xcomjs

X-COM: Browser Defense

IMPORTANT

This project requires a copy of UFO: Enemy Unknown or X-COM: UFO Defense.
That is, a copy of the original X-COM, released by Microprose in 1994.

Sources

The original X-COM is still available from many sources.

Personally, I own three copies of X-COM; two physical and one on Steam. Steam is very convenient way to obtain the game, and it's only $5.00!

Installation

The following sequence will build and run the game in Firefox.

git clone https://github.com/blinkdog/xcomjs
cd xcomjs
npm install
cake rebuild
bin/make-xcom-data /path/to/XCOM data.json
cake rebuild
cake run

Hacking

Want to hack around on the code?

doc/notes.md has some of my observations about X-COM: UFO Defense. It describes what I saw, and thus what I am attempting to re-create.

doc/dev.md describes the high level points of the xcomjs codebase. If I were tutoring someone on the code, those are the points that I would go over with them. Reading this document is probably the best way to get a feel for the moving parts of the codebase.

doc/game.md describes the JSON structure of the game object. If you want to make a classic saved-game editor, or maybe just pad X-COM's bank account with a few extra zeros, this is the file that will tell you the details needed to do that.

Thanks

I wrote xcomjs, but drew heavily upon the reference material found at UFOpaedia.org. Truly, my code stands upon the shoulders of the geniuses who reverse engineered and clearly documented the binary file formats of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown.

Thank you to Dominic Szablewski for his blog post Drawing Pixels is Hard. It pointed me in the right direction for rendering pixel graphics on the HTML5 canvas.

Thank you to Matt for his blog post Coffeescript constructor options with defaults.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.