Gorgeous Plastic Bricks Locked In A Deadly War... Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Philippe Moisan is an extraordinarily talented Lego artist as well as a Wing Commander fan. We've seen lots of great Lego creations over the years, but these are some of the most impressive yet! He's created both a Hornet and Dralthi - plus a display banner of the original game's logo. The Kilrathi ship's geometry is spot on, and the details on its large wing panels is exquisite. The shape of the Confed fighter is also great, but I really like the guns and am amazed that it actually has retractable landing gear and burning engine flares. Check out his basement for many more great pictures.
Here it is. The first spaceship I got to pilot as a kid. It clearly was the beginning of my love for space simulators.

I've spent countless hours chasing the Kilrathis when I was a kid. The idea of building this iconic ship has been in my head since I received my first lion head in a Chima set.

Thanks to st3lt3k for the tip!

Watch Confed Fleet Defend Its Solar Empire Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Nomada_Firefox's Wing Commander mod for Sins of a Solar Empire continues to come together with many familiar ships. Normally I'd say things have happened quickly since his big reveal last week, but in this case he's actually been working on the project for more than a year. What you see here is a product of that. A preliminary video has been put together that shows off lots of very cool fleet engagements. It's pretty neat to see Longbows escorting a Midway a a wing of Crossbows in formation with a Concordia class carrier. Check it out to see everything in action, and find another batch of screenshots below. The last image is a preview of better lighting, textures and weapons that are in work. Future pictures will show this off in more detail and expand on the Kilrathi fleet.
In the beginning SOASE was a bit difficult, because it was different. Perhaps the problem was read the manual. But one day, four years ago, I took the tools and the manual and with some help from the SOASE community, I started a Star Wars mod. I had some troubles in the beginning but it was easy. I could convert more of the space models added at my EAW/FOC mod and add them to SOASE. SOASE has been updated for years. The last version was released this summer, and I like to edit a game which it is not forgotten by the developers.

The video plays as the Terran Confederation. It is an in-progress video with many things unfinished, but you can get the big picture about what I am making.

Close Encounters Of The Kilrathi Kind Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We've got an another awesome NinjaLA sketch to kick off your Wing Commander week. This one features a Confed pilot locked in hand to hand combat with a fearsome Kilrathi. Our human appears to have a weapon, but it looks like he has about half a second to fire it before getting ripped to shreds! Were it not for the crashed fighter in the background, this might be a scene right out of the Gimle System pre-2654...

Hypothetically Cruise Though No Man's Sky At A Cool 500 KPS Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

There's been a lot said online about No Man's Sky. It had tremendous prerelease hype, and the final results have left some disappointed. But many others are having a wonderful time exploring space, collecting resources and admiring all the pretty colors on their way to the center of the galaxy. So far we haven't come up with much that could add to the discussion, but Doug Lee managed to acquire a sleek ship that has a striking resemblance to the Excalibur we all know and love. I can definitely see the similarity from the front and back, and those huge oversized winglets look a lot alike as well. If you have to play a space sim besides Wing Commander, you might as well strap in to something just like your favorite Confed ship!
Pretty wicked!?

Enhanced WC2 Music Samples Very Pleasing On The Ears Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Apple's Garageband is an app for music creation and a sound library that provides the user with various instruments and drums. The program also supports importing and tweaking MIDI files, a feature that YouTuber Jason Walton has been tinkering with. He's just posted two enhanced WC2 tracks based on further refinement of his methods and feedback from fellow fans. They sound great! Check out more samples from Wing Commander II and Ultima VI on his YouTube channel.

Geek Out Over This Wing Commander History Review Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Ollamh has filmed a Wing Commander profile for their Geek Trivia series. There's not a lot of trivia, but it's a pretty exhaustive retrospective view of the main games in the series. It's certainly a big step up from relatively brief text articles that pop up from time to time. Watch out for a few slick fan art samples that pop up in the background here and there. Note that Christopher "Maverick" Blair is retroactively recommended for the Kilrathi Saga edition of Wing Commander 2, but the name otherwise makes its big debut in Wing Commander 3. If you've been looking for a way to quickly sum up the series comprehensively for a friend or spouse, this isn't a bad way to do it!
Blasting off from the 90's we are going to talk about a VERY fun space combat franchise!

