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Xenonauts vs. OpenXcom

eXalted

Arcane
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Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Xenonauts is one of those "yeah, this game is good but the more I play it, the more I want to just play that other game" games.
 

ArchAngel

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Mar 16, 2015
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Xenonauts is one of those "yeah, this game is good but the more I play it, the more I want to just play that other game" games.
That is exactly what happened to me. I played one campaign of Xenonauts and then installed Open Xcom and played 3 campaigns on that.
 

cretin

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some of the posts dumping on xenonauts and proclaiming xcom to be the best thing since sliced bread just strike me as empty signalling and trying to fit in to be quite blunt about it. Xenonauts is fine, it has some flaws, but it is a pretty good game and this is a genre that is especially thin on decent games anyway.

I played a lot of UFO in the early 00s. Quite frankly now I find the UI and graphics and battlescape size to be antiquated and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because its considered beyond reproach and sacred for codexers. In this respect, I'm glad xenonauts exists because the only other alternative for a modern x-com is firaxis xcom which, obviously to anyone who has played it, is its own thing (not bad) rather than an actual spiritual successor.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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I played a lot of UFO in the early 00s. Quite frankly now I find the UI and graphics and battlescape size to be antiquated and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because its considered beyond reproach and sacred for codexers.
OpenXcom fixes lots of those issues and there's lots of quality total conversion mods for it.

Xenonauts is still a fine game.
 

Falksi

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some of the posts dumping on xenonauts and proclaiming xcom to be the best thing since sliced bread just strike me as empty signalling and trying to fit in to be quite blunt about it. Xenonauts is fine, it has some flaws, but it is a pretty good game and this is a genre that is especially thin on decent games anyway.

I played a lot of UFO in the early 00s. Quite frankly now I find the UI and graphics and battlescape size to be antiquated and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because its considered beyond reproach and sacred for codexers. In this respect, I'm glad xenonauts exists because the only other alternative for a modern x-com is firaxis xcom which, obviously to anyone who has played it, is its own thing (not bad) rather than an actual spiritual successor.

That's just it though isn't it, it's fine. It's like missionary position sex, or a Coldplay album. It's OK. It does what it's supposed to. But it doesn't stimulate or invigorate half as much as something with more imagination, character or pizaz.

The foundation for something really good is there in Xenonauts, but it needs more umph and Chaka Khan to take it to a great level.
 
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gogis

Scholar
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Jun 9, 2018
Messages
100
I really hope that people who complain about xenonauts atmosphere and recommending x-piratez are not the same. I will torture myself for hours with ufo extraterestrials over 5 minutes of x-piratez
 

Baron Dupek

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Jul 23, 2013
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1,870,765
I really hope that people who complain about xenonauts atmosphere and recommending x-piratez are not the same. I will torture myself for hours with ufo extraterestrials over 5 minutes of x-piratez

Where is my sequel of UFO Extraterestrials ffs, it's a decade of delays.
 

Jasede

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Thanks to this thread I learned about this Pirates mod for UFO! Thank you!!
 

ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,604
I like Xenonauts (with Community Improvement) better than the old XCOM for sure, because
- I really dislike the psy-war (which is toned down in Xenonauts),
- The interception is more interesting in Xenonauts,
- I like the civilian police trying to shoot back, though it is not very well done
- Shield and suppression fire

The huge problems of Xenonauts are that you cannot breach the enemy ships, worse or inexistant "random map creator" and less interesting enemies. Hopefully they improve that in Xenonauts 2?

I never played OpenXCOM, so I am not sure how these compare.
 
Joined
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Italy
off topic nostalgia time.
i remember the first time i saw x-com with my own eyes, after dreaming of it for months on magazines, the marvel was absolute. "can a computer today really do this?". 14 mhz and 1mb of ram was all it took for something never seen before.
fast forward 30 years, literally a thousandfold that computing power, we're here hoping for xenonauts 2 to deliver a just a tiny minuscule bit improved version of x-com which, graphics apart (and even not that much), could pretty much run on the same hardware.
 

Thorgeim

Educated
Joined
May 11, 2018
Messages
53
original xcom was released when I was 10 and it was the best game i have ever played, went to my school mate's house to play this in his older brother's 486 or whatever, then on my own when my parents managed to get me a PC 3 years later. I still come back to it with OpenXcom and the feeling and even mechanics are a lot of times unmatched by today's derp games.
 
Joined
May 19, 2018
Messages
415
You and I sound about the same age. I got the same over the summer of ‘95 and did a campaign a week until I got through the Superhuman difficulty. Now I’m feeling like Little Billy Badass at this point and pretty confident when I get Terror from the Deep later in the summer.

