Adventures in Explorations: WC1 Edition

Shades of Magenta

The following images are two different representation of the game palette. The first image represents the colors as extracted from the GAME.PAL file and the second represents the colors as extracted from game memory. Notice how several of the magenta colors have been blacked out when loaded into memory.

wc-default.png
wc-game.png


At first I found that curious: Does the game not use those colors? Often time magenta is used to indicate a transparent color, but several of them? Then I remembered what seemed like an oddity of the radar screens in the cockpit image of each ship.

PCSHIP00.png
PCSHIP03.png


When all put together and observing the behaviour of the game it becomes clear. When taking a hit on your ship, the space background turns to red and so does the radar area representing the location hit. Instead of redrawing the individual sections of the radar screen, the specific color position in the palette is change and every time the screen is redrawn, the appropriate color is shown.

wc_304.png
wc_304p.png


wc_305.png
wc_305p.png


wc_306.png
wc_306p.png


What a clever way to provide a wonderful bit of feedback to help a pilot know where enemy fire is coming from.
 
Necropost I know, but based on what is going on with the Confederation project, could these improvements somehow be integrated into that? Or are all the files and features of these mods completely dead?
 
Confederation is designed from the ground up for modding; it's a totally new/unrelated engine though, so a lot of these modifications to the original aren't applicable; or will be simply vastly easier to do via the inbuilt modding - no hacking required.

I'm hoping that for instance Secret Missions 1.5 will work as-is, but it may be better to eventually port it over as a mod; I'm not sure what (if any) sacrifices were made to get it working in the original engine...

More generally, it's worth reiterating that Confederation will just be an alternative way to play; DOSBox / Kilrathi Saga / wcdx / Wing Loader etc. will still be better ways to go depending on what you're after (e.g. the pure/original gameplay/physics) - and many of these mods/efforts are still directly relevant to those. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top