WC Workshop Online

Email sent. Gmail won't accept the attachment because it has an executable in it. PM me with an alternate email if you can. Thanks.

Sounds great. I'll try to start working on the text file tomorrow and post how far I've gotten at the end of next week.

When I read one of the text files of the shareware I sent you it did mention that the Kilrathi Ace had three flags.

Sorry, I didn't mean that your program would take the 3D-Max files and create images from it, I mean that people could use the 3D-Max files in our archives and make new images in a predetermined format for your program to then integrate. Stuff the HCl has apparently figured out.

Where is the file "briefing_format.txt" that you mentioned?

Thanks,
Shades
 
I know that mail programs do not allow plain executables for attachments, but now they also scan archives for them?
I will PM another account to you. If it's not working with that either, could you please try to rename the executable file to .bak or something like that?
I think there once was something about a 10 MB mail size limit with my other account...

You'll find the briefing_format.txt file attached to this post. I have also attached two other files, which held maybe the most important information for me so far.
Those three files really contain 90% of all the information that was needed for the current state of the workshop. The other 10 % were taken from the various source files you guys have sent me.
It would be great if one of the admins could make those files available for download in the mission editing section of the CIC?

They have been posted by ZOmegaZ in this thread about five years ago.
Seems he wasn't around this place for a little over a year. He definitely deserves credit on this one.

Awesome if you find the time to work on the phonetic database, thanks.
 

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Any chance of hacking in speech? Super Wing Commander on Macintosh has all the game's speech recorded as extractable aiff audio.... If someone could be bothered... we could hack it into Wing Commander 1 and Secret missions 1/2
 
Any chance of hacking in speech?
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That would require some of HCl's magic of doing com-exe memory overlay stuff.
But - afaik - he's the only one who knows how feasible that is.

Super Wing Commander on Macintosh has all the game's speech recorded as extractable aiff audio.
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That's right, the speech files from the Sega CD version are also an option
The SWC speech sounds to me like just being synthetically generated instead of being real human voice.
On the other hand, Sega CD is without Secret Missions and I don't know anything about the audio format on that one.
 
Just published a small update.
The improvements made by Shades in the savegame editor are now available (dropdown for rank and kilrathi ace status)

Thanks, Shades
 
Speech may be possible using SWC for the first iterations but much of the script in SM2 in SWC only shares some similarities and is still a different (technically) campaign.

That said, I wasn't a big fan personally of the SWC voice cast. Most I've recognized from other Origin characters including Privateer's but they don't seem to capture the emotions of the characters as well IMO.

Did kind of like old Cam Clarke as Halcyon but man they made him uglier. Peter Renaday though did make an awesome Shotglass.
 
Amazing stuff.
Darkmage, the Sega cd speech is significantly better quality, with different voice acting, but either in dos wc would be amazing. I was working on creating a rudimentary parser for the segacd files, to make a mini 'movie player'. I should get back to it.
 
This is neat stuff!

Out of curiosity, will this let us mod SM2? More specifically, do you think we could theoretically run the main WC1 campaign from SM2.exe so it can use the framerate limiter? That'd be awesome!
 
[...] do you think we could theoretically run the main WC1 campaign from SM2.exe [?]
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As far as I know, it is already possible to do that by messing around with savegame files a little bit.
But that has the drawback that some names and faces are mixed up (eg Paladin/Jazz).

The offsets in the exe files are not hard to find, so it is be possible to create a new WC.EXE which is really a SO2.EXE with different names in it.
I have not looked into graphics yet, but it should not be a big problem to put Paladin's face over Jazz's.
So all those things could be fixed.
Same with Kilrathi aces. No problem to put the names of Bhurak and friends into the SO2.EXE.

What's still left is the question about pilot's AI.
Is Jazz the same pilot as Paladin was? There surely will be some differences.
Also, is Drakhai 1's AI the same as Bhurak's?

If those AI routines are hardcoded in the .exe files I see no real possibility of resolving this.
If the AI was a generic engine with only some parameters, which define a pilot's behaviour, then it could be possible to fix this as well.

In a nutshell, it will be possible to do that to a very large degree. But I doubt that we will be able to create a perfect match.
 
Yes, there really seems to be. And probably some more improvements to the flight engine, but I'm not sure about this (smoother gameplay maybe?)
HCl once mentioned that the SM2.exe would also be his preferred way of modding WC1 because of that.

Right, I was completely surprised yesterday to find myself on the front page again.
Thanks Shades.

