Fan Mod Adds Full Speech to Wing Commander 1!

We've got great news to share today. Destro's fan project to add complete voiceovers to the original Wing Commander is complete and ready to release! He's managed to carefully map the speech files from the fully voiced Mega/Sega CD edition of the game and patch them over top of the familiar PC edition. While this fully voiced version of the game has existed for three decades, relatively few people have heard it due to the semi-obscurity of this console port. That's what makes this project so special!

The mod is specifically designed to work with the WCDX enhanced version of WC1 in Windows, and detailed instructions on how to get all that set up are available at the CIC Forums. We've mirrored the version 0.81 main file (342 meg zip) to make sure a permanent archive is available. All other necessary files are linked from this post. The reviews from fans so far have been fantastic, and what I've seen has been very impressive! Cutscenes, Tiger's Claw conversations and in-flight comms have all been combined and upgraded with authentic spoken audio in a way that's never been possible before. Destro considers this to still be a beta that could use some playtesting, but it should generally have everything in place. Give it a try and let everyone know what you think!

The wait is finally over! Wing Loader is done and ready for release!!!! Now all the Sega CD audio files are usable in Wing Commander 1 (KS Edition), this includes all the in-flight comms as well! There are some general script tidying to do and testing, as I haven't gone through and just did a whole playthrough yet, so I know that I missed a few things along the way. It is still a Work In Progress or a Beta and I won't consider it complete until it's thoroughly tested, but I think it's stable and complete enough to play and enjoy. Fingers crossed. :p

Annual Call For Award Nominations

It is somehow December already, so it'll be the end of the year in no time fast. This means it's time for our call for nominees for our annual contest to recognize top fan projects of the year. Now's your chance to suggest which community undertakings were your favorite. Everyone is welcome to email news@wcnews.com with your potential suggested nominees. Also check out some of our illustrious past winners below!

Download Index Refresh

The Downloads section is where we index all of our downloadable items, from soundtracks and official patches to fan-created tools or enhancements. This time of year is when we usually comb through the news archives to bring our index (in excess of 240 gigabytes!) up to date. We've done a thorough refresh so every file, patch and program is at your fingertips and easy to grab.

Highlights include the French, German and Spanish translations of WC1 DOS, the latest version of WCDX, Prophecy controller profiles for Saitek joysticks, the soundtrack to SegaCD WC1 and ODVS's various HD video packs.

WC1 Voiceover Mod Nearly Complete with Dialogue Speech

It’s been a while since we’ve gotten an update from Destro on Wing Commander Loader, but he’s back with some exciting news to report! You may recall that this is the project to integrate the recorded Sega CD audio dialogue into DOS WC1.

There have been lots of tweaks under the hood lately. By recoding and enhancing the project’s debugging tools, significant memory overload issues have been mitigated and the mod is more stable than ever. There are just a couple star systems left to go before the main campaign audio is linked up. Although this is very exciting, there are still secondary items with things like comms and the script font that need to be worked through.

It’s possible that we could see a preliminary release in the next few months, which would be quite a treat! You can find a more detailed breakdown of the latest info here. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

Loader:

More stable that ever! - With all the changes it now works very well and in my testing has not had any real issues with not linking to WC1 or anything like that.

Progress - I am half way through Venice and only Hell's Kitchen remains!!!!!!!

Com's - For enemy and confed ships they all use the same dialog but have different names. (Franthi, Ranthi, Tigers Claw, Transport etc...) I have tested a way to delete the Names off the com and just read the line itself but have yet to implement it. Plus the com's have a lot of audio editing to do so I'm going to hold off until Phase 2 for those.

Testing - I have stopped testing as much as it is getting hard to try and play the missions to get every line of dialog to test for every contingency, especially now that I'm in the endgame. Plan to just push through and update accordingly as people report issues.

