Understood - reading about the inner-workings of the game that you folks are doing is rather interesting.

I used to mod way back in 00 porting TIE Fighter missions to XWA. I'd offer assistance, but its been far too long since I've delved into the structure of these games. One thing I always wished back then is that they should have kept some of the features from '93/94/95 versions of these games and ported them into the '98 versions, namely being able to assign pilots from X-Wing was pretty cool (allowing you to dynamically change their AI from rookie to ace) or the many more cutscenes showing your craft taking off and landing inside the hangers that were taken out in the '98 versions. From what I am reading here, it seems like that is what you all are trying to accomplish somewhat.

You have hit basically all the main reasons why I am doing this. The 98 editions were... underwhelming. So many removed features.
The different total conversions made to bring X-Wing or TIE Fighters campaigns to XvT, XWA and Freespace are noble endeavors, but I think that much is lost in the process. Much more than even what was lost on the 98 editions.

As what we are doing here is to reimplement the flight engine and then use the resources from the games, most of the work is to actually find out how that engine used to work. I don't think we will ever reach a 1:1 match implementation, as most of the details are undocumented. But we can try getting as close at possible.
So most of the work right now is to observe and take notes on how the original game (mainly the 93 and 94 versions) behaves, and then try to find an explanation for that and implement it ourselves.

The frontend, while also greatly important, will be a secondary objective. We can theoretically read all the animations, palletes, images, etc, from the resources, and then have the concourse, take off, landings, cutscenes, introductory roll outs, and everything else, replicated.
But it has it's own challenges. The animation format is totally undocumented, and the graphics are mean for a 320x200 resolution. On today's screens, that would look horribly pixelated even with filtering, and contrast the high resolution remade flight engine.
For a time I thought that we could remake the concourse and some of the usual animations (take off, landing, shuttles to the training grounds, etc) in 3D with some ship and room models. But that is just dreaming at this point.

How did I correct the fields? I just dumped bflight.ovl to a hex format, all craft.This way it is very simple to spot the offsets and if one has shifted by accident. I'm pretty sure devs never wanted to get a craft higher then speed 255. But if you take a look at the craft list, it is very clear, that T/A added later to the game, I stongly believe that the engine was done by then. They realized that thy need more speed (345 in this case), which made a headache I guess. Devs just inserted in another byte (the byte order is reversed, this is strange enough), and with this insert an error occured: 2 byte shift happent for the next approximately 16 bytes. This gives a T/A an acceleration and roll value 0. I just shifted the 2 bytes back.
Interestingly, the FRG has the same problem, but that's clearly not having a speed of more then 255. :-) The cause of this error is still unknown for me.

About yaw filelds: there are two bytes at offset 56&57 which looks like it. But after the decision the engine will not used them fine tuning was skipped of this data. This makes inconsistency of my expereiments.

I decided to do the experiments again, with keyboard this time. I need more accurate data to confirm my theory on roll and pitch data. For a hint: I suggest that reading the values as 2 byte data gives the craft's roll exactly. I'll see.

I clearly hope we can later add a 3D replica of rhe concurse and the good stuff to it, too!

It's strange that something like this would happen, because I believe BFLIGHT.OVL isn't just a configuration file, but the whole flightsim executable code written by Peter Lindcroft. I know they wrote this with Microsoft C++ compiler.
So I guess these ship data slots were actually some kind of hardcoded array of structs, that at the beginning had all the ships sans the T/A, plus 4 empty slots. Then they added the T/A. Then they added the B-W and there were still 2 empty ones.
If they entered a value bigger than the data field would allow, the compiler would have complained, wouldn't it? And what would have kept them from just changing the field data type to something bigger, let's say UINT16? Surely the compiler wouldn't have complained when assigning the same old constants to the new bigger field.
Of course, maybe they didn't want to change the data type for some obscure reason. And maybe they assigned the bigger value in an imaginative way so that it provoked it to overflow the field and end putting data where it didn't belonged.
But... the devs gave internal data from the ships stats to Russel DeMaría for the official strategy guide. I don't really believe DeMaria, a writer, took a Hexeditor in the early 90's and read the stats from the binary. So why didn't the devs give him the right stats?
I'm not saying that you are mistaken here, not at all. But this all feels quite weird, doesn't it?

If they would change to a 16 bit unit type then the byte order should be correct. It is not. Speed 345 is ingame speed, not something you read in the strategy guide. Remember the 2.25 division. By the way, I just don't know how the game engine works, why they are using this instead of the speed that we all familiar with...
The point is: we have all the data we need, right?

It seems we have at least 6 unused slots for craft.

Wow, that is just nice! So you hacked yourself into aa A-wing for this with a mission editor. I would try it with a T/A! :-D

I am still not having a clear view on the Yaw component. Clearly AI can perform pure yaw turns (TIEs do that mainly), however, you cannot do that as a player. When you press Right or Left you roll AND yaw, how much. I don't know anymore than you can complete a full circle and end +-5 degress above or under where you started.


