Re: XWVM Alpha release on May 25th?

On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 17:35:02 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
https://www.moddb.com/mods/xwvm/news/xwvm-alpha-20250531-download-links
>

So, I briefly gave this mod a look. It's... nice.


ALPHA & INSTALLATION
-------------------------------------
It's definitely still beta, though. There's a good bit of missing
content; the frigates, for instance, are still untextured models
dating back to the original game*. The Concourse (the in-game
interface through which you select missions) lacks detail and life.
Every time you switch game modes (e.g., jumping between the options
screen and gameplay, for instance) the game comes out of full-screen
exclusive, requiring you to alt-enter back to full screen. The game
doesn't seem to know what to do with the transition screens -brief
animations that play when you load missions-- since it uses both its
own (to summarize mission objectives) and the original transitions
from the DOS game. The latter of which play out in 4:3 resolution even
as the rest of the game is displayed in 16:9. It's a bit messy. These
are all fairly minor issues --the game proper seemed fully playable--
but it reminds you this is still a mod in development.

Installation was easy. I whipped out my XWing Collector's Edition
CD-ROM, copied the disk contents to a folder on my hard-disk, then ran
the Mod's installer. Once the mod is installed, tell it where the
original game's files are located, and that's it. I did have to
restart the mod after that before all the updated graphics appeared,
though.



THOUGHTS ON GAMEPLAY
-------------------------------------
The gameplay, though, is pure X-Wing... which is both the game's
strength and weakness.  The actual combat is as fun as ever; X-Wing
veers more on the 'simulation' side of things than "Rogue Squadron" or
"X-Wing Squadrons", and does demand more of the player than either of
those two games. It's not just about flying and shooting fast; you've
constantly got to trade speed and energy. Capital ships are deadly and
can take you out quickly if you're not careful. TIE Fighters are
twisty little devils that require carefully piloting to hit. You start
to feel like a real Space Ace once you get the hang of things, though.

But the mission structure is, in many cases, just terrible. The
missions move ahead at their own schedule. Enemies programmed to
appear 8 minutes into the game won't show up even if you killed all
the other bad-guys at minute two. Expect a lot of waiting and faffing
about. Similarly, if you're already overwhelmed, the game isn't going
to take any mercy on you; if the bad guys are expected at minute 8,
that's when they're appearing, so just deal with it.

Mission objectives aren't always clear and in some cases you need to
know ahead of time where enemies are coming from (e.g., play the
mission and fail first) because otherwise you're going to be out of
position and not able to achieve goals mission. These were issues with
the original game, and they're none of them improved here.

On the plus side, the mission log is finally able to stay up to date.
This is a text prompt that would tell you when ships appeared out of
(or disappeared into) hyperspace, which was crucial information when
some of those contacts were mission vital. Unfortunately, in the
original DOS game, these prompts significantly lagged behind the
action (sometimes by several minutes) and often you didn't even learn
that a target ship had arrived until it had already finished its
mission and escaped again. XWVM's log, though, stays up to date.

Another improvement is that it's not quite as easy to collide with the
debris from exploding ships. In the original DOS version, you would
often blow up an enemy TIE Fighter, only to smash into its exploding
wreck. This seems a lot less common in XWVM.



GRAPHICS
-------------------------------------
Visually, the game looks a lot nicer now. Like I said, some ships look
unfinished (the Star Destroyer, for instance, is incredibly well
detailed in terms of polygons, but looks like it could use some better
texturing; it looks overly bright and flat, like a computer model).
But honestly, in the thick of the action you really aren't that
focused on what it all looks like and once you get past the initial
"golly the pixels are huge!" shock, even the DOS game is still very
pretty. So good job on improving the models and lighting, I guess, but
in the end I don't think it really matters.


One thing to keep in mind, though, is all those videos you see showing
off the mod? They're a bit dishonest. They're all either using VR or
TrackIR headsets, which gives the game a 3D-fidelity that most players
won't experience. With TrackIR, you can move your head and the game
will track its motion into the game, letting you (seemingly) pan left
and right and up and down, making it seem like you're really in a 3D
cockpit. But that won't be how most players do it. Yes, the cockpits
are all now fully 3D, but without TrackIR, they aren't really much
different in actual implementation from a 2D bitmap. In fact, you're
probably better off disabling the cockpit entirely in this case.




CONCLUSION
-------------------------------------
Overall, it's fine. It's arguably the best way to play Star Wars:
X-Wing right now, but a lot of its strengths (visuals) start to become
inconsequential once you're in the thick of combat, and XWVM still is
plagued by many of the same problems that made the original X-Wing
infuriating.** You'll definitely have a much better experience if you
have TrackIR or a VR headset.

But I think for a lot of players, "X-Wing Squadrons" -- or even 1999's
"X-Wing Alliance" will probably be more fun. It's just as pretty and
has more accessible gameplay. This mod is mostly aimed at "X-Wing"
die-hard fans. Plus, like I said, its visual flair is almost wasted
once you actually start playing, so as much as I love this mod it's
not something I'd urge people to download and install.












(inevitable footnotes)
-------------------------------------
* well, maybe the model dates back to the Collectors edition that came
out a couple years later... in 1994.
** most of these issues were fixed with TIE Fighter's missions.