deUS
Ensign
Thanks, I added swap34 = true in the config and that solved the problem.
AllTinker
Commodore
You're right - the 4th axis is used for digital data, which is confusing my new routines... As you say I'll probably have to write a new 3-axis routine. For WCAT 2.0 I'd like to support the full Thrustmaster protocol; that way it would also work with that era's pedals too (RCS?) - but I'm afraid that's out of scope before 2.0... which I cannot wait to show off a preview of.
SpaceProbe
Veteran Spaceman
that'd be mindblowing, I keep checking here every few weeks if there is anything new on the WCII front, want to play it next after I had a great playthrough of WC I with WCATWorking on it!I'm hoping I'll be able to add at least basic support for WC2 prior to WCAT 2.0.
AllTinker
Commodore
Well here it is... 1.0 is finally out, and on the day Wing Commander 1 was released - 36 years ago!
There's been many improvements and bugfixes. The WC1 ending "freeze" has been fixed, it has better support for 3-axis joysticks, and I've added an option for changing the "space blue" level, just to name the most obvious changes.
The biggest addition of course, though, is that Wing Commander A.T. (WCAT) now supports Wing Commander II, with full feature parity with WCAT for WC1. This took another massive chunk of work - WC2 is a much more complex beast than WC1 in several ways.
I've done as much testing as I can, but as always let me know if you have issues! Otherwise, enjoy!
There's been many improvements and bugfixes. The WC1 ending "freeze" has been fixed, it has better support for 3-axis joysticks, and I've added an option for changing the "space blue" level, just to name the most obvious changes.
The biggest addition of course, though, is that Wing Commander A.T. (WCAT) now supports Wing Commander II, with full feature parity with WCAT for WC1. This took another massive chunk of work - WC2 is a much more complex beast than WC1 in several ways.
I've done as much testing as I can, but as always let me know if you have issues! Otherwise, enjoy!
kingmakeress
Commodore
Well done!
bear_asault
Rear Admiral
This is amazing, everything looks gorgeous and runs really well, but I don't have speech in WC2, cutscenes or spaceflight. Am I missing something?
EDIT
If I enable MT32 (without roms) I have speech but no sound/music.
When I run WC2 from WCAT with Sound Blaster for both sound and speech, I don't get the notice saying speech is enabled.
EDIT
If I enable MT32 (without roms) I have speech but no sound/music.
When I run WC2 from WCAT with Sound Blaster for both sound and speech, I don't get the notice saying speech is enabled.
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AllTinker
Commodore
Oops! There was an issue with the DOSBox-Staging config - I re-uploaded the installers; apologies for that.
I'd added something which I thought might help ensure stability, but apparently that put it right on the edge in terms of available conventional memory, and something tipped it over at the last minute. Just like the good old days!
I've attached just the config if you want to replace it in the
I'd added something which I thought might help ensure stability, but apparently that put it right on the edge in terms of available conventional memory, and something tipped it over at the last minute. Just like the good old days!
I've attached just the config if you want to replace it in the
dosbox-staging\ directory rather than re-install.
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bear_asault
Rear Admiral
Hell yeah that fixed it! Thanks AT
TCSTigersClaw
Greek Special Forces B' Company "Naoussa" 2007-200
Thanks! Testing again!
darrenor64
Petty Officer
This is so wonderful. I couldn't find an item on it in the change log, but both WC2 and WC feel much smoother in this release. Am I imagining it, or did you add extra frames? Also the blue->black space is such a great idea. It looks much better. Maybe my experience with the classic Wing2 frame limiter is warping my sense of this. The experience feels very fresh and smooth in this release.
...anyway.
I have some joystick debugging info for you:
I was lucky enough to recently find a Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro, which has an analog mode. Further, it has a switch that purports to switch between "CH Flightstick Pro" and "Thrustmaster." These only seem to affect button behavior, the stick calibration seems the same.
In both cases, this is what I experience in pure DOS:
The main stick axes affects the rotate/throttle axes:
1. If my main stick axes are forced to the upper left corner, WCAT calibration range works perfectly with the trottle and rotation axes.
2. If the main stick is simply centered, the throttle-rotation axes seem to behave strangely and overflow.
3. If I move my main stick (anywhere away from the top left corner), it will affect the throttle-rotation axes in difficult-to-pin-down ways.
I am hoping point 1 is the most useful artifact for making this range of joysticks work. Let me know if you need any more information.
If I boot into Windows 98, it goes into digital mode (I presume), and through the Windows game controller configuration, it is able to transmit perfectly detectable joystick behavior to WCAT. I've never experienced rotational rolling and throttling in pre-Wing3 -- it's really adds to the experience.
