Wing Commander III • Hacker News Board

Re: Wing Commander III

#81

Post by akgoel » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #19

sandworm101 wrote: post #3

Owned it. It was campy fun even then but WCII and WC:Privateer were far and away the better games. III was one of many attempts at a game-movie crossover that never really worked imho. Privateer is the basis of EVE online, Star Citizen and countless other modern titles. In terms of influence it is up there with SimCity and Civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer

I believe it was WCII which had a framerate which was dependent on the speed of the processor. I remember trying to play it some years after it came out, and you literally couldn't understand what was happening on screen because it was too fast.

Both WC 1 and 2 depended on processor speed, but WCII had a slowdown feature (I believe it was Ctrl-+ and Ctrl--) that allowed you slow it down.

Re: Wing Commander III

#82

Post by mikepurvis » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #13

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I feel the same way. I'm really fascinated by speedrunners who can beat my favorite classic games less than an hour, sometimes in minutes. Some of that is cutting weird corners but often it's pure excellent execution. I often wonder about doing that myself, playing hundreds of hours of a single game to master it. Putting all of my focus on a single game like I used to as a kid, but I don't find anything keeps my atte…

"I'm really fascinated by speedrunners who can beat my favorite classic games less than an hour, sometimes in minutes. Some of that is cutting weird corners but often it's pure excellent execution."

Ocarina of Time speedrunning has gotten to a really weird place now, where they basically set the character's name to a string of bytes which are executable code, and then de-reference a pointer to it and warp directly to the end credits, all within a few minutes of gaining control of Link. But, the community has a whole bunch of categories for different types of runs, from ones that are basically the Any% category before SRM (stale reference manipulation), to semi-legitimately beating all the dungeons (though with lots of sequence-breaking), to fully glitchless. It's a lot of fun watching some of those other-category runs for a taste of "normal" gameplay done at a very high level.

Another thing that's fun to watch runs of is randomizers (chest contents, quest rewards, sometimes even doors), since then you're not just seeing high level play, you're also seeing someone doing the live work of reasoning about their route through familiar-but-scrambled territory:

https://ootrandomizer.com/

Re: Wing Commander III

#83

Post by dunnevens » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #18

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

There are many games that will give you much longer than 20 hours. It's actually a complaint by some about modern open world games and how they're geared towards 40+ hours for even a basic completion. Longer if the player wants to finish some of the side quests. And then that's not counting mods and how those extend game time even further. And also not counting all those open-ended games which last as long as you're interested.

Gaming is in very good shape right now. I think most of the lack of immersion comes down to age. And also comes down to having many more diversions when you have an afternoon to yourself with time to play.

Re: Wing Commander III

#84

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

mrexroad wrote: post #52

afavour wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding this. I think the game that most set my world alight as a kid was Star Control II. It was a wonderfully realised world of spaceships, alien races, battles and a sprawling story line. It blew my mind. But if I was presented with a game of similar magnitude today I'd have a pretty muted reaction. (I also probably wouldn't have time to play it!). I feel the same way about many things, like (to keep on the spac…

I dunno... The Mandalorian has achieved everything that the prequels and episodes 7-9 were unable to; it did exactly the things folks said were impossible. While I've been a fan of Discovery for the most part, and it occasionally shows glimpses of promise, it's largely not "Star Trek." The story telling is simply just not rooted same soul that Trek has been built upon. I'm okay with change, but not so much with creat…

> I dunno... The Mandalorian has achieved everything that the prequels and episodes 7-9 were unable to; it did exactly the things folks said were impossible.

That's a good way to put it. Entirely agree.

Re: Wing Commander III

#85

Post by codebje » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

david422 wrote: post #47

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I think it's just the novelty of things. And the free time aspect. I remember playing Dragon Warrior on NES late into the night with friends. Grinding away to get that next item and leveling up to fight bigger monsters. It was really fun, really exciting. A few years ago I got an emulator and fired it up. Played about 5 minutes before I couldn't continue. Just didn't have the desire to grind away. And the emulator ha…

This week I reconnected to the MUD I used to play 20 years ago. I'm amazed it's still running. I've forgotten nearly everything.

I've been having a blast these past few days exploring the vast world.