So I set that bitch to the top difficulty and just get rekt, curb stomped and put on suicide watch. Turned out to be the infamous difficulty bug where UFO always defaulted to the easiest setting. Players complained the game was too easy, MP didn’t find the bug for years, and so adjusted Terror accordingly.
 

Endemic

Arcane
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
4,321
Yeah, there are definitely changes that would throw UFO players for a loop, like gauss being subpar against most enemy types. Shipping lane missions are also pretty infamous.

Some aspects of TFTD make things easier though. Namely the relative lack of psi from the aliens, no tentaculats (ie flying chryssalid) in terror missions, and the sectopod\ethereal equivalents (triscene\tasoth) having more notable weaknesses.

14 mhz and 1mb of ram was all it took for something never seen before.

No, it needed a 386 and 4MB RAM, and that was just the minimum spec, not optimal. The Windows 95 requirements were higher than the DOS version, of course (at least 16MB RAM, as I recall). Openxcom uses DOSBox, so a lot higher again. Emulation be like that, I suppose.

fast forward 30 years, literally a thousandfold that computing power, we're here hoping for xenonauts 2 to deliver a just a tiny minuscule bit improved version of x-com which, graphics apart (and even not that much), could pretty much run on the same hardware.

Wasn't that the point of Xenonauts 1, to make something fairly close to the inspiration? I've already explained why you're incorrect on the hardware, and that's without going into details about bugs Openxcom fixed.
 

Thorgeim

Educated
Joined
May 11, 2018
Messages
53
I know it sounds silly but I couldnt get over Xenonauts weapon prjectiles not coming out of actual weapons. It probably is the same in openxcom but that game is pixelated enough to provide an excuse. In xenonauts with the cute graphics it was just too obvious.
Now watching Xenonauts 2 gameplay, from what I can tell the weapons line up with the firing line and projectiles so it looks much better. So Im hopeful about Xen2 :)
 

Darth Canoli

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Jun 8, 2018
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Perched on a tree
So I set that bitch to the top difficulty and just get rekt, curb stomped and put on suicide watch. Turned out to be the infamous difficulty bug where UFO always defaulted to the easiest setting. Players complained the game was too easy, MP didn’t find the bug for years, and so adjusted Terror accordingly.

I didn't know that but everyone who played the game back then was terrorized by alien terrors.
These fucking crabs...


Some aspects of TFTD make things easier though. Namely the relative lack of psi from the aliens, no tentaculats (ie flying chryssalid) in terror missions, and the sectopod\ethereal equivalents (triscene\tasoth) having more notable weaknesses.

Flying crysalids ?
I've heard you only get these after your fourth joint or something...
 

CthuluIsSpy

Arcane
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Dec 26, 2014
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On the internet, writing shit posts.
Oh yeah, Lobstermen were bullshit, but they did have some weaknesses; they had no psi defense, melee weapons ignored their armor iirc and they had low stun resist too.

TFTD had issues, but I did appreciate some of the ideas and the enemy design.

Its heavily implied that the Nu-XCOM sequel is going to be TFTD inspired, so lets just hope it isn't as popamole as XCOM 2 and is more sandbox than scripted.
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
It probably is the same in openxcom but that game is pixelated enough to provide an excuse.
It is not though.

That is why sometimes you can see an alien (because it lines up with the raycasting from the head of your soldier) but you can't shoot it (because it is not raycasting from the chest area of your soldier).

There is an update right now of OpenXcom that adds a toggleable option for the game to slightly adjust the raycast so that you can shoot at aliens that you can see.
 

Thorgeim

Educated
Joined
May 11, 2018
Messages
53
It probably is the same in openxcom but that game is pixelated enough to provide an excuse.
It is not though.

That is why sometimes you can see an alien (because it lines up with the raycasting from the head of your soldier) but you can't shoot it (because it is not raycasting from the chest area of your soldier).

There is an update right now of OpenXcom that adds a toggleable option for the game to slightly adjust the raycast so that you can shoot at aliens that you can see.

Interesting, ill have a look at my last installation. But i meant visually. In xenonauts, when the soldier shoots he turns his rifle 45 degrees but projectile leaves the square at 35 degrees for example, and it kinda comes out of the hands not really the end of a barrel. Like i said, silly thing but i hate it :)
 

Twiglard

Poland Stronk
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How's the AI for openxcom, as compared to JA2? From gameplay on youtube it looks to me as if the difficulty level was only caused by aliens being OP.
 

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