The Privateer Remake Team has finished the remake of Privateer. The 3d modelling art has been done by Brad Mick (as featured earlier on Wcnews.com), textured by peteyg, as well as a Stiletto by Eder, the Demon and Paradigm by DMJC, the Orion by Mamiya0taru and many other artwork contributions, which we will enumerated in the final release. The playbalancing and ship stats have been accomplished by Mamiya0taru, and the animations and sound and speech nodes by johnC.Make sure you include your system specs and a bit about why you want to test the game. They're looking at 700 MHz systems with GeForce 2 Ultras as a minimum, though higher speed systems are recommended.The remake is built on top of the Vega Strike engine programmed by ace123 and hellcatv. The engine has an all new new campaign system which supports all the campaign missions in the original Privateer, from Tayla to Rygannon to the demise of the Drone.
Please send mail to privater@gmail.com (the name of the privateer executable, 8 characters) to become part of the private beta so you can help us determine when it should be released. All features in Privateer should be equally present in this current beta--it just has not been tested in a widespread manner yet.
How the hell did Death end up running a blood drive? Weird. I wasn't allowed to give blood because I'm a foreigner. Their loss.
The "demo" contains the first mission you fly off the Lexington in WC4, recreated in the Freespace engine. The second mission is an original design, and contains some very strange dialogue between some Kilrathi pilots. Sadly we ran out of time to play so there may well be more surprises in store, but we'll leave those for you to find. You can download the WC Saga April Fools joke demo (104MB!) here. The download is so big because it contains the original Freespace 2 demo which is required to run the mod, and also a WC Saga trailer. Don't forget to read the readme.txt file contained within for installation instructions.
Thanks to the all-new CIC Archives you can now follow the evolution of the Wing Commander movie's script! We've just finished scanning Kevin Droney's First Draft (133 pages, 33 mb), which was written way back in 1995 (10/27/95)! It's very different from the later versions: it features many different proper nouns (Angelica "Angel" Devereaux), a strange callsign for Blair ("Dodger") and a very unusual twist on the traitor subplot. The previously scanned Second Draft (9/21/97) and the Third/Shooting Draft (1/8/98) are also available. Along with the original Phoenix Pictures Memo, you now have all the tools to decide what went right and what went wrong with the Wing Commander movie's story!
If you've got anything Wing Commander related that you think should be archived, contact loaf@wcnews.com. I've just moved to Austin, so I'm happy to take care of picking up and returning anything!
There were two editions of this meeting already - last year's FreeSpace Summer Meeting I (FSM I, August 2003) and FreeSpace Winter Meeting (FWM I, January 2004). Just like the other two meetings, FSM II is going to take place in Bialystok (North Eastern Poland). Many tournaments and competitions are taking place on FSM II. Yet the biggest attraction of this convention is a chance to meet many people you knew before only from the Internet.Hmm.. well.. we guarantee 25 hours of great fun each day at Dragon*Con!Meeting is open for anyone interested in what was said above. There is NO Entrance Fee. We guarantee 24 hours of great fun during each day of our meeting.
Well, in the middle of August I was contacted by Raptor, the guy behind the "Holding The Line" WC related sites and I was asked if I'm willing to contribute anything to the further development of HTL sites. We spoke about 3D models of course. Well after short discussion I agreed on helping Raptor to create some nice looking images of different WC ships. Those images required the models of course. So my first task was to create 2 cruisers based on Tallahasse design.Well I didn't have any of the Tallahasse type cruiser, so I spent a few day creating one. I've made low-poly count model to use in various games-mods-whatever and the model with a little bit more detail. When I finished the Tallahasse model, I began my work on those 2 new cruisers. First one was Barham class cruiser, which is 1/3 bigger than Tallahasse type itself. Second one was Stealth Cruiser - Nemesis, which pretty much kept the original design of Tallahasse except some additional parts, which make you to understand that its really the Stealth Cruiser.
