WC1 is an Awesome Game

F

FrostyNSO

Spaceman
I just got ahold of Wing Commander 1&2 plus all the secret missions add-ons. Before I was unable to play these games, but these ones worked so I got lucky I guess.
I'm only 3 missions into WC1 (alas I have to work), but I totally dig the feel of the game. You really get the impression that the Tiger's Claw is an old war-pig that has been around the block more than once, there is always somebody in the bar looking to chat. And they jump into eachother's conversations which is cool too. I love how in the debriefings, they don't say "You killed 3 enemy fighters" or something like that, but rather "You fried 3 furballs". I love it! Another thing I am enjoying is that when I go out, I don't end up blasting like 30 fighters on every mission. It takes a little more work to get the kill and that makes it a whole lot more satisfying, at least to me =)

The only thing is, All the sound effects work, but the speech doesn't. Is there supposed to be any?
Also, the flight engine is a little clunky. I couldn't get my joystick to work very well and didn't like the keyboard at all, so I've settled on the lousy mouse. The clunkieness is from the mouse right? Also, It seems a lot harder to do advanced manuevers than it was in WCIV and Prophecy (the only other WC games I've played), does anybody else have this problem?

All in all a very cool game. I can't wait until tomorrow morning when I will be flying up against my first Kilrathi battleship (according to Bossman).
 
I do not believe there is supposed to be speech in the first game... I have only played the SNES port of the game, though. From what I can tell, though, WC2 is suppose to have speech to it, I don't kow for sure seeing as how I have never played the game before, but I think that I have seen things like speech patches for it... but once again I am not sure.
 
I played both the original WC1 and WC2 a long time ago,

WC1 its a very old game, and there weren't any sound cards with wave capabilities then, so WC1 doesnt come with any speech or digital sound effects, It comes only with MIDI sound I believe.

WC2 in the other hand was the 1st game I had with almost full speech capabilities, the original game came with speech in the introduction (which was awesome) and the speech pack added voices during combat and some crucial cutscenes, I trully enjoyed this game, I remember I spent countless hours playing it when i was 14 years old.

Enjoy those games, I surelly did, i might put together an old pentium 1 box and replay them to experience old times.

-Andres Tinoco
 
Wing Commander, as far as I know, doesn't have speech. Wing Commander II has speech for certain special cutscenes, and inflight - as long as you have the speech expansion pack. Even with it, most dialogue is not in speech.

The "clunkiness" is almost certainly due to trying to fly with a mouse. It works fine and smoothly for me with a joystick. These games really weren't designed to be played with a mouse.

How are you running the games? DOSBox? VDMSound? Just normally? Either of DOSBox or VDMSound may help with getting your joystick to work properly with the games.
 
That would explain the lack of certain sound. Try to play it in DOSBOX. You should get much better results. Still no speach however.
 
The flight model is not as advanced as the one used in WC3/WC4/Armada and Prophecy/Secret Ops so it is not as obvious that you are performing any sort of special manuevers when you attempt to do them.
 
WC1 is awfully clunky in current machines. Even KS. It's so old that just running it on a 17" monitor makes it clunkier. But it's fun to play even then.
 
To me it seems that the AI is quite capable in WC1, even better than in most other WC's. I've seen enemy ships rolling, sliding and perform advanced maneuvers. Now the question is, was that pure coincidence or is it actually programmed to do stuff like that?
 
WC1 have aged much better than other games of the same age. Even X-Wing, released after WC, looks much older.
 
Both of you are right... But the game is still clunky :/
the thing with wc1 and 2 is that the visual scale is weird... you never really know how far from the capships you are, and it's easy to crash into invisble areas...
Xwing had the advantage of a true poligonal engine, which made these things clearer. BUT it had NO textures, so WC looked better. and, just as minasi said, it was "easier". Xwing's 4th mission was freaking impossible (the "protect the hospital Ship" one).
 
I think WC 1 and 2 are better than X-wing because there is more story development. In WC we see the main character interacting with others outside of mission briefings, discussing the war, tactics, and other things. The briefings were also more interestings because there were other pilots sitting around you, rather than in X-wing where all you saw was the person briefing you and a map. As a result WC felt more like you were part of a campaign, where you were progressing towards a recognizable goal. X-wing seemed like a bunch of missions strung together without much flow between them.
 
ck9791 said:
I think WC 1 and 2 are better than X-wing because there is more story development. In WC we see the main character interacting with others outside of mission briefings, discussing the war, tactics, and other things. The briefings were also more interestings because there were other pilots sitting around you, rather than in X-wing where all you saw was the person briefing you and a map. As a result WC felt more like you were part of a campaign, where you were progressing towards a recognizable goal. X-wing seemed like a bunch of missions strung together without much flow between them.
Click to expand...

Quite a bit like Freespace in that respect...
 
I love the look of the first Wing Commander. And especially of Privateer. They could keep making games that look like that and I would be perfectly content.
 
Delance said:
Visually, the WC1 game engine aged better than the original X-Wing.
Click to expand...

That's probably because the low-polygon shapes of the X-Wing engine show just how dated 3D technology used to be. :D

Personally, I liked how WC1 had that lovely series of branching missions in a win/lose tree that would let you cross between them, unlike some games of the time, where losing once meant restarting.
 
it's really annoying how older games run so bad on newer machines, it has me torn if I should get a *new* machine or just get new old computer...I want to play saga and standoff, but at the same time play KS so that it runs smooth and not like total clunky dog shit
 
After fiddling a lot with DOSbox, Bochs, VDMS, and even VMWare, I settled to spend the wealth of 20 bucks on ebay and got a P1. A couple $$ more for decent sound and video, some pennies for a KVM switch, and I have the PC that would have been anybody's envy in 1995 :D - and WC1&2 are running like a charm in DOS. So if you have a bit of space under your desk, I'd definitely recommend that...

In terms of gameplay I like the quaintness of WC1&2 - the bright colored ships, the somewhat cute laser sound, and the pilot's hand in the flight scenes. As I had started my space sim addiction with Elite (and who hasn't?), this all looked more like a comic strip (albeit a good one) first - and even today it makes me smile to see the jerky turns of Kilrathi fighters.
 
criticalmass said:
After fiddling a lot with DOSbox, Bochs, VDMS, and even VMWare, I settled to spend the wealth of 20 bucks on ebay and got a P1. A couple $$ more for decent sound and video, some pennies for a KVM switch, and I have the PC that would have been anybody's envy in 1995 :D - and WC1&2 are running like a charm in DOS. So if you have a bit of space under your desk, I'd definitely recommend that...
Click to expand...
Oh well. WC1 works ok for my under DOSBox and WC2 flawlessly, but I guess a proper dos box will beat it every time ;)

...I had started my space sim addiction with Elite (and who hasn't?)
Click to expand...
Mine was X-wing, actually ;). Elite was before my time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top