"Wing Commanders"

Release 0.3 - "Wing Commanders" - is available for download for Linux, PC and Mac now!

TLDR

This release features a completely new way to play battles in BC, with co-ordinated strategies within and between groups. Theres also a completely upgraded UI for target selection and subsystem targeting, as well as some big performance enhancements.

Full Changelog

Key changes:

• Targeting UI overhaul - Subsystem targeting now lives in the target status panel, and the target list has gained filters, sorting and can be collapsed out of view.
• Wing Leaders AI - Groups now work together, with Wing Leaders selected by ship strength, and co-ordinated orders being given to ships. Look for co-ordinated attempts to flank, cycle ships out of the battle, and reinforce struggling ships.
• Performance improvements - reduced CPU load by about ~55% and GPU by ~35%.
• New options - including:
  • Full screen mode
  • Audio level controls for music, vocals, ui and sfx
  • Medium option for Camera VFX for those of you looking for less lens flares
• No SDK Requirement - Dauntless now runs without the SDK, all you need to get it running is your clean game install.

Smaller fixes

• Don’t cross the beams - Phaser fire which clips a 3rd vessel will now impact that vessel and cause damage as in the original game.
• Music Fixes - Added missing music triggering events mean we are now much closer to original BC music behaviour.
• Mesh emissives - previously where an author had set an emissive value for the material they applied to their model Dauntless would render that as well as the glow map. We now only use this as a fallback when no glow maps are supplied, better matching BCs behaviour.
• Glow Volumes - splash damage will no longer cause lights to dim inside a volume. For example, this prevents warp nacelles from being partially switched off.
• Various fixes to the campaign - including handling ships warping without a warp destination, and XO correctly speaking objective dialogue. - Thanks to jmanyc
• Fixed power priority - ensuring sensors and weapons get power first when aux is running out. - Thanks to jmanyc
• Planet collisions report correctly - Colliding with a planet no longer triggers the “cloaked ship” warning. - Thanks to ShahadatTest
• Phasers no longer discharge below a threshold - previously phasers would attempt to discharge causing shield impact even though they basically had no charge. - Thanks to jmanyc
• Orphaned Phaser sounds fixed - The game now prunes looped SFX playing when a battle ends.
• Bundled MSVCP dependencies on Windows - “MSVCP140.dll not found” error should no longer be a problem on Windows
• Audio output preferences respected on MacOS - When you set a manual audio output on MacOS the game will now respect that setting. - Thanks to jmanyc
• BC Remastered errors - Minor change to torpedo system to better handle ships which expect changes made to stock BC files in BC Remastered
• Torpedo salvo behaviours- Fixed salvo spacing, and switching torpedo type empties the tubes - Thanks to jmanyc
• Increased brightness at red alert - Increased the lighting levels slightly on each bridge to improve visibility
• Added support for NiRawImageData - Supports ships with textures exported in NIF wrappers.

Quick Battle R2

Release 0.2

"A little rough, but a lot of fun!"

---

The headline is performance in large fights. A 64-ship battle ran at about 6 fps before this release. It now holds 25-30 fps on a Debug build (30 before damage piles up). Most per-tick combat and motion work now runs in C++, with the original Python kept as a test reference:

Combat

sensor detection, fire control, phasers, torpedoes and targeting eligibility are native. Fire control is native only.
Ship motion is native (DAUNTLESS_NATIVE_MOTION=0 turns it off), and so is the tractor force.
Proximity queries and collision avoidance are much cheaper.
Render interpolation is native, and glow is only sent when it changes.
Hit tests (beams, Manual Aim, damage, decals) use the simulated hull, not the drawn one.
Each sim tick now runs whole (AI, motion, combat), so combat sees each tick's poses. Tractor pull and hold respond a tick after the grip.

Quick Battle

Quick Battle now has victory and defeat conditions. You build each side's list in the setup screen. Victory defaults to Destroy All Ships and Defeat to Player Ship Destroyed. You can add "Ships Destroyed" conditions, naming ships and choosing whether ANY or ALL of them must fall, and a timer on either side. The first condition met settles the battle. A defeat that lands in the final second overturns a pending win. The AI plays to the conditions: enemies hunt the ships you must protect, and your allies go after the ships you must destroy. Quick Battle also now leaves the galaxy as it found it. Home stations stand in their systems. A battle near one leaves it as it was when the battle ends. A station you attack twice turns hostile and fights back. In free roam, the player's death is final.

Also since 0.1.0:

• Shuttles fly routes around Tau Ceti.
• Animated LCARS bridge panels (Lottie), E Bridge textures and lighting, Blender-authored DBridge smoothing, and a finer bridge AO.
• Fed Starbase shields (a deliberate departure from BC), stations that fire back in Quick Battle, and a hull that engineering repairs.
• Helm Intercept fixes, and no more warping into rescaled planets.
• Ship Property Viewer: add and edit running lights.
• Launch splash: the required Activision notice and "Built with Claude AI".