3Map Games development company is pleased to announce that the work on beta of Homeplanet: Play With Fire is complete. The much anticipated Play With Fire is add-on to the original HomePlanet, award winning spacesim of the 2003 year. Players will take a role of young Clan Leader's nephew, who will ensure the security of the new Clan's home planet. The add-on contains not only new storyline, new heroes and space ships, but long awaited multiplayer mode. With the Play With Fire players will be able to challenge their piloting skills battling other players via LAN or Internet.The company is still looking for a publisher for North America and Europe. More screenshots and a demo can be found on the website. Some of their ships remind me a little of Wing Commander and Freespace designs.
Homeplanet is a classic space combat simulator, based on a real Newtonian physic model. Some similar games: X-Wing series, Wing Commander, Freespace. The gameplay will take approximately 30-40 hours, while the possibility to take alternative missions may extend the time.
It is a bit light, but it shows a hellcat coupled to a pair of generators (for the lasers) in a hangar bay. The pilot in front has another flight suit compared to the one worn by Space Force pilots. This is because the pilot in question is a Marine pilot. Also the helmet features an additional sun protective visor for orbital duties.
Q: What happened to the devs?
A: The E&B team is being moved onto several other projects, most notably Ultima X: Odyssey. Visit http://www.uxo.ea.com for more information.
Slashdot recently ran an article that featured a subscription analysis for various massively multiplayer games. It's interesting to see where they all actually stand relative to one another over time. Although Slashdot killed the original page, a mirror has surfaced here.
The Korea based Lineage game stands above all others at nearly 3 million registered users. Lineage II has nearly half that already, but again, these are mainly in South Korea. For mmo games that are more popular in North America or Europe, Everquest and Final Fantasy XI each carry around half a million subscribers. Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Ragnarok Online both come in at about a quarter million. Since the charts go back all the way to 1997, it's interesting to see how UO was the lone player for several years until Everquest and Asheron's call became popular. EA's Motor City Online, which was shut down last year, shows a clear peak and decline, as does the Sims Online. Earth & Beyond, which EA will be shutting down later this year, doesn't seem to have passed 40,000 users. The space sim Eve Online is showing steady growth to 50,000, and there is no data for NetDevil's Jumpgate. You can find the graphs for yourself here.
All pilots up, this is not a drill!
LOAF: You've got us: Dragon*Con was all an elaborate excuse to watch girls change clothes.
Tye: Like an idiot or a true fan (you decide), I was humming the scramble music from WC1 right here, and it kept going until several hours later.
ChrisReid: It doesn't get much cooler than suiting up in Confed flight suits with other Wing Commander fans.
I'm really excited about the 2004 gallery. This year we'll have more cameras, more experience taking good pictures and a new plan to get the gallery to you in a timely fashion.
Madden NFL 2005 sold more than 1.35 million copies at retail stores within the first week, making it the biggest week one launch of a Madden NFL Football game in the franchise's fifteen year history.Additionally, over 300,000 new accounts have been formed for the online PS2 and XBox versions.
The first is a 'cover' art of the comic showing the main character with a hellcat behind her.
The second shows Tolwyn and and a young child (the main character)
I think it might be a picture drawn by assembly code on old hardware, but I'm not sure. It might just be a random picture drawn on a Spectrum ZX, which seems to be their platform of choice.Compare that to..
Command & Conquer Generals, Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour, Earth & Beyond v.1, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, SimCity 4 v1.0, Freedom Force 1The high profile Need For Speed Underground doesn't appear on the list, and certain games have a version denoted. Unfortunately it appears that C&C Generals might have some issues with the new software.
Thanks to our fighting men and women, the SO Fiction Index isn't only fixed... it's more complete than ever! Would You Like To Know More?If you'd like to read the backstory to Secret Ops, check out the index here. At the bottom we've added the Blue Horizon Lost Fiction and the Newsgroup Lost Pre-Fiction. LOAF's currently on the way back to Austin, so don't expect to hear from him this week if you've recently sent him something.
