[headdie]

>   Minimum Specifications:
Operating Systems: Windows® XP -  yep
CPU: 1 GHz processor - yep
Memory: 2 GB RAM -  nope
Graphics Card: 128 MB 100% DirectX 9.0 compatible card - yep
Sound Card: Windows® XP-compatible sound card - yep
Imput Device: MS Windows compatible mouse and keyboard - yep
OpenAL: OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications and many other types of audio applications. It is required to run Wing Commander Saga. - of course I am an FS junky
Installation: 8 GB free HD space - hmmmm, what games of my wife's can I uninstall

Well after deleting a load of stuff from my crammed Hard Drive and burning the install files to a DVD to make enough space after extracting the setup files I was finally able to get this beast onto my pc and hit the launch icon.

The launcher is nicely done, personally I would have liked to see a command line somewhere so I can manually customise the switches but that's a minor personal preference.  Ok so the setting look good, having read the requirements I decided making sure all the graphics setting were set as low as they would go would be a good thing.  Time to hit run!

Start up time is good, no massive wait for the thing to get anywhere and seeing the warp field animation again is cool. Create my pilot file and into the menu.  ohhh dear we seem to have picked up a little stutter in places, but hey ho, lets see what happens, check the campaign and into the briefing room.

Ohh nice Cini

Spoiler:

not so nice for the base though

the cini finishes and into quite a lengthy fiction reader entry

Spoiler:

I think Greywolf is treated a little harsh in it, personally speaking during the missions, even mission 1 he seems a little guff but fair, perhaps I am missing something but by the end of the carrier defence mission I was starting to like him and how harshly he put sandman down didn't seem to fit in retrospect.

Then its the usual welcome aboard command brief followed by a nice cini briefing which drops you into the review objectives part of the mission briefing screen.  hmm cant select my loadout but from comments I have seen about that's due to my rank and a lot more in keeping with WC1/2 so no worries there.  And we commit.
Control gives us clearance to launch, i hit "\" and get nothing  , try again, nothing.  right have the team messed with the control settings for some reason?  F2, controlls, nope there it is set full throttle = \  , for the hell of it I rebind the control,  its blank!!!! go back to the mission, hit the button again and off I go, so WCS charactar set and my keyboard are not talking the same language, all is good except that it's a little stuttery for a few seconds as I accelerate.  now I am worried! To date this is the only key binding issue I have had.

Ordered to head to nav 1 ( I spend this and the next few missions hitting alt+n until I realised I didn't need to as the mission selects it for me which is nice. just hit alt+a when the auto lights up)  we complete the mission and I line up with the Carrier to land, get close to the carrier and WOW MASSIVE SLOWDOWN, I mean the fighter is difficult to handle and I might hit a wall here because I cant respond fast enough!!!  turns out my PC dont like how you guys have done the through decks as it does it every time I land on the base carrier and

Spoiler:

when i tried to fly down the Yorktown and the Kat carrier decks on the fighter transfer mission

it just happens as soon as i get very close to the hanger.  The work around seems to be sit a little way behind the carrier so I am beyond the problem LOD range, line myself up with the far exit and fly forwards until the mission ends.

Performance wise the only other issue I have had to date is stutter in autopilot when something big is loading which in extremes stops the game for a number of seconds with 1 crash after pausing mid autopilot.

But all in all that's it for problems, I would strongly recommend it is not played on a significantly lesser machine than mine as dropping detail model detail from max to minimum didn't change the performance issues much.

All in all even on or slightly below minimum specs as laid out by the WCS team the game is playable, fun and you still get to enjoy the hard work put into the game.   Well done WCS team, I am currently on Mission 14 and enjoying it immensely,

If I hit any more performance issues I will let you all know, but so far nothing serious that happens at inopportune moments.

Spec
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (about 2.2ghz iirc)
1 gb ram
GeForce 6600 GT (AGP)

playing keyboard only.

[Tolwyn]

If I hit any more performance issues I will let you all know, but so far nothing serious that happens at inopportune moments.

Unfortunately, you will. Some missions will cause massive slow downs on your rig, most notably M17, 35 and the very last mission.

[headdie]

That's unfortunate but We will see how bad it gets when we get there.

[KeldorKatarn]

Strange about the default mapping, I'll look into that. As for the performance, yes with a 1Ghz CPU you will probably experience some slowdowns here and there.

[headdie]

I hit M17 and wow <=5 fps , adding some cubes to replace the rocks got it to between 5-20 fps if you kept the big one off screen when close.

Spoiler:

I managed to beat that mission by killing the carrier's weapon subsystem and flying around the back of the carrier just poking into it's fighter bay before it activated, then switching to the big damage (ion???) cannon on the fighter with weapon energy on full on the ETS and just blasted it, not the most fun way to do it but i scored the carrier kill without getting targeted by kat fighters.

With it dead the frames jumped up a little to more dogfight able levels.  now just failed M18 first time round after running out of fuel thanks to an over zealous opening charge so couldn't burn which made me a bit of a turret .

[Spoon]

You'd probably get a performance boost if you plug in an extra GB of ram. Easy to install and cheap too!

[headdie]

You'd probably get a performance boost if you plug in an extra GB of ram. Easy to install and cheap too!

I am waiting for my new bits to arrive which include a much more powerful Athlon II AM3 and 4 gig memory, I just hope I haven't forgot something because I cant afford to buy anything significant until maybe next month if I am lucky.

Just thought this would be an interesting exercise/report, tbh with the graphics, known inefficiencies in the FSO engine and everything else i am surprised my PC is holding up as well as it is!!

[KeldorKatarn]

Now just failed M18 first time round after running out of fuel thanks to an over zealous opening charge so couldn't burn which made me a bit of a turret .

In M18 you have to use the Glide function of the Arrow (Alt-G I believe, but look it up in the controls screen just to be on the safe side) to save afterburner fuel. Otherwise you'll make it a lot harder on yourself than need be (although even then the mission can be won)

[Tolwyn]

Good point. We might need to release old FS2 asteroids for slow systems.

[KeldorKatarn]

Yeah, or at  least some with even lower-poly LODs. We'll look into that.

[headdie]

ahhh forgot about glide thanks KeldorKatarn.

As for the roids though seeing changes was a would be nice consideration It was not what my primary reason, it was more of a just how playable is WCS:DD on marginal systems so much kudos to you all for taking it into consideration

[Tolwyn]

The minimal specifications are just, uh, a wild guess based on my experiences with Saga on an ancient Sony subnotebook.

[headdie]

well to be fair you seem to be not far off and while for the most part you seem to be on the safe side, there is stuff like the carrier deck and M17 where that extra is needed so I think you called it about right.  And heck you have a high grade game on your hands for much less performance demand than a commercial title of similar quality would demand.

[KeldorKatarn]

well to be fair you seem to be not far off and while for the most part you seem to be on the safe side, there is stuff like the carrier deck and M17 where that extra is needed so I think you called it about right.  And heck you have a high grade game on your hands for much less performance demand than a commercial title of similar quality would demand.

There are several bottle necks in the engine that we just didn't have the time to adress. We already put a lot of work into upgrading performance but in the end getting the content done and getting all the bugs fixed had to take priority.