Paper Commander has a new resident model architect! Thunderchild has joined forces with Péricles to create fabulous paper Wing Commander ships. As a debut event, Paper Commander has been updated with five new ships - each one even includes an integrated paper stand!
The Arrow has few parts, but it's average difficulty to build. It's ideal for intermediate modelers.
We can't overestimate the value of fresh play tester eyes on the product. As developers, we look at the thing all day, everyday, and to be honest, we lose perspective. When we're able to watch a new "fresh to the game" player run through the game, we get to see the game play out in a whole new way. We get to see when things are good, but more importantly, with the aide of our new set of eyes we can't hide from something that's just not working.
This is, in fact, a fairly detailed look at the mechanics of space-robbing people in EVE Online. Or, at least, was - the mechanics have changed a lot in the past four years and I don't play the game so I don't know how relevant it still is.Still, it's fairly entertaining, considering that it's essentially a nine-minute lecture. I think what impresses me the most after the fact that somebody actually had the idea to do this is how professional the whole thing feels. The voicing is measured and precise, syncing up smoothly with the mouth animations. Key points are clearly illustrated with text and diagrams, interspersed with in-game video to help break it up. This all sounds like the criteria for judging a school presentation - but really, the overall effect is more striking than many professional presentations I've seen, so maybe what I'm really impressed with is how superior this is to Powerpoint.
This isn't actually tagged as Wing Commander, and there's nothing in it to betray its origins (unless you scroll down to the comments, I guess), but the structure of the presentation and general tone shows the creator is clearly familiar with the source material, so I'm glad that this isn't just some cheap excuse to use "retro" graphics without any consideration or even knowledge of where they come from.
First the ever popular Hydra. I actually modeled two sizes of this ship. the first was a little large, but I like the larger one. The second is closer to appropriate "scale" in so far/little as I generally care about scale. It's always about paintability to me.The second is the ever popular Kraken... which got so little attention in the game... Of course attention of that sort ends in one way, the only question is which side. Oh and clearly the lens flare is CG. Otherwise, as always, 100% airbrushed.
Some have been asking what features will be in 1.7. I'm about to get married, so the wedding is my priority, and I won't be able to release anything until afterwards. But here's what I already got doneAnd here's some items that are partially done
- AI uses decoys against dumbfires
- Display shield flash when hitting shielded part of a cap ship
- Music change on Torpedo run
- Change shield color
- Add after debriefing movie.
- Add a timer with a callback for scripting
- Show ship name in the viewer
- In-game lua console
- weapons xml tag
- Mission timer wrong when pausing
- Multiple friendly wings
- More comms, and the AI to use them. For example, the AI congratulates you on a kill. Announces it is taking over the wing when the wingleader dies.
- More interactive menus in the gameflow. Buttons will highlight when you mouse over them, the scrollbars work. More stats and fiction in the ship viewer.
- An improved mission editor
- Give the user a choice of joystick
Seeing as how you have a well rounded engine already...and I have ALL the models I need...how about this? I have plenty of ideas on my own, as well as plenty of models, sprites, and sound f/x. I'm going to have some fun with this and see where I can take it.Next on the list:
I'm still not sure whether I want to be my own pilot or someone pre-created. I guess it's only a secondary problem. The real trick is making a good combat experience, and then enhancing that experience with a story line. At least I already have the plot and some minor characters already taken care of.
- Add some borrowed audio to the animated "face shots" I already have. This will be for communication traffic. I have all the characters from the first war portrayed.
- Build a Cat's Eye recon plane
- Import all the Pods
- Create some simple missions to test everything to this point.
Thanks a lot you guys, I will be building some good desktop pics for you when time permits!As for the various game engines out there, they're all great, but I'm going to keep my grubby mits on these for a while, before I decide on any kind of release. Who knows what the future will bring?
Here's a quick update on the Raptor, she's a lot dirtier now!
