Bugs, Bugs and More Bugs!

While there is indeed the strength of the storyline in X-WingŪ Alliance™ and much of the graphics are truly awe-inspiring, I felt somewhat cheated and frustrated by the large number of bugs in XWA. For the most part, I agree with the various and sundry reviews regarding XWA. The game is incredible and fun to play. It has much the similar draw as the original XWCD/XWCS game did for me. However, since I am a TacO for Kalidor, I take a slightly different view of the game than most players usually do. I try to determine all aspects of the game: mission scripting, tactics, storyline, so as to be able to create better and more complex missions for my squad-mates. From this POV, I found the mission script errors to be incredibly frustrating, and I wonder at the level of effort Totally Games put into the XWA's original release. Aside from that, the game is pretty much what I had hoped it would be for the final X-WingŪ series game. I was especially pleased at the continuation of XWCS's story line from the Battle of Hoth to the climatic ending in the Battle of Endor. The game installed smoothly, and the interface reminded me of the XWCD days back on the CRS Independence. In this case, it was aboard the Azameen family's station. Since I had a P233MMX with 96MB of RAm and 12GB of HD, and a Viper 550 card, handling the new XWA game engine proved to be no problem. So I started off, extremely happy and content, playing the role of a smuggler who would eventually join the Rebellion in destroying the second Death Star.

However, I, and several of my compatriots on the FRG Black Hawk and the CRS Liberty found severe flaws in the mission scripts for XWA. Most of these errors (or bugs) were found only when the mission was played on the "hard" difficulty setting. They normally didn't appear when the missions were played on "easy" or "medium." The most annoying ones occured when you accomplished the mission requirements, only to have the mission critical container spontaneously blow up. It became very apparant to myself and others that these missions had NOT been Beta tested thoroughly. This appears to have become a recurring theme with LA/TG in the past few years. Both XvT and BoP had bugs (though not usually from mission scripting) in their original releases that immediately required patches or updates. My interpretation is that LA had imposed a strict schedule for release of XWA (and XvT/BoP) which TG had to meet. So corners were cut, allowing for some serious errors to come through. A few were technical, but most were simply not wringing out the various prologue and battle missions thoroughly. As the Kalidor Tactical Officer, I've become very adept in scripting new missions for our monthly Black Ops, and I understand the need for ensuring that a mission is playable, and winable, at all levels for XWCD/XWCS and XvT/BoP. This requires some extensive testing of the mission, to ensure all mission goals are achievable, and the mission plays as originally scripted (in my mind [g]). I expect it would be no different for XWA. In addition, key aspects of the game were missing: 1) the gun camera option to film and verify tactics and mission performance and 2) multiplayer crewing aboard the Corellian Transports (CORTs) YT-1300 and YT-2000. Both of these had been originally billed as part of the game.

Update #1

As a result of several message boards posting these problems and several e:m's being sent back to LA and TG's tech support, the first update (XWA v2.01) was released in late May of 1999.

Installation: To install the update after downloading, simply double-click the update program "xwaupd201.exe" and follow the on-screen instructions. The setup program should automatically locate where X-WingŪ Alliance™ was installed and update those files.

Corrects: This update included the following features and fixes:

USING THE FILM ROOM

• HOW TO RECORD

Press [Shift]+[F] in flight to begin recording a film. When you wish to stop recording, press [Shift]+[F] again. Quitting or restarting a mission will also stop recording.

• HOW TO SAVE A FILM

When the recording stops, you will be given the opportunity to save your film, or cancel the process entirely. To save your film, name it using the dialog window that pops up, then press [Enter]. Pressing [Escape] will cancel the save. If you choose not to save the film when prompted to do so, it will be lost.

• HOW TO WATCH A FILM

To watch a film, use the film room door in the lower-right corner of the Concourse (or the button in the Combat Simulator, before the Concourse becomes available. Select the film you wish to watch from the list, and either double-click on it or click the Load icon with the film highlighted. Once the film is loaded, it will, by default, show everything happening in the mission from the point of view in which you originally experienced it. This default mode is called Follow Mode. Free Mode lets you move your camera around, position it behind other craft, or track a ship’s flight.

• FILM PLAYBACK AND CAMERA COMMANDS

NEW FEATURES

• The Film Room: The film room will allow you to record and view the missions you have flown. See the beginning of this section for instructions.

MISSION UPDATES

Prologue mission 3: Sometimes after a player would inspect 97% of the craft in Cargo area 2 the goal would appear as satisfied when it wasn't. This has been addressed.

Prologue mission 7: Changes in the ordering and triggering conditions that make the mission more cohesive.

Prologue mission 8: Occasionally the player's craft would inexplicably get disabled in the freighter region; this has been fixed.

Battle 4 mission 2: Occasionally a mission critical container would spontaneously explode; this has been fixed.

Battle 6 mission 5: On Easy difficulty only there was a problem with TIE Fighter AI; this has been adjusted.

Using a T-1 connection, I downloaded the 2.02MB file in a few seconds and took it home on a zip disk. The installation was painless and did solve the mission script errors listed above. It was very nice to have the gun camera back, in order to verify mission performance and work on tactics for the various missions. However, there were still several mission script errors not addressed, and the multi-player crewing was still not available. The first was a major source of frustration, and the second a disappointment.

