Comm VDU Images Show Off WC2 Pilot Roster

Spurred by some questions about helmet nameplates, Dondragmer conducted some WC2 archeology and posted some neat pictures of the communications VDU pilot heads. The basic pilots, plus a generic man and woman, lead the pack, and Bear Bondarevsky joins in Special Operations 1. The four SO2 additions are the Wild Eagles, Maniac, Minx, Crossbones and Talon, although their call signs are missing. Jazz's floating helmet from the end of the game also makes a guest appearance. The pictures are cool enough, but there's also some very interesting discussion on the file formats and how some of the game was built. HCl even joins the fray with an update on his research into the game!

As a side note, I'm getting close on my disassembling of the WC2 scripting code that we may be able to start playing with the Gameflow relatively soon. From my research so far, the WC2 scripting mechanism is pretty much a stack-based VM, with 186 opcodes. There are still more unknown opcodes than known ones, but as it is, things are making sense, and i'm able to follow simple chunks of bytecode and roughly understand what happens.

There are apparently four levels to it, with Script, Plane, Sequence and Sprite data defined in each Series / Incident chunk. Script only has one scripted function (often called "doit"), which is called to bootstrap the whole thing, and call other scripts (often from other "levels"). It's really amazing how different it is from WC1, and the more I look at this the more I agree with Quarto, in the sense that it really feels like a VM almost as advanced as the one used in WCP.

Anyway, this is proving to be an exciting adventure! :) I'll be posting more as I go along!