X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

This is how the PC UI should look like (not my work).

 

And those lazy fucks at Firaxis ("we have an extra PC UI team" lol) couldn't bother what fans did in a couple of days?

 

Link removed. Jasper on 2Kforums was too hasty.

 

BRO IN TEH FUTURE GAMS WILL ONLY CUM WITH AN ENGINE AND MODDING TOOLS TO PREVNET THIS KIND OF TRAGEDE

 

Yeah, the windows version works in windows 7 x64. Extender fixes all the problems I had on new OSes. You'll have to find a torrent though.

Xcomutil can be run on windows installs btw. Most of the fixes are superfluous, but a lot of the tweaks are still nice.

 

The Windows version was released as the Collector's Edition. It didn't change much to the original except it added a win32 executable and fixed the difficulty bug. It was mostly designed for Win95 and even under XP it gave some video problems due to DirectDraw, but that was fixed rather easily. The executable itself still works ok under a modern OS like Win7 x64. The UFO Extender will patch the CE executable in memory and apply various fixes and enhancements, so it won't actually modify any files in your X-COM installation. It can run the game in Direct3D for higher compatibily and enhancements, fix the animation speeds in the Battlescape and other various things I suggest you to read about. Most bugfixes are already applied by default and do not appear in the ini file, but some should only be applied if you actually need them. For exemple I need the animation fix but I don't need the scrolling fix. You'll need to do a bit of testing and reading but it's not too hard. I'm rather conservative in the things I enabled, so all bugfixes are on and some stuff that enhance the game a bit or make it a bit harder (like being able to hit an alien with a weapon in an attempt to stun him, or the aliens trying to retaliate if you attack a UFO that landed, not just if you take one down). Some other enhancements are simply ease of use and do not impact the game balance in any way, like the mod that lets your engineer manufacture items ad infinitum and sell them as soon as they are produced. Some changes are fun, like the aliens being able to suffer fatal wounds and bleed out like your men, but I wonder if it might not change it a bit too much (it would certainly make it harder to capture aliens, and I read of bugs where mechanical units would enter a bleeding state). Things like saving equipment on soldiers between missions is also reported as potentially giving trouble. All in all I consider that my ini file should be a good starting point and guide.

One thing that isn't fixed is the time speed in the Geoscape but I still find it playable. I guess that if you are really used to the way it worked in the DOS version you'll have a harder time adapating to it. There is a modified executable somewhere that reduces the Geoscape speed but it actually moves the clock by tick, and the so does the map. So you see a UFO blip jump instantly from one point to another instead of smoothly move on the map. I found it irritating and just use the default executable. I still find the 5 seconds option to give me plenty of time to do things, even if I know the game is supposedly almost frozen at that setting.

The other files mentionned in the page I gave you fix map generation bugs and restore the correct sounds to the game, which were broken with the 1.4 patch. There is also an executable with the sound patch but you shouldn't extract that one as per the instruction on the pages. It mostly allows you to play MP3 music, and the loader can already do that. The MP3 music from the PSX version is optional but nice to listen to.

All this works perfectly fine under Win7 x64. The GamersGate and Steam release of the game use DOSBox by default to launch the game but it also contains the CE executable required by the loader.

Xcomutil can be used with any version of the game, be it DOS or Windows. It can fix bugs but also change the rules of the game so you might want to be careful with it. If you want some the changes it brings, you can install it in the Windows version and use the loader to play the game. Some of the changes and bugfixes overlap though so you'll definitely want to read the documentation that comes with it.

 

I don't know why there is so much talk about the difficult level and that playing it on a higher difficult would somehow make it better. From what I saw in the demo and on videos a higher difficult rating won't make this a good game. If anything that will show the lack of tactical options even more. Not to forget the frustraion you will get when AI shoot you trhough all the covers and walls you use.

 

Looks like there will be additional settings you can enable before starting a campaign, Civilization style.

Some of them sound pretty good.

 

I've played a lot of shitty turn-based strategy/tactical games.

None of them would have been improved by simply making things more difficult.

 

Shit being hard does counter the "everything is wrong in the game because it is dumbed down shit for console titty babies that want to always be winning because they are faggots" argument

The stuff that makes me eyebrow raise in this is the wholesale abstract gaminess like 360 vision and classes and grenades-as-one-shot-magic-spell inventoryless design and so on. The idea is to make the whole game go down like greasy oatmeal, no processing required. In this game it completely murdered the tension of eg walking past a blind alley and getting killed in one shot instead of triggering a free move cutscene. I have played stuff like 40K tabletop, this looks like a skirmish version of it and that's not awful but it seems like a video game design cul-de-sac based on the simplicities you need for tabletop. It's the same kind of stuff Sawyer likes and it is epidemic for designers. I want to see a big studio that has the time and money to iterate designs out make some smart UIs and options to let people do little fiddly stuff like inventory management really quickly and cleanly and save profiles and etc.

