24.12.2022

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone Posted by Forceflow
Hi folks,

it's been a while since you last heard from us but rest assured we still aren't dead ;) There has been plenty going on behind the scenes and it's more of an issue of too much being changed so that too much needs to be redone. There is so much work going on into the backend with new features and bugfixes that things just kind of ran away from us in terms of a XWAU 2022 release. There also has been a lot of real life happening for some which always means stuff gets delayed. But hopefully the worst of that is over and we are confident that the next big patch will be coming in 2023 which should include plenty of new cool stuff, some small, some big some potentially huge.

In the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year.


You can leave your season's greetings here

28.08.2022

TFTC 1.3 is available Posted by Forceflow
Image

Just a small heads-up for all in case you missed it:

It's finally here, TFTC v1.3 has been released! Please go to our ModDB page to download. You can view the changelog from the patch-notes channel or from our new website under the Changelog section. You should be able to install v1.3 from any version of XWAU or TFTC.

You can find more detailed information here

You can discuss this great news here or head over to the TFTC forum section as well.

29.07.2022

Some eye candy news Posted by Forceflow
Hi folks,



I know it's been a small while since we had any news, but don't worry everybody is hard at work and there's loads of incredible new stuff getting ready. To tide everyone over and thanks to @JeremyaFrs cool toys I was finally able to properly recreate the sFoil action on some of the ships. Since I also have some more graphics power available for me I took this opportunity to re-render some of the comparison videos. The new version should loop better, is rendered at 1080p and is overall just better setup. Some now also include animations showing of said sFoils. Here are some small previews:









Each video is linked to the actual showcase page where you can find the full renders. (Which are also much longer and sport variations and flight-group colors where applicable) I know it's not a shiny new toy for you to play with, but I hope you still enjoy the eye candy in the meantime.

Any comments are appreciated here

23.06.2022

XWAU 2020 Mega Patch Update 5.5 Posted by Forceflow
Image

XWAU 2020 Mega Patch Update 5.5 is out now!

Warning, this Update is NOT compatible with the current version of TFTC!
An update of the TFTC that will incorporate patch 5.5 is in the works but will take a bit longer. If you want to keep playing TFTC while still checking out Patch 5.5 you will nee to make a copy of your XWA installation folder and switch between the two.

Brand new versions of the A-wing, TIE Advanced x1, Escort Transport, X-wing changes, TIE improvements, Effects, Updates and more!


We hadn't planned to release a new update for a while but the team have made massive improvements in recent months!

Ideally we wanted to do more to celebrate Star Wars Day but better late than never.

So Ace Antilles has been working extremely hard to compile this Update for your enjoyment over the summer months.

There may not be another patch for a while but there's more than enough in this one to keep you busy.

The team have been working very hard on a lot of these new ships for some time now so we are delighted to let you pilots have fun.

Testing has been done on this release but not for as long as we would like. Please post if you find any bugs connected to this release.

This release is a little different due to time restraints. You need to have the Update 5 installed before this 5.5.

For more details please see the Forum

18.06.2022

Update 5.5 is coming... Posted by Forceflow
Hey folks!

The team is working very hard behind the scenes to bring you another update. Sadly it's still not the big 2022, but with so many new features and abilities that were made available recently that one is just too much work to get it out any time soon. But since there have been some cool new ships done and we also have some major improvements with the hooks and DDRaw to offer we wanted to make a smaller patch after all.

It's still a bit off but hopefully you'll be able to enjoy it very soon! To tide you over in the meantime a small teaser for you to enjoy:

(backdrop provided by ilios)

There's also been some smaller improvements I made to the page. Little bit of an Easter-egg including some new animations I made. Head over to the Showcase page and have a look around ;)

Discuss this news here

04.05.2022

May the 4th be with you Posted by Forceflow
I hope you are all doing great and enjoy this years Star Wars day. We don't have much to offer over here, but DTM made a small BETA installer so that you can test out his newest TIEs which all got a nice new polish. There's also the newest BETA version off DDraw from blue_max included which should offer much better performance!

You can find the BETA installer in the Downloads page under Beta Versions. (Called XWAU 2022 5.1 BETA)



The team is very hard at work behind the scenes and there are a lot of new things to come, though with the current installer being very complicated to update the next real update will be a full blown new install again. Combine this with all the new options we just recently got means however that you'll have to be patient until the next real Upgrade will be available.

I know waiting sucks, so here's a small teaser to show you that waiting is absolutely worth your time:





All praise can be sent here

08.03.2022

Glory to Heroes Posted by Forceflow
Glory to Heroes

24.01.2022

PREVIEW: Effects ddraw 2.0 with enhanced GPU support Posted by Forceflow
See the great news from @blue_max about his new DDraw implementation!

Thanks to @JeremyaFr we now have an experimental set of hooks that allows us to offload most of the 3D work from the CPU to the GPU. This means that almost all the 3D computations are now performed in parallel -- with a corresponding increase in performance.

Please, bear in mind that this version is still experimental: you're likely to see artifacts and there's no VR support yet. However, I think it's relatively stable and the increase in performance is substantial, so I'd like to share this preview with the community.

But first, you'll need to do some setup. In DDraw.cfg, you'll need to add the following:

; D3dRendererHookEnabled = 0 (no) or 1 (yes)
D3dRendererHookEnabled = 1

In hooks.ini, make sure you set IsHookD3DEnabled to 0:
[hook_d3d]
IsHookD3DEnabled = 0

Now, rename your existing ddraw.dll to ddraw.old, and download the new version from the forum post linked below. (The very first post should always have the latest version available)

If you'd like to revert the changes, rename ddraw.dll to ddraw.new and then rename ddraw.old to ddraw.dll. You can't have two ddraw DLLs on the same directory (even if they have different names). So it's important that the extension is changed from DLL to something else.

Finally, feel free to report any artifacts or bugs you may experience. Again, VR is not supported yet, but the regular version should be relatively stable.

Discuss this incredible news here