Fan Project Vote Under Way

• AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Videos - ODVS has expanded on his award-winning enhanced WC videos by adding new language options for WC3, dabbling in 4K, experimenting with WC2/P2 and pushing image quality even further.
• Bonkus Maximus' Streams - Bonk has been publishing Wing Commander livestreams all year long. He's covered every main game in the series, plus spinoffs like Academy. In the words of his nominator, his streams are "both good quality and plentiful."
• Collectors: Rare WC Finds - This one is a different type of nominee. For the first time, we're recognizing the combined efforts of adventurous fans (such as, but not limited to, the work of Dennis Mull and Christian Klein) searching far and wide to build their Wing Commander collections with all manner of limited editions, different international translations and other exotic finds.
• DefianceIndustries' Art - This is another example of one vote doing a lot of heavy lifting. Defiance has done everything from animated series style art (with integration into the WC1 engine) to Arena inspired renders to a whole tabletop mod with gorgeous miniature depictions, just to name a few of his projects.
• Flight Commander 2 - We got an updated playable demo for FC2 this year. The spaceflight doesn't just look gorgeous, it also has very cool indoor game flow options. This project is just bursting with potential!
• Gemini Sector RPG - The crew of the has their work cut out for them in the Gemini Sector. This RPG stays very active and is supplemented by numerous live chats, animated briefings and even livestream tie-ins.
• Graphical Novel Project - EmuMusicFan sketched lots of gorgeous Kilrathi this year - and got some great attention for it!
• Language Mods - This one is another combined option because so many people made so many big updates this year. WC1 into German, WC2 and P1 into Spanish, cleaned up text and more. There's a lot of great modding happening to even the oldest WC games!
• Lego Creations - It was another fantastic year for Lego building. It continues to amazing me how authentic fans can make these ships look!
• Mac's Lore (& Art) - Mac's YouTube channel really hit its stride this year with a variety of Wing Commander and other sci-fi videos, but he didn't stop there. He also shared a whole bunch of high class art that was used in the making of his vids.
• WC4 Fan Remake - The WCRespace team is hard at work on bringing a next generation update to this beloved chapter of the Wing Commander series. Throughout the year, they kept us updated on the progress of their art and technology. We're looking forward to seeing something playable in 2022!
• wcdx 2.2.1 - The latest version of wcdx makes the program functionally complete for the Kilrathi Saga version of WC1 and adds cockpit damage back into WC2. It takes what was once a somewhat buggy experience and makes it a very compelling way to play Wing Commander on modern systems!
• Wing Leader - Howard Day's Wing Leader project also had a pretty productive year with new characters, shipboard scenery and the addition of the Krant to the game engine. This continues to be a project we get a lot of questions about, so we're looking forward to another burst of activity in 2022 hopefully!

Fan Project Vote Kicks Off

• AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Videos - ODVS expanded on his award-winning enhanced WC videos by adding new language options for WC3, dabbling in 4K, experimenting with WC2/P2 and pushing image quality even further.
• Bonkus Maximus' Streams - Bonk has been publishing Wing Commander livestreams all year long. He's covered every main game in the series, plus spinoffs like Academy. In the words of his nominator, his streams are "both good quality and plentiful."
• Collectors: Rare WC Finds - This one is a different type of nominee. For the first time, we're recognizing the combined efforts of adventurous fans (such as, but not limited to, the work of Dennis Mull and Christian Klein) searching far and wide to build their Wing Commander collections with all manner of limited editions, different international translations and other exotic finds.
• DefianceIndustries' Art - This is another example of one vote doing a lot of heavy lifting. Defiance has done everything from animated series style art (with integration into the WC1 engine) to Arena inspired renders to a whole tabletop mod with gorgeous miniature depictions, just to name a few of his projects.
• Flight Commander 2 - We got an updated playable demo for FC2 this year. The spaceflight doesn't just look gorgeous, it also has very cool indoor game flow options. This project is just bursting with potential!
• Gemini Sector RPG - The crew of the has their work cut out for them in the Gemini Sector. This RPG stays very active and is supplemented by numerous live chats, animated briefings and even livestream tie-ins.
• Graphical Novel Project - EmuMusicFan sketched lots of gorgeous Kilrathi this year - and got some great attention for it!
• Language Mods - This one is another combined option because so many people made so many big updates this year. WC1 into German, WC2 and P1 into Spanish, cleaned up text and more. There's a lot of great modding happening to even the oldest WC games!
• Lego Creations - It was another fantastic year for Lego building. It continues to amazing me how authentic fans can make these ships look!
• Mac's Lore (& Art) - Mac's YouTube channel really hit its stride this year with a variety of Wing Commander and other sci-fi videos, but he didn't stop there. He also shared a whole bunch of high class art that was used in the making of his vids.
• WC4 Fan Remake - The WCRespace team is hard at work on bringing a next generation update to this beloved chapter of the Wing Commander series. Throughout the year, they kept us updated on the progress of their art and technology. We're looking forward to seeing something playable in 2022!
• wcdx 2.2.1 - The latest version of wcdx makes the program functionally complete for the Kilrathi Saga version of WC1 and adds cockpit damage back into WC2. It takes what was once a somewhat buggy experience and makes it a very compelling way to play Wing Commander on modern systems!
• Wing Leader - Howard Day's Wing Leader project also had a pretty productive year with new characters, shipboard scenery and the addition of the Krant to the game engine. This continues to be a project we get a lot of questions about, so we're looking forward to another burst of activity in 2022 hopefully!

