TFTC (TIE Fighter Total Conversion) v1.0 | Hacker News Reader

TFTC (TIE Fighter Total Conversion) v1.0

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293 pointsomnibrain103 comments

TIE Fighter, for those old enough to remember it, must be the top 3 space shooters ever created. The campaign, the secret objectives, the little touches here and there. I don't remember playing anything close to that game. Freespace 2 was kind of but not quite there (it also is a great game, though!)

The most amazing trick it pulled was how quickly it converted players to the imperial side.

I was initially a bit hesitant playing for the bad guys, but by the end of the first campaign I couldn't wait to blast some traitorous drug trading rebel scum!

Absolutely! I loved shooting down Y Wings in particular.

After all the Y-Wing escort missions in earlier games I can see where you're coming from. :P

Same! It felt like a weird premise for the game before I started and I was a bit uneasy about it. But it was a bit of a lesson on how things are not always black and white like that (the protagonists had actual motivations), and also on "hey you know what, it's just a videogame, why not be the baddie one in a while?" at the same time. Kinda ahead of its time, but very well executed.

I had XWing CD and a school friend of mine had Tie Fighter. There was definitely some faction-based rivalry any time we discussed Star Wars.

... I bet if he ever played WoW he'd have been Alliance too.

Haha. I don't know what it says about me that I was champing at the bit to serve the Empire. I wasn't even interested in X-Wing, but I ran to the store to get TIE Fighter.

I was young enough playing it that TIE Fighter was my introduction to Star Wars, so I thought the Empire was the good guys until I finally watched the movies!

Yes I remember this to. I guess I was around 14 years old and talked even about my mother about this. About how I'm suddenly think the Imperium is the good side. They did the story very well and also the game was just great.

The Dark Side is quicker, easier, more seductive. Once you’ve played TIE Fighter, forever will it dominate your opinion of video games.

Agreed. Also, the TIE Missile Boat from that game is still the most fun and engaging simulated space fighter I've ever flown.

It had an afterburner-like mode that would give it short bursts of immense speed, but would rapidly consume the ship's energy reserves.

The mini-metagame of constantly shifting power around between engines, weapons, and shields in order to optimize that ship's combat effectiveness on large complex missions is something I still recall fondly.

The missile boat!!! I haven't played that game in decades but I remember that being the best one. That game was awesome.

Despite being six years old at the time, I still have fond memories of being instructed on how to systematically destroy Rebel forces using the Missile Boat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax68wZX9ZQg#t=1m05s

Starting the video from the beginning is also highly recommended; TIE Fighter's clickable menu system was incredible!

Good find. Yes, the SLAM boosters - Sublight Acceleration Motor - were what I was thinking of.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/SubLight_Acceleration_Motor...

The trick was to allocate all power generation into laser/ion cannon recharging since that’s what recharged the fastest, then continuously transfer the accumulated power reserves from laser/ion into engines or shields as necessary. To engines when a SLAM boost was needed, or to shields when defense is needed.

And once you were a good enough pilot, you could use SLAM boosts to avoid all incoming attacks, both lasers and missiles, and thus not have to waste power on shields and lasers. Fly around with no shields, using SLAM plus missiles/torpedos/bombs to destroy your targets lightning fast, then bug out.

You could even use the SLAMs to get in behind some missiles or torpedos that were targeting you and shoot them down, basically dogfighting against missiles and torpedos.

That was so fun.

Until you run out of missiles before running out of stuff shooting at.

Awesome game, have the Steam version and played it through in the last year. The best Star Wars fighter game for me, period.

I was in the inner circle, had the tattoos and everything. I had real power back then.

try StarLancer. For me, was the best space shooter since Tie Figther

Great game, one of my favorites. Tie Fighter, Freespace 2, and Starlancer have been undisputed champions in their genre. Everspace came close for me, but it lacked a compelling story.

Freelancer, also it's really nice. However, I always dislike the mechanic of "drifting" on space.