 

Well, I'd love to play some mid-game mission to get a better feeling of what to expect from the game.
It's quite sure now that it won't be in the same league as the originals, but it might still offer some mindless fun.
That puts it into the "wait till on sale" category, though.

Btw.: Not much news from the strange XCOM shooter they had developing a while back. Last thing I heard was that it might come out in 2013 or 2014.
Wonder if it got canceled?

 

Depends how did you make it hard?
Did you just add 100000000 hp to every enemy, so it takes 10 days to kill them? hell that could be hard.. but hard to PLAY.
It is different if it is hard on strategic and tactical level, not just add shallow placeholders of difficulty ( beth, BIo)

 

There is such a thing as bad difficulty but there is not such a thing as difficulty in service of instant gratification

 

The funny stuff is I could create a quite nice game from that, as long as they would get rid of "kiddie like game" idea.

 

There is. I never played on any other then normal in beth games like FO3. And trust me when i say it, i am difficulty junkie.
Why didn't i ever try harder? since it is pointless dosent feel more difficult just more tedius and stupid, also makes whole point moot of overcoming challenges by level scaling it.

 

I watched Firaxis' PAX panel, and i kinda understand their approach now. Forget about the original game, this game is focused entirely on small squad tactics. That's why, as the lead designer said, they finally ditched Time Units (which were removed really, really late in development), and came up with the move-shoot mechanic. It allows for more flexibility when performing "combo attacks" like suppression + flanking, spotting targets for your sniper etc. This isn't true to the original game of course, but i guess that's the only thing they could do with 4-6 man squads anyway. And i blame consoles for those limitations.

So, i understand why they went for special, unique abilities instead of proper inventory management. Since you're limited to 6 soldiers, they wanted to make every class feel useful and important. Because, form what i've seen so far, late game is all about combo tactics. You must utilize and combine everybody's skills to survive. That's also why the landing zone is always on the edge of the map. They don't want you to scatter your soldiers all over the area like in the original game.

This still doesn't explain why the soldiers are nearly omniperceptive, why there is no free aim, and why the aliens can't attack you from the fog of war...

 

Well yeah, bonescraper, only goes to show that the demo doesn't work as a demo for the kind of game they (probably) tried to make.
It's also why I still have some hope left that the final game might offer some amount of tactics, even if different from the originals.
Might turn out to be naive, but we'll see.

 

I've been playing the Xenonauts alpha (v15.1) a little.

Concerns:

• The normal difficulty is ridiculously easy. I shot my own guy with a rocket, after taking two shots of an alien pistol and his health was still above 50%.
• The tactical map is still far too easy on insane difficulty. One of my guys without armour took two shots and wasn't yet down.
• The civilian AI makes the wait between turns ridiculously long. They should make them all run at the same time.

Concerns or bugs:

• The maps with the same tileset are all pretty much the same. I don't know if this is due to the alpha nature or not, but it sucks.
• The F-17 is non-replaceable making any protracted game on the insane difficulty impossible.
• Shooting down a single craft in combat doesn't seem to give you a downed UFO.

Positives:

• It's fun, even if it's in a largely broken state.
• Multiple fighters in air combat is a plus over the game it's inspired by.
• The military ranks have been improved (How much I'm not sure).
• The looks are pretty sleek.

 

I thought you could have multiple fighters in the combat. Simply hit trail, wait until the second fighter catches up, and select engagement mode for both.

 

That's unnecessarily complicated and on top of that slightly unrealistic.

 

i found it kinda annoying that now you have to keep and launch different kinds of interceptors for different ufos, plus the feature was very half-assed last time i tested it, as in ufo escapes on the edges despite your interceptors being faster and constantly gaining on it.

 

I've never had a soldier survive more than 2 hits from an alien weapon. I can't remember what difficulty I played now though.

 

Oh, and if anyone else was wondering (I was, was why I went and tested it) you don't get an aimed shot bonus if you fire without moving. I initially figured shoot first taking 2 actions as opposed to move+shoot was their way of handling aimed vs snap shot in the new system, but nope. Same accuracy on classic difficulty if you fire without moving than if you move then fire.

Edit: What the fuck Firaxis. I was watching that 2 hour Gamespot video linked a few pages back and naturally the game seemed better than the demo implied, but then I saw THE GUY USING MOUSEWHEEL TO ZOOM IN THE BASE VIEW! Why the hell would you release the demo of your game with "Hold MMB and move the mouse" to zoom when mousewheel is apparently working in the full version/press release version? Around 1 hour 22 minutes if you wanna stare at his damning finger.

Well clearly everything is wrong in the demo and everything will be right in the full version. Game of the decade!

 

Mmm... Have you played the latest alpha release?

 

I don't think so.