Academy Fan Mission Pack From 1997 Resurfaces

Chronicles of the Claw Returns To Vega Sector

“Okay people, let’s get started.” Colonel Halcyon began. “First, the good news. Boxman’s escape pod was successfully recovered, he has a broken leg, but the doctor says he should be fine. Now on to business.” He pointed towards the map screen. Blair already knew what the mission would entail, Halcyon had briefed him in private a few minutes before the other pilots had arrived. The plan was risky, but it seemed the best option under the circumstances. “The Tiger’s Claw is currently on course for the Blytheheart jump point. We are taking a route that will take us past this pocket in the asteroid belt, where intelligence we have gathered shows the location of a Snakeir class carrier.”

“Now, up until this point, we have been sending out signals indicating that we do not know the location of the Kilrathi battlegroup. We want the Kilrathi to believe that we think the system is clear, and will proceed with standard escort to Blytheheart. And that is exactly what the Kilrathi will see when we pass their location. We will fly at standard cruising velocity with a six fighter escort screen.” Soft murmuring began to fill the briefing room.

“Sir, we’re going to just cruise by the kats with minimum escort?” Grunt asked.

“Yes Lieutenant. When we pass the Kilrathi battlegroup, we expect that they will emerge from the asteroid belt and attempt to attack us from the rear. As soon as we get indication of the Kilrathi attack, the Tiger’s Claw will immediately go to battle stations. We will have fighters standing by, already prepped in the launch tubes. They will launch and proceed to attack the Snakeir and their escorts. We will continue launching wings as quickly as possible until all fighters have taken off. This is a full smash, everyone is going up.”

Simple Hack Brings Armada Editor Into The 64-Bit Era

Sorted! It was much simpler than I thought. Following the instructions in the readme file did not do the trick for me, so I fiddled about a bit. Here's how it works:

1) Backup Data.tre in case something goes wrong.
2) Unzip the files to the Armada root folder.
3) Using DOSBox, navigate to the Armada folder, and run the following command: "Tresplit data.tre". This will unpack DATA.TRE so that it becomes editable.
4) Run Armedit.exe, and edit to heart's content. Select "Update Data.tre" when done.
5) Run the game; it should launch normally.

Voila! I've tested it sucessfully by equipping the Arrow with a mass driver. Hope someone finds this useful!

Kilrathi R&D Kicks Into High Gear in Homeworld Mod

The Kilrathi Empire has a massive selection of fighters and capital ships, with a few sneaky tricks up its sleeve. Asteroid fighters without any visible icons to see them from afar, long-range antiship missiles on many capital ships, advanced heavy fighters, electronic warfare crafts, heavy escort corvettes and frigates... The kitties are angry, and it shows!

The Kilrathi faction has a quite extensive tech tree for its units, using the system combining the Hiigaran and Vaygr logic: each category has general upgrades for all classes, and each class has specific upgrades. The thing is: different classes have different type of upgrades, furthering the specialization of each unit.

For example, let's take the capital ships: You will be able to buff the damage and the HP of all your capital ships through global research projects, but the light destroyer will have specialized projects to increase its speed. The heavy destroyer will improve its accuracy, the light cruiser will have first some line of sight upgrade, then anti-stealth detectors, while the heavy cruiser will get regen rate improvements. The Dreadnought, I hear some people ask? Well, it will have a massive and very expensive redesign upgrade that will give it an internal copy of the Kilrah Imperial Palace to make sure our favourite Princeling never feels away from home... and does nothing to the combat capabilities. :)

A Piece Of Cutaway Poster History For Sale

Two Milestones Are Better Than One!

Today also marks more than 12 years of continuous front page updates at the CIC! We don't always have earth-shattering news each day, but I continue to be genuinely impressed at the community's unwavering commitment to the series. 2015 is really hitting its stride with a number of fantastic fan projects in high gear. You can take a trip down memory lane in our news archives here.

Mark Hamill and Chris Roberts Together Again?

Mark Hamill engaging in a secret project on its own isn't necessarily huge news. Often, actors are restricted by NDA from disclosing movies they are working on until the studio is ready to reveal them. However, when combined with the fact that Chris Roberts is currently at Andy Serkis' UK-based Imaginarium directing the performance capture shoot for the Wing-Commanderesque Squadron 42, fans have been putting two and two together. It also helps that one of the Star Citizen early stretch goals promised that at least one Wing Commander veteran would be returning for the S42 single player campaign.

Coincidence? Or resounding proof that Colonel Blair will soon be back in the cockpit where he belongs? You decide!

Nimble KF-227 Harasses Vega Supply Lines

Salthis! I made them a little small to improve the weight (mass) to thrust ratio, theoretically. Almost ready for a low-res, stop motion scene.

