Nice! Brings back memories. Anybody know a modern game with a similar gameplay/vibe ?
Although it's already 20 years old and not very recent, have you tried Freelancer?
Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#42The original Star Wars: TIE Fighter was one of the first computer games I played as a teenager. The funny thing is, I had absolutely no idea what Star Wars was, but somehow I still thought the game was really cool and played it for quite a while.
Wow, I thought this could not be possible. May I ask, where did you grow up? I mean, in the 80s the Star Wars were already a cult thing.
> in the 80s the Star Wars were already a cult thing
I grew up in the 90s, and when the special editions came out in '97, it was the kind of thing that only those of us with nostalgic dads actually went to see.
I only saw Empire at the time, don't think I saw the rest of the trilogy until shortly before the prequels came out.
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#43I loved these games as a kid. So much so that I made a VR clone of sorts Rogue Stargun ( https://roguestargun.com ) Never quite got around to polishing it to the desired level (due to having kids), and Star Wars Squadrons ended up coming out before I even released the game. I believe the XWA revamp project also has a VR mode
That's a very neat soundtrack. Reminds me a little of Vangelis
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#44How is it that FS mechanics are dependent on which release you have available? It all seems to key off of TieProfile_UsesTie98Logic(). Why can't you enable that with just the 95 release?
The hitboxes were very different; presumably this needs the different models.
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#45Very nice. Looking forward to irritating the Empire again as a new recruit [1]. On a more serious note, there's also a really great conversion that ports the original TIE Fighter over to the later X-Wing Alliance engine [2]. And of course if you need copies of the originals, they still sell them over on GOG (Good Old Games). [1] - https://imgpb.com/AoSwyrZ [2] - https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion…
I think a lot of the value of a total rewrite in C is that it is a buildable executable that should be runable on virtually any system, given that this game predates the popularity of the modern "3D Card". A lot of the friction in these games is dealing with all the peculiarities of getting a DOS game to somehow install on a 30 year newer Mac. A complete rewrite eliminates all of that awkward installer friction, so l…
> I think a lot of the value of a total rewrite in C is that it is a buildable executable that should be runable on virtually any system
That may be true in general, but in this particular instance the rewrite requires a 64-bit system with a modern GPU for no particularly good reason.
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#46Loved these games. Grew up playing them with a yoke + throttle controller my dad bought for MS Flight Simulator. Didn't have the specs for Tie Fighter to run well but X-Wing worked great. I'd angle a clock radio next to the yoke for a little more of a cockpit vibe plus to change up the soundtrack. So much joy being at that age and in that era of computing/gaming. Hope people are able to pass that same feeling along t…
I wonder if immersion in fiction (interactive or otherwise) is lower nowadays, given the rise of dopamine-saturating short-form content like scrolling. I definitely enjoyed more long-form content (like the mentioned games) 10-20 years ago. I guess I do experience less genuine immersion. I wonder what the effect of that is on my wellbeing.
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#47The original Star Wars: TIE Fighter was one of the first computer games I played as a teenager. The funny thing is, I had absolutely no idea what Star Wars was, but somehow I still thought the game was really cool and played it for quite a while.
At that age, all I knew about most movies was from Mad parodies, which resulted in some highly confusing revelations later in life.
A significant amount of my pop-clutter (er, culture) knowledge comes from Mad parodies.
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, I thought this could not be possible. May I ask, where did you grow up? I mean, in the 80s the Star Wars were already a cult thing.
Star Wars went dormant in the late 80s through the mid-late 90s where there was no merch or toys in stores, no cartoons or shows on tv, and no comic books. Cable and home video wasn’t yet ubiquitous, for a cohort of kids born in the 80s and early 90s it’s quite possible to have missed out on it until you were older. I was 7 or 8 in the early 90s in Texas before I heard about Star Wars. I was playing play sword fighti…
Same, my first viewing was on a betamax copy my aunt had - coincidentally the same trip I ended up buying a cassette tape that had Weird Al's Yoda on it.
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#49Loved these games. Grew up playing them with a yoke + throttle controller my dad bought for MS Flight Simulator. Didn't have the specs for Tie Fighter to run well but X-Wing worked great. I'd angle a clock radio next to the yoke for a little more of a cockpit vibe plus to change up the soundtrack. So much joy being at that age and in that era of computing/gaming. Hope people are able to pass that same feeling along t…
I recently setup an emulator, passed it through the TV and had blue tooth controllers hooked up, so I could show my son Donkey Kong Country - we ended up finishing 1 and 2 (with my wife joining in), he loved the older game. Trying to get him into older PC games now. So yeah, it is possible to get them into it (just dragging him away from minecraft is hard haha).
The updated Donkey Kong Country that is available on Switch is also a great game. From what I understand it is almost identical to the older version, but with updated graphics and the option to save progress
Re: Show HN: OpenTIE and OpenXWA, Modern Ports of Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance
#50Very nice. Looking forward to irritating the Empire again as a new recruit [1]. On a more serious note, there's also a really great conversion that ports the original TIE Fighter over to the later X-Wing Alliance engine [2]. And of course if you need copies of the originals, they still sell them over on GOG (Good Old Games). [1] - https://imgpb.com/AoSwyrZ [2] - https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion…
I think a lot of the value of a total rewrite in C is that it is a buildable executable that should be runable on virtually any system, given that this game predates the popularity of the modern "3D Card". A lot of the friction in these games is dealing with all the peculiarities of getting a DOS game to somehow install on a 30 year newer Mac. A complete rewrite eliminates all of that awkward installer friction, so l…
I think it is the exact opposite. Keep remakes running in DOS instead, and they will run everywhere that DOSBox runs, which is pretty much everywhere, and also everywhere that you can boot up FreeDOS (including in QEMU), plus in other emulators, almost guaranteeing that the executable will keep working somewhere for a very, very long time. Versus a port to some modern system that will then require constant updates and ports forever to keep it running, and as soon as no one is around to maintain the project it will be a pain to get it to run anywhere.
It is always good to see open source reimplementations of old games, but sad to see almost none of them keep MS-DOS support. It's easily the most portable and future-safe of all virtual machines you can run games in.