Even when the XWSE program lists several slots under, I think the last two or three are actually overflowing into the iMuse data that Tarvis figured out. All those CR-01, CR-02 things are the different iMuse tracks. So definitely we couldn't get into them without breaking the iMuse tracks.
I tried that on a Y-Wing, with terrible consequences.
It would be fun to hack ourselves on a corvette and try it. Full throttle ramming all the obstacles. :D

You can believe XWSE. I see it in bflight.ovl, there is a space for 6 craft before the tracks.
I'll try to get something for that yaw.

A CRV? It is actually possible! I rode even a STD! Very interesting to get into and out of hyperspace. :-D
If anyone need it I can post the hacked BFLIGHT.OVL to get yourself into ANY craft. :-D

Okay, I am going into offtopic area here, but recently I tried to mod in a TIE Fighter cockpit for flying TIEs in X-Wing.
The cockpit I tried to use was from the TIE Fighter demo, that uses an engine that looks totally the same as in X-Wing CD, save for the targetting computer. Because the TIE Fighter demo is freeware, it should be okay to distribute the cockpit files around, I thought.
I tried, but X-Wing kept complaining about missin .PNL file, too bad.

Yea, I was haching myself into crafts in X-Wing using the XWING panel. If you take a look in bflight you could see some craft like the transport CRV and STD(!) has an Xwing panel set. I guess somebody fooled around in them, possibly the devs. :)

I had a very unproductive day, so I decided to take a closer look to this thread, reading it thoroughly. Of course I didn't, the musical parts get too technical for me time to time, but I guess I got the point. It made me to comment a lot! Here it goes!

About music:

Music is awesome! I like the Unity webpage, I used it in a real training as background. Just awesome!

DS tracks against capital ships? I support this idea! DS tracks are T3M13, T3M14, and BH5, BH6, which is quite not enough!

I strongly believe the following scenario: you are battling a capital ship, getting hits, then multiple hits just ran out of shields, the situation is really intense. You have to get your ass out there as soon as possible! Divert all power to engines and FLEE from the danger. That is why FL sounds and feels like it.

Training music near minefields? Yes, that should be good, but very rarely happens to be no other craft around. BUT when it happens then CR/AX kicks in which is horribly soft for a minefield situation, right?

About failing mission. Nobody could convince me it is hard to code. If an objective to be destroyed hypered out, then it is a fail. If an objective to be survived is destroyed, then obviously it is a fail. How hard can this to be coded? It is possible to have some complicated events where it is not easily coded, but to be honest, it would be the 10-20 percent. BUT! I, personally, wouldn't do it! Why? Well, it is very frustrating that you fought for nothing and know this when you finally decide to leave and see the end breifing. This builds character! If someone tells you, whatever you do right now, is worthless, then you just quit and try again. No, this is too easy. When you first encounter the above mentioned situation you will pay waaay more attention to mission objectives later!

Damage issues. It seems, that no collosion detection is running between AI ships vs. AI ships, just player vs. AI ships. But I got myself into a CRV. Unfortunately, I could not shoot (I might have to hack a bit of its weapons ;-) ), so I decided to ram things. Well, this is a no go as well! There's no collosion detection between these things. How sad... :-)
About T/As. I had some trouble figuring out what is the craft in X-Wing called 'Advanced TIE'. It is similar to Vader's x1, same panels, but the fuselage is different. Probably, devs didn't want us to think that Vader is coming, it seems x1 is his personal craft. So, Advanced TIEs could be used in numbers, because it is different. Who knows...

About cockpits. I strongly support your idea of "I prefer creating 3D versions of the orginal X-Wing game cockpit layouts."!!

Yes, it is. The work of Tarvis and Laserschwert to research the iMuse system and to synthesize the MIDI files into digital quality is outstanding. It's one of the reasons that keeps me pushing forward with this project. :)

I think the DS track is underused, and fighting a capital ship deserves a more dangerous theme than the usual dogfight (that is based on the sequence in Ep IV where the Falcon fights 3 TIE Fighters).

About the Flee track, I understand what the devs were trying to achieve, but I don't think it totally captures the feeling. The FL track is kind of sad, or a downer. While the event of losing my shields during a combat would be quite more adrenaline inducing that what that track inspires to me. (More below)

I think there should be themes that have more weight than others. And in case of two wanting to play at the same time, one of them has priority. For example, in the mission to capture frigate Priam on a B-Wing, it is surrounded by a minefield. I think Capital Ship theme (DS) should have priority over Minefield Theme (TR), and that over Dogfight (DG).

I am still not sure when the CR theme plays and when the AX theme plays.

