f13.net

Here's the remedy  :awesome_for_real: :

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41342/X-COM-on-Steam (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41342/X-COM-on-Steam)

Someone should just redo the first couple with up-to-date graphics and resolution support. I'd rebuy!

They did, it's called Extraterrestrials (or something like that).  It's pretty much an exact copy.

Or you can buy the games in the Aftermath (?)/ Afterlight series (on steam).  I know afterlight is actually pretty good, but their engine sucks, at least with vista (and widescreen).

There is also a free one: http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/

No warranty is given or implied.

x-com is an insanely good game there is no words for it probably the best of it's kind.

You need to turn that into haiku.

Sweet -- I just picked up Terror from the Deep two weeks ago, and ran straight into the "oh shit, it resets the difficulty level if you do too well" problem and got boned on a terror mission.

I really wanted to play regular X-com. :)

I never tried any of them after TFTD.

I'd be remiss if I did not point out that X-COM is on GameTap.

No, I really do not work for them.

Yeah I bought Terror from the Deep when I first noticed it on steam and now I bought the whole pack. Man I love the X-com series.

I love the idea of playing X-Com without fighting with a processor throttler.

And yes, I know about Gametap. :) I just didn't want to bother with it just for XCom.

I never heard much about the games after TFTD.

XCOM:Apocalypse wasn't reviewed very well, but I enjoyed it. It was based in a city in the future and you could attack the local gangs as well as the aliens. It also introduced real time combat into the game.

I always used to just toggle between turn based and real time to speed the game up.

I don't remember much more than that.

I think most people hated Apocalypse due to the art style.  I thought it was a fine game.

Yeah, I thought Apocalypse was fine, though I agreed the art style wasn't fantastic. The gameplay was solid, and reasonably consistent with what made the original a truly great game.

None of the non-Microprose UFO games feature a blaster cannon. Thus they suck.

I thought the AI was relatively good for its time and the atmosphere, when the chrysalids ran around a dark corner and infested one of your soldiers it really put the shits up me. Terror missions were great as they introduced new weaponry/tech and also were quite difficult snipers and grenaders came into their own here.

Various things the orginal had that remakes wouldn't though they all seemed to to have on one or two.

* Good strategy needed against a clever AI who didn't all just run head first into your firing line.
* Exploring buildings, looking around and using terrain to your advantage.
* Using lights to reveal hidden areas/enemies on night missions was actually fun.
* Character stats building thus making you revere certain soldiers and using others as cannon fodder piling out of the assault ship.
* The chance to make a two player version with one person playing the aliens and other humans.
* Atmosphere.

i hear aliens
a game now has 'atmosphere'
and keeps me up nights

I still hear the human dying sound effect from X-com, in my head, all the time.

The blaster launcher was one of those all time great video game weapns. Also, it was deadly to both user and target on the PSX version unless you had the Playstation mouse. Waypoints were a challenge on the PS controller.

I still drag mine out about once a year and play some on my PS2. The only real downside to the game was it required a considerable time commitment. Although massive campaigns of alien destruction and conquest were truly epic, I found it hard to put aside the time the game required. Great fun, though.

X-Com Apocalypse was actually a pretty good game. I didn't mind the art deco look of it (though, admittedly, it is peculiar) and the gameplay was pretty much pure X-Com--IF--you stayed away from the real time thing. There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with the real time mode and it did have it's tactical uses. However, one or two trigger-happy agents could ruin an entire mission if they happened to fire something explosive into a pile of alien ordnance--which happened frequently. I still remember an alien ship recovery where a squad with toxiguns was piling up aliens like cord wood at the ship hatch as they attempted to storm the defense. Of course, some idiot with a mini-missle launcher had to fire...and it blew the entire front of the ship off. That was another good thing about Apocalypse: fully destructable environments. Bringing down entire buildings was fun! Though it didn't help you make friends at all and tended to be expensive in restitution (bribes).

Shit.

$13.49 on steam for all those games. Right now. And it'll run on xp. That's a price point I can't deny.

Does terror from the deep have game-stoppping mission difficulty bug thing in it or is it fixed? Does anyone know? (Morat, did you get it from steam?)

I got it from steam -- the "Reset the difficulty" bug is still there, as is the "you didn't research those last techs in the right order, you = fucked" bug.

Ugh.

Well, I'll just play the first one. I never got very far in it.

It's really not that much of an issue. You can look it up easily enough, and it basically involves researching a dead Deep One followed by one which is alive (which you have to capture in the short window during which they show up in-game). You can end up missing the higher tier armour (iirc) but that's hardly game breaking.

Also, Aquatoids!

See when you people are saying 'Runs on XP', what do you mean ?  As in, 'we've fixed speed and resolution problems' or what ?

I still have the originals, but I'd be interested if these add some value.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (http://www.dosbox.com/)

Um, No.

I can get 'em to run, I just wondered if there was 'OTHER STUFF, DAN DAN DAAAHN !!'

Possibly not.

Oh no, i don't think so. It's just the old versions, but on Steam.

Fixed speed problems. Runs on my monitor just fine -- kind of grainy, but that's because the original graphics were low-rez and they've been blown up to fit 1920x1024 or whatever the hell I'm running on.

But it ran clean, no fucking around with Dosbox or processor throttlers.

The steam version uses dosbox.

As far as I can tell, there is no "other stuff" except that by paying $13.49 I just saved myself the hassle of tracking down 5 games, downloading dosbox, and getting all the appropriate dosbox.conf configuration options right for it to run x-com (which can be a gigantic pain in the ass for some games)

The resolution is the same - big and blocky. I prefer to run it in a window, slightly enlarged. To do that, I just changed these parameters in steam/steamapps/common/xcom ufo defense/dosbox.conf

fullscreen=true   -->   fullscreen=false
windowresolution=original  -->  windowresolution=1024x768
output=surface  -->  output=ddraw

to smooth the edges, some, I also changed:
scaler=advinterp2x  -->  scaler=super2xsai

You can see the different scaler options and what they do here (http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Scaler). Basically, different anti-aliasing options. The output I changed to ddraw since the others didn't support windowed mode in anything but default resolution.

Many thanks.  Seriously thinking about at least Apocalypse.

Probably the first two as well.

But Interceptor and Enforcer were balls.

I downloaded ufo for free last night from underdogs. Plays fine so far. Will cause me to get some sitty marks for the remaining essays I have this semester, to be sure. (But they don't really matter!)

In fact I'm considering playing it now. I do have a lecture... but I can listen to it online.

Hot girl in lecture vs UFO, then.

UFO wins.

UFO games would be much better if they featured Gabrielle Drake.

(http://www.leninimports.com/gabrielle_drake_gallery_10.jpg)