Agree

The side issue was probably overlooked since, as a continuation of X-Wing, the players were more interested in the upgraded experience than in which side they were playing.

I was way into x-wing. That game and it’s expansions were more important to me than Tie.

Rebel scum!

If you are still interested in Freespace 2 check out Hard Light: https://www.hard-light.net/ There is a vibrant modding scene for Freespace 2.

Interested in knowing your top 3. I'm guessing Wing Commander is up there?

For me the story was amazing. At the time it added so much depth to the Empire it was really a stand out game experience for on the same level as Half Life.

Interesting contrast between the antagonists in this era of star wars compared to Disney era where they're are more Saturday morning cartoon villain caricatures.

I got a lot of the old feeling of Tie Fighter back playing the new Star Wars Squadrons with a HOTAS setup but it didn’t quite hit the mark. The storyline, especially with the hidden missions, was just so wonderfully cynical and dark in Tie Fighter and Squadrons doesn’t have this.

Gameplay-wise it’s quite similar however.

A little note for the fans here, David Wessman, one of the original developers for the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter games, has been working on a new title over the past few years called "In The Black". There's some Mechwarrior 2 talent over there as well. (I could have sworn Larry Holland was involved at some point as well, but it looks like I was mistaken.) Maybe worth a look if you're interesting in "what they're doing now".

https://intheblack.gg/

That looks great. Bookmarked. Thanks for sharing.

>>>There's some Mechwarrior 2 talent over there as well.

MW2 had such an outstanding soundtrack...

Wow this looks impressive, I hope it starts a trend of remastering older games into the modern era. Many games like this from the 80s to 2000s were masterpieces in their time.

I've seen an official example with Blizzard and Diablo 2: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23658118/diablo-ii-r...

Any other old games being remastered officially or unofficially?

Many, including most of the LucasArts adventures like Full Throttle, Monkey Island 1-2, Day of the Tentacle. Also strategy classics like Command & Conquer and Red Alert. For some reason, they still manage to feel old.

On gog.com, remakes and updates come out pretty regularly. The quality varies wildly. But there's definitely an enthusiastic market for them.

Games remade that come to mind, some from the same people or reusing the old codebase:

* Warcraft 3 remastered

* Theme hospital -> TwoPoint hospital

* Dungeon Keeper -> War for the Overworld

* Jones in the Fast Lane -> No time to Relax

* System Shock

* Descent -> Overload and also Descent Underground

Nice to see Descent getting remade. I remember the extra DoF (and later, indoor / outdoor environments) blowing my young mind. Also, TIL Volition was a spin off / successor of Parallax Software.

Descent is still one of my favorite 90s-era boxes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Descent_cover...

One of my favorites as well. To clarify, it was remade. Overload is a remake of Descent all but in name. Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog, the original Descent programmers, lead the effort along with a number of other Descent 2 and 3 veterans. The story even carries a lot of references to the original game. As I understand it, Parallax lost access to the title, but retained all of the other IP, including the story. It's an excellent game, and plays very much like the original, just updated. There's a very active community for it on Discord.

Unfortunately, as the team said themselves, Overload didn't do too well in sales, and so they've largely ceased development. The game had a number of patches though and it's quite stable. The community still runs frequent events and new levels are being made for it. The creators are active in the Discord as well.

"Descent Underground" took a much different path, and bore little resemblance to the original except for 6DOF and the name. It was going to be a team shooter as I recall, but after their kickstarter, they missed release dates and never went into early access (that I recall). The title eventually was pulled from Steam and last I heard, was still in perpetual limbo.

Descent would be so crazy as a VR game... I remember being getting lost pretty much all the time...

Descent launched in 1995 with support for stereo displays (or maybe it was added in a patch, I can't find the patch notes, anyway it was supported within the support window) I'm not sure if there's good support for the modern crop of stereo displays though; I think Overload does have VR support though.

