DO NOT PLAY THIS VIA STEAM

[Chameleon_Silk]

Instead take the time to setup OpenXCOM which can use its data files to play it on modern systems, with bugfixes and high resolution support.

this should be stickied as it is THE premiere way to play TFTD nowadays.

I'm a fan of the original and openxcom is everything the original release should have been (research bugs fixed) and includes options that other mods have incorportated over the years.

absolutley no reason not to play it this way!

[Tetsuri]

I don't think so. You don't know how something is like unless you have had experience wit it. So, in the end, it's just about who you choose to believe. So I can see why people don't want to even try it when the game is already playable.

On the other hand, if you had the time to come argue about why you don't want to try it, you could already have installed it and tried it for yourself. Also, it's not liek OPENXCOM alters the original game in anyway. It is a seperate program and you can still run the original anytime you wanted(talk about an amazin programming job, not liek that Ark trash, and it's not even retail).

[Gilmaris]

Publicado originalmente por packor:

lol, editors to tinker wit stats, not even necessary. Bug fix for optimizing performance and Quality of Life improvements, hell ya.

When the heavy gauss is described as being "virtually unstoppable", yet does less damage than a sonic pistol, then yes, stat tinkering can improve gameplay - even if it isn't necessary. Neither are the bug fixes, for that matter, so long as you know how not to trigger them. I grant you that this is likely a pain for new players, but I played the hell out of TFTD back in the day and know all the pitfalls. As for performance, it performs just fine even without XCOMutil.

There were two main changes I did to TFTD via the editor:

1) Restored the Halliucinoid's ranged attack
2) Edited weapons damage. Specifically the demolition charge, which was never going to be used when it was just a pitiful 100 damage. And then rearranged the gauss/sonic weapons in this order of damage magnitude:

1. Gauss pistol
2. Sonic pistol
3. Gauss rifle
4. Sonic Rifle
5. Heavy gauss
6. Sonic cannon

There, the gauss is now useful, and not just as something to mass manufacture to make loads of $. This also makes the gauss more comparable to the lasers of EU.

[Gilmaris]

Publicado originalmente por Chameleon_Silk:

some people cant see the forest from the trees. the extra fluff can be disabled and played like original minus all the game/save breakers.

in years of playing never seen a tasoth commander, and i thought general consensus was that it didnt exist. many other ways to muck t'leth tho.prob very rare bug. (looks like it does exist) I must've never beat enough colony missions to see one!!! or maybe its to do with difficulty setting... lol.

I think it's only at colony and/or artefact missions that I encountered Tasoth commanders.

[Tetsuri]

Publicado originalmente por Gilmaris:

Publicado originalmente por packor:

lol, editors to tinker wit stats, not even necessary. Bug fix for optimizing performance and Quality of Life improvements, hell ya.

When the heavy gauss is described as being "virtually unstoppable", yet does less damage than a sonic pistol, then yes, stat tinkering can improve gameplay - even if it isn't necessary. Neither are the bug fixes, for that matter, so long as you know how not to trigger them. I grant you that this is likely a pain for new players, but I played the hell out of TFTD back in the day and know all the pitfalls. As for performance, it performs just fine even without XCOMutil.

There were two main changes I did to TFTD via the editor:

1) Restored the Halliucinoid's ranged attack
2) Edited weapons damage. Specifically the demolition charge, which was never going to be used when it was just a pitiful 100 damage. And then rearranged the gauss/sonic weapons in this order of damage magnitude:

1. Gauss pistol
2. Sonic pistol
3. Gauss rifle
4. Sonic Rifle
5. Heavy gauss
6. Sonic cannon

There, the gauss is now useful, and not just as something to mass manufacture to make loads of $. This also makes the gauss more comparable to the lasers of EU.

Basically, you're saying you just want to do your own mod instead of trying out the tons of mods available to choose from in one package.

And, no, the framing in the game really bothers me, especially when you're on a ship and it just takes a long time to move the camera anywhere, so thank you, OPENXCOM

Not going to go into it, because HEAVY SPOILER, but there's really only one dominant weapon in TftD, and it appears in abundance, so no real point rigging any other weapons. If anything, rig UFO Defense to follow TftD so that it's also easy mode, lol.

Other weapons besides the heavy plasma or warp launcher are also quite useless with the exception of laser pistols(for training), so is it really that much different? I can go straight from laser rifles to heavy plasma and that is the game. So if you just wanted the cash crop to be more useful along the way for some reason while completely ignoring earlier alien weapons, which we do anyway, that is quite redundant, just as it is in UFO Defense.

And my favorite thing may be being able to access alien inventory, so no moar making aliens throw their guns away so you can train, but then have them throw pulsars at you, but then you could also just edit your soldier stats with some text editor. *shrug*

[//]

XD OPENXCOM saves the day! Thank God...I love that Mod SOOOO much! Bless the creators of it...

[Gilmaris]

Publicado originalmente por packor:

Basically, you're saying you just want to do your own mod instead of trying out the tons of mods available to choose from in one package.

And, no, the framing in the game really bothers me, especially when you're on a ship and it just takes a long time to move the camera anywhere, so thank you, OPENXCOM

Not going to go into it, because HEAVY SPOILER, but there's really only one dominant weapon in TftD, and it appears in abundance, so no real point rigging any other weapons. If anything, rig UFO Defense to follow TftD so that it's also easy mode, lol.

