Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Tolwyn on July 27, 2004, 03:00:16 pm
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It's about time I posted something.
People are wondering how the Saga campaign is going to act. Well, here it is without giving much away.
The demo/prologue is 5 missions. It's 50% instruction training and 50% combat related to the main plot. The reason why it's not a full-blown fight campaign (unlike the excellent Prologue ideas made by our friends in the Standoff team) is because while everyone here is assumed to be used to flying in the SO/WCP engine (and thus familiar with the keyboard controls and all of that), many people will not be familiar with the FS2 controls. That's why this prologue's main purpose is to get everyone up to speed.
There's not much we can do in terms of branching due to the set FS2 engine programming. You either are on the main campaign path, or you are down the path of no-return. As for the main path, let's just say you aren't always winning. And for the path of no-return, it's when you try to defend Proxima and Earth (and lose in the process).
You are shifted through several squadrons throughout the campaign. Each squadron flies a different fighter (and only that fighter type). Each squadron has their own wingmen and a squad leader. During missions you fly with these wingmen, and the squad leader too if he's on rotation to fly a combat mission. There is a Wing Commander in charge of the air wing, and on occassions you'll fly among him in combat.
Just as Wing Commander, you fly patrols in elements of two fighters. If you are sent in a mission fully knowing there is going to be a stiff enemy presence, you go in flights of four. In more then one case, you fly as an integrated part of a strike team.
You will start off flying the Hellcat, then the Arrow, then Thunderbolt, then Longbow. You'll fly the Excalibur last.
Expect cameos from several notorious Kilrathi Aces of that period. We can't say which for now, but I will say that we made damn sure not to contradict the timeline, events and systems the Victory participated in during the official path seen in the WC3 novel.
Our comm officer is female :) The VA for her is very professional, and that will carry on to her character.
Your carrier is the TCS Hermes. It fights in the forefront of virtually every operation of the Vega Sector Fleet, whether it is losing or winning (mostly losing). Some operations were mentioned in the WC3 guide, novel, and game. We can't exactly say which systems for now.
The skipper of the TCS Hermes (your carrier) is Captain Moran (mentioned in the WC3 novel).
We are deliberately vague in describing the main character (the person you fly)'s exact features and appearance because we want the character to be an interpretation of what you think he would be. He won't say much in the missions, but he'll say a lot more out of mission. Primary wingmen are a different ball game, they are deliberately made to have their own opinions, attitudes, and whatnot.
There will be a complementary story to the Wing Commander Saga main campaign, based on the mission exploits. Rather then an email format, this is a totally blown storyline, and will take the place of the between-mission conversations in the WC games.
It was written mostly by psych and Viper61, and was contributed by several members of the Wing Commander Aces club. As of now, the fiction is 95% done, and 275 pages long. One thing to remember that there is no fighter combat in these stories (from my experience, combat comprises the majority percentage of WC fan fiction lately), it is pure character development and plot. The characters in the missions will be fleshed out, and so will many characters that aren't in the missions.
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Originally posted by Tolwyn
There's not much we can do in terms of branching due to the set FS2 engine programming.
i could make a mission branching tree that looks like Wing Commander 2's using nothing but the campaign editor -- no souce changes -- it's always been that way
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I was talking about the Proxima set of missions deal...
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you make it sound like it as an fs2 engine thing
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Kaz, IIRC, the only functionality along those lines is the SO loop capability, but then, I've never messed with the campaign editor much.
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you've never messed with the campaign editor much :D
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Originally posted by Kazan
you make it sound like it as an fs2 engine thing
am I wrong?
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completely
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ehh... I am not sure if you can go back, once you face bad ending... I mean, if you fail mission XY, and you are on one way road to Earth, because Kilrathi force is overwhelming, you can not turn back, not without save game system.
What you mean is mission branching, and I knew all the time that it is possible.
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you cannot turn back, this much is true -- however the branching is possible
theorectically it would be possible via creative usage of the SOC loop functionality to fork them back to the mission they came from in the event of goiing down the wrong path
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I would make that an option befor the battle of earth...so the player can chose to fight the battle of earth or to jump back to the importend mission he has failed an lead him to the loosing path.
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I have planned to release the losing path mini campaign separately... as an alternative ending
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Originally posted by Tolwyn
I have planned to release the losing path mini campaign separately... as an alternative ending
Sounds like a good idea to me ! Allthough Kazan is right,
with extensive use of the SOC loop it could be possible,
at least a little.