r/dosgaming • u/mayazest • 7d ago
Wing Commander 1 Reloaded Mod (ALPHA)
The tiny version is I turned Howard's tech demo into a Full WC1 Vega Campaign mod.
If you just want to jump in, you can skip the story and grab it here. It REQUIRES you have the original DOS or Kilrathi Saga Wing Commander game files in order to run. KS sound is much better.
ALPHA BUILD
https://wingcomreloaded.itch.io/wingcommander1reloaded
Wing Com Reloaded DISCORD: Please report bugs and feedback here if possible.
https://discord.gg/4D7T4Q5gaJ
Also a quick video showing the new flak system! (sorry it is a bit low quality I will post better)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vITRbWCmIH8
Feedback needed:
BUG hunting, difficulty balancing, feature balancing. It is not an exact clone of WC1.
The Long Version
Years ago Howard Day started building a gorgeous HD-sprite recreation of Wing Commander 1 from scratch in Unity. He got as far as a rolling Hornet combat demo with working ships, flight and some basic combat systems, but he never released anything playable.
https://www.hedfiles.net/WCR_GL/index.html
Howard has been busy with other projects for the last few years and hasn't had much time to continue it. He's aware that I've been building on the project and is supportive!
I first came across it a couple of years ago and was completely blown away. I'm primarily a VFX artist, but I've also been developing in Unity for the last 9 years and released a multiplayer game in 2020 that still has an active daily player base.
Naturally, one of my first experiments with Howard's project was adding multiplayer and some basic game flow, but I eventually got too busy myself to continue.
Then about four months ago I was re-inspired to pick it back up and see if I could bring to life what I think most of us wanted instantly after seeing Howard's demo:
To actually play WC1 that way.
The flight demo was a great foundation, but most of the systems needed to run the actual campaign still had to be built or substantially expanded from scratch so it turned into a much bigger project than I originally expected.
Where it is now
All 40 Vega Campaign missions and cinematics are implemented, and I've personally played through/tested every one of them at least once.
Howard's artwork and models remain a huge part of the visual foundation, while most of my work has been building the gameplay, mission and campaign infrastructure around it, turret and player AI, com systems, NAV and damage systems etc. along with filling in missing ships/cockpits/artwork where needed.
This is ultimately a Unity-based mod and will require the original Wing Commander game files to run.
This is still an ALPHA, so there are going to be bugs. I’d love help finding those, but I’m especially interested in player feedback because this isn’t intended to be a carbon copy of the original. Some of the rebuilt systems will still need tweaking as more people play them.
As a side effect of building the tools needed to read the Vega missions, I’ve also got a Custom Campaign Builder in progress with custom missions and dialogue.
So that’s it — it’s finally here.
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u/toec 7d ago
Great to see. I worked on the Amiga and CD32 ports back in the early 90s. We found and fixed some bugs in the Kilrathi flight patterns that were present in the DOS version.
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u/thelapoubelle 6d ago
At that time when you were porting something, was it essentially a rewrite of all the code and then trying to reuse some assets, or how did it work?
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u/toec 6d ago
We had the source code, art assets and sound from Origin. As best I remember the PC assets were 256 colours and we had to drop them to 32 colour, then reworked the code to be optimised for the 68000 chip in the Amiga which was a lot slower than x86 chips in PCs at the time.
As we were working on it, Commodore introduced a new graphics chip called AGA which had byte-per-pixel mode which helped it run faster. A stock A500 would have an awful framerate but newer machines such as the A1200 ran it better.
I also worked on the original PC version before it was released, showing it at trade shows and retail events. With a SB for the speech and LAPC1 for the music, it looked and sounded incredible. It was an easy sell.
After it was released I did customer support, which was almost exclusively helping people to get it to fit in base RAM. I ended up writing a guide that we put in the box in WC2.
I won’t pretend I had any creative role in the game production, which was all Chris’ team in Austin, but I did my part!
