Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops Model Update Pack

Quick Update: I hated the asteroids so much that I hammered out most of them except the giant class ones (they may need a tree, I'll have to research them). Asteroids come in several types, small, medium, large, huge, and giant. There are two of each to make a nice asteroid field. Here you can see some of the newer rocks, including one giant chunk of ice I made for fun. (and yes this is my dev copy since I still have the Panther cockpit mock-up...)

Asteroid_1.jpg Asteroid_2.jpg Asteroid_3.jpg Asteroid_4.jpg Asteroid_5.jpg Asteroid_6.jpg Asteroid_7.jpg
 
"Shoot the ice asteroids but dodge the rocky ones."
-Cmdr. Jake Farrel, Star Wars: Rebel Assault

Well done. By keeping the original large asteroid mext to the improved small one, you can clearly see the huge difference.
 
"Shoot the ice asteroids but dodge the rocky ones."
-Cmdr. Jake Farrel, Star Wars: Rebel Assault

Well done. By keeping the original large asteroid mext to the improved small one, you can clearly see the huge difference.

"Any easier, and it just wouldn't be any fun..."
-Cpt. "Ace" Merrick, Rebel Assault II

The Asteroid redux is complete. Attached are some final images on what you can expect your new and improved asteroid fields to look like. As an aside, I did some experimenting with the collision spheres, and found that by reshaping them, the game imparts some pretty crazy spins on some of the asteroids. All the ones for the MUP are the original spherical ones though as the crazy spin, while it looked cool (and very Star Wars) caused more than a few AI deaths (far more than usual).

Asteroid_8.jpg Asteroid_9.jpg Asteroid_10.jpg Asteroid_11.jpg
 
Magnificent! I really can't wait to see you tear into the capships, though!

This, given the scale of them on screen compared to the fighters (yet still working with the same texture resolution limits) I'm far more excited about the capships. It's a real shame me and Pete never had time for the single poly fighter override system we hypothesized about, the bug capships could really have benefited from bump and parallax maps.
 
Here's a fun old vs. new comparison for the Confed ships thus far, the Neph are coming (queue ominous music)....

As amazing as your new models are, it's almost more jarring to see the state of the old ships. It's easy to recall that the WC1/2 era ships were pixelated, but I think in many of our heads, ships of the later Wing Commanders already looked as good as you upgraded them to be. Probably our minds filled in the blanks with details gleaned from high res renders in promo shots, cutscenes or the official guide(s). Comparisons like this are fantastic so we can see how much upgrading you've really done!
 
It's a real shame me and Pete never had time for the single poly fighter override system we hypothesized about, the bug capships could really have benefited from bump and parallax maps.

I guess I'll have to do it the old fashioned way and model surface features, it'll give me a chance to play with Blender's oft overlooked (in my world anyway) sculpting tools. I think I can still keep the poly count sane, but get a decent look to them. Still, yeah bump maps would've been huge.

As amazing as your new models are, it's almost more jarring to see the state of the old ships. It's easy to recall that the WC1/2 era ships were pixelated, but I think in many of our heads, ships of the later Wing Commanders already looked as good as you upgraded them to be. Probably our minds filled in the blanks with details gleaned from high res renders in promo shots, cutscenes or the official guide(s). Comparisons like this are fantastic so we can see how much upgrading you've really done!

Thanks Chris! I appreciate the compliment! I'd like to think somehow that the 3D/FX version ensconced in my memories was better than what was shown, but the reality is probably what you've described, our imgainations filled in the gaps that technology hadn't caught up to. Still, for its time, Prophecy and SO were pretty cutting edge in the graphics department, especially compared with its contemporaries.

Finally - I need a proper font for the Wing Commander titles. Anyone know what the actual font was for prophecy or a reasonable facsimile? The font above is Space Marine, which is passable, but not really the correct font.
 
Great Job Guys and thank you for all your effort.

Will there be an update installer pack for Prophecy too?
 
Can I ask how future versions will work ?

Will it be download a new installer each time ?, or will there be some form of update ?
 
Can I ask how future versions will work ?

Will it be download a new installer each time ?, or will there be some form of update ?

The plan is that we will update the installers with future versions, however if you already have the MUP installed, you should be able to just use the Open/GL installer as opposed to the full install.
 
The plan is that we will update the installers with future versions, however if you already have the MUP installed, you should be able to just use the Open/GL installer as opposed to the full install.

What sort of size download are we looking at ? I get a limited amount of internet each month and so I have to be careful about what I download as I need the interwebs for my university work.
 
What sort of size download are we looking at ? I get a limited amount of internet each month and so I have to be careful about what I download as I need the interwebs for my university work.

Fortunately the assets themselves are pretty small, the new alpha files are only about 65 MB in size (not including all the Open/GL files). I can't really hazard a guess right now as to the full size of the MUP when its done, but I don't think we're into the Terabyte range by any stretch. I know that's not much help but it's kind of a moving target right now.
 
Hehe, yeah. After the experience of making UE, Standoff, and a bunch of air combat games, I can tell you exactly why refuel missions are so few and far between. Or why there's just one altogether :). The problem is that there is no point in refuelling the player unless the mission is really, really long and demanding. But the more demanding the mission is, the more likely it is that the player will take damage along the way. So, if a mission gets too long, there's a pretty good chance that the player will be too badly damaged to even be especially grateful for the extra fuel and ammo. Instead, they'll resent the fact that the mission is long enough for them to need it in the first place. This is particularly true for games from the Wing Commander era - the good old days before checkpoints, when it had to be possible to complete a mission in one go, and you couldn't stress the player with excessively difficult sequences because you knew that if they died, they'd be repeating the whole thing rather than just going back to the nearest checkpoint. But then again, with checkpoints it could potentially be worse, as you'd be saving at a checkpoint with a damaged ship.

So, yeah, what I'm getting at is that that's a cool Condor, but indeed not very useful :).
 
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