Rock Out To Wing Commander Memories Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

TeamRock has posted an article on the "Lost Classic," Wing Commander. The author lovingly recounts how Wing Commander shaped his formative gaming years. Branching plots, engaging shipmates and a dastardly enemy all get credit for making Wing Commander stand out among a backdrop of awesome '90s entertainment. I'm not sure I totally understand the intersection of video games and rock music here, but it's great to see fellow Wingnuts sharing their excitement with the series all across the internet! Check out the full article here.
Wing Commander was the moment where I knew what I wanted from games. It's a story of war, camaraderie and intrigue tied together with some fast-paced space combat against one of the most interesting enemies in gaming history – the Kilrathi - a feline humanoid race that combines all of the savagery of the Klingons with the guile and subterfuge of the the Romulans.

It was a joy to explore. The magic of Wing Commander was the way it told the game's story. It pretty groundbreaking now that I look back on it. The battlegroup focused around the carrier the TCS Tiger's Claw jumped around the Vega sector of the galaxy engaging the Kilrathi where they were at their most dangerous. Success or defeat in your missions in each system determines where you go from there. Win and you pushed the Kilrathi back, eventually to the point where their base in the sector is exposed and you can go in for the kill. Lose and the Kilrathi force you to fight an increasingly tough rearguard action.

New Sins Of A Solar Empire Mod Unveiled Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Nomada_Firefox has taken the wraps off his Wing Commander mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. There's a number of screenshots already available because he's actually been working on the project for quite some time and held off on sharing it until he felt like he had a good amount of momentum going. It looks like he's definitely off to a good start. A variety of WC3/4 ships are visible below, and sharp eyed fans will even spot a few designs from Privateer 2 mixed in. That's a pretty interesting fleet lineup! You can find more pictures and follow progress at the CIC Forums here.
This mod is my second complete modification for the Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion game and I have chosen the Wing Commander universe because a mod from this universe has never been finished before. I have been thinking about it more than a year. When I started the mod, I did not want show nothing about it because perhaps my motivation could replaced by other things. Now I believe how I will be finished. It is a good refresh for my mind.

Mainly it will be a three races mod: Humans, Kilrathi and Nephilim. Clearly there will three factions with them but the Rebel factions will add things as the Union of Border Worlds. There will be units from Black Lance and Pirates. Mostly from the original games: Wing Commander IV, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Wing Commander: Secret Ops, Privateer 2: The Darkening and from mods such as FOC Wing Commander Invasion from Major Payne and Wing Commander Armada mods from miklosgo. A complete credits list will be published when I publish some more than text and images.

Gr'Kath's Sick Of Herding Kittens Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Next up in NinjaLA's stream of sketches is a Wing Commander comic concept. Before you get your hopes it, this is just a one-off concept page. Ninja has several other examples from prior attempts to kick off a full length story, but an engaging and visually striking series is a huge undertaking. For today, we'll take what we can get!

Homeworld Mod Strives To Be First To Kilrah Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Now that L.I.F. has officially relaunched the Homeworld Remastered Mod so that it runs under the game's new engine, he can start to look towards the project's future. One exciting possibility is a special campaign that features End Run's story and the adventures of the TCS Tarawa. On the model front, he's been working on how to successfully implement Klavs' ships, and both a Wake class CVE, a Fralthra and an Excalibur are visible in the preliminary screenshots below. Check out even more beautiful pictures at the CIC Forums here!
No promises, but if I can find the time to do it, there miiiiight be a campaign idea involving this girl and her shenanigans in the kitty litter. Say it after me:

FIRST TO KILRAH!​

Looking Back At The Heart Of The Tiger's Awesome Premiere Edition Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

One of the most elaborate packages in the Wing Commander series is the Premiere Edition of Wing Commander 3. In addition to the regular items that everyone got, it included a color version of Warbirds, a soundtrack CD, a 'Behind the Screens' CD with cool interviews & features, a t-shirt, a 1995 calendar, a VHS 'making of' tape, a folded poster and a copy of the Fleet Action novel in a film reel enclosure. There was a variant available at Sam's Club, but the primary way for fans to acquire this collector's item was to directly call and order from Electronic Arts - since this was years before online orders were a thing! Joe Garrity scanned in his receipt from 1994 so you can see the slip in all its dot matrix glory. The Big Box PC Game Collectors have put together a retrospective and unboxing video that further details what came in the tin. Adjusting for inflation, the $100 price tag in 1994 comes out to $162 in today's dollars. Not bad for what you got!
Thanks to Rear Admiral Tarsus for the tip.

