Hello there, I have been lurking these forums for quite a while, and I finally got around getting my own account. The reason is that I want to discuss what I hope to be my first real project, a game inspired by my all time favorite: X-COM: UFO Defense (Enemy Unknown). I don't know how many of you is familiar with this title because it is getting quite old, but I consider it to be one of the best PC games of all time. There is something about it that makes it fun to play even today. Anyway, I do not want to make a straight clone of the game. Especially not since I have heard that there is another group that is working on that all ready. What I want to do is to figure out what made X-Com so great and take those key elements and use them as a starting point for a new title. For a very long time I have dreamed of a title that would combine X-COM with Master Of Orion II, with perhaps a little bit of Privateer added into the mix ;) But this is probably not going to be that game ... that is a little more cake than I can make, I think. I would apprichiate any ideas that could help with a brainstorming process. Also finding an answer to the question "what made X-Com rock?" ... personally I think it was combination of good tactics and resource system. And level of detail. All suggestions and ideas will be apprichiated. What are your thoughts? I apologize for inconvineint English. I am not native. Best regards, Sebastian Jensen

I think you'll find that most of the people on this forum count X-Com as one of their favorite games of all time. I certainly do.

As you mentioned, X-Com's combination of two seperate but related modes (Geoscape and tactical combat) are probably what made it so good. There were so many inter-related things to do in the game that it was always fresh. Research, finances, politics, air combat, and tactical ground combat (of which there were at least four types) all affected each other. Successful combat missions boosted your political reputation and provided alien goodies to research, sell, or use in future missions.

I think this inter-relatedness is one of the keys to X-Com's successful design.

-Mike

rating++ for good grammar and [hopefully] starting a great discussion about a great game.

Thank you for the great input, everybody.
It makes me very glad to see that the game still seems to have some sort of fan-base. It makes me glad because I consider the it a great example of good design.

As Omegavolt said the "time unit" concept certainly contributed to the tactical combat part of the game. The concept is found in some pen & paper roleplaying games too and I think it is probably one of the best ways to deal with this type of combat so far.

But the thing that I thought stood out about the tactical part of the game was the mood and atmosphere. I remember feeling very excited the first few times I commanded my squad to explore a landing site. It was almost a bit like watching a good horror movie.

And then about the inter-connectedness that Mike (doctorsixstring) mentioned ... this is what I think is very hard about designing games, and I also think it is where most modern games fail. In X-COM everything sort of "clicked" into the right place and I remember that I could see benifits from my research and base expansion very clearly in the tactical parts of the game. This raises a few interesting questions for game designers.
How does one achieve such balance? How does one design a game for good inter-connectivity between gameplay elements?

I did not know of the term "low level story" before, but I know exactly what you (Gyrthok) mean ... I think this is what makes the player remember a game and talk about it with his friends. I always feel very eager to tell my friends "low level stories" from the games that I play. It frequently happens that me and my buddies talk about outrageous things we have done in GTA, for example :)

Thank you very much everyone, I feel very glad I finally registered at GD.NET!

Best regards,

Sebastian Jensen

Quote:
One of the challenges right now with such a game, btw, is that we've been so cutscene drenched in recent years that we expect every element to play out in excruciatingly rendered detail. But if you can get gamers to curb their enthusiasm a bit and accept a level of abstraction, I think you can make such a game a reality.

I am actually thinking about using more cinematography than in the original X-COM game, now that the technology is available. Instead of a little box that says "UFO1 DETECTED" I can totally see a little cut scene of people wearing head sets at a hectic command station, running around and shouting like day traders, paper print out in their hands. If done right, I think this type of stuff could raise the atmosphere and potentially make the game more exciting to play.
I definitively want to have more of a developing storyline than what exists in the original X-COM game, that is for sure.

I think we have to think very differently now from what game programmers and designers did 10 years ago. Now, games are becomming more and more things that you experience and less and less things that you play.
I see this project as giving people the opportunity to play the role of a leading commander during a time when our planet is being invaded by aliens. Hopefully, it won't be too much like an interactive version of Independence Day, though [lol]

I realized when rereading my own post that it sounded like I wanted to divide the game into a series of missions with some cheapo cut-scene between each mission (like Red Alert 2) ... but this is NOT the case! I would NEVER do anything like that.

I totally gave you the wrong idea there, mostly due to my inability to express what I think with words.

I definitively do NOT want any form of mission structure or anything. I have never liked games that were separated into a number of "levels" or "stages," except maybe from a side scrolling platform games.

What I DO want though is to put a bit more roleplaying into the game.

My ideas on how to do this so far is:

1) Show scenes from the X-COM soldiers living quarters. I think it would be nice to see the soldiers exchanging a few words every now and then, to give them more character. These "scenes" could appear when some new research breakthrough is achieved or when a certain artifact is brought back to the base. Or perhaps when you choose to call them in right in the middle of their coffee break [grin]

2) I want many variations of UFO crash site, so that new things are discovered about the alien race from time to time. Imagine that when you have succesfully eliminated all the aliens it turns out this aircraft was carrying some type of object that contained samples of their written language.

3) I don't want the scientists and engineers to be anonymous people in this game. Perhaps when they have made a new discovery about the alien race or came up with a new weapon they will demonstrate it to you and the crew.

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?

I guess the reason I get carried away with this kind of stuff is that I am really studying to become a playwright. But I have grown up with an addiction to games and it would not surprise me if I would end up working with them one day. Also I am a total RPG fanboy somewhere deep inside of my Squaresoft shaped heart. So as far as a STRAIGHT X-COM clone goes I am definitively not the one to do that.

Best Regards,

Sebastian Jensen

Oh and about resources and commitment ... I have some totally awesome animation people at my school that I drink with [grin] We have discussed collaberation for a long time, so I think I might be able to get some pretty rad assets.