Wing Commander

[DesolationStone]

-cut-

You are not over :

https://www.wcsaga.com/
It is actually the best Wing Commander in my opinion, though I have not played WC4.

That's the old version, you can find the new directly on Knossos
BTW WC:Saga has probably the worst acting and writing in entire entertainment history and universe, but yes, has the best gameplay of the series

 

[LarryTyphoid]

What's annoying about these old space sims is that you can't configure the deadzone on your joystick. My Extreme 3D Pro was worn out and took longer to respond when moving left than moving right, which bothered me a lot, so I switched it for the more expensive Thrustmaster T16000M. It's slightly better but Privateer still isn't as precise as I would like it to be - the deadzone is very large. WC4 and 3 are alright. I guess some of this is the consequence of playing games in DOSBox.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

The secret to early-game Privateer combat: proton torpedoes.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I've never played a space flight game until this week, saw high praise for this series on GOG so i tried it and gosh! what a terrible experience i had.

The first two games have pretty nice art and presentation, but the gameplay is choppy, too fast when only 1 enemy ship on screen, too slow when more things appear on screen, jumping from 60 to 5 frames constantly, from what i heard there's no fix for this. Wing Commander 2 crashed a few times as well and i have played only for a few minutes. I have too many games to play to waste my time on choppy buggy shit like that so i gave up.

Tried Wing Commander 3, this one runs better though not perfectly. The presentation is impressive, even though the FMVs have terrible acting and cheesy, but those humanoid lion costumes must have costed some money:


The gameplay though.. i did not see the appeal, i have played only two missions so i can't judge the entire game(i gave up on this game as well, tell why later) but from the few missions i have played all i had to do is launch some missiles to automatically win, there's not a lot of things you can do in combat, only aiming and shooting. No dodging or nothing, it's like a FPS without level design/exploration or without the positioning from Serious Sam or without ammo scarcity. Actually, there are a lot of things you can do with your ship in combat, but are they really needed in order to win? that's the question.

The game might get better later, unfortunately i gave up because of mission 3(to scort a cargo). On that mission you can't use auto travel to skip the travelling and it takes like 10 to 15 minutes to reach the objective, seriously.. why waste players time like that? and when i reached the enemies after 15 minutes of waiting doing nothing, the game crashed immediately. I changed Dosbox settings, tried it again and the game crashed again, another 15 minutes wasted waiting to reach the objective. In my third attempt i used the turbo speed to reach the objective faster but my ship stopped moving suddenly, i thought it was a bug but it was because i run out of fuel, another 10 min. So i gave up on this series, too frustrating, horrible first time experience with this genre, i might try the X-Wing series next, i still have Privateer, i heard it's different from the main games so it might be better so i might try it, but not now, fuck this series for now.

I'm surprised to see this series getting praise on GOG, they are usually harsh on games with performance issues, but it might be just me having bad luck with old games again. Why there are no fan made open port or remake for this series yet?

 

[DesolationStone]

I'm surprised to see this series getting praise on GOG, they are usually harsh on games with performance issues, but it might be just me having bad luck with old games again. Why there are no fan made open port or remake for this series yet?

Some years ago one dev of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw tried to remake WC1 but he changed idea for the lack of funding.
For WC2 & 3 as I know no one never really tried to remake them, but right now someone it's developing a remastered for WC4.
Prophecy runs fine with some tuning.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

The first two games have pretty nice art and presentation, but the gameplay is choppy, too fast when only 1 enemy ship on screen, too slow when more things appear on screen, jumping from 60 to 5 frames constantly, from what i heard there's no fix for this. Wing Commander 2 crashed a few times as well and i have played only for a few minutes. I have too many games to play to waste my time on choppy buggy shit like that so i gave up.

Try the Windows version. The Kilrathi Saga Windows version, along with the Wing Commander DX patch, lets you play WC1 and 2 at a consistent framerate. On some versions of DOSBox, you can also limit the VRAM to get a semi-consistent framerate. You can find the Windows version for free on one of those Wing Commander fansites (because it's open-source), as well as WCDX on Github.

On that mission you can't use auto travel to skip the travelling and it takes like 10 to 15 minutes to reach the objective, seriously.. why waste players time like that?

Buddy... you have to fly close to the cargo ship in order to establish a link, at which point you can use auto-pilot. How the hell did you spend 15 minutes flying manually without figuring that out? It's in the manual, even.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Buddy... you have to fly close to the cargo ship in order to establish a link, at which point you can use auto-pilot. How the hell did you spend 15 minutes flying manually without figuring that out? It's in the manual, even.

I don't know man, i did not see any cargo ship, the game was lagging inside the starting base, outside it runs fine but inside it runs in like 10 frames, so i did not pay much attention. But it's not entirely my fault, if the game did not crash when i encountered the enemies, i would had known that i need to go back and pick up the cargo to finish the mission.

As for the manual, i did read some parts but not everything, too many stuff to memorize. So my plan was to get used to the basics first and check the manual from time to time, to learn the more obscure stuff.

Try the Windows version. The Kilrathi Saga Windows version, along with the Wing Commander DX patch, lets you play WC1 and 2 at a consistent framerate. On some versions of DOSBox, you can also limit the VRAM to get a semi-consistent framerate. You can find the Windows version for free on one of those Wing Commander fansites (because it's open-source), as well as WCDX on Github.

