A Pro Stick Paired With an Action Hit (January 11, 2023)

I know that third shot also appeared on the original WC2 box, but it too is quite distant from the final game.

Here are some screenshots (specifically from SO2, but these scenes are using WC2 art assets).

so2_000.png
so2_001.png


Here is the background of the Concordia bridge, from MEDIUM.V00.

Concordia Bridge from MEDIUM.png


The characters come from MIDFACE.V00 and MIDBACK.V00. All of them stand in these poses, at these scales. There are no people facing side-on, as seen in the box art. Neither could they be shrunk to the scale seen on the box, because they don't have feet. If the character on the box in a blue uniform with gray hair is Tolwyn, someone threw out his wardrobe - the only art that shipped with the game has his white uniform with the bizarre red cape. The WC2 artists did not waste a single pixel if it wasn't going to be on the screen.

Bluehair from MIDBACK.png
Tolwyn from MIDFACE.png

The people sitting at the consoles are in ARTDATA.V00, and aren't in any other poses.



Edit: the paragraph below is incorrect, and so is the speculation that follows. see this comment for a counterexample.

The box screenshot shows a red planet through the window. While that window is obscured by characters in my screenshots, I don't believe I have ever seen the "skybox" show up in the background of WC2 cutscenes. Space dust drifts past, but that's it.

The skybox does show up in the WC1 landing animation; below Dakota 3, with the ringed planet from that system appearing in upper right.

wc_004.png


Why not show the skybox in the WC2 cutscenes? I can see two possible reasons:
  1. It would mean transferring information and art assets between the flight simulation and the cutscenes. The programmers seem to have kept these fairly isolated, although it's neat that they did make damage to Bluehair's ship appear.
  2. Some conversations happen in a system other than the current mission. Either you risk having the wrong planet appear through the windows, or ytou have cutscenes able to specify their own skybox, just for the moments when the angle through the window is just right.
 
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Hey, I had that! That was actually how I got into Wing Commander, and also my first joystick, though for some reason I was never able to actually get it to work with the game.

I think there was a bundle that came with the first game? At least that's what I remember. It might also have been a sound card.
 
Ha Ha, I had that model of joystick back in the day
I have a still functioning Saitek Cyborg Evo now, it must be pushing about 15 now.
 
Hooked my Saitek up to my laptop at home just last week; the eldest wanted to learn how to fly. To my knowledge he still hasn't tried yet...

I need to get a second one so I can start pasting his ass in Armada...
 
Eh, Gravis was pretty good back in the day. Thrustmaster was the one to get if you could afford it, but if you couldn't and ended up with a Gravis, you weren't doing too bad either.
 
I had a 2 gravis mousestick IIs for early Mac OS growing up (had 2 Macs in the house). They look a lot like that joystick but they are beige, and connected to the apple mouse serial port. Despite feeling flimsy by today's standards, and yellowed, they still both work fine. Gravis made good stuff. Their soundcards of course were legendary.
 
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Hooked my Saitek up to my laptop at home just last week; the eldest wanted to learn how to fly. To my knowledge he still hasn't tried yet...

I need to get a second one so I can start pasting his ass in Armada...
Or just do split screen with two players on a single keyboard!
 
Or just do split screen with two players on a single keyboard!
I used to play the game like that quite a lot - it's a bit awkward. Besides, I'd like the boy to think he was doing at least a little bit well before I go wiping the floors with him...
 
Why not show the skybox in the WC2 cutscenes? I can see two possible reasons:

Wing Commander II cutscenes do have skyboxes that match their systems! While you usually just see stars, you will occasionally get a local object, like this pair of screenshots from Novaya Kiev A:

View attachment 12980View attachment 12979

The screenshot seems to match the footage we've seen from earlier builds of Wing Commander II where the game reuses a lot more of the Wing Commander I skybox objects. It may be a bullshot, possibly even the original reference for how the medium distance paper dolls were supposed to work.

I think there was a bundle that came with the first game? At least that's what I remember. It might also have been a sound card.

