ufonef

Good tactics If you make them blind, they wont know how to best crack your base open. Alghough i preffer zergs or protoss, and neither zerglings nor zealots can catch up to scv scouts. AI just goes back and forth around the base. I often let him go in by moving my forces away, and block the exit afterwards, so he cant run away safely... maybe not the best idea as i let him know whats inside my base, but the satisfaction of killing off his scout is priceless.

I'm very impressed with sc2's AI. Although It has the advantage of being able to command troops while at the same time being able to build up its base, units and cast spells - but except those, its a very fair gameplay. I played quite many skirmishes in sc1 and remeber being annoyed by the fact AI could see the entire map. You would build a new base somewhere - and AI already knew you could be attacked there easily. I hated it. There was no hide and seak whatsoever. In sc2 however, AI works out its strategy only based on what it can actually see. You can build a base and remain undetected for a fairly long time. Its way more realistic and fun. And to be honest, the "AI being ridiculously fast" isn't its main advantage - it simply has very good preprogrammed build ups, and can enmass really powerful armies - but it doesnt cheat and a player can actually learn something from observing the ai - at least if you are a begginer like me. It can also make some wise decissions as to what is your weakness. One time ive decided to bunker myself up with those zerg ground defence buildings (sunken colonies?). But AI responded very quickly by building a couple of immortals, which deal +30 more damage against armoured units/structures, so my defence was annihilated in seconds. Other time, ive also tried to do a bunker, but the AI attacked from a rear. It had to break through rocks to get to my base however. So i though to myself, ill use the new abbility to unburrow my sunken colonies and will simply reallocate them. I did so, but the AI had an observer over my base, it saw me doing that, and quickly outmanouvered my guns which take a long while to reburrow, and they attacked from up front. All in all, its really fun to play those games against the ai. I've never seen any ai in any game playing so 'human' yet. Ofcourse, after a while you can see patterns in how it plays, but its still fun. And it feels a bit less predictable than in sc1.

Isnt "Colonistation" dead for a long time now? I'm relatively new here, so please excuse my ignorance. I was interested in checking xcom remakes out. But except a couple of posts here, i couldnt find anything more on "Colonisation". I've found 4 different web pages for hosting the project and its code, but all of them are dead now. Starting from the "important topics" at the top of the page and www.projectcolonisation.tk - which my guess is should be a valid page if game creators and people holding assets and code for the game still cared about doing it. There is even mentioned a version that allows you to check what the game has already impelemnted. I was very interested in seeing that, but again... links are dead. So, is there anything that could be checked out, except a short interview from 2006 with a couple of screens?

To play no. But to enjoy the game yes. We werent able to redo everything. So the game is silent unless you own the original. Also some of the graphics may be missing. Non the less, you will be able to run the game and test most of its funcionality without ufo1.

Public beta is up.

Please keep in mind this game was at first dedicated for multiplayer only. Singleplayer was added later and was not planned from the beggining. As such, we did not plan for an option to have near 100% vanilla gameplay, because original game was impossible to be implemented for multiplayer like that. We had to change how ufo behaves. Alien ships in original game were more or less randomly generated then sent on more or less random missions at more or less random locations. We had to add some economical meaning behind those missions for human player playing as aliens. The entire game revolves around multiplayer mechanics and balancing the game for both players to stand a chance. We're not planning on adding 'vanila gameplay' option for singleplayer, since it would require rewritting a good couple of mechanics already being core of the game. We were planning on adding some more additional features that could be configurable, however. But that's for the future. Regarding TFTD: those games are hard to combine in the same game time period. It seems the only reasonable solution would be to either make another remake with tfdt in mind, or add tfdt as a kind of 'second stage'. But then again, this makes little sense in multiplayer, also makes not much sense for a second stage if the first stage was won by the aliens. Tftd is problematic because its pretty much the same as ufo. Barracuda is the same as interceptor, except it fights underwater and doesnt fight in air. So, the player would need to seperately operate with both types of planes/subs at the same time. Its like playing two disjoined games at once. Edit: Please also remember that we're open for suggestions. We were considering for example adding some of the tftd stuff like aliens to make the original game richer, but not add those aliens as real underwater aliens. For example lobsterman would be a good tier 6 alien, just after ethereals. Although this is the kind of stuff that IF (and thats a big IF) was implemented, would come with a configuration option for allowing/dissallowing.

Its a recurring question . I do like working on the project. So i

Indeed, it is not an open source project.

Now we do . We've just added some generalized roadmap on the main page. Right - bottom part "current status". Percent values are given 'more or less'.

Demo/beta is up. http://ufotts.ninex.info/

Some news for those interested: a playable, unfished beta is available for download. It is possible to take this game and play with a friend, at least for a short while. I know its annoying that you need to manually extract the graphics, but that can't be helped right now.

Its not pausing on purpose. It's supposed to pause (actually slow down to 1 sec) only with detection of ufo, and perhaps a few other stuff. But when your at your base, and nothing is going on on the geoscape, you can let the time go. After all, if you play with human controlled aliens, game might get quite huge slowdowns because someone is just looking through his stuff in the base. Its just something to get used to. You can control time acceleration from base view with your numerical keyboard btw. 1- slowest, 6- fastest. Tactical works partially. Well, everything works just parially, and its filled with bugs. You can test tactical if you play as xcom, setup a base somewhere in europe and let time pass untill you detect ufo. and just fly and start a mission. EDIT: About that bug, there is a test ufo in europe. If you don't deal with it fast, it will head home after few days, but there is no ufo base for it, and it might be the reason it crashes. Try fighting the ufo first. Anyways, game is still filled with bugs which for now i dont have the time to deal with. So true beta testing will be for later.

