X-Wing, TIE Fighter 95 Fixed, Lego Yoda Revealed

Swifti writes "Ever since Windows XP was released, the classic games, TIE Fighter 95 and X-Wing 95 [the X-Wing Collector Series and X-Wing Trilogy versions of X-Wing & TIE Fighter], were left incompatible with the new operating system. The issue refused to be addressed by LucasArts whose basic solution was 'Deal with it.' Luckily, a fix was recently released for these two PC games over at LucasFiles, obviously made by a fan. These great games are now compatible with NT/2000/XP systems." Elsewhere, an anonymous reader points to a movie-annotated fan report on the previously mentioned "LEGO Star Wars game being demo'ed" at last week's Comic-Con, including footage of a whirlin' Lego Yoda.

Better then Lucasarts' modern games

[Anonymous Coward]

These games came out damn near 10 years ago, and still have better game play then some of the more recent Lucasarts games.

I still remember screaming along on my 386-33Mhz machine.

and better cutscenes

[SmallFurryCreature]

perhaps it was because they could only do very basic animation (in fact really like animation, move images along each other to create motion) that they really had to think about it. But I enjoyed the cut-scenes in X-wing and tie-fighter a hell of a lot more then in later lucasarts games.

Oh well just call me an old dinosaur who can't keep up with modern times. Except one tiny little problem Lucasarts. I BOUGHT all the old games. Now I don't anymore because while I now have far more money coming in I think your games are not worthy of me spending money anymore. Should lucasarts care? Only in so far as any company should care about losing a once loyal customer.

Ah! Relief!

[Rallion]

I hope the fixes work with the versions I have...there are a few versions of each and I can never keep them straight.

Best three space sims ever, IMO? Freespace 2, TIE Fighter, X-Wing. In best-to-least-best order. And now I can (maybe) play every one of them. I thank whoever did this. I really do.

Re:Here is an idea.

[Rallion]

Yes.

There's a reson that there are huge many-pages guides on how to get these games to run, at all, if not perfectly.

Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS games

[Hamster Lover]

The only fix that does work for the original DOS based Tie Fighter and Xwing, at least for my system, was to turn all sound off.

I also have the Windows versions of Xwing and Tie Fighter called the "Collector's CD-ROM" and while I love the graphics and sound updates of these versions, I detest the fact that mouse support was removed so I have never attempted to install either on my Win XP system.

If I recall correctly, there are three versions of Xwing and Tie Fighter released in this order: the original DOS based games and their separate add ons released on floppy disks, the DOS floppy games re-released on CD-ROM with CD-ROM music and the "Collector's CD-ROM" with revamped graphics and music (including all the later add ons) intended to run under Windows. I think I have that right. Someone correct me if I am wrong, please.

Anyway, the patch only works on the last version, the "Collector's CD-ROM". Try turning the sound off if you can't get the original DOS version that came on floppy disks to work (due to extended/expanded memory problems).

FYI

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[swmccracken]

Do the dos versions work under dosbox?

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news =1

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Rallion]

On my system, at least, I can get them to run in DOSBox, technically, but....eh, it's not even worth playing. So slow...This is on a XP2100+.

I have TIE95, but X-Wing CD! Argh.

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Jeranon]

No, there is another. I think...

The Windows 95 versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter was when they converted the games to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game engine (with some extra tweaks) and called it the X-Wing Collector Series (which came with a semi-demo for XvT). By converted, I mean they converted the missions as everything else was the same from the original games. Imagine flying about in the nice 3D engine only to come back to the low resolution interface and cutscenes of old. Of course, the conversion m

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Rallion]

...XWA sold 1/3 of the original X-Wing...

Well, yeah. Crappy games tend to do that. "Ooh, let's let them fly the freighters, instead of the starfighters! Brilliant!" And the game was dead already.

Granted, that's not the only problem. But IMO it's the biggest one.

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Rethcir]

Absolutley insightful. I got sick of Alliance within about 3 missions. Flying the millenium falcon just doesn't do it for me when I was used to flying the xwing and tie fighters, not to mention the badass craft of Wing Commander 2.

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Sigma 7]

The Windows 95 versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter was when they converted the games to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game engine (with some extra tweaks) and called it the X-Wing Collector Series (which came with a semi-demo for XvT). By converted, I mean they converted the missions as everything else was the same from the original games

From what I could tell, the mission files seemed to be identical between the Windows version and the Dos version (aside from the "rebalanced" mission set). While I do know

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[chris411]

Actually, engine wash was only included in XvT

Do you mean introduced? I'm pretty sure I've been struck with engine wash in X-Wing Alliance (which came after XvT).

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Sigma 7]

Do you mean introduced?

In the sense of the collector's series (which was what I was referring to), included is correct.

