Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Developers
	Origin Systems
Mac OS (Classic)	Lion Entertainment, Inc.
Publishers
	Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS	February 12, 1996
Windows	February 12, 1996
Mac OS (Classic)	February 12, 1996
Windows (DOSBox)	April 3, 2012

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series

GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		CDs or DVD.
GOG.com		DVD version with compatibility fixes plus DOS version.
EA app		Included with EA Play.

Version differences

The GOG.com version includes both the DVD version and the original DOS version (available under bonus content).

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\WC4.CFG
Windows	<path-to-game>\WC4.CFG
Mac OS (Classic)

Save game data location

System	Location
DOS	<path-to-game>\*.WSG
Windows	<path-to-game>\*.WSG
Mac OS (Classic)

WSG_NDX.WSG is a save index and must be present to load saves.

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
EA app

Video

Control Parameters (via Main Terminal).

In-flight settings (Alt+O).

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		Videos are in widescreen, but the rest of the game isn't.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		Toggle with Alt+↵ Enter (when using DOSBox).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)		For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Capped to 24 fps during flights.

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Keyboard and mouse prompts
Mouse Y-axis inversion		See below for a workaround
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping		For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Input prompt override
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Invert mouse Y-axis
Before editing, make a backup of the wc4dvd.exe file in case the modifications go wrong. Go to <path-to-game>. Open wc4dvd.exe using a hex editor. First go to offset 0x9E99. At this address, replace the four bytes 33 DB 66 8B by F7 D9 0F B7. Next go to offset 0x4B2F5. At this address, replace the two bytes F7 D9 by 90 90. Mouse controls will now be inverted.

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		On/off only; set in in-flight settings (Alt+O).
Surround sound
Subtitles		Disabled by default. DVD version has no subtitles for movies.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French				Only on retail CD version
German				Only some retail versions. German DOS-version included in GOG.com-release (under Extras).
Spanish

Enable German in GOG Windows version

If you want to be able to change back to the English version, then back up all the files before replacing them. Download those four files for the German in-game videos: [1] [2] [3] [4]. Unpack the files and place all their content in <path-to-game>\vob. Override the existing videos. Install the German DOS-version of Wing Commander 4 from GOG to legally get the following files. The German DOS-version can be installed via GOG.com or GOG Galaxy under "Extras". Go the the game folder of the DOS version, copy the all six Special#.tre (with # from 1 to 6) files and paste them to the game folder of the Windows version, override existing files. You can now uninstall the DOS version. Download this zip file and unpack it. Inside it, under the folder Patch, you find another zip called 'german_patch.zip'. Extract and unpack that. Inside it, you find six files. Copy all those to the Game folder of the Windows version and override. Now you can play the game with everything in German. If you want to go back to English, override everything again with your backed-up English files.

Issues fixed

Unable to encode MPEG-2 video on DVD version

This problem is due to the game being coded specifically for MPEG-2 decoder cards of the era, which are no longer necessary for most post-1999 hardware.

Not needed on GOG.com release.

Install DXMCI
Go to the installation folder. Extract the zip and put dxmci.dll in the folder, as well as replacing mpeg2.dll with the patched version. Set the game's compatibility mode to Windows 98.

Movies too quiet (GOG.com)

The GOG.com version's movies are much quieter than gameplay due to the AC3Filter configuration used.

Delete/rename AC3Filter folder[citation needed]
Go to the installation folder. Delete or rename the AC3Filter folder. The default system decoder will now be used. If movies are still too quiet install AC3Filter and increase the Gain slider.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
DOS video modes	VGA, SVGA, SVGA (VESA)

Executable	PPC	16-bit	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
Mac OS (Classic)

System requirements

DOS

Windows

Mac OS (Classic)

DOS
	Minimum		Recommended
Operating system (OS)	5.0
Processor (CPU)	IBM 486DX4 75 MHz		Intel Pentium 75 MHz
System memory (RAM)	8 MB		16 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	30 MB
Video card (GPU)	VESA-compliant SVGA (640x480)

Windows
	Minimum		Recommended
Operating system (OS)	5.0
Processor (CPU)	IBM 486DX4 75 MHz		Intel Pentium 75 MHz
System memory (RAM)	8 MB		16 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	30 MB
Video card (GPU)	VESA-compliant SVGA (640x480)

For DVD releases of the game, a Pentium MMX 166 MHz processor is recommended.
The higher quality DVD-Video release of the game only works with specific Creative MPEG-2 cards outside of the GOG.com release.

Mac OS
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	System 7.1
Processor (CPU)	PowerPC 601
System memory (RAM)	8 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	46 MB
Video card (GPU)	256-color compatible