Ok, now I know, quality wise KS sucks...

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Spaceman
compared to the originally published games. I played WC 1 and 2 from the KS I bought on eBay for the first time last night and remembered them a lot differently than that. Boy, they sure seemed to cut a lot of corners just to make it Win95 compatible and speed adjusted. So know I need to know if the Secret Missions and Special Ops made available for free are compatible with the original DOS versions of the games or only the Win95 version? I still have the root games but not the expansions and no one seems willing to trade or sell them independantly so this information is needed now. Hope you folks can help me. Thanks
 
I would somewhat have to agree with you on that. Though they seemed to have fixed some glitches in WC2. In the DOS version I would sometimes get this glitch where your wingman's voice would sound somewhat garbled and cutoff and the video comm display of him would stay on display indefinetely until you push a key to remove it. Don't know if any other WC'er ever had this happen. But, one big thing i hated about the KS version of WC2 is that some missions would have the cool looking explosions and others would have the crappy looking one (Which seemed to be like 3/4th's of the games missions.) It's too bad I had sold my DOS copies of WC1 & 2 back then in anticipation of KS. In fact the only good things I can remember of KS is that it is for Windows and has orchestrated version of the music.

And as far as I know I believe the KS version of the expansions aren't compatible with the DOS versions of WC1 and 2. Though, I actually just did acquire a copy of the deluxe edition of WC2 so I can try and see if the KS expansions of that are compatible tonight and I could give you the answer tomorrow if no one else has responded about that question by then.
 
I don't think it would work, since secret missions and secret operations bring their own new executables into the mix. But hey, try it out anyway.
 
No, the old add-ons will not work with Kilrathi Saga. But KS versions were offered free for download. You can find them in the files section of this website.
 
Check Ebay, they almost always have WC1 and WC2 Deluxe sets for a couple of bucks. I have an extra copy of WC1 Deluxe CD for Dos if you want it. I had troubles getting the sound to work but that is quite possibly due to the sound card I was using. PM me if you are interested.

NoMention
 
I think we have a pretty certain case of rose-tinted memories... AFAICT, the original games aren't THAT different from the KS versions graphics-wise. I'll buy this theory if someone can post some screenshots or something.
 
The complaint regarding the graphics is that KS misaligns the overlays, not that the graphics 'look' bad... so there'll be situations where you can't see what level an enemy fighters shields are at because KS has the overlay several pixels off and its being rendered underneath the cockpit graphic.
 
The complaint regarding the graphics is that KS misaligns the overlays, not that the graphics 'look' bad... so there'll be situations where you can't see what level an enemy fighters shields are at because KS has the overlay several pixels off and its being rendered underneath the cockpit graphic.
Yes, I remember that. When flying the Dralthi and shooting, the laser scale wouldn't get shorter at one point, only when flying without cockpit. - Nearly forgot that and was already wondering what you are all talking about. :/ - I guess I just got used to it ^^ (and I didn't play through the whole DOS version anyway and so thought that this bug might be there, too)
 
Having recently got back into Wing Commander, I pulled out my copy of KS that I never played when I bought it and started playing from the beginning. As far as WC1 and WC2 goes, I don't see/remember any difference between it and the originals. The only glitch that I noticed was on the targeting screen. Occasionally it would target a ship (usually friendly) but it would only show the shields. There was no diagram for the ship itself.

I loaded WC3 to get a peek at it before I finished WC2. Mistake. Because after looking at the graphics on 3, it was hard to go back. I rushed through the remainder of the missions, cheated on some and then just dropped it all together so I could enjoy the glory of WC3. It occurred to me that for a game that is now 10 years old, it looks damn good! 10 years! And WC4 is even better.

Anyway, back to the problems with KS. I have noticed a couple with KS-WC3. While on the carrier, the game has locked up when going to access the main terminal or crashed as some other random areas. It never dropped me during game play. This installation was straight from the CD to my Win XP system. No patches installed. I installed the patch from the download section of CIC for KS and have had no problems since. Granted it has only been a day or so, but it usually crashed on me once a day.

KS gets a thumbs up from me!
 
Generally, I loved KS. I bought it on Ebay for loads of lolly and it was great. There are a few things, as with everyone else that I found annoying.

The worst part is not being able to contrl WC2 with the keyboard. I have always played with the keyboard and can't learn something new now.

Generally a big thumbs up though. It's like going back in time to my childhood.
 
climber said:
Generally a big thumbs up though. It's like going back in time to my childhood.

Indeed. The full glory of Origin, with the Wing Commander Saga and I also liked Crusader: No Remorse, never played No Regret.

I personally think 94-97 were the best years for PC games. Other games as Rebel Assault and all the other Star Wars Flight Sims in that time period, Total Annihilation, Warcraft, the list goes on, games that will forever be remembered, hopefully.
 
Other good games:

Castles II
Pirates! Gold
Jagged Alliance
Lemmings 3D
Worms

And the days of shareware games that would play directly from the cd.
 
firefox91 said:
Occasionally it would target a ship (usually friendly) but it would only show the shields. There was no diagram for the ship itself.
That was a glitch in the original WC/WC2 as well, at least in the Deluxe editions.
 
Heavy Gear was one of my favorites back in the day.

When I play KS, sometimes the characters just don't appear in the cutscenes in wc2.
 
KS Problems/differences

Well were the space backgrounds always pitch black back drops? That stuck out at me big time during the autopilot fly-bys, no details just flying in a total void or maybe a magnified view of a black hole singularity.
Also the sound FX. The music is great, re-orchestrated and all, but it doesn't seem to provide ambience but instead tries to overpower the other sounds like mugging for the most attention or something. It was hard for me to hear the wingmen. Are the new sounds and music the same file types, does anyone know? 'Cause it sounds like they are. If so it was better have MIDI music and Digital SoundFX as they complimented each other better and the music was actually in the background. Anybody else notice something similar?
 
The original DOS versions of WC1/2/3 all had (some would say annoying) navy blue backgrounds instead of the pitch black of 'realistic' space.
 
Did anyone ever try to do anything about the poor keyboard response in WC2 from KS? I mean, is there anyone else that is half as frustrated as me??
 
I don't think your poor keyboard response has anything to do with anything that anyone can fix, to be honest with you. WC2 Kilrathi Saga is markedly slower than the original. Which also means your keyboard response with WC2 Kilrathi Saga is slower than you're used to. Unfortunately, nobody's figured out a fix to this yet. Apparently porting the game to Windows made it ridiculously slow.
 
Unfortunately, nobody's figured out a fix to this yet. Apparently porting the game to Windows made it ridiculously slow.
Hmm, that's strange. For me the DOS version and the Windows version have got the same speed - DOS-version with my K6-2 400Mhz (ext. cache disabled) and KS with my 3Ghz PC. Also when using DOSBox I get the same speed as well. So no idea what you are talking about? Cause you can't mean seriously that the speed that my K6-2 has with ext. cache is the way it's meant to be played as it's unplayable fast...
 
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