Warcraft III Reforged (not remastered) is one of the biggest tragedies. It was released completely buggy, without about half of the promised features, featured an IP restriction that any map made using their map editor is Blizzard's to own (see: the entire MOBA genre that was created only due to blizards map editors).

The worst part was this: Warcraft III Reforged was made into a PATCH for the original game. So if you had the original game, and perhaps STILL PLAYED the original with all the mods that made it so continuously popular in the first place, you don't get a choice, you had to upgrade to their new buggy experience.

https://www.fanbyte.com/trending/warcraft-3-classic-owners-a...

So they literally replaced the old, extremely beloved game, with a new buggy engine and pretty much destroyed the entire community built around the game.

Blizzard has been dead for years and the remaining shell is just trying to beat the last few gold coins out of the corpses of their titles.

The Final Fantasy VII remake on PS4 is literally the (only) reason I own a PS4... I'm a big fan of remakes of classics as long as they stay true the original. Playing the FFVII remake has been beyond magical for me, it's like playing the original how I remember it (for the most part) instead of how it actually is (which is dated). How often in life do you get the chance to (re-)experience something like that? It's pretty freakin' awesome. I really hope some other classic games get the chance to shine again...

Amazing, looks like they completely rebuilt the game, thanks for the callout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luIUJ5sgT1I

Honestly, I played the original FF7 for the first time a few years ago, and it still holds up pretty well.

There’s something about graphics that are deliberately not photorealistic that makes them easy to accept.

The FF VII remake is, in my opinion, one of the best games I've played in decades. With the understanding that I'm biased because I also loved the original... everything about the new game was done amazingly. The story was well told, the characters were engrossing, the combat was extremely fluid... Heck, even the game play was visually like watching a cut scene. I adore this game.

Freespace 2 (available on gog) has a big community behind it that's rewritten the engine, modernized assets, and created new missions/campaigns.

Blizzard remastered the original Starcraft (and made the original free to play): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ypU9j4w3_w

There's also a cartoon version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCcg8XUh3tY

Btw, I just found out that they're making SC2 free to play too.

Edit: checkout this replay with commentary in a custom toony skin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoxcPwUnVuc

Original SC is free, but doesn't look good on HD screens.

But SC remastered with HD graphic will cost you $15. Or 15 Euro.

Like this Super Mario World modded to widescreen

https://github.com/VitorVilela7/wide-snes

Age of Empires (all of them).

Total Annihilation, a classic, has been remade under the TA Spring RTS engine project: https://springrts.com/. It's pretty fantastic.

Original Metroid 2 was remade (see AM2R). Nintendo had it taken down though because it completed with their own remake.

Half-life -> Black Mesa

Wow, this is really impressive. There's a huge number of scenarios and the assets look really good considering it's fan made.

If this appeals to you, I'd highly recommend giving Star Wars Squadrons a try in a high end VR rig. The game overall isn't perfect, but it's by far the closest I've ever felt to feeling like I was flying a tie fighter or an x wing.

This conversion has VR support as well, so you should get that same immersion, with the stronger gameplay provided by the Alliance game engine. I haven't played Squadrons myself.

Squadrons was amazing, and amazingly disorientating at the same time. Really awesome VR experience though. Up there with HL Alyx in terms of “unique to VR”

I would think a cockpit VR experience would be much superior to a FP one.

Does whatever the current Mechwarrior game is support VR?

My first response is, I don't know. But I guess it depends on what you consider the current MechWarrior game. I know of MechWarrior online, which I don't believe does, but I suspect there's a newer MechWarrior game out, or coming soon. There's also a newer strategy BattleTech game which I doubt would benefit from VR.

Shamelessly replying to my own comment, there's MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. I don't see VR support mentioned.

Today I learned. Appreciate the comment and lookup. Nice to see them retool Mercenaries.

Battletech always seemed trapped in a 40k-esque lore vise of its own making, in such a deep focus on a specific slice of time that progressing the greater narrative forward seemed inconceivable.

