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Well funny that Linux be mentioned actually as our old lead runs a linux system so in order to keep him on board as a regular dev we'd have to use something compatible with his system... It's not essential but would be a shame to lose the guy just because he runs a different OS...
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I wouldn't bet on XNA running completely on Linux just yet.

 

The forums here are very quiet because PX lost almost all of its members (I would know, I was one of them ;)) and there are only a handful over at their own forums, It's technically dead but the programmer returns from time to time and gets some tasks done, but hasn't dedicated that much time since no one was giving him a hand..

dteviot is the guy behind the XNA branch of Project Xenocide :)

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Thanks Az emailed him at their forums. What happened to the rest of the team? Why did everyone leave? Downloaded the last release from 2008 and they were definitely getting somewhere!

Thanks Pet but cross-platform isn't top of my list now, would rather find something that my devs are happy working in so we don't have trouble down the line!

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Thanks Az emailed him at their forums. What happened to the rest of the team? Why did everyone leave? Downloaded the last release from 2008 and they were definitely getting somewhere!

Thanks Pet but cross-platform isn't top of my list now, would rather find something that my devs are happy working in so we don't have trouble down the line!

The leaders of the different departments stopped ... well, leading, and it's easy to lose interest if the people calling the shots don't even show up when you need them.

All you see in the XNA branch is dteviot's work, with minor contributions from, say, me ;)

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Well it all looks very nice, has most of the basic game infrastructure in place though obviously plenty of placeholders! Hopefully I'll hear back from the guy tonight as he seems fairly active over there but even some basic source code on how they programmed the geoscape would go a long way, though there are several things that I think need some seriosu attention!

 

What was your role Az? I guess you left when the leadership strike began, how about trying again on something a bit different?!

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At the beginning I didn't know how to code (talking about 5 years ago) so I wrote the text entries for the UFOPAEDIA, later I became the leader of the department. I did a bit of code before david finally got tired and left, reappearing esporadically.

I wouldn't mind joining a good organised project, I hate wasting time, but my schedule varies dramatically from semester to semester ;) Pending is to take a look at PX codebase as david's programming skills are top quality and there's a lot to be learnt from there.

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Well I'm still waiting to hear back from the message I sent yesterday but we always have room for another good man, especially one I already know! I'm on msn at pantlessavenger@hotmail.com feel free to add me and I'll go through what we're trying to do and where we are so far ;)
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First choice XNA, second choice Ogre. Multiplatform would be great, but it's only adding about 10-15% max to the total playerbase, and if PX can be inherited, with new globe graphics and minior tweaking, that'd be awesome.

 

Quick questions: are the geoscape and battlescape going to be seperate programs like in UFO or all in one? and if they are going to be seperate, can the battlescape be made playable like a deathmatch game?

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There were two seperate programs that fed info to each other. What I'm asking is if the battlescape could possibly be run without the geoscape feeding it data like it would for a mission but instead have an instant action feature where you can just go right to the battlescape and play it ufo2000 style.
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Not sure I really see the benefit of playing a tactical mission off the cuff in that style to be honest. Xcom titles and their clones and successors are not sandbox games and if you can't use your own hand-picked team with weapons you choose then it's really not very likely that you'll enjoy the mission.

 

If of course someone is desperate to start a tactical mission they can always load the game tick a few boxes to build a base then hit '24 hours' till a ufo shows up and just launch the 'ranger or equivalent. Seems fairly unlikely that many people would want to do that though personally!

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Have to disagree with you here, I think there's a lot of potential in allowing for training missions. Sometimes I just want some action without all the fuss of building up first. And I might want to practice on a particular kind of mission, like a Dreadnaught or a Colony Assault. I'd personally have a lot of fun in being given a completely random group of rookies that I can use as fodder. Combat missions where you don't have to worry about the economic side of things can definitely be a blast, in more than one sense ;)
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Well I absolutely agree that we need to be able to release different versions of our battlescape in demo format but I'm afraid even with a 2:1 ratio I'm still not entirely convinced that a 'quick-battle' option is the way forward. I see no benefit that could come from a 'deathmatch' system as it simply doesn't fit with the genre or the franchise and as far as training missions go I don't recall saying we wouldn't have these but I don't think the choice to launch immediately into a random battle will be a popularity-affecting feature and therefore is currently not intended for inclusion.
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Greetings gents. FWIW, I'm the guy who wrote most of the code for the XNA version of Xenocide. Veteran, I got your e-mail and relied, but I never heard anything back, did you actually get it?