Well, I go on with my rambling about the FL theme. In my opinion FL stands for Fail, and it was meant to be played when the missions objectives are failed.
I agree with you that it feels strange that couldn't add a mission failed check. I don't know why, but I totally believe that they meant to put that in the game, and somehow they couldn't.
And I base my assumption of the FL theme. It sounds totally like a "mission failed" tune, not a "shields down" tune. In fact, in no other game in the series there is a "shields down" tune, and they all have a "mission failed" tune, even XvT, with it's crappy music system.

It builds character, sure. :D But for the same reason, then, they could have removed the Mission Complete check. You should know when you are done, then go home. Right? :)
Besides, they added Mission Failed check on all other games in the series. That tells you how much they wanted it there.
Even if it builds character, I think it goes against the accepted principle of not having "walking dead" moments in a game. In the sense that the player might keep on flying a mission, destroying enemies, protecting freighters from bombers, time passing, etc, while is has already lost the mission and that serves no purpose.
That made most players unhappy.
In general, X-Wing was quite opaque in respect of the mission objectives.
They were stated in an informal way during the briefing, but not clearly listed as a list until you returned from the mission.
In most missions, I remember just hypering out at the start of the mission to have a look at the list of objectives to know what I was supposed to exactly do. Then fly the mission again.

X-Wing was considered for long time the hardest in the series, not because the AI was excellent or the missions impossible. But mostly because it was the game where the player had the least amount of information about what was going on. I don't think lack of information is a merit.

They added the Hints page to every mission from Imperial Pursuit and on, and I think that was a great improvement for enjoying the game. The film room was used before that to observe the behavior of the different flight groups on missions that you kept on failing. At least I know I used it mostly for that. That was the only way to identify critical enemy flightgroups that sneaked past your defenses and went straight for your freighters or containers.
But you cannot really expect nowadays players bothering to do all of that to get thru a mission. They will just ragequit and never touch the game again. (Remember how this series died out, compared to the more popular Rogue Squadron series of pew pew missions)

All in all, I don't know why, but to me it feels that they attempted to add the Failed Mission check. They couldn't, then they reused the FL theme for something else that they didn't plan to.

I have seen, though, two freighters crashing against each other and exploding for that. Also, I have seen that between fighters and a star destroyer or cruiser. They crashed into the capital ship and exploded.
I have also seen freighters and corvettes flying thru each other. Fighter flightgroups flying shuch a tight formation that they glitch into each other. Y-Wings attempting to disable shuttles, and flying thru them. And transports and shuttles entering a frigate in formation, and doing so thru the hull instead of thru the hangar bay.
There is definitely something wrong going on there.
I think it is supposed to be the X1, but for some reason they didn't put the horizontal fuselage part on the model. Maybe they didn't plan to add that ship at all (you saw that it looks like an afterthought in the data files), and in the last moment they got the green light to do it, and for that they just modded a TIE Interceptor model by pasting the TIE Bomber panels to the sides.
I am pretty sure there were more than one unit of the X1 prototype made, so it doesn't have to be only Vader having one of those.
However, I think there was an attempt to retcon this particular look of the X1 in the game by calling it the X2.
As it says there, in the 98 edition of X-Wing they didn't give a d*mn and replaced the model with the TIE Avenger from XvT, that was developed way after the Battle of Hoth. In general, that edition was a huge "We don't give a d*mn".

The XWAU have 3D cockpits that try to resemble those in the movies. But the cockpit dashboards in the movies serve no other purpose that being scene dressing. They don't attempt to make any sense, or be functional, useful, or even good looking.
I know that the canon is the movies, and the movies are the canon. But the dashboards in X-Wing make more sense than in the movies, and those are the dashboards that we should have. In the TIE Fighter short film, the creator made use of the cockpits as seen in the TIE Fighter videogame, and it feels much more real for that.

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwVBGT02Pqc[/url]

That cockpit looks nice. I wonder if that person has kept on developing that past 2011. I would love to talk to him or her.

- I'm not sure about the power management control. With those round selectors I am never sure which side of the circle I need to set the selection at to have the levels as I want. I think 2 simpler sliders on the power bars would be actually simpler, with the engine slider being automatically balanced.
- One problem I see in most fan made space games is that it's too dark. If you look at the movies, they are supposed to be in space, but ships are always glowing bright under the light of some off-the-scene star or planet. Otherwise you see nothing. That space battle that he shows would look even better if you could actually see the ships and the lasers flying around.
- I love what he has done with the targeting computer. I am currently showing the targetted ship "wireframe" (it's not really a wireframe) on the computer screen, like a mix between TIE Fighter and X-Wing computers. But I totally forgot about that aiming mode. I always thought that having a targeting reticle on the center of the screen kind of defeat the purpose of the aiming mode, and saves you the hassle of having to move your eyes away from the main action to the targeting computer. But having it serve as an extra long range aim could be something to think about.

Man, that cockpit looks REALLY good... LOVE the style! And the details like buttons actually illuminating the dashboard. Maybe we should ask those guys to contribute to the project?