Some kind of movement problem in WC3

F

Fredde

Guest
Not sure how to explain this, but I've got a strange problem when playing some mission in Wing Commander 3 (it's the GOG-version, if that's important). Sometimes when I target something, say an enemy fighter or capship, or a waypoint, and try to fly after it, the range indicator keeps going in the other direction, as if I'm moving backwards! Using afterburnes doesn't help, in fact it might just increase the range between me and my target. In the end I end up extremely far away from the combat (the range-number goes up in the millions) and can't do anything to get back into it.

I can't always autopilot either, it just says "autopilot not allowed", and when CAN do it I usually run into the same problem at the next navpoint. It gets especially frustrating when I try to land on the Victory after a mission, but can't get close enough to get clearance, and instead just float away in the other direction.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug? It seems to have cropped up more the further I get into the game (I'm on the third disc, Alcor system).
 
I have encountered this issue as well (also on the GOG release) and I also thought it was a matter of the autoslide being set to "on", but pressing the autoslide toggle key failed to restore normal movement. The issue only occurs when flying craft with autoslide (Arrow or Excalibur). It also appears to happen on every mission flown with these craft from the start of Disk 2 (i.e. after finishing the Locanda system),

Here is what happens: When the mission begins, my speed indicator tells me that I have some crazy negative velocity that appears to be a result of a buffer overflow (-200,000 or beyond). Attempting to use the throttle does nothing, but I can launch by using the auto-nav command. However, for the rest of the mission I am locked into autoslide mode and unable to shut it off, and the throttle does not respond.

Unfortunately, since the Arrow and the Excalibur are the craft affected, and the player is required to use them for a number of missions, this makes those missions nearly unplayable in this state. Any clues on what is causing this error?
 
I have encountered this issue as well (also on the GOG release) and I also thought it was a matter of the autoslide being set to "on", but pressing the autoslide toggle key failed to restore normal movement. The issue only occurs when flying craft with autoslide (Arrow or Excalibur). It also appears to happen on every mission flown with these craft from the start of Disk 2 (i.e. after finishing the Locanda system),

I had this problem as well. I have the original CD version with DOSbox-0 .74 in Win 7.

I was going backwards in Wing Commander III just after the Skip Missile mission. You mentioned buffer overflow so I check my DOSbox conf settings and sure enough my cycles= were too high. I had it at 50,000. I switched it down to 35,000 and now it's totally fine.

I didn't notice until I fixed it but my acceleration [+] and [-] and my cameras weren't working either. With it fixed now my speed up and slow down keys works, and the victim camera I had on is working (settings in Alt-O).

The fix:
in my .../AppData/Local/DOSbox directory I went into the .conf file with notepad and changed
cycles=50000 to cycles=35000

No more weird autoflying!

Good luck. :)
 
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