As promised! Here comes the demo.
However please read this short description before jumping in to play:
As aftermentioned, this is a limted demo and works on unfinished version of the game. You will most likely encouter bugs. Please submit found bugs on the forum (and try to guess what is a bug and what is not simply implemented. For example – you press a button and it doesnt do anything – its not a bug, its just not done yet). If you can, try to tell us how to reproduce the bug.
Running the game is quite easy: download, run the extractor.bat, point the original game’s folders and let it extract. Note however that CE version of ufo is preffered for the extraction.
Its advised to play in windowed mode. Although you can change that in config.cfg, if game crashes its easier to safely exit it if you are in windowed mode.
Game minimal requirements: Windows family system, 2 GHz single core processor or better, graphics card capable of displaying graphics using shaders 2.0 or better. Extractor requires installed java.
Link to the game: demo
Future plans: From this point on we will keep on working on the full version of the game. We won’t be upgrading the demo however, so it will stay as it is. Next release will constitute of a full game, and will happen when we finish the basic stuff. Public releases are great because we can have a lot of people helping with the tests (thanks everyone who posted bug reports on the forum, this really helps us in development). So full release will also be a kind of beta, but with the full release we will start making (more or less) regular updates of the code, fixing stuff as they show up. With the demo we’ve decided not to touch it anymore, only fix bugs for the final version that are discovered in the demo and move on to making a full game.
And here’s a quick view of new graphics for xcom base

23 Responses.
This might sound dumb. What is “CE” (as in “CE version”)? Thanks!
CE=Collector’s Edition
Although game should run with any version you have. Simply the CE will work a bit better
How to launch “Ufo.exe” on WinXP?
And what is the problem? You launch it per normal. double click or enter. You ofcourse need all the graphics extracted.
Can’t start the game – is says that “Error loading units/floater.bmp. Did you forget to run graphic extractor?”.
But when I run grafic extractor I have such information:
“java -jar extractor/extractor.jar
Illegal command: java.”
It’s 64bit Win7 system.
I forgot to add game version – it’s “X-COM Collector’s Edition” (Enemy Unknown, Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse).
Also tried to launch in the DOSBox – same result. So maybe someone could provide me with a link to some working version?
Do you have java installed? Please verify that you have. Go to java.com and download it, then try again with the extractor.
Yes, I have. I even upgraded it to the newest one and reinstalled – no change in this subject.
it’s really sunday now
Great guys!!!
For people who don´t know, to run these demo you need java!
@pabi
Edit the extractor.bat in notepad. Manually add the location to java.exe, e.g. (without quotes):
“C:\PROGRA~2\Java\jre6\bin\java -jar extractor/extractor.jar”
Hope this helped.
I’ve been looking forward to being able to play the demo, and it “feels” great. The upgraded graphics are great, and the interface upgrades are welcome (although i’d've prefered the original battlescape UI). Feels like a good modernization of UFO. The new music sounds good as well, updated while keeping the original’s ambience and eeryness.
I’ll be giving Multiplayer a shot someday.
Original battlescape UI is there in the game too
. Although i dont remeber if it will work in the demo. you can try by changing config.cfg and editing newgui=true; to newgui=false;
its just extracted from the original.
Although be warned, game will probably crash. I think the old gui’s graphics isnt extracted. We decided to go with the new one since we can put more info on it.
We didnt do anything about music however
@kentsfield – thx, it helped
quite amazing stuff … keep up the good work
nostalgia attack
can i run it without java?!°?!?
im not the admin, at this pc
Game yes. Extractor – probably not.
Installs and plays fine. No problems. It is indeed bringing back memories. Keep working on this. The upgraded graphics are really nice.
One of the possible bugs is that when an alien is killed by reaction fire with HE shells the game freezes, but you can press Alt+Tab and close it afterwards.
This is awesome! Just found out about this today. Cheers! Excellent work so far. I’ve just tried out the demo.
For others trying to get the demo to work, some notes:
- On Win7 or Vista, be sure to run the extractor elevated (right-click and select ‘Run as Administrator’). If you run the BAT file and nothing happens, you may need to be more specific on the JAVA location if your system doesn’t have a JAVA system variable set up. Right-click the BAT file and select edit. Change “Java” at the beginning to be the full path of your Java.exe file. You may need to put quotes around it if the path has spaces in it like mine does. My was located here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin
So my edited BAT file looks like:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java” -jar extractor/extractor.jar
Also my copy of X-COM I got from Steam… some have trouble finding their steam apps install location. It’s located here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\xcom ufo defense\XCOM
Sheesh, too hard to get the demo running. The instructions weren’t that great. Shouldn’t have to come to the forum to figure out how to run it. The extractor needs more explanation like what Jfer said.
Thanks Jfer. It helped.
Tried it. It’s a great upgrade to X-COM, although several aspects were unfinished (backgrounds for the UI among others). That’s to be expected for a demo though, so my impressions of this are great.
Look forwards to seeing the finished deal.