Flight Commander is a Wing Commander-style space combat game.
For the more complicated missions, scripting is done with the powerful but user-friendly Lua scripting language. All scripting commands are well documented and there are examples provided for a range of missions.
When it comes to graphics, Flight Commander offers hardware-accelerated 3d graphics, as well as seven different camera angles. Textured space backgrounds and planets are featured in the game, providing players with a beautiful backdrop as they play. Additionally, there are heads up displays with radar, target images, and other stats, as well as particle-based explosion effects, autopilot, and take off and landing cut scenes.
Gameplay itself offers a variety of features, including over 20 available ships and more than 43 missiles and guns, most of which come with unique sounds and graphics. Additionally, the game's ship and weapon stats are based on Wing Commander's game balance. There are energy weapons, target-tracking missiles, and other exciting gameplay elements such as the ability to command and communicate with wingmen and enemies, multiple campaigns and a variety of mission types. Players can even target and destroy individual capital ship parts, and there is more accurate capital ship collision detection, cargo inspection, and traitor detection available.
Flight Commander also features full 3D- accelerated surround sound. On systems with four or more speakers, players can literally hear attacks approaching from the rear. There are individual sounds unique to every weaponry, and a dynamic music score changes with the events happening during the mission. Intense combat or a quiet return home triggers different songs.
Joystick support has also been included, with force feedback and support for joysticks using x, y, and a twist axis for banking. There is even joystick throttle support, along with up to 6 joystick buttons and joystick point of view (POV) controls.
Those interested in editing will be pleased to know that all graphics and sounds are stored in standard BMP, PNG, WAV, and MP3 formats, which can easily be edited using any paint program. Additionally, there is 3D import from wavefront .obj files and a graphical mission editor is provided, allowing players to create missions with custom 3d mission briefings and auto-generated spoken text. Finally, all ships, weaponry, missions, briefings, mission background graphics, lighting and campaigns can easily be opened with any text editor, since the game uses the standard XML file format. Fully-scriptable missions, cutscenes, briefings, and gameflow are all included in Flight Commander.
Version 1.1 Beta: N/A