Wing Commander Saga Launching 22 March, 2012

BrynS

Regular
"Check your six, pilot! Kilrathi incoming!"

J6XKM.jpg


I know there's still a few Wing Commander fans on the Beyond3D boards!

Some of you may recall the Wing Commander Saga Prologue that was released a few years ago. Well, the team of fans behind it have been quietly beavering away on improving, refining and developing the full campaign and have just announced that it will be released on the 22nd of March, 2012.

Wing Commander Saga is a completely free game, developed by dedicated fans of the Wing Commander series using the Freespace 2 engine and set in the same period as Wing Commander III -- which saw the four decade interstellar war between the Terran Confederation and the Kilrathi Empire hurtle towards its final conclusion.

There's more information and background data on the Wing Commander Saga website than you can shake a Dralthi at, but here are a few highlights:


  • Epic Storyline that complements, not contradict, the events portrayed by the Wing Commander 3 game and novel.
  • Presence of other Confederation carrier battle groups and fighter squadrons gives large-scale “teamwork” environment – the Hermes does not fight the war alone
  • Over nine hours of voice dialogue.
  • Approximately 70 cut scenes for a total of about 90 minutes of pre-rendered footage (not counting in-flight communications and command briefings).
  • Over 60 voice actors, some of whom are actual professionals.
  • 221 voice acting roles.
  • 55 missions.
  • Achievements (mission performance is evaluated and rewarded)
  • 90 models created for Saga.
  • Download size of 3-4GB with an installation size of 8-9 GB

As a huge Wing Commander fan, I've been following the development for years and really can't wait to get back in the cockpit. There have been some rumours lately that EA could be working on something Wing Commander related yet again after a bunch of stalled revival projects in the past. EA also recently renewed their ownership of the WC trademark (although that could just be general IP housekeeping) and Chris Roberts is apparently getting back into game development and is keen to work on the universe he created. So here's hoping this release gets some buzz going for the series once again.

And finally, the Saga team have produced a launch trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N1w9Xw0j0I

Dust off those joysticks!
 
As someone who owns the collector's edition (film cannister) of WC3 ($100 back in 1994), I'll definitely give this a try in a few weeks.
 
Oh those evil little cats. :D I'm not sure if I could stand the game without the FMV though ha ha. However, flying in space with some innovative control methods, now that's more interesting. One of those Move style controllers that have been released for PC would be great.
 
I was a huge fan of the wingcommander saga
my only problem was the devs tried to stay true to the original game (visuals wise)
i hope the darkest dawn game really pushes the fs2 open engine (looking at the install size and trailer it may well do)
 
Yeah, I think they were always keen to integrate the detailed cockpits that the original series (bar WC4) was known for and they modelled a number of them for the cinematics, like this Longbow cockpit.

I'm guessing there's an engine limitation that's still holding them back on the cockpit front although the Saga team -- in cooperation with the Freespace 2 Source Code Project devs -- have made many improvements and modifications to the engine over the years. You only have to compare the differences between this early trailer (2003) and this recent, revamped Prologue (2012) tutorial playthrough to see the considerable progress made, especially given the pedigree of the Freespace 2 engine!

There are some playthroughs online from the latest beta build that show more gameplay from the current HUD-style cockpit.


 
The HUD in that 2012 prologue mission looks wayyyy too much like Freespace's and not WC's.
 
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It will be playable Freelancer style with a mouse and keyboard while also having joystick and throttle support.
 
The download links are now live!

The Saga site is being hammered at the moment but there are multiple links and torrents for the 3.4GB PC download. Mac and Linux downloads will be available soon. Check out the WC CIC update here for all the links.

Plus there's also a new "Launch Trailer" :D
 
no cockpits in the trailer fs2-open does support them and track-ir
also it looks like they arnt using normal maps
 
There's a known issue with normal maps and some ATI cards, although this can apparently be resolved by reverting to an older driver.
 
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