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Prophecy Hacking Info Assembled
Standoff's PopsiclePete is giving us an insight into all the code hacking HCl had to do in order to modify key aspects of the Prophecy game engine. Various enhancement packs (such as the hi-res patch, the DVD upgrade and the multiplayer add-on) as well as the fully-featured game conversions, Unknown Enemy and Standoff, all make use of these techniques. Anyone with a background in software development should find this interesting.
As you know, Standoff is a modification of Secret Ops. Even if SO is much easier to mod than the previous WC games, many aspects of the game were hardcoded into it: the number of guns, number of ships, number of displayed asteroids, etc. To be able to break those limitations, the main game's EXE has to be altered. Those of you who have tried hex-editing their favorite games knows you can't do much using that method. To solve this problem, WC editing guru HCl developed a very effective method: do a very small hack to the EXE so it loads a DLL, and from that DLL rewrite the EXE directly in memory!
Using this trick, HCl has made many amazing patches to WCP/SO, like the hi-res and DVD patches. He also made a number of patches for Unknown Enemy and Standoff... but the really cool thing is that he gave us a formidable tool through which we've been able to add on our own little patches every time a need arises.
At this stage in the Episode 5 development, Standoff includes over 80 patches which allow us to raise the limits of the original SO, add new mission commands and making the game closer to the original Wing Commander 2 gaming experience.
I have prepared a small demonstration explaining a very simple patch I recently made. After hearing people complain about the game's screenshots being overwritten with new images every time the game was reloaded, I decided to make a quick patch. The problem is that when the player hits the "Print Screen" key, the game doesn't check for existing files and starts to save them over what already exists.
[KrisV] [# 9284] [Show comments]  
Making the Game: Comms Alien
Today's document is a list of Nephilim (then: alien) comm messages to be recorded for Wing Commander Prophecy. The alien comms in Prophecy are especially interesting because they're arguably the single largest source of information on the alien culture. As in the original Wing Commander, there were no cutscenes between Nephilim leaders plotting mankind's downfall - the player was put up against an entirely mysterious threat that appeared only in brief viewscreen taunts. Nevertheless, in these taunts alone we learn about their biological caste system (soldiers, warlords, mother creatures), their relation to humanity (they know Blair and refer to him as the World Slayer) and their religious beliefs (a fear of dissolution, of 'the blackness').
These updates are thanks to John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel, who provided several CD image archives of material used by the Wing Commander Prophecy development team!
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Comms Alien
Download (30 kb)
Date: July 9, 1997
Project: Wing Commander Prophecy
Donated By: John Guentzel
Pages: 7
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[LOAF] [# 9258] [Show comments]
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