Happy New Year's Eve! (A Look Back at 2021)

Here we are again - another year down. It was yet another very rough year in many ways, but today we won't focus on that. Month after month, Wingnuts made the best of difficult circumstances to build another solid year in Wing Commander.

It wasn't a round number itself, but 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of Wing Commander 2 and the 25th birthday for quite a few 1996 releases: Wing Commander 4, the Customizable Card Game, Academy television show and Privateer 2, to name a few. To recognize the P2 milestone, Jayden Morris remade the Anhur landing scene, which was totally unexpected. There was also this intro audio remaster - P2 got a lot of love this year!

Annual Call For Award Nominations

If you can believe it, we have less than weeks to go until 2022! While it might seem like 2021 has lasted several years, December is a quick month and we'll be on to bigger and better things before you know it. That also means our annual contest tradition is nearly upon us. We're now taking nominations for the 'Fan Project of the Year'. Now's your chance to suggest which community undertakings were your favorite. Email news@wcnews.com with your nominees! Here's a quick recap of our wonderful previous winners:

New wcdx Update Adds Cockpit Damage & Static to KS WC1

Stinger has released the next big update to wcdx, the compatibility program that enables Kilrathi Saga to run smoothly on modern versions of Windows. In recent years he's moved on from just getting the game to run and has been steadily adding back in features that the DOS version had but were missing or not properly implemented in KS. With this new update, he's essentially completely restored everything missing from WC1, so now he can turn his attention more fully to WC2. The last big hurdle was cockpit damage. Although it can be annoying when your dashboard sparks and you lose radar, this is critical to the classic immersive Wing Commander experience. Now you too can struggle to request landing clearance through a busted comm system as we all did in the old days! Grab wcdx 2.2.1 here. Each thumbnail below is an animated gif of the new features in action, so give them an extra few moments to load.

Wcdx 2.2.1 is now released! Grab it here.

Cockpit damage is finally here! Now you, too, can watch your cockpit come alive as it disintegrates around you! Is WC2 too much of a cakewalk? Try it without your radar!

Of course, cockpit damage would never be complete if it didn't cause your VDUs to go all crazy. VDU static somehow never quite materialized in the Kilrathi Saga, but now it's here! Who doesn't love that brief flicker of static during comms messages?

I believe this completes the missing feature set for WC1. WC2 still needs a lot of work for cut scenes, and I think the input handling could be a lot better. Expect to see more updates in the future, though I make no promises on timing. It only took me... eleven months... since the last release to fix these two small issues. How time flies...

And the Winner Is...

Last year had plenty of low points, but Wing Commander fans persevered throughout the dark times and still managed to do some amazing things. We were able to pick out ten of them for special recognition, and Wingnuts have spent the last several weeks voting on which should take the top honors. It's always slightly painful to deem one or two the winners, since all of the nominees and more do such great things for the community, but it's usually clear that a few bubble up to the top.

Our first runner up this year is the WC4 Fan Remake! The team has been releasing a steady stream of articles at their new website, WCRespace, that explain the complex process they're going through to retouch and improve all aspects of the original game. It also doesn't hurt that the movie sequences will natively integrate ODVS' enhanced videos either. Experts in coding, art and even music have all come together to help make this project the best it can be. They're shooting for a playable demo as soon as this year, so stay tuned for more awesomeness on the horizon!

