Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops Model Update Pack

Speaking of hacks, I would love for there to be a dll hook to reverse joystick rudder input. It's been a long annoyance..

As we are talking Secret Ops here, the rudder can be inverted in the options. For Prophecy it would require a hack as it isn't possible. I have a Logitec joystick which comes with software which can run game specific configurations so the rudder can be inverted there. Can yours do this instead?
 
Yeah, I would agree with Pete on that. I don't at all mind "reimaginings", and a couple of ships were slightly reimagined in Standoff, but a high-poly upgrade should be just a high-poly upgrade.



Hmm, what do you mean by this? You want to change the yaw axis, so that right goes left, or something?

I'm thinking by reverse he perhaps meant to disable it all together. I can't remember without testing, but doesn't Secret Ops give you a small amount of roll every time you try to pitch. Or maybe that's WC3.
 
I'm thinking by reverse he perhaps meant to disable it all together. I can't remember without testing, but doesn't Secret Ops give you a small amount of roll every time you try to pitch. Or maybe that's WC3.

I believe he means that when you twist the joystick counter-clockwise the ship will rotate clockwise (and vice versa). SO has an option to invert this but Prophecy doesn't. I guess he can correct me if I'm wrong and means something else.
 
Sorry I was talking about the rudder reversal. I'm prety sure both Prophecy and SO have the "option" to reverse the rudder, but it doesn't work. It reverts as soon as a modifier key (alt, button 2 on joystick, shift) is pressed, making the option effectively useless. I never had a joystick that worked with it's default rudder right out of the box, which leaves me to believe they were smoking something when they programmed it. No other game ever had that problem.
 
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Would be nice to see this ship package integrated in the open gl installer for secret ops/ prophecy @PopsiclePete , @Quarto would that be possible? :)
That's up to @DefianceIndustries. It's his own work, after all.


Yeah I'll scan in my pencil sketches and post them.

Ok so far it seems the overwhelming favorite is 'Keep your stinking creative license away from my Hades-class strike cruiser' :)
It's not like we don't have any interest in creative updates of the ships, but it really have to do with the kind of projet you're advertising. We're die-hard WC fans. If we're to install a "HD ship pack" for WCP/SO, it'd better be an exact match to the high-res movie models and/or original artist rendition because we expect an high-def version of the original we love.

"Re-imagined" models are better suited for projets such as fan mods. But please do share your sketches !
 
Would be nice to see this ship package integrated in the open gl installer for secret ops/ prophecy

I'm not opposed to the idea, in fact I kind of like it. but there are some differences between SO and Prophecy especially in the "low end" fighters. Both the piranha and tigershark have different weapons configs between the two games and you have to modify the ship .iff files to reassemble the models properly. So the installer would have to select which .iff to install based off the selection. Not an insurmountable hurdle but it is an added layer of complexity, unless you had two separate packs, but that presents its own challenges.

Also the pack should be optional on install IMO if there are people out there who want to play "vanilla" SO or Prophecy.
 
I agree - I just wanted to see what others were thinking. So the Cerberus shall remain as it is. I will post those sketches though.
Again, what Pete said :). There is plenty of room for more creative approaches, when they are appropriate to the project, and nobody says you can only do one project at a time... sanity? Oh, that's overrated ;).

That having been said, I must say I've never been a fan of ships "simply" being reimagined to change their appearance. This bothers me to no end even in official products - there are many things I appreciate about the WC movie, for example, but I sure don't appreciate having to deal with a whole bunch of new designs, whatever the issues with the original set might have been. But I do certainly always like to see canonical reimaginations, where an in-universe reason is provided for the ship's change of appearance. The updated Midway class in Arena, for instance, is a really cool thing. Similarly, I was (obviously) happy with the many modifications to capship appearance in Standoff, even though some of it was arguably quite controversial (the Concordia class' open flight deck, for instance). In those cases, we basically assumed that what you might see in one game does not necessarily reflect what a given ship class might look like in another timeframe, just as in reality ships are often revised and modified at various times in their lifespan.

So, what I'm saying, I guess, is that if you want to change the appearance of the Hades, think up a good story to explain it :).
 
Quick update: Popsicle Pete was kind enough to share an app he wrote back in the Standoff days to quickly add in some of the advanced features the GL patch has to offer. Pete and Pedro have been nursing me through the learning curve, :) I've updated the Piranha with the following:
  1. Rebalanced the saturation in the MAT so the ship is the appropriate shade of blue
  2. Repositioned the engine flames cone so it now appears in the proper position
  3. put a base spec map on the model! Hooray!!! Now the paint and greebles don't get washed out in bright direct lighting!
Pics below:
Pir_Update2.jpg Pir_Update1.jpg Pir_Update3.jpgPir_Update4.jpg
 
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Excellent to see such progress! Perhaps, as you get all this information, you could also endeavour to compile it into some kind of new guide for WCP/SO shipbuilding?
 
Excellent to see such progress! Perhaps, as you get all this information, you could also endeavour to compile it into some kind of new guide for WCP/SO shipbuilding?

Yes I was going to write up a tutorial after I get the fighters done (I'm doing the Tiger shark now and it's about double the number of faces as the other models) so I'm going to see if that presents an issue for the engine.

I'm most likely going to add a new section to the WCPedia with what I've learned and hopefully stash the software there as well so we don't lose it to history.
 
Oh, I wouldn't downgrade the resolutions unless there is a need to do so. It takes all of five seconds to convert a resolution from 1024x1024 to 512x512. I would suggest, as a priority, to implement all these ships one by one into either WCP or SO, and then to play through the game. If it's stable, if there's no crashes, no collision detection problems, et cetera, then it's fine. If there are problems, then there will be time to think about downsizing textures and reducing polycounts.
 
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