Let's play X-COM on the ODROID U2

One of the classic games I always dreamt to play again (on bigger screens, with huge blocky pixels) is the original X-COM: Enemy Unknown (a.k.a. Ufo Defense).

Not many of them survived every time I played this game

Spoiler: Enemy Unknown works fine on our beloved U2s thanks to OpenXcom :)

I will explain here how to get it running in a few steps. You will need some patience and the original X-COM 1 game. See also OpenXcom's README.

Installing yaml 0.5 packages

You will need slightly more recent yaml packages than those provided with Debian Wheezy.

wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yaml-cpp/libyaml-cpp-dev_0.5.1-1_armhf.deb
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yaml-cpp/libyaml-cpp0.5_0.5.1-1_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i libyaml*.deb

Compiling the sources

git clone https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom.git --depth=0 
cd OpenXcom
mkdir -p buildcd build
cmake ..
CFLAGS="-marm -mcpu=cortex-a9 -mtune=cortex-a9 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard" \
CXXFLAGS="-marm -mcpu=cortex-a9 -mtune=cortex-a9 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard" \
ASFLAGS="-marm -mcpu=cortex-a9 -mtune=cortex-a9 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard" \
make -j5
mv bin/data ~/.local/share/openxcom/data
## customize target of link with your favourite binaries location
ln -s $PWD/bin/openxcom /usr/local/bin/openxcom


At this point, if everything went fine, you have almost finished.

Using the original game

Run the game by providing the original game's directory:

SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa /usr/local/bin/openxcom -data /path/to/XcomEnemyUnknown/


NOTE: The prefixed SDL_AUDIODRIVER variable is needed to force usage of ALSA, since I get garbled sound with pulse. If you don't have pulse installed then it's safe to assume that you won't need this environment variable

Game options

From options, select full screen and change resolution to 1280x720 for best gaming experience.

Enjoy it! :)