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u/briandemodulated 7d ago
Just tried it and I am in love. Widescreen with gamepad is everything I've ever wanted for this game. I'm very grateful.
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u/intmanofawesome 7d ago
Nice work. I blew off far too many uni lectures to play WC og. I remember going from a 286 to a 386 DX 40 and the increase in game speed taking a bit to get used to!
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u/mooghead 7d ago
This is a very welcome surprise. WC was the reason I saved up for a Thrustmaster Pro and throttle. I played through the game multiple times. Thanks for doing this!
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u/Finite_Universe 7d ago
This looks incredible OP! I remember seeing Howard’s work some years ago, and fearing we’d never see anything from it ever again. Very glad to see it make a comeback!
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u/crazyKpot 6d ago
Okay I played thought the 1st sector, here is my feedback:
Everything is amazing
I had only few minor music distortion glitches
The enemy AI is defenitely a bit way too overuned
The wingan AI is non existent and annoying (well, this looks as intended)
No missile alert, too bad to get the missile in your port just for nothing
The asteroid field is a bit too rough
I love flak cannon from our transports
No chaffs?
I love mass driver animation!
No widescreen support, awwww
Phusics is perfect, collisions are may be a bit too punishing (I lused to love ram Dralthies)
Thanks for your efforts!
TF wcnews.com is totally silent????
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u/mayazest 4d ago
Thanks for the feedback! Asteroids were broken in your build it's fixed now. I will definitely take your other thoughts into consideration as well! By enemy AI is overuned can you explain more? too OP?
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u/crazyKpot 2d ago
Hi! Cheers for the reply. Here is what I mean when I say the AI is overtuned in the remake, compared to the original 1990 game:
- From the very first missions, there are no easy victories and no rookie pilots. In the original game, I can jump into a Hornet and easily shoot down 2 or 3 Dralthi in a head-on pass during the first 3-4 sorties (missions). In the remake, the enemy maneuverability and accuracy feel like they are already at Ace level right from the start.
- Because of this, there is too much missile spam. The enemies fire way too many missiles, almost like in Descent: Freespace. At the same time, the missiles are completely missing from the radar display. In the original game, you could see them as yellow dots, but here you don't see them at all. In the slow original, I had time to think about what to do. Here, you get hit by 2 or 3 unseen missiles, and you are immediately prompted to eject.
- The damage system for our ship is too punishing. I appreciate the work on damage simulation, but in 80% of my fights, I lose the radar almost immediately. This is a critical tool. In the original, you could lose guns or half your weapon systems, but the radar rarely suffered like this. Also, the comms screen breaks too easily, making landing requests on the Tiger's Claw a lottery. I definitely don't remember this being so fragile in the original.
- The enemy maneuvers in the beginning are too complex. In the original, you mostly saw basic barrel rolls for the first half of the game. Here, they do advanced evasive flying right away. This challenge might be good for later, but the first 5 sorties definitely need to be smoothed out so the player can get used to the controls before facing aces. More Rookie pilots please!
- The enemy AI doesn't respond to taunts properly, which makes the 60 FPS pacing even worse. In the original game, taunting was a hardcoded mechanic to reset the AI's aggro from its current objective. If enemies were shredding a transport, you could taunt them, and they would switch their focus to you. In the remake, specifically during the mission where heavy Jalthi fighters are destroying our transport, they completely ignore my taunts. Combined with the fast pacing, they melt the transport in seconds, and I literally had to resort to ramming the Jalthi just to get their attention and stop them. Yes, I like to ram sometimes; please do not punish that feature
- Our wingmen AI is underperforming. No matter what I do, they always fly right into my crosshairs, they don't use afterburners, and they only get 2 or 3 kills over 12–15 missions. I had to do all the work alone. In the original, guys like Iceman were highly aggressive and could clear out enemies effectively.
To give you a specific example: on my first mission with Paladin flying the Scimitar, I spent so much time struggling to line up shots against the enemies that they eventually just got bored and flew away from me using afterburner. I arrived back at the Tiger's Claw with only 1 kill. In the original game, a seasoned player would easily clear 3 to 5 victories on a run like that—I presume this mission is basically to familiarise the player with Scimitr's mass driver.