TCS Phoenix Still Holding the Line in Gemini

Ultima Art Project Moves Forward, But WC Element Still Possible

If you're not a Patreon follower of Denis Loubet, you may have missed the results from the recent vote for his next Origin-themed artwork. Unfortunately, Ultima fans won with a request for a new cover of Ultima VII. This is actually a very cool subject for Origin fans though as "The Black Gate" originally had just a stark black box! Denis will be consulting with Richard Garriott about what he might have imagined a properly illustrated cover to look like, so the results will be quite interesting for all.

The Wing Commander options in the poll placed around the middle of the pack of ten possible choices. But all is not lost for our heroic pilots, however! Mr. Loubet has acknowledged his significant support from the WC community and will likely find other opportunities to tide Wingnuts over in the future. In the mean time, fans are welcome to engage in open discussion about the glory days at Origin with this former senior OSI artist at the CIC Forums here.

Here is the breakdown:
=========
Ultima 7 Cover: 15
Ultima 2 Cover 14
Ultima Online Cover 0
Ultima Fiction Illustrations 9
Ultima Tableau Illustrations 14
Ultima Cover as Movie Poster 11
Generic Fantasy Characters 6
Wing Commander Portraits 8
WC/Ultima Crossover 10
WC/Ultima Cardboard Heroes 7
=========

The winner is #1! A real cover for Ultima 7!

It's interesting to note that everyone is apparently totally satisfied with the cover to Ultima Online, with 0 votes! ;-)

I will be quizzing Richard Garriott about what elements he would have wanted on the cover of The Black Gate if he had gone with an actual illustration. I'll let you know what he says!

The high counts for the U2 cover and Tableau illustrations shows a high Ultima bias in my fans so far. But the Wing Commander contingent just needs a few more voting fans to make things more interesting! Scold your friends who aren't already patrons!

I will try to sneak in something Wing Commander-ish at the same time for you guys.

I'd better get to work then!

Elite Dangerous Available For Mac

Take control of your own starship in a cut-throat galaxy.

Start with a small starship and a few credits, and do whatever it takes to get the skill, knowledge, wealth and power to stand among the ranks of the Elite.

400 Billion Star Systems. Infinite Freedom. Blaze Your Own Trail

In the year 3300, across the vast expanse of an epic, full-scale recreation of our Milky Way, interstellar rivalries flare as galactic superpowers fight proxy wars.

Some may know you as an ally; others will call you a pirate, a bounty hunter, a smuggler, an explorer, an assassin, a hero... Fly alone or with friends, fight for a cause or go it alone; your actions change the galaxy around you in an ever unfolding story.

LOAF Talks WC3 For A Good Cause

"Let's just say she could hypothetically cruise at a cool 500 kilometers per second..."

A long time during my childhood this ship was the most sexy thing in space I could imagine. I loved the Wing Commander series and especially Wing Commander 3 and 4 were my favourite ones.

This ship you can see here was created for an X3-Modification. The ship was already in-game and well... it was the death to all of its enemies. ;)

Behind the Scenes of the WC2 Demo

Yup, this is the WC2 announcement demo from winter CES in January '91. Those character closeups actually cost a huge percentage of our meager disk space, which is why the guard got cut from the final product.

This demo wasn't simply a promotional tool, it was a lab for trying out technologies for the game itself. Some of them worked--this was where I wrote what became WC2's voice system. And some of them didn't--Denis Loubet here was experimenting with sketching backgrounds, scanning them in and then coloring them in DPaint, and while it looks great in its own right, it wasn't clean enough to match the "pixel-perfect" style of the foregrounds.

You can find this demo on YouTube, where you'll get to hear some amazingly cringe-worthy voice acting. That's because we were crunching to get the demo done before Chris and Richard stepped on a plane, so the "actors" were just whoever happened to be around at 2am. The guard is Martin Galway, our audio lead; Prince Thrakath is Philip Brogden, designer/writer/programmer; and the Emperor, with the kind of gravely voice you can only get by sleeping under a desk three hours a night, is me.

Hari Sector Scans Reveal Gigantic Menace

The Dreadnaught is... magnificent. 52 turrets, hours of work to get them all done, and one hell of a fireworks show when it fires at the enemy.

Though, given the size of the ship, its death animation was kinda lacking as it went boom and just disappeared. So I added a new feature for the Kilrathi faction: wrecks for capital ships. Here's what remains of a combat group after someone let a kitten play with the self-destruct buttons.

WC Vega Sets Up Classic Dogfight

Scimitars. Are. Hard. I think I have discovered why we’re outnumbered out there. A Scimitar is a technological marvel, a balancing act.