StarPagga is an action based 3D space combat game. As a new member of the Azure Squadron it's your task to attack and defend in a variety of space environments. Choose one of four different spacecraft and take to the stars alongside your wingman in a series of dangerous dogfights against superior enemy numbers.You can play multiplayer games over a LAN, enabling you to battle with your friends or alongside them whilst at the same location. It is great fun to talk to your wingman face to face and to fight the AI bots. This is particularly good for iPod users who will have internet access with on a LAN, but not necessarily whilst out and about.
Internet multiplayer is also a key feature of Starpagga. It means that iPhone users can play online wherever they are, providing there is good reception on their network. It makes the game incredibly accessible, as you don't have to be in the same room to play Starpagga together online, or even in the same country!!
There are a variety of different space environments available. You can fly around Saturn's rings, or you may need to duck and dive through the dense asteroid fields. The deep fog plasma clouds, where visibility is challenged really test your skills. At the same time, the orbital construction zones are full of dogfights and will require a degree of control. Playability for this game is paramount!
Perhaps less well known, I thought I may as well make a vector image of the symbol used in Prophecy too. It might save some work for others, later on.
Did anyone out there make a a Steltek-drone colored Easter egg this year? Send it in!
I managed to convert my German P2D into an English one (thanks Mincemeat for the files) and noticed some small differences:criticalmass suggests NHK stands for "Netzwerk für Handel & Kommunikation."For those who are interested, the following files are needed to convert the game into a different language:
- The shortcut NHK instead of CCN in the booth welcome screen. I still don't know for what the 3 letters NHK could stand for as the text below actually gives the shortcut KKN which is also a quite accurate translation from the english text
- A different background in the P.A.D. with a quite simple done removal of the smaller "Personal Access Directory" text
- The small added suffix "verstorben" (eng "deceased") in the german Larn Regis and Douglas Pemtur entries as well as the missing title "Nurse" ("Pfleger") in the german Douglas Pemtur entry
- The different name of the papogod clan which is called papago in german. However even the english one isn't consistent as it is called papagod in the text and papogod in the headline. I wonder what's actually the correct name of this clan.
P.S.: it would be cool if someone with a French (or other language) version could post the pictures here too.
- Booth.iff - text in the booth like the welcome screen
- Dani.big - the audio of the ships computer voiced by Dani Behr
- Gameflow.iff - text that is displayed in menus (e.g. load game), pad (name of the transits, e.g "customs", "You Are Here"), planetary interior (e.g "exit to transit", "enter booth"), text between fmv's (the text of the 2 plot-choices), text of the various commodities, weapons, ships, systems, missiles, Bulletin board text "Reward"/"Tons"/"Hire
- Isets.iff - the audio that Lev Arris speaks between the FMV when the player has to make a plot-choice
- Mission*.iff (0-9,m,r) - the text of the missions and diary entries
- Pad.iff - the text on the P.A.D. like the "exit" button and the background images.
- Speech.big - the voices of the different pilots
Chris Roberts, Paul Mallinson, Mark Hamill and myself (front) in 1994 for Wing Commander 3 preview.
Upgrade Your Machine Now.The fall, Origin releases the biggest game of the year - Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger - starring Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, Malcolm McDowell and Tom Wilson. This Origin Interactive Movie will requirement 8 megabytes of RAM and a double-speed CD-ROM drive. Is your system ready?
And finally the Wormhole Gate with a Tiamat emerging through. Yes, I know scale is wrong as the Tiamat had to compact to go through, but eh. (~3" Diam)
These are early mock up promo shots--Origin continued to use them in catalogs for years. The original hope was to use Strike Commander's 3D engine for Privateer, which is why the early concept stuff looks like this.
The Raptors look pretty nasty when carrying Torpedos! I just love it when jets have a ton of ordanance hanging off the wings. Still have a lot of weathering, and yes, reducing panel lines to do...
