Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Lynx on January 12, 2005, 09:34:11 am
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Q: What is Wing Commander?
The best-selling space-sim computer game that supplies the universe in which Wing Commander Saga is set. We believe that familiarity with either one of the games (Wing Commander 1-3) or one of the novels (preferably Heart of The Tiger) will intensify enjoyment of Wing Commander Saga.
Q: Who is the enemy in Wing Commander Saga?
In Saga, like most other WC games you will fight the Kilrathi, an alien race feline in appearence and deadly in combat.
Q: In which timeframe will WCSaga be set?
WCS is takes place at the same time as WC3 and concludes with the end of the decades long Terran-Kilrathi War. The outcome depends entirely on you, the player.
Q: What ships will I see in Saga?
Mostly ships from WC3, though a few older ships from the earlier games are still in service.
Q: Will Saga have developed wingman characters?
Yes.
Q: How is WC different from Freespace sans the setting?
The differences are numerous, with the most important being in flight dynamics(ships are faster, less maneuverable and have only finite afterburner fuel), weapons(generally do much more damage than in FS and are faster) and capital ship combat(CapShips are smaller, faster, more agile and don't use beams).
Q: Will WC-Saga be a Standalone-Mod or do we need Freespace (or it's demo ?) installed ?
Both the prologue and the later coming main-release will be 100% standalone, there is no CD or previous installed Freespace-version required
Q: Is a german translation (only text) planned ?
Currently not. Due to the big amount of voice-files (which telling vital Story, or at least In-Mission-Story) all this text-reading would be rather disturbing. My personal suggestion is, disabling the text-window on the hud (since really every communication is voice-acted), so the text will not block the view on the pretty ships :)
Because of this, a full translation including voice-lines is out of question, not only because of the amount of work needed, but it is already very difficult collecting all the english lines, not to mention starting all over again with german actors (even if I know a lot of people interested in doing it).
Maybe someone else will volounteer doing this, we would certainly offer our help in this case.
Feel free to ask further questions.
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Iv never played any wing commander games (yet), and i was wondering what the capital ships would use to fight?
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Blobs and missiles.
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in other words laser and anti matter turrets plus torpedo launch tubes.
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Are you planning to add WC1/2 ships later?
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Only some, WCS will feature mostly WC3 craft, since it would be hard to balance all the ships from the different eras since WC1 craft(WC2 too to an extent) tend to be alot weaker on the Armor side, so they'd be no match to the other ships, and most of the earlier ship types are already decomissioned at the time WCS takes place. They'd still be around at some places such as the FRLN Navy, but since the Landreich won't be in neither the prologue nor the main campaign there's no need for them now. But some staff people already have plans for new WC projects with the Freespace engine, so I think you'll see other WC craft sometime in the future(for reference, don't touch the WC1 period, it's mine:p )
Iv never played any wing commander games (yet), and i was wondering what the capital ships would use to fight?
The main weapons in antiship combat are Anti-Matter guns which are able to bypass the phase shielding and directly damage the hull, and torpedos which also penetrate shields.
Torpedos are basically huge missiles with a large AM warhead and do enough damage to bring down any ship with a few hits.
Also used are Capship missiles which are even larger and have a higher payload, but they're slow and easily shot down.
Secondary batteries consist of laser turrets, which are mostly used for anti-fighter and pointdefense and against weak capships like transports since they can't penetrate capship shielding on their own. However if the targets ship are down they still can deal massive damage to a ships hull.
They are nuch faster than the Freespace blob shots, so estimates are that people will fear them as much if not more than FS fighter beams. :cool:
Some capships also mount missile turrets which are mostly used for defense.
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Originally posted by Lynx
(for reference, don't touch the WC1 period, it's mine:p )
Don't worry, I'm working on the other end of the whole WC-Universe ;)
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will there be a lot of cap ships to blow the crap out of?
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Depends on the mission, but in some, yeah.
