Talk:X-COM

Shouldn't this page be named "X-Com" instead of "X-COM"?--Ethereal Cereal 19:55, 13 October 2006 (PDT)

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Technically, X-COM in caps is the correct form. At least, that is how it is shown in the manuals, boxes and liturature. ;)--Zombie

You know, I think I checked that at one point and confirmed it was 'X-COM', but I've seen it typed so many ways I can't even remember anymore. Even in-game it's spelled "XCom"... but I'll go with X-COM as the official spelling.--Ethereal Cereal 15:43, 14 October 2006 (PDT)

In UFO, it was originally XCOM, no hyphen. Then the later games came along and introduced the hyphen and somehow we ended up using it in sentence case. - NKF

NKF, you mean the original European release, right? I have the US release (X-COM: UFO Defense box (c)1994 with floppies) and it looks just like the pic seen here. Everywhere in the manual says "X-COM", including in sentences (not just titles). So by "later games" you include the US release eh? FWIW I used to type it various ways in this wiki in the past, but now just use X-COM. --MikeTheRed 07:37, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

I was referring more to in-game usage. 'X-Com' is rarely used in the game, when you think about it. Speaking of covers, do we have scans or images of both of the original covers? They'd be nice to have up here for comparison. - NKF

In game for the Powerplus edition I get XCom in game (like on the graphs for XCom Activity in the graphs) and occasionally XCOM (for XCOM AGENTS LOST, buts its all in caps so that doesnt say much). Its XCom throughout the manual that I can see as well, so seems fairly consistent for that version at least. Still the graphic in the top right is X-COM, so its probably best to keep consistent with that as various variants are used at times. --Sfnhltb 14:12, 7 March 2007 (PST)

What to name articles?

Do we name everything specifically about the first game as Whatnot (UFO Defense) or Whatnot (Enemy Unknown) or just Whatnot hoping there's no collision? Heckruler 13:11, 30 January 2007 (PST)

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Hiya Heck, and welcome.

Good question. :) Seriously... originally the Main Page was smaller, and all the big "leading pages" appearing on it had (Game Name) in parentheses... and then there were a ton of "smaller" pages without the parens, past those leading pages. But later the Main Page got highly re-organized so that a lot more info could be found at once, and a bunch of the smaller pages (without parens) appeared there. So it's a mix, now.

Also I think that part of the original idea was that many of the various X-COM games would all have their individual pages and thus need the parens... but since many aspects are the same across games, that didn't really come about. (Why repeat something practically identical?)

The upshot - at least for me - being, you don't need to add (Game) unless you are making a point of it, such as if you are specifically making a topic for one game, when a topic of the same name also exists for another one of the X-COM games. But although you rarely have to do it, you can always do it simply if you want, shrug.

That's my two cents. Why not give it another couple of days to see if anybody else chimes in. Our usual rule here is, it's a democracy unless somebody presents a real convincing argument or wants to put in the effort to effect a change, assuming no one objects. :P

BTW you don't really need to worry about collisions; you can readily see if a page exists just by monkeying with the URL. If there is one and it is indeed on your topic, just add to it. If it's the same name but you mean something different, probably you should slightly change the name you want to give to yours so that you make a new page. Clear as mud?

Welcome again! - MikeTheRed 16:24, 30 January 2007 (PST)

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We didn't really have any proper naming conventions at first, but things have evolved since then. UFO was the core title that the wiki started on, we added the other games as we went along. If you spot any articles that have (UFO Defense) or (Enemy Unknown) in them, feel free to rename them and repair the wikilink that points to it.

Anyhow, this is how I see where we are at:

UFO - no title required.

TFTD - only topics specific to TFTD need to be labelled, otherwise it piggybacks on UFOs topics to a T.

Every other title in the series including fan-made games like UFO2000 must be labelled to avoid ambiguity.

- NKF

Works for me. Thanks for the clarification, NKF. I probably should've just waited until you spoke. :P - MikeTheRed

That's only how I see it and how I've been operating. There's no real general consensus on how it should work. Just use your discretion when deciding. - NKF

Maybe it should be better to adopt a formal style for page naming by voting or whatever and then post it on a special page available on the left Navigation menu named Style or something (including all other formatting issues). Hobbes 18:57, 31 January 2007 (PST)

Well, I vote for it. UFO is the main focus, (and what everything spawns off of), tftd isn't really a different game (except where noted), and everything else is simply everything else.Heckruler 15:55, 2 February 2007 (PST)

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A long time ago, in a place not so far away, there were many pages on this site which were a conglomeration of both EU and TFTD info. In an effort to separate the two, some pages were split and renamed. I remember renaming a few of those pages with "UFO Defense or "TFTD": it's my analytical brain at work at keeping things separate. Suppose we really don't need the "UFO Defense" in EU page names if the extension is assumed to be understood. GazChap started the "UFO Defense" naming convention and most of us just followed what he did.

