I think it's worth pointing out that as good as OpenXcom is, it isn't the original X-com, it's a clone of that game which uses the original assets, but seeing as neither X-com nor TFTD ever had their source code released, it's still an approximation of the game, not the real thing, ie the developers closely analyzed X-com and then basically coded from scratch a a new game as close as possible to X-com.

If you want a more vanilla experience you should probably use the original Dosbox versions GOG has provided, but with XcomUtil (http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XcomUtil)

Very interesting. Thanks for this !
I want to play the game as vanilla as possible, but for now, the dosbox version of GOG seems to lag a little and has sometimes crackling sound... Will this solve this ? Or is there something in dosbox I can do ?
So, XcomUtil doesn't add any things ?
Isn't the "difficulty bug" (I saw this in the FAQ) solved in GOG's version ?
With XcomUtil, do we need to instal the universal patch ? (found here)
Sorry, that's a lot of question ^^"

OpenXcom dev here, thanks for the support everyone! We're very happy to see X-COM finally making it to GOG, and we'll be keeping a close eye here to see if any issues crop up and assisting people with any problems they have.

For OpenXcom players, if you wanna play TFTD or the latest mods, you should use the latest nightlies, otherwise 1.0 is fine. It's all pretty playable but we can't make any guarantees it's perfect, that's why we need more testers like you.
The gameplay is 99.9% vanilla, or your money back. ;) While we don't have source, we have gone to great lengths to reverse-engineer and make it as accurate as possible.

For vanilla players, as far as I can tell the GOG version is identical to the Steam version, no unofficial changes. So you'll still have the "difficulty bug" and various other warts.
XcomUtil and UFOExtender will fix those, as well as include a bunch of other enhancements. However they also modify the data files, so if you plan on trying OpenXcom later, you'll need a clean install.
The Universal Patch is an independent data patch and should be applied before those. It has no bearing on gameplay, just fixes map glitches and the like.

Nice to see someone of the team here :) Thank you very much all of you for your work !

And thanks a lot for all the clarifications ! I was personally a little bit lost :P

Thank you so much for your work, it's given me many hours of fun over the past few years, not having to worry about constantly saving due to crashes, as well as all the great enhancements you guys added. :)

It's also worth noting that the Openxcom install requires the original game assets be pre-installed in order to run, so I think it's a bit better than an "approximation"...;) It also provides a lot of nice configuration options the original game doesn't. Generally, when games get this kind of treatment the experience is improved as opposed to degraded. Only real fans of the original game endeavor to do things like this as it's very time consuming and has to be a real labor of love, or it doesn't happen. I for one am very appreciative of Openxcom, and note that I have both installed and can play either at will. Openxcom is a win-win for everyone!

I was just reading elsewhere that OpenXcom made the game harder, for reasons such as all aliens with line of sight to the X-COM landing craft facing it so that they get overwatch immediately, and with the aliens having AI capable of being more sneaky, getting into cover, flanking you and using grenades more.

Are these comments more applicable to earlier versions of OpenXcom and not v1.0 or the nightly builds? Or do they still hold true? If true, are these AI changes toggleable via advanced options?

The reason I ask is because of the "gameplay is 99.9% vanilla" that SupSuper mentioned in the comments above. These kinds of AI changes would be more than a 0.1% change to gameplay.

Well, I just had a look into this and I'm not so sure that the difficulty bug exists in the GOG version. If I use a Hex editor on the GEOSCAPE.EXE and go to offset 0x175BC as per version 1.4 of the DOS UFO Defense, the value there is already set as 0x40, rather than 0x3C, so it should be saving the full 64 bytes rather than the truncated 60 bytes which caused the loss of the difficulty setting in the save games.

I've just compared the MAPS and ROUTES data file folders from the standard GOG installation and the Universal Patch, by using MD5 file hashes.

All of the MAPS files were identical, but the files in ROUTES were not.

As such, the Universal Patch does contain different files, so should still be used.

Good to know :) Thanks !

I'm not sure if it's harder or easier or different; but I can say that the aliens don't always face the skyranger.

I was playing yesterday. There were a couple of times when I lost troops by simply taking one step out of the skyranger. But there was at least one time when I walked out, threw an eletroflare to spot enemies, and shot a snakeman in the back from inside the skyranger.

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I've seen it mentioned in this thread that openxcom is an "approximation" to the original. I guess that's true in the sense that it doesn't mimic every detail. In particular, it doesn't mimic all of the bugs...

Even aside from openxcom; the original game itself must be emulated through dosbox, and slowed down and tweaked so that it will run in a playable way. So even without openxcom, the game is not quite as it would have been like when it was new.

As someone who has played UFO when it was new, and on newer computer through dosbox, and on openxcom - I can say that the only things that are noticeably different in openxcom are UI improvements. And I don't mean nicer looking graphics. Everything in openxcom looks and feels the same as the original; but some UI elements are improved. The biggest change is the option to show how many TUs you'll have left at the end of a move. That's an option which can effect playstyle and strategy, but I'd call that a positive change, and it's among the very few changes that anyone would ever notice.

Cool, good to know. Must have been referring to an earlier build (it was something from 2013 I think). I did check the advanced settings and found an option called Sneaky AI, but it is off by default (which is good!).

I'll have to examine some of the advanced settings. That remaining TUs could be good, as would be the displaying of pathing. Not decided on the option for you to customize the layout of the starting base. I know why customizing it is a good idea, but does it mean the game is then too different as you don't have that weakness of initial base design forced on you for when the aliens eventually attack?


EDIT: Oh, and when I played through UFO, it was the Windows version (Collector's Edtion?) with UFO Extender applied for some fixes and to get it running properly on my machine. It was quite some years ago, though.

Just as an aside for any prospective Mac players, the current version of OpenXCOM is sadly broken on OS X.

http://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4457.0.html

Hopefully we'll see an updated milestone release soon that has a native .app build for the Mac. In the meantime, the game runs just fine in Boxer with X-ComUtil.

Hi!

I've created an app bundle with the latest code - link posted in the thread you mention.