WC1 Editing Made Easy
UnnamedCharacter has created a new software library for editing Wing Commander game data. A console tool allows for easy editing of WC1's core data files by converting the game's internal files to human-readable XML. Once the desired changes have been made, the tool can convert the file back to the game's internal format, so you can then check out the result of your tinkering. If somebody felt like creating a WYSIWYG mission editor for WC1, this new library greatly simplifies the work involved. It can also extract various game assets. Look here for a detailed description and some examples.
I am a long time fan of Wing Commander, playing since the original WC1 DOS release. Although this is my introduction to the community, I have been visiting this site for a while.
Last year, after witnessing all the work done on various WC projects, I was inspired to try and contribute by building on some of the work already done. I have been working on a WCGames Library (in .NET v4) for editing WC game data. I believe I now have enough functionality to share the results with the community.
Using the WCGames Library, you can edit existing data or create new data files. At this moment, there is support for CAMP, BRIEFING, and MODULE data files whether compressed or uncompressed; although compressed files will be written uncompressed.
Along with the WCGames Library, there is a simple console application which converts supported WC game data to and from XML. This provides a quick and easy way of editing game data.
This has only been possible because of the great work done by others. I hope this is just the beginning and to expand the library.
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