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X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter?


Epathos

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The name of the title is just a reference to those that know what I'm talking about.

 

But the real question is...

 

Will we ever see a flight simulator that they made back in the 90's in the present time?

 

Sad thing is to.... the old flight sim game's, Are and still much better to play then any thing to current date.

 

-But having the know how to make those old games run also help- :cool:

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I think a lot of people loved X-wing, TIE Fighter, and X-wing Alliance.

 

I don't think most people loved X-wing vs. TIE Fighter as much. It had much less story, much simpler missions, and respawn, which broke a lot of the game's balance and difficulty.

 

And as for multiplayer, most matches were decided by jousting, or if not that, endless turning wars whose results were decided more by dialup speed than skill.

 

I don't ever remember having a very satisfying experience with XvT. My happiest memories come from the single player campaigns of the other three games in the series, and I think that is true of most others as well.

 

We recently saw Starfighter, Inc. Kickstarter flounder because it misunderstood the root of nostalgia people have for X-wing and TIE Fighter. It was not the PvP--it was the flight mechanics, the mission design, the atmosphere, the music, and the Star Wars.

 

GSF ran into the same exact problem. That being said, those of us patient enough to give GSF a chance have come to realize that it takes many of the best mechanics from the old games and works them very successfully into an awesome PvP experience. As a PvP-centered game, it is far superior to X-wing vs. TIE Fighter.

 

But ultimately, most people don't have the patience to give it a chance. They find some excuse to hate it immediately. "It's PvP." "I can't use a joystick." "It's all about gear." "I'm not instantly good at it so it must suck."

 

These people are denying themselves. And then, even worse, they make nostalgic comparisons to X-wing vs. TIE Fighter, the worst game and black sheep in the otherwise amazing series of single player games.

 

If you truly loved X-wing vs. TIE Fighter, then GSF is as close as you are ever going to come.

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I don't know about it being the closest you can get, but I'll say it is clearly a strong design point. The devs obviously loved it and included whatever they could.

 

The big thing in the flight sim that was so charming was that everything was physical. Your blaster bolt could go betwixt the two solar panels on a TIE, doing nothing. The hit box was a hit polygon that, while a bit simpler than the ship itself, was very much not just a cube, and the logic was all handled by where the enemy and the blaster were at a given time.

 

This didn't map well to the massive latency of the internet, and still does not. Network games have so many things that people don't like precisely because of this. The industry has set standard solutions in place, and mostly they are used. You see instant weapons (bullets in most games) and area weapons (the area itself is instant, even if the thing triggering it not). You very rarely see a game where an enemy can, say, throw a bowling ball up in the air, and you have to dodge it on the way down. The latency would truck that game to pieces, and if you did make it work, you'd be giving up something else.

 

The absolute best piece on this is literally written by a dev who worked on it for a game that you might like:

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131781/the_internet_sucks_or_what_i_.php?print=1

 

This is such a top article. But the other piece is, games like this have to cut some corners to be able to be played on the existing infrastructure. If a second internet ("Optical Gamingnet") was almost nothing but low latency fiber, you might be able to make this work. You might also need a different protocol to ride this effectively- something that sits in between UDP and TCP in terms of "reliable" and "fast", as UDP is not really reliable enough for the type of gaming we are talking about, and TCP is too laggy.

 

 

Anyway, tech stuff aside, Nem is correct in pointing out that the big pull of these games was the PvE. I would argue that what would make a game like this truly loved, you would need and want most of this set:

 

1)- Solo flight missions, just as X-Wing had. Status: Mandatory, primary, expensive.

2)- 1v1 duels, with ship choices set for balance. Status: Optional, tertiary, cheap.

3)- Campaign type duels, with both opposing players dwarfed by their respective fleets, each trying to compete with the other in that way. Status: Optional, tertiary, expensive.

4)- Coop play. These would be like (1) or (3), except all players are on the same side, and you could have more than two players. Status: Mandatory, secondary, expensive.

5)- Squad combat. This would be like GSF. Status: Mandatory, secondary, cheap.