Void War is somewhat experimental in a lot of ways, and probably owes more of an ancestry to games like Asteroids, Spacewar, Descent, and Wing Commander. We do have pick-ups in Void War, however, which will inevitably draw comparisons. But while I was loathe to put them in at first because they were 'unrealistic' - quite frankly they increased the fun and challenge of the game by an order of magnitude, so they were just The Right Thing To Do.
Yes! Sign me up for EA SPORTS Premium Pass presented by Dodge for Madden NFL 2005, FREE through August 1, 2005. I understand that because Dodge is presenting EA SPORTS Premium Pass, regularly $19.99, my credit card will not be charged until after August 1, 2005 and that I have the option to cancel at any time before then.The pass highlights your name in the game, gives access to message boards and other content. A structure of this kind sets a new precedent, at least on this scale. It's quite a bit different than subscription based MMO games, and I wonder what sort of features will be leveraged in the future for first class customers.
I authorize EA to share my EA account membership information with Dodge, and I allow Dodge to contact and/or present me with offers and promotions. Use of that information is subject to the DaimlerChrysler Privacy Statement.
E-BOREDOM: How did your collaboration with David Govett work for the original Wing Commander game for the PC?You can read the entire interview here.THE FAT MAN: Govett was, and even more today is, an amazing natural-born composer. He's refined his art so much over the years that it would blow anybody away. At the time that I was asked to do Wing Commander, Dave had only composed simple little boopy-beepy Nintendo tunes for me. I had no idea that he had had those two main Wing Commander tunes (the main theme and the dogfight music) in his head since high school.
Done from scratch in LW 5.5. Fighter 36,000 polys, terrain 8,000 polys. Steamer fog and light (sun). This is my first LW scene. I hope you like it, thanks Rich.
The Wing Commander series has always focused on the combat pilot. "Wing Commander - CAG" places you instead in the seat of a Commander, Air Group, responsible for several, perhaps dozens of fighters at once. It's Wing Commander on the next level. Four missions and dozens of ships and weapons are included with this v1.0 release. To play, you'll need a JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installed on your computer - go to http://java.sun.com for details. If there's any errors or crashes, contact me or post on my forum - you can never have too many testers. Enjoy!
Most of the ships now have refined and upgraded graphics which look a lot sharper then their predecessors, and most of the WC1 and WC2 Kilrathi fighters and capships now have compilation pics. You will even see a picture of the WC Standoff's newest Stiletto fighter as well.Their ships section now features very cool graphics thanks to the creations of the Saga and Standoff teams. Head on over and check it out.Much thanks to Starman, Eder and Lynx of the WC Saga and Standoff teams for going out of their way to donate pictures to our cause.
There isn't much we can say about how to use it - you should have no trouble compiling it if you have experience with WCP Pascal... and if you don't, then you probably won't look too closely at the source anyway ;).You can download the source package from the UE site.
Halman sent us this picture for our birthday, and it also didn't make it to the main lineup. But now you can see it here!
Wing Commander 3 Making Of (290mb)
Wing Commander 3 Trailer XXL (66mb)
Dedicated readers may remember several months back when I revealed the story of the Warrior King - possibly the strangest crossover in TV history (and the only one involving Wing Commander). Basically, Star Trek's Michael Dorn played a 'warrior king' who travelled between all four of USA's saturday morning cartoons... starting in Street Fighter and ending in Wing Commander Academy. In the past, we've only offered the Wing Commander portion of the story for download... but thanks to PAL DVDs and eBay dubs the entire crossover is now available to you!
Part One - Street Fighter ("The Warrior King") - here
Part Two - Savage Dragon ("Endgame") - here
Part Three - Mortal Kombat ("Resurrection") - here
And thanks to Killer for once again hosting high resolution Academy files! You're the best!
And as always, you can find Wing Commander Academy's Recreation episode (the conclusion to the crossover) here. Relive the entire epic (?) saga (?) yourself! All three episodes are encoded in DivX ;-) 5.11 and weigh in at about 200 megabytes each.
