Question About Tie Fighter

[Cowhead418]

I'm sure many of you know of the flight sim Tie Fighter. I still have mine, and I have many fond memories of the countless hours I spent blasting those damn Rebels, and I've just recently decided to install it again. I can get the game to install, but I can't seem to get the sound card detection working properly, nor does the game seem to recognize the joystick. Playing the game without sound and with a mouse significantly nerfs the enjoyment out of it, as you can imagine.

My question: Is there anyone here who has been able to get Tie Fighter working properly on XP? And as I have no clue what kind of sound card I have, how can I go about finding this out? It would kick all kinds of ass if I could play this game again, as it has been almost a decade since I've last played it (and I'm only 17!). Many thanks in advance.

[Whacker]

Warms my heart to see kids these days demonstrating such good taste in games.

OK mate, you've got a few options here.

1. VDMsound + DOS32A + nolfb

This one worked best for me. You'll want to get VDMSound 2.1.0, it's listed as a beta but it worked fine. What this will do is emulate and old soundblaster on your system, so you can launch the game using this application as a wrapper. Joystick support can be spotty, but it should work. If it doesn't work, then you will probably want to invest in a cheap and SIMPLE joypad, one that's got very few buttons and directionals. I also used this program here to help with that, it can act as a wrapper and map joystick buttons directly to keyboard sequences.

DOS32A is a plug-in replacement for DOS4GW that shipped with all those old games. It's real easy, you just back up your old DOS4GW.exe and rename the new DOS32A.exe to DOS4GW.exe, and copy that into the dir where the old DOS4GW was.

You might or might not need nolfb to help with VESA video card issues. You might need this, you might not. Play around with it and see if it helps.

Install the game to your C:\ drive, so it'll be something like C:\TIE or C:\TIECD, and then work with that. With any luck you'll have it up and running smoothly.

2. Dosbox

This can be good or bad, depending on your tastes. You won't need anything but Dosbox itself, and your install dir. It will emulate everything for you, you simply fire up Dosbox, configure it and your game, and then rock and roll. Of course it's not that simple, but you can RTFM which you should do anyway when doing stuff like this. There are also several forks of Dosbox, some of which may work better for you, perhaps give them a shot.

Good luck!

[TinCow]

A while ago I heard that people were trying to mod X-Wing Alliance to run the TIE Fighter campaign. That would be an absolute dream for me. Anyone know if that went anywhere?

[Whacker]

Pretty sure that one died TC. There's a few battle/campaign editors floating around, the best one for XWA is payware, but I don't recall anything that would convert TIE battles to XWA directly... or even indirectly for that matter...

[TinCow]

I don't think they were trying to port the files over as much as simply recreate the campaign by designing it from scratch. Sure, it wouldn't have the cool tattoos and ranks, but what I wouldn't give to fly those missions again with XWA graphics...

*sigh*

[edit] Did some googling and it turns out it actually was released! I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.

http://www.tftc.gaylenol.com/

Conversion Features:

A. Battles 1-7 from the original TIE Fighter game (battles 8-13 expansion planned).
B. New TIE Fighter models with cockpits.
C. All Introduction and Battle Cutscenes.
D. All in-flight and briefing voices (converted from the users TIE Fighter CDROM).
E. Concourse/Imperial Quarters Interface.
F. Imperial Star destroyer hanger and items.
G. Custom �extended� version of the intro Cutscenes.
H. Custom award ceremonies.
I. Custom/Converted concourse music from TIE Fighter.
J. Custom battle CBMs and Icons.
K. Custom Email messages following the chronicles of Stele Maarek (runs parallel with Stele chronicles and Prima�s Strategy Guide).
L. Custom game launcher (you must use the launcher to play).

[Whacker]

Have you tried installing and running it lately? Got Nvidia cards? Be prepared for horrific unreadable in-flight text. There's a 'fix' for it that's pretty ham fisted, it's here at Lucasfiles. I'd be most curious to hear if you do get it working and how good/ugly it looks.

[TinCow]

Do you mean in XWA? I don't think I've owned anything but nVidia since XWA was released. If there were any problems, I must've fixed them with a patch without too many difficulties, since I don't recall them.

