WC 4 and... 3DO WC 3?

Mr_Blastman

Rear Admiral
Couple questions:

1. I have a nice little pure-DOS machine with an AWE-32 sitting in it and a CRT hooked up. I'd love to play Wing Commander 4 on it but... I don't know which version to buy. I have found a copy of the Creative limited edition double-sided DVD (the high-res movie version) and I'm aware there are patches on CIC for it if you don't have the MPEG-2 board (I don't). The thing I'm wondering though is, will the patches make it work in MS-DOS on a pure DOS system, or do I need Windows?

Oh, the machine is a P-200 so I hope that's fast enough to run WC 4 as it runs WC 3 great.

2. The 3DO version of WC 3, after watching a couple of videos of it--is it that much better than the PC version? Is it worth the effort to track it down to play through it? I loooooooooove Wing Commander and the little sparks that the lasers make when they hit ships remind me of WC 1/2 which--*gasp* I preferred in their implementation of weapons fire. Call me old, I am, whatever, but it looks nifty. Is the 3DO version worth it, is it significantly better?
 
You must run the DVD in windows. The good news is that WC4 DVD works well on most modern machines with the exception of a palette error in Win7 64 bit. We're working on a fix for that. Your only option for DOS is the CD version.

Regarding the 3DO version of WC3, I don't know that I would call it better. It does have better quality video though. Like the PSX version, Origin reencoded all the video to make use of better compression methods. So you get higher color depth and cleaner looking picture in both versions (you can download encodes of all the PSX videos that I did if you search the CIC news.) The PSX version and 3DO versions both have the Deleted scenes (the TCN newsburst and the CGI videos in place of the ground missions, and hobbes explanation) but the PSX tries to emulate the PC version and therefore has a really complicated controler setup. The 3DO version overhauled the gameplay to suit the console and therefore presents a kind of unique WC experience compared to the PC version. But gameplay wise I would really look to the PC version as the gold standard.
 
If I'm forced to use Windows to play the DVD version of WC4, what do most people use for the MIDI-music playback? I know WC 4 doesn't support an MT-32 (I have one :( ) and a real AWE-32 sounds great in WC 3, but on my Windows PC, I have an SB X-Fi card and well, it just sounds awful for MIDI-playback compared to both the Roland and the AWE-32. Do people use soundfonts or something? I can't imagine using OPL-3...
 
If I'm forced to use Windows to play the DVD version of WC4, what do most people use for the MIDI-music playback? I know WC 4 doesn't support an MT-32 (I have one :( ) and a real AWE-32 sounds great in WC 3, but on my Windows PC, I have an SB X-Fi card and well, it just sounds awful for MIDI-playback compared to both the Roland and the AWE-32. Do people use soundfonts or something? I can't imagine using OPL-3...

WC4 doesn't use MIDI. All the music is streaming digital music.
 
Wing Commander III 3DO is a different enough experience that it's worth playing in addition to the PC version. The gameplay is built to be more action-oriented (more enemies, quicker fights) and as a result every single mission is set up differently. (My favorite example, that makes me excited every time I remember it, is that instead of the Victory being attacked by a handful of fighters in the Tamayo scramble, there are corvettes and destroyers!)

It doesn't *look* as good as SVGA Wing 3, though. The gameplay is sort of a cross between WC2 and WC3... and you lose things like the fly-through bays on the carriers as a result.
 
Ohhh I see then. So it looks a lot like WC 1/2 for a reason. I bet it isn't using polygons on the 3DO version at all, eh? I always remember the 3d capabilities of it lacking.
 
I'm reasonably certain the 3DO also uses polygonal models. At the very least, I doubt they'd take the time and resources to create WC1/2-style sprites just to replace the RealSpace engine.
 
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