Wing Commander CD32 on an AGA Amiga

Personally I think Wing Commander on the Amiga rox, it was the game that most impressed me back in the day, the story, the choices, the graphics and sound were all amazing, but even though the ECS version was better on the A1200 than the A500 (moving hand, better FPS) it was still dithered like crazy :( Then came the CD32 version in AGA 256 colours and contrary to popular belief does not use the AKIKO chip.

A500 dithered version

The CD32 AGA version

So how do we get the pretty AGA CD32 version to run on the A1200? read on dear reader read on................................................

"The CD32 version of Wing commander rocks (seriously, try it!) but setting it up can be a pain if you can't read German, so with the help of Laudrup (thanks m8) and Mrs JuvUK here is an easy to follow guide based on the fantastic work of aPEX & Turrican hope this helps, JuvUK The Wing Commander CD32 guide Wing Commander is an ingenious game, especially the cd32 version with 256 colours it has achieved cult status amongst Amiga Fans. Sadly, the game is unplayable on the more powerful Amigas (or, at best, is too fast to play). The guide explains how to play Wing Commander on fast Amigas 1. Installation The CD32 CD version has no install-script. But this isn’t a problem – all that is needed is to copy the whole directory from the CD to your Amiga HDD. The fastest way is with the shell-command: copy CDx: Game:WC32 all Please make a note of your drive names and directories and change them! 2. The Patch Have you copied all the files to your HDD? Next you need the WCpatch. Download it from: http://aminet.net/game/patch/WCPatch.lha Extract the archive into your existing Wing Commander directory. After extraction you have a file called “WCpatch” which you have to use to start the game. 3. Start the game with the patch To start the game with the cheat/trainer change to your wc-directory and execute the following command in your shell: wcpatch exe=wing.german s=65000 SD=3 This is an example how the command could be. “Wcpatch” starts the game with the patch “exe=wing.german” start WC in German language (obviously for the UK version you need to replace the word “german” with “english”) “S=65000” sets the stack size to 65000 “SD=3” slows down the game with factor 3 4. Activate the cheat/trainer Some missions are really hard. If you need some help, you can activate the cheat with the following shell command: wcpatch exe=wing.german s=65000 SD=3 I (again substitute “german” for “english”) The parameter “I” activates the cheat. You`re now invisible and in God mode. You can destroy your targeted enemies with shift+F5. 5. Make a start icon for the game To make the game start much easier, it’s possible to build an icon. follow the steps below to create your icon: 1) find your favourite icon 2) open the icon information window 3) change the type to “project” 4) change to “C:iconx” as standard program 5) change stack size to 8192 6) save the changes and close the information window 7) change the icon name to “WingCommanderCD32.info” create a text file with the start command of the game and save it to the same name without the ending .info That’s it. You can now start the game easily with your icon. If you want to make any changes just open the icon with a text editor. Have fun ! 6. Make gamesaves Cd32 makes the game saves in his own flashrom. The A1200/A4000 has no flashrom so we need a detour. 1. Find the “nonvolatile.library” 2. If this library doesn’t exist on your system, you can find these in NVTools (Aminet) 3. Create a directory on your HDD for the gamesaves, (i.e. DH0:CD32_savegames) 4. Save a textfile with the path (i.e. DH0:CD32_savegames) 5. Change the textfile name to “nv_location” 6. Copy the textfile to DH0:prefs/env_archive/sys A 2nd and easier method: 1. Create a directory for the savegames (i.e. DH0:CD32_savegames) 2. Write the following command in shell: echo "DH0:CD32_savegames" >envarc:sys/nv_location Have Fun ! Original text written by aPEX & Turrican Translation by Laudrup Helped by JuvUK & Mrs JuvUK"