Wing Commander 3 Free on Origin

Hey guys, it's been a while since I posted here. Fully in Star Citizen world right now. I'm quite busy doing podcasts to advertise Chris' game in Russia.

However, when I learnt about the fact that EA gives away WC3 for free, I couldn't resist and decided to make a video with open question at the end. What does Christopher Blair think about free copy of Wing Commander 3? What does he feel?

I'll let you all decided for yourself, what might be in his head. Have a good time watching it ;)
Here is the original post on SC's forums.

and here is the the video itself. I hope you like it.



With best regards,
Cyb
 
"They did it because it's reliable, as everyone's midi setup is different and the GUS drivers are not free"
Click to expand...
You can still download them from Kensington's FTP, and they include all the wavetable soundfonts.

Here you can hear the cards software wavetable playback from a GUS in-mission:
Mind you, you did need to expand your card to the maximum amount of memory(So yeah, under €10 from radioshack(1994) in today's currency), but you can specify this in dosbox(for free).

My point was why did they not use a freeware, or licensed software emulator for a wavetable card? they could re-use the license for other older games as well..

But then again, not everyone is heavily into music in games...
 
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Oh, I'm fully aware you can download them, but their legal status are not free. This is why they are not included with dosbox in the first place. All of those old wavetable cards are in the same boat. IBM music feature card, SB AWE, MT-32, ect.. The roms are still owned by their respective owners. A lot of the companies are still alive today. As for a General MIDI solution, it is by far easiest to just really that to the OS and let people deal with it how they wish.
 
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I can legally download them from their own website. How is it not free? And the gravis has no build-in sounds, unlike the other cards you mentioned. You could include a sample set yourself, which some game developers, including LucasArts, did. GM solutions would have worked perfectly, had DirectX not abandoned midi support.
 
"Free" in this case doesn't mean "pay no money for it" as much as it means "The intellectual property owners still want to exert control even though they don't get money from you for it". That means that distributing without their permission is still taboo.
 
Exactly, to quote the GNU free software page. There is a difference between free as in "free beer" and free as in "freedom of speech." The latter is not the case here. And even though the patches were installed on the HD and not the card, it goes under the same category as roms from the other cards. The only difference is that, unlike the mt-32, the GUS drivers have, to my knowledge, never been attempted to be enforced. But that still doesn't mean Origin and GoG can bundle them in their wc3 packages.
 
I downloaded the Origin version ,but it doesnt work :/ tried everything I could.It starts ,and crashes
Anyway ,back to GOG/Kilrathi Saga versions :)
 
Ohhh it was nice to be published on WCNEWS again. It was a while I must say ;) Anyway guys, I hope you like the video as I tried to create a scene, where I could rise a question - What does Chris Blair think about a free copy of WC3 on Origin? Let us all decided for ourselves. Enjoy!
 
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