I heard the windows version of these games, called Kilrathi Saga, are even buggier. I supposed this WCDX patch fix the bugs so i might try it. What about Wing Commander 3 in Kilrathi Saga? does it works well?

Another question, what's up the Joystick thing? are those games designed to be played with Joystick only? i tried X-Wing and i could not launch the game cause no Joystick, why is that? maybe that's what i'm missing here, maybe these Space games are designed to be played with joystick so you can larp as Luke Skywalker. So my question is... do the gameplay in these games holds up on their own, regardless if playing with Joystick/mouse, or they're just mediocre larping material for Star Wars/Trek geeks?

 

[DesolationStone]

Another question, what's up the Joystick thing? are those games designed to be played with Joystick only? i tried X-Wing and i could not launch the game cause no Joystick, why is that? maybe that's what i'm missing here, maybe these Space games are designed to be played with joystick so you can larp as Luke Skywalker. So my question is... do the gameplay in these games holds up on their own, regardless if playing with Joystick/mouse, or they're just mediocre larping material for Star Wars/Trek geeks?

They do support joysticks, but their support is very old, and when I played WC3/4/Prophecy with a joystick I actually had some problems with dead zones etc.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I don't know man, i did not see any cargo ship, the game was lagging inside the starting base, outside it runs fine but inside it runs in like 10 frames, so i did not pay much attention.

You're using the GOG version, right? Go to your installation directory, find the .txt file called "dosboxWC3.conf", and replace the relevant portions seen here:

Spoiler

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=True
scaler=none

[cpu]
core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=fixed 150000
cycleup=1000
cycledown=1000

[joystick]
joysticktype=fcs
timed=false
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true

With that, the game should run properly.

Another question, what's up the Joystick thing? are those games designed to be played with Joystick only?

For the most part, yeah. The original DOS version of X-Wing can be played with a mouse, as can all the Wing Commander games, but the joystick is ideal. You can get a cheap Logitech Extreme 3D Pro for about 25 bucks. The Windows Star Wars games (including the 1998 Windows version of X-Wing) will not launch without some kind of joystick, but I think you can patch them to work with Xbox controllers.

What about Wing Commander 3 in Kilrathi Saga? does it works well?

I don't think it's any different from the DOS version, besides nicer looking cutscenes.

They do support joysticks, but their support is very old, and when I played WC3/4/Prophecy with a joystick I actually had some problems with dead zones etc.

Origin's flight sims appear to have pretty low input resolutions for their joysticks. It might be an emulation quirk; Battlehawks 1942, a flight sim that came out around 4 years before the first Wing Commander, has super-precise controls with no discernible dead zone, so it's not on account of these games' age.

I haven't played it, but from what I hear, the Kilrathi Saga versions of WC1&2 don't have the same dead zone problem as the DOS versions.

 

[Lemon]

The gameplay though.. i did not see the appeal, i have played only two missions so i can't judge the entire game

The Freespace games were the best space sims of that era, if you haven't played them.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

The gameplay though.. i did not see the appeal, i have played only two missions so i can't judge the entire game

The Freespace games were the best space sims of that era, if you haven't played them.

Are they good with mouse + keyboard or needs joystick to be enjoyable as the others space sims?

 

[Lemon]

The gameplay though.. i did not see the appeal, i have played only two missions so i can't judge the entire game

The Freespace games were the best space sims of that era, if you haven't played them.

Are they good with mouse + keyboard or needs joystick to be enjoyable as the others space sims?

I played them with a mouse and keyboard and liked it. I remember moving my mouse pretty madly in dog fights though.

 

[ValeVelKal]

The Digital Antiquarian just did an article on WC4. Well worth reading !

https://www.filfre.net/2023/04/wing-commander-iv/

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Someone made one of those 2 hour long videos about WC1.



The "original space sim" label on the thumbnail is a little provocative, but he really just means "original space combat sim", which would arguably apply to WC1 depending on your definition. The uploader plans to move onto other space combat sims like X-Wing in the future. He kind of has a modern popamole way of looking at things, but on the other hand, it can be somewhat interesting to get the perspective of people like that regarding old games most would consider obsolete. Just don't expect lots of jokes or a Patrician TV level of insight; despite the length, this video's kind of surface level, although comprehensive in covering all the game's mechanics and different versions.

This video was the first I ever learned of the Wing Commander DX patch for the Kilrathi Saga version. It definitely looks smoother to play, so anyone new to the series might want to check this video out and skip to the part where he discusses the version differences.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

The Digital Antiquarian just did an article on WC4. Well worth reading !

https://www.filfre.net/2023/04/wing-commander-iv/

lol, I skimmed through it, picked a random spot to read, and immediately found that gay retard complaining about Maniac being a sexual harasser. An even bigger loser than the CRPGAddict.

 

[Taxnomore]

The Digital Antiquarian just did an article on WC4. Well worth reading !

https://www.filfre.net/2023/04/wing-commander-iv/

lol, I skimmed through it, picked a random spot to read, and immediately found that gay retard complaining about Maniac being a sexual harasser. An even bigger loser than the CRPGAddict.

It's worth mentioning. Suppose an absolute random player plays the game without knowing this, she would be shocked.

 

[DesolationStone]

https://www.wcnews.com/index.shtml#16121

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[OndrejSc]