Wing Commander: Covert Missions (was: SM 1.5 (Working Title))

delMar said:
You can just edit that post, remove the attachment and add a new one. That's what I do with the first post when I post updates.
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You have rights because it is your thread. I can only edit my post for a limited amount of time before I lose the edit function.
 
@wcnut I'm almost done flowcharding the script for SM1.5 and I will be putting in pictures soon. I'm curious, the missions where your are briefed in the Colonels office, are you debriefed there as well or are you still debriefed on the flight deck?

Thanks, :D
Shades
 
delMar said:
Another finding:
The broken briefing in Halcyon's office is really very likely to be caused by how the engine loads graphics. According to the game data files, those briefings refer to the same images as the "regular" cutscenes in Halcyon's office do. The engine just does not load them because at this point in the game they are not expected to be required. We won't be able to solve this by just manipulating data files. The game executable requires some love here.
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@UnnamedCharacter and @delMar
I'm curious, can all the images used for the office scene be copied and made into a new *.vga file and then referenced that way? Maybe that would require less editing of the exe?
 
Shades2585 said:
I'm curious, can all the images used for the office scene be copied and made into a new *.vga file and then referenced that way?
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The problem is not that the images are missing.
The problem is that the images are just not loaded for briefings because they are not supposed to be referenced there
 
delMar said:
The problem is not that the images are missing.
The problem is that the images are just not loaded for briefings because they are not supposed to be referenced there
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I know, that's why I was wondering if we can copy the images into a vga file that it can reference. I'm guessing it's only a few background images that are necessary.
 
delMar said:
Referencing is exactly the part that needs treatment in the binary.
The images are already in a vga file, otherwise the other cutscenes in Halcyon's office wouldn't work.

Or am I just misunderstanding you?
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I was thinking they were in two different vga files. I'm not at home to check which vga file they are both in right now. I could be wrong.
 
Part of the problem is there are briefings in the briefing room and in the office. So if you replace one set of images, you may be able to fix it for one situation, but break it for the other. The images are in the same VGA file, but maybe we can have different VGA files for different missions?

As an example, you play S1M0 using the briefing room images for the briefing. Then exit the game, change the files, and then play S1M1 using office images for the briefing. Certainly not elegant, but maybe a temporary workaround?
 
Ok, here you go. Fixed my type-o.
 

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UnnamedCharacter said:
Part of the problem is there are briefings in the briefing room and in the office. So if you replace one set of images, you may be able to fix it for one situation, but break it for the other. The images are in the same VGA file, but maybe we can have different VGA files for different missions?

As an example, you play S1M0 using the briefing room images for the briefing. Then exit the game, change the files, and then play S1M1 using office images for the briefing. Certainly not elegant, but maybe a temporary workaround?
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I'm at home now. I see that both images are in the briefing.vga file. There are 172 images in that file. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a scene is programed to only load into memory images within a certain range pertinent to the scene in question. So that would mean briefing room images are 1-78 and the office scenes are 109-117. What I'm wondering is, can we make a new vga file, lets say brief2.vga and put a copy of the office scene in brief2.vga. Then when we need to make a briefing in the office we can have it look to brief2.vga to get the scene? This way it can keep the original file intact and not affect the rest of the game.

I'm sure I'm simplifying it too much but SM2 is already doing this with additional content like Wingmen.vga and Wingmen1.vga and several other files.
 
Hey guys, sorry it took me a while to respond. To be honest I don't rightly remember. It would take a lot of game play to get to that point. In SWC you don't get to choose the campaign, it's really a single very long campaign.
 
I believe the .VGA file contains several distinct image sets, each containing several images. I think @Shades2585's solution will work if you add Halcyon's quarters to the briefing room image set, though you're still going to have to change some indices around.
 
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