WC Uprez Unity3d Doodle! (Heavy GIF Use, Mobile Users Beware!)

H

Howard Day

Random art guy.
Hey, folks. Playing with some ideas in Unity. if I can get it working well, I'll release it to the community to make your own campaigns and games.
WCRemake002.gif

Based on a mix of WC1 and Arne's Wing Commander concept art!

Wing Commander

Wing Commander 1 fan-art and concepts.
androidarts.com
Enjoy!
 
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Oh I love it.
There are so many options for re-creating WC1/2 given how the technology has changed. 3-Prophecy are more obvious which is one of the reasons why I picked 4, we have the FMV. I could never decide how I'd like to see 1 and 2 tackled, I love this interpretation, it maintains the nostalgia wonderfully.
 
this rocks! (and Arne Niklas Jansson and Dan Fessler are badasses, and so are you :)

on a side note, I've wondered for some time now if there's a way to morph between pre-rendered sprite frames to get smooth transitions. you know, like automatic frame interpolation in newer TVs?
 
Thanks, All! got some progress to show - mostly in improving the cockpit art, and adding things like explosions and placeholder Dralthi (just a hornet with two drive tails and narrow-set lasers, for now!)
Pedro: Thanks, man - I'm basically just going for a 2x upscale - I'm not even using alpha-blending! maintains the look, and makes a lot of things a ton easier.
Shere Khan: Aren't they just? There's totally a way to smooth morph like that - but, in this case it's sorta anti-productive? It really kills the nostalgia to have the ships sprites *totally* smooth. It's the same reason I'm not just bilinearly filtering the sprites - You need to pixel flicker in there to sell the look. :D
Here's the updates!
So I'm building this as moduarly as possible - since the latest unity allows nested prefabs, that means it's VERY modular. Every ship that has a laser cannon will use the same laser cannon, so changing stats for things is super easy. Things like cockpit displays arent hardcoded - they derive from the stats of the ship they're attached to. AIs and players drive the same ship prefabs through the same inputs - no cheating. :D
 
It may be a bit much to ask, but I'd love the option of smooth rotation. Rather than doing it with an interpolation of the images I'd use 3D models and render them to 2D on the fly. There was neat presentation at GDC 2016 I think it was about an RTS game that rendered all of the vehicles off screen (primarily IIRC because the creator had a bee in his bonnet about the available AA techniques) and then combined them in the final image.
If the same thing was done here you could render the ships at the required resolution, but in the case of nostalgia mode only at pre-defined rotations.
I don't know if I'd play with them on or off, but I'd love the option to compare.
"since the latest unity allows nested prefabs" - It's shocking to me how these engines are touting features that were once a given. Argh at least it's better than the child actor solution of Unreal.
 
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Well, it really depends - Right now I'm working on this as sort of a catharsis during the ending days of RGO - just trying to distract myself a bit from bug fixing. that means I tend to work on things I find fun. Now, if I reach the point where the idea of a smooth-angle rendered real time to a texture pixel art ship solution sounds like a fun challenge - I'll definitely do it! Right now, I gotta admit doing things like radar and shield displays and Dralthi sounds more fun. I hope you can understand. :D
 
This is so awesome. I'm very much looking forward to see how it will develop further.

Do you intend to go the same route as XWVM and WC4 Remastered, ie modernising WC1 and reading the data from the original files?
 
I do not. I'd much rather make a system that's simple to read and create with, lightweight, and easily used to make new stuff. You should be able to 1-1 remake the original, but some things...I would recommend against? Faster projectiles, multiplayer options, etc. Anyhow, I dunno. I'm definitely just screwing around at this point, we're a long way away from even my base goal. :D
 
On an aside; the WC4 remake is being built on a variant of real entity component system. All it'll take to switch from WC4 missions, to WCP or LUA etc is switching out a single component. Unfortunately building from the ground up means it'll be a long time coming (after 20 years of modding I'm prepared for this to be a 10 year project) but support for WC4 assets won't be at the base of the engine (both because I want to use it for my own projects and if it were ever successful I wouldn't want to have to go back to the drawing board to work on other titles.
TBH I've not yet got to working out WC4 mission files, but if they are like WCP's it should be able to ride the existing generic message system without being tied to a specific format. I'm particularly keen on long term WCP support in the future as then other mods could just carry across.
 
Pedro said:
TBH I've not yet got to working out WC4 mission files, but if they are like WCP's it should be able to ride the existing generic message system without being tied to a specific format. I'm particularly keen on long term WCP support in the future as then other mods could just carry across.
Click to expand...
It's worth noting that WC4's missions are visibly simpler than WCP. They're fairly schematic, and most can be easily reconstructed just using a strategy guide and a bit of in-game observation. Possibly some small nuances would be lost, but nothing significant. That's the major, huge difference between WC3/4 and WCP - the latter presents a completely different level of scripting complexity (which is then taken to the extreme in UE and Standoff).
 
Quarto said:
It's worth noting that WC4's missions are visibly simpler than WCP. They're fairly schematic, and most can be easily reconstructed just using a strategy guide and a bit of in-game observation. Possibly some small nuances would be lost, but nothing significant. That's the major, huge difference between WC3/4 and WCP - the latter presents a completely different level of scripting complexity (which is then taken to the extreme in UE and Standoff).
Click to expand...

Simple or not that was like 50 missions (double that if it went on to support WC3). It's hard to imagine there will be more work involved in deciphering the formats than re-implementing everything from scratch. If I was going to go down that route I'd kick off another fan campaign; atleast it'd be original content.
 
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