

My point is that, copyright aside, not all publishers and developers rule with an iron fist. Some of the better ones out there realise that there's free advertising and hype to be had for their own projects in this way.

Realistically, if (and just as an example) UFO: CF was released for free and an official X-COM game was released, would UFO: CF prevent hordes of hungry X-COM fans from buying a new X-COM game as well as playing their own, free game? I don't think so

Anyhow, more questions people!

Well if these are possible interview questions, I would like to point out I still have some important questions not being told.

Yep, I've got those.

Just one point though, where on their site does it even suggest they have SVN set up? I honestly can't see it.

It's not easy to see, it's under the Team page:

http://ufo.yaa.dk/index.php?categoryid=8

svn Developers (image) link:

https://opensvn.csie.org/traccgi/ufo_cf

The link is no longer broken, they set up a user and password now.

Ah, I see.

I think that's just for the dev team though, as they are from different countries. It would therefore most likely jsut be for the team to access files in one central location rather than let everyone have access to it.

Probably. The link is trac authentication, which is a bugtracker thingamajig.