Perhaps most notably, the usual cartoon rule that everything has to be wrapped up nicely by the end of every episode… is not in force. Academy isn’t afraid to end stories on a downer, or present war as something other a cheery, glorious adventure. In one early episode for instance, one of the main cast has to blow up a comrade who recently declared his love for her. In another, a legendary hero turns out to have taken a turn towards Nietzsche. In others, the show plays with the fact that the cast – as fighter and bomber pilots – aren’t privvy to the high-level tactical decisions being made elsewhere on the ship, and often have very distorted ideas of what they’re risking their lives for. None of this is desperately earthshaking for fiction as a whole, but for this timeslot, it’s good stuff. It’s also a rare case where this kind of spin-off has both slipped into canon, and generally been embraced by the fans.
The notes we received this weekend highlighted a shocking fact - many longtime CIC visitors still haven't watched the Wing Commander Academy series! WCA is a must-have for all Wing Commander fans, and it helps us eat through our bandwidth allowance too! We're frequently asked questions about the Wing Commander series that are explained through events depicted in the television show. The series follows the Tiger's Claw through a very exciting year in Wing Commander history. Grab all thirteen episodes, plus some special features, below.
NOTE: Wing Commander Academy episodes are no longer available for download. Please support the franchise by buying the complete DVD set through the link above.
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There's a new poll today that asks which 'wing commander' delivered the best mission briefings. Colonel Halcyon had the original games on lock, but there was more diversity in Wing Commander 2 and even Paladin got in on the action in Special Operations. Eisen, Blair and Wilford are sprinkled here and there in the later games. Commander Drake is the last one we see, but Clippy delivers some of the best lines in Secret Ops. Who was your favorite?
The old poll asked what setting would be the best for the next Wing Commander, and a pre-WC1 timeframe won out! The decade spanning WC1-2 and a post-Secret Ops game were also quite popular.
Nearly finished the new interface screen. Looks a lot neater, ordered an d manages to fit a lot of relevant info on the screen at once. Done 50% of the pseudo code for the re-code and know how I'm going to handle most of the data. I'm feeling that this should go pretty smoothly (as an experienced coder, I should know better than that).Then it's on to the briefings/debriefings and finally (if doable) the campaign file. I'm moderately excited!
About this model performing in a game: it has to much detail IMO. Games like Homeworld 2 have seriously limited detailed models. They do great things with textures, which give you a sense of detail and shapes, but the models are pretty basic. I never destined the ship for games, I just wanted to be able to see it because I loved it in the movie. I hope I'll find someone to texture it for mePS if anyone has good pictures of the Rapier and Broadswords from the movie, I would love to make them too and maybe detail the hangar in a separate setting.
We apologize for the lack of updates lately. We have been working hard on the beta test. ...Another work item are communications videos. When we came up with all of these capital ship, pilots, and other personas years ago, little did we know that eventually we would have to individually model and render each character to animated video. That is a lot of videos and time!
On the potential of remakes, he added: "When looking at a new bet, a new investment to make we always look at whether we should create a new IP, bring one back or have something in active growth right now that we can double down on."So we constantly look at ways to grow the recent category of titles like Burnout, Need for Speed, Road Rash are constantly things we think about. It's the same thing with the old Bullfrog IPs like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Powermonger, Magic Carpet, I can go on. So we do look at that stuff and are very cognisant of our past.
"The key thing for us is, if we do bring [any of those] back, the game has got to be good. I don't know about you but when I look back at GoldenEye, I think of it as this amazing game and the you go and play it and are like, 'Oh. Really?'. From our perspective we have to manage that element which makes things look nicer in the rear view mirror compared to what you have to do now in the modern day.
"Production values and game mechanics are very different than what you see on some of those IPs but trust me, it's a part of the asset of our company to have 25 years of IP and you'll see them come back in different ways at different times."
Fresh off the train from Germany, Immortal 4 is here!
Big Block Games is still very young. Our main game- Black Market- is in the process of emerging from the late Beta stage of its development, and there's a fair amount of work ahead for it. While the first campaign is now essentially complete, there are still several additional features to be implemented, not to mention a large number of future campaigns on the drawing board- our ambition is to gradually create a vast, dynamic universe to play in. In the meantime, we'll also be producing plenty of non-BM related titles to keep our lineup feeling fresh and varied.While our games will all feature significant quantities of free content- because hey, it's a global recession- we also intend to charge small amounts for premium content on our most popular products. Right now, the first Black Market campaign is available to purchase for $6.99, and until the Beta is complete we're giving away lifetime premium membership and permanent access to all future BM related items in return for your financial support.
