WC1 Voiceover Project Reaches Brimstone & Chengdu

Earlier this year we reported on an exciting project to incorporate full speech into the PC version of Wing Commander. The game only got such a treatment on the Sega CD edition originally. While extracting the audio for that port has been technically possible for some time, finding a way to get it to correctly link and play in the appropriate places in other versions of the game has been an enormous hurdle. Wingnuts have made tremendous strides in modifying the original engine lately though, and we're now seeing the fruits of that labor. That's not to say any part of this is easy: Destro has had particular challenges categorizing the thousands of separate audio clips into the right order (not to mention coronavirus issues we are all facing!), so the work has been slow going, but he's got a great update to share below. There's even a new teaser of everything in action!

Since the last update I mentioned I was missing some audio files. I began the Gimle System and I found even more audio missing.. I cried inside but became determined, so I brewed several pots of coffee (and maybe a beer or two) and just put all 5000+ audio files in a playlist and just sat there for several hours listening. Eventually I did find all the missing audio. They were stuck in the middle out of order for one reason or another and through my scanning I must have just missed them. I rejoiced and filled in all the missing sections... Then all audio broke and nothing would play. I checked and triple checked my code, the scripting, the audio files for corruption anything to explain the issue, I even changed IDE's and compilers which took some time but nothing. I took a short break from it and came back and started deleting random lines and I found out that the placement of some audio files in my scripting cause a complete break in the system. I have no answer for what caused it but my guess is a memory leak somewhere in my code. I have some thoughts on where the issue might be but for now though, It's fixed, and long story short I'm back on track.

During this "broken" time I didn't want to distance myself from the project too much so I created a new menu system. It's still a bit glitchy but it's more inline with what my vision was and how I wanted it to work. Again all the textures are still place holders, even the music and sound effects, but just wanted to add a bit of flare to the splash screen. It's been a wild ride but I now have all the audio files I need and am moving forward. It will be a slower move forward for the next few weeks as I work on all my other projects but now there are less hurtles to overcome. Below is a progress report of sorts.

• Funeral - COMPLETE
• Medal - COMPLETE
• Office - COMPLETE
• InFlight Coms (WingMan) - IN PROGRESS
• InFlight Coms (Taunts)
• Enyo - COMPLETE
• McAuliffe - COMPLETE
• Gateway - COMPLETE
• Gimle - COMPLETE
• Brimstone - IN PROGRESS
• Cheng Du - IN PROGRESS
• Dakota
• Port Hedland
• Kurasawa
• Rostov
• Hubble's Star
• Venice
• Hell's Kitchen

I'm handling Wingman coms as they appear in the game and the Taunts I have to actually edit and export each line because the bitrate is super low to fit it all on a SegaCD disc. So the taunts will be the last thing I tackle. I also started making a little trailer for the project. I whipped it together in about an hour but might as well share it with you all. I'm going to continue hammering away at it on my free time but until then enjoy the teaser and stay safe everyone.