Wing Commander Script Guides Updated For New Release Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

In the chaotic hustle and bustle leading up to the CIC Birthday, sometimes we run out of time to process a few things in time for the party. Shades' Wing Commander script guides didn't quite make the cut this year, but that means they gets a whole news cycle to themselves today! These were first previewed back in 2014, but Shades has used the intervening time to edit and clean up the documents. He officially calls this a "beta 2" release, but they already seem pretty polished. There's good reference material included concerning mission branching, Colonel Halcyon's briefings as well as the cutscenes. My favorite part is that each branching variant of the game's dialogues is shown. For example, the guide will show both winning and losing text, plus specify addition lines that are spoken if a Kilrathi ace gets shot down or additional verbiage if a wingman survives. Grab them below!
Like all of you I am a huge fan of Wing Commander and have been since the first game. One of the things I loved most about it was its branching story and like many of you I played it many times just to follow the many story branches. Many year ago I decided to flowchart the script/story of the Wing Commander games, something that could be read in a "Choose your own adventure" style. My first public release was for Wing Commander II. It was rough but still felt lacking. With my current scripts I've changed the layout and added more picture to help bring more of the feel of the game to the story. It's not done yet but I wanted to release it for the Birthday party. Constructive feedback is welcome.

Our Most Pointless Post Ever... Or Our Best? Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

There's a sizable slice of the internet today that's just mindless content farm drivel. No, I'm not talking about clickbait listicles or low quality aggregations - this is stuff so pointless that it really makes you pause. I get why they do it. With a macro or simple app, they can spam the internet with mass produced whatevers with virtually no effort, and if by chance they get a few stray clicks and ad eyeballs, then they've succeeded. And yeah, by linking to this, we're playing into it that a little, but it's worth it for the amusement factor alone. I give you... "Our Best Moments: Wing Commander IV."

This channels aims to bring people together by presenting trivial moments and subjects in time or place for all to share their best experiences with them as comment or video replies. Your best/funniest/most interesting moments will be collected into a free e-book called 'Best moments about nothing'.

Please share why you like this game.

Happy 20th Birthday, WC4.123106: The Price Of Entertainment! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Fan fiction is what you get whenever you have creative fans combined with an audience. Today, you'll see stories emerge for game series before the first game is even completed. But in the early days of the internet, things were rapidly evolving and the nature of things like fan fic were dynamic as well. Wingnuts were writing story chapters and sending them out to email lists almost as far back as email existed, but one of the first large scale cohesive "novels" was Wing Commander 4.123016 by Gary Hladik.


Part parody and part refinement of the original story, "The Price of Entertainment" was published in 35 installments starting August 18, 1996 and concluded August 29, 1997. It was first posted in the alt.games.wing-commander Usenet newsgroup and later reposted to the agwc Homepage and the CIC. Popsicle Pete even turned it into an ebook for easy reading (with a slick cover by NinjaLA). In addition to being a fun adventure in its own right, WC4.123106 is also something of a fascinating time capsule. Comedy and literary tone can also evolve over time, and it's amazing to think back to how this emerged mere months after WC4 - the game - was itself released. For the emerging online Wing Community of the mid '90s, and especially those who lived in alt.games.wing-commander and many of whom call WCNews.com home to this day, Gary's fan fiction filled a big gap between WC4 and Prophecy and has a special place in our memories. Check it out and read or reread it for yourself below!

If Wing Commander IV were approached from a somewhat less reverent point of view, I wondered, what kind of humor could be extracted from it? My own answer to that question is found in the fanfic story "Wing Commander 4.123106: The Price of Entertainment," which debuts next week on alt.games.wing-commander. While not exactly a comedy, this rewrite of the Wing Commander IV story tries to be considerably more lighthearted and uninhibited than the original. It follows the same general storyline, but I've rewritten every existing cut-scene and added many new ones. I've kept the same Wing 4 characters (although Pliers has a new job), added many new ones, and brought back a few more of the Wing 3 cast (guess who!). The story is told in the first person by none other than the Heart of the Tiger himself, which means of course that the story omits all cutscenes in which Blair is not present, e.g. the opening sequence of the attack on the transport Amadeus.
Thanks to Benjamin Boys for the reminder about this milestone!

