Wing Commander Fan-Sequel Nears Completion

[News Portal]

After an entire decade in development the Wing Commander fan-sequel [app=8827]Wing Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn[/app] is almost complete, and is due to launch on March 22.

Built with the Freespace 2 engine, this ambitious amateur production spans 55 missions, 11,000 lines of dialogue, and 70 cinematics, and strives to recreate the magic of the blockbuster series of space fighter combat simulators...

Read full article by James Cottee

[Alex Walker]

I keep throwing money at the screen but it's not working for some reason -_-

[Auld]

I don't think I've played wing commander.....is it supposed to look that bad?

[psychofruiterer]

The engine they are using for this was made in 1999.

And yes, the original looked a lot worse, it came out in 1990, in vga, with 256 colors.
At the time though, it looked awesome!

[Auld]

The engine they are using for this was made in 1999.

And yes, the original looked a lot worse, it came out in 1990, in vga, with 256 colors.
At the time though, it looked awesome!

They always do fond memories of 90's games.

Why did they use such an old engine?

[flabcab]

Loved the original wing commanders, might have to buy myself a cheap joystick for this one.

[Bronze_D]

The engine they are using for this was made in 1999.

And yes, the original looked a lot worse, it came out in 1990, in vga, with 256 colors.
At the time though, it looked awesome!

They always do fond memories of 90's games.

Why did they use such an old engine?

Because Freespace SCP is pretty much the best engine available for free in this regard, it being already designed from the start as an space combat game engine... and the other reason being SCP community is pretty much the gathering spot for ALL the fans of the old space combat game, be it Xwing fans, Wing Commander fans, and naturally Freespace fans.

Note: the ships design and all may look odd and blocky to you but that's because the original geometry design as you see in the original wing commander was pretty much like that and redesigning it more or less going to earn you a big 'RAGE' hammer from the fans, the engine itself is capable of anything from that to these:

This is what the original Freespace 2 roughly looked like and play like (with some enhancement on the visual):

(yeah that's why we loved Freespace)

and the mod community later on added so many things to the engine till it was capable of doing these

Hidden: show

[Auld]

Actually, it was less a matter of blocky ships (although I can't see why they couldn't add some more poly's) and more about the stiff animation I suppose.

Also I though this was a game in dev, not a mod project so my expectations were higher.

Still looks like it'd be fun, visuals arent everything.

[Bronze_D]

The visuals are really the choice of the modders, take a look at some of the vid from SCP that i linked above and you can quickly see that the engine is actually capable of impressive feat, all that's left is how the modders choose to utilize the assets.

vids like Blue planet vid at the end of my list is particularly stark in showcasing how much it has gone since it contains both player made mod ships and original game ships, the ones with rotating compartment and clearly massive amount of poly? those were player made design, the ones that looked like metal slabs without much details? yeah those were the original game ship assets.

[Otto-matic]

Dammit, my fast forward time to Thursday button isn't working!

[meji]

Hmm very interested in a new space combat sim, the last decent one I played was well Freespace 2 heh. Loved the old X-Wing and Tie Fighter series, really loved X-Wing Alliance ( i think it was called) as well.

The whole X series was ok but not as much fun as the old FS and WC series. Eve Online never grabbed me, so it's a long time between drinks in this genre (for me).

[Bronze_D]

Actually, it was less a matter of blocky ships (although I can't see why they couldn't add some more poly's) and more about the stiff animation I suppose.

Also I though this was a game in dev, not a mod project so my expectations were higher.

Still looks like it'd be fun, visuals arent everything.

Note as well that this is not exactly a mod project.

Freespace 2 SCP engine is available free because Volition released the source code for it years ago and fans then picked it up and enhanced it.

that's also one of the reason why they used the engine, because it has no strings attached to it being free, aside of it being exactly tailored for space combat sim.

As the title of the article should already made it clear, it's a fan sequel... ie: hardcore fans of wing commander simply got together and built it using Freespace 2 SCP engine.

[Auld]

yeah bad reading comprehension

[hellbender]

I think this is probably the best FS2 video out there. Its a remake of the FS1 intro scene using the upgraded FSO engine.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Man after watching those modded Freespace 2 videos, makes me want to go back, reinstall and try it out.

On a slight side note, but on the subject of space sims, the X-wing Alliance Upgrade project has finished one of the crown-jewels in the project, a size accurate, high texture version of the Super Star Destroyer