RSI Museum Looks Back at Wing Commander III (June 17, 2017)

[Bandit LOAF]

I was honored to get to spend another hour talking about the history of developing Wing Commander games on this week’s RSI Happy Hour. Wing Commander III marked a major shift in the scale of how games are managed and created… setting the stage for games like Star Citizen. Enjoy!

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Original update published on June 17, 2017

 

[Whistler]

Need to give a public service announcement for any games with General MIDI. Recommended to download a custom soundfont because the modern Microsoft Wavesynth MIDI sounds like rubbish.

Friends don't let friends suffer Wavesynth.

Otherwise an awesome show.

 

[Worf]

Custom soundfont with a fuller featured synth (bassmidi or better). Not only does the wavetable Microsoft has sound crappy (it's supposed to be a Roland based wavetable, but it doesn't sound like it - even the Sound Canvas SC-55 with a smaller wavetable sounds better!), but the synthesizer they implement makes it even worse (it basically doesn't support *anything*). Hell, it even says it's a "GS" synth (Roland GS), but it lacks support of that as well.

It's like MIcrosoft licensed Virtual Sound Canvas and then stripped it of everything and downsampled the wavetable. And given it's a 2MB wavetable, while tiny, synthesizers often made do with 512kb, 1MB or 2MB wavetables that sound way better. Even the vaunted MT-32 has only a 512kb wavetable and doesn't sound like crap. Not sure what happened...

 

[LeHah]

I cannot wait to see you go through this game in full. I'll take the day off if need be.