Wing Commander 1 - Briefing Timestamp Question

sgupta

1st Lieutenant
Hey all - this is sort of technical, but somewhat general as well, so I'm putting it in the general forum. Mods feel free to move it if you feel it should be in Technical Support, though it's not technically a real "problem".

Just curious if anyone knows the answer to this.

I'm playing Wing Commander I on an old DOS rig. (Not quite slow enough, so using SlowDOS, but otherwise it's simply DOS 6.22 with a genuine ISA Sound Blaster Pro and plays it great overall [few sound issues once in a great while cured by restarting the game, mostly if comm static + afterburner noise happens at the same time it seems]).

I've noticed that every mission I do starts at 01:20 hours during the briefing. Generally the debriefings and such are then too. And I know from screenshots/videos I've seen it looks like the timestamp can vary. The computer system is keeping time, so I guess I'm just curious what determines the timestamp the game gets.

This isn't a problem - game is fully playable. Just wondering since I noticed it and am quite curious. =oP
 
The time stamp in briefings and cut scenes between systems are all hard coded in the game. There are some which over lap but it's human error, considering the many different paths you can go down.
 
Thanks for the reply! Are you 100% certain on this? Just as an example, if I look at, say, http://wedge009.net/wc/wc1/goddard.php (or pick another walkthrough/script listing), the times they have are much different than the times I do. Dates, yes; those appear to be the same/hard-coded. Times, like I said, lately I've noticed they're all 01:20 for me, even one right after another, whereas you'll see things like 06:00 and 09:00 in theses scripts. Unless my copy of the game is different somehow, but it shouldn't be; installed from the CD version of I & II.
 
The WC1 briefing dates/times are weird. LOAF mentioned they were just random (within a set range) a while back.
 
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Interesting - thanks for the link; I did a brief search but didn't uncover that. I'm probably wrong about the dates too (they looked similar to me so I was assuming) - seems there's some weird random generation going on. At least that confirms I'm not completely crazy, just mostly. =oP Appreciate the feedback!
 
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