First post, by Chris Pickett
Hi,
Before anyone reads this ... I think the file I have is the TIE Fighter Collector's CD, with an executable named TIE.exe -- and from
http://www.minos.net/~sco/guide/tie-tech.html#xp
it seems that the X-Wing Collector's Edition with an executable named TIE95.exe is the better product. Not sure if it makes a difference to getting VESA support working though (my primary problem), if someone has that version and could let me know. There's so many different X-Wing / Tie Fighter packages / box sets / extensions out there, it's really hard to determine what people are talking about.
My current system:
Motherboard - IBM Thinkpad A20p 26296VU
Intel Pentium III 750 MHz
384Mb RAM
ATI Mobility Rage 128 Pro (or some similar combination of those tokens) - 16Mb
Crystal SoundFusion sound card (generic laptop crap)
W2K SP3 with all pre-SP4 fixes
Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Power -- an AMAZING Gamepad!!! In case you need a new one.
I searched all the threads with either "tie fighter" or "x-wing" in them, and made some progress towards my ultimate goal: getting the TIE Fighter Collector's CD Edition to work in W2K with sound and VESA
support.
I thought it would be good to have a detailed walkthrough on how to
get TIE Fighter working, since it's such a great game and since
VDMSound is such a nice program. That's why a started a separate
thread -- to consolidate all the current info in one place.
So far, this walkthrough is incomplete, feel free to edit this post or
whatever. It also shows you exactly what I did and should help you to
exactly reproduce my current problem. Unfortunately, I got tired
towards the end of writing this, so it might not be so detailed at the
end. That can always be fixed.
I'm assuming you know how to use Google for something so easy to find
that it doesn't need it's own link.
1. Get or make a Tie Fighter CD.
You can find the Tie Fighter CD on kazaa pretty easily (it's about 260
megs); that's what I'm using because although I can buy the
collector's edition off somebody, I want it to work first (otherwise, what's the point?). If you
already own it, you're done.
Once you have the executable, extract it into a directory on your
harddrive. Use WinISO or some other tool to compile the files into an ISO
image (you can probably do this with just about any burner app in fact, I
just like WinISO). I named the volume TIEFIGHTER and it worked, not sure about
other names (depends on copy protection actually used).
Now, you can burn the ISO to a CD, but if you want better / less noisy
performance, use Daemon-Tools to mount the image. Either way, you're
now ready to install Tie Fighter.
2. Install Tie Fighter.
Put the CD in either in real life or with Daemon-Tools, and the
autorun installer should start. Use the maximum install (90 Mb) and
choose C:\TIECD (the default) as the installation directory. If you
choose another drive, you'll run into problems -- even copying the
TIE.CD file from C:\ to the root of whatever partition you install to
won't help (at least when I tried). Another directory is probably
fine on C:\ as well.
Don't worry about the sound card options for now, just quit after the
installation.
3. Update Tie Fighter.
LucasArts has a couple of updates available on their website.
http://support.lucasarts.com/patches/tie.htm
ftp://ftp.lucasarts.com/patches/pc/tiecdjoy.exe
ftp://ftp.lucasarts.com/patches/pc/tiesnd.exe
Save these into C:\TIECD and run them from there using the command
prompt or Explorer. WinZip will prompt you to unzip into the current
directory ... just hit OK.
I'm not sure if these patches make a difference, but I always try to
apply as many patches as possible because it's rare for something
*not* to work after an upgrade.
4. Install VDMSound + updates.
Refer to the directions in this post:
a) install VDMSound 2.0.4 using the installer. choose 8 character
directory names with no spaces on C: for the install directory.
b) unzip vdms_update.zip, and copy the update files into the
VDMSound directory.
c) replace the launchpad DLL with version 1.0.0.9d. Uninstall
LaunchPad if you already have it, and reinstall.
Just look for vdms_update.zip posted lower down. However, I don't
think this zip includes the latest launchpad (1.0.0.9d) so you'll have
to get that from the top of the thread.
By the way ... are you guys making an updated installer? Also, why
not include LaunchPad in the installer? Off topic, I know. I think
it would be really helpful if all updates were released on SourceForge
as soon as they were available ... generally, people assume that a
project's "files" page has the latest and greatest, even if unstable.
It took me quite a bit of work to find all the updates and apply the patches.
5. Configure TIE Fighter.
Go into a command prompt and run dosdrv.exe or use LaunchPad -
whatever - and then run C:\TIECD\INSTALL.EXE. Go into the advanced
sound configuration menu and select General Midi for the music and
SB16 for the sound (choose default settings). Test it out -- you
should hear something. Now if you run the game, you should hear great
sound and be able to use your joystick too. I read in one of the
forums and on several other websites that the CD version requires a
joystick, so you're probably out of luck if you don't have one at
all. See 7e) below for a possible way to get your joystick
recognized, but I don't think this is necessary with VDMSound.