Fan Project Vote Under Way

• The AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Video Packs made a big splash this year by surprising fans with the quality of its upscaled movies. The new footage can even be easily dropped into WC4 and Prophecy.
• The Animated Academy-style Video Project is a relatively new endeavor by prolific modeler DefianceIndustries. He's managed to create some gorgeous cartoon style models that look wonderful in action.
• Flight Commander 2 was another newcomer this year. There's already a playable demo to interact with, and it even runs in a web browser!
• The Gemini Sector RPG has had an especially busy year. The team has been hard at work to keep evolving and spice up the game with cool artwork to accompany their Discord sessions.
• The Graphical Novel Project draws inspiration from WC4 and Action Stations as it seeks to develop a flexible interface for animated storytelling. Some very cool previews help set the stage for what to expect going forward.
• Klavs' Models made a return in 2020. On top of the being some of the most beautiful WC imagery around, they also serve as the backbone for a number of fan projects, such as LYP Studios' awesome Morningstar 3D print.
• The WC Toolbox expanded this year to support Armada and Wing Commander 3. Even the console ports of WC3 got in on the action. The tools helped lead to some new discoveries, including some never-before-seen background sets from Wing Commander 3!
• The WC4 Fan Remake kicked things into high gear this year with the ramp up of key programming, artwork and video enhancement. They even debuted a new website at wcrespace.com to keep tabs on it all and share the latest advancements!
• wcdx 2.2 is the latest and greatest patch for the Kilrathi Saga. It fixes compatibility on modern systems, but it also goes back and unbreaks things that the original conversion for Windows 95 didn't incorporate correctly from the DOS originals. It now supports everything from WC1 through both Special Operations.
• Wing Commander Loader is a project people have been asking for for decades, and Destro is finally making it happen as he steadily works to incorporate the voiceovers from the Sega CD port of WC1 back into the original DOS game.

Fan Project Vote Kicks Off

• The AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Video Packs made a big splash this year by surprising fans with the quality of its upscaled movies. The new footage can even be easily dropped into WC4 and Prophecy.
• The Animated Academy-style Video Project is a relatively new endeavor by prolific modeler DefianceIndustries. He's managed to create some gorgeous cartoon style models that look wonderful in action.
• Flight Commander 2 was another newcomer this year. There's already a playable demo to interact with, and it even runs in a web browser!
• The Gemini Sector RPG has had an especially busy year. The team has been hard at work to keep evolving and spice up the game with cool artwork to accompany their Discord sessions.
• The Graphical Novel Project draws inspiration from WC4 and Action Stations as it seeks to develop a flexible interface for animated storytelling. Some very cool previews help set the stage for what to expect going forward.
• Klavs' Models made a return in 2020. On top of the being some of the most beautiful WC imagery around, they also serve as the backbone for a number of fan projects, such as LYP Studios' awesome Morningstar 3D print.
• The WC Toolbox expanded this year to support Armada and Wing Commander 3. Even the console ports of WC3 got in on the action. The tools helped lead to some new discoveries, including some never-before-seen background sets from Wing Commander 3!
• The WC4 Fan Remake kicked things into high gear this year with the ramp up of key programming, artwork and video enhancement. They even debuted a new website at wcrespace.com to keep tabs on it all and share the latest advancements!
• wcdx 2.2 is the latest and greatest patch for the Kilrathi Saga. It fixes compatibility on modern systems, but it also goes back and unbreaks things that the original conversion for Windows 95 didn't incorporate correctly from the DOS originals. It now supports everything from WC1 through both Special Operations.
• Wing Commander Loader is a project people have been asking for for decades, and Destro is finally making it happen as he steadily works to incorporate the voiceovers from the Sega CD port of WC1 back into the original DOS game.

And those are our nominees for 2020. Please vote below!

Happy New Year! A Look Back at 2020

Legos were surprisingly big in 2020. Bricks with Wings made some great stuff, and Malcav did too. Then we managed to end the year with a bang in the form of LYP Studios' gorgeous Morningstar model.

