Could WC1 be made better?

climber said:
If you want something that really appeals to the masses then it must be by the masses. Simple.

Arggg just noticed that :( The masses should be kept out, by use of lethal force if necessary, from the development process.

I don't know whats up with Armada online play but patching a closed source title... there's really only one man in the community with the experience to do that and its HCl (and I'm more excited about his WC1 patch atm).
Could put an original multiplayer Wing Commander title together however the real issue is how many people could you get online at once? If the answer is what I think it would be you really would be limited to a remake of armada and we're back to that old remake issue again :p
 
WC1 remake? it's been done before. It's called super wing commander. And yes there is some controversy regarding some of the "changes" therein. (ive never played swc so I can't comment on this)

Could it be done? Thats not the issue. Even if you kept all the cinematics graphics and only made a 3d engine, it would change the dynamics of the game. Some of the challenge and charm of the originals had to do with learning how to use the engines limitations to your advantage. once that is removed, it would necesitate other balancing issues. And your back to the conundrum of whether or not it still represents the original faithfully enough.

And no the masses by definition don't have a clue. (consider election results if you will... Oviously, not everyone will ever agree) When Terrry Gilliam had finished Brazil, a bunch of studio honchos decided they knew better what a movie was, and started re-shooting and editing the film. Gilliam fought for his film (albeit slyly) and of course we have that wonderfull classic film to enjoy. (for comparison you can watch the studios version included in the criterion edition dvd set)
 
Well, it stimulated a good discussion. I love the original and will play it over and over again I am sure. Maybe some day one of us will be rich and we can resurect WC for the commercial market and show these kids today that zapping zombies and driving computerised souped up cars to crappy music and mugging old grannies on screen is not gameplay at all.
 
AD said:
WC1 remake? it's been done before. It's called super wing commander. And yes there is some controversy regarding some of the "changes" therein. (ive never played swc so I can't comment on this)

Having played SWC for several hours yesterday, here's what I have to say on the controversy over it:

The remake could have easily eclipsed the original *if* they had taken their new features to their proper conclusion. SWC had it all: FMV, cool looking cockpits that shifted as you moved (like Prophecy!), higher resolution ships, more up to date drawings, voice acting, ITTS tracking, an enemy direction indicator, and the list goes on. All while maintaining much of the feel of the original game. However, if you take apart each of these features, you find that each one falls short of what it could be, and even detracts from the original! Here's a quick list of items I can think of now:

- The voice acting is awful. Such flat lines delivered from people who are obviously non-professionals. Halycon is particularly bad, despite the fact that he's one of the few that doesn't have a (very) faked accent. With professional voice actors, this would have been much better. (Chris would argue that at the time we were happy to hear anything. I would argue that Privateer did a far better job the year earlier, and that WCIII was released the same year.)

- The cockpit indicators are useless. The radar is so small that it's impossible to get *good* bearings on the enemy craft. In fact, it's quite difficult to see the dots on the screen at all! Thankfully, they have an arrow in the targeting reticle that tells you which way to turn, but it's not a replacement for a good radar. Same with the shield, armor, and damage readouts. They've all been simplified into a picture of your ship that turns red in the area it's damaged. It's nice looking, but difficult to extract useful information from in a combat situation. Damage readouts have been replaced with a single floating line that loops through each damaged component. So much for getting a quick summary of your condition. :(

- The ITTS always overestimates the lead, especially when there is none. This is quite annoying as I've been trained from WCII on to aim for the ITTS reticle. Now I have to unlearn that behavior.

- The wingmen are dumber than rocks falling into a canyon. I swear, if I let them off my wing for ONE second, the bastards fly right into my line of fire and get their asses toasted by friendly fire! Gah! Can't they pick an enemy and stick with him instead of flying in front of me?! (Ok, so this is a minor nitpick, but it annoys me to no end.)

- Because of the FMV, your chance to check the state of your fighter after a mission is lost. It's replaced with the deck chief saying something non-helpful like, "You're lucky to have made it back" or "Glad to have you back, sir!". *sigh*

In short, SWC strikes me as an excellent project done on a low budget in a short amount of time. If they had taken the time to fix these shortcomings, it would be one of the most sought after items today. If a WC1 remake ever occurs, the best thing for them to do is to get the original gameplay down pat, then add features such as voice acting *very slowly* so as to ensure that they're done right. If the feature isn't working, throw it out!
 
AKAImBatman said:
The ITTS always overestimates the lead, especially when there is none. This is quite annoying as I've been trained from WCII on to aim for the ITTS reticle. Now I have to unlearn that behavior.
Funny... most of us would say that the problem with ITTS in a WC1 remake isn't its quality, but rather its very presence.
 
Quarto said:
Funny... most of us would say that the problem with ITTS in a WC1 remake isn't its quality, but rather its very presence.

The best solution would obviously have been not to include it, but the next best solution is to make sure it works right. Adding it to the game and not taking the time to make it work right is the worst move possible.
 
AD said:
And no the masses by definition don't have a clue. (consider election results if you will... Oviously, not everyone will ever agree)

I don't appreciate or agree in any way shape or form with your analogy.

Despite that, the truth is with a project like a remake or even just fan created modification there must be a logical highly organized outline for the project. This is where almost every fan project that I've seen falls apart (this is not WC exclusive). Fan projects typically start as a general idea of what someone wants to do and then it evolves into a hodge podge collection of brainstorms that have occurred here and there. Very few are worth playing.
 
