4 ms·
It was also interesting from a design perspective; the various parts of the game were all separate executables and I never did figure out how they all interacte
by type_enthusiast 6y ago
It was also interesting from a design perspective; the various parts of the game were all separate executables and I never did figure out how they all interacted (though clearly some people did, as evidenced by the excellent XComUtil which has proved difficult to track down lately!)
- zlorch 6y agoIIRC the game just wrote a plain data file onto disk and the next executable read it up with all the needed info.
- type_enthusiast 6y agoWell sure, when you put it that way it sounds simple! I was 12 or so, and I spent a few nights trying to figure out the "plain data file" before shrugging and going back to playing X-Com.
- Delk 6y agoWell, reverse engineering binary data is hard and laborious, and probably incomprehensible to almost any 12-year-old (and the majority of adults). (I'm assuming they were binary. I really can't remember what they were.)
- type_enthusiast 6y agoGotta be honest, I installed the game tonight under DOSBox thinking I would give thirty-something, seasoned engineer me another crack at decoding the file format. But then, those UFOs kept landing and I mean, somebody had to do something about it. And then all of a sudden my kids were like "daddy where are you" and the file format (and UFOs) once again had to wait for another day...
- marakv2 6y agoHuh that explains it! I realised (somehow) that if I ctrl-q (or alt-f4) in a mission, it kicks you out to the Misson finished with the same results as your last completed mission.