[Mog]

I'm happy to hear you're still working on this!

I'm especially eager to find out how your emulation goes. I'd love a cleaner way to play Super Wing Commander well!

Well my results weren't amazing, but I think your mileage will depend on your setup. I tried both Sheepshaver and Basilisk using my G4 Sawtooth 450mhz and had problems with each.

Basilisk
It just wasn't fast enough. I tried three builds of a port by Nigel. Only the 19b build (from 2006) booted without memory errors and it had a really low framerate. From what I can tell, there are far more advanced versions on modern Macs, Windows, Linux etc.

Sheepshaver
I tried a few builds from 2005, which still supported OSX 10.3.9. Lots of memory errors, unstable as hell but... I got to the start game menu one time and the timing seemed to be perfect. Then it crashed. With the lack of a working GUI, and having to boot into OS 9.2.2 just so I could edit the config files, I just gave up.

So it was a pretty pointless exercise on that choice of hardware but was good to rule it out. It did kind of defeat the point of using native hardware in the first place but might work very well for somebody on modern Macs of PCs etc.


The Performa 630 I ordered off Ebay arrived a few days ago so I've been working on getting that set up. I found that the reason these sell so cheap is that they have a very high PSU failure rate. This one miraculously came in fantastic shape despite being sold as parts/untested. I'm going to do an ATX conversion mod to guarantee longevity though. On the plus side,HDD/RAM/CPU can be upgraded reasonably cheaply and ofc it runs SWC perfectly So if anybody wants a cheap way to get a suitable Mac and is ok with recapping/converting the PSU then this is definitely a nice option. I've tried so different combinations of hardware, clock speeds, slowdown tools etc... but this just works and the improvement is massively noticable imo.

 

[Mog]

Okay, I need to stop spamming in this thread, so I'll keep this brief lol. I've finished messing around with finding an alternative setup for playing this now and settled with my forever SWC Here's a few thoughts and I'll be on my way...

Don't bother with the 68k version. Or at least not on native hardware. I overclocked a full 68040 chip to 40mhz (the highest viable clock on 68K mac?) and it had consistent timing. It felt natural, but it was sluggish as hell when something intense was happening. It's like suggesting somebody pick up the Amiga version of WC over the PC version I guess. As I'm interesting in exploring retro computers/consoles I enjoyed messing around with the machine though.

I actually got the game working nicely on my Powermac 4400/200. I found some pretty esential info about the machine here:

Overclocking a Tanzania – Stuff & Nonsense

By using the info on this page I was able to underclock the 603ev processor from 200mhz to 120mhz. I can confirm what mkdud has already said, about this being a sweetspot for performance. As long as no L2 cache is installed in the machine, this seems to be nearly perfect and so much smoother than the 68040!

It's crazy you have to be so precise in finding a setup to avoid that speed hitching". This must have been a problem even around the time of release. In truth, even at 120mhz you can kinda see the slightest fluctuations in speed every once in a while. But it is entirely negligible and it looks fantastic the whole time. The 68K version doesn't have it, but that's because the CPU is literally begging for mercy.

 

[AD]

Okay, I need to stop spamming in this thread, so I'll keep this brief lol

Even if it doesn't feel like there's much interest, we like hearing about this stuff. You aren't bothering anyone and this kind of insight is invaluable. The internet needs people like you.

 

[AllTinker]

I've certainly considered getting a vintage Mac (one day, probably!), so this is really informative on that front. Beyond that, it's quite interesting though - it's fascinating to me that they managed to have the exact same lazy code problem on two completely different architectures, with (unavoidably) mostly scratch-written code.

You've also mentioned something I found in some of the (very mild) pushback on WCAT; the argument that you can "just" lower the cycles in DOSBox or use a more accurate emulator. Sure! But once you get into the more intense missions, you're lucky if you're getting more than a frame or two per second... There's always some level of inconsistency no matter what.

Anyway, sounds like you may have found the sweetspot for SWC Mac. It'd be nice if you could disable L2 cache while having it installed; I'm not sure if that's an option like it is on (some) PCs.

 

[Vidmaster]

It's crazy you have to be so precise in finding a setup to avoid that speed hitching". This must have been a problem even around the time of release. In truth, even at 120mhz you can kinda see the slightest fluctuations in speed every once in a while.

It was. I have played this game on three different Macs in my life over the course of about 15 years and it never ran consistently on anything (plus tended to have bugged-out colors later). At is and always was a technical mess when it comes to framerates, I have been playing this game somewhere between slow-motion and fast-forward all my life and usually both depending on the scene.

That said, allow me to again sing the praises of SWC once more, which is a brilliant and highly engaging version of Wing Commander that remains gated behind hard-to-emulate platforms. It remains my favorite way to play this gem of a video game, even with WCAT, simply due to the much more interesting graphics and voice acting. I have kept around that 2002 G4 Mac (the "lamp") for SWC and one other Mac game exclusively, it is that good and that important to me.

That being said, I remain hopeful that a certain Confederation-project may liberate this game from its technical shortcomings and allow me to eventually share the experience with my kid that is currently growing up. Hopefully she will not outgrow the project progress 😏.

