Original X-Wing engine rebuilt project

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Re: Original X-Wing engine rebuilt project

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Post by K-j » Tue Sep 06, 2016 11:15 am

However you do it, it's worth doing, I'm sure it will be great in the end.

Have you guys thought about reanimating cutscenes or anything, maybe with the new game engine? Those could always chop and change depending on how fast people's computers were back then. They seem to load too quickly now though on modern machines, even the opening Main Title gets cut off abruptly and jumps to the next scene. Or maybe just make sure everything plays in sync and smoothly keeping the old stuff?

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Post by azrapse » Mon Oct 03, 2016 6:40 am

K-j wrote:However you do it, it's worth doing, I'm sure it will be great in the end.

Have you guys thought about reanimating cutscenes or anything, maybe with the new game engine? Those could always chop and change depending on how fast people's computers were back then. They seem to load too quickly now though on modern machines, even the opening Main Title gets cut off abruptly and jumps to the next scene. Or maybe just make sure everything plays in sync and smoothly keeping the old stuff?
Believe it or not, I have been coming to the forum to check for replies almost every day and never noticed there was a second page, so I have been missing your last post for almost a month!

About the cutscenes, we have had some discussion about them. But nothing really planned.
We are focusing on having a demo done, with just one mission, so most of the cutscenes don't really matter for now.

However, just for the fun of considering future plans, we have discussed whether we should rebuild the cutscene playing system to accurately replay the original cutscenes or not.
There are different opinions, but mine is that the original cutscenes are 320x200, 4:3 aspect ratio, while the rest of the remake runs at whatever resolution and aspect ration the user has, usually 1920x1080, 16:9. Playing the original cutscenes would involve either stretching the originals or at least rescaling them up. Both would look really badly next to the remade models and UI, so I don't know if it is worth the effort.

There are some cutscenes that we could include in the demo. In particular the game intro (Battle of Turkana), the Y-Wing taking off and the Y-Wing landing.
I really think that with some effort we could redo those cutscenes in the game engine and have much better results. They involve mostly spaceships and lasers. There are some humanoid characters involved, and that would be the biggest challenge. However, in the original, these characters barely moved at all or had any complex animations.
If I remember well, the game intro has two imperial officers standing and talking (mostly a rip off of a scene in Empire Strikes Back when the Avenger is detecting rebel transports taking off Hoth). Then, it has Ackbar (or another Mon Calamarian; was Ackbar with the Alliance back then?) talking from his control chair.
The rest are spaceships dogfighting and voice overs. The dogfight we could redo with our models, and the voice overs we could take from the original sound files.

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Post by azrapse » Tue Oct 04, 2016 5:00 am

Latest screenshot:
  • 3D, animated, backdrops
  • Mission goal tracker
  • Throttle instrument
Screenshot

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Post by Marcos_Edson » Wed Oct 05, 2016 3:46 am

Nice! :)
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Post by thick » Thu Oct 06, 2016 3:14 pm

This is really great, awesome work! Looking forward to see where it goes.

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Post by azrapse » Mon Oct 10, 2016 6:09 am

I need some help figuring out something, and I can't really find the answer myself anywhere. But people here is usually well versed on all the intricacies of the game series.

I am currently programming the capital ships' laser weapons. I have noticed that these weapons appear in two different sorts: turbolasers and superlasers.
For example, the Nebulon-B Frigate has 4 rotating turrets with superlasers, and 4 fixed guns with turbolasers.
My question is, what is the difference between "turbolaser" and "superlaser" in the game?
It is obvious that the term superlaser isn't matching the Star Wars cannon term, that referred to the Death Star's superlaser weapon, able to blow up planets.

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Post by K-j » Mon Oct 10, 2016 2:54 pm

I think the correct terms should be laser cannon which are the standard ship mounted lasers, and turbolaser which is an immensely scaled up version of the laser cannon. Confusingly those in-game terms you mention there could quite easily be different, with 'superlaser' being the more powerful of the two.

