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Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger cover
Developers
Origin Systems
Mac OS (Classic) Lion Entertainment Inc.
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS 1994
Mac OS (Classic) 1995
Windows October 15, 1996
Windows (DOSBox) September 13, 2011
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) April 23, 2013[1]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Perspectives First-person
Genres Action, Shooter, Vehicle combat
Vehicles Space flight
Themes Sci-fi, Space
Series Wing Commander
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger on HowLongToBeat
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger guide on StrategyWiki
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger on MobyGames
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger on Wikipedia
Wing Commander 1990
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi 1991
Wing Commander: Academy 1993
Wing Commander: Privateer 1993
Super Wing Commander 1994
Wing Commander: Armada 1994
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger 1994
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom 1996
Privateer 2: The Darkening 1996
Wing Commander: Prophecy 1997
Wing Commander: Secret Ops 1998

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is a singleplayer first-person action, shooter and vehicle combat game in the Wing Commander series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Setup guide for GOG version

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
Use DOSBox.
DOS
Mac OS
GOG.com
DRM-free
Pre-packaged with DOSBox.[2]
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Origin
Origin
Pre-packaged with DOSBox.
Windows
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Version differences

The game was ported to Windows as part of Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga.

Game data

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\00000***.WSG
Windows <path-to-game>\00000***.WSG[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 2]
WSG_NDX.WSG is a save index, not a save file.
In-game settings are stored in each save rather than shared.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin

Video

Main Terminal settings.
Main Terminal settings.
In-flight settings (Alt+O).
In-flight settings (Alt+O).

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
640x480 only. "widescreen" FMVs: Set DOSBox to fullresolution=desktop. Via the in game settings leave Movies at the default of VGA (most important, Note: original video files are only in VGA, turning on SVGA only affects playback and will not result in a visual improvement on modern PCs) gameflow can stay set to SVGA. Full motion videos will now play in "widescreen". While there are some black borders on the sides of the video, they are reduced by considerable amount from the default settings.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
For DOSBox toggle with Alt+ Enter (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
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
24 FPS cap.

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
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Space flight follows the cursor in mouse mode.
Controller
Controller support
Must be selected in in-flight settings (Alt+O).
Full controller support
Text entry requires the keyboard.
Controller remapping
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
PlayStation controllers
Generic/other controllers
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music and Sound.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Enabled by default.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
German UI and subtitles are available in all versions. German audio is only included in the GOG version and German retail versions. To enable German audio in the GOG version, it has to be set at installation or via GOG Galaxy -> Installation verwalten → Konfigurieren → Sprache.
Japanese
Spanish

Issues fixed

Joystick not recognized

Remove other controllers[3]

In Windows' Settings or Control Panel, remove any other controllers and set the joystick as the preferred device.

Calibrate it

Calibrate the joystick by going to the options menu ("2" when launching the game, or use a terminal in-game, or Alt+O during flights).

Joystick calibration issues

Use the Alternate Joystick Routines[citation needed]

Can no longer roll

Deactivate alternative flight mode[4]

If you find you can no longer bank / roll, that's because the alternate flight mode was activated - sometimes happens automatically during planetary sections or when flying certain ships. Deactivate alt. flt. mode ("Flugmodus" in German) in the options menu (ALT+O while flying).

Don't do this while flying the Longbow bomber, our you'll no longer be able to control it at all. Wait with turning the alternate flight mode off until you're no longer flying the bomber.

Right side cut off with SVGA graphics

Use OpenGL instead of DDraw renderer

Use the following settings:

  1. Keep aspect ratio (aspect = true)
  2. fullresolution = desktop
  3. Graphic mode: OpenGL

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
Mac OS (Classic)

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista, 7, 8
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7.0 compatible
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.6.8
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Duo 2 GHz+
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

References

  1. Mac Game Update: 22 New Additions ● GOG.com - last accessed on 9 June 2023
  2. List of GOG games using DOSBox, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023
  3. Joystick in Wing Commander 3 (Windows version) - last accessed on May 2023
  4. Alternative flight mode - last accessed on May 2023