I'm not sure how TIE Fighter's mechanics would translate to modern sensibilities, and I say this as someone who loved the LucasArts games (at least part of the reason I'm a graphics programmer today!) and currently has, well, a not-insubstantial investment in flight simulation hardware for modern titles like DCS/Falcon BMS/various IL-2 things.
House of the Dying Sun (https://store.steampowered.com/app/283160/House_of_the_Dying...) might be the closest thing going I'm aware of on the current market, as an arcade space fighter game in VR. Doesn't have the same theming, but it's at least space fighters doing space fighter things in space!
For me, the question of how you'd do a modern TIE Fighter remake becomes "how do you make assumptions about how space combat works in your game-universe that line up with the Star Wars films, and also lead to fun gameplay?" Since the space combat from Star Wars (at least ANH) was basically "Dambusters, in space!" you can draw lots of inspiration from World War 2-era aviation and combat. However, given an environment where gravity doesn't play and everything has ridiculous thrust-to-mass ratios, you lose some of the interesting bits re: altitude/energy trades and everything just turns into a "Pull as hard as you can" circle fight in the within-visual-range (WVR) / basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) space, which is where most of the iconic Star Wars dogfights-in-space happen. Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat isn't really a thing in Star Wars, because Rule of Cool indicates that dogfights are cooler than slinging missiles at each other based on sensors. In the films, the writers/VFX people created the scenes they wanted by creative fiat -- in a game you need the mechanics to drive to the experience you want, and that's a challenge given Star Wars' apparent assumptions about how space combat works.
Of course there's all sorts of interesting assumptions you could make instead, but then you're just making a space arcade-sim game, not a Star Wars game.
Nope, I've clearly never thought about this. At all. Clearly.
Thanks for bringing some of those non-existant thoughts to the surface!
I used to imagine how to improve game play in the X-wing series, but not really outside the existing mechanics (just tweaking max speed, weapons load, or shielding). I have such fond memories. I started out in web programming largely to the web community around the game.
The Mighty Eighth reminds me of a take on Star Wars space combat game play that I wished was explored more, like the gunner role in a Y-wing, or what it's like to be the crew a Corellian Corvette taking on other similarly sized ships.
Having different energy retention and ‘flight envelope’ would at least let you make distinguishable ships to fly around. Couple that with the ship power management, stuff like shielding and so on could end up plenty complicated. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Allegiance are two games that did movie space combat really well. I’d love a more detailed model in a version of either of those games.
Allegiance! Now there's a name I haven't read in a long time. tried to get into that community around the time the first Free Allegiance release happened, but I didn't end up with the right combination of personality and time to get really involved, and even though I think the gameplay might be more my jam today, I think the community has largely dried up, and I don't have nearly the time I used to for gaming. (A few years later, I got DEEP into ArmA and DCS, which led my career into academic research connected to defense training and simulation.)
Incidentally, this is another reason to be excited about the second coming of Microprose -- I'm unclear on the exact relationship, but I believe I read that some of the same leadership responsible for TitanIM is associated with the new Microprose.
TitanIM is a defense simulation engine, using Outerra, which is a world-scale 3d+terrain engine. Tech demos of Outerra are around, and there's at least a few TitanIM videos floating around. I've been out of the sim/training niche for a couple of years, but I believe Titan is still being marketed as a competitor to Virtual Battle Space (VBS) which is the ArmA engine, but expanded and specialized for training, and sold into government with the associated contract support, etc.
I have no idea if this overlap in leadership means Microprose might have access to/be using the same tech stack as Titan for the new Microprose games, but if they are, it could be pretty darn cool.
It seems like space sim combat ... almost is too weird, or twitchy or something or other to actually enjoy. At least I've found the more sim like it gets when it comes to sort of dog fighting combat the more it just gets immediately disorienting / feels to the user very random.
House of the Dying Sun (https://store.steampowered.com/app/283160/House_of_the_Dying...) might be the closest thing going I'm aware of on the current market, as an arcade space fighter game in VR. Doesn't have the same theming, but it's at least space fighters doing space fighter things in space!
For me, the question of how you'd do a modern TIE Fighter remake becomes "how do you make assumptions about how space combat works in your game-universe that line up with the Star Wars films, and also lead to fun gameplay?" Since the space combat from Star Wars (at least ANH) was basically "Dambusters, in space!" you can draw lots of inspiration from World War 2-era aviation and combat. However, given an environment where gravity doesn't play and everything has ridiculous thrust-to-mass ratios, you lose some of the interesting bits re: altitude/energy trades and everything just turns into a "Pull as hard as you can" circle fight in the within-visual-range (WVR) / basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) space, which is where most of the iconic Star Wars dogfights-in-space happen. Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat isn't really a thing in Star Wars, because Rule of Cool indicates that dogfights are cooler than slinging missiles at each other based on sensors. In the films, the writers/VFX people created the scenes they wanted by creative fiat -- in a game you need the mechanics to drive to the experience you want, and that's a challenge given Star Wars' apparent assumptions about how space combat works.
Of course there's all sorts of interesting assumptions you could make instead, but then you're just making a space arcade-sim game, not a Star Wars game.
Nope, I've clearly never thought about this. At all. Clearly.