Red Alert cutscenes were anything but cheapo. That was the main reason Westwood went down (as far as I know), they were too expensive and they didn't sell enough to cover such budgets.

anyways, there is already an X-Com inspired game with filmed skippable cutscenes instead of text popups, called Ufo: Aftermath.
It's also 3D, however it lacks environment destructability, and IMHO thats kind of a deal killer (you get stuck very often and can't do anything about it). Also the AI is rather omniscient, and unit placement is dodgy.

however, in Ufo Aftermath the base defense bits are a little less squarey, and much more proportionate (hangars are really big, bathrooms can hold 1 or 2 soldiers tops).

About the original X-Com, i always thought it would be cool if you could land anywhere.

About avoiding cutscenes.. how about showing the base animated during each takeoff? like soldiers talking and prepping up before taking off? or maybe just trigger that in key missions or something.
About crash site variation (here Ufo Aftermath SUCKS) i always thought you could have randomly created landscapes (X-Com had them i think) and then just toss an ufo and pre-calculate the landscape damage. Also allow people to bash walls and stuff =D

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Original post by Madster Red Alert cutscenes were anything but cheapo. That was the main reason Westwood went down (as far as I know), they were too expensive and they didn't sell enough to cover such budgets.

Sure they were expensive, but they FELT cheapo. It doesn't have to do with the budget, it has to do with the skills of actors and directors and the quality of the dialogue and script.

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anyways, there is already an X-Com inspired game with filmed skippable cutscenes instead of text popups, called Ufo: Aftermath. It's also 3D, however it lacks environment destructability, and IMHO thats kind of a deal killer (you get stuck very often and can't do anything about it). Also the AI is rather omniscient, and unit placement is dodgy.

That game had some serious problems, most of which you all ready pointed out. The way you can blow shit up in the original X-COM was definitively awesome and there is no way I am going to overlook that.

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About the original X-Com, i always thought it would be cool if you could land anywhere.

Sure it would be cool, but what purpose would it serve?

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About avoiding cutscenes.. how about showing the base animated during each takeoff? like soldiers talking and prepping up before taking off? or maybe just trigger that in key missions or something.

Yeah, this is actually what I had in mind ... Another convenient place to do something like this is when a mission is finished.

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About crash site variation (here Ufo Aftermath SUCKS) i always thought you could have randomly created landscapes (X-Com had them i think) and then just toss an ufo and pre-calculate the landscape damage. Also allow people to bash walls and stuff =D

Randomnly generated maps are generally quite bland, but I am feeling you here. It's no fun playin' the same thing twice.

Thank you very much for the input,

Sebastian Jensen

Yay! X-Com! Loved the game and still play it from time to time.

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I don't know HOW it should be done ... as Wavinator said cutscenes are probably not the way ... can anyone think of anything else? Anything that will help add more of a plot to the game or any convenient way to show the player a little bit of dialouge now and then?

How about doing the Sims with an attitude? Just click on a base and you can see them walking around drinking coffee, drilling, researching and what not.

UFO: Aftermath was such a dissapointment, the view was to far out, you could hardly see the details on your guys and that made becomming attached to them difficult. Its a shame they didn't complete the FPS that was intended..

Anyhoo, perhalps a Briefing/Debriefing approach for before/after missions, with management of the wounded, and any spoils you may have gotten. I would almost perfer less of a menu driven system, with a more hands on approach where you tell your guys to store their goods and you manage where everything is in the base, tell people where to do research, etc, like in a realtime mission environment (or Sims'esk approach as Kekko mentioned). I would have also liked more detailed allied ships, i mean you walk around alien ships and you see the engine room, the bridge, crew quarters and various alien apparatus that you can research and find out about. Yet X-Com ships were nothing but boxes, where's my engines? My crew quarters? My bridge? You get the idea.

hum yeah, landing anywhere would hardly serve any purpose. Unless you had to scout for base locations yourself, which the game always 'suggested'.
However i always wished more freedom in the whole flying and landing thing, and here's something that would rock: being able to take off before finishing a mission
why would one do that? well, you could run out of ammo... or find yourself in a bad situation. You could find that in order to tackle that mission you should change soldiers, loadout or maybe manufacture some particular type of ammo.
Another thing i've always missed from X-Com is in those 'kill X amount of aliens'. I'm talking about hauling the aliens back to the ship in case the area is still not clear. To me packing an alien carcass (or a stunned alien! abduct the aliens!) into my backpack was the source of inmense joy. But it served no purpose. Wish it had.
Hauling dead/wounded soldiers back to the ship could allow you to get some health too.... or something.

Anyhoo. Luv that game. Did y'all hear about Laser Squad Nemesis? its like the original Laser Squad that inspired X-Com, but they made it more UFO-Like and you play it via email, one turn each email. Like a chess match. Good stuff.

Slightly off topic...

Actually I've found uses for abducting just a single alien. One was when I needed psionics and a large etheral UFO comes along. Since I just wanted one of them alive, all I had to do was to stun a soldier, grab him and go. Immense fun, as you said...
At another occasion I needed a navigator, and was able to capture one at the lower level of a UFO. Instead of clearing out the upper levels, I just left.
Probably saved a couple of soldiers' lives.

More on topic...

One of the things I liked about X-Com was that while you could get attached to the soldiers, they where not indispe... indespi... You didn't lose the game if they died.
This made the struggle more real, more grim. This is something that other games have moved away from. In X-Com: Apocalypse, death was much more rare, and in X-Com: Alliance you where supposed to have a limited number of soldiers.
As a wish list, I would like more automated micro-managing. For example, I wanted to place the quickest guys first, and automatically have pistols and smoke grenades in their hands.
In X-Com, I had to manually rearrange who had which weapon, *every single mission*, and there was no way at all to decide which soldier stod where.

yes! control over deployment!

In a real tactical situation, one wouln't just randomly drop
you would choose where and what positions your soldiers would approximately fall (parachute) or where they'd be seated (heli seats)

Also, that would defeat the horrible UFO: Aftermath situation of landing, and finding out that you're surrounded by aliens with bazookas. Thats sort of dumb.

I am really liking most of these ideas, it's really helping to shape the game for the better. To summarize, these are the changes/improvements that are being made so far:

- Sims-esque base overview
- "events" at beginning/end of key missions (game still open-ended though)
- Automated micro-management
- Control over deployment
- Abducting aliens will lead to new research possibilities
- Modernized GUI

Other than that the game will be pretty much intact. Thank you very much everyone, I really apprichiate your help.

- Sebastian Jensen

Hey, i just saw this post and after reading it and several replies, i figured i might want to get a copy of X-com. Anybody know any where it could be found/bought/traded? Not to imply piracy, of course.

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