Wing Commander Saga (fan work in FS2 engine)

[TurinTur]

Title says it all, I just saw it in EG
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-16-ea-sanctioned-wing-commander-saga-project-release-date

Interesting, given the current lack of any kind of space sims.

[Cal]

Looks Awesome, but my God the voice acting was appalling, i hope you can turn the voices off and have it subtitled.

Definitely keeping an eye on this.

[Jazar]

It's a shame they're modeling everything after the WC3&4 ships.

[Brian Rubin]

Wow, it's finally, FINALLY coming out. Been in the works for YEARS that one.

[meeper]

Did anyone else sit through that entire video thinking "ok, they're going to start showing more than 5 seconds of game footage at a time right after this next section."?

[Dawn Falcon]

Looking forward to this.

(And if you think the voice acting in this is cheesy, re-play the Freespace games themselves some time :P I'm willing to overlook it, anyway.)

[Brian Rubin]

(And if you think the voice acting in this is cheesy, re-play the Freespace games themselves some time :P I'm willing to overlook it, anyway.)

Freespace 2 had Robert God Damned Loggia, Ronny Motherfucking Cox and Kurtwood Fucking Smith among its voice cast. You, sir, can suck it.

[Dawn Falcon]

It wasn't bad. It was, however, cheesy :P

Actually, I admit I went out and spent £12.50 on a joystick in anticipation of this game. The Logitech Attack 3 is quite good, considering the price.

[TranquilityBase]

Wing Commander was originally a MS-DOS game for PC, released 22 years ago in 1990 - the same year the Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan to win the WWF Championship.

Cosmic symmetry, man.

[John Reynolds]

Bought my first PC in the fall of 91, walked into my local mall's Electronic Boutique and asked the salesman what game he'd recommend. It was Wing Commander, $30 then. I loved it, played the sequel, Privateer, WC: Academy, etc. Have my boxed copies sitting on a bookshelf here in my study.

[triggercut]

Did anyone else sit through that entire video thinking "ok, they're going to start showing more than 5 seconds of game footage at a time right after this next section."?

No. 5

[DKDArtagnan]

What's the best modern joystick (for flight/space sims) that's not incredibly expensive?

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Logitech Extreme 3d Pro. 12 buttons, throttle lever, twist stick for rudder-style functions. In the $30-40 range. I couldn't find anything less expensive that had all those features.

I haven't tried it in any space sims yet; so far only used in WW1 flight sim Rise of Flight where it's been excellent even without factoring in the relatively low price.

[DKDArtagnan]

Looks pretty cool. I might try that, thanks! :)

[Wendelius]

Not sure how it will play with space sims, but I got this for MS flight:

- US: http://www.amazon.com/Thrustmaster-T-Flight-Hotas-Flight-Playstation-3/dp/B001CXYMFS
- UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrustmaster-T-Flight-Hotas-Joystick-PS3/dp/B001CXYMFS/

Works for both PC and PS3, has got rudder through stick twist or a throttle axis and lots of buttons to configure. It sell's for just under $50.

It might be a bit cumbersome for a WC game. Not sure. I'll try it with it anyway.

Wendelius

[Rock8man]

Just a small warning, all Logitech products are designed for people with big hands. Operating a Logitech joystick always makes my hands hurt after five minutes of use because they're designed for people with much bigger hands than mine. Which is a blessing for someone like my brother, btw, who has big hands and has never been comfortable with joysticks or mice from anyone other than Logitech.

[Dawn Falcon]

Logitech Extreme 3d Pro. 12 buttons, throttle lever, twist stick for rudder-style functions. In the $30-40 range. I couldn't find anything less expensive that had all those features.

I'm using an Attack 3 (http://www.logitech.com/gaming/joysticks/devices/302) as I said. It's very much at the bargain end, but it's a fully usable stick. I use the keyboard for throttle in Freespace anyway, so...