Panel Lines! Modo has the wonderful feature of 3D Painting, which allows me to very quickly add panel lines across complex surfaces as I rotate and view the model in 3D Space. Just like painting a real model, without the thumbprints!Howard has previously covered the UV unwrapping process, but you can see how entire Raptor is textured from a single image (8192X8192 allows for just about the right level of detail) There's a lot of wasted space on the UV Map, partially because I'm lazy, and partially because I wanted to come back in and include the Cockpit Texture maps in the same image, and they'll need some space to do that.
This is just a rough workup of where I want the panel lines to be. I will go back in in Photoshop later, which allows for precise placing of rivets, screws and other tiny details.
Freddie Prince Jr, Saffron Burrows and Jurgen Prochnow star in a splashy videogame spin-off. Six hundred years into the future and human exploration has reached beyond Earth's galaxy. But the future is not so bright. As more galaxies mean more chances of alien hostility, Earth's existence hangs in the balance. This is an adventurous and courageous film of a battle against the odds as the threat of human extinction is all too eminent.-----------------------
The Human thirst for the unknown has resulted in an intergalactic war between the Terran Confederation and the ever so slightly scary, giant, tuscan-coloured rubber cats - the Kilrathi. Caught unawares, the Confederation fleet is ambushed in a random Kilrathi attack.
Earth's remaining pilots (about ten) courageously opt to tackle the vast Kilrathi fleet in what can only be described as a Pearl Harbour-esque suicide mission (with really un-cool outfits).
Instead of taking to the sky they take to space with all the banter ridden arrogance of fighter pilots similar to the likes of Top Gun and Pearl Harbour, with classic lines such as, "You've got balls" to which the reply is, "You should see 'em."
In order to save Earth, the NAVCOM unit with the hyperspace jump coordinates to Earth must be recovered from the Kilrathi's clutches. The fate of the world lies in the half-human, half-pilgrim pilot, 1st Lt. Christopher Blair (Freddie Prince Jr.), who has inherited special interstellar navigational abilities from his Pilgrim mother.
By fending of discriminatory remarks (due to his Pilgrim blood) with a constantly confused stare, and out of this world flying technique, he eventually wins over... everything, with all the emotion of a wet flannel.
Asteroids, alien attacks and death defying stunts are the elements of this basic and unconvincing sci-fi adventure, although its best not to take it too seriously.
As science-fiction goes, Wing Commander is decidedly un-cool, yet ironically, probably the most realistic depiction of future space travel... with a little rust around the edges.
How about some Wing Commanderified real life (or not) fighters? :)
I made two versions because I couldn't decide which would be more useful. One is a large, hi res version of the tree, with (very abridged) notes on the "back" (page 2, but the back if you print double-sided) as to what controls the branching. It's essentially a "Quick Reference Guide". The other is a full document, a "Branching Guide", that explains the branching in more detail, but has a much lower-res version of the tree (because it had to fit into 8.5 x 11 to be printable with the text).------------------------------
I did confirm that "Rescue Run" and "Search and Rescue" are two different missions, and which you get is determined by where you wingmen eject (if any of the pilots eject on the patrol prior to the jump point battle in "Rearguard Duties" you get "Search and Rescue", but if all the ejections happen at the jump point you get "Rescue Run". Incidentally, getting Rapier pilots to eject to confirm this, when they're only facing a few Kilrathi on patrol is an adventure in and of itself...I ultimately had to, very carefully (to avoid being branded a traitor), "help" the Kilrathi along to get one of them to eject.