 

Some quick comments.

 

Quick questions: are the geoscape and battlescape going to be seperate programs like in UFO or all in one? and if they are going to be seperate, can the battlescape be made playable like a deathmatch game?
Well, for development testing and debugging there will need to be a way to go straight to a preconfigured battlescape (and probably a way to specify the configuration, probably via command line and config files.) Providing access to this via the main menu shouldn't be a lot of work (maybe 20 to 40 hours for someone, depending on how slick an interface is required.) That said, as I think development should probably START with the battlescape, you might just get this anyway as part of the project.

 

So if there's anyone out there who knows about engines please feel free to throw in your 2cents! Hopefully Andy will drop by at some point too as our newest team member! Remember to check our forums often and give us your feedback whenever you can spare it!
This site gives an evaluation of 3D engines.

 

https://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php?...5142a63be9b2c5c

 

Hello,

Could you answer those question first?

1) What language do you want to use?

2) Do you want to create open source software or closed source?

3) What platform do you want support?

Absolutely correct. These are almost the first questions you need to ask. However, they do impact on the question of which framework/engine to choose.

 

So, my thoughts on framework/engine.

 

  1. You really need two engines, a good 3D one for the battlescape, and another one for everything else. (Everything else includes the "globe", ufopedia, base layout, shopping, equipping soldiers, research, monthly stats etc.) The globe screen you can roll yourself, it's not hard, but you will really want a framework that supports windows (both full screen and dialogs) and a selection of GUI controls. Especially, you want table (or grid) layouts, list box (or better tree control) for Ufopedia and the ability to display large quantities of text.
  2. Yes you can use an existing FPS 3D engine for the battlescape. (This is what UFO/AI did with the Quake2 engine.) However, if you want fully destructible terrain, the Quake and Unreal engines are not going to be satisfactory. Cube2/Sauerbraten will do destructible, but I'm not yet sure how much work would be required to get it to do night missions/hide undiscovered terrain. (I suspect not that much.) (Having looked at the "Capture the Flag" mission "Core_Transfer", I think that would make a really cool battlescape.
  3. The problem with using the Cube2 engine (or Quake) as your starting point is that while it would give you a big start on the battlescape engine, you'd have to write all the geoscape code from scratch.
  4. That said, I'd pick Cube2 over Quake, as Cube2 is C++, Quake is C. C++ assuming you're using Boost, is a lot easier to program in than C (although it still requires considerable skill to do well.) If possible, I would use C# as the programming language, as it IS more productive than C++, at minimum 2 to 3 times as productive.
  5. My recommended approach would be to use the C# programming language, use Axiom , RelmForge, ForgeRelm or one of the other C# ports of Ogre as your framework, and port octree/voxel engine/file importer from Cube2 as your battlescape rendering engine. (I think that's about a dozen files.) Note, I'm currently working on a port of this part of Cube2 to C# myself.
  6. A second option, assuming you're going to be windows only. Use XNA as your main framework, use Silverlight as your GUI system, and port the Cube2 voxel engine.
  7. A third possibility, Use the Ogre framework, port the Cube2 engine to it as another scene type, and then build the game using Ogre.
  8. To get a cube2 engine going as quickly as possible, use the existing levels as battlescapes. Then, at a later stage, have a level builder engine that creates Cube2 levels by putting together 10 x 10 x 4 and 20 x 20 x 4 blocks as the UFO:Enemy Unknown engine did. (The Cube2 developers might even be willing to help with that, assuming you got a POC working.)

Lastly, if you could send me a copy of your developers discussions, I'd be happy to chip in with my advice.

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Firstly Gimli thanks for the feedback, we were actually using Irrlicht to program in last time but dropped it when we lost our lead dev. A position which is still open by the way!!!

 

And DT I'm sorry I haven't got back to you but I certainly would have done if I got the message! Not sure what happened there but will check the email addy I gave you as that's what I use for a lot of project correspondence so would be good to give people the right one!!! Thanks for your post though and I'm reading it as I go so bear with me ;)

 

Well, for development testing and debugging there will need to be a way to go straight to a preconfigured battlescape. That said, as I think development should probably START with the battlescape, you might just get this anyway as part of the project.

 

I remember last time the project was approached our demo launched directly into a battlescape starting with the equip screen as in the originals but that's all old code now so not much good to us now! I see what you mean though for testing and debugging purposes. Regarding where to start I was thinking there may be quicker results if we started with the Geoscape and related programming than if we went from the battlescape initially. The reason for this is that after last time it became very apparent that the battlescape entails a LOT more work to polish into a goodlooking demo or even for the sake of screen-shots. I'm sure everyone would understand it was in early stages but I was of the impression that starting with the Geoscape and such could give us some nice screenshots in a much shorter timespan than the battlescape portion of the game. That said it all needs doing in time!

