Wing Commander Saga

104th_Crunch · March 4, 2012

3/22/12 Release

Free To Play!

Space Sim using Freespace engine

Edited March 5, 2012 by Crunch

element1108 · March 5, 2012

What the heck!?!?! How did this pass under my radar. Was a huge fan of the wing commander series growing up. Now it's up Laurance Holand to release an updated xwing series ;). Thanks for sharing, going to check it out.

104th_Crunch · March 5, 2012

You may have heard of it before. It's just that it's been 10 years in the making! I am sure if you liked all the old space 'sims' like X-Wing, Wing Commander, and Freespace, you'll like this one.

element1108 · March 5, 2012

Believe it or not...never once heard of it. Not in ten bloody years...apart from the x series I had thought space sims were long dead. This is great!

Total · March 5, 2012

I had thought space sims were long dead.

The X-Series from egosoft is still alive and doing quite well. They released an installment back in December and are getting ready to release another.

Good to see WC coming back on the scene though :)

Toxe · March 5, 2012

Is that the fan project that build on the Freespace 2 engine? Looks interresting.

Impact · March 5, 2012

I was pretty hyped about it 6 years ago. Lets see how it turned out!

104th_Crunch · March 6, 2012

Is that the fan project that build on the Freespace 2 engine? Looks interresting.

Yes, it is. Very dedicated and talented fans.

EtherealN · March 6, 2012

You may have heard of it before. It's just that it's been 10 years in the making! I am sure if you liked all the old space 'sims' like X-Wing, Wing Commander, and Freespace, you'll like this one.

So THAT is what happened to it. My eyeballs are definitely on this, even if my free time is getting nuked completely in the near future. :(

PoleCat · March 6, 2012

Nice one....can't wait.

Out

Shaman · March 7, 2012

Wing Commander IV was awesomeness.

I wonder if Saga has TrackIR support.

Aginor · March 23, 2012

Hi there!

Just wanted to tell everybody who is interested in the project that the game was released yesterday.

btw:

I am part of the Saga team and I can tell you we are completely blown away that there are so many people outside the hardcore Wing Commander fan community who actually want to play such a game. Since yesterday there were already several ten thousand downloads from our different mirror sites.

This is great. :)

visit wcsaga.com for more details on where to get the game.

Regards

Aginor

104th_Crunch · March 23, 2012

Thanks Aginor for your work and all the team over at WCS. Can't wait to try it out this weekend!

71st_Mastiff · March 23, 2012

was wonder same 1st person ciockpit and track ir?

and one of my mantra's "if it's free it's for me"

Edited March 23, 2012 by Mastiff

Boberro · March 23, 2012

It looks nicely! I'll download it - never played such games IIRC but it seems worth to try.

Aginor · March 23, 2012

The view is first person, we have no real cockpit though (engine limitation, sorry. We wanted to have this inside the game but we couldn't get it to work properly)

So our screen looks basically like the one in Wing Commander IV.

It's a pity we don't have real cockpits but screen shaking and the way the elements are arranged help with immersion.

Actually I haven't tested TrackIR until now (although I own one).

I will install the release version today or tomorrow and try it.

The normal FreespaceOpen Engine does support TrackIR with a additional DLL though, IIRC. I'm just not sure if it will work with our exe since we branched from the main build a while ago to support some special functions which don't work in the FSO exe.

You can get the DLL here (second posting in this thread)

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76277.0

I can't guarantee it will work with WCSaga though.

Regards

Aginor

Impact · March 23, 2012

The view is first person, we have no real cockpit though (engine limitation, sorry. We wanted to have this inside the game but we couldn't get it to work properly)

If the engine isn't able to have cockpits, how do you explain this:

Aginor · March 23, 2012

Well, this is not the quality which we aimed for.

What we tried to do was real cockpits like in Wing Commander 1-3, with working displays and so on.

The cockpits like in that video are part of the model and there are a lot of restrictions which apply to those. (the most obvious being a quite low resolution and being completely static textured )

The screen elements are just overlays so you don't really have working MFDs and such things in the cockpits. So they are Wing Commander Prophecy style which we didn't like that much.

Our producer considered using this sort of cockpits but we think our fans (mostly old WC fans) would have been disappointed. So we decided to at least do a WC4-like interface.

btw: The game is moddable so we'll see what modders will come up with. Maybe cockpits, I don't know :D

Regards

Aginor

Edited March 23, 2012 by Aginor

Rusty_M · March 23, 2012

Looks like I should reinstall my Freespace games.

Pilotasso · March 23, 2012

hehehe I was part of the Dev team going by the name of Haderak by 2002/3.

I have since left the dev team due to emergencies of real life, fortunatly they got far better talents than I ever was.

Someone recovered the Original 3D models from ORIGIN used on the WC2 box cover art and the ingame cinematics and let everyone download them.

The original models were made with very basic polygons using rudimentary 3D renders back in 1991. Some of the them were damaged or corrupted due to years storage on perishable magnetic storage, or simple convertion errors while parsing them to modern fromats.

I picked up some of them and started fidling in their meshes and textures. I converted the caernavon Station (had to partially rebuild it), the concordia and and a few other confed and kilrathi ships.

I even took the 3D hangar from the cutscenes and pasted it inside the Cocordia model and made it playable! The Player would take off and land in the actual hangar from the cuscenes!

It was just an experiment but other fans on the concepct interesting and new members kept joining.

I Still remember looking at the box back then and thinking "god! I whish the game actually looked like this!" Who would have thought some 12 years later it became reality! :)

I Used TRUSPACE 5 and 6, and used a lot of freeware converters and game utilities. It was A LOT of work just to bring them to usable models the game could render, let alone setting up submodels such as turrets, moving parts, hangar spawn locations, subsystems, and missile and gun ports!

Edited March 23, 2012 by Pilotasso

Aginor · March 23, 2012

Ok, I'm back :)

First of all: Rusty_M, you won't need to install your FS2, Saga is completely standalone. (you'll need it for other FS mods though if you want to try some)

Secondly: I tried TrackIR, and it works with Saga. You have to adjust your settings but I guess we flight sim guys are used to that. :D

@Pilotasso:

Always nice to meet another fellow modder, hope you have fun with our game :)

That reminds me: I have to tell the others of my team that TrackIR works. Some of them might find it interesting.

Regards

Aginor