After Hours – X Wing

The documentation does not say how much memory is actually required, but with my fairly sparse setup with over 600K of base memory available, I had no problems. The game can use expanded memory for some features, so you will need to have both the extended memory manager and the expanded memory managers loaded these are the “HIMEM. SYS” and “EMM3856. SYS” lines in your CONFIG. SYS file. If this confuses you, wait until next month, when I will write about these settings in more detail and all will be revealed.

Games manufacturers seem to take two paths with written documentation you are either confronted by a flight manual slightly shorter than “War and Peace”, or you get a couple of cryptic pages. X Wing falls into the latter category. You are expected to enjoy “experiential learning” which is not my preference, so I will pass on some tips I gleaned from the game which may save you some time. Reading what documentation is available is highly recommended as most of the X Wing systems controls are covered, albeit briefly.

The game has three core segments: a learning maze to teach you basic controls and weapons systems, a set of six historical combat missions which teach you tactics, then the actual campaign, where a loss of life or liberty requires you to return to the start and requalify. I strongly suggest you take the game in this order. When taking the photographs for this article, I returned to an earlier exercise and was amazed at the amount I had learnt – what seemed impossible then was now a cinch. The learning path provided is both effective and necessary. Take some time to work out how the cockpit functions. There are three aircraft types to fly: the X Wing Space Superiority Fighter, the A Wing Fighter Interceptor and the Y Wing Fighter Bomber. I only flew the X Wing fighter except where a mission required otherwise, but the control systems for the three available craft are nearly identical, although the indicators are placed in different parts of the cockpit and the craft perform differently in terms of speed and turn rate.

Flight controls are unconventional but very effective. Since you are moving through space without gravity, the X Wing moves in a natural sense in pitch, but the nose yaws with side stick. These two controls, plus engine control, are quite sufficient to fly around space. Sometimes however you need to track a target, and to do this you roll the X Wing about its axis. Holding the top joystick button and using side stick rolls the universe about the X Wing’s longitudinal axis. While this sounds a bit bizarre, the controls quickly felt natural. You need to master this control setup to fly though the maze.

This first level of training is as complex and interesting as a full blown game would have been a couple of years ago. A string of platforms each with three gates is strung out like tiles in space. Your task is to pass through all gates in a given time. Missing a gate invokes a time penalty. Initially, I thought this task was impossible, but after some time experimenting with the pitch, yaw, roll and speed controls I managed to get through level 1.

The second level has a nasty surprise – there are target boxes for you to shoot, and it you don’t get them, they get you! Lasers first knock your shields down, then the hull, then blackout. At this stage you need to stop and think about how the X Wing works- the manual is no help at all in this regard, so I’ll pass on what I discovered.

Think of the X Wing as having some kind of power source with a maximum rate of energy production. This energy can be directed into three areas: engine, shields and laser power. There is a small set of bar indicators showing how the power is directed. Function keys F9 and F10 set laser and shield recharging rates respectively, while the “+” keys set the speed. If you take a laser or missile hit, you need to direct power to recharge the shields or the next hit is fatal. However, this action robs the lasers and engine of power, so you either run out of speed or firepower, or both. The maze quickly teaches you how to make the required resource balance.

I slugged away at the maze for several hours, but must admit to not being about to get more than 2/3 of the way though level three -and there are eight levels. I think you either have to have superhuman reactions or be 15 years old to complete this segment.

Next try historical combat. Waving the mouse at the doors in the spaceport makes them open with a very convincing hiss, then you enter to be briefed. You can select any of the missions in any order. The first couple are quite easy, but I have never managed to complete the destruction of the communication satellites protected by lasers in “vulnerable” mode – there is some trick I have not yet discovered.

In the historical combat, you need to be much more “tactical” because the Imperial spacecraft usually shoot your craft to bits before you complete the mission. After you drop out of hyperspace (with a wonderful depiction of the Starwars effects,) it pays to charge your shields to maximum. Then press “R” to target the nearest fighter and get stuck into the fight. As in any combat zone, it pays to keep the fighter moving around, if not you will very soon be one roasted, dead duck. It pays to “R” from time to time, as new fighters join the fray and you often find yourself being hit from behind while attaching a target in front the classic sandwich attack.

The targeting system is simple and brilliant. At eye level you have two circles – one for the front and one for the rear sectors. The spacecraft you have locked onto is bracketed and it only takes a moment to rotate the X Wing in the right direction to get the victim into your sights out in front of the lasers.

