Saturday, April 13, 2024

Incoming classified data... Posted by Forceflow
We've got confirmation that one of our rebel spies has turned up some juicy information and is trying to get it to us as soon as possible...

Well, in all seriousness we figured that it might be good to keep you guys a bit more up-to-date on what's going on and provide some teasers along the way. We'll try to have some sort of regular updates in the future to hopefully built some excitement towards XWAU 2024 (formerly known as XWAU 2023, also known as XWAU 2022 ) There is no planned release date, yet. We do have a working early beta version that's being tested however. There are still a lot of things that need to be fixed, but one of the discussions going on right now is to maybe release a beta to the general public sometime soon™.

There are plenty of reasons why things are taking so much longer than expected. One of the biggest contributor is that the scope just got so much bigger. Especially tech-wise things have been absolutely crazy. So many new toys and shiny things to play with. Pretty much all aspects of the game have been getting upgrades that we never thought possible. That did however also come with pretty hefty performance hits, some of which were simply not feasible. So a lot of time had to be put into optimizing performance versus eye-candy.

Recently huge strides have been made to improve performance with those new features in place however, so things are again being shuffled around and tested. Ace Antilles has built, rebuild, and rebuild the installer yet again countless amounts of times. Just the sheer number of files that he needs to keep track of is insane. Just to give you an idea, before a craft like the Z-95 consisted of a few files at most. Basic, exterior, cockpit opts, double that for a different variant, a material file if you wanted to be really fancy. Let's be generous and call it 10 files. Depending on how we end up setting things up that ship alone might come with 400 files, but it will be 100 for sure. (Granted, that one is pulling all the available stops here, but you get the picture)

Then there's the need to coordinate everybody working on stuff and fixing issues, making sure to not accidentally overwrite other peoples fixes and simply just desperately trying to stay on top of all the new and incredible tech-wizardry blue_max and JeremyaFr are coming up with.

And last but certainly not least a lot of older models are being redone, being reworked, tuned and generally optimized. Not to mention a whole bunch of completely new models are also in the pipeline.

So, to make a very long story short, stuff is going on

Again, we hope to provide some more updates and teasers to you regularly, so stay tuned and we hope you guys are as excited about what’s to come that we are.

Comment on the forum on what you think!

Saturday, March 30, 2024

Has it really been 25 years already? Posted by Forceflow
Okay, so I must admit that date kinda slipped below our radar, so thanks @unmarcz for pointing it out. On the 23rd of March 1999 X-Wing Alliance was released. Which, looking at my calendar, was now 25 years (plus a few days... ago)

I know there hasn't been much communication from us lately, but that's not to say we aren't keeping busy. In fact we are hard at work, creating and improving and testing loads and loads of things to get the next big patch out. And unfortunately the next patch is getting bigger and bigger all the time. @Ace Antilles has been super busy going over pretty much all existing OPTs, making sure the material files are up-to-date and correct, smoothing the models for better looks and making tons of other tweaks as well.

Some existing models have gotten some pretty substantial upgrades, while yet others have been completely redone plus a few new ones are in the works as well. @blue_max and @JeremyaFr have been busy doing their magic enhancing overall visual fidelity and gameplay features and a complete rework of a as of yet fairly untouched area of the game is also being done right now.

Some of the new features have been teased before and we don't want to spoil too much, but @Vince T agreed to give you one sneak-peak at two of the newest additions that will hopefully be included in the next patch once it's ready:



The next patch is going to be huge, not only in content but there's also a lot of other stuff that should make everything a lot better going forward.


Head over to the forum to discuss!

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Happy Holidays everyone! Posted by Forceflow

We all wish you happy holidays and hope you are all doing fine! It's been an incredible year for the XWAU and even though we had to push back the next all in one patch yet another year we hope we still provided plenty of new goodies for you to play with!
For all your seasons greetings head over here

Bugfix for Update 6
Note that we release a small bugfix update for patch 6, more details can be found here and the fix itself is available on the downloads page

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

XWAU 2020 Mega Patch Update 6 is out now! Posted by Forceflow


Brand new versions of the Preybird Fighter, Buoys, Hangar Sounds, Pilots, multiple fixes and updates and more!

This Update is NOT yet compatible for use with the TFTC. That will come later after testing is complete.

There's always a lot going on in the XWAU. This release sees several new items but also a lot of improvements to the game.
In particular a massive improvement to mission loading times and when entering/exiting the hangar!
That coupled with many existing ships getting updated versions, mission fixes and more to keep you entertained!

Big thank you to all the testers that have helped me with this release. As well as our regular geniuses for making it all work.
Plus of course the hard work that all the XWAU creators have put in to bring you all new toys to enjoy.

Read all the details here

Friday, June 9, 2023