serge

Just wanted to drop a line here, it has been a very long time since my last visit Basically there has been a maintenance bugfix version of ufo2000 released just a few days ago (beta 0.9.1129). Feature wise, nothing has changed yet, just a few bugs got squashed. But more updates are coming. In the mean time, new players are welcome on our server, feedback and bugreports are appreciated.

There was also 'Screamers' movie (based on 'Second Variety' story)

"X-COM free" version is already here And it was announced in a nearby thread: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index...?showtopic=4221 But it is still much less playable when not using data files from x-com (no sound, some buttons and images are missing, only a single early demo version of map is available, ...), that will be improved in the next beta releases.

That was not quite a big news (just one of the work-in-progress releases which are available almost every week) But thanks for posting the news anyway, some people who don't particularly track our progress will get another proof that we are still working on the game

0.7.963 http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net * Fixed crash on stunned soldier recovery (it was accidently introduced in revision 903) * Stunned soldiers can now be killed by explosions * Fixed sync bug because of falling body stopping bullets * Fixed visibility issue of the map cells where your soldiers are standing (they were not registered as seen) Webserver, bugtracker and SVN repository on lxnt.info are currently down for maintenance, sorry for the inconveniences. But the game servers still work though

They are not making fun of you RVI is just too naive and does not know anything about software development (he is the graphics designer). So he heavily underestimates the complexity and importance of programming part of job and critiques StarikLesovik for the absence of 3D in his game in a manner that seems a bit offending to me. StarikLesovik replies that he would better have the project as it is (2D) but finished, not dropping it halfway. If I'm wrong here, I hope that RVI or StarikLesovik would correct me. On the other hand RVI's project (Prisoners of Taal) does not have anything to show but some 3D models, creative texts and screenshots. They do not have a single programmer in their team and are only trying to recruit some. But considering their attitude and too high expectations, I doubt that any sane programmer would ever join them So their project seems to be doomed to me 2RVI, StarikLesovik: Anyway, let's go to http://www.xcomrus.com/forum/ if we want to discuss anything in Russian. That forum has subsections for all of our projects but it is not too lively now (something that is up to us to change ).

Any volunteers to provide all (or some) x-com units rendering scripts for ufo2000? We have got support for modding units animation using lua scripting. Currently we support only a few skins, check for lua files here: http://lxnt.info:8888/repos/ufo2k/trunk/ex...unit-chameleon/ All the comments about what is available for unit rendering scripts are in: http://lxnt.info:8888/repos/ufo2k/trunk/ex...eon/soldier.lua Plugging more unit skins is possible in the latest beta version of the game. We don't have enough man power to do this work (and also sorry for the lack of detailed documentation). As there are people familiar with algorithms for proper building unit skins from pck frames, maybe we could get some help here. Just PM me if you are interested. Theoretically it should be possible to make animation for any single square unit from x-com for ufo2000

Hmm, looks like you have mistyped word guys, hope this was not intended. By the way, maybe he would like to interview us (guys from http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net or http://ufo2000.lxnt.info) as well?

By the way, there was one more Christmas present for x-com fans from ufo2000 team: http://www.x-com.co.uk/community/index.php?showtopic=2163

Hello All, The latest beta releases of ufo2000 are available here. They install into its own directory and do not overwrite installation of the stable version of the game, so stable and beta versions of ufo2000 can be both installed on the same computer. Upgrading beta version is simple, just download a new installer and run it, it will upgrade your existing installation preserving all the configuration and team settings. Beta versions are configured to connect to lxnt.info:2001 server (it is different from stable versions which use lxnt.info). The game can automatically send bugreports for some kind of problems to the server, so by playing it you greatly help us to test its stability. You can also report bugs and submit feature requests at ufo2000 bugtracker as the automatic error reporting can't provide all the important details. Also if you are testing the game in hotseat mode and it crashed, we would like to have a look at ufo2000-crash.log file which it generates in ufo2000 directory. Testing beta releases will help us to release the next stable version sooner. Thanks. Developer Contact

Don't know, it works fine for me. Anyway, I have mirrored this article here: http://ufo2000.lxnt.info/files/sloperama/idea.html

We all want to believe in a miracle, but the reality is quite disappointing: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.html

UFO2000 does not particularly need any installers. The installer was added made to make it easier for people to install the game. Also besides being able to install the game, it can also also make easy upgrade to a new version preserving all the configs and team settings. Considering how often new beta versions are released, that simplifies everything a lot. PS. Can any of local admins split this topic and move UFO2000 installation related posts to a separate thread?

Well, now we at least know what happened. As you explicitly told UFO2000 to install into 'C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition', the game considered it to be its own directory. And this directory was cleaned when you uninstalled the game because the game thought that it only contained UFO2000 related files. You were lucky not to manage to install the game into 'C:\' or to any other important place. We probably need to fix the installer so that it will refuse to install into existing directory.