AKAImBatman said:
The best solution would obviously have been not to include it, but the next best solution is to make sure it works right. Adding it to the game and not taking the time to make it work right is the worst move possible.
No... if the best solution is to not have ITTS at all, then the second best solution is to make sure it does not work right :). Although ITTS appeared in WC2 simply as a new gameplay feature, it was disguised as a new invention within the WC universe, with only the most modern ships carrying it. Since it's new in 2664, it shouldn't appear at all in 2654 - but if it does, it should at least be disguised as a malfunctioning prototype.
 
Quarto said:
No... if the best solution is to not have ITTS at all, then the second best solution is to make sure it does not work right :). Although ITTS appeared in WC2 simply as a new gameplay feature, it was disguised as a new invention within the WC universe, with only the most modern ships carrying it. Since it's new in 2664, it shouldn't appear at all in 2654 - but if it does, it should at least be disguised as a malfunctioning prototype.

I don't agree. A "malfunctioning" prototype would do weird things like bounce the reticle all over creation. Simply placing it in the *wrong* spot would never get get deployed as a prototype. It's stupidly simple to figure out the current trajectory of the ship and then use that info to decide where the firepower would intercept. That's part of the reason why ITTS becomes far less useful as soon as enemy starts evasive maneuvers. It isn't smart enough to predict his changes in course.

No, I think this is one of those times when we should see through the storyline to what something actually is. In this case, as you say, a game feature introduced in WCII. Since SWC lies solidly outside of the canon games, there's no reason to pretend like the ITTS shouldn't work.
 
The Armada/Dosbox problem seems to be that while dosbox has built in network support and also built in "protected mode" support as required by many games, currently the two can not function at the same time. That's just a guess, but it's probably a pretty accurate one going by the error message Armada throws up when you try to run it with dosbox networking enabled. For some reason Armada can't work with the dosbox modem support either.
 
What's the ITTS discussion doing in this thread anyway? :p
IMO, SWC is a version of WC1, not a remake of the PC version of WC1.

SWC has stuff that WC1 doesn't, SWC lacks stuff that can be found in WC1, and the things that SWC and WC1 do have in common most likely are done differently in each product... If that fits in with your definition a "remake", then that word doesn't define much to you at all. :p
 
Speaking of Armada and DosBox... i do have a small patch that allows Proving Grounds to run under DosBox, by disabling that initial check. I didn't upload it until now because it hadn't been extensively tested (and the CD version remained completely untested), so i can't guarantee it works... but if someone wants to give it a try nonetheless it can be found here.

Usual procedure: ems = false, ipx=true, loadfix, pgdb ... You should be able to get PG under dosbox and host an IPX game. Now wether it works on Kali or not... that's another story. If anyone tries it, let me know :)

Mario
 
I'm not familiar with the IPX stuff to begin with. Whether I use the original pg executable or your db version, it does the same thing. Tells me IPX isn't loaded when I go to host a game.
 
Ok, i decided to do some testing with 3 instances of DosBox and things are looking good! Apparently DosBox emulates IPX with UDP *and* has UDP tunnelling capabilities, so Kali is unnecessary.

My setup was:

DosBox1: Dedicated IPXNET server

ipxnet startserver

DosBox2 and 3: proving grounds

mount c c:\
loadfix
c:
cd games\armada
ipxnet connect localhost
pgdb

Dosbox version: 0.63

Modifications to vanilla dosbox.conf:
ems = false
ipx = true

Some pics :)
Connecting
Battle

Only thing to check is how tolerant PG + DosBox are to internet latency.

Unfortunately, regular Armada won't work.. It uses NetBIOS instead of IPX.

Mario
 
Well, that's extremely exciting. After getting Privateer/Armada/Strike Commander working in Windows finally, getting Armada playable on today's internet is one of our great holy grails. I've got Proving Grounds running just fine here if you need someone to test linking to. Also, what about joystick support? Armada seems to have the worst joystick support in dosbox. Do you foresee ultimately getting regular Armada to work too?
 
Sounds good, if you can be online tonight at around 2300 GMT we can do a test link to determine how well this setup works in practice and if there are any configuration issues that need to be addressed.

I wasn't aware of the joystick issues in DosBox. I have a separate machine for WC games, so i don't use DosBox all that often. It's strange how in Armada the joystick jumps all over the place but in SM2 it works like a charm. I'll compare both routines and see if i can find anything useful.

I expect to get regular Armada running as well, but i still don't know how far i'll have to dig to do so, so i won't even guess on a completion date. I made a few tests with a NetBIOS-over-IPX driver i got from Novell and although it seems to install correctly, DosBox complained about "unhandled IPX functions". Attempting to start a LAN game crashes DosBox. Looks like it will be necessary to go deep into NetBIOS and IPX... However, getting the Armada joystick routines stabilized for DosBox seems more useful in the short term, so i'll probably start there first.

Mario
 
Looks good when running on my laptop. For some reason I get synchronization errors when I try to run it on my PC though. I'll have to try and find out why somewhen because right now I don't see what's different
 
id love to see wc1+wc2 remakes as i dont have the games anymore and it almost makes me feel like crying!!!! i want to kill cats damm furry things!!!!!!
 
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