 

This site gives an evaluation of 3D engines.

 

Thanks for the link will pass it on in our next discussion this afternoon!

 

[*]You really need two engines, a good 3D one for the battlescape, and another one for everything else.

 

Now while I can only comment so much on the ins and outs of languages and GUIs and such I know we discussed yesterday how the two portions of the game would relate so this is the sort of information I could really do with my devs having so they have a better idea of how the overall framework will go together and such. If you have any time to discuss any of this with us at some point I'd really appreciate any advice you can give to the team, my msn is linked in my profile here!

 

[*]Yes you can use an existing FPS 3D engine for the battlescape. However, if you want fully destructible terrain, the Quake and Unreal engines are not going to be satisfactory.

 

Thanks that answers one of my original questions! But yes we would be wanting destructible terrain so those first two wouldn't really fit the bill! Advice on those that will however is duly noted!

 

Just read ahead through all of your more engine specific advice and there's plenty of it so a big thankyou for all of that but I won't respond to each point individually! Instead I'll just say you've hit on a majority of what was discussed yesterday though the devs I was discussing this with were more fans of C++ than C# and the impression I got from them was that it would give us less than C++ not more but then that's just me not knowing code!!!

Also you mentioned both XNA and OGRE which have been discussed but didn't mention our front runner from yesterday's discussion which was the SOURCE engine from valve. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that one and how it compares to your other suggestions, most notably XNA and OGRE but CUBED 2 as well as you've given a lot of information about that engine.

 

Of course at the end of the day what will make the final decision for me as a leader will be the guys I have working on the code as I won't pick an engine that noone knows because it can do a better job of it in theory. So long as there are no significant compromises then I'd much rather stick with a code and engine that the devs we have are familiar with but I think all of those I just mentioned could probably be used based on team experience.

 

I have an msn chat log from yesterday's meeting which I'd be happy for you to go through if you'd like to but it's rather long and the timing was unfortunate in that I had to keep leaving but there was a lot of good discussion there. Further to the fact I never got your email I'd be interested to hear your current status on Xenocide as I recently downloaded the old demo client and was very impressed at the amount of features that were already in place at least to some extent! feel free to pm me here, email me at my yahoo account (also here I think) or add me to msn if you have the time but I'd love to hear more from you.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post here and I hope to speak with you soon!

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We were actually using Irrlicht to program in last time but dropped it when we lost our lead dev. A position which is still open by the way!!!
I'll comment that Irrlicht and Orge are roughly equivelent, and C++ based. So if you're going to use C++, then there may be no need to discard the work that's already been done.

 

Just read ahead through all of your more engine specific advice and there's plenty of it so a big thankyou for all of that but I won't respond to each point individually! Instead I'll just say you've hit on a majority of what was discussed yesterday though the devs I was discussing this with were more fans of C++ than C# and the impression I got from them was that it would give us less than C++ not more but then that's just me not knowing code!!!
Now I definitely want to see the transcript of the discussion, to see just why they think C++ is better.

 

Also you mentioned both XNA and OGRE which have been discussed but didn't mention our front runner from yesterday's discussion which was the SOURCE engine from valve. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that one and how it compares to your other suggestions, most notably XNA and OGRE but CUBED 2 as well as you've given a lot of information about that engine.
I'm not familiar with the SOURCE engine. However, having a quick look at it (assuming it's the valve Source engine) it appears to be derived from the Quake engine. And it's definitely BSP based, with a maps that require extensive compilation before they can be played (they boast of having a tool that can spread the compiling of a level across multiple PCs to speed up the compile!) This suggests to me that fully destructible terrain is not going to be possible. Also, the set of GUI controls appears small, but might just be sufficient.

 

I have an msn chat log from yesterday's meeting which I'd be happy for you to go through if you'd like
Yes please.
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Hey dt I finally go your email last night and the projecltcol one I sent you is definitely working so not sure what happened there! Will send you the chat log today and respond to your other points in the email! Thansk again for all your feedback though, I'll catch up with you shortly!
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One other possibility that occurs to me, use the UFO:AI code as a starting point and modify it.

Some additional points.