Other weapons besides the heavy plasma or warp launcher are also quite useless with the exception of laser pistols(for training), so is it really that much different? I can go straight from laser rifles to heavy plasma and that is the game. So if you just wanted the cash crop to be more useful along the way for some reason while completely ignoring earlier alien weapons, which we do anyway, that is quite redundant, just as it is in UFO Defense.

And my favorite thing may be being able to access alien inventory, so no moar making aliens throw their guns away so you can train, but then have them throw pulsars at you, but then you could also just edit your soldier stats with some text editor. *shrug*

I disagree with pretty much everything you said. If you think you can only make it with sonic cannons (because of lobstermen), then you haven't made full use of the melée weapons, all of which are very good against lobstermen. In later missions, when aquatoids become a real menace because of their MC abilities, it is very useful to have weapons with higher rates of fire. And also because of tentaculats.

At any rate, the TFTD Extender does pretty much everything that OpenXCOM can do for TFTD, with much easier install.

As for scrolling taking a long time, even playing vanilla I have no trouble with this at all because of the options already available right there ingame. You can select different scroll speeds. Usually it's actually way too fast and I have to select a slower one.

[Chameleon_Silk]

hey as long as your fixing the issues with vanilla... point is more about staying away from vanilla and using something to fix the problems.

if thats tftdextender for you, fine. I agree its probably easier to install since openxcom requires a nightly and not the release, I however doubt tftdextender offers as many changes to the core game as openxcom does, if thats not your thing then by all means.

I do find it odd there is such resistance and brand loyalty going on, fix the vanilla game and enjoy there really is no need to belittle each others way of doing it, im sorry my initial post set the topic off this way. just enjoy the game.

[Tetsuri]

Publicado originalmente por Gilmaris:

I disagree with pretty much everything you said. If you think you can only make it with sonic cannons (because of lobstermen), then you haven't made full use of the melée weapons, all of which are very good against lobstermen. In later missions, when aquatoids become a real menace because of their MC abilities, it is very useful to have weapons with higher rates of fire. And also because of tentaculats.

At any rate, the TFTD Extender does pretty much everything that OpenXCOM can do for TFTD, with much easier install.

As for scrolling taking a long time, even playing vanilla I have no trouble with this at all because of the options already available right there ingame. You can select different scroll speeds. Usually it's actually way too fast and I have to select a slower one.

If you think I am talking about sonic cannon, then you just aren't on my level yet. I said TftD is EASIER than UFO Defense, so why would the best weapon be a weapon that isn't even as good as the heavy plasma?

Idk why you are talking about MC,it's a non-issue in both games, except for the aliens. They get rolled hard. The only issue is with Lobstermen, because with the option to melee all they do is stand there when they can't do it, so you have to bait them in order to train reactions.

Extender is also a mod, so that pretty much invalidated your own argument. I also only had to download one file and it installed OPENXCOM for both games for me, so Idk about that part.

Game slowing down, NOT MAP SCROLLING, because the game eats processing power and doesn't make full use of your graphics, not because of some game setting.

[Chameleon_Silk]

tftd base defense mission nuff said about slowdown.

does openxcom fix the hallucinoud melee bug? reading wiki says they have no ranged attack which is BS... in vanilla they shoot a sonic attack at range and melee was bugged... unless im severely not remembering the game.

[Chameleon_Silk]

maybe it was triscenes? cant remember which had non-functional melee.

edit: its bio-drones.

[Tetsuri]

Idk it's super rare for me to ever have to do a base defense, but yes, alien turns were super terribad on those.

[Chameleon_Silk]

no its not that alien turns were slow like cruise ships or something its that the game ran slow and sluggish due to a game engine limitation... newer hardware is still a slave to the same slowdown as it was inherit to the engine. I know this because I've done plenty of games in TFTD with base defense losses and wins.

openxcom because its rewritten does not have this limitation... all mods of tftd would have this slowdown... its not as bad as some of the other bugs but its a QoL thing, anyone claiming there is no 4-8fps chug during these missions couldnt have been playing hard 20 years ago.

[//]

OPENXCOM....so sweet....

[Tetsuri]

no, I was saying alien turns were especially bad on base defense, so I was agreeing wit you. It's especially slow on alien turns, possibly because the game's computing what to do

[Chameleon_Silk]

AND im saying its especially slow on everything in the battlescape... not just the alien turns.... you agree but you're not understanding that the entire game has the slowdown. Evidenced by the commenting that the alien turns are especially slow. Bro, everythings slowed down. should be apparent the first time you play a defense mission.

if you wish you can see it on arrow above aquanaunt head not animating smooth and janky gameplay. He blames it on DOSBOX.. it is not DOSBOX slowing it down, its the way it played on my 486.

https://youtu.be/O4gw-pw0Ksk

compared to openxcom

https://youtu.be/hhmveQNosPU

and thats with higher resolution... you can see how much smoother the cursor/animation is. so why anyone would want to play vanilla/mods when you can make the game look exactly the same and have these QoL improvements is beyond me!

but hey play it the way you wanna, just dont shoot the messenger for pointing out why it's an objectively superior way to play.

Keyword: Objectively, people citing mods are not looking at it objectively and just doing it the way they have been doing it for years.. their comfort zone... If the same people actually compared the experience they might walk away with a better formulated opinion on what the latest TFTD can be like, instead of resisting change.

the horse cries for the beating to stop.