[DKDArtagnan]

Just a small warning, all Logitech products are designed for people with big hands. Operating a Logitech joystick always makes my hands hurt after five minutes of use because they're designed for people with much bigger hands than mine. Which is a blessing for someone like my brother, btw, who has big hands and has never been comfortable with joysticks or mice from anyone other than Logitech.

Thanks for this info!

I have rather small hands myself, so...

(Compensating in other areas ;))

[Ezdaar]

I really like the Thrustmaster T.16000. It uses the fancy hall sensors that their high end Warthog does so it's super precise. Also has a ton of buttons, twist rudder and a throttle slider.

[TranquilityBase]

CH Fighterstick

I've had my second one for nearly ten years now (second only because I upgraded from the serial port version to USB) and the springs/pots are as crisp as the day I bought it. It doesn't do the twist-rudder thing and doesn't co-operate with a 360 USB controller, but it's easily programmable, tight, and you can hammer nails with it. It's also not cheap - Amazon currently has it at $105, which is more than twice what I paid for it brand new at Best Buy back in '02. However, as long as USB remains viable, I'm fairly certain this stick will outlive me.

[TurinTur]

It's here
http://www.wcsaga.com/ (link not really working right now :P)

Impressions from RPS
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/22/back-in-the-cockpit-wing-commander-saga/

[triggercut]

http://www.gamershell.com/download_87172.shtml

You're welcome. (Getting 600-800 kps from the torrent, btw)

[Brian Rubin]

Wow, looks like I HAVE to get this tonight -- I was gonna wait until the weekend for various reasons -- but now, it's a done deal.

[Rock8man]

I have it downloaded, and after reading that RPS piece, I'm pretty excited to try it out. Since it uses the Freespace 2 engine, I'm confident this will be the first space sim to come out since Taychon: The Fringe (more or less) that gets the joystick controls right (one hand on joystick, one hand on A/Z/Tab keys) for the way I like to play Space Sims.

I have a small smidgen of time tomorrow, then I'll be free on Monday. So now I'm debating whether to continue playing Mass Effect 3 (which I've been playing every single free moment I've had since launch, which adds up to 33 hours so far), or to try this out and give ME3 a break.

[John Reynolds]

So far it's pretty fun. The HUD and commands are too Freespace-y for my tastes, but the ship models and music are bringing back the memories.

[Dawn Falcon]

Apart from a weird bug in not wanting to map my \ key, good fun. The flight model and so on are pretty accurate.
I agree they could have provided an option for a more WC-like keymap. (I'm fine with the freespace-like one, but...)

It's got the sarcastic com chatter down pat too.

[Ultrazen]

I really like the Thrustmaster T.16000. It uses the fancy hall sensors that their high end Warthog does so it's super precise. Also has a ton of buttons, twist rudder and a throttle slider.

It's pretty difficult to argue with anything named 'Thrustmaster'...in a Ron Swanson kind of way....

[Dawn Falcon]

As a note, when you start playing, go into the campaign room and select "prologue" and play that before "darkest dawn".

[John Reynolds]

I played the prologue, but the To be continued message really threw me at first. Took me a few seconds to realize I had to go back into the campaign room and select the main campaign.

[scharmers]

Just because we're a bunch of jaded gits here on the forum, I wanted to pop in a say that this is really a piece of work. I've only played a couple of missions so far, but I'm putting right up there with The Nameless Mod for content and quality. A lot of love went into this.

[Dawn Falcon]

Unfortunately it's buggy as heck with ATI cards. I suspect they must be using a fairly old build of FS2Open (as the modern one doesn't have those issues) ><

What I've played is good, but it's tendency to crash and the mission length don't make me a happy bunny.

[stusser]

It's 2012, so I don't have a joystick. Is it playable with an xbox360 controller, or should I just use mouse+keyboard?

Supposedly the ATI issues are fixed in catalyst 12.3, released 2 days ago.

[Dawn Falcon]

The issues are with the engine build they're using, unfortunately.

