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Falcon 4.0

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Falcon 4.0
Falcon 4.0 cover
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 4.0 on HowLongToBeat
Falcon 4.0 on MobyGames
Falcon 4.0 on Wikipedia
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]

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
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc DRM[Note 1]
Windows
Mac OS
GOG.com
DRM-free
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.
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Green Man Gaming (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold.
Windows
Humble Store (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Bundled with Falcon, Falcon A.T., and Falcon Gold.
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

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) <Steam-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) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/429530/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics settings (retail)
Graphics settings (retail)
Graphics settings (BMS Mod)
Graphics settings (BMS Mod)

Input

Control settings (retail)
Control settings (retail)
Control settings (BMS Mod)
Control settings (BMS Mod)

Audio

Sound settings (retail)
Sound settings (retail)
Sound settings (BMS Mod)
Sound settings (BMS Mod)

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

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
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
Mac OS (Classic)

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 166 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 175 MB
Video card (GPU) High Colour graphics card

Notes

  1. 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. 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. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/429530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (429530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References