Wcdx - Kilrathi Saga for modern Windows

In retrospect, I probably forgot to run the music patch.

Besides that, I have just finished SM2 and I keep getting attacked by kilrathi fighters eventhough I'm flying the Dralthi.
 
As for WC2 bug report: My main problem with WC2 (wcdx) is the controls are sluggish. If I press "c" for communication there is a bit of lag. I cant remember if it existed in the regular Kilrathi Saga but it is present in the WCDX version.
Also, during flight, whenever I move my mouse beyond the left and right borders the mouse turns into a Windows mouse (so to speak) and stops responding to in-game mouse.
 
As for WC2 bug report: My main problem with WC2 (wcdx) is the controls are sluggish. If I press "c" for communication there is a bit of lag. I cant remember if it existed in the regular Kilrathi Saga but it is present in the WCDX version.
Also, during flight, whenever I move my mouse beyond the left and right borders the mouse turns into a Windows mouse (so to speak) and stops responding to in-game mouse.
Thanks, that's great feedback. Looks like I should make input a priority this time around.
 
Thanks, that's great feedback. Looks like I should make input a priority this time around.

Correction: I cant seem to replicate the problem. Been playing a few missions today and the mouse cursor behaves as normal.
Not sure what the problem was before when the curors went beyond the borders. I'll keep you updated if it happens again.

*edit*
I might have had some sort of background desktop message or something that messed things up temporarily.
 
Update on the mouse issue:

It seems in some sessions (mid-mission), but not all of them, I get a few temporary freezes which causes the mouse cursor to go out of bounds. I dont know if it's my computer or if it's the game but after that first 2-3 second freeze the cursor goes into "free" mode.

wcnut: The issue is with the keyboard, not mouse/joystick. I use mouse and it works fine but when I press certain keys it takes like ½/1 second for it to respond sometimes.
 
Try holding shift. It speeds up movement so it doesn't do a slow ramp up in speed and is instead instantaneously fast. It is annoying as heck, but it is possible...sort of...
 
Try holding shift. It speeds up movement so it doesn't do a slow ramp up in speed and is instead instantaneously fast. It is annoying as heck, but it is possible...sort of...
Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall that that was a game mechanic in WC2. I'd completely forgotten about that one. (I used to play exclusively with the keyboard way back when these games first came out.)
 
It seems in some sessions (mid-mission), but not all of them, I get a few temporary freezes which causes the mouse cursor to go out of bounds. I dont know if it's my computer or if it's the game but after that first 2-3 second freeze the cursor goes into "free" mode.
That's very interesting. That means that something is stalling the game every once in a while, and Windows is reacting to the stall by releasing the cursor so that you can interact with the rest of the system.

You should be able to work around the issue by going in and out of full screen mode when it happens. Just hit alt-enter a couple of times and the cursor should be constrained again.
 
Well in the original dos versions it wasn't for WC1 and 2, but was in WC3 sort of. In wc3 if you just hit arrow, you turn slowly. If you hit shift-arrow, you turn quickly.
Apparently they tried to implement that function into WC2KS (but not WC1KS?) with some really strange results. Just arrow key has some sort of ramping where for half a second you don't move at all, then you turn slowly and eventually your turn gets faster. (10 seconds after the need to turn...) Shift forces you to turn at the maximum rate (what it was in the dos version) So the keyboard controls feel very, very awkward...

(This was actually a difference between KS and Dos I didn't realize.. I knew about the added rudder for WC3KS and zero cockpit in WC1\2KS)
 
There is one thing I recall was a bug even back in the original Kilrathi Saga, WC2.

When I sometimes fire the guns (like one click, one burst) it keeps firing for 1/1½ seconds eventhough I've let go of the button.
This is like I said an old issue. Anyone else experienced this with KS?
 
Upon further looks at the dos version, apparently there is the ramping effect being done. But it is so much faster then the KS version and is mostly noticeable in the hand animation. Shift does make the change instant.
 
I suppose things are all still on your plate, Stinger... :)

Hopefully you will return to your pet project here for the joy of all the fans like myself!

(I just finished watching the "Making Of" of Wing Commander III and could not help thinking of wcdx!)
 
Correct; I really want to continue this, but I have a lot of other things in flight. WC2 is also a significantly larger project than the earlier games.

One interesting conundrum: Fixing cut scene frame rates. In KS WC2, the game will change the frame rate of a cut scene as it is playing depending on whether or not there is any speech. If there's a voice, the frame rate is set relatively low in order to stay synchronized with the audio playback (I can't remember the exact number offhand, but something like 25 fps); if there's no speech, the frame rate is set all the way up at 75! You can see this by just how fast the debris animations are playing in the space backdrops. I have no idea why the devs chose such a high frame rate, but it causes a lot of problems; for instance, in some of the in-flight briefings, the player's ship animates too far into the frame and you can see the entire sprite -- just the nose and cockpit of a fighter completely detached from the rest of its body. To correct for some of these issues, the devs changed some of the timings for scene duration and so forth, but the result is pretty bad. I'd like to set a fixed frame rate for animations, but I can't do that without patching game data, and that's a big dark hole I haven't wanted to crawl down into just yet. To get an idea of the scale of the problem, try comparing the gamedat folders from your GOG install with your KS install. Some of those changes I may want to keep; some (probably most) I'd want to revert. But to know what needs changing, I first need to figure out what all that data means.
 
Sounds like a daunting task, Stinger.

I am pretty sure you are capable of tackling it when you have time enough to dedicate to it. When I played the game (GOG) I actually never really noticed this kind of problem much.
 
Back
Top