Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About WC Killboards (June 26, 2022)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Let's look at some chalkboards! The kill board in Wing Commander I is one of those great immsersive touches: instead of scoring points like an arcade, you stay in the game world and compete with the characters you recognize.





All the characters' kills increase as the game progresses but they start from the same numbers. It's nice environmental storytelling, too: you can tell right off that Maniac is the rookie, Iceman is the top gun, etc. There's a million untold stories in this picture!





That environmental storytelling started to become linear storytelling as the series went on: here's a bit added to the Super Wing Commander Claw Marks that tells the story of how Maniac became an ace (as had already been reflected on the original board):





Quick aside: the kill board is based on actual 'scoreboards' used aboard aircraft carriers, particularly in World War 2. Here's a neat article with some history and pictures.





So I thought that it would be fun to emulate all the ports and compare their killboards. Starting with the obligatory EGA vs VGA! Wing Commander generated its EGA graphics programmatically so there aren't any artsy details to look for.





Here are the SegaCD and SNES versions. Very similar, except the former forces your name as HOT SHOT (or STARBUCK in Japan) and the latter allows only a user selected callsign and no last name.





The Kilrathi Saga, Amiga and CD32 versions are identical to the PC so I kind of assumed the FM Towns would be too... and boy was I surprised! The counts are all much higher and this version removes a rank! It has a single LT. grade and promotes all the other characters!





Then I captured the Super Wing Commander version and it's not only different but it has the same starting numbers as the FM Towns release! What's going on here? Did they intentionally up the challenge for players in these ports?





The answer is... no they did not! What happened is that the starting values are stored in wc.exe. Origin updated the executable for Secret Missions 2 and thought to plug in new starting values since the mission disk takes place two campaigns later.





The FM Towns, 3DO and Macintosh teams then worked from that codebase (which added things like a much needed frame limiter) and didn't think to change the hard values back. An old error echoing through eternity!





The standalone release of Secret Missions for SNES also thought to update the values (no others did). Which means we have canonical kill counts for the characters at the start of WC1, SM and SM2! Neat coincidence.





Quick aside: the dates work the same way. WC1 always starts on 2654.110 (4/20!) and then moves forward with a random element as you play. Most releases of the mission disks just leave this as is:





Even the FM Towns versions (note the change in rank!) always start at 2654.110 no matter which campaign you select.





But LOOK! The SNES version remembered when no one else did! The hard date, 2656.289 (October 16) doesn't really fit with later timelines but it's so cool that someone took the time to set it.





Also, have you ever noticed that the closeup of the killboard looks nothing like the one you see in the gameflow screen?





... but they caught that when they redid the graphics for Super Wing Commander!





I thought it would be fun to take this screenshot in every port, too. It's the one that every magazine article and retrospective uses since it's the first place you can stop to grab an image! Here's EGA vs. VGA:





Amiga vs. CD32:





Sega CD and SNES... someone took Shotglass' TV! And his plate of chicken wings!





Then here's the PSP version, which is really just the SNES one stretched out.





Next I wondered if there was any difference in the starter kill board in Wing Commander III. Here's the PC version, with no entry for Blair since I hadn't entered my callsign yet:





Sure enough, the values change from port to port! Here's the PSX version and the Macintosh version (which really surprised me!):





But the best discovery here was the 3DO port which starts with drastically higher numbers... and a different 'saying' for the total?!





Scratch that, it's not one new saying... I was able to find sixteen different version, some of which were extremely funny. And one is a reference to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, so good on you TCS Victory IT team.




--
Original update published on June 26, 2022
 
It's kinda funny with me and the killboard(s). After the first Wing Commander, where kills were a big deal, I remember I stopped caring about my kill-score in the future games. I think maybe the kill-score of the first game with medals and promotions readily available was more "attractive" to me than in the later games where your rank & medals were static. It simply didn't feel important..
 
Is there any variety to the kill-boards in later games? I don't recall WC2 having one, since Blair moves around a lot (in fact, it's the only game in the series where the player character has several 'home bases', isn't it?) WC3 has one, and I think WC4 has them both on the Lexington and Intrepid. And of course Prophecy has a very colourful one, I always paid attention to that one because of Maniac's goading 'one of you might accidentally catch up to me on the kill-board'... uh, sorry Major, already did that!
 
WC4 definitely has one, and it’s a neat hidden story telling element, if I recall correctly. If you stay with Confed after Eisen defects, you start seeing other pilots showing up on the kill board as MIA, not KIA. Then after you join the Intrepid, there the MIA pilots are! It makes it clear that you and Vagabond weren’t the only ones following their morals and choosing sides.

at least, I think this is the case… but it’s been a while since I played. Anyone confirm?
 
Is there any variety to the kill-boards in later games? I don't recall WC2 having one, since Blair moves around a lot (in fact, it's the only game in the series where the player character has several 'home bases', isn't it?) WC3 has one, and I think WC4 has them both on the Lexington and Intrepid. And of course Prophecy has a very colourful one, I always paid attention to that one because of Maniac's goading 'one of you might accidentally catch up to me on the kill-board'... uh, sorry Major, already did that!

