A very hypothetical concept

getembees

Spaceman
I saw some concept art that re-imagined modern franchises in the context of the 8-bit era. It made me remember back in the day when I would play a game on SEGA or PC, and think about how cool that game would be if it had 1000 players going at it at once. I'd quickly forget such notions, as they seemed impossible. But today we have games which do exactly that. The game-art made me think about the potential for re-engineering old games in a way that maintains their integrity, but expands upon them greatly in one or more ways. Would you want to play these games?

- 100+ person servers on DOOM II, with mouse support. Multiple game modes, multiplayer balancing and new maps.
- Zelda series in which you can zoom out to view the map in real time. Gauntlet mode for quick action, and maybe multiplayer modes if they proved to be any good.
- Massively Multiplayer Mario. Not an rpg, just a MMO-platformer concept-game with mod support to allow for many game-modes to be created by developer teams and fans alike.
- NBA Jam Online. Nuff said.

If copyright laws apply, it would be easy to develop franchise parody's with similar gamplay, but enough changes to make it a different intellectual property.

Of Course a Wing Commander re-envisioning would be amazing. And I must say that the current Wing Commander Mod for the Freespace 2 code definitely looks like it doing exactly what Im speaking of here. It has the WC3 look, but with an engine well-suited for making it bigger without straying far from the original vision. It's incorporation of ships from WC1/2 is impressive, as they don't look out of place at all, even though they were taken from a 2D game.

This brings me to the topic of the WC source codes. Are they public? I know that WC1/WC2 are now freeware, does that include the source code? If they are public, a development team could study them and re-write the code to allow the game to be bigger, faster, sharper, and smoother, while still making the game feel true to its original vision. Imagine a game where you have the look of WC2 but the scope of a modern space game. Im not sure if this could be accomplished in 2D on a 1600x1200 resolution, but it doesn't sound unreasonable. Conversely, it wouldn't be difficult to mimic the WC2 style in 3D. A creative use of pixelation could help preserve the 2D, 256-color feel while maintaining the feeling of vastness in space. If the game proved to be fun, then concepts like campaigns, and multiplayer become tempting to say the least.
 
This brings me to the topic of the WC source codes. Are they public? I know that WC1/WC2 are now freeware, does that include the source code?

No and you are incorrect. Wc1 and Wc2 are not freeware. See this thread for a detailed understanding of this.
 
That depends on your perspective. WC1/2 are not freeware, because EA considers the Wing Commander series a valuable viable franchise that's not up for grabs. Meanwhile, the makers of Freespace have taken an "ehh, whatever, we're done with it" stance and given away the whole thing.

Now if you want to play Wing Commander, WC1 is available without paying through certain limited channels, and fans have developed ingenious graphical and stability upgrades. https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/10285 https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/10356

And Wing Commander fans have an exciting future to look forward to someday. In the mean time, there are tons of amazing Wing Commander mods and fan projects available.
 
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