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UFO: Cydonia's Fall


Pete

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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

cf_interceptor.jpg Geoscape800.jpg cf_snakeman.jpg

The game will be in full 3d and high resolution textures for the best gaming experience. It will also pack really high quality sound and music.

When entering tactical combat you will have the ability to choose either isometric-overview mode, camera mode or first-person mode, the isometric-overview is like you know it from the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, it's just in 3d the same goes for camera mode it's just freely rotateable, the first-person mode is a bit more intense mode where you will encounter the alien forces as if you were one of the soldiers!

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!

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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!

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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!

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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) ?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 :blush:

 

Anyhow, more questions people!

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

 

Very impressive!

 

I would like to have some questions answered though regarding development if they aren't asked in the interview:

 

1) Is this game by any chance open source?

2) If open source, what license are you working under? GPL? GNU?

3) What are your 3D artists using for modeling and animation? Blender? 3DStudio Max? They're very well done models. I've always used Blender myself for modelling, and little animating.

4) Is your svn access link broken? I seem to not be able to access it. I always liked projects that let me send patch files, not necessarily recruit me, but still credit me. I am already working on a specific project so it hard to give full focus on another.

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Strange thing, to have the SVN link be public while the development is closed to the team members only...

First, I would like thank you guys at StrategyCore from all of NightbirdGames for the news article, and we are indeed looking forward to the interview.

The reason there is a "public" link to it is because it is easier to find again if you forgot the exact link for the svn.

Also we have just bought https://www.nightbirdgames.com/ so keep an eye out for a new site for both Nightbird Games and UFOCF.. UFOCF will be at https://www.nightbirdgames.com/ufocf/

As I read these comments I notice alot of you guys have opinions on what features should be recreated in UFOCF. We would really like if some of you wrote the suggestions in the suggestions section of the UFOCF forums.

I hope this doesn't spoil the interview but I would like to make a very short answer to the question about why we keep the original X-Com theme, it's simple, it's because it part of the whole X-Com spirit and soul. And there are indeed alot of other remakes of X-Com but none of them touches the original theme like we want to do. Did that sound wrong? :blush:

Anyway I am personally making the new sites so it'll be done very soon.. cheers.

- FLZ

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problems with copyright still remain, remember projects like stratagus. they had to remove the support for warcraft 2 and change the name. but it all depends on the copyright holder, even scummvm once got into touch with lucas arts about those issues. and abandoned ware is mostly not copyright free. in most cases the copyright holder just doesn't care - but they are still somewhat "illegal".

 

let's hope the best, because it looks very cool - but i would really like to know under which license they release their work. i can't find anything about it on their page

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