Pix Revives Tandy TX For Glorious Wing Commander Run Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Pix has put together a wonderful walkthrough of the process he followed to get an 8 MHz Tandy TX to run Wing Commander. The technical hurdles he had to jump through are a fun read for those of us who've built computers from scratch, and the results are quite impressive. The game is super choppy since the machine is well below the recommended specs, but it's amazing that it actually runs! It's not unplayable, and I'm sure we all have stories about playing games that performed worse. As an original Tandy 1000 owner myself back in the late '80s, I'd have been absolutely stunned to see something like this in action. It certainly loads faster than Wing Commander 3 did on a 486 with 8 megs of RAM, and it's only marginally worse than playing Prophecy on a Pentium 100 with 16 megs (both experiences I was all to familiar with in the '90s).


The proprietary 16-color Tandy mode running through this CGA monitor produces very interesting results. Some contrasts disappear and other things are washed out, but it's fascinating to see how the game compensates with solutions like checker box Dralthis and red-faced Spirit. Kids today might think WC1 looks dated, but this will really make you appreciate the graphical quality of the standard DOS original. This gives me the impression of what the game would have had to look like if it were ever ported to the 8-bit Nintendo. If you think this is wild, Pix does lots of great work like this all the time, so definitely check out his webpage for more fantastic info. You can find the full article on this story here.

Dogfight Doubles Down On Colorful Contrasts Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Hot on the hells of his very colorful tribute to the CIC's 18th Birthday, NinjaLA has put together this beautiful scene. A Confed fighter chases after a Kilrathi ship in the distance. Its bright engine flare against a blue haze adds some great texture to the mix, plus there's some additional nice highlights provided by the electric green blobs being fired from out of the frame.
A quickie.. I haven't been doing enough painterly art.. I need to remedy that.

Party Logs Now Online Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We've put the logs from this weekend's party online, so if you couldn't make it in person, you can relive the event now! Check out the transcript here. Hop down to 16:17 to see when the party officially got started. The big countdown to unveiling of our front page updates takes place at 17:00. You can also find previous parties dating back to our grand opening in 1998 in our #Wingnut archive here. We know that many of you have been around for nearly twenty years - it's still crazy to see the '90s version of yourself talking online!

Time To Claim Party Prizes Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Another great party was complemented by another great round of Wing Commander trivia, and now it's time for the winners to claim their prizes. If you won an item below, send us your IRC name, real name and address. If the item has a choice involved, be sure to let us know that as well. This is also the time to tell us if you won something in a prior year and either didn't claim it originally or didn't receive it. We do have a few items from last time that didn't go out that will ship with this batch, and we'll reach out to them as well. Congrats again to the winners!
  • Freedom Flight eBook - Music_Guru
  • GOG Wing Commander Games - LeHah
  • Academy DVD - Mekt Hakkikt, NinjaLA
  • Wing Commander on BluRay - Music_Guru
  • Wing Commander Soundtrack on iTunes - Whistler
  • Wing Commander novel (pick one)- capi
  • WCCCG Starter Deck box - Whistler
  • CIC Glass - Jetlag

Happy 18th Birthday, CIC! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Welcome to the CIC's 18th Birthday Bash! Daily updates all year round are an important way to keep the ball rolling, but once each summer we get this special opportunity to turn the faucet on full blast and share a load of big updates. In the months leading up the birthday, we're never exactly sure what all will solidify in time for the event, but we're always happy with the outcome. As usual, most of the great stuff below comes from you all, but we've managed to dig up a few neat things ourselves as well. Enjoy, and happy birthday!
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Happy 18th From NinjaLA Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

NinjaLA has put together this party-themed sketch of the Tiger's Claw and her escorts for our 18th birthday. I really like the idea of the colorful smoke trails and the ships are pretty sharp too! In case anyone else wanted to take a stab and crafting their own message, he put together this base template that tones down the smoke and removes the caption. If you're artistically inclined, have fun with it!

