X-com: Ufo Defense

[M-HT]

Hi,

I finally managed to finish the first playable statically recompiled version of X-COM: UFO Defense for the GP2X.

Intro does not work.
Sound does not work.

Original X-COM: UFO Defense version 1.4 is required for playing.

Read the readme-GP2X.txt file in the archive for instructions.

X-COM: UFO Defense alpha 1 on the gp2x archive

Information about X-COM: UFO Defense on Wikipedia

 

[Manjuu]

Super impressive! B)

Another great feat for the GP2X has been accomplished.

Awesome work, and thank you very much M-HT.

 

[senquack]

Holy crap.

Hooooooly crap you have achieved the equivalent of the moon landing in GP2X-world. M-HT is the official GP2X grandmaster.

Thanks! Will try soon

 

[jbrodack]

M-HT you are insane. thanks!

 

[Pickle]

Wow, never saw this coming. I guess pandora's killer app has arrived.

I just tried it out and it works, and it works great. I ran it on a F100 with open2x dr4. No problems that I could see, but I just did a quick start and a tactical battle. Once touchsreen is added F200 users are going to be spoiled.
The only thing I noticed was the fullscreen stretching.

M_HT with the static recompiler youve made is it still require a lot of manual modifications after an initial recompile? I know you said there were some with Albion, but is it possible you've automated it more?
Give us some details on what youve done!

 

[senquack]

Hooka, it's time for another interview

Just tried out the game, it works great, I am very happy to have portable X-COM. I found only one bug so far.. when you have a direction held on the DPAD/stick and then pause the game, when you unpause that direction is still registered even if you've let go of the stick. Small bug.

M-HT: sent you an email

 

[M-HT]

Wow, never saw this coming. I guess pandora's killer app has arrived.

I don't know about that, because X-COM has one unfortunate feature - it's not synchronized to clock or vsync. Meaning it's as fast as the cpu allows it. Pandora is at least 3 times faster than gp2x, so X-COM would run at least 3 times faster unless pandora was underclocked.
Another thing is, that the pandora should be fast enough to run X-COM in DOSBox, so that would make DOSBox the killer app.

The only thing I noticed was the fullscreen stretching.

That can be turned off by using config file (UFO.cfg - must be in the main directory) - there is an example in the Example subdirectory.

M_HT with the static recompiler youve made is it still require a lot of manual modifications after an initial recompile? I know you said there were some with Albion, but is it possible you've automated it more?
Give us some details on what youve done!

A lot is a relative term. I spent more time changing the recompiler tu support things that were not required by Albion.

 

[antaresuk]

excellent stuff many thanks

 

[euro48k]

nostalgia is back
thankyou M-HT

 

[___]

Wow... this was unexpected. Nice surprise! M-HT for Guru!!!

 

[Hahahoj]

Thank for good job.

 

[icurafu]

You've picked two of my all time favourite games (that are not already ported)

Amazing! I thought xcom was impossible due to some lib.

PocketUFO was my favourite windows mobile app, but the real thing is better.

 

[Pickle]

I don't know about that, because X-COM has one unfortunate feature - it's not synchronized to clock or vsync. Meaning it's as fast as the cpu allows it. Pandora is at least 3 times faster than gp2x, so X-COM would run at least 3 times faster unless pandora was underclocked.
Another thing is, that the pandora should be fast enough to run X-COM in DOSBox, so that would make DOSBox the killer app.

Well dosbox appears to be running at 2000 cycles on pandora, I dont know if thats enough for this game. What clock are you running your version at?

M_HT with the static recompiler youve made is it still require a lot of manual modifications after an initial recompile? I know you said there were some with Albion, but is it possible you've automated it more?
Give us some details on what youve done!

A lot is a relative term. I spent more time changing the recompiler tu support things that were not required by Albion.
Maybe a better question would be can you take your recompiler throw at any binary and get something that works? Or is there more manual labor required including tweaking the recomilier to support newer things?
In other words can we use this on other dos apps?

 

[M-HT]

Well dosbox appears to be running at 2000 cycles on pandora, I dont know if thats enough for this game.

I don't know either, but I will try running X-COM with 2000 cycles when I get home.

What clock are you running your version at?

If you mean on my PC, then the answer is probably 40000 - that's standard number I use for DOSBox, because I'm lazy to find some lower number.

Maybe a better question would be can you take your recompiler throw at any binary and get something that works? Or is there more manual labor required including tweaking the recomilier to support newer things?
In other words can we use this on other dos apps?

Manual work is required. Things that can't be decided by the recompiler, things that are difficult to do with the recompiler, and other things are done manually. And of course if the program uses something that wasn't required by previous programs, it must be added to the recompiler.

 

[Pickle]

If you mean on my PC, then the answer is probably 40000 - that's standard number I use for DOSBox, because I'm lazy to find some lower number.

Sorry i meant the GP2X freq clock, not dosbox cycle count.

Manual work is required. Things that can't be decided by the recompiler, things that are difficult to do with the recompiler, and other things are done manually. And of course if the program uses something that wasn't required by previous programs, it must be added to the recompiler.


ok thanks, thats what i thought the process involved. Its amazing you can do this, does your brain run on ARM?
Another bomb shell game that would just be incredible to recompile is Dark Forces the Stars Wars doom clone.

 

[M-HT]

Sorry i meant the GP2X freq clock, not dosbox cycle count.

I'm not setting the GP2X freq clock, so X-COM runs on the frequency that was set before running X-COM.

 

[Megagun]

Wow, this is amazing... and unexpected!!
This'll be great over the christmas holidays!

Being the standard GP2x user, though, I've got to ask: any hope for music and/or sound, hardware-wise? X-Com was a great game, but the music and sound made it infinitely more engaging..

 

[M-HT]

Being the standard GP2x user, though, I've got to ask: any hope for music and/or sound, hardware-wise? X-Com was a great game, but the music and sound made it infinitely more engaging..

I can't promise anything, but I'll be working on sound/music in X-COM.

 

[Pickle]

I can't promise anything, but I'll be working on sound/music in X-COM.

How long did it take you to get to this first alpha?

(H-HT dont take this as an expectation, just as a me thinking outloud that it could be possible.)
As a side note Terror from the deep should be doable someday as the engine it mostly the same, although it sounds like there are some changes to make it more difficult (as in gameplay difficulty).

 

[M-HT]

Well dosbox appears to be running at 2000 cycles on pandora, I dont know if thats enough for this game.

I don't know either, but I will try running X-COM with 2000 cycles when I get home.

OK, I tried it - it's slow. In Geoscape, it doesn't matter that much - you can speed up the time. In Tactical it's worse, but nothing a hell-bent gamer couldn't endure.
I tried it also with 3000 cycles and it's much better.

The end result is, with faster dosbox (if that's possible) and/or overclocked pandora it would be relatively playable.

How long did it take you to get to this first alpha?

Hard to say. I began working on it sometime in Febuary, but I took a lot of breaks from it to work on other things, also there were some problems that took me long time to solve. I didn't really keep track of how much I worked on it.

As a side note Terror from the deep should be doable someday as the engine it mostly the same, although it sounds like there are some changes to make it more difficult (as in gameplay difficulty).

Terror from the deep should be relatively simple, because it's almost the same engine, so there shouldn't be things that I need to add to the recompiler. After I finish the things I want to do on Ufo Defense (sound, intro, ...) I will start on Terror from the deep. Or maybe even before that if I become bored with it or if I come across some difficult problem.