Wedge009

Wedge009

Rogue Leader
I'm not sure if anyone's shared these before, apologies if I've missed the news.

A long time ago there was a news article on the Concordia PTC animation being extracted from Wing Commander II. I did some poking around and I think I've managed to get many of the significant cut scene animations from the pre-FMV era games. By animations, I'm referring to scenes that were specifically drawn as a continuous 'video', so I'm not meaning the relatively static scenes of WC1 here.

Wing Commander II
  • Gwynedd A: The Tiger's Claw's demise.
  • Niven B and Ghorah Khar (lose) A: Ferret landing on a planetary base.
  • Niven C and Ghorah Khar (lose) B: Ferret launching from a planetary base.
  • Novaya Kiev A: The Broadsword refuelling scene (only used once, to my knowledge).
  • Enigma B: The Concordia powers down in an asteroid field for repairs.
  • SO1 Ghorah Khar 2B: Maverick recovering Prince Thrakhath.
  • Ayer's D: The aforementioned Concordia PTC animation and Jazz's demise.
  • Various:
    • The Hha'ifra's fly-by.
    • Angel recovering Jazz after Maverick shoots him down.
    • A Kamekh rescuing Prince Thrakhath.
    • Animated Concordia Flight Deck and Repair Deck introductions.
Wing Commander Academy
Wing Commander Privateer + Righteous Fire
Wing Commander Armada
 
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Hah, these are awesome and great to see the script pages updated too!

Was this a case of using the wctoolbox to extract the images and then combining the still frames as a gif, or something more complicated?

I am curious too about the bomb on the flight deck - I seem to recall that the timer counts down and then there is an explosion? but perhaps memory is playing tricks on me? (or the 'stock' explosion is just pasted over the previous frame?)
 
I just extracted the imagery from the game data files and compiled them into animated WebP files (GIF's limited palette could probably handle it too, but newer formats seem to have better compression ratios). 80 ms per frame (12.5 fps) looks right to me, with the exception of the Hha'ifra's fly-by.

Your memory sounds correct, there is an animation for the bomb scene - I have the animation too, but the game overlays an explosion animation on top once the counter hits zero, which I could probably simulate but don't feel like tackling right now.
 
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Hmm, I thought Origin FX was a player - an engine to play those scenes outside of the games. I'm not sure how that would help in a web context.

I can only work with the data I actually have in a final published game. I don't recall the planets end-game for Armada, is that in playing the campaign mode?

Regarding the Concordia bomb scene, I have that working but am working on some other scenes before publishing (I also have the Emperor & Thrakhath, Maverick and Angel kissing, Angel disarming Jazz, and more, forthcoming). They may not be game-perfect like Origin FX, but I feel they're close enough for the web.
 
Yes, the planets exploding are the campaign endgame flicks. They're MIDGAM4.VGA and MIDGAM5.VGA in DATA.TRE.

The Origin FX page I linked to has a list of what cutscenes the module plays, so it's a good start for having a canonical list of what Origin considered to be one of these cutscenes.
 
I've found them. Kilrah wasn't established as a fiery world yet in Armada's time - do you remember which planet is which?
 
I believe 4 is Earth and 5 is Kilrah.

(I think they could've known what Kilrah was going to look like in Wing Commander III at that point, but it must not have been anything anyone cared about at the time.)
 
Yeah, in the end I guessed that since Lexington's destruction came first, that Earth would be the first planet.

I've nearly finished my rework, there's a lot more animations forthcoming and more accurate reproductions too.
 
My web host is down for much of today, unusual, but not the end of the world. Once it's back up, I'll publish the following updates.

I compared timings against the actual games' renders of these scenes, so even though a lot of the timing is dependent on the speeds of computers of the day, the later games are more reliable in terms of animation consistency. I also did a lot of work optimising file sizes as best as I could - while these are still far better than regular videos, there's no need to have bloated files if we can make them smaller.

Wing Commander I
  • McAuliffe and Gateway: McAuliffe scientists capture Kilrathi or are killed by them.
  • Gimle/Brimstone/Chengdu: Confederation commandos sabotage the Brimstone facility or are shot by Kilrathi.
  • Dakota and Port Hedland: Port Hedland SAM shoots down Dralthi, or Dralthi bomb Port Hedland settlement.
  • Kurasawa/Rostov/Hubble's Star: Mopoks capture Kilrathi, or Kilrathi beheads a Human.
  • Venice and Hell's Kitchen: Their respective game-engine ending scenes.
  • Secret Missions:
    • Goddard wreckage
    • Emperor executes the Admiral
    • Humans enslaved
  • Secret Missions 2:
    • Terran-Firekkan treaty
    • Sivar-Eshrad ceremony disrupted... or not
    • Firekkans liberated or enslaved
Wing Commander II
  • The Kilrathi HQ introductory animation
  • The Emperor dismissing guards, as well as his 'grasping' gesture (soon, Earth itself will be in our grasp!)
  • The Emperor and Prince Thrakhath's silhouette animations
  • The Concordia bomb scene (used in the event that brings Maverick to the Concordia as well as Minx doing the same to cover her escape in SO2)
  • Shadow's death
  • The murder of McGuffin
  • Spirit's Sabre sabotaged and her subsequent kamikaze run on Heaven's Gate
  • Maverick and Angel's kiss scene is now animated, including both the version in Angel's office as well as the one on the Concordia's flight deck
  • Angel disarming Jazz
  • Maverick bringing an ejected Jazz under his Sabre's guns
  • Explosion scenes now use the same flash-to-white-then-fade-to-black transition that the game shows, eg the Tiger's Claw's destruction, Spirit's death
  • Tractoring in an ejected pilot and data pod
  • Various poker game animations
  • Various jump point animations - most of them of the Concordia entering a new system but one of the Bonnie Heather and Maverick's Crossbow returning to Olympus.
  • Special Operations 1:
    • The Kamekh under attack by Rigel pirates (this one always looked odd to me, but it's faithful to the game's representation)
    • Sabre landing on the Gettysburg
    • Sabre launching from Olympus
    • Crossbow launching from the Gettysburg, Concordia and Olympus.
  • Special Operations 2:
    • Minx kissing Maverick
    • I don't plan to publish it, but I also have the nuke trap explosion from the mission where you die if you kill all the enemies instead of withdrawing as ordered
    • Morningstar launches from and lands on the Concordia
    • Morningstar docks with the Gamal Gan
    • Concordia's PTC scene - it turns out the animation from the original news article uses a static star background. Maybe for file size reasons, but I restored the actual scrolling as depicted in the game.
    • Maniac stranded
    • Jazz's death - the previous version lacked the distinctive Deneb sector starry background. Like the Concordia PTC scene, I made sure this one scrolled properly too.
Wing Commander Academy
  • The introductory scene was redone to be more accurate to the game as well as be much smaller (~30% the original version).
Wing Commander Privateer
  • Existing introductory scenes were optimised. Two were missing asteroid belts that have now been restored.
  • The full victory sequence is done now - pan to the Steltek scout and derelict, scout shoots its tow thingy, scout tows the derelict away.
  • Righteous Fire's introduction - the final scene now ends with the same dissolve-to-black effect that the game has.
Wing Commander Armada
  • Existing animations were optimised and, per LOAF's reminder, the planet destruction scenes were added.
 
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