The idea was to create two chassis, and then make the wing assembly detachable. There are over a dozen different paint schemes on the Scimitars, and having a different wing-set for each pilot would make it easy to pick out your favorite pilot in a picture of many. It didn’t go so well.

The problem boils down to materials. Cardboard is too flimsy to use as wings. Chassis foam is too brittle. Eventually, I broke down and used pastry foam, which worked, but the plaster came off, and the paint ate it, so it looks terrible. I will find something, even if I have to use balsa.

Dralthi are the best. Dralthi I/II’s are the Wing Commander Franchise Player. Easily recognized. Distinctive. Attractive. My Dralthi have cats’ ears because cats’ ears are cute, and cute sells. I might be getting better at this.

Bearcats Bagged By Border Worlders

There we go, textures!

It's worth noting that when Neil Armstrong was asked what his favorite airplane to fly was, his answer was a simple, one word, "Bearcat."

I like to think he'd of liked this one, too. :)

I love this ship, but I've never been able to get her in a shape I liked before. This one is... closer.

Lunchables Uploaded Reloaded With More McDowell

Make Or Break A Strategic Shakedown Cruise

Two Major Updates and many minor fixes:

1. The planets, refineries, mining etc. have to be fought for. No more sweeping through a system picking up installations. You need to bring the heavy guns to bear on each installation. Asteroids are easier than planets but still need to be fought for.

2. Ship Repairing now available. Just park your ship next to your ship yard, click on the repair button on the right ship details window and get it fixed. Only strength below 8 will be fixed and only up to 8. Credits will be deducted from your overall credits total for each point of strength renewal (1 strength point = 10% of ship cost/value).

Coming up:

Merchants will be harvesting goods from your planets and installations to keep your credit score ticking and will also keep your merchants busy.

Please keep playing testing and post your ideas and recommendations.

Digital Archeology Looks Behind WC1's Curtain

heat_seeking_missile_intelligence()
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/

void heat_seeking_missile_intelligence (int obj)
{
int exhaust_heat, target_ship, targ;

/*--------Intelligence used for heat seeking missiles ---------*/

// This is implemented wrong. Heat seekers need enemy to be facing away... -KLD
if (facing_to_target < 0 || ship_target[obj] == NONE)
{
/*-- If lock is lost on the target, look for closest "hotest" target --*/
ship_target[obj] = NONE;

viable_target_index = 0;
for (target_ship = your_ship; target_ship <= last_ship; target_ship++)

Majestic Vesuvius Sets Sail

A nearly finished model of the TCS-Vesuvius Class with a small Destroyer escort (which the Vesuvius could take out in a few moments :P ). The model uses currently two 2048x2048 maps - for the Homeworld engine this should be ok. ;-)

Flat Universe Preview Posted

Since you liked our screenshots let my give you some taste of the quality differences between version 0.6.5 and the one that will follow...

Go Big or Go Homeworld

Also, penny for your thoughts, everyone, about how to buff the poor Border Worlders in the final version of the mod and make them a valid faction to play. I intend to add a menu option to force a game to take place in an era or another, though there would be one "free for all" with everyone authorized. Anyway, one of the ideas was to give Border Worlders access to some light Kilrathi units as Melek reluctantly sides with the Heart of the Tiger, so stuff like corvettes and frigates, but it would be hard picturing a "super-unit" like the other factions will receive. Maybe some bigger advantage in resource or some non-conventional buffs, but I'm not sure what... oooooooh, just got an idea while writing this post: a sneak capture unit. A specially modified Avenger bomber with cloak and a capture function, or some way to neutralize defences remotely, like the vanilla game capture units neutralize weaponry on the target ship after some time...

Last Days of Denis Loubet's Patreon Vote

It looks at first glance that I'll be doing an Ultima cover, unless there's a sudden influx of Wing Commander fans.

It could happen.

--Denis

Comm Relay of the Future: The CIC on Social Media

Escapist Searches for the Best Battles

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this left an impression on me simply because of how long it took me to get to this point when I played the game as a kid. Wing Commander 2 is not an easy game and it kicked my ass back and forth when I was younger. By the time I actually reached this mission, Shadow had spent hours on my wing, following my orders and keeping me company in-game. Her death made me genuinely sad and it's always memorable to me when a game can do that.

Digital HD Wing Commander Discounted to $10

Revisit the Golden Age of Space Sims

Wing Commander sold with abandon and became one of the defining PC gaming experiences of the early 1990s. ... Wing Commander, in particular, has one of gaming's grandest legacies. The Privateer spin-off series were outstanding, combining some Elite-style elements into the Wing Commander universe. For a number of years, Origin was an unbeatable powerhouse of space flight gaming.