The teaser trailer the WC Saga team did last year's CIC Birthday was met with good feedback, but the biggest criticism was that there wasn't any plot to go with the FX, it was just a bunch of gameplay footage. Well, that's going to change starting now.This is the new Wing Commander Saga teaser trailer, with a strong emphasis on our flagship campaign, set in the events of Wing Commander 3. We made cutscenes and dialogue in a style that was of the Wing Commander 3 teaser trailer from way back.
Stuff to say upfront: with the exception of the very last scene, everything is straight from the in-game engine. All the voices have been recorded by Saga voice actors and not ripped from Freespace 2. Music is just for trailer purposes only, it won't be in the actual game.
The Reckoning's Bob McDob checks in with an artsy reinterpretation of the final losing scene of Wing Commander III. He'd darned well better animate Pepper crushing someone's skull for next year!
#WingNut regular/talented artist (how's that for an epitaph?) Filler has made us some neat birthday wallpaper:
Hey all, Raptor hereIn honour of the CIC's birthday, we're presenting an HTL double header, parts three and four of "Loud And Clear". As you've seen previously, a combined strike by three Confederation carrier groups has taken out an enemy dreadnaught and decimated its escorting battlegroup. The Nephilim are not beaten yet however, and are more than capable of hitting back. As before, these chapters are brought to you by the teamwork of Joe "Wraith" Guida of the Yorktown battlegroup, the Auriga writing team, and Shaun Rashid of the TCS Endeavour. Please send any and all comments Joe at captpowell1@earthlink.net, and he'll pass them along to his fellow writers.
Part Three is at: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~theraj/archives/ch188.htm
Part Four is at: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~theraj/archives/ch189.htm
I also want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the good work done by the CIC. It's been close to a decade since the last official WC product was released, and by all rights the WC community should either be dead or consist of a few people getting together to wax nostalgic about the "good old days". Instead, we've got mods like Unknown Enemy, WC Saga and Standoff (to name just a few) which are new WC games in all but name, we've got HTL approaching novel trilogy length, we've got RPGs, websites and fan made reference sources galore. And central to all that has been the CIC and its staff, who have supported the community generously with time, knowledge and resources. Happy birthday, and many happy returns.
Best, Raptor
Freelancer narrowly beat Freespace in our previous poll, each getting close to a third of the vote. If you combine the scores for Freelancer and Starlancer they win by a good margin.
This time we'd like to know how long you've been a Wing Commander fan. Previous polls can be found here. You can send any poll suggestions to news@wcnews.com.
I would like to thank all of you who participated in our shortened game. We had many knowledgeable fans, and some close scores, both of which made for an entertaining game. Congratulations to Black Joker, Bob McDob, Tolwyn, and Viper61, for answering every question correctly. Prizes for our four winners, and a number of other participants, were awarded during the birthday celebrations in #Wingnut. Details will be posted here, and in the news, shortly.We're currently giving prizes to the winners in #Wingnut. Official listings will be posted soon.
Bob McDob has sent us five pretty screenshots from the Reckoning mod for Digital Anvil's Freelancer. They show off Perry, New Constantinople, Bearcats and more! Check them out:
I know a lot of people will tell you that Wing Commander is dead -- but look around. It's been six years since Secret Ops came out, and we still get as many visitors each day at the CIC as we did back then. We still get as many posts to the chat zone each day. We still get as many new users impressed with the games. EA might not realize it yet - it might be years before they really get it again - but Wing Commander won't die.
So, lets take a moment to recognize the people out there keeping Wing Commander and Wing Commander fandom alive. The CIC is just a small part of all this - we're a skeleton that helps keep this together, but we wouldn't be anything without the efforts of literally hundreds and hundreds of people around the world.
Certainly, nothing is higher profile than the big Wing Commander mods - Standoff, Saga, Reckoning, Unknown Enemy, Fleet Action and all the others. I'll tip my glass to any one of them - you're consumate, dedicated professionals with a damned noble goal. Hell, any group of people who can make Freespace look good deserves all the fame in the world.
