Wing Commander Standoff: Episode Five Released (August 11, 2009)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Here's the news you're all here to read: Episode Five of the Wing Commander Standoff fan mod is now available for download. I don't think I'm overstating this: Standoff is, perhaps, the single grandest achievement of the Wing Commander community -- a more than fitting tribute from a team of more than talented people. Here's the official word and download links:

Start by downloading
Standoff Prologue + Episodes 2, 3 and 4 Bundled (270 MB). Then download the Episode 5 upgrade (173 MB)! The combined Episode 1-5 package will be released later this week, but it will be the same as the separate 1-4 & 5 packages that are available tonight.


August 10th, 2009 - Standoff Episode 5 released!

Well... it's been a long, long time coming, hasn't it? And just like Episode 4, this is another one that only barely made the release date. We'll be honest - we really, really wanted to make this release date, because it's the Wing Commander CIC's birthday. Had the release date been set to any other day, however... we would have chosen to delay this episode for another day.

We'll start with the bad, to get it out of the way: the game crashes. Big time. There's a major memory issue in there that we've been going crazy trying to fix... and failed. For now. But in the meantime - basically, if you play two or three missions in a row (especially the kind of huge missions you have in Episode 5), the game will most likely crash in the middle of a mission. You can avoid these crashes simply by quitting after every mission. It's not fun, but it seems to work. And we are working on it...

Two other small bits of bad news - first up, with all the new features in the game, we did not have time to finish testing the simulator missions. Rather than releasing something half-done, we've decided to hold off on releasing any new sim missions at all in this package. In about a week or two, we'll hopefully have them all polished and ready to go. As it is, the sim missions are unchanged from Episode 4 - all of them are functional, but only some are enabled for the scoreboard. And the other thing is - we didn't get a full Episodes 1-5 package done for tonight, only Episode 5. However, all the additional content for previous episodes is present in this package. If you have missed out entirely on the previous episodes, we suggest you wait until the big package is available - but if you absolutely must play Standoff tonight, simply download the Episodes 1-4 package, install it, and then install Episode 5 on top of that.

Enough with the bad, let's talk good news :). First up - we've got a new website, the old layout was... well, old :). And the other good news, obviously, is that we've released the final episode of Standoff :-D. It's a big package this time, over 180 MB in size - more than twice what the previous episode had taken. Apart from the big damn finale, this episode also contains a lot of fixes for various issues in previous episodes. And new cutscenes for Episodes 1 and 2. And all those great graphics improvements we mentioned in the last update. In short - it's the best damn Standoff release ever!






--
Original update published on August 11, 2009
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Bah don't let Quarto scare you...the game seems to only crash in a few select missions. Taking the above advice though will help prevent the crashes. During testing I found that the problem missions tended to crash 3 out of 5 times. Not a great ratio, but still not too bad. The problem is the missions it crashes in Episode 5 are pretty epic and difficult, so it really sucks when it happens.

I also have to thank the Standoff team. I came onto the team before Episode 4 came out and have been testing every since. I've learned a ton of stuff (who ever knew that Quarto really is that big of a jerk? :p) and had a great time helping to create this Wing Commander experience.

I hope all of you enjoy it as much as I did in play testing it. Have fun...oh and remember to save Earth while you're at it. :D
 
Website Update, August 10th

And here's the last of our weekly updates to Standff episode 5's release. Hope you had fun following us as much as to play our game !

August 10th, 2009 - Standoff Episode 5 released!
Well... it's been a long, long time coming, hasn't it? And just like Episode 4, this is another one that only barely made the release date. We'll be honest - we really, really wanted to make this release date, because it's the Wing Commander CIC's birthday. Had the release date been set to any other day, however... we would have chosen to delay this episode for another day.

We'll start with the bad, to get it out of the way: the game crashes. There's a major memory issue in there that we've been going crazy trying to fix... and failed, for now. But in the meantime - basically, if you play two or three missions in a row (especially the kind of huge missions you have in Episode 5), the game will most likely crash in the middle of a mission. You can avoid these crashes simply by quitting after every mission. It's not fun, but it seems to work. And we are working on it...

Two other small bits of bad news - first up, with all the new features in the game, we did not have time to finish testing the simulator missions. Rather than releasing something half-done, we've decided to hold off on releasing any new sim missions at all in this package. In about a week or two, we'll hopefully have them all polished and delivered to you via our launcher's built-in patching system. As it is, the sim missions are unchanged from Episode 4 - all of them are functional, but only some are enabled for the scoreboard. And the other thing is - we didn't get a full Episodes 1-5 package done for tonight, only Episode 5. However, all the additional content for previous episodes is present in this package. If you have missed out entirely on the previous episodes, we suggest you wait until the big package is available - but if you absolutely must play Standoff tonight, simply download the Episodes 1-4 package, install it, and then install Episode 5 on top of that.