There's nothing that Google can tell me about it. There's still people playing (and building) it, so I can ask for help - my old clan is still going even - but there's no instant fix on everything.

I don't know how long it'll last, and the time it will take is too much to fully immerse, but I've already started making some maps and trying to tackle some quests.

Re: Wing Commander III

#86

Post by grillvogel » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

mrexroad wrote: post #52

afavour wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding this. I think the game that most set my world alight as a kid was Star Control II. It was a wonderfully realised world of spaceships, alien races, battles and a sprawling story line. It blew my mind. But if I was presented with a game of similar magnitude today I'd have a pretty muted reaction. (I also probably wouldn't have time to play it!). I feel the same way about many things, like (to keep on the spac…

I dunno... The Mandalorian has achieved everything that the prequels and episodes 7-9 were unable to; it did exactly the things folks said were impossible. While I've been a fan of Discovery for the most part, and it occasionally shows glimpses of promise, it's largely not "Star Trek." The story telling is simply just not rooted same soul that Trek has been built upon. I'm okay with change, but not so much with creat…

check out The Orville, it is more of a classic star trek than the new official star treks

Re: Wing Commander III

#87

Post by bjelkeman-again » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

allenu wrote: post #22

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I think there's a lot going on here. Some of it is just general maturity and experience. Things that were novel when you were a child wear off when you're older. Those achievements that you aimed for as a child (having 'perfect' gameplay) may seem less meaningful when you're an adult, especially in the context of other real world achievements. The loss of "novelty", to me, one of the most challenging things about agi…

> The loss of "novelty", to me, one of the most challenging things about aging.

To me, this is where the “start a new company doing something good and interesting” kicks in, it seems. The best part of ageing seem to me that they grey hairs that I acquired during the last startup make it easier to the next one.

Re: Wing Commander III

#88

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

swivelmaster wrote: post #72

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if I was presented with a game of similar magnitude today I'd have a pretty muted reaction Or maybe not. I'm yet to see any modern game that would even remotely approach the magnitude of SC2. So far, the closest competitor was the original Mass Effect game, itself clearly influenced by Star Control games, but even it failed to surpass it.

The problem here is that it is basically impossible for a modern game to achieve the magnitude of those old CRPGs if you just mean that in the sense of how big the universe is and how much story it contains, but with modern AAA standards. The man-hours required to create all that content would be ridiculous. That being said, if you count the totality of the Mass Effect trilogy, including all its DLC, I think you do g…

You don't need to create everything with modern AAA standards. Games like FTL show that you can achieve a lot with much less effort. You just need to be bolder. And i think being bolder is the hard part: games these days are more timid in their aprroach to than they were in early 90s, like always trying to stick to a working formula. Mashups of different genres like SC2 are somehow nonexistent.

Re: Wing Commander III

#89

Post by ballenf » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #42

I really miss actual movie cutscenes. Good graphics and cheaper mocap, and the general notion that we see the same characters led game studios believe they were a better option. I still think actual actors are hundred percent better at delivering a story. We don't need to uphold this belief that in-game scenes were "real", in the way that an actual movie cutscene would hurt the "magic" - it would actually make it muc…

I wonder if the master recordings for WC3 were kept or still exist. Imagine taking them and remastering the game.

Re: Wing Commander III

#90

Post by techrat » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #4

buescher wrote: post #2

I'm a big fan of the genre, played at least one of the Wing Commander games a while after it came out, and I think Tie Fighter also. I never understood the appeal compared to say, Star Raiders or the Star Wars vector arcade game. Maybe I was just getting too old for video games, but I played Oolite (never played Elite when it was current) for a little while when I was between jobs at 40 and loved it.

Yeah, I must be too old too. When "cut scenes" started becoming the norm I felt like video games had lost their way.... Additionally, the big studios with their cut scenes set a kind of bar that the indie game dev couldn't match. It eventually sorted itself out but at the time it looked like the big players were moving in and the indies should probably head off and get "real" jobs.

And then Half Life came along and showed you could have a game without any cutscenes whatsoever, with story and expositional moments parts of the game you could still interact within the map. Listening to the security guards in the main hall, finding that button under the desk... and pushing it.