But I guess that's tabletop-derived worlds and games in general.

I've just looked into this recently and the sad answer is no. It's a really fun game and perfect candidate for VR. Really a shame they couldn't make that happen.

I've heard Elite: Dangerous is meant to be fantastic in VR. Although the latest expansion which adds a first-person shooter element doesn't support it (yet?).

Elite: Dangerous is fantastic in VR

How is the flight model in comparison?

Squadrons is a blast in VR but I wasn't the biggest fan of the feel of the flight model. Especially coming from combat in Elite:Dangerous with much nicer cockpits, etc.

The Squadrons flight model was atrocious, IMHO. It felt like first person FPS, except you have the craft around you.

I wanted to love it to death in VR because it looked so nice but the flight model was not my piece of cake.

The cockpit immersion was so good.

I had read the frame rate is locked at a low rate in VR though. It's an issue with the X-Wing Alliance engine itself. I want to be wrong though, because I would love to play this in VR!

My biggest gripes with Star Wars Squadrons are the poor campaigns, or lack thereof, and ships tuned for competitive multiplayer only.

This does use the Alliance ships, which are slightly more tuned towards multiplayer than the original Tie Fighter models. Specifically, shielded fighters suffer a bit.

Editing to add, I just saw your user name, and at first assumed you created it just to reply here.

Haha, just a fan. :)

they fixed this!!! This was true last year when it first came out. Im not sure since when but as of this week, I was able to play 120hz VR mode on my RTX 3090. the VR mode in this game is so immersive! it makes up for the lack of gameplay mechanics, it kind becomes just a beautiful arcade space shooter, which is ok.

This is the best news! I also have a 3090, so I'll have to try it out tomorrow!

I believe the above poster is talking about Squadrons, for what it’s worth.

I didn't play Squadrons, but looking at some gameplay videos I was disgusted how blatantly they've nerfed Tie Fighters, by making the radar occupy so much of the screen. So the craft with the best possible view from a cockpit became almost the same as X-Wing with its huge nose.

It is hard to judge what a VR experience will feel like from a 2d video.

Possibly a deliberate choice to reduce VR sickness?

How would that reduce VR sickness? It was clearly moved way more up than it was in Tie Fighter (and there is zero chance that Squadrons developers didn't play it), so it was really obscuring the view - in fact, more than X-Wing's nose. I suspect it was done for the balance purposes, or maybe some rebel scum in the development team was sabotaging the imperial starfighters.

I wonder how many hours this will stay available before Disney sends a takedown notice to the server host for moddb.com

Do you think they are violating any laws? They aren't profiting from the mod and it requires a legit copy of the game. It's arguable that it actually helps Disney by increasing sales of the original game.

None of those things have stopped companies from issuing DMCAs in the past.

Definitely. The ability to create derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of a rightsholder as laid out by Title 17 from the US Code.

It's great, I've been really enjoying it. Everything you love about Tie Fighter, but feels thoroughly modern, has that feel, "this is just like the movies!". I just hope my 20 year old joystick survives, prices for replacement are off-putting.

I would love to build a Tie Fighter Cockpit gaming rig some day

If anyone on here has built a flight simulator rig, I'd love to hear about it.

Star Wars Squadrons in VR is essentially this. Feels amazing to be able to look around an x-wing or tie-fighter cockpit.

omg omg omg

I played this so much on my pentium 100mhz as a teen. I think I broke multiple joysticks dodging xwings. My biggest concern is that it won’t live up to the memories I still have. I think I need to buy a joystick. I have much more disposable income and a lot less time… my six year old isn’t too young to join the Empire right?

I used to run home from middle school to play Tie CD. It's my favorite game of all time. This looks amazing.

Confirming that I ran both home and down the neighborhood street to a friend's house for X-Wing.

I doubt I would have ever gotten into computers if it hadn't been for Oregon Trail, Treasure Mountain, Escape Velocity, and X-Wing.

If I got home asap I'd have at least 2 hours of gameplay before my parents returned and made me do homework lol.

