WC Saga Breaks Down Campaign (March 14, 2012)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
The WC Saga team has posted some new details about how the mod's campaign will work. Just like a real "in universe" character (and similar to how things worked in WC1), the game will assign you to various squadrons that each fly a particular fighter. Although the player does not fly off the TCS Victory, the game interweaves with some of the official WC3 events that occurred. It will also have 50 missions, and the pilots should actually see all of these, since the Freespace engine does not support branching like WC titles do.







You are shifted through several squadrons throughout "The Darkest Dawn" campaign, which consists of 50 missions. Each squadron flies a different fighter (and only that fighter type). Each squadron has their own wingmen and a squad leader. During missions you fly with these wingmen, and the squad leader too if he's on rotation to fly a combat mission. There is a Wing Commander in charge of the air wing, and on occassions you'll fly among him in combat.

Just as in Wing Commander, you fly patrols in elements of two fighters. If you are sent in a mission fully knowing there is going to be a stiff enemy presence, you go in flights of four. In more than one case, you fly as an integrated part of a strike team.

You will start off flying the Hellcat, then the Arrow, then Thunderbolt, then Longbow. You'll fly the Excalibur last. Due to the set FS2 engine programming there's not much we can do in terms of branching

Expect cameos from several notorious Kilrathi Aces of that period. We can't say which for now, but I will say that we made damn sure not to contradict the timeline, events and systems the Victory participated in during the official path seen in the WC3 novel.

Your carrier is the TCS Hermes. It fights in the forefront of virtually every operation of the Vega Sector Fleet, whether it is losing or winning. Some operations were mentioned in the WC3 guide, novel, and game.

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Original update published on March 14, 2012
 
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Except the Freespace engine DOES support branching. it's in the campaign editor and you can trigger branching based on any in-mission event.
 
Well, it does, but it does not support branching the way Wing Commander titles did.
It is not easily possible to do such complex branches as seen in in WC1.

But having no branching does not mean that everything is static. The Freespace engine allows to change missions based on what happened in previous missions, that's right.
 
Except the Freespace engine DOES support branching. it's in the campaign editor and you can trigger branching based on any in-mission event.
Which is pretty much what I said. However you can't create a real losing path, akin to the one in WC3 or WCP for instance, without forcing the player to replay the entire campaign. Actually, we did add a functionality during the beta test to allow the players to clone their pilots and their campaign progress, so now it is actually possible - not that it matters much at this point.
 
I'm confused. Having used FRED quite extensively, I remember being able to make campaigns that branched in massively different directions. I even made a campaign where you could siwtch sides at points and take part in battles on different sides, according to your current branch.

I'm not doubting the team, after all they have done far more modding of the FS2 engline than I ever did, I'm just confused by this.

One question, is this an FS2 mod or an FS2open mod?
 
I know Earth Brakiri War campaign for the Babylon Project had branching, for instance so yeah, it does have me curious a bit on this point as well. What exactly are the limitations of the engine? Not that I really mind in how it effected your end result. Many of the expansions to WC were quite linear as well. I'm just excited to see the final product! :)
 
@flashpoint its a standalone game built off a fork of the FS2O engine. how much different from the current FS2O engine, I don't know.
 
Im glad you guys are on final stretch with this project.:) Hell its been so many years from the start and finally you are nearing the finish line. So when you finish this, whats your next project going to be? Maybe an epic saga taking place between end of WC4 and start of WCP?:D
 
If you end up on the losing path, you would have to replay the entire campaign.

So you only get one save per campaign? You can't have separate saves at different points in the game?
 
nope, not really. Although you could always clone your pilot file at different points in a campaign. buts a little more cumbersome.
 
Uh, I'm pretty sure this isn't what Tolwyn meant, but apparently the news outlets are running with it:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-16-ea-sanctioned-wing-commander-saga-project-release-date
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116371-Wing-Commander-Saga-Arrives-Next-Week

Both of those are taking the Gnomes lair article (http://www.gnomeslair.com/2012/03/wing-commander-saga-preview-interview.html) and claiming some kind of announcement about official backing.

This is exactly the *WRONG* kind of publicity Saga wants. Tolwyn basically thanked EA and Chris... And Origin for that matter. Not that he had specifically talked to them. Just that EA's turning a blind eye has allowed this to happen. That's not what the other articles are saying.
 
nope, not really. Although you could always clone your pilot file at different points in a campaign. buts a little more cumbersome.
You could. Thing is, pilot cloning does not transfer your campaign progress. We had to add that during the beta test to allow our testers to retest certain portions of the game without having to go through the entire campaign. Of course, I do not know how FSO 3.6.14 handles pilot cloning.

This is exactly the *WRONG* kind of publicity Saga wants. Tolwyn basically thanked EA and Chris... And Origin for that matter. Not that he had specifically talked to them. Just that EA's turning a blind eye has allowed this to happen.

Precisely. Maybe something got lost in translation, but I was pretty sure the message I tried to convey was very clear. I would be the last person to complain about Wing Commander (or WCS for that matter) getting some spotlight but this is just wrong. The only thing that tops this is the short news over at online-welten.de claiming that we are using the Freelancer 3 engine. ;)
 
You guys definitely need to clear that up, as it might potentially bring trouble down on your heads. EA has always been happy to tolerate fan releases, but I don't think they'll appreciate hearing about how they officially sanctioned this. You should send a note to these guys explaining this.

That said, I must say, I'm envious :). Saga is getting a very impressive amount of publicity, it seems there's a lot more interest than there was in Standoff :).
 
You guys definitely need to clear that up, as it might potentially bring trouble down on your heads. EA has always been happy to tolerate fan releases, but I don't think they'll appreciate hearing about how they officially sanctioned this. You should send a note to these guys explaining this.

That was the first thing I did once I found out about this whole mess. Andy Chalk from escapistmagazine.com has already made the alterations. That being said, I've posted a small blurb on wcsaga.com, which should clear this up.

That said, I must say, I'm envious :). Saga is getting a very impressive amount of publicity, it seems there's a lot more interest than there was in Standoff :).

Not sure if ten years of work are worth it. ;)
 
pinch me because i still cant believe its almost here. honestly during the first half decade it seemed as this was just going to be another flame-out fan project, but here we are. Congratulations.
Knowing this was coming out this month really helped to soften the blow of the suckfest that was Mass Effect 3's ending. After alt-f4'ing that epic fail all I could think about was "holy shit another Wing Commander game is coming out in a couple weeks."
 
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