TIE Fighter, X-Wing, etc. apparently gonna be released tomorrow on GOG.

http://kotaku.com/x-wing-tie-fighter-are-finally-getting-digital-re-rele-1651470045


Figured some of you nerdlings might be interested! I think I'll pick them up, though I believe the joystick I used to play them is buried at my parents' house somewhere. Hrmm.

you must register &c. &c.

The have a countdown on the site:

X-Wing was my introduction to level design for PC gaming. I remember downloading a program that let you create your own missions.

I wonder, though... will I need a joystick to play them? It would be nice if they updated the controls so that using the mouse was akin to more modern flight sims, as opposed to the classic 90's method of having to repeatedly lift the mouse up and move it back across your mouse pad to keep scrolling.

I literally just checked in to post this.

Adjusting for the era in which I played it, TIE Fighter might actually be the best game I've ever played.

! @saberopus

Eh, cool news but I'm still really only anticipating for Requiem: Avenging Angel and Soldier of Fortune 1 to be released on GOG.

I would imagine that you'd need to setup Joy2Mouse or something, from what I've heard the source was lost years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if what we're getting is the original just with the necessary wrappers to play nice with today's OSes.

Oh and, when they get to JK they better ship TODOA with it

What's TODOA?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/todoa

I turns out that USB Joysticks aren't too expensive.

Tie Fighter? More like WHY Fighter!

am I right, FGR?

My favorite game of all time is the 3.5" floppy, non-collector's edition version of TIE Fighter for DOS.

At a later time, I had a chance to play the collector's edition. In this edition, a higher screen resolution was used, so I believe the cockpits were re-done (I've also read that it was based on the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter engine). More importantly, it seems the music was changed in some way from the original iMuse MIDI setup; the cut-scenes were also touched-up, with the explosions different, or lens-flares added (or something to that effect).

Basically, if this version isn't the original, well, then I refuse to play it. Whatever team of creative geniuses created the original TIE Fighter were obviously either gone, or in a different state of mind at the time the later changes were made, and the game loses any nostalgic value to me. It would be like re-releasing JK, where nothing was changed except to add gpu-accelerated water surface effects.

The first Collector's CD-ROM was the version you're familiar with with all of the subsequent campaigns packaged together in one installation on one CD. The GOG version is:



And X-Wing:

Yes, TIE95 used the XvT engine and increased the cockpit, concourse and cutscene resolutions to 640x480, although the originals were still packaged with the game and you could probably go back to them (I never tried). MIDI was also replaced with WAV for all of the sound. Again, the MIDI I believe wasn't actually removed, just the WAV resources added.

Tie fighter? More like LIE Fighter!

am I right, FGR?

I've always thought it was pronounced "type-writer".

The original ran nicely on a type-writer.

''

Bye, fighter. HOO-HWAUGH!

So it would be inkeeping with the spirit of the movies?

I will probably wait to find these GOG releases on sale as I have both versions of both of the games already. KOTOR is $9.99, 20% off I believe, right now. I don't have that for PC (XBOX only) so perhaps I will pick that up. Don't know if that's really a good price or if I should wait for a deal.

I'm inclined to support GOG as I can because it's pretty much the model that we want to support irt DRM.

Awesome! I'm gonna get TIE Fighter and dust off my joystick. Has anyone released any high-res mods for these games? Or even written a new engine? 640x480 on a 4k screen might be a bit... blocky :p

Get your stinking hands off my pixels!

shut up

Most of the hi-def work was done for X-wing Alliance, there's mods/hacks for higher resolutions and newer ship models and texture that people have made. TIE is blocky, and hasn't gotten the same treatment so it's unknown if hi-def is even possible.

AFIAK the Windows CD editions had the XvT graphics but that's it, I don't know of anything like the XWA Upgrade project for Tie Fighter.

INNUENDO???

You're definitely looking at an engine recreation in order to do anything interesting there. I don't think anybody has tried yet.

The only major blocker is that the file formats aren't especially well understood. Between Lucius and ScummVM most of the music, cutscene and menu code should be covered (although not all of that code is open source yet). The actual gameplay seems like something you can do piecemeal, but you'd be working from a cold start on that. It certainly seems plausible for someone to do at some point.

I've reversed-engineered most of the file format definitions for the resources (cockpits, cutscenes, concourses, planet backdrops, fonts, battle files, etc) and wrote editors (some finished, some WIP) for a lot of it. The biggest problem is rebuilding the engine, if that can be rebuilt the rest of it should be relatively easy.

I vaguely remember there being a TIE Fighter-to-XWA TC at some point, or maybe even something that let you play the TF campaign in XWA. I remember downloading it but never really trying it, though.

There is, here: http://darksaber.xwaupgrade.com/

The XWA combat experience is better than the one in Tie Fighter anyways.

I played the first couple missions of the TC. its pretty darned good.

These links are from an old post of mine at the XWAU Forum. I haven't reviewed them before linking to them here but I see the second one has been updated since this latest GOG release.

Play X-Wing with upgraded graphics. Trust us: you should

Star Wars X-Wing Series

X-Wing and Tie Fighter aren't doing anything technical that rules out using a commercial engine (Unity, UE4, Crysis, whatever). The biggest problem is reverse engineering and implementing the gameplay, and the biggest time sinks there are understanding mission and ship files. 3d models, components/hardpoints. You wouldn't need the rest at first.

Mission files are well known, as are the 3D model files (they include the components, hardpoints, etc). I personally haven't messed with the models too much, but it's the same basic format for all of the games. There's converters out there to take the in-game OPT (3D model) and convert it out to format that Blender or Rhino can read, as well as purpose-built ship editors. The XWAUP guys know way more about them than I do. Never had the patience for it myself.

Mission files on the other hand I know *very* well, and I've written my own mission editor that'll handle TIE, XvT and XWA and convert between all three. Building missions from scratch is trivial. There's still some values that have never been worked out, but there's evidence of "dead" values left over from development that have no bearing in-game. Yes, implementing the AI logic and ability to implement the missions into your engine of choice is the hard part. I have an idea of which files control the logic, and afaik nobody's ever been able to make sense of it.

As I stated in an earlier post, I definitely remember a mission editor for X-Wing. I believe it also had a ship editor- not models, but rather just weapon placement (and type). You could also give lasers and ion beams "homing" properties akin to missiles and torpedoes, and increase the fire rate. Homing lasers with an extremely high fire rate were deadly, but I don't think you could decrease the energy consumption, so after a couple seconds of fire, you needed to let your laser cannons recharge.

There must have been a mission editor for TIE Fighter as well because at one point the game got so hard that I had to edit the mission files to actually get through them.

(One of the reasons why these days I don't count TIE Fighter in my "games I've actually completed" list)

Haha, this is even more than repeater conc hax.

In the last campaign, and especially the final mission which involves protecting a shuttle with some very precious cargo (I don't think I can understate that), there's no doubt that I had to enable "invulnerability mode".

I find it funny that editing mission files seemed easier to you than doing the equivalent of typing "laimlame".

Editors for X-Wing, XvT, and XWA are here: http://www.troyed.com/x-wing/

I wonder if you would be able to use Xed or XvTed with Tie Fighter. IIRC the mission files for each game are .tie (besides the obvious differences like missing ships and orders).