Peeling More Layers of the Super Wing Commander Capship Onion (February 27, 2022)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
There's a little error in the intro to Super Wing Commander. Paladin reports that his wing is "approaching Fralthi target" when what they're actually attacking what immediately turns out to be a Snakeir carrier.





You can watch the full intro here. An even dorkier continuity error is that the intro can't happen BEFORE WC1 because the Rapiers, Fralthi and Snakeir are the (only) specific ships that are introduced as being brand new during the game.


So wondering if there was a story here, I went back to access the 3D models used to render Super Wing Commander's ships. SNAKEIR.OBJ is the carrier (later reused by Armada as the Shiraak) but FRALTHI.OBJ is... this:





I forgive you if you don't know the Super Wing Commander Fralthi redesign by heart, so here it is from the manual:





Is it just a case of giving up on one concept and switching to another for the actual game? Well, I found another piece of the puzzle: here's a gameplay shot from the Super Wing Commander trailer. A Rapier attacking the mystery ship!





Here's that trailer:


So I kept looking through the original models until I found where the 'new' Fralthi originated. It's saved the same date (so it's not a later substitution) as the others... and it's named SPIKERI.OBJ.





The unused/cut Fralthi is a pretty detailed model as far as SWC objects go, complete with textured interior bays that would never have been visible when rendered for the game.





It also has another ridiculous secret: it's a Sabre! Whoever built this cruiser started with Wing Commander II's Sabre 3D model, clipped the wings and went to town. The intakes became launch tubes!





So stepping back: what's a Spikeri? It actually comes from the original Wing Commander where it was concepted as the Kilrathi corvette. It even has stats in the published wc.exe, there just isn't a ship file with graphics included for it (and no mission spawns it).

For Wing Commander I, Glen Johnson concepted 22 ships and an outsource company in New York turned his 2D artwork (as seen in Claw Marks) into 3D objects (which were then rendered at different angles for the finished game). But to save space, five of these designs were cut! Four of these immediately appeared in the first mission disk: the human corvette and tanker and the Kilrathi freighter and dreadnaught. But the Spikeri did not! The Kilrathi wouldn't get a proper corvette until the Kamekh in Wing Commander II.

So what happened to the Spikeri art? We come full circle, because it was reused in The Secret Missions 2... as the first appearance of the Snakeir, the ship from the Super Wing Commander intro! Look closely, it's not a huge carrier, it has a large visible cockpit...





Wait a minute, then the Kamekh corvette model from Wing Commander II is retextured for Privateer... and then just like the Sabre it had it's wings cut off for Super Wing Commander where it became... THE SNAKEIR! We're through the looking glass here, people.




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Original update published on February 27, 2022
 
The Snakier always jumped out at me as an odd design when I first saw in SM2, way back in the early 90s. I wondered why it had such a massive forward bridge/observation deck, when we never saw anything like that before. At the same time, the those giant scoops/hangar bays again struck me as strange. A friend once said he though the hangar was the forward "bridge" and it had some kind of atmo-shield. So it starting as corvette makes some sense, but then the bridge tower seems an odd inclusion, except, looking at the in game assett, the tower is barely there. So that leads one to believe that the in game asset is just a rescaled Spikeri, and the manual artwork is modified to make it better resemble a carrier class ship.

As for the SWC models, the odd reuse there is just crazy. It makes you wonder it the production was rushed. Armada even reused many of the models, converting them to lower poly 3D versions. It is interesting to see how game size limitations led to such oddities.
 
The Snakier always jumped out at me as an odd design when I first saw in SM2, way back in the early 90s. I wondered why it had such a massive forward bridge/observation deck, when we never saw anything like that before. At the same time, the those giant scoops/hangar bays again struck me as strange. A friend once said he though the hangar was the forward "bridge" and it had some kind of atmo-shield. So it starting as corvette makes some sense, but then the bridge tower seems an odd inclusion, except, looking at the in game assett, the tower is barely there. So that leads one to believe that the in game asset is just a rescaled Spikeri, and the manual artwork is modified to make it better resemble a carrier class ship.

Pretty sure this is the case! I think the 'tower' added to the drawing was originally the main turret.

As for the SWC models, the odd reuse there is just crazy. It makes you wonder it the production was rushed. Armada even reused many of the models, converting them to lower poly 3D versions. It is interesting to see how game size limitations led to such oddities.

The big challenge on a lot of those 1991-93 games was the general lack of 3D artists. Today it's a common skill and you have endless options... back then it was a totally new idea in games and Origin was desperately training traditional artists and anyone else interested in it in-house. But the BIG projects (Strike Commander, Wing Commander III) got the lion's share of a limited pool while the 'keep the lights on' games like Super Wing Commander got last call.
 
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