The lengths you are going to are (wonderfully) crazy, thanks again for all your hard work.
Enhancement Patches for Wing Commander III and IV
- Thread starter Mash
- Start date
Aeronautico
Rear Admiral
Wish the textures were to a point where we no longer saw that false hangar texture on the Victory when at a long distance.
While I understand this, I love this old rendering trick and it is part of the charm for me.
So, if Mash would indeed tackle this problem, may I humbly request to seperate this toggle from the LOD one?
Also, a question from me: Does the understanding of the EXE cover the mission limits at this point? Could they be extended to support modded missions with larger battles?
Think limit-removed Doom Sourceport?
So, if Mash would indeed tackle this problem, may I humbly request to seperate this toggle from the LOD one?
Also, a question from me: Does the understanding of the EXE cover the mission limits at this point? Could they be extended to support modded missions with larger battles?
Think limit-removed Doom Sourceport?
I've been looking but haven't yet found where this is set in the exe. I have a feeling this couldn't be improved much anyway, apart from extending the distance when directly in line with the hanger. The engine doesn't clip obscured objects very well, when flying about the Victory you often see cargo items and ships showing through the hull. I think the hanger would do the same, which is probably the main reason they set it up this way in the first place.
Haven't really explored that side of things. I'd be happy to track those down if there's a need. Is there a wc3 mission editor/creator out there?
HCI made one a while back. See here: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Mission_Editor_(Wing_Commander_III)
Personally, I would love to tweak some (just some) of WC3's missions to be a bit larger in scale, plus fixing up those missions in which the Victory suddenly looses all her escorts because the game's engine requires that.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Would be neat to backport the totally different (and often bigger!) 3DO missions to the PC version.
Looks like there are two things that need to be changed to increase the number of ships per nav point. First is the max number of watchers which is usually set as 500, this is basically a count of all ships and their turrets I think. This is set in world iff's "WORLD.iff", "WRLDD1.iff" etc. The other being the amount of virtual memory allocated for wc3. Increasing the number of watchers to 1500 and doubling the amount of virtual mem allowed me to have 30 heavy destroyers at one nav without any crashes. There were some graphical glitches with some ships not being displayed, so there are still some issues. Reducing this to 15 heavy destroyers seemed to work well.
Seems HCl made a better editor for windows https://hcl.solsector.net/2001/wc3editor.zip . This one allows for 30 ships per nav. There are some caveats in it's use however. To save a mission as an iff you need to hit the "launch" button, where the mission will be saved as "_newmiss.iff" in the game dir. Unfortunately you cant load existing mission iff's with this program either. Is @HCl still about these days?
Replacing an existing mission in the patch is pretty easy however. You just need to rename the "_newmiss.iff" with the name of the mission you want to replace and put it under "\DATA\MISSIONS" in the game folder.
I'll include options for the number of watchers and virtual memory in the ini next release.
Seems HCl made a better editor for windows https://hcl.solsector.net/2001/wc3editor.zip . This one allows for 30 ships per nav. There are some caveats in it's use however. To save a mission as an iff you need to hit the "launch" button, where the mission will be saved as "_newmiss.iff" in the game dir. Unfortunately you cant load existing mission iff's with this program either. Is @HCl still about these days?
Replacing an existing mission in the patch is pretty easy however. You just need to rename the "_newmiss.iff" with the name of the mission you want to replace and put it under "\DATA\MISSIONS" in the game folder.
I'll include options for the number of watchers and virtual memory in the ini next release.
Sounds promising.
Hello,
I wanted to replay Wing Commander again after a decade, so I searched and ended up here. It's amazing. Thank you.
However, when I apply the Wing Loader and WC3 Enhance Patch to the WC3 GOG edition, the subtitles don't appear in the opening cutscene. The HD Video Pack doesn't work either. Everything after the opening cutscene works fine. Is there a way to see the subtitles in the opening cutscene?
I wanted to replay Wing Commander again after a decade, so I searched and ended up here. It's amazing. Thank you.
However, when I apply the Wing Loader and WC3 Enhance Patch to the WC3 GOG edition, the subtitles don't appear in the opening cutscene. The HD Video Pack doesn't work either. Everything after the opening cutscene works fine. Is there a way to see the subtitles in the opening cutscene?
@CharmSeul:
There is currently no way to display subs in the opening scene as sub preferences don't get applied until a game is loaded. I think I can probably do something about that though, I'll get back to you on that one.
[EDIT]: I take that back. Subtitles and language can be set with command line options eg: "<game dir>\WC3W.EXE -s" will start the game with subs enabled. To set the language add "-L1" for German or "-L2" for French.
As for why the HD movies aren't playing.
First, just to confirm you've got the latest version of the patch, links in the first post. Also that you have the latest "libvlc_min_pack_3.0.21" installed as well.
And to ensure everything's in it right place. You should end up with "libvlc.dll","libvlccore.dll", "plugins" and "movies" folders in you game dir. HD movies should be located under "movies".
There is currently no way to display subs in the opening scene as sub preferences don't get applied until a game is loaded. I think I can probably do something about that though, I'll get back to you on that one.