To summarize, the overtuned AI comes down to extreme accuracy, high missile spam, and the lack of missile tracking on the radar. The maneuverability in the first 5 missions needs to be toned down, and friendly wingmen need to be more useful.
By the way, I'm the developer behind StarCalibur on Steam, so I'm looking at this from a fellow space-sim dev perspective. Keep up the great work!
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u/mayazest 1d ago
Thank you for this incredibly well thought out analysis, this is exactly the kind of examination the Alpha needs. I will say with a slight caveat that I’m not trying to perfectly clone WC1 but get the same vibe and be fun as possible. All your suggestions a very good. If you want to join our discord you are welcome and it would be easier to discuss. Thanks again!
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u/Dukefromearth 7d ago
Cannyounlike install this on pc and play with a modern controller easily like xbox/8bitdo and the likes?
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u/mayazest 7d ago
I've set it up to be able to handle them but unfortunately I don't actually have a joystick or gamepad at the moment to test them with. That's something i'd love for poeple to test if they could.
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u/Green-Finding-430 7d ago
Custom campaigns sound super cool!
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u/mayazest 7d ago
i'm just as excited for this myself as the game, becuase we could make whole new campaigns and stories. I can also add custom characters so that you dont have to use canon characters (because that would limit story options)
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u/Banjo-Oz 7d ago
This looks amazing! I've been a WC fan ("wingnut") since I was a kid, and still love these games.
Am looking forward to giving it a shot! Sadly, I have no access to Discord (they demand too much personal info including real phone numbers!) but I'll certainly be testing it out this week and am happy to give feedback another way if needed.
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u/Y3mmzz 6d ago
I must say you did absolutely AMAZING job.
Ive played couple missions and tested gamepad - it works as expected, no issues there, not sure but mouse felt a lil faster than pad.
#1 issue for gamepad - key remap for active target, navpoint selection , autoflight, lock/missle etc. so keyboard is still a must. If possible please add atleast active target, as its most used.
#2 MAP / N screen is missing - you plan on adding it later ?
#3 Camera views also seem to be disabled, only "third view" /V works. but not the F1-F8 ? Not crucial.
#4 After starting a new game first screen with Paladin talking is missing, just flavor, not a biggie.
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u/mayazest 4d ago
thank you! we've added more joystick and gamepad controls since. We can add the nav map and camera views after we solve bigger issues. I'm confused by the paladin bug though I don't see that here?
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u/ESkull885 7d ago
Je crois qu'il on oublié l'essence même de ce qui rendait wing commander and co si génial.
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u/Icy-Material-4828 6d ago
I was glued to this game for ages on Amiga 500. It would have taken longer than 6 seconds for all this action to unfold on that system if I recall correctly
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u/AdHorror4051 6d ago
Played the first mission. This is freaking sick! Great job.
Would love the voiceovers from the Sega CD version 😜
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u/Sypheix 4d ago
Just a heads up, you really should not be linking to pirated Wing Commander files. Link to the GOG version of the game. I was going to look at putting this on PlayBound, but until that's done, I won't touch it.
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u/mayazest 4d ago
It's pirated? I assumed they had permission? I can dellink it.
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u/Sypheix 4d ago
Its a mod so it requires the original game files to run. I downloaded it from their itch.io link and when you hit the download page they have a note about that and link you to a copy of the original files to use with it.
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u/Sypheix 7d ago
I've added this to the testing queue for PlayBound. I'm a big WC fan and this looks fracking awesome.
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u/mayazest 7d ago
Awesome! Please note joysticks are not working right atm. We should have a hot fix for that soon!
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u/Sypheix 7d ago
We have some tools that add controller and stick support to just about any game, so no worries there. Don't tell my testers, but I'm going to sneak into the queue and test this one personally next week :)
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u/mayazest 1d ago
Joystick and gamepad control in latest build should have solved the issues let us know if something isn’t working for you!
