BREAKING NEWS: Wing Commander IV on GOG (April 3, 2012)

Cool, thank you very much. Ah, it really is good to be back in the cockpit :-).

Hmm, another /stupid?) question though: when I fly, it's all in 4:3, while the rest of the game is in full screen. It didn't do that with WC3 - something else I'm overlooking?
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
Ok then: All praise to HCl, he is cool! :)

But seriously, what do I miss?
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I'm not sure I follow you here... You don't miss anything. The spaceflight is it's original aspect ratio. The DVD videos were also encoded at a 4:3 aspect ratio but letterboxed so they would be full screen on an old 4:3 monitor. HCls patch uses the DVD decoder options to basicall zoom in to touch the width limits of your monitor's resolution. the only thing you're missing are the black bars that essentially get cropped off the top and bottom of the screen.
 
AD said:
I'm not sure I follow you here... You don't miss anything. The spaceflight is it's original aspect ratio. The DVD videos were also encoded at a 4:3 aspect ratio but letterboxed so they would be full screen on an old 4:3 monitor. HCls patch uses the DVD decoder options to basicall zoom in to touch the width limits of your monitor's resolution. the only thing you're missing are the black bars that essentially get cropped off the top and bottom of the screen.
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Ah, thanks, so I am not missing anything.

What I meant "Am I missing a patch or enabling a function for WC4 that makes the inflight sections fullscreen?" because I reckoned that if WC3 was fullscreen WC4 could be too, the technical differences neved seemd that big to me. I didn't know that HCl had worked his magic with WC3 and that without it, it'd look like WC4. Sorry for the confusion.
 
All of the Wing Commander and Ultima on GOG are on for half price this weekend. So if you haven't picked them up until now, like me, we have no more excuses.
 
Just got myself a new Ultrabook. Nothing better than to inaugurate it with this purchase. Thanks for the info just bought WC1+WC2 pack (havent played the games for ages after my floppies were corrupted).
 
Some spoilers here.

Speaking of the GOG WCIV, I noticed something interesting when I played through. The scene where Seether kills Paulsen seemed to be edited...or rather censored. I don't remember what it was like on my original play through on the CD dos version, but on YouTube the videos you can see of that cutscene very clearly show Seether cutting his throat, whith the knife blade shown slicing his neck and lots of blood. But in the GOG version, it cuts to Seether's grinning face immediately after he pulls out the knife, and you just hear Paulsen gagging in the background, and then it zooms out and shows Paulsen(bloodlessly) slumped as Seether addresses the shuttle pilot.

Was the GOG version censored for some reason? Or was the DVD version censored, relative to the CD version? Where did the two versions come from, and what is the story there?

It's a little odd they would censor that scene, when the Telamon scene showing the dead settlers is there with all its graphic gore.
 
I remember the scene in the DOS version, and yeah, you can see Seether slitting Paulsen's throat. Might be too blatant of an act of violence for GOG's end-user policy or something like that; just a guess.

Went and looked it up...WC4 was released with an ESRB "M" rating - probably specifically for that one scene. The PS3 version was releated with the lesser "T" rating - makes me wonder if that scene was edited in that version as well.
 
The DVD uses the less violent German version of the scene. I BELIEVE both are actually on the disc and you can swap the files around if you want it to play the more violent one.

Nothing to do with GOG, though, they just used the DVD as it was made.
 
Farbourne said:
Some spoilers here.

Speaking of the GOG WCIV, I noticed something interesting when I played through. The scene where Seether kills Paulsen seemed to be edited...or rather censored. I don't remember what it was like on my original play through on the CD dos version, but on YouTube the videos you can see of that cutscene very clearly show Seether cutting his throat, whith the knife blade shown slicing his neck and lots of blood. But in the GOG version, it cuts to Seether's grinning face immediately after he pulls out the knife, and you just hear Paulsen gagging in the background, and then it zooms out and shows Paulsen(bloodlessly) slumped as Seether addresses the shuttle pilot.

Was the GOG version censored for some reason? Or was the DVD version censored, relative to the CD version? Where did the two versions come from, and what is the story there?

It's a little odd they would censor that scene, when the Telamon scene showing the dead settlers is there with all its graphic gore.
Click to expand...

There were two versions of the scene. One is cut so you don't see blood... likely done preemtively to avoid issues with the German market. However, *both* versions are on the DVD and therefore in the GOG package. SC_1200C.vob is the censored version... SC1200D.vob is the bloody version I don't know why the game defaults to the 'censored' version but all you have to do is switch the file names and the game will play the bloody version.
 
It's awesome that you can get WC4 from GOG for only $3 during this sale. I'm hoping that any 'hedgers' on the game will decide to buy.

I went ahead and bought Ultima 7 Complete and both Ultima Underworld games.
 
You can't :(
I have asked GOG repeatedly to provide the modified sources of my patches. Although the response from last year was that they are working on it, nothing happened. I have again sent them a reminder just last month but I have not received any response.
 
Too bad - or whether GNU GPL mean nothing? :-(

I refactored your dxmci.dll (by the way, thanks for v1.5!) for my project (http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4033753 - subtitled translation of movies into russian), but it can work with DVD version and DVD-upgraded CD version only, not with one from GOG.
I emailed you binary and source code - just in case you want take a look at or use it for something.

PS. Apropos, are there source code of mpeg2.dll available somewhere, or it is a patched binary file from Origin?
 
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