Messages

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Discussion / Re: A simple thank you!

« on: December 25, 2009, 12:02:23 am »

Duke;  I did have the Win32 2.1.1, I downloaded the Win32 2.3 at 594 megs from the file front link in another post late last night.  I haven't had much time the last couple of days, but I am very eager to see it.  "I am hopelessly addicted!"  As far as Mapping, heh, it's been a while but I would enjoy tinkering in that area once again after the chaos of the holiday season ends.  It is something I enjoyed all those years ago, load up a fair amount of Metallica or maybe some Tchaikovsky in the background and let the mind wander.    Very nice way to relax in my opinion.

Mattn;  Yes, some of the folks I told about UFO:AI seemed to be very interested in the game, but lacked a lot of the knowledge to get familiar with the game on an easy to understand level.  I guess, not to be rude but, some of them just lack the ability to figure something out for themselves.  And they too mentioned the Age Of Empires style tutorials, but I think they meant the simplicity of the playable tutorials in the Age Of Empires series.  It's very clear that I have a lot of reading to do and I'm thankful that it's here, and I do look forward to it.  I am following your lead, and will try to write some after the holidays.

All of you earned the compliments in my previous posts!  You really have!  And I can't thank you enough for offering me an opportunity to possibly contribute something as well.  Thank you very much.

But, right now, I think I am gonna try to abuse some more aliens for tonight.  

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Discussion / Re: A simple thank you!

« on: December 23, 2009, 06:03:29 pm »

I will gladly “contribute” what I can to help out, but you folks have already done an amazingly great job!  I have told a few folks about the game, and they too have downloaded it.  But, they never played X-Com and are having a difficult time figuring out the gameplay.  The X-Com story I guess you would say is what they are missing. 

The one thing the devs could have done with X-Com was to offer some tutorials, which was in my opinion, something that would have helped a lot of people step into the game a little easier.  Age Of Empires offered these tutorials, and thus helped an unknown amount of people learn the game quickly.  In X-Com, you hit the floor running, so to speak, which forced a lot of trial and error guessing and a lot of restarts of the game due to failed bases because of the lack of understanding of the game.  I now wonder how many would have kept playing if there were good tutorials for X-Com?

I have tried to explain the story and the gameplay to them and bring them up to speed as to the reasons and rhymes of the game, but I have found it easier to teach my dogs how to play Chess.  “I personally think most folks have gotten far to use to the point and click for instant satisfaction!”  Please don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Quake explosions of the late 90’s like millions of others did, but there are more to games than flying by the seat of your pants graphics in FPS’s.  The Need For Speed series also offered tons of wonderful eye candy for the graphics junkies who loved the car world.  But the story to those were simple and quick to understand.

Quake 2 was released late November 1997.  I bought the game, and finished it within a week.  Very disappointing.  Quake 1 took much longer, and had 4 separate sections to finish separately, not to mention the story to Quake 1 had a much better plot! 

The Need For Speed games, well, they would require you to upgrade your OS just to play the newest release, and not warn you that the previous version of NFS would not work on the newer Microsoft OS!  This happened with win95/98se to Win ME, and Win 2000, and XP, and Vista, and I am sure they will do it again with Win7.

Now, the folks at Westwood Studios, before they were bought out, did good things for the command and conquer series, red alert, red alert 2, and so on.  They also had rather good tutorials.

But, when you want a game that has a wonderful story line, a solid plot, and grit, X-Com was very difficult to compete with, in my opinioin.  And now, with the purity of UFO:AI and your remarkable ability to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, is just something you don’t see these days and is so very refreshing, especially for us scifi junkies. 

I will be around for a long time now, you have me hooked!  I have a lot of reading to do with your forums and see if I might be able to contribute to something, but in all honesty, you folks have done amazing things with UFO:AI, you really have!  The quality, atmosphere, and grit of the game has blown me away!

Again, thank you all for all your wonderful work on an old friend like this.  It’s been a long, long time since I have seen a game, no, a piece of masterful work that really grabbed at a persons imagination, made them think, immersed them into the game and forced the passage of time to the curb until the sun started to rise.

I guess you can tell, you have made an old gamer very, very happy!  So ask what you want of me, either in PM or email, I will do what I can to help preserve such a wonderful game and to help the people involved in it.  I don’t think I have a lot to offer, but what I do have I offer freely.  I have used level editors in the past, mostly for Q1 and Q2, and even made a few maps for some old Command and Conquer series games.  I've been a software/hardware tester then a test lead for IBM in the past, "which I already know devs don't really like testers, hehe."   I've used visual basic eons ago, and I have dabbled a very little in c, c++.  I am still figuring Linux out, but I am getting more fluent with it.  "One tends to remember better when one learns first hand and on their own.  I might pull my hair out a little faster, heh, but I do learn." 

Thank you all again.  Now, I have aliens to deal with.......   

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Discussion / A simple thank you!

« on: December 21, 2009, 08:15:23 pm »

I am an old school gamer from the days of DOS 1.something in the late 70's early 80's.  I've played countless games over the decades.  The first real games that I was ever honestly addicted to were Doom, of course, and X-Com!

When opportunities permitted, I lost countless hours to doom with co-workers and friends.  And, when the day was done, X-Com ate up even more of my time.  About a year ago I stumbled upon a box of old, old software.  Doom, Duke 3D, and X-Com were in this box along with some other odd games!  This only meant I had to install DOS on an old system just to revisit some old friends.  Besides, Windows has grown so very old.  Always the same story with Windows, move things around, change the GUI a little, and modify some of the internal structures and call it a new OS, just so people will give more money to Microsoft.

It was nice to see Doom and Duke 3D again, but nothing pulled at me to play them beyond a couple of minutes to remember all the fond memories of the games.  I continued to X-Com, wow, the addiction was stronger than I had expected once again.  I ended up playing it for the first time in nearly 15 years until the wee hours of the morning.  Time had indeed flown by! 

Like any other old school gamer, I hit the web to see if someone had done anything new for such an addictive, and wonderful game.  I didn't find much, mostly just broken links.

As I said earlier, I had grown weary of Microsoft, and I certainly had no desire to give them another cent.  So, I started downloading different Linux bundles.  Ubuntu, RedHat, and a slew of others.  I also started searching for games that would run on Linux.  EUREKA!  UFO:AI, based on the old X-Com game!  I couldn't believe it!  I instantly downloaded it for windows, and linux!  I am not that oriented with Linux yet, so I went to windows to see this amazing game, I was shocked!  It was like seeing an old friend, polished up and dressed for today’s hardware!  I once again lost track of time and ended up until the wee hours of the morning again like I was in my 20s... 

For all the people responsible for bringing this game into existence, I truly, humbly, and honestly thank you.  I can only imagine what you have in store for the future of such a wonderful game.


Thank you!