Shades' Secret Ops Guide and Wing Commander Script Updates (August 25, 2014)

Dundradal

Frog Blast the Vent Core!



Just when you think the birthday fun is over there's more presents! Longtime Secret Ops aficionado Shades has some updates to his Wing Commander works.

Like all of you I am a huge fan of Wing Commander and have been since the first game. One of the things I loved most about it was its branching story and like many of you I played it many times just to fallow the many story branches. Many year ago I decided to flowchart the script/story of the Wing Commander games, something that could be read in a "Choose your own adventure" style. My first public release was for Wing Commander II. It was rough but still felt lacking. With my current scripts I've changed the layout and added more picture to help bring more of the feel of the game to the story. It's not done yet but I wanted to release it for the Birthday party. Constructive feedback is welcome. The guides are not 100% tested and I would greatly appreciate any help in testing them.

WC Secret Ops has always had a special in my heart. Years ago I released an ICIS and Strategy guide for Secret Ops. I have redone both. The Cerberus ICIS is now very close to the Midway ICIS with a few tweaks. The Strategy guide had been updated to more closely match Prima's WC Prophecy guide. I've tried to upgrade the graphics throughout the guide. I've updated the maps to 3DFx version of the maps. I've made corrections throughout the guide including the release dates. Often going through the SO backup disk I found a document with all the pilots biography, many are different from what was in Prima's Prophecy guide. I have added those biographies and in some cases merged them with known ones from Prima's Prophecy guide. Also keen eyes will note the ISBN barcode on the back is the one that Prima's WC Prophecy Gold guide would have used.

I hope you enjoy these books. Constructive feedback is always welcome.


 
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Thank you. This has been a long time coming. I lost my HD and had to redo all of my projects. The SO guide now looks a lot closer to the Prophecy Guide and I'm happy with how it turned out. I've added as much to the SO guide as I can find and think of. If anybody can think of anything I missed that they think should be in there or found any mistakes I made please let me know. I would really love to add more ship pictures but despite all my looking I can't find any quality pictures for the remaining ships.

Once I figures out how to Photoshop the frame for the ICIS, that project came together quite nicely. It matches the Prophecy version very well. The cover still needs a little work but otherwise I'm very satisfied.

The scrips are a BIG pain to do. However, I like how far it has come when you compare it to my old WC2 script. The reason it is still "Beta" is because I have not tested all the flow charts of the scripts I made. The text is a direct rip from the game code but how it goes together and what the decision factors are are anybodies guess. It takes a LONG time to test each mission. Time I just don't have much of. For example to test one debriefing it will take at least 10 play-through's of a mission trying to test each branch in the script. Not Fun! If anybody is willing to help me on testing it I am MORE then willing to accept it. I also want to add some more pictures to it. I would really like to add animated gifs but Word will not allow it.

I am in the process of working on a new WC2 script as well as SO1 and SO2 script in the format you see in WC1. I am using WCNav to extract images from the game files and Photoshop to put them together to give me the best quality pictures. If I'm lucky I can release them for the New Year. YAY!
 
<snip /> I also want to add some more pictures to it. I would really like to add animated gifs but Word will not allow it.

Well, Word will allow animated GIFs, but if you're making a print document out of it it will only display the first frame. It will show the animation, however, if you save the file as HTML. PDFs don't support animated GIFs at all, but apparently they will support Flash (if that's an option for you).

The scripts are pretty sweet, I must say...and if you're ever interested in turning the SO guide into an actual hard-copy product, I'd be remiss not to suggest Lulu.
 
Well, Word will allow animated GIFs, but if you're making a print document out of it it will only display the first frame. It will show the animation, however, if you save the file as HTML. PDFs don't support animated GIFs at all, but apparently they will support Flash (if that's an option for you).

The scripts are pretty sweet, I must say...and if you're ever interested in turning the SO guide into an actual hard-copy product, I'd be remiss not to suggest Lulu.

That's correct and I don't want to save it as a HTML and of course I am distributing it as PDF. I don't know how to make Flash videos.

Thanks for the Lulu suggestion. The guide would be cool to make but probably too big and costly. I am thinking of making the ICIS manual, however.

Off to Dragon Con I go!!!
 
Thanks for the Lulu suggestion. The guide would be cool to make but probably too big and costly. I am thinking of making the ICIS manual, however.

Don't be too sure...I went to their site this morning and punched in the numbers for a 176-page full-color perfect-bound paperback: the manufacturing cost is $34.21. True that it would be a bit pricey for a game guide, particularly for one as old as SO, but it's not exorbitantly so. Just a thought.
 
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