Enough with the bad, let's talk good news! First up - we've got a new website, the old layout was... well, old. And the other good news, obviously, is that we've released the final episode of Standoff! It's a big package this time, over 180 MB in size - more than twice what the previous episode had taken. Apart from the big damn finale, this episode also contains a lot of fixes for various issues in previous episodes. And new cutscenes for Episodes 1 and 2. And all those great graphics improvements we mentioned in the last update. In short - it's the best damn Standoff release ever, even though we're still working on improving it!
 
It's nice to finally see the new website up.

And all of us should enjoy the night...tomorrow it will be back to work to kill that damn bug...finish the sim missions...and put Dundradal in eternal hell of finding any bugs he may of missed...
 
Here's a bug... None of the ships appear during flight mode. They're there as far as the game is concerned, but they're not visible to the player at all.

No, I have no idea what's causing this. Coin toss between Wine (running it under Linux, bleh) and my rubbishy Intel video chipset.
 
Hey guys, awesome job. I played a few missions tonight and really enjoyed the experience. I forced myself to stop so I can ration it over the next few days. I havn't checked to see if yall fixed the bug that crashes it on my desktop, which is a shame because I have my desktop hooked up to my 32inch TV.

It does however play flawlessly on my laptop.

Cheers guys! Great job and thanks for the fun!
 
Here's a bug... None of the ships appear during flight mode. They're there as far as the game is concerned, but they're not visible to the player at all.

No, I have no idea what's causing this. Coin toss between Wine (running it under Linux, bleh) and my rubbishy Intel video chipset.


Black screen? Me too.
 
No, no black screen, the starfields and the movies show up fine. Ships just don't appear at all. I have my HUD and I have space and stars, and no ships.
 
Here's a bug... None of the ships appear during flight mode. They're there as far as the game is concerned, but they're not visible to the player at all.

No, I have no idea what's causing this. Coin toss between Wine (running it under Linux, bleh) and my rubbishy Intel video chipset.

I am having the same problem too with no ships in game play. I have Windows XP SP3. Like it though.
 
I'm getting a black screen too. Only when I use HDR though. I have a 9600M GT card and the FAQ says I should be able to run HDR... unsure what's up.
 
Here's a bug... None of the ships appear during flight mode. They're there as far as the game is concerned, but they're not visible to the player at all.

No, I have no idea what's causing this. Coin toss between Wine (running it under Linux, bleh) and my rubbishy Intel video chipset.

Intel chipset...turn off Enhanced lighting...that should fix it. This is something Alex and I were working on the other day. Intel chipsets just suck.

As for the other gfx issues...those are strange and new. We'll look into them and definitely see about fixing the situation.

EDIT: Iceblade also mentioned something I forgot :p ....yes update your vid drivers
 
Guys, update your video cards to the absolute latest. I didn't think it would work so well on mine (what with it being just a black screen) but it worked perfectly.

This is actually something that probably needs to be said in the news update, since I ep. 5 requires mid-09 drivers.....very few people bother to update their drivers that often.

EDIT: PS I found a typo in the second cutscene of the game, the word was "against" The error is minor and therefore hard to notice esp. for game dev.
 
Could it be that those cards lack proper OpenGL support? IIRC, the new patch was using OpenGL for all the new graphical updates. Unfortunately many cards, especially those on laptops, don't support OpenGL, at all, so, unfortunately, something like what you wrote about, happens.
 
The card is a Nvidia GTX 285. Its possible the initial drivers from December had no openGL support, but the update sure did. I know my old card (a 9800 series Nvidia) had no trouble. (pity it got burnt out....heat stress I think)
 
EDIT: PS I found a typo in the second cutscene of the game, the word was "against" The error is minor and therefore hard to notice esp. for game dev.

Yeah...blame Quarto...and me...I didn't have time to check the scenes with subtitles in today before I had to go to work...
 
Updating drivers worked.

WOW the game looks -spectacular- now. I especially love the new explosion effects. And all these additional cutscenes inserted into the prologue are quite a treat! I lost all my old Standoff saves and so need to replay eps 1 - 4 to play ep 5, but with all these new additions it's going to be a REAL treat to do so! Viva la Wing Commander!
 
Ohh man! I'm excited, but you guys have some of the worst timing... I have to leave for Ohio for the week tomorrow! I just hope some of the remaining patches come during that time so that the wait was even more worth it...!
 
Back
Top