Wing Commander Secret Missions
 

I've managed to get hold of the two add-on packs for the original Wing Commander game, but I'm having a little difficulty installing the things.

I'm attempting to run the install .exe through DOSbox, but I hit a wall when the program asks me to insert my original Wing Commander disk 7 into drive D, presumably for copy protection reasons.

This is a problem for two reasons;
Reason one - I don't have a disk 7
Reason two - the D on my computer, like most computers these days, is a CD drive, and the install program doesn't give you the option to select which drive you'll load from.

I can think of one possible solution, but I'm not savvy enough with the DOSbox program to carry it out without instruction, and I don't know if it would work anyway. Presumably there is a way to mount "D drive" (as far as DOSbox is concerned) as another folder within my computer. If we can do that, then all that needs be done is to copy whatever data is on disk 7 to that new mounted drive and run the install. Although, as I said, I'd need to get that data off of somebody.

Is this feasible? Or is there a better solution?

Wing Commander by itself, incidentally, is running fine through DOSbox.

You can mount a floppy drive in DOSBox:
mount a x:\path\to\file -t floppy

Yes it's okay to mount a directory in your C: and call it D: in Dosbox. In the same way that "mount c c:\games\wingcom" tells Dosbox that its c: is c:\games\wingcom\, doing "mount d c:\games\wingcom\disk7" will tell Dosbox that its d: is c:\games\wingcom\disk7\. But of course you'll still need the install data from somewhere.

Great, we're halfway there. I haven't been able to find a copy of disk 7; does anybody have any suggestions on how I might get a copy of the data it contains?

I've been unable to find an appropriate one myself, but I think I have in the past come across websites that store the data from older programs disc-by-disc. Which is to say it was possible to, if you felt the need, download disc 3 of Dune II by itself. That was several years ago however, and I haven't managed to find it again.

I suppose the alternative is to simply ask the abandonia admins to contact whoever posted the game originally and ask them for a copy.

Although this seems like a fairly convoluted method of dealing with what I suspect is a simple copy-protection device. I'm open to any other suggestions from those with more practical experience on this subject.

[Deleted]
Wrong post .... sorry.
:doh2:

No other help or advice? Because otherwise I'm sitting here with some games I can't run simply because of copy protection on a game that hasn't been sold for 15 years.

As I have all the original WC games and mission addons, I don't encounter your problems, but maybe this site
http://www.wcnews.com/techsupport.shtml
can help you, BTW, they also have a friendly and active forum......

They are a very helpful bunch indeed. They threw themselves into helping, and also have a huge archive of the old documents, as well as as much background material as you could ever want.

The problem is now solved; if anybody else has a similar problem installing the Secret Missions, I solved it by mounting the Secret Mission folders as my floppy drive, temporarily.

For SM1 I typed "mount A C:\DOS\CDrive\WCSM" into the autoexec line in the DOSbox notepad, and then "mount A C:\DOS\CDrive\WCSM2" when installing SM2.


To transfer my pilot into the Secret Missions, I ran the TRANSFER program that comes with both SMs. Once you've installed the Secret Missions, the TRANSFER program is installed in your original Wing Commander folder (WING in my case), so you need to run it from that prompt. So I typed "cd wing", then "transfer" to run it.

Finally be aware that transferring your pilot to the add-on means you cannot use that save file in the original game anymore. I saved my pilot into another bunk, duplicating them, then converted the new save with TRANSFER.

Note that since you have to transfer the pilot from a saved game, and you can't save game after the final mission where you destroy the Kilrathi star base in the Venice system (assuming you're on the winning mission tree), the Kilrathi are actually still in the Vega sector. Don't sweat this, because the long-term story-line assumes the Kilrathi are still in Vega, as you'll discover if you play Wing Commander 2.

Any chance you could post step-by-step instructions on how to get SM1 & 2 working?

The dosbox method is mentioned above. To repeat,

1. Have your Wing Commander I game installed first, preferably in it's default folder. (Preferably, but not necessarily.)

2. If you're using dosbox and have the Secret Missions 1 in a folder, mount that folder as above, replacing the SM1 folder with your own, if different from the above . You can place the SM1 files in any folder you like. If you have the SM1 files placed in C:\SM1 folder, for example,
type "mount A C:\SM1"

3. After successfully mounting the folder, you can run the install program.

4. Point the install program to where your Wing Commander I is installed. (The install program will ask you to identify where WC is installed. If your WC is installed in C:\WING, for example, point to that directory.)

5. After installation completes, you can load the SM1 from within the main Wing Commander game - wing.exe.

6. Repeat the steps above for SM2. But for SM2, if I remember correctly, it has it's own executable. Meaning that you should load it's program file. Maybe SM2.exe. ( - Forgotten..)




Summary & Example :

1. WC installed in C:\program files\dosbox\WC\WING
2. SM1 installed in C:\program files\dosbox\WC\SM1
3. type mount a c:\program files\dosbox\wc\sm1
4. type a: and press [ENTER]<ENTER>
5. type install

Then load up wing.exe and you can see a new "Play Secret Missions" option in the main screen.

Another method is to copy the sm1 files to a floppy disk and install directly from the disk. You still have to mount the real floppy drive as the floppy drive in dosbox.

All these mounting stuff will be much easier if you're using a dosbox frontend.