  1. This gives you the advantage of starting from a working engine, and if you're lucky, 90% of the grunt work has already been done for you.
  2. A question is how close is UFO:AI to Colonization? That is, what are the things in UFO:AI that you'd want to change? (You've probably listed them elsewhere on the forum, but I don't have time to hunt them down at the moment.)
  3. Fully destructible terrain/environment. While UFO:AI doesn't support this (or at least didn't last time I looked), a quick Google for "dynamic BSP" reveals there's been quite a bit of research into this topic. Therefore, it may well be possible to adapt the Quake 2 engine used in UFO:AI to support dynamic BSP. (This would benefit both the UFO:AI, and Colonisation.)
  4. Additionally, if the changes to UFO:AI to create colonisation are of the form of creating interfaces and plug-in points into the UFO:AI engine to change the behaviour, this would also benefit the UFO:AI project, as it would allow others to more easily modify it as well.
  5. The biggest downside I see to using UFO:AI is that it's all C code, which requires a great deal of skill to code in well.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Greetings, Guv'na...

 

Let me quickly introduce myself:

I'm just some random hooligan that happened to be browsing Abandonware - love me some Wizard's Crown and Knights of Legend (which i playtesteed a bit way back when at origins when it was still in Austin)...

...and came across some game called X-com Apocalypse (which is no longer abandonware, btw: relevent later)...

As you can imagine; I was floored - how did i miss out on the X-series?

 

This led to me finding this site, and my current love; Aftershock ( any game that starts as Fallout Tactics and turns into X-com, had me from Hello).

 

In any case; unaware that anyone else knew or cared about such old games; and saddened that; other than graphically, games have gone backwards rather than progresing after X-Com, I began scheming how to make a modern x-com - especially while playing 40K; thinking how X-com would play with that engine... (not possible but; oh so pretty a dream).

I almost cried when i found out - and correct me if I'm wrong -

HASBRO, for crying out loud, Hasbro? owns the rights the franchise?

Isn't that going to be an issue if it is indeed the case?

 

SO, I just stumbled across your thread here; and you have me looking at OGRE's site now...

 

All I can say; is I'm delighted to hear others are interested in such a project, and I'd like to put myself at your disposal, for all that my talents are a bit limited at this point.

 

I am however going back to a college gaming program ( I had to drop out due to a personal tragedy I simply couldn't concentrate around); so i hope i might be increasingly useful.

 

Salutations.

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I'm just some random hooligan that happened to be browsing Abandonware - love me some Wizard's Crown and Knights of Legend (which i playtesteed a bit way back when at origins when it was still in Austin)...

...and came across some game called X-com Apocalypse (which is no longer abandonware, btw: relevent later)...

As you can imagine; I was floored - how did i miss out on the X-series?

X-COM was never abandonware. As long as the rights are owned and held by someone, the games are still under license and people can be prosecuted for up/downloading the games. While it's true that the right holders never did anything with the series or provided support for them, that still doesn't make the game abandoned. ;)

 

In any case; unaware that anyone else knew or cared about such old games; and saddened that; other than graphically, games have gone backwards rather than progresing after X-Com, I began scheming how to make a modern x-com - especially while playing 40K; thinking how X-com would play with that engine... (not possible but; oh so pretty a dream).

I've yet to play Warhammer, but I think if the game would be converted to run on the Silent Storm engine we'd have one amazing game. :)

 

I almost cried when i found out - and correct me if I'm wrong -

HASBRO, for crying out loud, Hasbro? owns the rights the franchise?

Isn't that going to be an issue if it is indeed the case?

Take-Two Interactive Software owns the rights these days. I doubt this poses any problems in the long term. I mean, just look at UFO Extraterrestrials (a commercially produced game). It's basically a X-COM rip-off and they haven't been shut down. In fact, they are currently producing the second game in the series. As long as the game doesn't use X-COM material directly it should be fine. :)

 

- Zombie

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  • 2 years later...

I've been using C4 for a similar game for over 4 years now and couldn't be happier. It's 350 bucks but it gives lifetime updates and has superb graphics.

 

Untity is not going to cut it for a game like X-Com because it has bad GUI system, can't draw in 2D directly, doesn't have full source code and a variety of other issues. The editor is nice and there's a free version but all pay versions are a bit expensive for hobbies.

 

Ogre is free but it's not even a game engine, just renderer. I looked at it a while but you'd have to know it so inside and out and make so many tools that I'd say just write your own game engine.

 

There's other stuff too and it's been a few years but for a complicated game like X-Com you wouldn't want to try most of them, or else they are very expensive or dn't give source code.

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