Starting with Wing Commander 1, Secret Missions and Secret Missions 2!

Wing Commander GOG.com Tech Review and Tweak Guide

In this video I am showing you how to improve certain aspects of the GOG.com release of Wing Commander, Secret Missions and Secret Missions 2.

Topics covered include:

- Improving graphics
- Improving music and sound effects with Munt MT-32 emulator
- CPU cycle speed
- Changing sound device (no sound, PC Speaker, Adlib or Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32)
- Joystick calibration
- Transferring pilots

Link to my website: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/tech-reviews-and-tweak-guides-series.html

Link to Munt Roland MT-32 emulator: http://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/

Use these lines to edit WINGCMDR.CFG (WC 1 and SM1) and CRUSADE.CFG (SM2) to change the audio device.

No Sound:
v z

PC Speaker:
v p z

Adlib / Sound Blaster:
v a904 z

Roland MT-32:
v r z

Wing Commander Privateer GOG.com Tech Review and Tweak Guide

In this video we are improving graphics, sound, music and other aspects of the game. I cover:

- Full screen aspect ratio corrected image
- Output modes
- Scaler mode
- Improving sample rate
- Using a virtual MIDI device and soundfonts
- Running INSTALL.EXE to change sound devices
- Fixing the slowing down of music in space flight
- Calibrating joystick

Download BASSMIDI: https://kode54.net/bassmididrv/

Download VirtualMIDISynth: http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

Download Weeds General MIDI Soundfont v3.0: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/general-midi-and-soundfonts.html

Wing Commander II GOG.com Tweak Guide

In this video we are tweaking Wing Commander II from GOG.com.

We will improve the graphics, look at ways to tweak the speed of the game, configure the game to use Roland MT-32 music via Munt emulator and address an error to do with the joystick.

Link to Munt: http://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/

Wing Commander III Tweak Guide

In this video I am tweaking the GOG release of Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger.

I will cover:

- Configuring the game for General MIDI
- Using VirtualMIDISynth and SoundFonts
- How to toggle subtitles
- How to change the language to German or French (Text only)
- How make the graphics smoother when moving around the ship
- Setting the perfect cycle speed to avoid some bugs
- Boost the sample rate for digital speech and sound effects
- Configure joystick as input device
- Configure joystick hat and rudder with the game

At the end you can watch me play the game a little bit (first mission).

Awesome video Phil, I really appreciate you updating this video and sharing it with us! Admins, you should have this thread "stickied" for anyone who buys WC on GOG to see how to get the most out of the game. Thanks to you Phil, my campaign in the Dakota Sector has resumed.

Any plans on releasing a similar video for WC2 and Privateer, or would most of what's covered here be applicable to those games as well regarding config file editing? Thanks again!

My goal is to do one or two videos per week.This one took a bit longer because I wanted to really learn about the joystick emulation. I will make updates to this thread with the other Wing Commander games.

Very good guide!

Regarding MT-32, I found it easier to simply use the SVN Daum build of DOSBox than messing with MUNT. This DOSBox build has MUNT built-in and doesn't require installing it separately. Though you still need to hunt down the MT-32 ROM.

Use is very simple, just download the non-installer version of it (the 7z), delete/rename the vanilla DOSBox folder in the game install directory, and then extract the SVN Daum build there with the folder DOSBox so you replace the old one. The executable name is the same so all of the shortcuts that GoG creates will still work fine. You also need to drop the two MT-32 ROM files in the folder.

Everything else with your guide is otherwise the same, except you don't need to get the device number and change the midiconfig property. Instead, you just you just set mididevice=mt-32 (or mt32, I can't remember exactly I'll have to double check when I get home),

Apart from the built in MT-32 emulation this build of DOSBox has a graphical menu that allow you to change the output, scaler, and various other methods "on-the-fly" so it's nicer to play around with.

I finally finished Wing Commander and can confirm that the transfer utility, as shown in the guide, works fine. I moved my last save game to Secret Missions and continuing on...

TRANSFER also allows you to select ANY mission of Wing Commander. Quite nifty. Check the reference guide for Secret Missions for details.

