Enhancement Patches for Wing Commander III and IV

[Noel Shourai]

A new version of the wc4 patch is up (v0.6.1).
I couldn't find the cause for the music stopping during space flight, although I suspect it's a thread timing issue in xanlib. In the end I replaced the music playing functions using libvlc as the player, which seems to be working well. Using libvlc also makes it easy to load alternate tunes in place of the originals. You can do this by editing the "wc4w_en_alt_music.ini" and entering the file path for the tune you want to replace. I've been using it to play George Oldziey's Orchestral Recordings. These sound fantastic in game although there are quite a few tracks missing, we'll have to pester him into doing a volume 3 to fill in the gaps.
I'll be adding this feature to wc3 in the coming weeks.
Edit: Be sure to re-download the "libvlc_min_pack_3.0.21" as well, as I've added a few extra plugins for music playback.


added to my list of things to do.

It's a bit on the ambitious side but would it be possible to have an option to restore the original MIDI music for Wing Commander III? Of course, I could probably get around that by recording the MIDIs on a SoundFont or synthesizer and then using that in place of the Kilrathi Saga music.

Using the original music in WC4 converted into OGG, the tracks seem to cut a little early (noticeable when I score a kill) but otherwise libvlc is working pretty well and seems to resolve the issue with the music stopping during spaceflight.