EA Checks Up On WC3 Cast (September 12, 2014)

[ChrisReid]

Electronic Arts has published a Where Are They Now? feature on the actors of Wing Commander 3. It doesn't actually give you as much information as simply browsing all of the actors' pages from IMDB would, but it's a little bit amazing that EA's Origin is publishing articles on The Heart of the Tiger in 2014. It would have been hard to imagine such a thing half a dozen years ago. Although we know this kind of recent news and activity isn't necessarily what Wingnuts have been hoping for, we find it encouraging that EA and other companies are at least showing an interest in the series again after a number of quiet years. If you haven't done so already, be sure to grab WC3 On The House by this coming Tuesday!

Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger holds a special place in the hearts of gamers. Developed during the early 90s when full-motion cutscenes were still in vogue, the game boasted a cast of recognizable actors who have made their mark in the public consciousness. And because Wing Commander 3 is On the House until September 16, you can see them strut their stuff against a green screen by downloading it for free! Clearly, this game made the careers of these well-known names, but what are they up to these days?

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Original update published on September 12, 2014

 

[L.I.F.]

Gotta love the part for Ginger. Well-played, EA, well-played.

 

[-danr-]

Gotta love the part for Ginger. Well-played, EA, well-played.

Y'know it's strange, about Ginger - she looked great in WC3, youthful and beautiful. If you check out any of her 80s, err, titles she actually looked older and less fresh in her past life than she did by the time she played Rachel in 1994.

I love to recall the time I stayed up drunkenly flirting with Ginger Lynn right here at the CIC, she was a great sport for dropping by.

 

[bsmith1702]

Gotta love the part for Ginger. Well-played, EA, well-played.

My mind is slightly blown by the fact that someone actually referenced "Super Force".

 

[Grey_Wolf]

Yeah.. the WC3 On the House from EA uses DosBox.. they didn't even bother packaging it for a newer OS. I'll stick with the GOG.com version, thank you. Good to have it as a secondary Online copy though.. saves my discs from additional wear lol!

 

[cff]

What's wrong with DOSBOX. Whatever you mean by packaging it for a newer OS, it would be lots and lots of work. EA probably even doesn't have the sources anymore nor would they compile or run natively in windows.

 

[-danr-]

What's wrong with DOSBOX. Whatever you mean by packaging it for a newer OS, it would be lots and lots of work. EA probably even doesn't have the sources anymore nor would they compile or run natively in windows.

I agree that DOSBox is fine, I really don't understand what Grey_Wolf was getting at - since both the GOG and EA versions both run just fine on a modern OS.

Got to disagree about EA not having the resources to modernise the game for x64 bit Windows though, firstly it runs just fine on Win 7 anyway, but even if it didn't - EA is a behemoth of a company, a multi billion dollar corporation with surely some of the finest programmers available. Shouldn't be that difficult!

 

[Dundradal]

And they both run on DOSBox.

 

[ChrisReid]

Got to disagree about EA not having the resources to modernise the game for x64 bit Windows though, firstly it runs just fine on Win 7 anyway, but even if it didn't - EA is a behemoth of a company, a multi billion dollar corporation with surely some of the finest programmers available. Shouldn't be that difficult!

The key word from CFF's post was "sources," rather than "resources." It's hard for people to comprehend today, but 20 years ago, professional companies did not properly back up and archive their material. I bet if you pulled back the curtain and saw how the sausage was made, you'd find that that this was still spotty today, despite the prevalance of cheap terabyte drives and automatic cloud backups. For context, when WC3 development was in full swing, hard drives of the day averaged 120-200 megabytes. A 340 meg machine was very high end. Backups were on tape machines, not hard drives or CDs, and backing things up to tape was a big pain. There's also no pristine temperature-controlled vault under EA headquarters with everything. I've seen the archives with my own eyes - they're sitting in old cardboard boxes just like your and my old archives. In the last decade, they've been shipped from Austin to Los Angeles to Virgina and to who-knows-where today. So take lax practices, out-of-date hardware and 20 years of entropy, and I would agree with CFF that many sources ("source code" and beyond) aren't really available.

On the subject of resources, it doesn't matter if EA has billions of dollars and thousands of employees available. They operate as a business, and resource allocation has to make business sense. Considering the limitations mentioned in my previous paragraph, it would take quite an effort to bring WC3 natively into the modern computer world, and I don't think it would pass any cost-benefit analysis - especially when DOSBox is available and works so well!

 

[cff]

What Chris said. I'd actually almost bet that the CIC has a better archive of raw material (including source codes) then anyone else, including EA. At this point it would most likely be easier to do WC3 from scratch anyhow then to try to access old material (except the FMV). If you consider what one-man shows like Howard or small groups like Vegastrike did with regards to building their own engines. But yeah - none of this would be remotely clever from a cost-benefit angle. Maybe if there were a new big WC hit and maybe if they would therefore decide to redo WC3 for that console as a retro package. But I really don't see that happening.

 

[cff]

Got to disagree about EA not having the resources to modernise the game for x64 bit Windows though, firstly it runs just fine on Win 7 anyway, but even if it didn't - EA is a behemoth of a company, a multi billion dollar corporation with surely some of the finest programmers available. Shouldn't be that difficult!

You'd be surprised how much work it is to keep old software running or to port it to new systems. Being from the field I can tell you that in most cases I'd rather start from scratch. Sure that would be financially possible for EA, but why not spend that money on a new WC instead? Or at least a remake with modern graphic?

 

[-danr-]

What Chris said. I'd actually almost bet that the CIC has a better archive of raw material (including source codes) then anyone else, including EA. At this point it would most likely be easier to do WC3 from scratch anyhow then to try to access old material (except the FMV). If you consider what one-man shows like Howard or small groups like Vegastrike did with regards to building their own engines. But yeah - none of this would be remotely clever from a cost-benefit angle. Maybe if there were a new big WC hit and maybe if they would therefore decide to redo WC3 for that console as a retro package. But I really don't see that happening.

The key word from CFF's post was "sources," rather than "resources." It's hard for people to comprehend today, but 20 years ago, professional companies did not properly back up and archive their material. I bet if you pulled back the curtain and saw how the sausage was made, you'd find that that this was still spotty today, despite the prevalance of cheap terabyte drives and automatic cloud backups. For context, when WC3 development was in full swing, hard drives of the day averaged 120-200 megabytes. A 340 meg machine was very high end. Backups were on tape machines, not hard drives or CDs, and backing things up to tape was a big pain. There's also no pristine temperature-controlled vault under EA headquarters with everything. I've seen the archives with my own eyes - they're sitting in old cardboard boxes just like your and my old archives. In the last decade, they've been shipped from Austin to Los Angeles to Virgina and to who-knows-where today. So take lax practices, out-of-date hardware and 20 years of entropy, and I would agree with CFF that many sources ("source code" and beyond) aren't really available.

On the subject of resources, it doesn't matter if EA has billions of dollars and thousands of employees available. They operate as a business, and resource allocation has to make business sense. Considering the limitations mentioned in my previous paragraph, it would take quite an effort to bring WC3 natively into the modern computer world, and I don't think it would pass any cost-benefit analysis - especially when DOSBox is available and works so well!

Thanks both for the interesting replies, I was going to write a longer post than this, but in a nutshell: I've been well and truly schooled!