 

[AD]

I've certainly considered getting a vintage Mac (one day, probably!), so this is really informative on that front. Beyond that, it's quite interesting though - it's fascinating to me that they managed to have the exact same lazy code problem on two completely different architectures, with (unavoidably) mostly scratch-written code.

You've also mentioned something I found in some of the (very mild) pushback on WCAT; the argument that you can "just" lower the cycles in DOSBox or use a more accurate emulator. Sure! But once you get into the more intense missions, you're lucky if you're getting more than a frame or two per second... There's always some level of inconsistency no matter what.

Anyway, sounds like you may have found the sweetspot for SWC Mac. It'd be nice if you could disable L2 cache while having it installed; I'm not sure if that's an option like it is on (some) PCs.

Not sure why I thought of this here but I feel like it's probably technically possible to port the SWC art into the PC versions of WC1/2... It might have some other technical issues that need addressing to make sure everything lines up I guess, but under the hood, the stuff I've seen in some of the extracted code is still structurally very similar to the originals except with a new coat of paint. HCl already proved it was possible to port in/replace ships and even that you could technically do video/FMV with WC2's animation format.

 

[Vidmaster]

It might have some other technical issues that need addressing to make sure everything lines up I guess, but under the hood, the stuff I've seen in some of the extracted code is still structurally very similar to the originals except with a new coat of paint.

In theory, I agree. In practice, I suspect that the technical hiccups will be too severe even without looking at SWC's gameplay improvements like ITTS and technically different audio and cutscenes. The graphic's resolution and color resolution alone will be annoying.

I do not know enough about the exact technical heritage for SWC, but I always suspected they took the original W1 code base, merged in various W2 engine modifications and then started to replace all the stuff necessary for the new graphics, video and sound. Gameplay code will have remained very similar for the most part.

 

[Mog]

Even if it doesn't feel like there's much interest, we like hearing about this stuff. You aren't bothering anyone and this kind of insight is invaluable. The internet needs people like you.

Thanks for that, that actually made me smile. I think I forget the sort of place this is. I know I can come across as a little obsessive perhaps when talking about my interests. Probably a symptom of spending too much time on sites like Reddit, where people recoil in fear when you start posting responses larger than text messages.

I've certainly considered getting a vintage Mac (one day, probably!), so this is really informative on that front. Beyond that, it's quite interesting though - it's fascinating to me that they managed to have the exact same lazy code problem on two completely different architectures, with (unavoidably) mostly scratch-written code.

You've also mentioned something I found in some of the (very mild) pushback on WCAT; the argument that you can "just" lower the cycles in DOSBox or use a more accurate emulator. Sure! But once you get into the more intense missions, you're lucky if you're getting more than a frame or two per second... There's always some level of inconsistency no matter what.

Anyway, sounds like you may have found the sweetspot for SWC Mac. It'd be nice if you could disable L2 cache while having it installed; I'm not sure if that's an option like it is on (some) PCs.

Well if you do, I think I can finally recommend the Powermac 4400 as one of the better systems to adopt. Apparently it was a bit of a black sheep back in the day for being too PC-like. That obviously works in everybody's favour now. They're cheap and it's easy to install compatible DVD drives, RAM, PCI cards (USB, graphics etc). People have even put Voodoo cards in there.

I think there may be extensions that facilitate toggling the cache. It would be nice because it runs like a dog without it. Unfortunately there's nothing that lets you toggle the G3 expansion on/off.

It was. I have played this game on three different Macs in my life over the course of about 15 years and it never ran consistently on anything (plus tended to have bugged-out colors later). At is and always was a technical mess when it comes to framerates, I have been playing this game somewhere between slow-motion and fast-forward all my life and usually both depending on the scene.

That said, allow me to again sing the praises of SWC once more, which is a brilliant and highly engaging version of Wing Commander that remains gated behind hard-to-emulate platforms. It remains my favorite way to play this gem of a video game, even with WCAT, simply due to the much more interesting graphics and voice acting. I have kept around that 2002 G4 Mac (the "lamp") for SWC and one other Mac game exclusively, it is that good and that important to me.

That being said, I remain hopeful that a certain Confederation-project may liberate this game from its technical shortcomings and allow me to eventually share the experience with my kid that is currently growing up. Hopefully she will not outgrow the project progress 😏.

Thanks for confirming what I thought was probably the case. There's seemingly currently no way of fully beating the timing issues then. I get the colours issue too but think it's isolated to Mac OS 9 and above. Maybe 8.6 but I haven't tried that in ages. As long as you keep to the ingame menus and don't roll the mouse over the OS menubar etc it's avoidable... I think.

I've just looked up this WCAT project, this is the first I've heard of it. That's really awesome. I've been sticking with PCem for the older games for this very reason but sometimes you don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a full environment before you get to play the game. I have zero understanding of development or coding etc but fingers crossed it means maybe there's an opening for SWC one day. My uinderstanding is SWC is a custom WC1, more than anything else. Oh... I get it now, I've just looked up "WC conferation project". That sounds absolutely amazing, like the first time I saw one of the Doom or Ultima source ports in action. I think there are few game series that deserve this kind of treatment more tbh. An absolute game changer!