Well, never say never, but I strongly doubt that this could have happened. The uninstaller just does not have any code for deleting any files outside ufo2000 game directory. If anyone makes some experiments and manages to reproduce the same problem, it will be very good and it will surely help us to fix it. But it is hard to find and fix something that does not exist. I do believe that Zombie has lost his X-COM and TFTD installed games, but what caused this is still not very clear, manually copying or moving files, you have always a chance of accidently deleting something important. In addition, nobody else did report such problem, and believe me, the game was tried and played by a lot of people, you can just check the statistics for the last week: http://ufo2000.lxnt.info/results.php

This is very strange. This might be a bug and a really bad one. If you can make some experiments and manage to reproduce it (having made backups before), that would help to locate it and fix. We just need to be sure that you have not misclicked when trying to copy the files and did not move them accidently. Maybe your copy of X-COM was heavily modified by different mods. UFO2000 expects unmodified files and performs crc checks to be sure the files are ok. In this case it should report the name of file which failed crc check. 'INSTALL' file appeared long before the installer became available, it is mainly targeted at Linux users currently. You are right, Windows section in it should be replaced to 'run the installer and follow all the instructions'. It is a bit silly to require the user to read any readme files that are not available before the game is installed

Where did you get this information from? It would be good to find the source of this disinformation and ask them to either update their information or remove it at all. The game had Engish interface and documentation for ages, the fact that the development was originally started by a Russian guy does not prove anything. It also reports the exact filename with the full path where it expected to find it. Most likely you have copied the files with an extra subdirectory. For example, the game could try to load: C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\geodata\scang.dat But you probably have copied (or moved as it gets obvious later) this file to: C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\Zombie's weird directory name for xcom\geodata\scang.dat Is this your bugreport: http://ufo2000.lxnt.info/mantis/bug_view_p...?bug_id=0000089 ? The game asked you to copy data files to UFO2000 directory, but you did move the files instead (you mention moving files in the text of your bugreport). The uninstaller does not touch any files outside UFO2000 installation directory (why should it?). And you are the only one who has encountered this problem so far. I'm sorry that you lost your saved games, but you just need to read installer messages more carefully (it has an option where you can specify the location of your xcom directory, it does all the "copying the necessery files" work for you and is completely safe to use). You need to read uninstallation messages even more carefully as it warns you about what files are to be deleted and asks for confirmation. That is true not only for UFO2000 but for any other application.

You can also get some information about x-com data formats by looking at ufo2000 sources (at least obdata.dat and soldiers.dat structures are described there): http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net

I'm trying to improve items handling system in UFO2000 and want to export X-COM items descriptions to a better easy editable and clean format. There are a few mysterious fields in obdata.dat file though: http://lxnt.info/pipermail/ufo2000/2004-April/001121.html Any ideas how to interpret them? PS. Lua interpreter can be downloaded here: http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaBinaries

You can also try these files directly from UFO2000 sources repository: XCOM palette: http://lxnt.info:8888/repos/ufo2k/trunk/datfile/gamepal.bmp TFTD palette: http://lxnt.info:8888/repos/ufo2k/trunk/datfile/tftdpal.bmp

That's a good news. We are always in need for new developers. And I don't think it will change in the near future So you (or anybody else) can join our project any time.

UFO2000 goal is to remake the whole game at some point in the future. Currently we have a working remake of game engine, but have almost no our own graphics. So UFO2000 can use grahics and maps from X-COM and TFTD, but we do not distribute data files from X-COM and TFTD with the game. So getting a copy of X-COM and TFTD is up to the user (the user can buy it legally, download and use data files from X-COM DEMO with UFO2000 or even use illegal copy from a warez site - all this is not our problem). That's not very convenient for users, I mean somewhat difficult install procedure. But it is better than having a working engine and do not use it at all but search for people to remake the graphics (and wait for another few years ). A new remade graphics will be added to the game eventually (by the way, if there are skilled art designers reading this forum, you can join our project, you can mail me serge@lxnt.info), but I don't think that the support for original X-COM data files will be ever discontinued. X-COM engine still outperforms engines of all the other tactical squad based strategies. It supports multiple levels, realistic land surface (hills and mountains), is fully destructible. JA2 for example has only a single level (a roof does not count), flat landscape and limited destruction. UFO: Aftermath is even worse, you can't enter the buildings, and have many other limitations. That's why UFO2000 uses an engine very close to X-COM, this will allow us to have a superior X-COM remake in the future (IMHO of course ). Just try it yourself

Did I say we have nobody working on the game? That's not true I just did say that the game is improving not so fast as I would like, but the work did not stop at all. After a year or two of XCom6 development you will understand me. It is silly to debate which one of the existing projects is The TRUE Successor to Xcom. For example, in my humble opinion, UFO2000 is the most promising of all x-com inspired projects. I would have already working on a better project otherwise. But you surely have a different opinion

You can download the latest beta-version of ufo2000 to play multiplayer games with your friiends using TFTD maps. What do you think about this?

Hey, these two games use the same engine, so this is not an argument UFO2000 does support maps from TFTD now (but still uses wrong palette for them). If you like TFTD so much, you can help make better TFTD support in UFO2000. What do you think? Also you can start making strategy part of the game. There are lots of tasks to do, there is no need to start everything from scratch