I found this link, for another game mod as it goes, which describes where lasers and turbolasers are positioned on a Nebulon-B, hopefully it will help somewhat:

http://firststrikemod.wikia.com/wiki/Ne ... rt_Frigate

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Post by azrapse » Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:31 pm

Yes. Laser and turbolaser seem to be the canon terms for these weapons.
Still, I am not sure of what they mean in game terms.
Attached is a screenshot of the frigate model open in OPTech.

The little pyramid-like cannons are marked as turbolaser hardpoints, while the turret cannons are marked as superlaser.
What is the difference in game?
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Post by K-j » Mon Oct 10, 2016 3:58 pm

Or this link puts things more simply: http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/N ... igate.html

12 Taim & Bak XI 7 Turbolasers (6 Forward, 3 Left, 3 Right)
[With computer assisted targeting]

12 Borstel RH8 Laser Cannons (6 Forward, 2 Left, 2 Right, 2 Aft)

RH8 Lasers apparently primarily being anti-starfighter weaponary. So in game I assume the main difference is the standard lasers should be much weaker than the more powerful superlaser or turbolaser, whichever way round they term it.

But from that same second link, they have a different weapon array for the Rebel Medical Frigate version!:

6 Taim & Bak XI 7 Turbolasers (2 Forward, 2 Left 2 Right)

8 Borstel RH8 Laser Cannons (2 Forward, 2 Left, 2 Right, 2 Aft)

(And now I've given myself a headache). ;)

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Post by Vince T » Wed Oct 12, 2016 11:44 pm

Well in the X-Wing Engine, at least as of XWA, the "SuperXYLaser" is the equivalent to your average heavy starship turbolaser. THe SSD, if I recall right, is littered with these, while smaller ships usually carry a selection of Turbo and Super lasers.

The use of normal and turbo lasers varies across many ships of all classes. For example The X-wing uses TurboRebelLasers, whereas A-Wing carries normal ones. Going further, turbo and Super lasers are further devided into several levels of power as becomes visible through MXvTEd or BinHexEdit.

Hope that was helpful in any way :D
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Post by azrapse » Thu Oct 13, 2016 11:04 am

General_Trageton wrote:Well in the X-Wing Engine, at least as of XWA, the "SuperXYLaser" is the equivalent to your average heavy starship turbolaser. THe SSD, if I recall right, is littered with these, while smaller ships usually carry a selection of Turbo and Super lasers.

The use of normal and turbo lasers varies across many ships of all classes. For example The X-wing uses TurboRebelLasers, whereas A-Wing carries normal ones. Going further, turbo and Super lasers are further devided into several levels of power as becomes visible through MXvTEd or BinHexEdit.
Hi.
From what I can see laser weapon hardpoints can be of 3 different types:
{Faction}Laser
Turbo{Faction}Laser
Super{Faction}Laser

Where {Faction} is either "Rebel" or "Empire" and it just determines the color of the laser bolt.

The projectiles shot come in two varieties for each of these weapons: Normal or Weak, depending on whether the laser accumulators were overcharged or undercharged. As far as I know, this only applies to the player ships. AI ships always shoot Normal power lasers.

These weapons have barely nothing to do with their namesakes in the Star Wars lore. That is why encyclopedic listings of weapons from the ship guides are of little use to us. The developers of the X-Wing series gave different meanings to these weapon names. And those are why I am trying to figure out.

Also, as far as I know, fighters use the "{Faction}Laser" type for their main cannons. I didn't know that X-wings had turbolasers in game. I have not checked it, but I trust your word.
I think the turrets on Assault Shuttles and Assault trans
That leaves us with what do Turbo{Faction}Laser and Super{Faction}Laser do different on starships.
From checking the damage outputs, it seems that all these lasers deal exactly the same damage in their Normal power variety: 500 hp.
Are my sources wrong?

