A first for the alt.games.wing-commander Posters List, three new posters (Dustin Evans, Firefly and SX Glory) were added in one night. This comes after adding two others (KrisV and James Boswell) this week since the CIC's opening Monday. The ICQ List also has grown by twenty-two people in five days with more to be added soon. Remember, to qualify for the Newsgroup List you must have 125 posts and a year's experience or 250 posts credited to your name. To be added to either list, or if you have any questions or comments, email here.
Wing Commander author Andrew Keith was kind enough to answer a few quick questions for us... read on! (Thanks to Dundradal for setting this up).
1. What can you tell us about the upcoming Wing Commander: False Colors?
Understand that I don't know what changes may have been made in the novel's two-year odyssey since it left my word processor. However, it WAS the story of a band of humans whose breakaway frontier worlds are threatened by Kilrathi warlords, interstellar politics, and Terran apathy in the wake of the long war. To save themselves, they set out to recover a damaged Kilrathi carrier and put it back into service, meeting some surprising enemies -- and allies -- along the way.
2. Will you be involved with future chapters of the Wing Commander universe?
I certainly hope so, but I haven't been approached as yet.
3. Why are you 'Andrew Keith' in HOTT and 'William H. Keith' in FC?
As far as I know, I am NOT William H. Keith in False Colors. At least, they got my name right on the cover. (I suppose you've seen some promotional piece that messed this up). My brother, William H. Keith, has also been doing some work for Baen (very good work, I might add), writing books set in Keith Laumer's Bolo universe and a very funny sf comedy (with Peter Jurasik of Babylon Five) called Diplomatic Act. I suppose somebody in Baen's publicity department got confused.
4. What else have you been up to lately? Any non-WC books coming up?
I've got one book in the pipeline (under the name H. Jay Riker) in the ongoing SEALs --The Warrior Breed series about the early days of the war in Vietnam. "Riker" is also just starting a new series following modern submarine warfare, of which I'm writing (at least) the first book -- my brother or I will be doing others down the line. I'm also just beginning to plot out some notions for a book, not contracted anywhere yet, following a space-going carrier battle group, sort of like Wing Commander meets Tom Clancy but against a backdrop of my own devising.
5. I understand you've seen the cover art. What can you tell us about it?
The cover is a little odd, showing about half of a snarling Kilrathi face above a spacebattle (which thus appears to be flying out of the cat's mouth -- one ship appears in imminent danger of running into a fang). As covers go, it isn't horrible, although frankly I liked the HOTT cover better.
Yet another one of those major gaming site articles based on the new Secret Ops press release: check out this article at the Adrenaline Vault.
Boomer went on a posting spree over at agwc that can only be described as Reidesque. Check out some of the exciting Secret Ops stuff he posted about... You could wait till it's all over and download the whole thing at once, playing it like a normal game. But we're hoping people get into the 'spirit' and follow along each episode. Just note that if you wait till it's all over you can't be involved with all the debates/discussions about 'what happened', 'what does this/that mean' (which I would expect to be numerous ;)
OK.. this password thing sounds like it's getting confusing to everyone (rest assured, it's simple and when you start playing it won't be as confusing as it seems now).
#1 when you register (before or after you download) you will receive a 'password' (based on your callsign and other things) that will 'unlock' the executable (e.g. when you 'fire up' the executable it'll ask for the password).
#2 Then, after finishing the missions (per episode), depending on how well you fared you will get a 'code' at the end of the last mission. When you come back the following Monday for the fiction for that weeks upcoming episode you can enter this 'code' and get custom fiction based on how well you fared. Note this 'code' isn't necessary. If you don't enter anything it'll just give you the normal, default fiction. The custom fiction is just a lil something the designers thought up to provide a bit of a 'twist' to the experience.
Secret Ops will remain on our website for a while (not sure how long, but it's not going to be removed just as soon as it's over if that's what you're thinking).
Plus, if you want it on CD it will be available via Wing Commander Gold edition released soon after the SO episodes are completed.
Wing Commander Gold is essentially Wing Commander: Prophecy with Secret Ops included.
The Secret Ops *episodes* begin (Monday) Aug 24 with 'set-up' fiction for that particular (1st) episode. The actual download of the executable (and 1st missions) will occur on (Thursday) Aug 27.
Then (thereafter) each Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, new fiction will lead-in to (set-up) that weeks episode mission (avail on Thursday). Thus you have the weekend to play the (preceeding) weeks missions.
The fiction being delivered now (preceeding the episodes 'et al') is designed to give players some background to Wing Commander as well as introduce Secret Ops.
(Your callsign) is not like the password (not code.. see above) is tied to the game direction. It's just required to 'unlock' " run the executable.
Anybody who knows me knows that I don't like those stupid banner advertisements. That's why you haven't seen any here at the CIC; until now that is... here are three banners worth posting at the CIC! Attention other WC webmasters, you may all want to post 'em and link to secretops.com too. Speaking of which, expect a major redo of the CIC's Secret Ops section, including useful stuff like this, coming in just a few days.
One of the writers over at 3DNews.net posted an odd little article questioning whether or not Origin would charge for later episodes of Secret Ops. I've had my problems with Origin in the past (pretty much given up getting working Pacific Strike disks), but why don't people understand that Origin is not out to scam us? SO is free, it's great, take it at face value. Yes, they'll use it to test the validity of future online ventures, but we aint paying for this one. (Thanks to Mohammed for finding the article).
Follow or Contact Us