Art Assets Reveal Never Before Seen Cockpit Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's certainly not every day we get to see new Origin concept art or unused designs from the classic Wing Commander games, but we've got a birthday treat today! Joe Garrity recently uncovered an amazing set of cockpit art and animations from a fighter we've never seen before. The lock and autopilot lights are unmistakable, and there are vertical and horizontal bars that could definitely be for a gun capacity and afterburner fuel. However, there are some remarkable differences as well. There seem to be two radar displays, and the VDUs flip open and closed. There appear to be supplemental heads-up VDUs that overlay on the windscreen, as well as something that resembles a very large targeting crosshair in the center of the dashboard. It has a very cool illumination startup sequence as well.

So, what is the ship? And what's up the functional differences we don't see elsewhere? Joe uncovered these on a 5.25" floppy labeled "DISK 9 - PANEL X-LBM SCREENS.ANM" from artist Dan Bourbonnais. He had to get the proprietary "Deluxe Animator" software going to read the files properly. The still screenshots are dated April 22, 1991, while the animation has a December 11, 1992 date stamp, which could be artificially delayed due to backing up or disk transfer. The brown durasteel could imply a Kilrathi design, but it lacks overt alien markings that the Dralthi II and Jrathek art contained. It's also interesting that this concept dates back to the time Secret Missions 2 was released, but the animations are ahead of their time and the different dashboard elements (quadruple 5.25" floppy drives are a nice touch though!) raise more questions than answers. LOAF's thoughts on the subject are below. Do you have any theories about what this could be? Post them in the comments!

A potential Wing Commander mystery is afoot! Dashing game archaeologist Joe Garrity recovered it from an old Origin-internal diskette... it certainly looks like a Wing Commander cockpit, but it isn't one that ended up in any of the games (and it doesn't quite /work/ like other WC cockpits.) Any ideas? What we have here… is a good, old-fashioned mystery! To preface this: I don’t KNOW what it is, but I can make some educated guesses as to possibilities.

First: I know that this immediately screams ‘Kilrathi cockpit’… but I would caution that I think that’s a bit of an anachronism. It is the same color as the Kilrathi cockpits we see later in the series, including the Jrathek and the ships in Wing Commander Armada… but in 1991, that color scheme had not yet been established. Wing Commander II (in development) was using the lighter tan color for the Kilrathi space camo… but it also used this same color for the cockpit of the human Rapier (as did Wing Commander I.) This would have also closely followed The Secret Missions 2, which showed the first Kilrathi cockpit… which was steel and purple. Finally, there’s no Kilrathi writing. At the time, Kilrathi text was a series of dots and dashes arranged vertically. The Dralthi Mk. II cockpit in Secret Missions 2 is full of them (and has human text on sticky notes added over them! Immersion!) while this cockpit has only English writing. [One other thing that makes it feel like a Kilrathi cockpit is the fact that the large, red central display immediately looks like the red Kilrathi armor indicators used in all five of their cockpits in Wing Commander Armada. It’s not the same graphic at all (and Armada was three years later, an eternity at the time), but it feels very similar at first glance!)

One thing I can say for certain is that it is NOT a ‘working’ (gameplay) Wing Commander cockpit. While the cockpits in Wing Commander I and II vary wildly in shape, color and overall design, they have several common elements that this lacks:

  • Identical blank spaces for VDUs. These need to be the same size because the images the game overlays in real time are the same for all the ships. The mystery cockpit has two small black squares that imply the same VDU setup, but they’re proportionately much too small to function in the game. (After the ‘flip’ animation, there is more space… but the shape still isn’t right.)
  • Similarly, Wing Commander ships have all have identical (across each game) circular radar displays. Again, this cockpit seems to have one (two, actually!) but they’re again much too small and when you look closely you’ll see they aren’t Wing Commander radars at all. The Wing Commander scanners divide space into four quadrants with an X, while this uses a cross +. That seems like a small thing, but it means the radar wouldn’t be functional in a WC game because it’s not showing you what’s in front of and behind you. (Credit to Toast for noticing this one!)
  • There is no shield/armor indicator. These DID have a different style in each ship in the early games, but they were always distinct enough to be identified. I don’t see any equivalent here.
  • There is no space for the set and actual speed indicators. (Though, one small point in favor of a Kilrathi ship is that the Dralthi didn’t have such indicators either and instead had a small computer ‘added’ by humans to display them.)
I will note that none of that excludes it from being concept art for a Wing Commander, and in fact many of the same failings this cockpit has are repeated in another bit of lost cockpit that we DO know is from Wing Commander from three years later (pictured right). This so-called mystery cockpit was used in advertising for Super Wing Commander, but does not match any of the art used in the finished game. It, too, lacks VDU spaces, reuses art from earlier Wing Commanders, is missing certain displays and so on!