6. MY TWO BIG PROBLEMS:
a) I can't get VESA support working. I tried NOLFB.zip, enabling VESA
support from LaunchPad, and using UNIVBE that comes with Tie Fighter.
Nothing worked. If I choose the 640x480 resolution in the game, I get
a scrambled mess when I enter a flight scenario.
Note: if you encounter this problem, hit Q and then press spacebar (at
least in the training missions) to leave the mission. Then press ESC
to change the game options to use 320x240. If you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, you'll
probably end up having to reboot.
b) I can't get Tie Fighter to recognize the second stick on my
gamepad, and so I have to program the throttle buttons manually. This
isn't actually such a big problem, but it's still annoying. Is it a
problem with VDMSound? Are there other games that require 4 joystick
axes I can test this with? How many axes does VDMSound actually
support? I know SoundFX supports 4, but it costs $$$. I tried using the different options from LaunchPad, but I get errors in "joy3.map" when I select single joystick with 4 axes. This can be fixed (sort of) by replacing the offending "T" in joy3.map with a "Z". A simple typo I suppose.
I find that if I turn *off* the analog sticks and just use the D-pad, the game runs at perfect speed (there is a little button on my joystick just like there is on the psx dual shock controller to switch from analog to digital control and back), but if not, it is quite slow. Has anybody else noticed that analog joysticks slow down emulation but digital ones do not? I suspect that this is not a problem specific to TIE Fighter, I just don't have any other games right now to test it on.
7. Other things I played around with:
a) act26.exe, available from microsoft
-- interestingly, there is an entry in the database for
x-wing alliance, and apparently tie fighter CD uses the same graphics
engine. anybody able to do anything with this information? there's
also qfixapp.exe included with it, but I don't know what settings to
apply (see section e) below.
b) There are suggestions on getting X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter to work at:
http://www.imperialcommand.net/window1.htm
but when I try adding the "ishost" command after TIE.exe at a command
prompt, it doesn't make a difference. And I cannot run the other
executables. I think that fix is only for XvT (seems like it's a
multiplayer thing specifying that this instance is the host).
c) a guest called Rela said at:
showthread.php?threadid=81&highlight=tie+fighter
that they were able to get Tie Fighter to work with VESA support by
starting it from a full screen prompt, but that didn't work for me.
I'm having the same problem that swaaye was (but he was actually
having two problems, one sound, one VESA).
I tried the ALT-ENTER trick, but I still couldn't make it work.
d) Squish said at:
showthread.php?threadid=1089&highlight=tie+fighter
that he got TF to work after either moving TIE.CD to another drive or
reinstalling to C:\TIECD (never specified), but it was unclear whether
or not he got VESA support to work. My guess is not.
Also mentioned in this thread is NOLFB.zip from Ken Silverman's
website ... I got that, tried loading it after dosdrv.exe and before
tie.exe, but I still couldn't get VESA mode to work.
e) finally, at Totally Games, there's a Tie Fighter CD thread that
says it won't work with VESA support at all (yet I refuse to believe
this ... there must be _some_ way ...)
http://pub30.ezboard.com/fofficialtotallygame … picID=103.topic
However, they do give suggestions as to how to get the Joystick
recognized. Unfortunately, I think that VDMSound already provides
this recognition, and the suggested fix there actually makes the
problem worse for me (the music and game are slowed down). So I don't
recommend using QFixApp as they suggest in that thread, but you can
try it if you like.
One final thing you can try, if you want to run QFixApp but then use
VDMSound's dosdrv.exe, is to run QFixApp with the fixes you want on
CMD.exe (preferably a copy so you can make permanent changes). Then
any commands you execute from that prompt will have the fixes. This
was sort of addressed in:
showthread.php?threadid=204&highlight=tie+fighter
when discussing how to use programs that target an executable and then
run VDMSound. Incidentally, my Thustmaster ThrustMapper app that I
use to remap buttons is similar to the WingMan Profiler but I can get
it to work with VDMSound without any problem at all simply by pointing
it to the .vlp shortcut.
===================================
Anyway, by now you should have a pretty good idea of everything I've
tried. I cannot get VESA support to work (and I know it's worth the
result from all the descriptions I've read), and I can't get Tie
Fighter to recognize my second control stick (that I want to be the
throttle). However, the second problem is really minor because I can
program the buttons to get the same result. The Thrustmaster programming software (called Thrustmapper) is really great!
Hope you don't mind my long post ... hopefully I'll save a bunch of
time for somebody else trying to get Tie Fighter to work.
Cheers,
Chris Pickett
chris.pickett@NOSPAM.mail.mcgill.ca (remove the "NOSPAM.")
P.S. Please contribute any suggestions to get VESA support working!!! Thanks!