There were a lot of bundles, I've been trying to catalog them all lately. Creative alone put out a dozen plus multimedia kits with WC2 and Academy! Wing Commander I is an interesting case because of how the CD-ROM version was licensed out to Software Toolworks/Mindscape... EA very very rarely touched it but Software Toolworks put out lots of OEM copies of WC1 and WC1/Ultima VI which were often included in multimedia bundles (more often as a third party thing where a store would buy 5,000 CDs to include when someone bought a sound card or a drive or a kit...).
 
I remember this one fondly! There where 2 variants, the other one came with Academy I believe?

Had a Logitech Wingman Extreme during that era... and both games already, and limited money to spend... I remember the Gravis Sticks not looking like much, but very, very durable.. (I went through lots of joysticks during the 90's)
 
I've never seen an Academy version, but I'll be on the lookout! I did see a nearly identical one with that era's version of Flight Simulator a few days ago. (WC2 was a much more common OEM title because there was a CD-ROM version that was much cheaper to reproduce/pack in).
 
Wing Commander II cutscenes do have skyboxes that match their systems! While you usually just see stars, you will occasionally get a local object, like this pair of screenshots from Novaya Kiev A:
Thank you for the correction, and my apologies to the WC2 programmers for underestimating them.

Interesting further detail: the background shifts slightly between the middle and closeup. So WC2 is not just drawing the skybox at an arbitrary angle, there's some thought about which direction each shot is facing.

wc2_001.png
wc2_000.png


So which direction is the window in Officers Barracks 235F looking out? I launched that mission, expecting to find it directly forwards, port or starboard. But instead it's at an angle somewhere between forwards and port!

wc2_004.png


From the Novaya Kiev A debriefing, Angel's office has the same orientation as the barracks, with no shift in angle when in closeup.

wc2_008.png
wc2_009.png


Then the Novaya Kiev B plot scenes included a different object in the Observation Deck background...

wc2_006.png


...but that implies that the Observation Deck points partially upwards!

wc2_007.png


So are there any missions where background objects appear out of the Bridge windows? If not, do we know enough about WC2 editing to add some, and work out which direction is forwards in that one?

Not that I can see much to be gained from such esoteric questions, unless someone wants to make a game where the Concordia interior rooms are placed within the Concordia exterior model...
 
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Is the gravis stick more or less what's in a confed cockpit? I'm looking at the art... seems about right.
 
It would've been the top of the line 'type' of joystick when Wing Commander I was being developed... Thrustmaster hadn't come out with the first FCS yet!

By Wing Commander IV, there was money to be made licensing one stick over the other... hence the CH Flight Stick Pro in the trailer!
 
A couple months ago I started an atlas with all the sky objects per system if you're interested: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uxJC725IHLjzWhPOjKkhBjFpH85y83LCxZNifeq2smY/edit?usp=sharing
Am I interested in absurdly detailed digging through Wing Commander asset files? Of course I am. Thank you for all the work making that atlas in the knowledge that someone was guaranteed to ask about them.

Are there only 3 columns in the WC2 sheet because it only supported 3 sky objects, or the designers only ever used 3 objects, even though some WC1 missions had 4? I know going from WC1 to WC2 the maximum number of ships per mission shrank from 32 to 24, but if they reduced the sky object limit from 4 to 3, that seems like a minimal saving of memory.

I'm a little disappointed with how few objects they drew for Super Wing Commander, and I see it means there's no specific character to the "Secret Missions 1.5," where the original Secret Missions 2 had a whole lot of new objects to give Firekka and adjacent systems their own appearance.



Thank you also for digging through and finding those Heaven's Gate appearances. I went and got screenshots.

This purple nebula appeared in the Observation Deck during Heaven's Gate A, but I couldn't find it in flight.

wc2_000.png


The brown planet appears in the exact same graphical position of Angel's office window and the bridge. So at this point I have to concede that there probably wasn't some careful plan to define the orientation of every room aboard the Concordia. But it's been an entertaining diversion, going through all these backgrounds.

wc2_005.png

wc2_003.png

wc2_007.png


However, if these angles were planned, then in the bridge shots, Bluehair appears to be looking towards the front windows.

wc2_006.png


Hey, while most rooms have two distinct backgrounds for close-ups, they just mirrored the one used for the bridge!

wc2_009.png
wc2_008.png
 
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