This was a fun overview of the highlights, but there were plenty more day-to-day updates for these projects and others. I'm already hearing about some good stuff bubbling up that we'll be able to post in the days and weeks ahead, so I'm very confident that 2021 will continue with more of the same! We're looking forward to going through it all with you!

Programming Advancements Help WC1 Voiceover Mod

Hello everyone. With the holidays right around the corner I wanted to say for starters, Happy Holidays to everyone and I hope you are all doing well and have a Merry Christmas. I'm going to start with a few (small amount of) fun details as I've done a ton of under the hood work lately. I always like to include the technical details in case anyone is interested and to let you all know what I've been up in regards this program.

Fun Details:

• Now working with latest version of WCDX. So go and update that if you haven't already given it a try. It's a great program and fixes a ton of stuff. Glad to see you back Stinger! Great work!
• Updated my tree system to limit the amount of string compares and makes it a bit more manageable and readable.
• As my end goal for this is to create the most definitive and complete version of the games as possible so I created a little video player to run before the start of Secret Missions 1 and add the SNES intro to the PC version. Now you can be treated to the SNES intro when launching that Campaign. It is skippable so you can jump right into the game if you want. :) I plan to make make some edits to the intro to make it a bit quicker and cleaner with better audio in the future but for now a placeholder version had been created for testing and Proof of Concept and it works perfectly. ;P
• A lot of under the hood fixes and enhancements to make things smoother and more efficient. Might not be exciting for everyone but rest assured it's much better now and resolves some problems I foresee going forward.

-------Tech Info here-------------------

Conclusion:

That's about it. I know it's a lot of programming stuff in this update but I want you all know that I'm still working on this on my free time and wish to make it the best it can. Stay safe, Happy Holidays and see you in the New Year.

Cheers,
Destro

Updated wcdx Plans Provide Peek at the Future

Well, there are a few options here:

• I really would like to get cockpit damage fixed, as that's really the final missing feature for WC1.
• I also need to go back through this thread looking for any reported unaddressed bugs (I really should be tracking this in GitHub).
• WC2 has some input issues (clicking during cutscenes sometimes counts as two clicks, for instance), and also appears to stall whenever entering autopilot. It also doesn't play well with non-QWERTY keyboard layouts (I use Dvorak).

Those I think are the most immediate issues to deal with. Looking farther ahead to larger projects:

• I would like to spend some time investigating cutscene timing in WC2.
• People have asked for graphics filters such as pixel smoothing, and I agree that would be a neat feature. This is something simple that others could reasonably handle if they were inclined to contribute to the project.
• Throttle support in WC1 and WC2 would be awesome.
• I could start work on WC3, with the specific goal of supporting ODVS's work on enhanced cutscenes.

There's certainly plenty of work here to stay busy, but time is certainly at a premium and I can't promise that any of these things will happen soon. If there's anyone out there who would like to collaborate, please let me know!

Watch Wing Commander Run on a Tandy 386

It's easier to play your classic Wing Commander games today with DOSBox, GOG and compatibility patches like wcdx readily available, but there's also a certain magic to getting an old 386 or 486 running. Not everyone has the time or space to make that happen though, so Philip from RadioShack put together this video of the game running on a vintage Tandy 2500 SX/25. This would have been a pretty good system for getting the original Wing Commander going back in the day!

The planets aligned and I was able to get Wing Commander running on my Tandy 2500 SX / 25 Hard Drive model computer - a 25mhz 386 running DOS 6.2 with Sound Blaster audio. RadioShack pro tip - add EMM3686 to your config.sys file!

WCDX 2.2 Releases with SO1&2 Support and More!

wcdx version 2.2 is here! After years of empty promises and unmet expectations, I can finally present to you the next official release of wcdx!

What's that, you say? Version 2.2? But what ever happened to 2.0 and 2.1? Last anybody knew, there was just an alpha that kinda-sorta worked for WC2! What gives?

wcdx gives, that's what gives! Specifically, it gives you Wing Commander 2, and Special Operations 1, and Special Operations 2! All three games are now fully playable in all their Windows-compatible glory! (Well, as long as you don't look too closely at the cut scenes, I guess. They're still way too fast and jittery. But never mind the cut scenes! We're here for space combat!)