And today I recognized, that the workshop was also posted on Facebook by the CIC.
That leveraged the page hits on the workshop and view count on youtube quite a bit :)

Thanks for both, ChrisReid.
 
Awesome, great work delMar! :) Sorry for not commenting before, i'm suddenly in crunch mode at the day job. End of year deadlines...

Just a few comments, from various posts:

Any chance of hacking in speech?
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It should be possible, yes, but it will require different approaches depending on whether we decide to focus on hacking the DOS or Windows / KS EXE. Personally, i'm inclined to keep hacking the DOS version, but i'm open to feedback on that. Regardless, it would probably be best to use the SM2 EXE for WC1 modding and SO2.EXE for WC2 modding whenever possible, since they probably support a few features the earlier EXEs don't (eg. Dralthi "stealth" support on SM2, as well as framerate limiter, or Mace / full-angle ship support in SO2).

On the other hand, Sega CD is without Secret Missions and I don't know anything about the audio format on that one.
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I made a quick extractor for SegaCD audio some time back, after looking at the SegaCD sound chip specs. You can find it here: http://hcl.solsector.net/segacd/segarip_v0.1.zip
Also, in case you're interested, i have a couple links with all ripped SWC 3DO audio and movie data on my site as well.

In any case, i agree with Whistler and Madman, i also tend to prefer the SegaCD voice cast over the SWC once.

If the AI was a generic engine with only some parameters, which define a pilot's behaviour, then it could be possible to fix this as well.
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I think the AI is hardcoded for WC1... but, and i'll have to check my notes to confirm, for WC2 the AI behavior is stored in separate files from what i recall (INTELSHP files).
I'm fairly sure the Drakhai SM2 AI is reused from the individual WC1 Aces AI, but i can try to confirm that.

I'd make the following suggestion: Assume that both game AIs can be parameterized. If the plans I have for my little COM file do pan out as planned, i'll be hooking the EXE at some key points, in part to make certain hardcoded options configurable via some kind of text file (ex. how many angles used by each ship). AI could certainly become configurable at some point. (although hooking a new mechanism to influence mission behavior is probably easier to acheive, given the parts of the EXE i've researched at this point)

I didn't know there was a framerate limiter in SM2. Interesting
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There is, but it's only applied to spaceflight. One of the many things i'm hoping to do for SM2 is to apply the limiter to other parts of the gameplay that aren't currently using it (eg. autopilot and talking head sequences, those are still too fast.. same thing for WC2 actually)
 
Thanks HCl. That limiter sounds promising.

Slow progress is being made on the phonitics list. I'll post a test file in a few days for you. It will by no means be complete but it will be a starting place for you to test what you are working on delMar.
 
Sorry for not commenting before, i'm suddenly in crunch mode at the day job.
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No need to apologize. Take care of yourself during crunch time. Developers tend to wear out pretty much at crunch mode.

i also tend to prefer the SegaCD voice cast over the SWC once.
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So do I.

Concerning EXE hacking:
I have identified some hard-to-miss points inside the EXEs myself already. Like names of pilots, etc.
I plan to generate modified EXE files as well (allows for changing names of pilot for campaigns in different settings than just the Tiger's Claw).
Modifying ship's data also requires exe modification, if I got that right. So there's no way around that anyway.

If I can relieve you from some tedious tasks, I'd really love to.
So if anything in the EXE can be modified by just modifying the right bytes at the right offset, please let me know. It just requires me to adjust some mapping files.
Except, of course, you get a kick out of creating a new wc4-dvd patch revision with the left hand while importing some star citizen constellation class craft into wc1 with the right hand at the same time.
At least to me it seems as if that's exactly what you where doing constantly :)

I'll post a test file in a few days for you
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Thanks, Shades.

Btw:
Allowing users to generate and download modified exe files probably opens the door for piracy.
To allow the creation and distribution of modified exe files, I plan to have users upload their wc.exe or sm2.exe as a proof of ownership.
That way I know if someone owns the original exe and there should not be any problem if I allow him to download a modified version.
What do you guys think about that?
 
delMar said:
Btw:
Allowing users to generate and download modified exe files probably opens the door for piracy.
To allow the creation and distribution of modified exe files, I plan to have users upload their wc.exe or sm2.exe as a proof of ownership.
That way I know if someone owns the original exe and there should not be any problem if I allow him to download a modified version.
What do you guys think about that?
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable to me.
 
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