Originator [v0.3.06 Released]

Here's version 0.3.05, which mainly adds a few more missing bits of Privateer 2 text, brings over some of my old work-in-progress Bioforge stuff, and adds support for Wing Commander Arena models.

Years ago I was reverse engineering Bioforge, but stopped when I discovered the OpenBioforge project which seemed much further along - if you're into the idea of an improved Bioforge source port, be sure to keep tabs on that (e.g. here). Anyway, I've brought over a good amount of my old work, including my half-finished script reparser, and support for images and some more of the in-game text. I may bring over my animation code eventually too, but it'll be part of the object/ship viewer.

bioforge-1.jpgbioforge-2.jpg

I've also added support for Wing Commander Arena's models, which are binary Ogre3D models - I wrote a custom parser rather than use Ogre itself.

arena-2.jpg

arena-1.jpgarena-3.jpgarena-4.jpg

Originator itself doesn't display the normalmaps currently, but it does export them; it'd be easy enough but I'll wait until I do a bit of a refresh of the viewport rendering code at a later date.
 
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Support for Arena's models is especially awesome.
Years ago I converted someof these models for Defiance and the process wasn't easy.
If Originator is able to convert these to common formats like obj or fbx, that would make things much easier. :)
 
FekLeyrTarg said:
If Originator is able to convert these to common formats like obj or fbx, that would make things much easier. :)
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Yep, it currently exports to .OBJ (+ .MTL), with .PNG for textures - I've made sure they load into Blender. :) Having said that I'm not 100% sure if the Blender .OBJ importer is setting up the material to use the normal maps properly or not, but they are exported/linked...
 
I still cannot get over how Kenshi-esque those Wing Commander Arena images look (the carriers, especially). I know it's because the same game engine was used for both projects, but to be able to spot the stylistic similarities this clearly came very unexpected to me.
 
I think it's the shading on the metal surfaces that evokes this sense of familarity in me. Maybe I've just been spending too much time among the technological detritus of the Second Empire lately, never mind!
 
AllTinker said:
To load Wing Commander Arena, rename the big file (the name of mine starts with 9D2C and ends in D858) to arena.xbla and place it in data/
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I see the full number string for that original file in Settings as a hover tooltip but I can't copy and paste it to do a forum search - where is that super long named file downloaded from? I have Arena Meshes from a previous post here, but Originator doesn't seem to be looking for that.

I'm super interested in Arena! I never got to play it because I don't have an xbox so its like brand new WC content to explore
 
3ry said:
I see the full number string for that original file in Settings as a hover tooltip but I can't copy and paste it to do a forum search - where is that super long named file downloaded from? I have Arena Meshes from a previous post here, but Originator doesn't seem to be looking for that.

I'm super interested in Arena! I never got to play it because I don't have an xbox so its like brand new WC content to explore
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Following up - it wasn't here on teh CIC but I did find it by searching for a "Wing Commander ROM" file, that had the long string named file inside of a downloaded ZIP. Looking for the string wasn't necessary. Hope this helps anyone else excited to discover new ships! Thank you for this!
 

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Nice :) For folks who have an XBox 360 (or plan to, or whatever) it's worth a reminder that you only have until July some time tobuya copy. If you have the game downloaded on 360, you can just transfer the game to a USB drive and get the file that way - I was going to write up a brief guide, but my 360 apparently chose today to die. That'll be a fun repair job no doubt... :p

EDIT: The next version of Originator will also support the "demo" version of Arena (which can be extracted from the Official Xbox Magazine Game Disc 76) - the content seems identical; the demo differences are all in how the executable is set up to run on the 360 without a full game license present.
 
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First release in quite a while; version 0.3.06 is mainly a bugfix release, but does add a couple of new things:
  • Support for the aforementioned demo version of Wing Commander Arena.
  • Support for Playstation's VAG audio format, used by Wing Commander 4 PSX.
  • Fixed terrain heightmap export for Wing Commander 4.
  • Some improvements to Shape parsing, fixing at least one regression with Wing Commander 3.
  • Hooked up texture / image / image set loading for Wing Commander: Secret Ops:
secretops1.jpgsecretops2.jpg
 
Nice work - and thanks for documenting it! :) I'd love to help more actively myself but I can't give any timelines for when/if I can.

I'm keen to improve Originator's support for Starlancer - it's very rudimentary/broken at the moment. I'll be focussing on the media side of things first though; graphics, audio etc.

I do have nebulous plans for mission editing for the mainline Wing Commander games in the longer-term... Beyond those, Starlancer (being another mission-based game) is definitely something I'd be keen to support as well. Eventually; this is all very long-term daydreaming at the moment.
 
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