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Post by Vince T » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:05 pm

I'm not sure if they do but at least for player ships I'd assume so. For more detailed information on the various projectiles you could take a look at the weapons setup in MXvTEd, there you'll find the various variants of the projectiles, their strengths and their speed. Here's a quick screenshot of what I mean:

This is how a weapon setup looks on a VSD (just an example)
mxvted1.jpg
These are shots of the weapons editor where you can see the parameters of all the various projectiles.
mxvted2.jpg
mxvted3.jpg
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Post by azrapse » Fri Oct 14, 2016 5:13 am

General_Trageton wrote:I'm not sure if they do but at least for player ships I'd assume so. For more detailed information on the various projectiles you could take a look at the weapons setup in MXvTEd, there you'll find the various variants of the projectiles, their strengths and their speed. Here's a quick screenshot of what I mean:
Thanks! That is a very informative post.
Clearly, the weapon subsystem became much more complex in the later games in the series, because it doesn't seem to be as complete and detailed in the original X-Wing. I need to study this closer. Even if I end not implementing all of this, it is good to keep it in mind to make the code a little bit more "future proof".

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Post by azrapse » Wed Oct 19, 2016 12:42 pm

Some screenshots.

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Post by Freebeard » Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:47 am

This makes me rather giddy. I see a ton of potential!

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Post by Fek'LeyrTarg » Thu Oct 20, 2016 1:23 pm

Freebeard wrote:This makes me rather giddy. I see a ton of potential!
And so do I. :)

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Post by K-j » Thu Oct 20, 2016 3:57 pm

Nice to see dynamic lighting in a proper 3D cockpit! I like the actual craft shapes in the forward and rear sensors rather than just dots (for the low res originals).

Forgive the only negativity so far, but I still don't get the addition of large CRT screens in cockpit for game messages to be displayed in world (mission objectives, crafted destroyed etc.). They don't really need to be added like that? Game messages could easily function just as well as the standard HUD overlays rather than those bulky screen eyesores? Game messages aren't in-game universe, what made yous decide to add those large screens to display them? :?

Here's an image someone put together as to how they thought DICE (shudder) should have displayed their effort. A bit minimalist I know, but the screens could be made to function for a flight sim game, horizontal lights along the top made to activate like the laser firing/charging, original X-Wing game parts added (sensors, indicators):

http://i.imgur.com/StR0uiP.jpg

Just sayin'. ;)

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Post by azrapse » Thu Oct 20, 2016 5:55 pm

K-j wrote:Nice to see dynamic lighting in a proper 3D cockpit! I like the actual craft shapes in the forward and rear sensors rather than just dots (for the low res originals).

Forgive the only negativity so far, but I still don't get the addition of large CRT screens in cockpit for game messages to be displayed in world (mission objectives, crafted destroyed etc.). They don't really need to be added like that? Game messages could easily function just as well as the standard HUD overlays rather than those bulky screen eyesores? Game messages aren't in-game universe, what made yous decide to add those large screens to display them? :?

Here's an image someone put together as to how they thought DICE (shudder) should have displayed their effort. A bit minimalist I know, but the screens could be made to function for a flight sim game, horizontal lights along the top made to activate like the laser firing/charging, original X-Wing game parts added (sensors, indicators):

http://i.imgur.com/StR0uiP.jpg

Just sayin'. ;)
Glad that you liked the lighting effort. There is still many things to do. Among them, replacing that frigate model that is from XWAU with some made by ourselves, since we didn't get permission to use it. :/

About the information panels, please allow me to rebate you.

This is the original Y-wing cockpit in the movies:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/56 ... 91f002.jpg

And this is how it looked in the X-Wing game:
http://www.badphilosophy.com/gug/gug02/ywing_large.gif

I am pretty sure you can tell big differences between them. In particular, the huge monitor, two radar scopes, and several other instruments that serve a purpose in gameplay.

