Gameplay preview

Starman©

Spaceman
Hello,

as promised we have prepared something to give you more insight into the game. Since we often get asked how WC-Saga will actually try to recreate the WC feeling in the Freespace 2 engine, we’ve constructed a small exhibit that demonstrates portions of the gameplay that we’ve refined for that purpose:

1) Launching.

In nearly all missions, you will launch inside the hangar of your home-base carrier, usually together with flight group. Although we could have tried to make the launch automatic (since that was an option in WC3 and 4 and pretty much the only way to launch in 1, 2, and Prophecy), we just thought it will be better to let the player launch manually (it makes it more fun and adds realism IMO).

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/launch.jpg

2) Traveling through nav-points.

What would WC be without autopilot and nav points, two features that were not present in Freespace 2? We received a nice code feature that allows us to autopilot to different mission areas using the FS2 engine. Please note that this is actually just a picture taken in the external camera while traveling. Our autopilot function doesn't show an automatic flyby scene, but it uses a “real traveling” system. When autopilot is engaged, the ship steers itself and the engine engages a 64x time compression, otherwise it could take quite some time to get to the next area.

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/traveling.jpg

3) Dogfighting.

Here it is, the heart and soul of WC: the dogfight. This Dralthi pilot wasn't very lucky in his warrior life! WC Saga game features taunts and death screams just like in real WC. Some might notice the subtitles on the upper left of this screenshot. We can't prevent them, but the player has the option of turning them off (which I highly recommend). Everything is voice acted, so there is no need for those disturbing text lines. BTW, sorry for the red blur in this pictures, but in this fight I had a destroyer behind me and my shields received constant hits

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/dogfight.jpg

4) Battle scenarios.

Here we see a Fralthi II and a Tallahassee cruiser involved in a political discussion. They are more or less equal to each other, so it will be up to the player how this battle will end.

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/fire-exchange1.jpg
http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/fire-exchange2.jpg

In this case, my side was lucky:

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/owned.jpg

5) Time to go home!

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/returning_home.jpg

6) Landing procedure.

Also like in the original WC games, you will have to land again at your carrier. We also decided to make this a manual landing for the player, because making an automatic attempt didn't work out so well (since we couldn’t convince the AI to not roll over the Z-Axis, we decided to leave it out). Besides, I find manual landing more fun, I always did it that way in the original games.

http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Starman/pics/land.jpg


Starman
 
Thank you, Starman, this sheds a lot of light on the gameplay. (Now quick, hide, before someone flames you! ;))

edit-odd, though it's a welcome change, the forum's filter converts l-o-l to ~~~.
 
The videos are in the works. But I think it wouldn't be such a great deal if we now make a daily update, and then got no stuff left for new updates in 3 weeks (the question is, how many pictures/videos of always the same ships are good before they get really boring).

Besides, if we now start daily discussion what we should release next, it's not really helping the work to get done :)

I'll say we stay to our promise to make updates (sometimes small, sometimes bigger) on a regular bases, that will be quite a improvement compared to the past, don't you agree ? :)
 
Wow, thanks, that's a great update. Looking very nice, really like the Hangar in the takeoff and landings. Looking forward to the video...
 
a simple video capture of a mission would do alot to alleviate people's cocearns of gameplay..

talking about it is one thing, but seeing is believing.
 
Starman© said:
Some might notice the subtitles on the upper left of this screenshot. We can't prevent them, but the player has the option of turning them off (which I highly recommend). Everything is voice acted, so there is no need for those disturbing text lines.

Why is this an issue at all? You can turn the subtitles off, so why would anyone spend any time at all trying to prevent them from appearing period? Tolwyn might not like subtitles, but many people very much do. Almost every WC game with full speech let you turn subtitles on, and I know a lot of people who did. Since everyone has the option to just turn the subtitles off, trying to force them off at all times seems really weird.

NinjaLA said:
a simple video capture of a mission would do alot to alleviate people's cocearns of gameplay..

talking about it is one thing, but seeing is believing.

Yeah, and you can see it in the screenshots. I think the Saga team definitely should release some gameplay videos, but this is not something all mods automatically make for their projects.
 
I know. but its not exactly a hard thing to produce, unless nobody has a capture card available.

the screenshots are pretty nice.
 
NinjaLA said:
I know. but its not exactly a hard thing to produce, unless nobody has a capture card available.

the screenshots are pretty nice.

You don't need a capture card. Any computer can do it with something like fraps. It's easy to do, it's just something that I notice everyone demands these days, but a few years ago it was pretty unheard of. The screenshots are good, though I'd compress them a bunch less. A 1024x768 screenshot doesn't need to be limited to 50-60 k.

Something I noticed from the website:

though the taunts are only hardcoded and can't be send by the player (yet)

What's the point of this one? Does the game have a multiplayer component? I don't see much point in adding user-created taunts to feed to the computer. You might as well just yell at the screen.
 
The game looks great. I can't wait to play it, but I've got a question: is the Lexington from Armada the base for your TCS Kennedy model? They look similar to me.
 
ChrisReid said:
What's the point of this one? Does the game have a multiplayer component? I don't see much point in adding user-created taunts to feed to the computer. You might as well just yell at the screen.

Taunts was something that was included in every game of Wing commander that I can remember...from WC1 up until WCP. I'm not saying it was something I necessarily used a lot...just that it was there. :)
 
Thanks for the update, Starman. Looking good. I'd also like to see a gameplay video.

d3r3k said:
... I've got a question: is the Lexington from Armada the base for your TCS Kennedy model? They look similar to me.
I thought it looked like the Tiger's Claw in Super Wing Commander, but the Lexington in Armada also looks almost identical.
PopsiclePete said:
Glad someone had fun with my little app :p
I didn't even know this existed. I'll try it out next time I play Prophecy/SO, or maybe it even works on WC Standoff !? Anyway, thanks, PopsiclePete!
 
Armada recycled the SWC carrier model, along with assorted objects from SWC and other games.
 
Confed said:
I didn't even know this existed. I'll try it out next time I play Prophecy/SO, or maybe it even works on WC Standoff !?
Well, it won't work on Standoff without disabling the game integrity feature we built in Standoff (the "no folder" line in stan_1.fcg)... it you disable it SOTaunt should indeed work on Standoff, but then your simulator scores would not be sent to the CIC.
 
Hello,

thanks for the comments, I will try to answer your questions as good as I can.

1) The subtitles. Of course everybody can turn them on (I think we already have them on by default), and I already did take care for the correct grammar according to the voicelines. Turning it off was just my suggestion, I like to get as much disturbing stuff from the HUD as possible :)

2) Regarding the taunts, I used them a lot beginning in WC3 up to WCP. Not only they are funny, but I also noticed the following : You can use the taunts to distract a enemy from it's current target and make him "angry" to attack you. Pretty useful if you want a bomber to drop his target (that you have to protect) and turn against you. Though it's not working for all enemies, I think this is a question of the AI-Goals for enemy ships in the original games.

Though after your comments Chris, I'm not actually sure this is true, but it worked pretty well everytime I tried it as much as I can remember. Can someone confirm that feature ?

That's what I actually wanted to say regarding the hardcoded taunts :) We have them ingame (but mostly from Kilrathi side and a few confed maincharacters). The player can't send any to distract the enemy.

3) As for the carrier model, yes it's the lexington-class from armada. This great model has been created by Eder, with a descent texturjob done by Lynx and the hangar and subsystems done by myself :)
 
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