It also has some elements that are distinctly not functional in Wing Commander II:

  • The large, central ‘target’ area doesn’t match a function in the early Wing Commander games. It seems to be the focal point of the cockpit, but if this were a ship you fly there’d be no reason to ‘use’ it. (Which I believe suggests that this was for a cinematic; more on that theory later!)
  • I can say from experience that it’s unlikely the 5.25” drives on either side of the cockpit would have made it past a Chris Roberts art review! :) (Though there did seem to be a pair of IBM M-Type keyboards in the Orion in Privateer…) In fact, I’d venture to say that having the ‘cute’ diskette drives there is much more the sort of nod you’d see in a Richard Garriott or Warren Spector project.
  • No Wing Commander ship at this time had used a ‘glass cockpit’ where displays appear over the game area (as this does in the animation.)
  • The fact that it has a ‘startup’ animation means that it doesn’t match any of the other Wing Commander cockpits at the time. There’s nothing in those games that has the cockpits turn on/off with resultant changes to the lighting.
On the other hand, it DOES include elements that ARE unquestionably from Wing Commander:
  • The ‘LOCK’ and ‘AUTO’ lights are from Wing Commander II’s cockpits. I believe the specific buttons here match the Epee cockpit.
  • The rectangles of green and red lights adjacent to the diskette drives are modified from similar panels on the Wing Commander Rapier artwork. They aren’t specific to Wing Commander II, though, they were originally created for the Rapier in the already-published Wing Commander I.
So, what games COULD it be from? To narrow down the options, I went back to the Point of Origin (Origin’s internal company newsletter) archive and found that the very first issue was published just under a month after the date on these files. At that time, Origin had five product development groups working on four original games:
  • Martian Dreams (Scheduled for May, shipped on time)
  • Wing Commander II (Scheduled for Summer, shipped in September)
  • Ultima VII: The Black Gate (Scheduled for Christmas, shipped April 1992)
  • “Air Command” (Scheduled for Christmas, likely shipped April 1993)
  • (The fifth group was working on the CD-ROM conversion of Ultima VI for the FM Towns. I strongly suspect that ‘Air Command’ was a working title for Strike Commander rather than a cancelled project, as it vanishes the next month and mentions of Strike begin.)
I include the scheduled release dates because it tells us where each game was at the time. Martian Dreams went to beta about a month after these images were finished, which suggests that it was getting close to wrapping up. Wing Commander II would have been midway through development, making it the most likely to be having new art created at that specific time. Ultima VII and Strike Commander were very early in the process, but demos of both were being created to show at Summer CES around this same time. (It also lets us rule out a few other projects that might have been tempting options: Wing Commander Academy, which DOES feature a similarly-colored Kilrathi cockpit, and Privateer weren’t on the table yet.)

With all that analysis, I’ve come up with several possible theories. I suspect Strike Commander and Ultima VII are not likely (while Ultima VII had a Kilrathi ship, it wouldn’t have been the focus at this point in development!), which leaves Martian Dreams and Wing Commander II. I believe it could fit into either game:

