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Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom cover
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
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 IV: The Price of Freedom on HowLongToBeat
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom guide on StrategyWiki
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom on MobyGames
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom 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 IV: The Price of Freedom 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

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
CDs or DVD.
DOS
Windows
Mac OS
GOG.com
DRM-free
DVD version with compatibility fixes plus DOS version.
Windows
Origin
Origin
Windows

Version differences

The GOG.com version includes both the DVD version and the original DOS version (available under bonus content).[1]

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\WC4.CFG
Windows <path-to-game>\WC4.CFG[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\*.WSG
Windows <path-to-game>\*.WSG[Note 1]
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
Origin

Video

Control Parameters (via Main Terminal).
Control Parameters (via Main Terminal).
In-flight settings (Alt+O).
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
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
Capped to 24 fps during flights.

Input

Mouse Y-axis inversion

Invert mouse Y-axis
Before editing, make a backup of the wc4dvd.exe file in case the modifications go wrong.
  1. Go to <path-to-game>.
  2. Open wc4dvd.exe using a hex editor.
  3. First go to offset 0x9E99. At this address, replace the four bytes 33 DB 66 8B by F7 D9 0F B7.
  4. Next go to offset 0x4B2F5. At this address, replace the two bytes F7 D9 by 90 90.
  5. 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.[2]
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

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). To enable in GOG Windows version, see below.
Brazilian Portuguese
Retail: Wing Commander IV: O Preço da Liberdade.[3]
Spanish
Enable German in GOG Windows version[4][5][6]
If you want to be able to change back to the English version, then back up all the files before replacing them.
  1. Download these four files for the German in-game videos: [1] [2] [3] [4].
  2. Unpack the files and place all their content in <path-to-game>\vob. Overwrite the existing videos.
  3. 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".
  4. 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, overwrite existing files. The DOS version can now be uninstalled.
  5. Download this zip file and unpack it. Inside it, under the folder Patch and extract the zip file german_patch.zip to <path-to-game> and overwrite existing 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
  1. Go to the installation folder.
  2. Extract the zip and put dxmci.dll in the folder, as well as replacing mpeg2.dll with the patched version.
  3. Set the game's compatibility mode to Windows 98/Me.

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]
  1. Go to the installation folder.
  2. Delete or rename the AC3Filter folder. The default system decoder will now be used.
  3. Delete or rename the ac3.cmd, ac3filter.ax, ac3u.cmd files in the game root folder as well.
  4. If movies are still too quiet, install AC3Filter system-wide and increase the Gain slider.

Other information

API

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

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 5.0
Processor (CPU) IBM 486DX4 75 MHz
System memory (RAM) 8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 30 MB
Video card (GPU) VESA-compliant SVGA (640x480)
Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 5.0
Processor (CPU) IBM 486DX4 75 MHz
System memory (RAM) 8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 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
Hard disk drive (HDD) 46 MB
Video card (GPU) 256-color compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 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).

References

  1. Changelog, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023
  2. WC4 - No subtitles?, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on May 2023
  3. TecToy Wiki (SEGA-Brasil)
  4. German 1 - last accessed on May 2023
  5. German 2 - last accessed on May 2023
  6. German 3 - last accessed on May 2023