Man of Vision: Multiplayer Added to Prophecy

When Wing Commander Prophecy was released in 1997, there was one notable flaw: the promised multiplayer component was missing, cut some months earlier in order to release the game when promised. This was a huge disappointment for Wing Commander fans, who had already formed online squadrons, bragged about their flying abilities and prepared to do battle in space. It was a crushing blow to the franchise as well: for all its grandeur, Wing Commander Prophecy could not compete in sales with the likes of multiplayer-capable games like Quake II. 'Would Origin issue a multiplayer patch?' was the question on everyone's lips. No, Origin GM Neil Young replied, it was technically impossible... but a future game would add the capability. Ultimately, neither outcome was to be.

Until today, some eight years later: we are proud to announce that HCl has accomplished the impossible. He has developed a patch reintegrating multiplayer into Wing Commander Prophecy. This is only the announcement - the project is still in testing. The current expectation is that it should be ready for release in about a month. It must be stressed that the software has already begun testing and that it works: during one attempt, four players in different countries managed to play the game smoothly together. In others, two and three players have played the game together on dialup connections. What remains now is simply to squash remaining bugs - something HCl is very, very good at.

Here's how it works: a host runs a special program to start while other players run a secondary utility which links them all together. The host launches Prophecy and everyone meets in the Simulator Pod for multiplayer combat!

The importance of this event can not be overstated- the single most asked for feature in Wing Commander has been added back where it belongs... by the fans! Look out, world: Wing Commander is back!

HCl has updated his website about the project - you can read all the impressive details here.

Prophecy Gets Even More Resolutions

Not satisfied with accomplishing the impossible by integrating multiplayer in to Prophecy, HCl has simultaneously been working on the latest version of his high res patch for Prophecy. Aside from fixing bugs from previous versions, the new patch also includes support for widescreen resolutions. As can be expected, it looks incredible. We've included a full size 1MB, 1680x1050 resolution version of the first screenshot below here, since the smaller version linked below just doesn't do it justice. The new version of the patch should be finished in about a month, just in time for the release of the multiplayer patch.