WC4 3d acceleration?

C

Carnaklor

Spaceman
I wonder if it is possible to convert Wing Commander 4 simple graphics to 3d accelerated ones. I saw some guys doing succesfull conversion of Hexen, Doom 1 and 2, Heretic, Blood 1. So maybe it's possible to convert WC4 in Direct 3D, OpenGl or glide. What do you think of this possiblity?
 
Hi,

There are people who have converted some of the fighters from WC4 to use in WCP so those are hardware accelerated.

But

I heard that when WC4 was released on budget, it came with 3dfx acceleration.

Can anyone confirm or deny?

Regards
 
Unfortuantley thats false

The reason Doom etc could be 3D accelerated was because their source code was released whereas the Wing Commander open source project failed.
Theoretically WCIV could look better than Prophecy but then EA has its principals which don't make any sense :( I mean damn the engine is old and therefore of little commercial use and obviously you'd need the original due to all the video involved.
Not to mention the fact that they aren't making any profit from it or any of the WC games at the moment :(
 
Source code

Anyone thinks EA/Origin will distribute the source code in the future? Or maybe we could contact them and I try to gather some information about the reasons of not releasing it.
 
As I recall they said their reasoning was:

It is not EA's policy to release the source code of its games

The petition raised some very good reasons for releasing it and that was pretty much all they could come up with. To be honest I find it hard to believe it was anything more than laziness.
 
I think the polities of EA are to make money with agame and then, trash futher possibilities of improving their games. Damn marketing strategies!
 
Well guys, once I asked just the same question here in the CIC, and the answer I got was : "You shouldn´t be playing WC games for the graphics, but for the game itself".
 
However, it is not that hard to release a source code! Even if we play for the game story, improving graphics is also a good idea! When it is possible.
 
Well, there are quite a few reasons *not* to release the source code... among them...

- You're *giving* your secret information to your competitors... releasing the WC sourecode means that anyone wanting to make a space-sim game can just copy the AI routines, for example.
- You have to pay to host it online -- and there's no intrinsic return in costs to this.
 
The AI in WC4 must be too old for today's games. I mean, simulation games have evolved a lot since 1995. They can post source code in WC fan page like WC CIC.

[Edited by Carnaklor on 03-18-2001 at 11:42]
 
I don't think we could afford that sort of bandwith -- we're rather strapped as is.

But the WCIV routines are presumably very similar to the Prophecy routines and the WC3 routines -- WC uses the old stuff as a base. The point is that when you release the source code, *anybody* can take it, slap some new graphics onto it and then sell it as their own game... EA doesn't really see the need to allow that to happen <G>
 
Well as I understand the way games are produced its not all one big block of code. The AI has absolutley nothing to do with the two things that need updating in those games:
The lack of 3d acceleration
The joystick support

Now if Origin simply made the code we needed available to change that I would be happy as pie, the joystick thing might be alterable without the source and if so that would make me very happy but still just think how good WCIII+IV could look.
 
Someday maybe, we'll have all these improvements. Anyone wants to steal the source code in the Origin's Office in Texas??? :)

[Edited by Carnaklor on 03-18-2001 at 12:22]
 
If anyone has actually seen the OpenGL version of doom they will have no doubt realised the benefits of making something open source, as with Wing CommanderI,II,Privateer and Academy Doom used sprites but now the sprites look far cleaner and the resoloution can be altered by the user.
lol, imagine playing WCI in 1280*1024, if it looked anything like Doom does now it'd be worth it.
 
I'm a real newbie in programmation, but couldn't we crack the code of the game to know how it is done? Maybe a good hacker could do it?
 
Well you could try to reverse engineer the code, so long as you don't mind a little jail time when you release it :rolleyes: .
 
As long as nobody knows who you are, you are not going to jail. Anonymous releases are the best way to force events to happen.
 
Personally I'm not sure Origin care what we do, Secret Ops is up everywhere, acadmemy is given away free here. WC1 is available as abandonware, they haven't taken any action against the projects which bring wing commander to non wing commander engines (anyone remember alien quake? loudsa fun, quickly shut down). Like I say it sounds like laziness to me
 
No, you can't really turn a compiled program back into its original source code... if you could, we'd see a lot of things more serious than wc ripoffs (bad Windows knockoffs, for instance (G)). :)

Anyway, as for stealing the code from their offices... it'd be fairly difficult -- you need a magnetic card just to use the elevator... I'm sure whatever sort of machine they have it archived on is pretty well protected (if they even archive it on a computer...).
 
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