(BTW, I sent GazChap an email way back in November but haven't received a reply yet. I know he's been having some personal problems and went through a messy divorce, so these could be playing a role). I'll try sending another email to get his views on the naming conventions, but make no promises. In the mean-time, I suggest we follow standard wiki protocol. Since the quorum has spoken, we'll shoot first and ask questions later.

What really needs to be standardized is the Terror From The Deep page names. I'd much rather we use "TFTD" instead of "Tftd" (hence why I use that abbreviation exclusively). Me thinks it's time to rename so that all the Terror From The Deep pages have the "TFTD" extension. I'll probably have some time tomorrow (finally), so I'll get to work renaming.

Sound like a plan guys? --Zombie 20:24, 31 January 2007 (PST)

Works for me, Z. A Style page wouldn't hurt either, Hobbes. - MikeTheRed 20:39, 31 January 2007 (PST)

Who in their right mind types Tftd? Rolls eyes and somesuch. For all I know, it's been me. a-heh. Um. Anyway, then there's Apocalypse. I lean towards using (Apoc) myself, but should it be full or abbreviated?

We do have a Guidelines to writing articles section - but I suppose a separate style guide is worth having. Will keep things standard. Under the Community Portal, I'll add it and a stub link for an index of transclusion templates that we use. I think it would come in handy, as we've created a small but useful selection of templates. This is also an excuse to remove my map kit from the main UFO listing - it's not really related to the game as such. - NKF

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Apoc in the abbreviated form will be the standard. It's a lot easier to type.

For shame! Wikis are should be for everyone, not just the creators. Spell it out, least we have idiots asking for XCOM Apoxy, the all-glue-based-attacks tactical squad-based combat game. You know they're out there. Heckruler

We aren't technically the creators. Just the regular contributors. A bit here, a bit there, and suddenly we've made a grandfather's axe. And you're right, it should be for everyone. I wish they knew that. Still, no rush. The Apocalypse, Interceptor and Enforcer sections are bare-bones at the moment, and the two that we do have a lot of articles on work well with less than 4 character abbreviations. Plenty of time to mess up later. Heh. -NKF

Anywho, you guys probably saw I went to town standardizing the naming for EU. That was a ton of work, but I think I got most (if not all) of them taken care of. There are a couple categories with the (UFO Defense) ending, but seeing as I can't move them (only delete) we might have to do a cut-n-paste job to get 'er done. That's all I can possibly do today, but if I get some time between tomorrow and the weekend I'll work on the TFTD section next. --Zombie 19:31, 1 February 2007 (PST)

Personally I would suggest that only articles that collide and are not basically identical (although that potentially includes links within the article going to different areas for different games) need extra in the title to differentiate them. So Large Sonar, not Large Sonar (TFTD), but it would link back to Base Facilities (TFTD) because that is common to at least that and and UFO. Base Facilities should probably then be a disambiguation page that points to both Base Facilities (TFTD) and Base Facilities (UFO) and then someone would need to ensure nothing points to the disambiguation pages created. --Sfnhltb 08:26, 7 March 2007 (PST)

Game Files Category

Well I started in on giving all the related articles on game files the category tag, and it soon become a long winded effort. Got to looking around and I found a nice bot Pywikipedia. Once I figured it out adding that one line to the end was a breeze. If you guys have some tedious tasks or what not I can see if I can write a script to do them and run this.

It's built in to wait a few seconds or so between edits, so it shouldn't spam the server with requests. On a side note, do you think I should register an account for this bot, right now I just had it use my user name. Also I'm not sure how to flag edits as 'bot', this site has the capability but I'd have look into documentation on it. Pi Masta 17:45, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Intro text

I made some slight modications to the intro text, one thing to note is that it is basically a direct copy of one of the manual pages (the Introduction, unsurprisingly). Maybe it would fit under fair use, but its on the borderline at least, although its very unlikely the copyright holder would be bothered by it as we are effectively promoting one of the pieces of software, so they are likely to be fairly flexible. Something to be aware of though. --Sfnhltb 08:29, 7 March 2007 (PST)

Steam

Can someone test to see if the version of X-COM on Steam is effected by all of the exploits/errors? It comes with DOSBOX, so i am assuming it is effected by all the DOS problems. Thanks! Muton commander 11:58, 22 September 2008 (PDT)