  • It could be a cutscene from Martian Dreams. Martian Dreams does end with a cutscene in which the characters return to Earth aboard Jules Verne’s spaceship (you see the ship take off and then in the next shot landed.) It’s possible this was created for that sequence and then cut to save disk space. In that case, the Wing Commander elements (and the disk drives!) would be intentional nods of the sort Origin was often fond. The startup animation would then be where you see it take off and rocket out of the Martian atmosphere into space.
  • It could be a cutscene from Wing Commander II. We have hard proof (from the box itself!) that backgrounds and faces were cut from Wing Commander II, including a younger Blair head and courtroom backgrounds. The intro was rewritten late in the process to cut down on disk usage (and so instead of seeing young Blair at a trial, you have old Blair talking to Admiral Tolwyn in his same office set used for the rest of the game.) The place I can imagine this is the attack on the Tiger’s Claw: if it’s a Kilrathi cockpit (as noted, not a given!) then I could see an alternate version of the shot where you see the action from inside one of the stealth fighters. This would also explain why it doesn’t have parts needed to function, why there’s a startup animation (as it’s decloaking) and then large central ‘target’ area, since the point of the cockpit would be to see it lock and fire a torpedo at the ‘Claw.
  • It could be for a totally unknown sales demo or a failed product pitch. Origin’s sales team was aggressively pursuing distributors at this time, and we know they showed demos of all these games at CES in 1991. It’s likely the Wing Commander II demo was the version which currently survives (featuring an alternate version of the first part of the intro)… but there may have been some other, unspecified behind-closed-doors tease this was done for. As for failed pitches, ‘Wing Commander but you’re a Kilrathi!’ was certainly discussed from the day Wing Commander I came out (and unexpectedly eventually became System Shock!)… it could be lookdev for that sort of project pitch.

WC vs History: Takes More Than That To Make A Wake Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The CVE class had been a source of intense debate back in the Concordia's pilot ready room. This new class of ships was a rush job to try and plug the gaps after the heavy losses of the last campaign. Nine transport ships, already three quarters completed, were pulled out of the transport assembly stations and converted into escort carriers; and a single look at her convinced Jason of the folly of the whole damn thing.

If Captain Bondarevsky had been looking at an American escort or light carrier from the Second World War, his thoughts probably wouldn't have been much different. Escort carriers, in particular, were the type of ship only a parent could love. In both the real world and Wing Commander, escort carriers were stop-gap measures when larger fleet carriers were in short supply. The Wing Commander version actually combines the history of the escort carrier with that of another class of ship, the Independence-class light carrier, to create the background for the Wake-class.

2666 was a bad year for the Confederation. A large number of fleet carriers were lost in engagements with the Kilrathi and replacements were still a ways off. The Confederation needed something to fill the gaps in their carrier forces until those new ships came online. The solution was the Wake-class escort carrier. Nine medium transport hulls were taken off the assembly line and prepared for conversion to escort carriers capable of carrying 45 fighters. Along with creating a flight deck and hangar area, the conversion also replaced the old transport engines with those from Gilgamesh-class destroyers for added performance and mounted a number of turrets to improve defenses.

The CVEs were designed with four roles in mind:

  • Fighter Transport: The transporting of fully assembled spacecraft from the factories to front-line units and installations.
  • Convoy Duty: Escorting convoys thereby freeing up other heavy ships for more important missions.
  • Space-to-Ground Support: Provide ground forces with close air support during secondary operations.
  • High Risk Deep Penetration Raids: CVEs are cheap and quick to build and above all else expendable and therefore ideally suited for high risk operations.

Three of the above roles are the same as those for their real world cousins. High risk deep penetration raids were not something escort carriers were used for during the Second World War. Along with almost no armored protection, they were far too slow, with a top speed of only 20 knots compared to the 32+ knots for the larger carriers, to undertake such operations. They would have had a hard time surviving any kind of raid, but especially one requiring speed. There were some wartime proposals, mostly from Admiral John H. Towers (Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet), to conduct deep carriers raids against Japan in early 1944 before the American offensives brought them to the doorstep of Japan in 1945. For the Wake-class, it was that fourth reason that made them famous. First with the TCS Tarawa's raid on Kilrah in 2667 which not only caused the destruction of numerous ships under construction but also aided the Confederation's victory at the Battle of Vukar Tag. It was followed by subsequent raids by the TCS Enigma and Khorsan into the Kilrathi rear that did so much damage the Kilrathi were driven to call for a truce.

Admiral Towers pushed for deep raids against Japan in 1944.