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Originally posted by Lynx
(for reference, don't touch the WC1 period, it's mine:p )
I do not make any promises. Never :ha:
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Have WCS a Comlex Mission Tree like in the "original" WC Games?
So that you have a different Next Mission when you can't complete all of your Objectives. So that is possible that you can lose the war? (Like WC3 ;))
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in the prologue: no
in the main campaign: yes :D
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Are you going to make a flyable Tarsus class ship (I loved that ship; bag of ****e, but it had personality)? Or, indeed, larger turreted ships? (I know turrets can't be controlled)
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Tarsus is a no-no, at least now, since pirates aren't your usual encounters on the front lines :)
In the prologue however, you start as a young second Lt. on a god forsaken Ranger-class carrier on the edge of nowhere. During missions you will have to fight pirate forces, which operate mostly with lighter craft: Demons and Razors.
While these ships are not intended as player ships numerous modders will surely change that. At least I hope so :)
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I have another Questions:
Will be WCS a Stand-Alone Mod like "The Babylon Project"?
Will be a German Version (of couse, only Texttranslation) released?
Have WCS Cutscenes? (In-Game or Rendered)
It is possible that you have a crossover to WC3 and meet Main Charakters from WC3 like Blair or Maniac?
Have WCS Mission they play on Planets.. like TBP?
(I know.. in TBP you have only a big Rockarea in Space, but with a good Background it seems you were on a planet)
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Stand-alone -> Yes
German translation -> Not at the moment since we leak the resources and good translators.
Cutscenes -> We are working on that part.
Crossover to WC3 -> Can't answere that straight...maybe in the final release but not in the prologue.
Planets -> Maybe...if we can do it in the quality we are aiming for then we will have some planet missions.
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one of these days I'm going to take a shot at terain generation. not any time soon though unfortunately.
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@Boboau
Do you mean from the modeling or the coding point of view?
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Originally posted by Bobboau
one of these days I'm going to take a shot at terain generation. not any time soon though unfortunately.
huh? :D
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Translation wouldn't be the problem, Tolwyn and myself could do this pretty fast I guess. (this "pretty fast" is relative of course, it would be certainly a few weeks of work).
But IMO there is way to many speech in the mission, and with only german text you would be either shoot down everytime when read in order to follow the story, or you concentrate on flying and miss 50 % of the text/story.
My team-mates know what I'm talking about, on the beginning (before we had the voice-lines) we faced the same problem (of course after playing the missions a few dozend times you knew from your mind what text was written in it ;) )
(Just for explanation about the relation, the prologue has 5 Missions and contains around 400 Voice-files, now guess what the main-campaign with +30 Missions will have :D )
On the other hand, the english used isn't so difficult and would be understandable to people that have an average english-knowledge (from the view of german/austrian school niveau)
(edit) FAQ-post updated :)
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Originally posted by Deepstar
Have WCS Cutscenes? (In-Game or Rendered)
Yes it will have them.
There are no current plans for them yet, but if we have enough time and a good animator, we *might* also have character based gameflow cutscenes like in WC3, e.g. pilots manning their planes when the mission starts, the tech crew commenting on your ships damage when after you landed, and so on.
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Originally posted by Lynx
There are no current plans for them yet
oh yes, there are plans and also several test animations :)
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Cool. Look like I'll finally have to finish the pilot and confed officer mesh some time.
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Will you guys be rearming the fighters to take advantage of the new SCP features (3+ primaries)?
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of course
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Originally posted by Tolwyn
oh yes, there are plans and also several test animations :)
Now if we could make them anywhere near as good as the Freelancer ones, it would be perfect
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Actually, the Freelancer ones sucked on most things except animation. The characters looked lifeless and all the same.
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I mean the animated cutscsnes. The movement and expressions and so on. Some scsnes I was really impressed.
Sure though, the reused models and animations were lazy but it still was the most impressive animated cutscens Ive seen. (with the possible exception of MGS)
Ed
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The animations were good, yeah, but everything else was not. Low poly and low res textured backgrounds, characters looking too similar in many places and everyone had a pale skin like he was locked up in the cellar for a decade.