And thanks to all the communities out there! The alt.games.wing-commander newsgroup, the Ace's Club, #Wing-Commander on the DALnet, WC Revival, WingCenter and the CIC's own Chat Zone. Nothing makes us remember Wing Commander like getting together and making real friends out of love and respect for the games. I've met my best friends in the world because of online Wing Commander groups.
And to some of the unsung heroes: the guys out there volunteering their free time running tech support at the forums and elsewhere. Helping people run the games in modern Windows and fix their Prophecy sound acceleration problems is a tireless, thankless job that only a handfull of people are smart enough to do... but in my mind it keeps the games alive and shows the spirit of the community better than anything else. I'm in awe of the effort you guys put in - thanks.
I know it's been a hard year - Origin's office in Austin was a big symbol to everyone that a new Wing Commander project could appear at any time. It was a big loss for us and for gaming and culture in general for EA to close it. I asked Chris Roberts to comment on the situation, and this is the response he sent me:
Its really sad, but the writing was on the wall once both Richard and I had left as there really weren't any strong creative wills left to drive the company or the worlds that Richard and I had created. It is doubly sad as I still love the Wing Commander world and on more than one occasion have told EA that I would be willing to shepherd / create another Wing Commander for EA - especially given what could be done with the state of the current technology - It has advanced significantly where I think I could really push the story telling and immersion into the world of the Confederation and the Kilrathi to a level never seen before... The sticking point has always been one of control... I'm not willing to be an in-house employee of EA in order to make another WC. I have offered to create the game with a team of free-lancers as an outside developer, but I think EA are a little worried about investing a large amount (which another WC would take) into an outside developer that they didn't have full control of. Who knows, EA may change their mind and I would be happy to put a team together to make one more WC for everybody, but in the meantime I'm pretty busy with all my film exploits that have being going pretty well.He's still out there - so are lots of other developers who love the series - and we're still here. Lets see what the next year brings.Hope all is well with you and thanks again for everything you've (and your team at WCNEWS) have done for Wing Commander... It's very cool to see something that started out as a rough idea in my head at the end of 1988 / beginning of 1989 still stay with people 15 years later... Its why I started making games in the first place...
Anyway, stick around, we've got some pretty neat prizes to give out and some big updates to the CIC that I hope you'll all enjoy!
Featuring...
If you need help connecting your IRC client just check our #Wingnut section, or just use our Java Client.
Top text: Last year ORIGIN set a new standard in the world of pc games... And now they want to do it againSounds like a great game!Top-right-corner text: WING COMMANDER II
Wing Commander lets you feel playing a cinematic movie. There's no game that can be compared to it. (PC Player)
This is definitely a candidate for game of the year. Wing Commander is one of the most exciting games ever released. (Ace)Bottom text:
o Completely new graphics - programmed with the newest 3D techniques
o Dynamic Intelligence - the better you fly, the better your opponents will fly
o Totally new adventures - new space ships, equipment and much more
o Steady replay - watch your moves from spectator perspective
o Digital speech - each character has their own voice
o An experience just like Cinema - you're the star in this story!
Question 9: Name an inhabited Confederation world that was the victim of a Kilrathi biological attack.You can email your answers to trivia@wcnews.com or fill out the form. This year's winners will be announced at the CIC party tomorrow, and winners will receive CIC playing cards. If you win you might even be able to choose between bridge size or poker size cards. We have both lying around.Question 10: Name the gas giant of the Kilrathi system in which the Tarawa hid in order to conduct repairs?
Bonus 9: Name the planet that is the capitol of the Haka clan circa 2670.
Bonus 10: Name a large gas giant that inhabits the same system as Buford's World.
Time has been going incredibly fast and we are now three days away from our biggest event of the year. I really look forward to the CIC Birthday as a refreshing point to collect ourselves, get some good work done and talk to a lot of CIC visitors at the same time. We have very busy schedules, so we never accomplish near as much as we'd like, but I think each year we put together some fun and interesting content to show off. Next week you guys will get to see some giant cool projects LOAF has been working hard on for many months. A number of dedicated fans have been working on other things that we'd like to showcase then.
