Since we often get asked how WC-Saga will actually try to recreate the WC feeling in the Freespace 2 engine, we’ve constructed a small exhibit of one of our missions, that demonstrates portions of the gameplay that we’ve refined for that purpose:
Launching.In nearly all missions, you will launch inside the hangar of your home-base carrier, usually together with your flight group. Although we could have tried to make the launch automatic (since that was an option in WC3 and 4 and pretty much the only way to launch in 1, 2, and Prophecy), we just thought it will be better to let the player launch manually (it makes more fun and adds realism IMO).
http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-01.jpgTraveling through nav-points.What would WC be without autopilot and nav points, two features that were not present in Freespace 2 ? We received a nice code feature that allows us to autopilot to different mission areas without any loading cylces between the navpoints. Please note that this is actually just a picture taken in the external camera while traveling. Our autopilot function doesn't show an automatic flyby scene, but it uses a “real traveling” system. When the autopilot is engaged, the ship steers itself and the engine slowly engages up to a 64x time compression, otherwise it could take quite some time to get to the next area.
http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-02.jpgDogfighting.Here it is, the heart and soul of WC: the dogfight. This Dralthi pilot wasn't very lucky in his warrior life! The game features taunts and death screams just like in real WC, though the taunts are only hardcoded and can't be send by the player (yet). Some might notice the subtitles on the upper left of this screenshot. We can't prevent them from being generated, but the player has the option of turning them off (which I highly recommend). Everything is voice acted, so there is no need for those disturbing text lines. BTW, sorry for the red blur in this picture, but in this fight I had a destroyer behind me and my shields received constant hits.
http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-03.jpgBattle scenarios.Here we see a Fralthi II and a Tallahassee cruiser involved in a political discussion. They are more or less equal to each other, so it will be up to the player how this battle will end.
http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-04.jpghttp://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-05.jpghttp://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-06.jpgTime to go home again !http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-07.jpg
Landing procedure.Also like in the original WC games, you will have to land again at your carrier. We also decided to make this a manual landing for the player, because making an automatic attempt didn't work out so well (since we couldn’t convince the AI to not roll over the Z-Axis, we decided to leave it out). Besides, I find manual landing more fun, I always did it that way in the original games.
http://web396.xps1.microserver.de/media/news/22-03-08.jpg