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'nother Question ;)
How do you planned to integrate the typical Autopilot/Navsystem System in Freespace 2? I mean in WC you haven't Intersystem Jumps and so the enemies and other ships can't jump in on a Battlefield.. or would this Fact of the WC series would ignored, because you haven't another possibility. I think it's a interesting question.. but on the other hand.. in Freespace 1 you have to no Fighters with Intersystem Jump Drives (first in "Judas" or "Playing Judas" ( if think it is different in other countries) but Fighters jump in, jump out in every mission before Judas.. hmm...
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Saga has autopilot - it's a combination of dedicated code and sexping. Anyways, you press the button and get transported to the next navpoint. Only thing is that we don't have a nifty fly-by animation yet, right now you'll remain in the cockpit - that may be fixed too in the main campaign, I think we can use WMC's ingame movie thing for that.
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hmm... it is embarrassing, that almost nobody is aware of the hard coded autopilot (created by Kazan :D)
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Oh.. when you say "Autopilot" then i remeber on a small thread on HLP which i've read someday.. but i forget this ;)
BTW.. then this would great.. finally again a Space-Sim with Navpoints :D
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hey Deepstar, you can also visit us at www.wingcenter.de :D
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Oh.. i will visit this page ;).. It's a German WC Site.. nice!
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sorry, did't know where else to ask this:
I was wondering if WCS runs in 16 bit mode the way FS2 does. I know its based on a 16 bit game so forgive the n00b question.
The reason i ask is cuz i have the all too familiar problem with the config.nt file being altered. Will this problem prevent me from playing WCS like it does FS2?
Yes i am aware as to how to fix this problem.. lets just say i "misplaced" my XP disc....
This mod is still awesome.
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Well, it should be no problem starting the game in 16 Bit. I just tried, and the game and a test mission loaded just fine. So I think you will not encounter any problems in this mode. :)
Starman©
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but you will encounter problems with gradients.
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So is there going to be an autoslide feature in WC saga? I am not sure if some one asked this before and with search down i looked around but i couldnt find any info on weather or not it would be presant
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Unfortunately not. That is something the freespace-engine can't do (yet :) )
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Thats what i figured but no one had mentioned it so i was curious
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Are we going to fly together with Maverick? (Commodore blair?) or with any other wingmen of WC (I haven't played WC3, but I have finished WC1, I am busy with Secret Missions 1, and with WC2), I would love to shoot Maniac again.
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I am afraid, that you won't encounter any wingmen from WC3. Other Wing Commander parts are a different story. You could try to guess which characters will make it into the game ;)
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I have three questions:
1 - will there be a killboard in the mod?
2 - would you be able to eject?
3 - what happend to the community - nobody is posting :D
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1.) Currently, I don't think we have found a way to include a kill board for your other wingmen. Of course, your own kills and other stats will be tallied.
2.) As far as ejecting, that has not been implemented yet (as far as the player being able to eject). As far as I know, we don't actually have any ejecting pilots yet, but friendly players can be shot down and will "eject," that is they will tell us they are ejecting when their ship goes down and they will be alive in the next mission.
3.) Don't know. The team is working hard behind the scenes. Maybe they're just trying to give us more time to work? :)
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:confused: Is this true??? Other story? I am a BIG fan of WC3, WC4 and Prophecy. Why R U working on a different story? When I saw this topic about making a WC saga....I was happy to see Colonel Christopher Blair again in new coat. Will U guys be working on the WC:Reborn??? Or something like that?? Couse this project that R U working on will be awesome........but I'll be more happier, when U will make the game identically as WC3, WC4 and Prophecy.......the base story with no inovations....only graphical :nod:
Just like the FreeSpace Port!!!
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Actually it's the base story from WC3, we just tell it from the view of another carrier group with some other
side stories, so it wont become boring :)