WC Generals Beta Kicks Off

After almost a year of work we are ready to beta test the new 'WC Generals' game. Feedback is always welcome! Please try it out and get back to me. Thanks.

Flat Universe Prepares to Land

Thanks for your support guys. It keeps us going!

Fully Armed Lexington Joins Homeworld Mod

The development planning is as follow:

• Current version 2.0X: Kilrathi working faction, with research and construction tree debugged.
• Planned version 2.5: Hvar'Kann available as a super-unit, Zartoth electronic warfare correctly implemented, Kilrathi voices working ingame.
• Planned version 3.0: WC Saga Confederation models added to the game, option to select WC3-era Confed or WC4-era from the skirmish menu.
• Planned version 4.0: Integration of updated models and textures for Border Worlds and Black Lance units, almost everything smoothed

Origin Promo Gives Ultima VIII Away

To find a way back home, you must become a Titan.

The Guardian has tricked you, Avatar. After you defeated Batlin on Serpent's Isle, he banished you to Pagan, a world under his control. Once, it was a beautiful land, but ever since the ancient battle between the Elemental Titans and the evil "Destroyer", it is engulfed in eternal twilight. Titans - now worshiped as gods - are cruel and uncaring. They bestow power on their most dedicated followers who, in turn, terrorize Pagan's population. To find a way back home, you need to become a Titan yourself before the Guardian succeeds in his plot to conquer Britannia--and then Earth itself.

The eighth installment of the Ultima series takes a much darker tone. The story is much more mature (do the ends justify the means?) and the game focuses more on action, like climbing and jumping across platforms. Training your character has also changed: the more you use an ability, the better you are with it. Without a party to assist you, you must rely on your own strength, dexterity, intelligence, and magical abilities to save Britannia and Earth.

Help Denis Loubet Select Next Artwork

Right now, my Patreon is a hotbed of Ultima fans. Ewww! :p You don't want them deciding what art I'm going to do, do you! ;) I need more Wing Commander fans to be patrons because although I don't mind fantasy, I also like science fiction! Help save me from a career of swords and sandals! ;)

Voting on a Patron Project for me to do starts today, and ends on May 11th at noon central time. Only Patrons can vote!

Here are the 10 candidates:
1. Ultima 7 cover (Color, LB approved.)
2. Ultima 2 cover (Color, based on recent illustration.)
3. Ultima Online cover (Color, LB or Raph Koster approved)
4. Ultima Fiction illustrations (B&W, perhaps The Tale of Captain Johne, given permission.)
5. Ultima Tableau illustrations (Color, assorted scenes from Ultima, player approved.)
6. Ultima Cover as Movie Poster (Color, where I try to impersonate Drew Struzan.)
7. Generic Fantasy Character studies (Color, Dwarf, Elf, etc, you know the drill! Load them up with character.)
8. Wing Commander portraits (Color, how I envision them.)
9. Wing Commander / Ultima crossover illo (Color, qwirky Kilrathi in Britannia illustration!)
10. Ultima / Wing Commander cardboard heroes (Color, cardboard miniatures of WC characters and ships.)

VOTING RULES:
1. Only Patrons can vote, so become one now!
2. Send a Patreon message to me, or reply to the voting thread on my Patreon Activity Feed, with your top 3 choices.
3. Each of the 3 choices must be different, duplicates will be ignored.
4. Voting ends May 11th at noon central time.
5. The project that shows up most often, wins!

May the coolest task win!

Patreon is crowd-funding. But you're not buying art, you're funding the artist. I have my patreon campaign set up in a "per art" arrangement where the patron is charged each month for each piece of art I do. This is why funding levels are usually smaller on a Patreon than a Kickstarter. You can, however, cap your monthly funding to stay within your budget. You could, for instance, fund at $5, and cap at $5. That means you get charged $5 for the first piece of art I do that month, and you get any subsequent art that month "for free!" :D

This decoupling of what you pay versus what you get is why you're not really buying art. It might look like a patron is gaming the system and getting free art, but they're not. The artist is still getting some funding from them, and feeling grateful because he knows how rare good fans are! :) Plus what would be the point of consciously ripping off someone you want to fund? The whole idea is to make it possible for the artist to work for his fans, and that includes you! ;) I expect to do about 3 to 4 "chargeable" pieces of art a month, and also offer a host of freebies. Of course, since I'm currently trying to social-media my way to more patrons, I've only had time to do 1 or 2 chargeable pieces a month so far. (Mostly 1.) :(

So for as little as a dollar a month, you can fund me and I'll be forever grateful! :)