OT (sort of): about Wing Commander

[Grimlock Dragon]

Well, the team has done a great job on Exult.

I was wondering if there were any similar projects for Wing Commander. Yes, I know that the Kilrathi Saga was released (for Win 95), but it is very rare, and I cannot obtain it for a reasonable price. I still have my old original Wing Commander games. So, no, I am not asking to pirate anything, just a means of playing the old games easily (and maybe with a few enhancements like the Exult team has provided for U7). Are there any projects like this?

Also, from what I understand, Kilrathi Saga left out some artwork from the originals.

[MV]

I have the kilrathi saga, but it's sort of like playing it with moslo in dos. It's not that great.

I'll have to fire it up again sometime. It's been a long time since I last played it. WC2 is the best IMO of the entire series.

[Chris Schumacher]

Actually I think it might be better just to build a DOS 5.0 emulator, especially since
you'd only have one company on your ass for it.
Allowing you to set clock-speed, the DOS, EMS and XMS memories would be considerably better than the Windows 9* DOS prompt and such.
Anyone want to volunteer?

[MV]

You can just use VMWARE. Pity there is no DOS sound though.

Oh yea, I just loaded up WC2 with the kilrathi saga, works fine under XP, but it's just so damn annoying to play.

It really is just like using moslo. Scenes are fast, play is jerky and you have to keep re-pressing keys for the craft to move. IE: You move left, then you press down, but no, you have to let go of left and let go of down, then press down again.

[Grimlock Dragon]

Well, I was hoping that maybe someone might be working on a project that would make it cross platform native, kind of like Exult, that would be more fluid rather than choppy as far as game play with full audio and joystick support. Ha, I ask a lot don't I? And all for free of course

[SB-X]

Does WC use a mostly data-driven game engine like Ultima VII?

[nadir]

I think the most complex parts of WC 1 and 2 would be the 3D engine (which uses only bitmaps) and the AI (which doesn't have to be identical to the original).

[D.Jay]

Wing Commander 2 was indeed the best of the series IMO, and one of my fave games of all time ( along w/ U7 )

D.Jay

[Armchair_Avatar]

Andy:
If there is a WC remake, it's probably listed on Wingcenter, a bilingual WC fan site (English and German).
http://www.wingcenter.de/

[drcode]

WC1 and WC2 are fairly well-behaved DOS games (unlike U7), so they should play okay in Windows. If I recall, WC1 might be too fast. However, WC2 does have frame-speed control (alt+ and alt-). I recently played WC3 under Windows98, and I think WC4 would also be okay there.

If you look on SourceForge, you'll find one or two project to make games similar to Wing Commander.

I also agree, WC2 was the best of the series. But I also think Privateer (the original) is one of the best games ever made. (And that might be worthy of reverse-engineering, since it is not a well-behaved program.)

[Morg]

if memory servers (and it usually doesn't) privateer used the exact same engine as WC2, and it was just something origin created real quick to give people something to play before WC3 came out

[drcode]

No, I don't think so. Privateer, I think, had somewhat better graphics (either higher-res or more colors). And WC2 was 'well-behaved', in that it runs within Windows95, while Privateer, like U7, uses a funky memory manager.

[SB-X]

But now make them work in Linux.

[Grimlock Dragon]

Thanks for the link Armchair Avatar. I will follow up on it to see how it progresses.

But, there's nothing like playing the classics (with a few enhancements, of course). Privateer was indeed an excelent game. I can remember playing it with my old Turtle Beach wave table. Now that was a feast of sound. I didn't remember that it had a weird memory manager. Okay, add that to the Wing Commander list of wanted Exult-like interfaces. Ah yes, good ol' bitmap graphics. I guess it might be tricky to work with since I'm guessing it's not a true 3d game engine (at least by todays standards). Would it be harder to work on this than say a modern polygon based engine?

[drcode]

I just played Privateer (and Righteous Fire) a few months ago. One thing I've noticed is that it seems to have better enemy AI than the other games. If you concentrate on one ship, the others will blast you from behind. And you don't have to have 12 opponents (like in WC3 and WC4) to have a challenging battle.

In fact, one thing I thought was kind of dumb about WC3 was that you kept hearing how we were losing the war. Yet, everytime you flew a mission, you alone would blow up at least a dozen Kilrathi ships, including one or two cruisers.

[MV]

Speaking of WC3, on that mission that the big gun gets destroyed, I was determined to not allow that to happen, and one attempt at it, I managed to destroy every single enemy ship attacking it, but it still cut to the scene with (magically spawned?) enemy ships destroying it. Then I realised how much scripts suck and you can't make a difference.

[TruchiDragon]

Now, for the DOS emulator... guys, you really NEED to look arround sourceforge there are several emulators/virtual machines arround, like

bochs (i think it was bochs.sourceforge.net )
dosbox (was it? dosbox.sourceforge.net )

i have tested dosbox with some games and it *seems* to work fine, so far i used ttycoon and tie fighter on it

Truchi