Trying to play-test these branches led to a number of interesting and extra-hard mission challenges like this. For example, trying to *not* kill the Ralatha in, I think, "Making Way" to confirm that that lead to the Ep 4 losing path was fun...I eventually treated it like a fleet defense mission where I would park near it and try to shoot down my wingmen's torpedoes. This ultimately worked. However, trying to fleet defend a hostile capship when I couldn't shoot at the bombers and while there are scores of enemy fighters, and very good pilots in those bombers...let's say it was...interesting. It led me to believe that, by far the easiest way to get to the Ep 4 winning path was to take the Ep 3 losing path...way easier than saving the Verdun and the Clydesdales/Sao Paulo. Anyway, a lot of fun times like that.
We now have a home. It's a simple page atm but take a look.
The Development ProcessGame development at Origin Systems follows a fairly structured and organized approach. When a designer comes up with an idea for a game, the designer submits his idea to a review board. The review board evaluates the idea and decides whether or not it is worth investigating. If a game design is approved, the designer gets a software engineer (programmer) to help develop the idea further. What follows is a period of research and development where the designer and programmer work closely together to build the basic framework of the game.
After a period of time, the designer and programmer take their results back to the review board. At this point, if the game still looks like a winner, more funding is provided and a development timetable is set. Artists and more programmers begin working on the project. Programmers and designers work hand-in-hand to get the artwork and data merged together into a workable game.
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Gameplay Design
The main goals in the design of Privateer were to create a commerce trading system within the Wing Commander universe. Another goal was to provide a game with random missions that players could play over and over again. That freshness ensures the game never ends.
Some initial ideas never quite made it into the final game. One such idea involved player finances. The game initially enabled players to get loans from banks or other (less reputable) characters. In this scenario, you might run into debt, and be pursued by creditors or bounty hunters which were after the price on your head. Privateer took about a year and a half to make, and so during this period, many such ideas were dropped while others were developed and added to the game.
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Music and Sound Effects
Music and sound effects have become just as important to video games as they are to motion pictures. You would hardly expect to see a new feature film without a soundtrack and spoken dialog. Likewise, all computer games today have either a sound track, digital sound effects, or both.
The ship is getting close to being finished. Hope I can find someone who can help me texture it, because I have zero experience in it. Don't forget I am still learning stuff in Google Sketch up, so it's still a learning curve. I have remodeled a few things and redid a few parts. The underside is done, though I feel it's a bit empty. At the moment I have no idea what to put there to change this.
I think it still looks like an intergalactic biplane, but I am starting to like it a bit more. Had some fun detailing the engines, too.
Apparently, the game might always use the same palette. Of the various GIFs AD posted that I checked, GAME.GIF and the various CV-xx-yy GIFs seem to have exactly the same 256-color palette, the only thing that varies is how those 256 colors are used. I speculate that GAME.GIF defines a lookup table for gamma levels, while the CV GIFs define conversion tables in order to stylize the textures according to a given criteria (eg. pirate clans... Chirichan might use the Yellow conversion table, while the Kindred may use the Red one, and so on).I made a small script for playing with this color conversion mechanism a bit, using textures from spacetex.iff (the textures are already unpacked once you run inflate on them, no need to run them through the RLE unpacker). It seems to work out Pic attached on this thread, in case you're curious.
Regarding text compression: Thanks LOAF! That is actually very useful information and will allow me to try a few things out before diving into the EXE.
AD, I suspect those C file references might be related to the BRender engine. It was a really nice engine, I wish I could take a peek at it some day.
This is me running Wing Commander 1 on the Nintendo DS by using DSx86. It runs quite well, if a bit slowly. Sorry for the shaky footage - it was quite hard holding the cellphone in one hand and playing the game with the other. :)
It is about 200 years in the future and we have just discovered wormholes, and are learning how to navigate them. Wormholes connect galaxies and solar systems and allow you to fly across the entire breadth of the universe. Your goal as a commander in the Frontier Wars will be to explore and secure sector after sector of the galaxy.
- An engaging sci-fi storyline chronicles the battle between three unique races over 16 episodic missions.
- Simultaneously control up to 16 interplanetary battle maps through the use of wormholes.
- Exploit an all new dimension of strategic possibilities with Conquest’s exclusive supply line management features.
- Dispatch orders to up to six AI fleet admirals who implement your mission objectives, assess threats and react with organized tactics.
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