For what it's worth, I found the unofficial patch would crash more often than the DOSBox version, especially during hectic battles where there are lots of ships in the area. However, the DOSBox version tended to crash after being in space for a certain amount of time; barely enough time to do 2-3 missions on average. At least on my current PC; my other PC was more stable when running the DOS version. This laptop is slower so I set DOSBox to dynamic mode which was faster but possibly less stable, especially when playing videos. Either pressing ESC or just at the end of a video could cause the game to hang - a serious crash that meant I had to end DOSBox via Task Manager or Sign Out. It was worse if in full screen mode; it was impossible to see what I was doing, so if I expected a possible crash, I tried to be in windowed mode just in case. Of course, the unofficial patch had its own issues too, including stealing focus even when crashed, needing its own specific workarounds for those cases as well as if you wanted to view another window during play...
Privateer 2 was one of the few games I finished in my childhood, even though I knew just some words in English. That's because I liked it a lot. Full of bugs, sure. Wing Commander 4 was not that hard past that mission with 2 pilots mirroring each other.
The Privateer games are some of my favorite ones in the Wing Commander universe. Not sure why, but Wing Commander IV was one of the hardest for me to adjust to.
From what I understand, Privateer 2 was actually two separate games. They merged the two together (likely cost related reasons). One part being the actual game itself & the other part being all the FMV stuff.
@@tomvu1470 Read a long time ago that Erin Roberts (son of Chris Roberts) was a well liked person among UK "stage and plastic arts people" (sorry my English). That would explain how he managed to attract a lot of good actor and actress to the game.
Fantastic Channel. Keep it up. Did you do your play through on a Windows PC or Linux? Did the patches work to improve frame rate when large objects like planets were in full view?
I had to play this game on Windows because the patch I was using required me to run it in Windows 98 mode with admin privileges. I think I tried to do that under Linux, but couldn't get it to work. I had issues with WC III and IV under Linux too with the movies. A bit of a shame, but it is what it is. As for the patch on this game, I think it worked great even with the conditions that you mentioned. I definitely recommend using that patch.
I still have my OG CDs for this somewhere (and believe it or not floppy disks for Privateer 1). I did prefer Privateer 1 (and RF expansion) for the story
I loved Privateer and had very high hopes for Privateer 2, but they were brutally dashed by broken logic repeatedly stopping all progress! It is highly possible to trigger events in the wrong order to break logic much later in the game, by simply talking to an NPC or visiting a place in a slightly different order than the devs intended, despite there being pauses in the main story where the MC is encouraged to explore. I never was able to come anywhere close to completing the game due to logic errors setting up Catch-22 situations.
I guess I got lucky in avoiding those logic errors. For the most part at least. Getting some of the side missions was really tricky though depending upon which 'CD' you had in the drive. That's pretty tricky when you don't actually HAVE CD's!
I got it from GOG as well, but I used the patch found at the link below. There's lots of fan-made patches for all of the Wing Commander games to help them run better on newer systems. www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/complete-wc-gog-fixes-and-tweaks.27176/
I thought WC4 had a difficulty setting. I played on PC. The only missions I found hard were ones with a chase like when you have to chase a couple of dragon fighters before they jump. I hit a wall for a while when first playing because I kept staying with the Lexington and not transferring to the other ship. Once I figured out it was part of the script then I was fine. (edited for spoilers).
It does have a difficulty setting, which is the only way I was able to get through several missions. It's just that the difficulty spikes are quite uneven. Combine that with the fact that missiles are exponentially more deadly in WCIV when compared to every other game in the series. Not a bad game, but I had to turn on invincibility quite a few times where I was able to get through WCIII without that.
Loved this back in 96.