6)- Squad campaign combat. Like (3), except with entire flights on both sides. Status: Optional, tertiary, expensive.

 

This is a lot of game modes. Understandably, most games don't want to focus on all of them (because that's not really a focus). Each mode would need its own tuning to be able to play with whatever (hopefully mostly static) ship sets are around, and something like a 1v1 duel would need to explicitly not have them all, as that could never be interesting unless all the ships were mostly homogenous.

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Back on the tech side, the real ramifications of this is that we can't have ANY weapons that are as satisfying as the ones we deserve.

 

Short range blasters:

How they should work: All blasters should work by generating a blaster bolt at a position, with a speed. If that bolt connects with a target before it reaches its maximum range, the blaster should deal damage to the target.

How they work: Blasters are instantaneous weapons, fired at a 2D target. If your aim is correct on target, the game count this as an attack and rolls on the combat table. The results are generated essentially instantly- no amount of weaving or bobbing after the blaster is launched makes any difference at all.

Net effect: For short range blasters, this total disconnect between blaster travel time (low) and real blaster time (literally zero) is simply ignored. The difference is observable, but not overly distracting. The reticule system hides the issue decently enough. The time between shooting and striking someone at 3k is low enough that this mostly looks ok in game.

 

Long range weapons:

How they should work: Railguns should ALSO work by generating a shell at a position, with a speed. If that shell connects with a target (ever, really, or with a max range for balance), then the shell should deal damage to the target.

How they work: Railguns are ALSO instantaneous weapons, fired at a 2D target. If your aim is correct on target, the game counts this an attack and rolls on the combat table.

Net effect: For long range railguns, this disconnect between a physical and instantaneous object is resolved by making the railgun itself an instantaneous weapon. The time between a railgun shooting and striking someone at 15k is zero in practice, and also as presented by the game.

 

Medium range weapons:

How they should work: Same as the first two cases.

How they work: They don't. There are none. No one is shooting a 12km blaster shot, because the blaster shot resolving instantly and being undodgeable simply doesn't make sense for a projectile that is not drawn by the engine as being instant. The game engine would support these the same way it does all existing blasters, but the effect (which is quite visible with heavy lasers already) would be overwhelming. Your shots that count as hits would be just miles off the target in most cases.

 

 

Missiles:

How they should work: Missiles should be projectiles with a turning rate, and one of: acceleration, constant speed, or acceleration to a max speed. The missile should attempt to get close enough to a target to explode, and if it does, it should explode, dealing damage to any target based on the distance that target is from the missile. If the missile needs to embed or some other lore whatever, then it would need to strike the target with enough velocity to make this happen. Missiles should be interrupted by anything else that gets in their way, be it another ship, a rock, or an enemy blaster.

How they work: They are frostbolt from WoW.

 

 

This is not a GSF problem, or a SWTOR problem. It's an industry wide issue, and it greatly controls what kinds of projectiles can exist. If you did the real projectiles, the positional difference on each machine would run the risk of absolute shenanigans happening. Instead, the game designers get to choose from two mechanics- one where the weapon is locked on and will hit (and is drawn going to the target, such as a frostbolt chasing an enemy around an obstacle, or a missile shooting through an asteroid), and one where the weapon attack is determined at the point of fire.

 

If you were to watch a dogfight in SWTOR unfold from the positions of different players, it would look totally different. Blasters would overshoot on one screen, undershoot on another. The server has the True Story, but if you were to witness that, it would take some time to get to you. A game built like that would be like:

You zip forward, and then pull up. 400ms later, your ship actually begins to pull up. Everything you did would control with a huge lag amount. This would show everyone the real server version, but the time delay would make the game so wildly frustrating that it simply isn't done in any game like this.

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The ships should also be a lot easier to hit at point-blank range. I was literally following a bomber so closely my screen was about 2/3 filled by the ship I was following. Firing anywhere into that 2/3 of my screen should have hit the bomber, because it was moving so slowly and was so big.

 

In GSF physics, you still have to shoot the little red dot in the middle of the lead indicator.

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