BCMM May 2026 Progress Report

What's New?

We've completed our playthrough of the SP campaign as described in BCMM From Playtests to Engine Rewrites.

We've also made additional fixes, improvements to how the game handles BIK files, and, as always, more performance improvements and general bug fixes.

Remaining playthrough videos

Since April's blog post, we stopped at the E6M3 playthrough video. Here are the links to the remainder of the campaign playthrough.

TGL Compiler

Added transparent JSON localization support to the BCMM runtime. When the game requests a .tgl file, BCMM now first checks for a matching .json source file, automatically compiles it into a cached .compiled.tgl, and redirects the engine to the generated file.

Direct .json loading is now also supported, allowing modern JSON-based localization workflows while maintaining full compatibility with Bridge Commander's original TGL system.

New dynamic movie resolution system

BCMM is now effectively resolution agnostic and can handle video playback across virtually any resolution. It checks the current rendered resolution, evaluates the available movie versions, and selects the best match using an internal scoring system. It's also aware of supported display resolutions, so it won't attempt to play something like 1600x1200 on a display that doesn't support it.

If a user has both 720p and 1080p versions installed, BCMM will automatically select the most appropriate version.

The important part is that the original scripting logic and movie paths remain completely unchanged. Scripts continue to request the original movie paths as usual, while BCMM transparently resolves and selects the best available movie override for the current display resolution.

Subtitle Backing

This came as a result of the BCMM movie presentation polish.

Our FMVs are now running as 720p crop upscales, which immediately exposed an old Bridge Commander limitation. Native TGCreditAction subtitles were never really designed for modern fullscreen playback and readability.

So I ended up building a proper dynamic subtitle backing system around the existing renderer:

• automatic subtitle background/backing
• dynamic sizing based on the actual rendered subtitle height
• resolution-aware font scaling for existing movies with subtitles
• fullscreen-safe positioning across multiple aspect ratios and resolutions

The fun part is that this is all still running through the original BC UI and action systems rather than replacing them outright.

A lot of tiny engine-level work for something most players will hopefully never consciously notice. Usually, that means it's working.

Here you can see what I mean -- there is no subtitle backing.

Here's the same scene with subtitle backing enabled.

And finally, the current version with larger fonts and subtitle backing.

HDR aware

This does not make the game support HDR. BCMM is simply aware of HDR environments and can react accordingly when HDR is detected.

While this does not add HDR rendering support, it does enable a number of compatibility-related adjustments intended to improve the overall experience when running Bridge Commander on modern systems.

MP4 Support

Since we went out of our way to enhance movie playback, we also realized that 720p BIK movie files can become quite large. Ten 720p BIK files upscaled by a friend of mine come in at roughly 550 MB.

So what better way to modernize BC than to add MP4 support?

The end result is that BCMM can now play and support MP4 files. Upscaled videos are now comparable in size to the original game BIK files despite being significantly higher resolution.

Cordy's Corner

Welcome back to Cordy's Corner.

The Landscape portion of the mod is something that I wanted to revisit. It was time to create a new mesh to use a tileable texture. In the video below is the result.

This is a simple mesh that uses a Specular Map, the model being repeated 31 more times to give a sense of grandeur.

Before you get to the beloved Mutara Nebula, you will see the Water Planet model that is being worked on. The model is being rotated within the NIF file and not via script. It also has a specular and is semi-transparent.

Being a long-time fan of The Wrath of Khan, it became abundantly clear that I must try to recreate this wondrous nebula. A large-scale model was created and then configured in a unique way to give the appearance in the video below:

An idea came to me, and I knew that this could only improve how models act in Bridge Commander. This is a wormhole model that does not use any Textured Animation (NiFlipController) to give the appearance in the video below:

On top of that, it uses the "_ glow" and Enhanced Glows.

Now that it is possible for models to be moved without script, it was time to see how dynamic these can be made. Each of these lightning objects is directed along a specific path. Throughout the video, I changed their paths to showcase how dynamic they can be.

Thanks to Mark, of the gracious modding community, an old question has been answered.

The flickering lights on a bridge set can now be configured properly. I decided to take it a couple of steps further. The Ops and Conn's LCARS are now using texture animation on top of the flickering. Furthermore, I inserted a mesh into the bridge set and worked some magic. What you see is in the video below:

My goal is to continue to work on all these unanswered questions that I have and create what used to be known as impossible. Bridge Commander indeed has a limit, but I am redefining it.

Conclusion

See you next month, when we'll finally begin preparations for the SFC3 Federation Campaign -- something Blackrook32 has been looking forward to for months.