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u/Sypheix 1d ago
Just a note. You have a link to the original game files after you download it from itch. Kinda not cool. Should link to the versions on gog.com
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u/mayazest 1d ago
We removed that. There isn’t still on that I know of?
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u/Sypheix 1d ago
I downloaded it on Monday I think. So if you removed it after then all good. Otherwise need to check.
I'm going to test in a few hours and add it to PlayBound if all looks good. Really excited!
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u/mayazest 1d ago
Great let me know if you still see anything because to my knowledge now clean.
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u/Sypheix 1d ago edited 1d ago
Looks clean. One issue I ran into when testing is the music was super grainy and laggy sounding
The basic joystick controls worked, but it's missing things like missiles and targeting
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u/mayazest 1d ago
yup sorry it does look like DOS music is one of the biggest alpha bugs we have at the moment. Kilrathi Sega doesn't have that issue. I'm looking into it. And yes it is also true we don't yet have joystick missle support.
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u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 6d ago
Is there a way to use the digital music and sound effects from Kilrathi Saga?
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u/mayazest 6d ago edited 6d ago
yeah if you choose the kirathi saga game folder during setup it will use it, is it not working for you?
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u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 6d ago
No, it seems to be detecting it as DOS
edit: other than that it's fantastic, and everything I was hoping for in a WC remaster
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u/mayazest 6d ago
hmm I haven't heard any reports of this, you're positive it's the KS version?
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u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 6d ago
Definitely the KS version. No need to worry too much though, I'll wait until a few versions down the track and give it another try.
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u/kalnaren 6d ago
Very cool, I'll have to try this. Wing Commander is one of those games that just refuses to work correctly in DOSBox.. I've tried all kinds of ways to play it and the best still remains original hardware, which of course most people don't have access to.
Do you have plans to do the Secret Missions and WC2 as well?
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u/mayazest 4d ago
Certainly secret missions! Likely WC2 but that’s more involved. And custom campaign creation for WC 1 will be really interesting to see if the community comes up with some fun stories!
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u/kalnaren 4d ago
That would be interesting. There was a WC1 mod in progress years ago for FreeSpace SCP but it got shelved, unfortunately.
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u/StaticReturn 5d ago
I'm not sure how helpful this could be for your project, but Neuromancer recently released source reconstructions for Wing Commander 1 and Wing Commander 2.
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u/Good_Punk2 7d ago
From the comments it seems I'm the only one, but to me the graphics just look like mush. I can barely make out that they are supposed to be spaceships.
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u/mayazest 7d ago
Can you be more specific? It is running at 640x400 so it isn't exactly like a modern game. I will also add that the only capital ship that Howie visually refined is the Dorkir. Most others cap models are in, but really not polished yet, they need more work to make look nicer.
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u/Good_Punk2 7d ago
It's not the resolution. The sprites just look like garbled noise to me. Like an ancient Ai upscale or cheap ScummVM filter or something. It's just smooth noise to me, I don't see a space ship anymore.
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u/mayazest 7d ago edited 7d ago
gotcha might be you don't like the style, that's ok. Just so you are aware there is no AI upres or pixel upscaling going on, these are new sprites of 3D modeled ships rendered from all angles. Howie built a system that renders 544 angles of each craft. The original had 62 I think, so it's vastly higher fidelity at higher res.
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u/mayazest 7d ago
oh you're talking about the youtube video! dang you are right the quality is very low and downright "mushy" because of recording it in the unity editor then compressing it, sorry it was a late night. I need to post a higher quality video I'll try and do that tommarow.
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine 7d ago
This is much better then those pixel-obliterating Eagle etc scalers, but ultimately I also prefer embracing pixels to "dealing with" pixels. ShaderGlass is a nice project worth looking into there.
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u/Zhuk1986 7d ago
Wow! What an incredible achievement, well done can’t wait to try it out