To anyone still interested in this: simple demo version is up for download on http://nefurii.my-place.us

Thanks. They look great, and will be useful.

Good idea with tabs, but what i thought is that: Indeed sell screen is more obvious for getting rid of unwanted staff, but on the other hand player would have to memorise his soldiers names or change them before selling, so he would go to the appropriate screen and do that there. So most of the cases for selling soldiers in sell/sack screen would be for those players that visit the screen for the first time not knowing the interface. Player that discovered that he can sack soldiers via status screen probably wont use normal sell screen for that too often, if ever. Sure, it's more elegant to place it in both places but for now it's another feature for the 'in the future' list. Speaking of this...a funny thing happened recently. On the buy/sell screen every item is treated the same. I changed couple of things in the code, and forgot to rearange indexes. And it happend that i was testing air combat. My interceptor flew bravely towards his target. But when faced with the alien threat, he proved to be quite ineffective in cobat. Wondering what happened I rechecked my interceptor's status and to my surprise i found out that instead of missiles, my stingray launcher was loaded....with scientists. Quite a sight to see stingray launcher loaded with six scientists. Result? Against ufo's outer armour: Warheads > Scientists's heads

I've added 'sack' button on soldier's stats screen when in base. Getting rid of soldiers you didnt like took some time always. This will actually save me some work, as I wont have to add it to the sell/sack list now.

Can be done, but this works good for games with huge ammounts of various weapons. Ufo weapons were somewhat self descriptory by name. You could easily guess that 'earth rifle' is more powerful than pistol, but less than laser...etc. So, again, going to the list 'for later'. I had a similar idea, but with accuracy (this was done in one other remake too). Since the actual hit accuracy was dependant on more factors, and the displayed number when picking attack mode was false. Well, i already done that actually. It's just not displayed in a user friendly way yet. Ok, but i posted this on xcomufo.com, so maybe skip that one, as that would double post it. Sure. Like on that youtube movie clip. Those green fences are destroyed with bullets. Terrain does not however follow any physics, like (i believe) apocalypse did. So if you demolish an entire level, upper levels will float in the air. It's quite much coding to make this more realistic.

Don't be dissapointed, but alien's will use the same screen. Only instead of human, you will see that alien (picture taken from ufopedia).

In terms of coding, i'm doing this alone. I will need some help with graphics later on, though (alien buildings in base view, air combat icons and animation. Not much work fortunetly). Modding depends on scale. Real modding would require some additional scripting language, which is somewhat more code. However, personally, i never liked modes, so i'm not putting much effort into it. The easily modable parts are currently all the graphics (open format bmp pictures), and terrain setup (open format text files). Item's stats, alien's stats and so forth are hardcoded. There is actually a second reason for that. This is intented to be multiplayer game primarly (singleplayer will, hopefully, be made, but mp is the priority). The more the game is moddable, the more mechanics i have to make to check if both players are using the same version, or, if one is not simply cheating. So, the less modable the game, the less i will have to worry about easy cheating, or even accidental changes. EDIT: in screen's section, there is new equipment screen with your suggestions implemented. http://nefurii.my-place.us/index.php?optio...1&Itemid=53 I'm sorry for the poor quality, but that hosting site is free, and therefore limits the bandwidth i can use, thus, i'm minimasing all the pictures as much as possible.

Second thing sounds great, will do as you suggest. About the first one, although its also interesting, it would require quite a lot more coding. I'll add it to my list, but will leave it for the future. Anyways, i havent really done much thinking about the interface, except the basic stuff, so i'm happy to hear such good remarks.

C++ (and directx).

I must had been a really patient player it seemes. Very good suggestions. Also, it's been a while since i touched Apocalypse. Well, hotkeys are planned, that's for sure, as that did bother me. Joining equipment and stats screen sound really good, and i didnt think about it before, but now that i do it actually was bothering me when trying to equip weapons on proper soldiers for a given task. Thanks, that suggestion i'll implement for sure. As to the rest, i'll take a look.

Improve the look or improve the usability? I played one of the other remakes, can't remember which one was it, but every button was re-arranged and placed somewhere else. I must say it annoyed me, as that remake didnt introduce much new functionality (at least at my first glance, as i didnt play it for too long). So it was a kind of 'look for a key you already know what should look like, but in a completly different place' thing. And sure, if the new interface would be better than why not, but since my game itself does not introduce too many new functions for the x-com player, i didnt find much to improve. Although there are a couple of little changes that make it less clickfest than before. For example Soldiers memorise last held weapons in each slot, so you dont have to re-equip them every time. If something was annoying in the original, im trying to make it better, but if i didnt find it annoying, i try to make it the same as it was. Could you perhaps give an example of what you had in mind?

Hello, i'd like to interest you with my little project here : http://ufotts.ninex.info/ it's another remake, hopefully you'll like it. cheers.