The news adapted this one from a Twitter thread and the bottom part ended up being cut off. You can start here for more including Maniac's total kill score and the Prophecy boards!
Wing Commander IV does have killboards for the Lexington and the Intrepid... but neither one has a visible initial state since you can't access them until after you've flown at least one mission and (with a randomized element for your wingmen) altered their contents!

Wing Commander II has no killboard but it does list your kills in each save slot.
 
Then after you join the Intrepid, there the MIA pilots are! It makes it clear that you and Vagabond weren’t the only ones following their morals and choosing sides.
I remember that too - a nice, subtle way of showing that the 'main cast' weren't the only ones to defect.

Wing Commander II has no killboard but it does list your kills in each save slot.
Yes, that was the only way to track kills - it was nice that you could carry them over from SM2. I remember the console used a tiny pixellated font (yeah, I know, DOS days) but not anything else so good to know I wasn't actually forgetting a kill-board that didn't exist (nugget).
 
In Super Wing Commander, does Bossman still exclaim "There's one for the chalkboard!" when he destroys something? That always amuses me, when people working on different parts of a project don't anticipate how their choices might affect each other... such as in the original game, where, as pointed out, the closeup view doesn't match the wide view.

Still, credit to the artists. I remember once going through the files for the chalkboard font and marvelling at how much work had gone into that small part of the game.
 
He does indeed! And what a good opportunity to plug something I've been working on for the past week or two: a spreadsheet of different Wing Commander game scripts that includes different ports! Curious what does and doesn't change between WC1, WC1 SNES, SWC, etc? Here's your resource!


(I'll start a thread about this guy a little later, but it's just been a fun timewaster that has turned into a useful reference for me... because I at least am always looking up Wing Commander quotes.)
 
He does indeed! And what a good opportunity to plug something I've been working on for the past week or two: a spreadsheet of different Wing Commander game scripts that includes different ports! Curious what does and doesn't change between WC1, WC1 SNES, SWC, etc? Here's your resource!

Wow, that's fascinating to have in one place. Are all of those extracted from the respective game files, or did you have to go through any of the games, including every possible branch of mission debriefing?

It helps address a thought I've had since the discussion of EA Replay in 2006, using the SNES release. You noted then that squadron names had changed, so "Blue Devils" were "Blue Angels," and "Star Slayer" was "Rising Star". You also noted these:
Here's another Nintendo oddity: any subtle reference to drinking -- the act of drinking -- has been removed from the game. Shotglass, depressed over the death of his cousin, was kind enough to tell he that snacks were on the house. You can kill 250,000 people, and even show silhouettes of their tortured bodies in a cutscene (which is included)... but you can't suggest that anyone ever ingest liquids. Still, the idea that the Confederation employs a full-time bartending staff to hand out snacks to pilots amuses me to no end.
Paladin still has three glasses on his table, but instead of inviting you to "tilt a glass", he asks you to "have a chat".
... Shotglass has invented a new dessert... the Rostov Sundae!

But having the complete script makes it easy to confirm some other subtle changes. In particular, the removal of the word "kill" in many places. Below is a sampling of the different synonyms they found:

Gateway 2 Debriefing
"It shows no kills for you, $C..." →
"It shows no victories for you, $C..."

Gimle 3 Shotglass
"He's got 78 confirmed kills, counting fighters and capital ships. They say his name means 'Deathstroke' in Kilrathi..." →
"He's got 78 confirmed victories, counting fighters and capital ships. They say his name means 'Deathstroke' in Kilrathi..."

Gimle 3 Debriefing
"You killed $K Kilrathi, $C..." →
"You defeated $K Kilrathi, $C..."

Brimstone 3 Debriefing
"Recorder credits you with $K kills, $C..." →
"Recorder credits you with $K wins, $C..."

"Recorder shows no kills for you, $C..." →
"Recorder shows no wins for you, $C..."

Rostov 3 Angel
"If you are so lucky, you will try to kill him at all costs, non?" →
"If you are so lucky, you will try to destroy him at all costs, non?"

Rostov 3 Debriefing
"I killed $L, sir." →
"I got $L, sir."

Hubble's Star 1 Briefing
"Remember, people... Dakhath is ruthless. He'll try to kill you in your ship, or out of it." →
"Remember, people... Dakhath is ruthless. He'll try to get you in your ship, or out of it."

Goddard 1 Debriefing
"$C, you came up with no kills. You'll have to do better than that..." →
"$C, you came up empty. You'll have to do better than that..."

Border Zone 1 Briefing
"A quarter of a million Terran colonists have been killed." →
"A quarter of a million Terran colonists are gone..."

Border Zone 2 Paladin
"Genocide, lad. If we dinna destroy them completely, this war may never end." →
"If we dinna destroy them completely, this war may never end."

"An' if we do kill them all, how are we different from them?" →
"An' if we do get them all, how are we different from them?"

Border Zone 2 Debriefing
"For the record, $C, you killed $K." →
"For the record, $C, you downed $K."