Update #2

In June of 1999 the second update (XWA v2.02) was released. This update incorporated the changes of v2.01 but included some 3D enhancements and changes:

Installation: To install the update after downloading, simply double-click the update program "xwaupd202.exe" and follow the on-screen instructions. The setup program should automatically locate where X-WingŪ Alliance™ was installed and update those files. This update has replaced the 2.01 update that was previously available and it is highly recommended that all users using the 2.01 update upgrade to the 2.02 version.

Corrects:This update includes further enhancements to 3D sound support and is compatible with all foreign language versions. The xwaupd202.exe update includes the following features and fixes:

NEW FEATURES

• Problems associated with foreign language versions after installing the 2.01 update (a red hue appearing on the screen and a sudden increase in the firing rate of the Death Star cannon) have been corrected.

• Aureal A3D Interactive(TM) sound support: Provides hardware accelerated 3d positional audio. To enable this support go to the sound options menu in the game, and select on for 3d sound enabled. If you have an Aureal supported sound card it will default to A3D support.

• Improvements to Direct Sound 3D support: We have made adjustments to our sound system to create a more fulfilling experience for users with Direct Sound 3D supported soundcards.

As I mentioned earlier, the v2.02 upgrade includes the gun camera, film clip room, and the updates to several mission script bugs. As in v2.01, the installation was flawless, and I didn't notice any changes in the game play. Which is probably both good and bad. Good in that, the 3D update left my 3D configuration alone, bad in that there were still several mission script errors uncorrected, and the multiplayer crewing was still unavailable.

Where to Go From Here?

From my Bothan Spy Network (BSN) it appears that there will be no more enhancements, updates, or expansions made to XWA by either TG or LA. This is very disappointing to many of us players, as we saw XWA, with its graphics and 3D capability, as the means for following the work done by the Datamaster's OPT Project for new missions, campaigns, OPTs and shipsets. There have been several on-line organizations springing up to provide focus for new utilities, OPTs, missions etc for XWA. These include: New Horizons providing one of the two high quality mission editors for XWA. Troy Dangerfield is working on his follow-on to the best XvT editor (XvTED) known as AlliED. Stealth is continuing his work to create an OPT editing creation tool, now known as Ace. It can create OPTs that work either in XvT/BoP or XWA. Several new OPTs created by his tool are now featured on various websites including Datamaster. There have been several sites and gamers interested in converting XWA into an Imperial theme and/or format. For those who want to multicrew, there has been a patch put out on several of these websites that discuss how to add ships to XWA, and enable the multicrew feature. The following is available on Datamaster's site and was originally written by James "Defiant" Lupiani.

How to Enable Multi-Crew / How to Pilot Any Ship in Multi-Player

Have you ever wanted a chance to gun the Falcon and defend it against a TIE attack while a real person does the flying? Ever want to fly that Star Destroyer? Look no further. X-Wing Alliance's Shiplist.txt is easy to edit and can be very powerful when used properly.

!SPECIES_1!Xwing,Fighter,Flyable,Known,Skirmish,			6  ,9  ,13 ,20 ,4  ,13 ,32 ,43 

!SPECIES_40!Corvette,Starship,Nonflyable,Known,Skirmish,		44 ,51 ,50 ,65 ,543,12 ,557,42 

!SPECIES_53!Imp Star Dest,Starship,Nonflyable,Known,Skirmish,		289,48 ,299,68 ,9  ,375,29 ,420

You can see here the Death Star orbit--that is, you can see here some typical entries in Shiplist.txt. Keep in mind that the text listed in here is case-sensitive. That means you must capitalize letters properly in order for your changes to work. For the purposes of this document, ignore the !SPECIES_#! and the numbers off to the right for now.

!SPECIES_1!Xwing,Fighter,Flyable,Known,Skirmish,			6  ,9  ,13 ,20 ,4  ,13 ,32 ,43

!SPECIES_40!Corvette,Starship,Nonflyable,Known,Skirmish,		44 ,51 ,50 ,65 ,543,12 ,557,42 

!SPECIES_53!Imp Star Dest,Starship,Flyable,Known,Skirmish,		289,48 ,299,68 ,9  ,375,29 ,420

I suggest that you visit the Datamaster's website, and then springboard to the many XWA websites to pick-up any information you're seeking - whether to add a new ship opt, mission, or shipset. As long as there's interest and desire to learn more about XWA, and understand how to enlarge its gameplay, I see a long and bright future for all of us who want to strap on an X-Wing, and bring freedom and justice to the galaxy. There are several efforts ongoing to create new shipsets (missions, opts all combined into one set of files) for the Timothy Zahn trilogy, the X-WingŪ series of novels by Stackpole and Allston, and even a few of the Darkhorse comic book series (e.g. Dark Empire I & II and X-Wing: Rogue Squadron). Given the licensing agreement instituted by LA, you can expect all of these to be free and available on-line once their creators are satisfied with the quality of the shipset. Yours truly may be involved as a beta tester for several of these shipsets. If this happens, you can expect further updates in the near future.

X-WingŪ Alliance™ is, given the mission scripting issue, a wonderful culimination to the X-WingŪ series. I had hoped that LA and/or TG would address the issues mentioned here, but it is unlikely since LA is now focussing on its Phantom MenaceŪ series of games, and TG is no longer involved with LA from a gaming POV. Most likely, these issues will be addressed by people like myself, using tools like AlliED or New Horizon's mission editor.

Good Luck, and Good Hunting!
A'Kula, Kalidor 3
Kalidor Tactical Officer (TacO)

(Scott (A'Kula) Schimmels is currently on vacation to his home planet Belsavis, undergoing serious training.)