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Sheppard has overhauled his classic Wing Commander 1/2 difficulty tool and released it as Wing Hard 2.0. The program allows players to carefully tune shield/armor values as well as asteroid/mine radius and damage. This means that fans can customize the games' difficulty in a way that still preserves just the right amount of challenge. The new version also works natively in either DOS or DOSBox for maximum compatibility. You can read up on the details, installation instructions and grab the file at the CIC Forums here (file mirror here 96 k zip).
WINGHARD v2.0 README (1 January 2025)WHAT IS IT? WINGHARD is a "difficulty" editor for the original Wing Commander series (WC1/WC2) and their addons (SM/SO).
WHY DO WE NEED IT? A lot of O.G. Wingnauts are in their forties (or fifties) now and we just don't have the time anymore to suffer through some of Chris Roberts' design decisions made to extend the playability of the games. I'm talking about the asteroid fields (mostly). Yes, you can just enable the invincibility cheats such as: "wc.exe Origin -k". But that destroys a lot of the playability of Wing Commander if you are just invincible and zipping through the game. So I set out to find a way to get rid of asteroids; and I found it through WingLoader which gave me the values I needed to search for it in the game files.
HOW DOES IT WORK: You simply place WINGHARD.exe into your WC1 or WC2 install directory and run it before you play Wing Commander 1 (or 2). It will recognize the game folder it's in and switch program logic accordingly.
WINGHARD lets you fine tune WC1 and WC2 (GOG releases) difficulty to what you feel is correct. The difficulty is adjusted via three different sets of variables:
(NOTE: Mine editing may or may not work in WC2 as of version 2.0; so be warned).
- Confederation Fighter/Capital Ship Shield/Armor Values.
- Asteroid Radius Values.
- Mine Radius/Damage Values.
Through a multiplier, where 1.0 = stock game values. As an example, you enter 1.5 as the multiplier for Terran fighters; and the WC1 Hornet is changed as follows: WC1 Hornet = 40 stock = 4.0 cm front shields. With a 1.5 multiplier; it becomes 40 * 1.5 = 60 (or 6.0 cm front shields in game). Likewise, entering a multiplier of say 0.8, the game becomes harder because you have less armor/shields.
For Asteroids; game difficulty is changed via changing the radius of asteroids in the game via a multiplier. Radius is effectively the size of the in-game collision hitbox in the first-generation WC engine. Stock Asteroids have a radius of 100 in both WC1 and WC2. You can now adjust how "hard" asteroid fields are -- eliminating them entirely, if you enter 0.05, it computes a radius of 5, effectively removing them as a threat in the game.