Midgard 1 Debriefing
"And then the cats killed him. Damn, but I'm going to miss that man." →
"And then the cats got him... I'm going to miss that man."

Jotunheim 2 Angel
"Their smarts are getting us killed, one by one." →
[Removed entirely]

Jotunheim 3 Debriefing
"It was real, sir, and they tried to kill us. But it's dusted now."
"It was real, sir, and they tried to kill me. But it's dusted now."
"It is real, sir, and they tried to kill us. But it escaped...we couldn't destroy it."
"It is real, sir, and they tried to kill me. But it escaped...I couldn't destroy it."

"It was real, sir, and they tried to dust us. But it's dusted now."
"It was real, sir, and they tried to dust me. But it's dusted now."
"It is real, sir, and they tried to dust us. It escaped sir...we couldn't destroy it."
"It is real, sir, and they tried to dust me. It escaped sir...I couldn't destroy it."

Bifrost 1 Shotglass
"We'd better find those cats, kill them and get out of here fast---" →
"We'd better find those cats, down 'em and get out of here fast---"

Bifrost 2 Debriefing
"No confirmed Kilrathi kills, $R. You're usually better than that." →
"No confirmed Kilrathi hits, $R. You're usually better than that."

"And then he was killed in the fight. Damn...he was so close to retiring." →
"And then he was downed in the fight... he was so close to retiring."

Valgard 1 Bossman
"`So-and-so of Tiger's Claw is credited with the kill..." →
"`So-and-so of Tiger's Claw is credited with the downing..."

Vigrid 1 Shotglass
"Scuttlebutt has it that we're just about ready to go for the kill." →
"Scuttlebutt has it that we're just about ready to go for it all."



But this wasn't a simple search and replace. Some lines that stayed in:
  • Anything about the Killer Bees Squadron
  • Anything about Bhurak Starkiller
  • "He's lookin' to be famous, an' its gonna get him killed."
  • "He's in it for the killing, I think."
  • "We tried to get in for the kill, sir, but they fought us off."
  • "Take a crack at her, if you can, but try not to get yourself killed."
  • "I have managed to kill one, Dommo!" [But in Secret Missions, changed to "I have managed to down one, Dommo!"]


Why that particular word? Douglas Crockford worked at Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts), including on porting Maniac Mansion to the NES. He wrote about the experience in an essay titled The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In particular:
Howie Rubin of Jaleco (the company that was going to publish the game under license) advised us the that the baddest bad word is Kill. The central activity in most Nintendo games is killing things. The image and the act are good, but the word is bad, even if the word does not suggest the image or the act.

The mansion contains a number of arcade video games. One was called KILL THRILL. The name had to be changed.
Someone would have to ask the Wing Commander SNES team to be sure, but they seem to have been close to this principle. They rewrote instructions to the player, and debriefing of player actions. Some other uses stayed in. Probably the most interesting quirk here is that "Star Slayer" got renamed, but "Killer Bees" didn't.

Did Nintendo specify acceptable and unacceptable uses of "kill" somewhere? Crockford writes that the round trip time on getting feedback from Nintendo of America was a full month. After a few rounds of this, the Maniac Mansion team pre-emptively removed a lot of things rather than argue about it. But the cumulative edits to the Wing Commander script are quite clear, thanks to Bandit LOAF's epic spreadsheet.

If someone does have written specifications from Nintendo, see if you can get a good voice actor to record them, like these ones from Disney Standards & Practices critiquing Gravity Falls.



Edited to add:
Given the original topic here, it's amusing that the SNES chalkboard still has a "KILLS" heading.
 
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I'm glad you're enjoying the spreadsheet! Anything that appears as text in the game is extracted directly but I'm also working on transcripts of the audio versions of things... for instance the Wing Commander II tab has a column for the speech version of various cutscenes. Hopefully that'll expand to add Super Wing Commander, Sega CD Wing Commander and Privateer CD soon!

The Origin Museum has the actual guidelines SNES provided to the SNES-porting team at Origin in 1994, which was a huge three ring binder listing a million different things that could lead to your game not being certified. I suspect Mindscape had similar rules in 1992! You can tell from the kills it's not the word so much as when it's used in the active voice to actually say someone has been killed. (Spirit's comms are actually bugged, you'll see it in the game... the SNES version doesn't display variables in the comms but they missed editing her lines so she will actually say "$C" in one of them...)
 
How many kilrathi did Blair Kill by nuking Kilrah. I know it doesn't count towards medals, but it is a question I had for a while.
 
I don't think there's ever a number given. It's likely something that wouldn't really be known in the 27th century given the scale and the suddenness of the attack. Just look at how little agreement there is about how many people died in the atomic bombings.
 
"(I want to play something set in that earlier era!)."

I feel like if anyone can make that happen it's this articles author.
 
In terms of kill numbers from a game-play and game engine perspective, the Nephilim were far more numerous than the Kilrathi ever were (and Standoff's representation of Fleet Action using Vision took advantage of that). Makes me wonder if pilots of Casey's generation and those who flew against the Nephilim to the conclusion of the war would rack up higher kill totals than Maverick and Maniac.
 
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