Another thing I am noticing:
In Wing 1 only:, with my throttle axis set to linear, max throttle seems to only do half of the hornet's speed range (0 -> 210).
In Wing 2, I get the full range on the Ferret (0 -> 500).
For Wing1, I workaround this by setting the throttle to relative.
---
Thanks for working on this project. It truly brings the intended experience of these games back to life.
...anyway.
I have some joystick debugging info for you:
I was lucky enough to recently find a Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro, which has an analog mode. Further, it has a switch that purports to switch between "CH Flightstick Pro" and "Thrustmaster." These only seem to affect button behavior, the stick calibration seems the same.
In both cases, this is what I experience in pure DOS:
The main stick axes affects the rotate/throttle axes:
1. If my main stick axes are forced to the upper left corner, WCAT calibration range works perfectly with the trottle and rotation axes.
2. If the main stick is simply centered, the throttle-rotation axes seem to behave strangely and overflow.
3. If I move my main stick (anywhere away from the top left corner), it will affect the throttle-rotation axes in difficult-to-pin-down ways.
I am hoping point 1 is the most useful artifact for making this range of joysticks work. Let me know if you need any more information.
If I boot into Windows 98, it goes into digital mode (I presume), and through the Windows game controller configuration, it is able to transmit perfectly detectable joystick behavior to WCAT. I've never experienced rotational rolling and throttling in pre-Wing3 -- it's really adds to the experience.
Another thing I am noticing:
In Wing 1 only:, with my throttle axis set to linear, max throttle seems to only do half of the hornet's speed range (0 -> 210).
In Wing 2, I get the full range on the Ferret (0 -> 500).
For Wing1, I workaround this by setting the throttle to relative.
---
Thanks for working on this project. It truly brings the intended experience of these games back to life.
AllTinker
Commodore
Thanks for letting me know! I'll have to do more joystick testing under real DOS - clearly I changed something since last time I tested. It's especially strange that WC1/2 are different, but that in itself may be a very good clue...
I was really pushing to get 1.0 out on the WC release anniversary, so honestly I pretty much ran out of mental bandwidth to fully document all the changes - but yes! It should be smoother than prior versions - potentially a lot smoother - especially when there's a lot going on.
Instead of just waiting a fixed number of vsyncs, the new implementation is dynamic (with zero latency); meaning it can take up to four times longer to compute a frame before the framerate is impacted. Achieving that within the limits of a 386 and a handful of spare bytes was very fiddly... But I managed to make it work! This also made it quite a bit less demanding for emulation too.
I'll have to do more joystick testing under real DOS - clearly I changed something since last time I tested. It's especially strange that WC1/2 are different, but that in itself may be a very good clue...I was really pushing to get 1.0 out on the WC release anniversary, so honestly I pretty much ran out of mental bandwidth to fully document all the changes - but yes! It should be smoother than prior versions - potentially a lot smoother - especially when there's a lot going on.
Instead of just waiting a fixed number of vsyncs, the new implementation is dynamic (with zero latency); meaning it can take up to four times longer to compute a frame before the framerate is impacted. Achieving that within the limits of a 386 and a handful of spare bytes was very fiddly... But I managed to make it work! This also made it quite a bit less demanding for emulation too.
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Ahimsa
Spaceman
I'm not sure how helpful this could be for W.C.A.T., but Neuromancer recently released source reconstructions for Wing Commander 1 and Wing Commander 2.
centaurianmudpig
Rear Admiral
I'm having trouble with the dosbox staging. It keeps crashing when it enters fullscreen after running the WingCommander exe. I tried running dosbox staging directly and it crashes just after opening up the dos prompt. I tried downloading both the zip and installer with the included dosbox stating about an hour ago.
AllTinker
Commodore
Wow that's... Unusual. Can you give me some details on your PC? E.g. which version of Windows, what kind of CPU/GPU. Does DOSBox-Staging crash if you download it separately? If so, does DOSBox-X work?
It sounds like DOSBox itself is crashing. Be aware loadfix may cause other issues; e.g. it can prevent speech from working in WC2 under staging...
if you have a mount command in your main dosbox config file and then a second mount command in the config file you're using for your game, they can conflict and cause dosbox to shutdown immediately - worth checking that you've not got anything conflicting in your users AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-staging.conf because All-Tinker's config file also mounts C.
centaurianmudpig
Rear Admiral
There was nothing helpful in the error messages, but I narrowed it down to vJoy. Uninstalled vJoy since it didn't want to be turned off. Problem solved!