[EDIT]: I take that back. Subtitles and language can be set with command line options eg: "<game dir>\WC3W.EXE -s" will start the game with subs enabled. To set the language add "-L1" for German or "-L2" for French.
As for why the HD movies aren't playing.
First, just to confirm you've got the latest version of the patch, links in the first post. Also that you have the latest "libvlc_min_pack_3.0.21" installed as well.
And to ensure everything's in it right place. You should end up with "libvlc.dll","libvlccore.dll", "plugins" and "movies" folders in you game dir. HD movies should be located under "movies".
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Thank you for your help.
Regarding HD movies, I meant that subtitles wouldn't appear regardless of whether I used the HD Video Pack or not. Your answer solved that.
And I have another question.
1. The in-game music (during battles) in WC3 doesn't play. Is this because it's the GOG version? Do I need to use KS?
2. My system is set to play sound through an AV receiver via HDMI (multi-channel speakers). WC4 works fine, but in WC3, all sound comes out as mono, only from the center speaker. Is there a solution?
3. I've confirmed that the soundtracks in the HD Video Pack videos are all AC3. Is it possible to change the libvlc_min_pack settings to enable passthrough output?
Sorry for the inconvenience. 🙏
Music should work with the GOG version. Music is in "WC3MUSIC.TRE" which should be in your game dir. Make sure music is enabled in the "Alt+O" menu in space. Does the music stop when you enter battle or is there no music in space at all? Is music playing when on the Victory?
Not sure why wc3 would differ from wc4. They both process sound in a similar way.
I'll have to look more into that one. In the VLC app it's easily set in the audio options, but it seems a bit more complicated to program.
I trimmed down the VLC plugins folder to the bare minimum. It's possible you might need some of the plugins that I removed. You could try downloading the VLC app (32 bit version) and copy the plugins folder from it to the game dir.
AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
This is probably working as intended. The HD packs are upscaled from the PSX version of WC3. Only the intro movie is in stereo. All other cutscenes are mono only. WC4 PSX lowered the resolution of the movies and upgraded all the sound to Stereo. The WC4 HD packs don't use that as a source though as they use the original DVD version with proper AC3 as the audio source. The PC version of WC3 has mono sound for all scenes including the intro.
Maybe one day someone will find the audio masters and redo it in Dolby Atmos or something... we can always dream!
Bitterman
Rear Admiral
may i suggest one thing from this, have an option to change the sky from this navy dark blue to black as the 3do release, Armada and WC4
A new version of the wc4 patch is up (v0.6.1).
I couldn't find the cause for the music stopping during space flight, although I suspect it's a thread timing issue in xanlib. In the end I replaced the music playing functions using libvlc as the player, which seems to be working well. Using libvlc also makes it easy to load alternate tunes in place of the originals. You can do this by editing the "wc4w_en_alt_music.ini" and entering the file path for the tune you want to replace. I've been using it to play George Oldziey's Orchestral Recordings. These sound fantastic in game although there are quite a few tracks missing, we'll have to pester him into doing a volume 3 to fill in the gaps.
I'll be adding this feature to wc3 in the coming weeks.
Edit: Be sure to re-download the "libvlc_min_pack_3.0.21" as well, as I've added a few extra plugins for music playback.
I couldn't find the cause for the music stopping during space flight, although I suspect it's a thread timing issue in xanlib. In the end I replaced the music playing functions using libvlc as the player, which seems to be working well. Using libvlc also makes it easy to load alternate tunes in place of the originals. You can do this by editing the "wc4w_en_alt_music.ini" and entering the file path for the tune you want to replace. I've been using it to play George Oldziey's Orchestral Recordings. These sound fantastic in game although there are quite a few tracks missing, we'll have to pester him into doing a volume 3 to fill in the gaps.
I'll be adding this feature to wc3 in the coming weeks.
Edit: Be sure to re-download the "libvlc_min_pack_3.0.21" as well, as I've added a few extra plugins for music playback.
added to my list of things to do.
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AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
I actually do not like the black space in WC4... but the blue in WC3 is also way too light in general on modern screens. You used to be able to adjust the brightness (and I want to say you were kind of expected to) of the background colors a bit with the old knobs for contrast and such on old CRTs, so it should be nearly black but not quite. But on modern very bright monitors you can't quite get the right feel. Just having a more fluid range of brightness for the background color would be something that interests me.
Hello, Mash.
Just like I previously inquired about in WC3, in WC4, after applying the Wing Commander IV Enhancement Patch, the subtitles do not appear in the first cutscene. In WC3, the -s option solved the problem, but in WC4, it does not work. What should I do?
For the win95 patch version, there is a built-in installer that can be run using the "-i" command line option. The subtitle option is under Video Settings. Unfortunately the installer was removed in the DVD version. The only way round this at present is to copy the "wc4w.exe" from the win95 patch version to your DVD install folder and run it from there. I might look at adding the "-s" option back to the DVD version to get around this issue in the future.
Edit: If your comfortable using a hex editor. You can modify the "WC4.CFG" file directly. The subs option can be set by changing byte number 118 from 0 to 1.
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