[stusser]

Their forums said new drivers helped. I choose to blame ATI, because I just hate them so very much (and would like to try this tonight).

[Dawn Falcon]

You do that. The FS Open builds haven't had ATI issues for some time.

[RichVR]

Looks like some sticks have throttle issues. My Saitek EVO is recognized by the game but the throttle isn't. Going to check the official forums for help.

[Dawn Falcon]

Throttle support needs to be turned on, it's off by default.

Also - If you're using Saitek's own software for calibration, it might not work. FS2 Open uses the windows calibration interface.

[RichVR]

Thanks. I missed that in the control menu.

Edit: First one to design a keyboard overlay gets a cookie.

[Brian Rubin]

So I'm finally diving into this, and I'm a bit into the prologue campaign. WOW this is good stuff. They went to a lot of work to make it feel like a WC game, and it shows. Sure the walls of text are a bit off-putting, and damn do those pilots talk a lot, but the combat, ship modeling and sound effects are top notch.

I also loved this one bit. In Freespace 2, in training you're told not to touch the controls until told to do so, but you can still fly around and shoot weapons, and your instructor don't care. In THIS, I shot ONE shot, and got chewed out for not following orders, followed by needing to land and restart. I was DYING of laughter, but thought this was a nice touch.

[Rock8man]

Thanks for resurrecting the thread Brian. With so many big releases coming in the past month, I'd totally forgotten about this. I'll have to hook my joystick today and check it out if I get the time.

[Brian Rubin]

Thanks for resurrecting the thread Brian. With so many big releases coming in the past month, I'd totally forgotten about this. I'll have to hook my joystick today and check it out if I get the time.

No problem, enjoy!!

[MattKeil]

It really is great, if you can overlook some of the questionable voices. At some point in the summer I'll try to get it on the show, maybe score them some extra hits.

[Brian Rubin]

Yeah, the voice acting is...blurg...and their quips can totally fall flat, but when it works, it works well.

[MattKeil]

I was really worried during the prologue considering how much awful talking was going on, but the main campaign keeps it streamlined for the most part. Plus they throw you into pretty serious shit right off the bat.

[Brian Rubin]

I was really worried during the prologue considering how much awful talking was going on, but the main campaign keeps it streamlined for the most part. Plus they throw you into pretty serious shit right off the bat.

Sexy!!

[Brian Rubin]

I was really worried during the prologue considering how much awful talking was going on, but the main campaign keeps it streamlined for the most part. Plus they throw you into pretty serious shit right off the bat.

Man you were right. The end of the prologue is brutal, and in the main campaign they throw tons of crap at you. The writing is better in the main campaign too.

You can really see both the love and respect for Wing Commander here too.

[MattKeil]

Yeah, I can't quite put my finger on what it is that they did, but it all feels really authentic in terms of mission design and how everything flows.

[Brian Rubin]

Exaaactly, it really exhibits a very authentic sense of Wing-Commanderness. ;-)

[Brian Rubin]

A little further into the game now, and I've come to the conclusion that this game is god damned fantastic. The pure love of Wing Commander just emanates from every part of this game, and for a fan project, they've used both the mythology of the Wing Commander universe and the Freespace 2 engine to amazing effect. It's such an impressive product all around.

[spiffy]

Woah.. read on their forum you can use Track IR. No virtual cockpit or course, but hey. I'm going to get on this as soon as I find a scrap of free time.

[Brian Rubin]

Hah, I've never used Track IR, but I know folks who love it.

[Penny Dreadful]

I've never played a Wing Commander game before (or Freespace 2 for that matter) but I'm having a bunch of fun with this. I'm not very far into it (just ran into my first "Ace" who killed me dead), but everything seems to be working great. It's probably the best use I've gotten out of my force feedback joystick as well.

[Brian Rubin]

Nice! You should get the other games on GoG, knowing Wing Commander will make this even more enjoyable. :)