The original X-Wing, TIE-Fighter and X-Wing: Alliance are some of my favourite Star Wars games. All three actually build a loose but cohesive story of the Galactic Civil War from a few years before the Battle of Yavin straight through to the Battle of Endor.
Even better, all of them have active modding communities and there are fantastic things coming our for all three.
I strongly recommend to anyone that likes the X-Wing series to check out the following links:
X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project
https://youtu.be/NtHGgAs33Iw
This has been an ongoing effort to improve the graphics of 1999’s XWA. Over the last year it seems that they have finally reverse-engineered the engine and have added new shaders, bloom, high-resolution backgrounds, TrackIR/VR support, in addition to the new high polygon 3D models and high-resolution textures. All now bumdled into a single installer “XWAUpgrade 2020 Patch.” From what I gather on the forums, they’re working to add multi-threading support to the engine, which will remove the biggest bottleneck in the engine (dependant on high-speed single CPU thread) and allow for smooth framerate during massive engagements.
TIE-Fighter Total Conversion
https://youtu.be/d8EbwANhJDQ
Built on the upgraded XWA engine using the XWAU project resources, requires the TIE-Fighter CE disk to play; they’ve completely rebuilt the campaign, rescored the dynamic soundtrack and redone the voice overs.
X-Wing Virtual Machine
https://youtu.be/IiOhc_DPQNY
Another “remaster” - this is a full port of the original X-Wing (94 CE) in the Unity engine. New 3d models, textures, graphics, they are remixing and cleaning up the sounds, voice over and soundtrack. Requires the original game to play as it will use of the original mission assets, including the expansion, for a full carrier mode.
Fate of the Galaxy
https://youtu.be/KNUgfPwoskk
Full Star Wars game based on the open-source FreeSpace2 engine, itself having been constantly upgraded and expanded since it became open in 2000. New original score, voice overs, full campaign mode with an original story, gorgeous graphics, multiple ships for both sides.
I understand XWVM and FotG are trying to not to gather too much attention prior to release after the Disney/EA issued the Cease&Desist to the KotOR remaster mod. All have been in development for years now and should be released or near release later this year or early 2022, XWAU is already complete and playable, and still being improved.
I plan to play all of them in a chronological order when released and I am really hyped. Hope this might give some smiles to those of you who have fond memories of the series but you haven’t played them in a while. They are all up to modern space sims graphics quality now.