At the appointed time, we will be updating the front page with the new content for everyone to see. If you're not busy then, you should stop by our online party in #Wingnut at 7:00 pm Eastern US time (4:00 pm Pacific and 11:00 pm GMT). It's really simple to use the web chat interface if you've not been there before. I've taken a smaller role in the new content creation this time around, so I'll have a lot more time to host the party and see what you guys are up to. I'd like to hear your thoughts are on what the CIC should be doing and share my ideas on Wing Commander directly with fellow fans.
I mentioned earlier that in addition to the aforementioned door prizes we'll be giving away throughout the event, there will be a few extra surprises. This one arrived just in time.
E-BOREDOM: Before starting work on composing music for Wing Commander III, did you listen to any of the music from the previous Wing Commander games?You can read the entire interview here (restored here). If you want more, you can also listen to an audio interview we did nearly six years ago in our infoburst section.GEORGE OLDZIEY: The only music from prior WC games that I listened to was the few select themes that the producer, Chris Roberts, wanted me to quote or emulate in Wing Commander 3. You may remember that there is a reference to the old Wing theme in a fanfare before the opening credits music for WC3. Also, there was some music from the old games that was used for "running to your ship" that Chris wanted to emulate. Other than that, I was pretty much on my own. I'd have to say that the great Star Wars and Star Trek scores that were out at the time were inspirational for me and for Chris as well.
I have been able to port over most of the stable code thus far without any problems. This screenshot will show the Local Map navigation view. Here you can see within short range sensors what is out there like planets, other ships, mines, starbases, tech dealers etc.This should be fun when it's ready.
I found the monsters.
Work? School? Summer camp? Or even lunch with Aunt Ida? Not if we can help it... Whether your predicament is jury duty, the chicken pox, or just a "one-day" flu, print out one of the PDF files below, and make sure you'll be right where you should be on August 10th.They've even provided the fake jury duty notices and doctors' notes. Isn't that nice of them? The CIC Birthday is just one week away and we hope you can join us in #Wingnut for the event. We officially start the party on August 10 at 7:00 pm Eastern US time (4:00 pm Pacific and 11:00 pm GMT). We'll have a bunch of cool prizes and surprises for people on that day. If you've never used irc before, just use our simple Java interface to check things out and join us. Feel free to stop by earlier to confirm the times in your zone and hang out.
You can email your answers to trivia@wcnews.com or fill out the form. Good luck!Question 9: Name an inhabited Confederation world that was the victim of a Kilrathi biological attack.
Question 10: Name the gas giant of the Kilrathi system in which the Tarawa hid in order to conduct repairs?
Bonus 9: Name the planet that is the capitol of the Haka clan circa 2670.
Bonus 10: Name a large gas giant that inhabits the same system as Buford's World.
Yay, Doom's out. Now there's finally a reason to upgrade your computer beyond Wing Commander Secret Ops (if you're not into Command & Conquer). I'm too afraid to progress to a point where there are actual monsters, so here are some pictures of the bathroom. I was testing 800x600 and medium detail when I grabbed these.
I ran into a problem getting my USB joystick to work (MS Force Feedback 2). I finally stumbled onto the solution and thought I should share it in case people didn't know about this:Pretty simple solution for an annoying problem.1) Go to Control Panel / Game Controllers
2) Click "Advanced"
3) Set "Preferred Device" to your USB joystick. (This defaults to None).
That's it. After I did that, the joystick worked immediately in the game.. Woo!
Greetings, my name is trenthowell, and I am the newest team leader for the Wing Commander Invasion mod for Armada 1. This mod has gone through a number of revivals and subsequent deaths. In that time however, 3 of the 4 sides were finished. Only the Kilrathi still remain. About a month ago I got an urge to pick up WCI and finish it. I went to the forums of SGN and collected a pretty good size modding team. We're now up and running again, and looking to be well on our way to getting the Kilrathi side up. More info is available at our forums.It's always good to see mods actually get finished, so hopefully they can wrap things up soon.
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