Falcon 4.0
Developers | |
---|---|
MicroProse | |
Mac OS (Classic) | Westlake Interactive |
Publishers | |
Retail | MicroProse |
Retail | Hasbro Interactive |
Mac OS | MacSoft |
Digital (2015-2023) | Retroism |
Digital (2023-present) | MicroProse |
Release dates | |
Windows | December 11, 1998 |
Mac OS (Classic) | June 1, 1999 |
Taxonomy | |
Monetization | One-time game purchase, Expansion pack |
Modes | Singleplayer, Multiplayer |
Pacing | Real-time |
Perspectives | First-person, Third-person |
Controls | Direct control |
Genres | Simulation, Vehicle combat |
Vehicles | Flight |
Themes | Contemporary |
Series | Falcon |
Falcon | |
---|---|
Falcon | 1987 |
Falcon A.T. | 1988 |
Falcon 3.0 | 1991 |
Falcon 4.0 | 1998 |
Falcon 4.0: Allied Force | 2005 |
Falcon 4.0 is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person and third-person simulation and vehicle combat game in the Falcon series.
The game's source code was leaked in 2000. One of the community projects which made use of it is the BMS mod, which is the community's preferred way to play the game. On May 4, 2023, the rebooted MicroProse announced upon claiming the franchise rights that they would officially support the BMS mod.[1]
Key points
- It is highly recommended to play the game with a joystick
- The manual is required to fully understand the underlying game mechanics
- Most of the community has switched over to Falcon BMS, a heavily upgraded fork of F4's source code.
General information
- GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
- GOG.com Support Page
- Steam Community Discussions
- Falconpedia - A wiki dedicated to Falcon 4.0
Availability
Source | DRM | Notes | Keys | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Retail | SafeDisc DRM[Note 1] | |||
GOG.com | Available in Falcon Collection bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold under bonus content for the latter.[4] Also available alongside Falcon Gold's separate store entry as an extra. |
|||
Steam | ||||
Green Man Gaming (unavailable) | Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold. | |||
Humble Store (unavailable) | Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold. |
Essential improvements
Patches
- The official v1.08 patch provides bug fixes.
BMS mod
- BenchMarkSims webpage
- Not compatible with Falcon 4.0: Allied Force.
- Includes compatibility fixes for modern operating systems and graphics cards, as well as bug fixes, visual enhancements (including DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 3.0 support), and additional content
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | <path-to-game>\config[Note 2] |
Mac OS (Classic) | |
Steam Play (Linux) | <SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/429530/pfx/[Note 3] |
Save game data location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | <path-to-game>\campaign\SAVE[Note 2] |
Mac OS (Classic) | |
Steam Play (Linux) | <SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/429530/pfx/[Note 3] |
Save game cloud syncing
System | Native | Notes |
---|---|---|
GOG Galaxy | ||
Steam Cloud |
Video
Graphics feature | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Widescreen resolution | See BMS mod | ||
Multi-monitor | |||
Ultra-widescreen | |||
4K Ultra HD | |||
Field of view (FOV) | |||
Windowed | Run the game with the -window command line argument. Requires 16-bit color mode. |
||
Borderless fullscreen windowed | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | ||
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | See BMS mod | ||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | See BMS mod | ||
Vertical sync (Vsync) | See BMS mod | ||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS | |||
High dynamic range display (HDR) | See BMS mod |
Input
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Remapping | ||
Mouse acceleration | See BMS mod. | |
Mouse sensitivity | ||
Mouse input in menus | ||
Mouse Y-axis inversion | ||
Controller | ||
Controller support | ||
Full controller support | ||
Controller remapping | ||
Controller sensitivity | ||
Controller Y-axis inversion |
Controller types |
---|
XInput-compatible controllers |
---|
PlayStation controllers |
---|
Generic/other controllers |
---|
Additional information | ||
---|---|---|
Controller hotplugging | ||
Haptic feedback | ||
Digital movement supported | ||
Simultaneous controller+KB/M |
Audio
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | Master, interface, music, engine, Sidewinder, RWR, cockpit, flight and other comms, sound effects | |
Surround sound | ||
Subtitles | ||
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | ||
Royalty free audio |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
English | ||||
Traditional Chinese | Retail only. | |||
French | Retail only. | |||
German | Retail only. Localized voiceovers were a separate download. | |||
Italian | Retail only. | |||
Spanish | Retail only. |
Network
Multiplayer types
Type | Native | Players | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|
LAN play | 16 | |||
Online play |
Connection types
Type | Native | Notes |
---|---|---|
Matchmaking | ||
Peer-to-peer | ||
Dedicated | ||
Self-hosting | ||
Direct IP |
Issues unresolved
Graphical glitches
Graphical bugs are experienced during gameplay while running in Windows 7. Some textures will show bright purple sections with and without the patch and with the patch, text is unreadable while using hardware rendering. Switching to software rendering solves this but the game slows to a crawl while the cockpit is in view. Sometimes the menu screens will bug, certain elements not disappearing when changing menu - running in Windows 95 compatibility mode could fix this (most prominent on Allied Force re-release).[citation needed]
VR support
Devices | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
TrackIR | Supports: Yaw, Pitch. |
Other information
API
Technical specs | Supported | Notes |
---|---|---|
Direct3D | 5 | |
Glide | 2.54 | |
Software renderer |
Executable | PPC | 16-bit | 32-bit | 64-bit | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Windows | |||||
Mac OS (Classic) |
System requirements
Windows | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 95 | 98 |
Processor (CPU) | Intel Pentium 166 MHz | Intel Pentium II 450 MHz |
System memory (RAM) | 32 MB | 128 MB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 175 MB | 600 MB |
Video card (GPU) | High Colour graphics card | 8 MB of VRAM |
Notes
- ↑ SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[2] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[3]
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below
%PROGRAMFILES%
,%PROGRAMDATA%
, or%WINDIR%
might be redirected to%LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore
on Windows Vista and later (more details). - ↑ 3.0 3.1 Notes regarding Steam Play (Linux) data:
- File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data.
- Use Wine's registry editor to access any Windows registry paths.
- The app ID (429530) may differ in some cases.
- Treat backslashes as forward slashes.
- See the glossary page for details on Windows data paths.
References
- ↑ MicroProse is back on the Falcon series - last accessed on 2023-05-06
- ↑ Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
- ↑ Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
- ↑ Release: Falcon Collection - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023