Revisit Classic Fan Campaigns (November 11, 2007)

KrisV

KrisV

Administrator

Long before there was Standoff, Saga or Unknown Enemy, Wingnuts would create single missions or brief campaigns for everything from the first Wing Commander to Privateer. We've collected most of these in the Fan Missions section, one of the oldest CIC pages. Forums member Sharpshooter recently stumbled upon two old sets of fan-made missions for Wing Commander I and decided to help them get more exposure by creating game guides for them. It can take a little bit of effort to get certain custom missions working, so be sure to check out the documentation for detailed instructions and last minute notes from the creators. You can find all the archived missions here. A decade ago when these were made, WC fans usually set up vintage computer systems to get older games running. Today it's much easier. Visit our Tech Support section for information on running the old DOS games on modern hardware and operating systems. It only takes a few minutes to configure DOSBox for Wing Commander I.
  • Secret Missions 3: Enigma by Omega and Phantom

    Walkthrough by Sharpshooter
    The Confed and the Kilrathi have both discovered that the Enigma sector has
    a strange property that can be of great tactical advantage. Namely, the
    ability to cross the whole sector in one jump. They realize that whoever
    controls this sector will have the decisive upper hand in the war, so the
    Tiger's Claw and the Exeter class T.C.S. Nixon have been sent into the Enigma
    sector to build a series of bases in an attempt to gain control of the sector.
    The Kilrathi, however, have committed many more ships to the same task. The
    race for the Enigma sector has begun...


    [*]Unzip the archive to a temporary directory
    [*]Read ENIGMA.TXT in its entirety
    [*]Make sure the files "hornet", "scimitar", "salthi", "post", "kbase",
    and "module.tmp" do not exist in your gamedat directory.
    [*]Place "sm3.com", "unsm3.com" and "enigma.exe" in your Wing Commander
    directory.
    [*]Place "ferret", "epee", "strakha", "base", "kbase", and "module.zgk"
    in your gamedat subdirectory.
    [*]Run sm3.com and have fun.
    Click to expand...
  • Wing Commander: Rise to Honor by Omega

    Walkthrough by Sharpshooter
    [*]Unzip the archive to a temporary directory.
    [*]Read HONOR11.TXT
    [*]Place "kilrathi.exe", "dishonor.com", and "honor.com" in you "Wing
    Commander" directory
    [*]Place "module.eye", "honor.wld", and "comm.eye" in the "gamedat" subdirectory
    [*]Make sure that the files "temp", "tempa", "tempb", "module.tmp",
    crusade.tmp, and "sm2comm.tmp" do not exist in your gamedat directory
    [*]Make sure that you have unpacked the graphics files during install,
    as it is yet unknown what the results would be if you did not (although it
    should work)
    [*]Make sure that you have Secret Missions One and Two installed
    [*]Run honor.com
    [*]Load a savegame and have fun
    Click to expand...




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Original update published on November 11, 2007
 
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Ah, this certainly brings back memories! :) Although i wasn't part of the development team of either Rise to Honor or SM3, i made quite a few tools for WC1 editing back in the day, so i ended up being in touch with the authors in a regular basis, helping to solve problems here and there.

These WC1 mods are amazing, i remember i had a lot of fun playing through them. I'm pretty sure Omega and Phantom used every tool and every hack available at the time to put these mods together (and ship conversion was a particularly tricky process!). One of the most interesting tricks was the cloak implementation on SM3, which actually exploited a known WC1 engine bug. As i recall, this bug caused the engine to fail to draw the ships in some very specific circumstances, making a given ship type invisible for the duration of the mission. The way this was handled by the authors was brilliant. :)

Back in 1995/1996 WC1 and WC2 modding was a big thing actually. WC modding at the time was much less sophisticated than today (let's be honest, we were all learning how to walk back then), so the earlier WC1/2 engines ended up seeing a lot more modifications than WC3/4. This was in part due to the TRE packaging of the later games, since XTREs ended up introducing quite a few obstacles (eg. something as simple as knowing the name of a file inside a XTRE is a hard task). In time, some WC3 and WC4 tools were developed... but eventually WCP was released in 1997, and the modding community ended up focusing on the most exciting WC engine yet, with mods for the earlier games being more or less forgotten.

It's great reading about these mods again, they really are precious gems. And i'm very glad
to see that the interest in mods for the classic WC games still exists today! Many thanks
to Sharpshooter for rediscovering these mods and to the CIC for reporting about it.
 
Back when I was just getting started in the WC stuff online, I was so wrapped up in the new games coming out that I missed a lot of this stuff. I knew we had missions, but for a long time, I assumed these were little more than preconfigured Academy simulator saves. It really is quite impressive to see a green-tinted Ferret chasing Dralthi in the WC1 intro or flying on your wing around the Tiger's Claw.
 
Yes, it is... Especially since the Ferret is a lot of fun to fly.

Oh, and many thanks to you, Hcl, for making those mods possible in the first place. ;)
 
I used to have this disk that had crazy stuff on it that I bought at this store called "Electronics Boutique" I dunno if it's aroudn anymore but it used to have all sorts of game mod tools on it. For Xwing 95, Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Privateer, Tie Fighter, Full Throttle, Leasure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Space Quest....Some cool stuff I wish I had the disk now...but then again I wish I kept all my 3.5 and large" Floppies too
 
The company was bought by GameStop a couple years ago, and they are in the process of renaming all the stores.
 
No clue... But I think the mods were made for the DOS versions, so you'll likely have to use DosBox to get the mods to run even if the KS resource files are compatible.
 
DOSbox won't even try to run a windows executable- but since the mods use their own executables, I guess it's gonna be awful difficult to run them in KS anyways- at least the way I'm thinking where I get the upgraded versions of WC1 that KS provides... ah, well.
 
Max Gene said:
DOSbox won't even try to run a windows executable- but since the mods use their own executables, I guess it's gonna be awful difficult to run them in KS anyways- at least the way I'm thinking where I get the upgraded versions of WC1 that KS provides... ah, well.
Click to expand...

I was pretty much suggesting that you should try to install the mods as if you had the DOS version, and then run the special executable (SM3.com, for example) under DosBox if necessary.

It's true that it might not work even if you do this, but it's still worth a try.
 
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