Yeah, after following your WC Tweakguide video, I successfully played through WC, and transferred the same pilot to both SM and SM2.

I'm now onto WC2, and have successfully transferred my WC Crusade Pilot stats to WC2, and have applied what you taught in the WC video to improve my WC2 experience. I eagerly anticipate you making a WC Privateer video; I hope that one is in consideration by you to make!

Wow you are fast!

Took me quite a while to beat Wing Commander. And died lots :)

I'm still waiting for the Thrustmaster joystick to arrive, but the Logitech stick has been very good so far.

Yup Wing Commander II should work with the Wing Commander settings, maybe a bit more cycle speed. It has options to change frame duration and things like that but isn't speed sensitive like Wing Commander.

Privateer should be pretty straight forward. I will use VirtualMIDISynth as a MIDI device and load a soundfont to improve General MIDI music, otherwise it should be quite straight forward.

Not sure when though. I'd like to make a non-Tweak Guide video again, otherwise people might get a bit put off if I just keep doing Tweak Guides...

WC was VERY hard at parts - I don't even want to think about Kurasawa 2..... WC2 is an absolute cakewalk in comparison so far, mostly due the smoother frame-rate, making dog-fighting so much less of a slideshow and chore.

I found your WC2 cycle speed recommendation in another thread, so I'm using 6000 and it's working out great. What is the option to change frame duration in WC2 that you spoke of? Could it be improved at all?

For Roland MT-32 Sound, v r z in the config file works for WC2, but cuts out the speech pack, and led to crashes I found for me. Searching another thread on here, I found a config code that plays both the Roland MT-32 sound, and the speech pack: v r816 c25 d1, and it works perfect (not that you need to know this!).

I took a look at the Privateer config, and it looks very similar. The only thing that I would need insight to is the whole General Midi emulator situation (BassMidi, VirtualMidiSynth, etc.) and which sound fonts to use; there seem to be so many of them out there!

I hear you regarding making a lot of consecutive Tweak Guides, but I assure you - you won't put me off at all! Thanks again philscomputerlab.

Wing Commander 2 should work well with faster cycle speeds. 6000 was just a starting point, faster cycle speeds shouldn't affect it at all, I just like to avoid using max cycles.

I believe the keys for frame rate duration and skips are ALT or CTRL and then + or -

WC2 used MT-32 and Sound Blaster for speech, so what worked for Wing Commander won't work here. But I believe that GOG.com included the program to change sound cards. But I will look into that.

Might make a video just covering soundfonts then. Yes there are many, but when you look on sites, you will keep coming across the same ones :)

Wing Commander Privateer GOG.com Tech Review and Tweak Guide

In this video we are improving graphics, sound, music and other aspects of the game. I cover:

- Full screen aspect ratio corrected image
- Output modes
- Scaler mode
- Improving sample rate
- Using a virtual MIDI device and soundfonts
- Running INSTALL.EXE to change sound devices
- Fixing the slowing down of music in space flight
- Calibrating joystick

Download BASSMIDI: https://kode54.net/bassmididrv/

Download VirtualMIDISynth: http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

Download Weeds General MIDI Soundfont v3.0: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/general-midi-and-soundfonts.html

Killer content as usual, philscomputerlab. I think I missed it in the video as to how you correct the sound lag? Once again, thank you for the amazing Tweak Guide series of videos Phil!

Thanks :)

The slow music issue is being fixed at around 5 minutes. Either setting the joystick type to 2axis or using a USB joystick will fix this.

There is also a patched game file but the DOSBox config file tweak is easy enough.

Ah I'm sorry, I didn't catch that changing the joystick setting to 2axis would remedy that, my bad. Thanks again Phil; I hope that you'll be feeling better soon!

Wing Commander II GOG.com Tweak Guide

In this video we are tweaking Wing Commander II from GOG.com.

We will improve the graphics, look at ways to tweak the speed of the game, configure the game to use Roland MT-32 music via Munt emulator and address an error to do with the joystick.

Link to Munt: http://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/

For those looking for the MT-32 ROMs, they are here: www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/complete-wc-gog-fixes-and-tweaks.27176/ at the bottom of the first post.

This came from the #2 sticky thread.