The picture you linked shows a 3D cockpit that mimics that of the movie. The main problem is that the movie cockpits weren't designed to make any sense. They were just stuff put around to fill up panels with details and look cool. Star Wars isn't realistic and their models and props don't need to make sense.
However, X-Wing was Star Wars combat "taken more seriously". It was even branded as a simulator. So they needed to give more verisimilitude to the instruments on the dashboard, and that is how we got that huge monitor, radar scopes, charge meters, etc, that we got in the original game.
XWVM tries to recreate X-Wing, the game, and not Star Wars, the movie, and of because of that it replicates the layout of the cockpit in the original games, perhaps taking advantage of the stuff time has given us in the past 25 years.

I'm sorry that you find the goal and message log screens eyesores. Probably we can improve them to make them look less bulky or better integrated with the rest of the dashboard. Even when really, every intrument is kind of bulky in a Y-Wing.

You say that game messages aren't in-game universe. Yes, they are. As well as the map, the damage assessment screen, and other "screens". You could always look at these screens during the game, and they appeared enclosed in 2D art depicting an instrument somewhere in the cockpit, or in a datapad, at least.
In fact, text messages were there in movie universe. In Episode I, R2-D2 sends a text message to Anakin on the N-1 Naboo Fighter during the final battle, telling him not to go to the battle. The message appears in one monitor.
In Episode V and VI, again R2-D2 sends a text message to Luke before they go to Dagobah. You can see also that the message appears in a monitor on one side of the dashboard.

I wouldn't like to have a cockpit that is movie-faithful, but useless for the gameplay. Again, this is a game and a simulator. The cockpit needs to serve a purpose other than being in the middle. The XWA cockpits served no purpose whatsoever. There was zero incentive to play without the pressing the [.] key 1 second after starting the mission.
Not to have any of the XWA "floating" HUD panels was one of the main goals from the beginning. Not only they detract from the immersion factor. They are also problematic if you want to do anything remotely VR-related with the game.
HUD panels on top of a useless (even if good looking) cockpit, are a big no no.
I understand why Totally Games went with the useless 3D cockpits and HUD panels. It was the year 2000 and graphic cards weren't really spectacular back then. Resolutions needed to stay within reason. Rendering 3D text on a small 3D instrument at a 800x600 resolution with the 3D technology of 2000 would have ended with a blurry unreadable pixelated mess.
Today we don't have that problem, and I believe it would be a mistake to do that again. Back then, it was a technological compromise. Today, it would be just bad design.

When remaking X-Wing cockpits, you notice among the first things, that the original 2D art for the cockpits was meant for the 4:3 aspect ratio CRTs from the 80s and early 90s. You get a lot of empty space to the sides when you project that layout on a 16:9 monitor nowadays.
It would be absurd to leave the sides of the cockpit dashboard empty, while the middle of it is so cramped with instruments, so they became immediately good candidates to hold the extra information that couldn't fit on the dashboard in 1993. Namely, the message log, the map, the goal list, and the damage assesment.

From the screenshots, you see that the message log and goal list are there already, while the map and the damage assesment aren't. There is a reason why we prioritized those. Nevertheless, those monitors are supposed to cycle thru different "screens" of data with the use of some keys, in the same way that you could cycle the two lateral HUD panels in XWA to show different functions.

I hope I have being able to express the reasons why we made the decisions we made. We are still in the early stages of development and we can change our minds, of course. That is why we ask for suggestions and ideas, and your feedback is welcome. :^^:

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Post by Marcos_Edson » Fri Oct 21, 2016 2:56 am

That was a good read, azrapse, I like it. :)
Talking about "real" cockpits and game ones, an interesting piece of trivia is that in one of the Rebel Assault II game cutscenes, when Rookie One b-wing is going down, we can briefly see some elements that look like straight from the X-Wing games, like the multiple laser charge indicators... :)
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Post by azrapse » Fri Oct 21, 2016 5:04 am

Marcos_Edson wrote:That was a good read, azrapse, I like it. :)
Talking about "real" cockpits and game ones, an interesting piece of trivia is that in one of the Rebel Assault II game cutscenes, when Rookie One b-wing is going down, we can briefly see some elements that look like straight from the X-Wing games, like the multiple laser charge indicators... :)
Yes. It looks quite a lot like the one from X-Wing.
In the TIE Fighter short, even when it's not an official LFL product, you can clearly see that the cockpit follows the design established in the X-Wing game series, and not in the movies.
It's not hard to understand why:
While the movie cockpits were just an afterthought to fill up screen real estate with gadgets, the game cockpits have lots of time and thinking put onto their design to have something functional and believable.

