HCl's Wing Commander Editing SiteHCl's Wing Commander Editing SiteWebmaster:Kindly hosted byNovember 29th 2013I've been making a few tweaks here and there to a few of my projects since the last update. A quick summary:- WCP DVD Patch: due to the release of the WCP on GOG, i decided to revisit my WCP DVD patch and make a few improvements. Basically, i changed the DirectShow interface being used by the patch in order to improve compatibility with Wine, which means the patch now works correctly on Linux. The subtitle code ended up being reworked as well, and should hopefully work better in the more recent versions of Windows. You can get it and follow the CIC thread.- Privateer 2 Patch: Since the first release, I managed to make a few tweaks to the MIDI code and added a very simple setup utility which allows selecting a specific MIDI device for use with P2. Third party MIDI software synths are a great alternative to Microsoft's default synth, but unfortunately might now work well together with P2 as of yet. Beyblade burst turbo toys.

It becomes necessary to coerce P2 to use one specific MIDI device, which can be problematic, especially in Windows 8. Hopefully this option should help with that. Other tweaks are in progress. This new version of the Privateer 2 patch can be downloaded, feel free to join into the ongoing CIC thread- WC3 3DO Movies: ok, so I thought I had the movie decoder fully documented, but recently discovered the script I put together perfectly uncompresses one file sample I had, but apparently doesn't decompress the movie files I am ripping from the CD images i dumped into my hard drive. Looking into it, it seems there are.two.

Editing Information, 70 KB, Information on how to add new missions and edit privateer. Save Game Editor, 40 KB, Edit Privateer save games. Ship Editor, 46 KB.

variants of the WC3 3DO codec, which is very interesting. Part of the CEL chunk structure is different, and the VGA chunk corresponding to the Huffman stage seems to be encoded differently. Naturally, i have a research stream were I'm exploring this.- WC2 Ship Importing: last but not least. Began exploring the possibility of making a COM file for dynamically patching SO2 into supporting full-angled ships and started tweaking the Dralthi stats. As an aside, I also began thinking about a way to use the new COM file to expand the WC1/WC2 mission environment and hook a new scripting system. Looks like it could be fun!

But first things first: finish that Dralthi.November 6th 2013Quick update: I improved the ship importer in order to handle Armada and Prophecy ships, so I'll be able to import the WCP Dralthi instead of the WC4 one. The WCP Dralthi is a bit more detailed than the WC3 or WC4 versions, and the quality difference is noticeable even in the low-resolution sprites used by WC2:As an aside: since the importer can now read WCP meshes, I couldn't resist trying to import one of the Nephilim ships into WC2:-) Here are a few WCA screenshots showcasing the Manta. I gotta say, I'm surprised how well it looks in the WC2 palette!Next: time to work on the Dralthi stats!October 28th 2013There's been a lot going on on the WC2 ship conversion front. On one hand, i managed to figure out how the game handles the various types of ship encodings. The game handles every ship internally as having 62 sprites, with 12 sprites per rotation set around the Y axis (30 degree increments), and with every rotation set having a 30 degree angle increment around the X axis. Still, there's only one ship file that actually has the full set of 62 sprites: Ayer's Rock.

All other ship files encode a more reduced set of sprites, 37 for fighters, 17 for starbases and 22 for missiles, exploring various types of symmetry. The game then uses a set of 4 lookup tables to map the 62 angles into the more reduced set of sprites. I made an overview of this scheme at the CIC thread.Unfortunately, it turns out that Ayer's Rock is coded as a special case on the SO2 EXE, which means that some EXE editing will be necessary in order to get the game to support asymmetric ships.

As I prepare for tweaking the SO2 EXE a bit, I decided to begin importing the WC4 Dralthi into WCA as a test subject. The Dralthi is asymmetric, which means it will be a nice test subject for the SO2 hacking I have in mind, but at the same time, it's asymmetry is subtle enough that it won't spoil the fun as a WCA ship, even before adding symmetry support.Additionally, it is the perfect opportunity to explore something else: increased sprite resolution. I doubled the sprite resolution of the Dralthi on both axes compared to the Hellcat, which means that the ship scales a lot better on close-ups. The current file is around 400kb (with RLE optimizations off and no LZW compression), but the game seems to handle it well.

As expected, having a larger sprite means that the scale factor needs to be adjusted. I haven't done this yet, which means that the Dralthi on the screenshots below is actually larger than it should be.Also made some progress on engine placing, so once i fix the Hellcat engines i will post a new version (maybe re-encoding it with higher-resolution sprites while i'm at it!)October 13th 2013A couple updates for today:The WCA Hellcat project continues! I'm currently working on documenting the engine exhaust chunks and am making good progress gathering data. In the meantime, I managed to implement proper ship stats based on suggestions of Quarto and Capi3101, which makes the ship now fun to play!Although the engine exhausts still need to be fixed, i'm releasing a test version of the Hellcat for WCA. Download file and unzip it into the WCA Gamedat directory, then launch the game. The Hellcat replaces the Wraith in WCA for now.

Give it a try, and leave feedback on the discussion at the CIC!Also, regarding Privateer 1: I made a quick patch which fixes the issue of the MIDI music slowing down during space-flight if you don't have a joystick connected. This can be annoying if you want to play with the mouse or keyboard. You can get it (GOG / CD version EXE) or (BSDiff patch file). This really was a quick patch, the ideal solution would be to change the P1 joystick routine and improve it in order to make it timed. But that's something for next version.PS: Yes, you can configure the joystick settings in DOSBox to overcome this problem, but it's still a problem in real machines. I am currently putting together a new dedicated WC-machine, so i will, over time, be revisiting a number of issues that the older games still have (eg. WC1 speed issues in fast DOS machines)October 7th 2013A quick update on our WCA Hellcat project!I have since solved the various issues when converting the Hellcat to WC2 format.

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The slowdown that I experienced on the first few imports was due to the lack of a terminator code on the RLE stream, which caused the game to process garbage. But since the image is rect-limited, it ended up being very difficult to get any image corruption (and therefore many clues about what was wrong).After fixing the issues with ship import, it was time to import a new cockpit! Fortunately, i was able to count with the help of CIC-regular Howard Day, who made a fabulous cockpit in full WC2 palette. After he sent me the PNGs with two versions of the cockpit (with every component 'on' and 'off'), I was able to improve my scripts in order to cut the cockpit in small pieces and code the animations for the various parts.