Of course, forgetting to mention the scope would mean the later games don't have it. And as you know, that's obviously incorrect. :)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Doesn't work, at least with the original DOS ga

[Foolhardy]

Try VDM Sound [mcgill.ca]. It provides sound and joystick support to the DOS VDM in Windows NT (and XP and 2k).
I use it to play DOS CD version of TIE fighter (the best version IMO) and it works great.

I hate the graphics updates for the Windows versions; they use very low color depth and resolution textures that make the ships look... dirty. The vector based gouraud shading looked much better to me. Also, there is this really annoying engine sound that plays way too loud and has this short repeating sample (no, it can'

Fond memories..

[Taulin]

I met one of my best friends because of X-Wing. He was playing a mission over and over and over again... His dormroom door was open when I walked by, and I just had to know WTF he was doing. Being an Amiga man myself, I was overcome, and just had to get a PC. Thanks Lucas Games!

Mission Editing

[Xetrov]

One of the best things about the original X-Wing (DOS) game, was the mission editor I downloaded.

I spent months creating and playing my own custom missions, and I think this was probably the start of my desire to customise everything which evolved into a love for hacking.

It's time for a new XvT game.

[Picass0]

I don't know why Lucasfilm doesn't take advantage of today's PC specs and put out a new X-Wing vs. Te-Fighter game. Especially since they can add craft from the new trilogy.

XvT is one of my favorite LAN games ever. I'd love to see a new edition.

Re:It's time for a new XvT game.

[Anonymous Coward]

This [lucasarts.com] seems to be as close as we're going to get for a while. Too bad you need a subscription to SW:G to play it.

And that more or less answers the question...

[rsilvergun]

Why sell XWvsTF 2 once for $50 when you can sell Galaxies + Expansion for $60-$80 and tack on a monthly fee to boot.

Re:And that more or less answers the question...

[0racle]

Because not everyone who would play XvT2 will buy Galaxies, so you would make more money in the long run.

Re:It's time for a new XvT game.

[RogueyWon]

I believe X-Wing alliance didn't sell so well, despite it being, in my opinion, the best of the series (TIE Fighter was great, but degenerated into rather annoying supership-wars towards the end). I think the final Wing Commander game (Prophecy?) also bombed commercially around about the same time. Since then, Space Flight Sims haven't been seen as mainstream and as, I suspect, they're quite expensvie to develop, nobody really wants to take a chance on them.

I really hope Lucasarts do reconsider making anot

Re:It's time for a new XvT game.

[will_die]

You have star wars battlefront aka lucas arts answer to battlefield 1942, coming out in september. It is suppose to have x-wings and other space craft; in addition to ground.

Privateer

[MagicDude]

Now we need a patch like this for Wing Commander Privateer. Every year or so I get to itch to want to play it again, but it hates XP too.

Re:Privateer

[Haeleth]

Now we need a patch like this for Wing Commander Privateer. Every year or so I get to itch to want to play it again, but it hates XP too.

This is for the Windows/DirectX remakes of the games - Privateer was only ever a DOS game, so it won't be patched so easily. However, DosBox should be able to emulate it soon if it doesn't already.

qfixapp is a more generic solution

[Tanaan]

see google

Virtual PC was a savior

[figleaf]

Since some of my favorite LucasArt games not compatible with XP I have been using Virtual PC to play the games.
So far all my games have worked without any problems.

Works in WineX -- no patch needed

[Spoing]

X-Wing 95 game page for WineX/Cedega [transgaming.com]

The game is officially marked as a zero (not working at all) though the forum comments say that's not true.

Why didn't Lucasarts do this fix?

[EnglishTim]

I suspect that the reason Lucasarts didn't fix this themselves was because it's quite possible that they could no longer build the game. Certainly I've worked at games companies where we've wanted to do a build of an old game and suddenly foung it much harder than we'd expected. Sure, you manage to find an old version of the code somwhere, but it's not been packaged alongside the art assets. Suddenly you need to work out which version of the art assets go with which version of the code. You then find out that although somebody took care to save the source code, nobody thought to make a copy of all the libraries that you were using at that time. Or perhaps the incompatibility was due to a third-party library, and they don't do a 2000/XP version of it any more, and maybe have gone out of business.

The thing is that unless you take a lot of care when backing up your old code, it can be very easy to find yourself in a tricky situation, especially if the person who did it originally has left the company.

Re:Why didn't Lucasarts do this fix?

[g051051]

The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit is a wonderful thing. I'm surprised more companies don't use it to make older games playable.

Does anyone know about any master repository holding more of these kinds of fixes? This is the first one I've seen that wasn't built-in to the toolkit.

X-COM/UFO

[caitsith01]

It may interest ./ DOS gamers to know that there is also (finally) a fix to get UFO: Enemy Unknown, aka XCom, aka possibly the greatest game of all time, to work under Windows XP.

Just go here [xcomufo.com] for more info, you can get the full game (including the XP fix) at The Home of the Underdogs [the-underdogs.org].