For those who haven't been keeping up (and with my terrible release cadence, I don't blame you): wcdx is a patch for the Kilrathi Saga versions of Wing Commander 1 and 2. The Kilrathi Saga was released for Windows 95 way back in 1996, comprising Wing Commander 1, 2, and 3, along with the Secret Missions and Special Operations add-on packs (each available as separate download). These versions contained some nifty enhancements over the original DOS versions, such as invisible cockpits (Wing Commander 4 style!), a frame limiter to keep the frame rate nice and steady (don't fly without it!), and perhaps best of all, a pre-rendered enhanced digital score based on the original MIDI soundtrack, courtesy of George Oldziey! Unfortunately, it also came with a lot of brand new bugs, including (perhaps most infamously) that planets and other space backdrops would no longer render, and one particularly short piece of victory fanfare music would just loop forever if it ever played. There were also numerous Windows compatibility issues that would not become apparent until several years later. wcdx fixes many of these issues, making the games enjoyable again on a modern machine with a steady, reliable frame rate and without the need to fiddle with DOSBox configurations.

If you're interested in trying out wcdx, feel free to drop on by the forums for instructions on how to download it and get it running! If you don't have the Kilrathi Saga, you can still download the PC Gamer coverdisk release along with the Secret Missions add-on to get started! If you want to play Wing Commander 2 with wcdx, and don't have a copy of The Kilrathi Saga, then I'm afraid I can't help you there; KS is not presently available for purchase from EA or any other official venue, though you may be able to find copies for sale on the secondhand market.

Lastly, this release of wcdx has some additional bonus goodies -- tools that you can use to examine the game's data files, and listen to the soundtrack! Read all about it here!

WC1 Speech Mod Marches Through Vega Sector

Messed around with Super Wing Commander Audio files (Thanks GuybrushSF) and played around with getting them into the game. Was easy enough to swap and I might make an option to toggle between SegaCD and 3DO versions. They are quite low quality and don't sound that great with the background music but I'm gonna keep this in mind as I so forward and see what I can do.

Completed Enyo, McAuliffe and partially complete of Gateway. Had some issues where if a Wingman is dead during a briefing then the player would say the exact same line. Because the strings would be the same I needed to have a way to tell them apart. For now I simply changed the Wingman's dialog to have an extra period but I'd like to find a flag for if Wingman is alive or not and use that.

Tested to see if I could inject translations into the dialog. Sorry to say EmuMusicFan but the way that the game works it has each line of dialog in it's own unique section of memory then a function moves it to be converted to an image to be displayed. I cannot read it until after that move which means it is already called to draw before I can replace it. I could get it before then but I need to search and map as many memory blocks as there are lines of dialog in the game and it does seem worth it. Alternatively you can make edits to the dialog via WCMissionEditor so the memory doesn't need to be mapped but I tested this with German and Chinese characters and it caused broken graphics and in some cases crashes so I don't think the game can support other languages.

That's it for now. Stay save everyone and I'll try to keep you all posted every now and then. Cheers!

Kilrathi Saga Celebrated in Comprehensive Review

Origin remastered the first three Wing Commander games for Windows 95 and released them in one big box, called the Kilrathi Saga.

Sega CD Speech Being Added to PC Wing Commander!

Hey all! I've been working on this for a few weeks now, sifting through the memory of Wing Commander 1 to try and find a way to insert the voice overs from the SegaCD version of the game. It began as an experiment to see if I could even do it and I think I've made some good progress so far and have decided to share it with the community. It's in a very early stages but with all that's going on in the world now and I have some time on my hands I figured I'd put some work on it. I've got the first mission completed, all the funeral scenes and some other bits here and there. The loader menu I made in about 15 minutes just to get something working and will be cleaner in the future.

Wing Commander Loader is built using a custom engine and script language I've been writing for the last few years and it allows me to make changes to the scripts and not require re-compiling. It's far from complete, re-inventing the wheel is difficult but I wanted to learn how to program so that's why I made it.

I built this around the KS version of the game with WCDX in mind so it won't work on the DOS or standard KS versions but once I map all the memory addresses I need, it shouldn't be hard to port to other versions. I hope. Check out an uncut video of it in action here as I test it out. :p