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Post by Freebeard » Fri Oct 21, 2016 6:50 pm

Yeah, one of the things I dislike the most about XWAU's models are the Tie-Fighter cockpits. They tried to make them more "realistic" while not providing much in the way of functionality in trade for the amount of your view that is obstructed by the model. I just end up turning the cockpit off most of the time. Which isn't as immersive, but is at least playable.

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Post by K-j » Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:46 am

Hey azrapse, thanks for taking the time to express your thought process for this decision.

I know what you mean by the movie look and the sim games having to have more functional instruments for the game, and on that point I totally agree. But those 'so and so craft has docked/been destroyed/whatever' and such messages are game messages. When the spoken radio voice messages were introduced in later game versions, they are the way of communicating those types of messages in universe as they would be in film, otherwise those types of messages were always only shown along the bottom of the screen, out of the (uni)verse and as convenient game messages for the player:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xoBFPvIxcI8/maxresdefault.jpg

No difference between single or multiplayer, or the kind of messages you get in first person shooters to let the player know what's happening nowadays. Only usually these messages are displayed heads up/game, rather than having to have a screen built into the game universe to show them. It would be like placing a screen on the side of a gun in first person perspective to show who's been killed and what not, and another screen on the secondary arm to show mission objectives.

Even by the photo you shared of the Y-Wing cockpit made for the films, those large screens either side would still look out of place. An astromech droid's communication to it's pilot's translation on screen would be in verse character based, and not game messages.

Even for the old DOS games they could have had screens to show those messages, but that's just not the way its done. It's taking up too much of the movie look to show messages that are normally shown to the gamer, no the in verse character.

X-Wing Alliance went further and just made everything heads up (a shame, as the instrument way is much more immersive). But in mission goals they also displayed score and bonus, which is not in verse, and radio messages (in verse) appear written in thin air as they happen for the player, and are logged/written as HUD for player convenience to look back on:

http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/a/a/c/gfs_41569_2_1.jpg

'Canonically' radio messages don't appear written like any of that, and aesthetically it just doesn't look right.

That's it. If you're still not convinced I think I'll just leave you to it. :D ;)

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Post by azrapse » Wed Oct 26, 2016 8:23 am

I get your point: there are things that are only game related that wouldn't be shown on the actual ship if it were a real situation and not a game.
And you believe that game-only stuff should be presented on an abstract matter (like HUD overlays), while in-universe stuff could be presented on actual instruments. Right?

Well, it's not a matter of convincing each other. Once you mention the "and aesthetically it just doesn't look right" part of your post, it is clear that it's mainly a matter of tastes, since aesthetics isn't something that can be discussed in a objective matter. It's not math. What for someone looks cool, for someone else looks horrible.
You can convince someone when someone is wrong about something. But nobody is wrong about their tastes. They just happen to like what the like.

We could still keep on this discussion if you wanted. For example, I could say that the radar scopes are also something that belong entirely to the gameplay, and not something in-universe. How many times in the movies the pilots look around in the cockpit trying to find their enemies. Just like WWII pilots would do.
In the game, there is little incentive to do that, though. The radar scopes tell you all the time where are enemies, in a precise way.
"Careful, Red 5, you have an enemy on your tail!"
"Yes, I know. I have been seeing it on my rear scope for a while, and the 'being shot at' light is blinking."