Destroying a Tie fighter is extraordinarily difficult. Shooting blowflies with a pistol is easy by comparison. The laser system has a lead predicting sight which turns from blue to green and peeps when it computes that you will hit a target travelling in a straight line. The problem is that the Tie fighters also know that it is sudden death to fly a steady course, and weave faster than the sight predicts. Somehow, lasers do not fly at the speed of light, and what you actually get is a standard gun lead prediction problem. Withpractice, patience and a lot of shots, you can hit the little beggars, and it gives great satisfaction to see them tumble as a wing falls off or when they blow to bits in a fireball.

Destroying larger craft requires a special technique. Using “W” to select a photon torpedo, you target the spaceship for at least six seconds. Initially the sight turns yellow as you lock-on, then red when it is time to fire. Missiles hit large ships from six kilometres and small ones from two and a half. Make sure they don’t have laser turrets, or you will be destroyed during the time it takes to fire the torpedo. A capital ship or a large cargo ship takes many hits to blow up. If you slow down, you can put a couple of torpedoes into the shields, then fire lasers into the hull. Watch the screen showing the locked target initially the status will change from “OK” to “Shields Down” to “Hull Damage”, then finally to “Target Destroyed”.

This process might take fifty laser shots so press F9 to get all the power going to the guns and keep pounding away. Of course, you need to time your arrival so the target is destroyed before you run into it. The programme keeps track of damage, so you can make a second pass if necessary.

If you get lost, press “M” and the game stops and is replaced with a map setting. Here you can pan and zoom to get a clear picture of where all the action is. Don’t relax though, as on return you are right at the point where you left the fight.

I would have liked some more information in the documentation on how to complete some of these missions. For example, in mission six, you have to protect a boarding party to allow them to capture critical documents. However, you are so busy staying alive that you don’t have time for fancy diversions to this ship or that. I managed to eliminate all the fighters on several occasions, only to sit there wondering how the mission should have been completed.

Having mastered all the historical combat missions, which I didn’t, you move to the campaign, where if you die you have to start again. The first mission is ridiculously easy in comparison with any of the historical missions. The next mission is nearly impossible. This is my main criticism with X Wing. A well crafted game has a gradient to the learning curve that is accessible. X Wing sets the gradient much too steeply to allow steady progression and a sense of achievement. I imagine the strategy is to avoid making the game too easy with the result that you pass all levels and get bored with it. However, it is just as unsatisfactory as finding levels totally inaccessible and having severe frustration set in as you get stuck on a level and cannot make any progress.

To compensate, there are some spectacular graphics and the sound is superb. Lasers blat, torpedoes whiz, strikes on the shield clang, doors hiss, the music is stimulating, the robots sound mechanical and R2D2 speaks in its familiar, charming way. Voices are very well done, with no hint of the digitisation that usually distorts accents. Darth Vader sent a shiver down my spine after I was captured on one mission and was presented with the floating dentist’s torture sphere.

Controls are very smooth with the scrolling allowing the rapid, fine tracking that is necessary to destroy the highly manoeuvrable Tie fighters. I did find that the location of the important power allocation controls which are critical to the game could have been better positioned. Commanche uses the “ZXCVBNM” keys for critical functions which are more accessible – this arrangement could have made the game easier to play under hectic battle conditions.

There are the usual views from every conceivable angle, but I did not use any of these, as the combination of the sensor, the cockpit view and the map was more than sufficient to find the targets. You cannot track a target from these views, and I suspect they are provided to match the competition rather than add to the game play.

There is complete control over the configuration of the game. Pressing “Escape” brings up a menu that allows you to set volume levels, allocate memory, make yourself invulnerable and so forth. The spaceport also has several interesting features such as film and technical rooms. Switching on a camera allows you to record your moments of glory or ignominy for later presentation to your admiring audience. You can learn a lot about the weapons of war in the technical room.

If you use the “invulnerable” setting, the whole nature of the game is changed. Instead of frantic changes to the shield and laser setting, you can send all the power to the lasers and sit back and relax while knocking down space ships like ducks on a pond. While the “shoot ’em up” approach may appeal to some, I think it trivialises the play, reducing the tactics to that of a simple arcade game. Now for scores:

X Wing is an impressive, entertaining game. There is considerable complexity that offers all the features necessary for the game to be entertaining in a way that is quite different from terrestrial flight simulators.

My only criticism is that the learning gradient is too steep and the written documentation too sparse. You can become frustrated by becoming stuck on a level and being unable to proceed. If that happens, my advice is to find one of the neighbourhood Luke Skywalkers and get some serious tuition!