Wing Commander Together - Co-op multiplayer for DOS Wing Commander
Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander
Wing Commander Together is a fan-made project that brings cooperative multiplayer to the classic DOS game Wing Commander. After an 11-year journey of reverse engineering, the creator and his brother figured out how to let two players pilot separate spacecraft as wingmates in the same mission. By analyzing memory dumps, identifying game state locations, and using DOSBox to inject network commands, they enabled shared gameplay over TCP. The project includes a browser-based version, so you can experience the co-op mode directly in your browser. It solves the childhood dream of playing Wing Commander together, turning a single-player classic into a shared adventure.
We always dreamed of playing the Wing Commander series cooperatively as wingmates rather than as a two headed hydra in a single craft.
- daniel_rh
Author here: in 2015, I was playing the classic Wing Commander in DOSBox and
suddenly realized the game state fit in the 64k data segment.
Over ten years my brother and I went through a set of experiments (stop
and go, turn, communicate) while probing the memory. We uncovered
where the variables were, how to inject calls into
the game functions, and how to sync the gamestate across the
network, so we can fly the story missions together.
My favorite finding is that the camera lives in entity slot 0x3D, which is
possibly a "3D" reference by the original developers.
You can play it at https://fireflyk64.github.io/dosbox in browser. If
you own Wing Commander, drag in the installer since no game files are
hosted. If you don't, the page will load the original DOS/3Dfx version
of Vega Strike, before I open sourced it. I upscaled and redid DOS Vega
Strike art using AI, but it now has multiplayer and a similar feel.
I'll be in the lobby for the next few hours if anyone wants to fly together.
Disclosure: I also used AI for the final step to help compile for the
browser and port our TCP networking stack to WebRTC with voice and solve
a few lingering bugs.
- Tepix
Neat! You're using the data channel for voice? why not the rtc stream?
- ShakataGaNai
Oh man. Blast from the past. I loved wing commander back in the day.