Radio text messages wouldn't appear anywhere in-universe, unless in Star Wars there are some kind of automated modules that transcript everything said into the logs.
In TIE Fighter there was a screen with the radio message log. I am pretty sure it didn't appear in monitors on the cockpit because of technical reasons. There was simply not enough room on the dashboard to include them.
The text line below, where text messages used to appear in the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, are just something inherited from the game engine lineage. Look at the screenshot from Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
1455377176-c29dd8aba44aad3841bae9dfad011596[1].png
X-Wing DOS is Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe with polygonal models and a Star Wars skin on top. They just had reuse the message system because they didn't build the game engine from the ground up. They used one written in the mid 80s, with all its limitations.

Actually, they admitted they got a lot of inspiration from the Wing Commander series of games when making X-Wing. That series had no problems with showing communication options, radio messages and dialog on monitors to the sides of the dashboard.
a61e87c53a0bada3e876d39adc74a99a357b9203714979bf6f40c751d9a0e6ae_product_card_screenshot_600[1].jpg
When it is obvious that a pilot wouldn't select his radio responses from a menu on a screen, but actually speak them to the mic. Sometimes we just need to have some degree of suspension of disbelief in a game, when the results are more practical and easier to use than the realism-friendly approach.
It is not unheard of that message logs and communication are interacted with thru physical monitors on the cockpit even in recent games.
Please, have a look at Elite: Dangerous.
sddefault[1].jpg
With the difference that E:D has a postmodern holographic look it its monitors, while Star Wars and Wing Commander have a distinctive 70's and 80's look on theirs, they are basically the same thing. Physical screens placed on the dashboard (and not in some kind of HUD) that show communication options, as well as details that are entirely game related and not in-universe, like chat controls and message logs.

But let me finish saying that, regardless of whatever I have said above, if you don't like it, you don't like it. And whatever I say won't change your mind because it's not a matter reasoning, but a matter of taste.
Since you are likely not the only one that dislikes the lateral monitors (be it for aesthetics, be it for purism), your opinion is still quite valuable. I have absolutely no reasons not to make them optional.
We are, anyway, making many things configurable. From the input, to the laser speed. So why not making the presence of those monitors also configurable. I will add an option to the preferences panel where you can disable any or both of those monitors. You will still be able to see the message log, goal list, map and damage control panels on their own screens.
What about that? ;)
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Post by Vince T » Wed Oct 26, 2016 2:57 pm

OK before this escalates, we agree that everyone has his own particular taste.

Me, personally, I like the idea of messages showing up as part of the cockpit, as it adds a tad more immersion to the whole thing..
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Post by K-j » Mon Oct 31, 2016 4:57 pm

It's OK GEN Trageton, I can't see this escalating anywhere, it's all quite civilised compared to how 'discussions' on the internet can go!

I didn't mean aesthetically as in personal taste, more as in accordance with the 'verse' that has already been established. For instance whether on movie sets or all previous games released thus far, those screens are not present, so look unauthentic and out of place ("forgive the crudity of the model, it's not to scale"):
Falcon.jpg
X-Wing.jpg
Perhaps most significantly, from your own evidence, those messages are merely the left over game message system from a previously released game. Exactly. An old game message system. Not even STAR WARS related.
1279-secret-weapons-of-the-luftwaffe-dos-screenshot-in-gotha-229.gif
But still, I guess, like you said, you like them, or you don't.

So if you could make them optional... holy crap that would just be freakin' awesome. Any chance of making the option to have it just like the old games' message system? Or heads up like XWA... somehow... hmm... I don't know, I haven't thought through the aesthetics yet. ;) I think the old game option would be best, more familiar for players? A HUD option wouldn't necessarily need the XWA modular coloured background, could just pop up like the DICE (shudder) example shown (on the right of the second image).

Thinking of the radio messages, some years ago I saw some RTS game moving military units around on ground and air, and the guy giving the live demonstration onstage (some XBOX 360 event I think) was showing off the voice activated radio commands way of playing the game. I thought that would be incredible for the X-Wing series! Commanding wingman and stuff via your own voice through a mic. But I'm guessing as good as it could be, it's a huge step to implement something like that. A different ball game.
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