I never got the hang of X-Wing but the tractor beam, the Tie Defender, the secret inner circle, made Tie Fighter a really good game!

At least as I look through the rose colored nostalgia glasses.

Tie Fighter is the golden standard of all space fighting games. Definitely worth checking out.

This looks amazing. If the author(s) are reading this, well done and thank you. :)

The music in TIE Fighter was incredible. For those of you that want a nostalgia kick, this is (in my opinion) the best remaster I've found of its original MIDI score:

https://soundcloud.com/laserschwert/sets/tie

2:44 in the second track is probably the most iconic moment, although I'd recommend watching the original intro first if you haven't seen it!

A curiosity from someone that doesn't know the project: the host game for this mod is reported in Steam to be from 1999, so it looks like it should be... also rather aged. But the graphics from the mod look awesome (definitely not 1999 graphics). How come?

It is based on the X-Wing Alliance Upgrade project which is a major fan-made upgrade: https://www.xwaupgrade.com/

How does this play without an actual joystick.

Was happy to see X-Wing etc come to Steam. But trying to play with a keyboard or controller felt awful.

I remember Rebel Assault 2 needing a joystick for a few flying missions(freighter in the tunnel(3), tie fighter in the canyon(7), speeder bike in the swamp(9?)). But the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games just needed one.

It's still poor on a controller. I tried an Xbox controller on Windows 10, with no additional software (but I hear that third-party joystick/remapping software may improve this?)

1. The triggers are detected as an axis, the throttle axis by default. Hold LT for 0 throttle and hold RT for 100 throttle. Release them for 50 throttle. This is .. not ideal. They cannot be remapped to, say, use the triggers to fire your weapons.

2. The right stick's horizontal axis is not usable at all.

3. There's no support for button combinations. So you are very limited button-wise.

4. You can switch around the mapping for the axes that are detected, so you can put pitch/roll on the left stick.. but that leaves yaw on the vertical right-stick axis, or on the triggers. But TIE Fighter's flight model is not the same as a space sim's, so trying to fly it like one may not be advisable.

I tried to play this like I play Elite: Dangerous, which has very robust controller support. But TIE Fighter really, really wants to be played on joystick and keyboard (which is how I played it when it was released). Alas, I don't own a joystick now and I am not sure I have room for one anyway.

The LT/RT being a single trigger axis is just something the default Xbox controller driver does for XInput (and under DirectInput they're just treated as buttons).

If you install a different driver such as XBCD/x360c/x360wc it can be reported as separate axes.

I used to play Tie Fighter a lot when it was new.

I tried the recent space battles of star was battlefield, but somehow I cannot get the hang of it (maybe I'm getting too old?)

Would love to have the same experience, but maybe I'm doing something wrong or looking over something?

this is incredible. I mean, I have fond memories of playing Tie Fighter (until a glitch with the floppies and an upgraded PC meant I couldn't install it again!!), I don't game or follow retrogaming land, so what is the background here:

What is X-Wing Alliance? Someone 'out of nowhere' (is the code open sourced or something) decided to redo all the engine/graphics to be 'modern'? It's incredible to me that this could exist/that someone put that much work into it. If the code is open, is it a matter of simply updating the engine and then replacing all the 'sprites' and textures with updated stuff, so really just a massive graphics update?

https://xwaupgrade.com/

X-Wing Alliance came out in 1999. Fans on this website have been modding and upgrading its graphics ever since. There were campaign editors also. The holy grail was to bring the original TIE Fighter campaigns to XWA. It never happened, until now.

Awesome! I loved TIE fighter.

I’m curious to know how copyright is handled?

Disney does not know about it yet.

Dude, yes please.

Blown away! What a blast from the past... Loved this game when I was young and couldn't get enough :) Awesome

Sad, I don't have my PC joystick, nor do I have a PC game port. I'll have to order a real joystick.

This is amazing. Congrats to all involved!

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