It may be a while before I get around to this, since I just got the new Civ 4 expansion pack, but I'll try it eventually and post the results.

[Whacker]

Cool! Haven't been this happy about being wrong in awhile! Will have to give that a shot tonight and see how it works, I thought that project died some time back. Tincow++

[TinCow]

Don't forget to install the XWA ship upgrades. Apparently they work with the conversion and will make it look even better. I'm going to give it a shot tonight and see how it works.

[TinCow]

Finally got around to trying it and it works great. The installer is very easy to use and walks you through all the steps. I also installed the ship upgrades and it turned out I need the font patch as well. It's amazing how good a job this mod team has done. Everything is transported over from TIE Fighter, all cutscenes, dialog, awards, etc. They've even added in appropriate 'email' to the system like in XWA. I'm essentially playing TIE Fighter, but at 1600x1200 resolution and with very good looking ships. I highly recommend it.

The only problem I have had so far was on the second mission, where somehow my TIE was shooting one laser and one concussion missile in laser mode instead of two lasers. The missiles were infinite in quantity as well. I'm off to investigate the cause now.

[darkragnar]

Finally got around to trying it and it works great. The installer is very easy to use and walks you through all the steps. I also installed the ship upgrades and it turned out I need the font patch as well. It's amazing how good a job this mod team has done. Everything is transported over from TIE Fighter, all cutscenes, dialog, awards, etc. They've even added in appropriate 'email' to the system like in XWA. I'm essentially playing TIE Fighter, but at 1600x1200 resolution and with very good looking ships. I highly recommend it.

The only problem I have had so far was on the second mission, where somehow my TIE was shooting one laser and one concussion missile in laser mode instead of two lasers. The missiles were infinite in quantity as well. I'm off to investigate the cause now.

so are you saying Xwing Alliance Looks like this now ???

[TinCow]

Yep. I don't remember what it was like originally, but my game (with official patches and modded ship upgrades) runs at 1600x1200 and looks very decent. The ship upgrades definitely make a difference. Take the following ship upgrade screenshots for example, and then imagine playing with them in the entire TIE Fighter campaign at 1600x1200. I highly recommend it.

More Screenshots

[darkragnar]

Yep. I don't remember what it was like originally, but my game (with official patches and modded ship upgrades) runs at 1600x1200 and looks very decent. The ship upgrades definitely make a difference. Take the following ship upgrade screenshots for example, and then imagine playing with them in the entire TIE Fighter campaign at 1600x1200. I highly recommend it.

time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and i'm all out of gum.

[TinCow]

Ok, I HAVE noticed one problem with the TIE Fighter conversion. XWA has one significant engine difference from TIE Fighter: ships can shoot down incoming missiles/torpedoes with their lasers. The result is that some missions become MUCH, MUCH harder in the conversion. Dogfighting remains the same, but TIE Fighter has many missions that require you to take down capital ships. Since capital ships now essentially have point-defense guns, this becomes very hard, especially in the missions where you are flying unshielded ships. The end result is that you will have to play a good deal of the game in East and the rest in Medium. Hard is literally impossible in almost every mission.

[Kekvit Irae]

Ok, I HAVE noticed one problem with the TIE Fighter conversion. XWA has one significant engine difference from TIE Fighter: ships can shoot down incoming missiles/torpedoes with their lasers. The result is that some missions become MUCH, MUCH harder in the conversion. Dogfighting remains the same, but TIE Fighter has many missions that require you to take down capital ships. Since capital ships now essentially have point-defense guns, this becomes very hard, especially in the missions where you are flying unshielded ships. The end result is that you will have to play a good deal of the game in East and the rest in Medium. Hard is literally impossible in almost every mission.

That sucks. I fondly remember launching space bombs from a long distance at capital ships to soften them up before I go in for the kill. Now with a point defense system, there's no point.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That wasn't in Tie Fighter? I thought there were missions where you had to defend capships from bombers...

Maybe I'm getting confused with Freespace? Those missions sure suck...

[Kekvit Irae]

That wasn't in Tie Fighter? I thought there were missions where you had to defend capships from bombers...

Maybe I'm getting confused with Freespace? Those missions sure suck...