For what it's worth, I found the unofficial patch would crash more often than the DOSBox version, especially during hectic battles where there are lots of ships in the area. However, the DOSBox version tended to crash after being in space for a certain amount of time; barely enough time to do 2-3 missions on average. At least on my current PC; my other PC was more stable when running the DOS version. This laptop is slower so I set DOSBox to dynamic mode which was faster but possibly less stable, especially when playing videos. Either pressing ESC or just at the end of a video could cause the game to hang - a serious crash that meant I had to end DOSBox via Task Manager or Sign Out. It was worse if in full screen mode; it was impossible to see what I was doing, so if I expected a possible crash, I tried to be in windowed mode just in case. Of course, the unofficial patch had its own issues too, including stealing focus even when crashed, needing its own specific workarounds for those cases as well as if you wanted to view another window during play...
True, I played the original Windows version back in the 90's and it was unstable even then.
Privateer 2 was one of the few games I finished in my childhood, even though I knew just some words in English. That's because I liked it a lot. Full of bugs, sure. Wing Commander 4 was not that hard past that mission with 2 pilots mirroring each other.
The Privateer games are some of my favorite ones in the Wing Commander universe. Not sure why, but Wing Commander IV was one of the hardest for me to adjust to.
@@kilrathikiller US Air Forces retired F-16 pilots helped to design WC4 spaceships, missiles and combat AI.
Interesting. That might explain why it was so different. Missiles were much more heavily emphasized and deadly in it compared to every other game.
From what I understand, Privateer 2 was actually two separate games. They merged the two together (likely cost related reasons). One part being the actual game itself & the other part being all the FMV stuff.
@@tomvu1470 Read a long time ago that Erin Roberts (son of Chris Roberts) was a well liked person among UK "stage and plastic arts people" (sorry my English). That would explain how he managed to attract a lot of good actor and actress to the game.
Fantastic Channel. Keep it up. Did you do your play through on a Windows PC or Linux? Did the patches work to improve frame rate when large objects like planets were in full view?
I had to play this game on Windows because the patch I was using required me to run it in Windows 98 mode with admin privileges. I think I tried to do that under Linux, but couldn't get it to work. I had issues with WC III and IV under Linux too with the movies. A bit of a shame, but it is what it is. As for the patch on this game, I think it worked great even with the conditions that you mentioned. I definitely recommend using that patch.
I still have my OG CDs for this somewhere (and believe it or not floppy disks for Privateer 1). I did prefer Privateer 1 (and RF expansion) for the story
I loved Privateer and had very high hopes for Privateer 2, but they were brutally dashed by broken logic repeatedly stopping all progress! It is highly possible to trigger events in the wrong order to break logic much later in the game, by simply talking to an NPC or visiting a place in a slightly different order than the devs intended, despite there being pauses in the main story where the MC is encouraged to explore. I never was able to come anywhere close to completing the game due to logic errors setting up Catch-22 situations.
I guess I got lucky in avoiding those logic errors. For the most part at least. Getting some of the side missions was really tricky though depending upon which 'CD' you had in the drive. That's pretty tricky when you don't actually HAVE CD's!
Hello, where did you get the Privateer 2 ? I've bought it on GOG and have some ingame stability problems and interlaced video
I got it from GOG as well, but I used the patch found at the link below. There's lots of fan-made patches for all of the Wing Commander games to help them run better on newer systems.
www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/complete-wc-gog-fixes-and-tweaks.27176/
I thought WC4 had a difficulty setting. I played on PC. The only missions I found hard were ones with a chase like when you have to chase a couple of dragon fighters before they jump.
I hit a wall for a while when first playing because I kept staying with the Lexington and not transferring to the other ship. Once I figured out it was part of the script then I was fine. (edited for spoilers).
It does have a difficulty setting, which is the only way I was able to get through several missions. It's just that the difficulty spikes are quite uneven. Combine that with the fact that missiles are exponentially more deadly in WCIV when compared to every other game in the series. Not a bad game, but I had to turn on invincibility quite a few times where I was able to get through WCIII without that.
I loved the original, too bad no Privateer 3. :(
Freelancer was Privateer 3
Well it was made by Chris and Erin Roberts so I guess is the closest thing to it. Maybe one day Star Citizen will be out of Alpha