Tweaking Settings

XWAU and TFTC feature a large number of settings that can be tweaked to tailor the TFTC experience to your liking. 

There are two Configurator tools located in the launcher menu under 'Configurators' - The Babu Frik Configurator and TFTC Configurator. This section will briefly go over what these two configurators can do.

Babu Frik Configurator Options

Let us go now through the different options available in Babu Frik.

Reset Game Configuration

This resets everything back to their Default settings.

Game Progress Backup

This will create a backup of your current Pilot file which contains your game progress. As per the warning, bear in mind that using it will overwrite any previous backups you’ve made. 

Special Effects Graphics Settings

This will let you modify some of the additional graphical options the XWAU mod has added over the years. There are two sub-menus here, one allows you to use a preset setting of graphics, while the 2nd allows you to enable or disable specific graphical options.

General Choices

Some additional gameplay choices are available here through several sub menus.

1: Hyperspace Effect – This changes the exit speeds of ships using hyperspace in-game, so they appear to ‘zip’ into combat more like they should as depicted in all other media as opposed to the vanilla slow game speeds. WARNING: This can affect gameplay balance as this affects exactly where ships will exit on the battlefield. This can alter certain mission scripting that depends on timing or positioning.

2: Joystick Emulation – This allows you to disable the Joystick and use a keyboard and mouse instead. However a better solution if you really want to use KB+M would be to visit this YT video which tutorializes how to get the best results from a KB+M setup: 

 3: Change the in-flight text resolution – This allows you to alter the resolution of the UI text on screen. This does not affect your actual inflight game resolution.

4: Change the in-flight Aspect Ratio – Allows you to adjust which aspect ratio you’re playing from.

If you have an ultra-widescreen monitor, you will need to adjust this manually via the file Hooks.ini located in the root folder of your game installation. If you find the section [hook_resolution] in the file, here you can adjust several values to suit your monitor needs. Bear in mind that ultra-widescreen – whilst it does work – this old game engine wasn’t designed with them in mind so ships and objects may not render at the extreme edges of your screen.

Dynamic Cockpit Choices

This section concentrates on your in-flight UI and cockpit options. There are three sub-sections here:

1: Enhanced HUD options – This adds additional UI features to the targeting reticule of your craft including shield, hull and system health bars, ship names and their distance to you. By default, this is enabled. You can also decide if you want the vanilla XWA HUD to be visible or not when you launch. By default this is disabled, but can be toggled ingame regardless by pressing the D key.

2: Inertia Effect – This changes whether the ingame flight yoke/joystick physically moves in tandem with your own actions. By default, this is enabled.

3: Wireframe View – This option changes whether a fully rendered ship or just its wireframe is rendered in your CMD window when targeting a craft or object. By default, this is enabled.

 VR / Head Tracking Options

Thanks to the wizards of XWAU, both it and TFTC are VR / Headtracking compatible. To enable VR, you will need to launch the Babu Frik Configurator from the game launcher and select Customize the Special Effects (twice). Then scroll down to the bottom until you see the Head Tracking options. We have a handy guide here to help you setup your VR hardware to work with XWAU/TFTC: 

If you still find yourself facing issues, please join our Discord Server and head over to the #vr-help section for assistance, the community will be happy to help try and resolve your problems! 

TFTC Configurator Options

Let us go now through the different options available for this tool.

Laser Options - (Classic Only)

TFTC Classic attempts to match as closely as possible the original laser behaviour of TIE Fighter. As such the laser speeds are notably slower than XWA or TFTC Reimagined. Previous versions until v1.4 had this faster speed but since 1.4, the OG speeds have been introduced. However if you simply can’t live with these OG speeds, you can instead select the faster XWA speeds. Be warned this may make the game harder. 

Laser/Ion Linking - (Classic Only)

 In the original TIE Fighter, you could not link your laser and ion systems together for extra firepower. By default this behaviour has been disabled also for TFTC Classic but if you really want that extra bit of DPS, then you can turn it back on. This may make the game a bit easier for you.

Projectile Limit Options - (Classic Only)

 In the original TIE Fighter, due to engine limitations, the game can only spawn a maximum of 32 projectiles, be it laser, ion or warhead. The player has their own separate spawn number, so this only affects AI craft. However this means that there is a hard limit to how much firepower is allowed on screen at any given moment. This ofc can have a notable impact on balance. TFTC Classic enforces the original 32 projectile limit, however we have also given you more options to play with if 32 is just too limiting and boring for you. Be warned this may make the notably game harder OR easier (as this can work both for and against you in gameplay).

Map Colour Options

 Traditionally in TIE Fighter, friendly forces are depicted as IFF Red and Rebel forces are IFF Green. This can mentally throw some people who would usually expect Red = Enemy and Green = Friendly as most games tend to lean towards. This option allows you to change the IFF system so that the colours are swapped so friendly Imperial forces are Green and Rebels are Red. This does however remove the colouring in the message log which will simply go all white. 

Mission Tutorial Options - (Classic Only)

 As the XWA engine has some advances or differences over TIE Fighter, the original tutorial missions do not quite convey some of the extra information that XWA has. So whilst by default 4 of the original game tutorial missions are included as part of the campaign, these can be swapped out by their TFTC Reimagined variants which has new voiceover dialogue rather than the original voiceover by Guy Siner. 

Music Soundtrack Choices

 TFTC offers six different soundtracks for the game. By default, the Remastered Soundtrack is selected but you can also select 5 other options including an alternative remastered soundtrack by Alexey Savelyev, the genuine MIDI performances of the Gravis Ultrasound, Roland SC-55 or the Soundblaster AWE32 for that nostalgic 90’s MIDI performance. Finally an option to use the default vanilla XWA soundtrack is also included. Be wary of using this soundtrack while streaming and you may receive a copyright notice due to using John Williams Star Wars music.

TFTC Craft Options

 This allows you to select from the TFTC lineup of reticules that various fighters use or the XWAU lineup for the campaign flyable craft.

Advanced Tweaking Options

If you really want to get stuck into the advanced options available to tweak the various settings XWAU provides, you can open up the configuration files (CFG extension) found in the root folder and change them from here. These files can be opened with any text editor such as Notepad. Please make sure you make a backup of these files before you make any changes in case of any issues it may cause. Below are the most relevant files for you to look at:

• Bloom.cfg: Here you can fine tune many of the individual bloom options right down to the level of bloom distances and spread amount on individual light sources such as lasers, suns, cockpit displays etc.

• ddraw.cfg: Here you will find many of the advanced settings used by the XWAU such as MSAA, FXAA, Anisotropic Filtering and more.

• SSAO.cfg: Here you will find more advanced graphical options to tweak which are specific to Screen Space Directional Occlusion (SSDO) or Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) settings. These settings are important for the updated lighting and shading system of XWAU as well as a few other settings.

• VRParams.cfg: Here you will find many settings to fine tune your VR experience. If you need any help with your VR setup, please join our Discord server and head over to the #vr-help section for assistance, the community will be happy to help try and resolve your problems!