In TIE Fighter, you could shoot down torpedoes, bombs, and missiles with lasers. It's just that the enemy never had the intelligence to do this themselves, forcing the player to shoot them down alone.
This is wildly different in X-Wing Alliance, where the enemy is slightly smarter, allowing it to shoot down incoming torpedoes with slight frequency.

[Whacker]

In TIE Fighter and X-Wing, fighters didn't do anything vs. missiles but evade. Cap ships would attempt to shoot them out of the air with missiles/adv. missiles if they were loaded with them... which after the 7th campaign, pretty much every enemy cap ship was guaranteed to have adv. missiles.

Tincow, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Campaign 1 missions 5 and 6? Or was it 6 and 7? The last two where you blow up the CRL. The 2nd to last one where you cleared out the fighter screen on hard was excruciatingly painful, and I never managed to get all of the bonus objectives ever. That one, and one of the other in 5 where you are in a gunboat up against T/A's with adv. missiles were the only two I was never able to get all objectives in on hard. How is it in the remake?

[TinCow]

Haven't gotten that far. In truth, I experienced a bug on B1M4 that made me restart with a new pilot. I found multiple complaints of the same problem, but there's no fix except a restart. I haven't gotten back to that point yet.

As for the point-defense, there is a way around it: dumb-fire your missiles/torpedoes/bombs. Ships only shoot at incoming warheads if they are locked on to the ship, so you can get by the point defense with a well-aimed dumb-fire. That's hard, but certainly doable. Plus, even though some missions are harder due to point defense, some are also easier... particularly when you have to protect a ship from enemy attack, since its own guns will now help in its defense.

[Mailman653]

Those models look really cool, I remember playing the game years ago with a mouse since I did not have a joystick. Can anyone put a before and after shot of a tie fighter for example?

[Sigurd]

Reading this thread, I went and got the old cardboard box from the attic and searched through its contents. Yes… I got the X-wing alliance, but my tie-fighter is no were to be found.
I distinctly remember buying that game when we bought our first 486 PC.
I suspect the game came on floppies though.

Ah well, I installed X-wing Alliance and are pleased it runs smoothly on my 3 year old laptop.
I do have a little time to play when the children are sleeping and the wife is watching a boring TV show.
Those patches TinCow mentioned. Are those for smoother graphics only?
…

As of yesterday I joined the rebels…

[TinCow]

If you mean the 'ship upgrades,' yes, they are just for better graphics. The TIE Fighter conversion wouldn't work with the floppy version of the game anyway. It requires one of CD versions.

[Mailman653]

Over at Amazon.com, they have several versions of the Tie Fighter game, which is the latest/mod compatible version?

[caravel]

The original TIE Fighter and X Wing were DOS games, so getting them to work on XP is a pain. Luckily for me I picked up a compilation of X Wing, TIE Fighter and X Wing Vs TIE Fighter some years back where both of the earlier games had been ported to Win32 so the DOS problem is not a problem for me now. I doubt I'll dig it out though as that would mean digging out a joystick and I don't bother with joysticks these days. Out of all those games, TIE fighter was easly the best, if not the best Star Wars game, with the best campaigns, ships and replayability, an all time classic. I probably spent days on that game.

[Kekvit Irae]

There's a Win95 version of TIE Fighter, and I believe the Collector's CDROM is also Win95. X-Wing Collector's Series contains both the X-Wing Collector's CDROM as well as the TIE Fighter Collector's CDROM, but nukes the MIDI music in favor of looping Redbook music.

[darkragnar]

Arggg this is frustrating so ill just ask my questions here .
From Where do i download Xwing alliance ? i cant find a link for it anywhere, the game is abadonware now so i dont think there's any problems with it.

[TinCow]

Abandonware is a legal myth. Unless a company specifically releases a game to the public domain, copyright remains fully in effect. XWA has not been released to the public domain, so any discussion about where to download it is piracy-related and forbidden at the Org.

[Kekvit Irae]

Now that the truth of abandonware is out in the open, any further discussion on this will lead to this thread getting locked, your dog violated, and your family found at the bottom of Lake Mead. Please, think of the dog!

Back on topic, you can find all games on amazon and/or ebay.