The United States faced a similar lack of carriers before the Second World War. A year and a half before Pearl Harbor, the United States passed the Two-Ocean Navy Act in July 1940. This legislation called for a 70% increase in the size of the US fleet. However, even though it was passed 18 months before the United States joined the war, the first fleet carriers built under the law wouldn't reach the Navy until 1944 (wartime production increases had them start to arrive in 1943). While not a major concern in July 1940, it became one on December 7, 1941 when war came to the United States. On that day, the US Navy possessed seven fleet carriers (the Langley had been converted to a seaplane carrier). Of them, six were suitable for operations in the Pacific. The USS Ranger (CV-4) was not due to defects in its design and low top speed. The Navy needed carriers, but where to find them? The answer lied with the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson, now-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was instrumental in the development of the CVE and CVL

President Roosevelt proposed both types of ships that came together to help the war effort and provide the background for our beloved Wake-class. The first, the escort carrier, was proposed in October 1940. Escort carriers often get overlooked in favor of the larger carriers. And yet, out of the 151 carriers the United States built during the Second World War, 122 of them were escort carriers. America's first escort carrier, the USS Long Island (CVE-1) was commissioned six months before Pearl Harbor in June 1941. She had been laid down as a cargo liner in 1939 but was acquired by the US Navy before being completed. She was then converted into an aircraft carrier. Experiments were conducted on her to show the feasibility of converting further cargo ships into carriers. They proved that such operations could be undertaken and provided an important foundation of experience for later escort carriers.

USS Long Island (CVE-1) and USS San Jacinto (CVL-30)

The other type was the Independence-class light carrier. Believing American entry into the war was imminent, President Roosevelt proposed converting cruisers then under construction into light aircraft carriers in August 1941. The Navy, at first, rebuffed the president and said the conversions would not be successful. But, the president was not to be put off and asked the Navy to look into the issue more. Then December 7th happened and the Navy quickly took up the cause.

Nine 10,000 ton Cleveland-class light cruisers were reordered for conversion into what became the Independence-class light carriers. Despite early misgivings by the Navy, these carriers proved their value throughout their wartime service. Displacing 11,000 tons (about a third of the Essex class), capable of making 31.5 knots, and carrying just over 30 aircraft, the Independence-class worked alongside their larger brothers throughout the latter half of the Second World War. Only one, the USS Princeton (CVL-23) was lost to enemy action during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

USS Cowpens (CVL-25) steaming with a fellow CVL and the USS Princeton (CVL-23) afire during the Battle of Leyte Gulf

While exploring the real history behind the Wake-class, I came across this quote from a pilot who served on the USS Cabot (CVL-28) which fits nicely with Bondarevsky's first impression quote and his thoughts after returning from Kilrah with the TCS Tarawa. I especially like that last line as Wingnuts are certainly familiar with the sight of two runways on a carrier.

At that time, I had not operated from an Essex-class carrier, so to me it was routine to operate off a smaller CVL. The deck was much narrower. You had to be lined up coming in; there was no way to be off center and make your landing...but the width was certainly much less on a CVL, since a CVL was built on a cruiser hull. With all that flight deck added on top of it, it had a tendency to roll much more than the Essex-class, so in rough seas, you were fighting a pitching and rolling deck.

The operations were different in that, since we were a smaller unit, the air group knew the shipboard people, whereas on the Essex you could be there for a year and not know the first lieutenant. But, in our case, it just seemed that you knew you were more of a family-type affair than aboard the larger ships; the camaraderie was much better, I thought, than on the Essex-class. Other than that, a CVL pilot was always a CVL pilot; they were proud of it. A CVL pilot would come in on an Essex-class carrier and would ask which runway to use-just to put the needle into them, you know. "Right or left runway? Which one?"

Standoff Team Releases Single Package Install Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Standoff team is happy to release the single package install (462 MB) for the CIC's 18th birthday. This file will install the complete game without the need to download multiple packages.

It's been an amazing journey for Standoff. Work on the game started in spring 2001. Wingnuts got their first taste of Standoff when Episode One was released on December 23, 2004. Episode Two came out on the CIC's 7th birthday in 2005. Episode Three followed on January 8, 2006 and the penultimate Episode Four was in Wingnut hands on September 27, 2007. The grand finale, Episode Five, came out on the CIC's 11th birthday in 2009.

As a team, we'd like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to the Wing Commander community for all the support over the years...and patience. Now get out there and save the Confederation...again!

More Prerelease Art Reveals SWC Differences Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's been a good season for Joe Garrity and undiscovered cockpits! He found a second interesting artifact, but this one is a little more familiar than the one above. The first photo below comes from a disk labeled "1994 WINTER CES SWC." It shows an early version of the Super Wing Commander Hornet cockpit with an actual DOS-era Hornet targeting outline on the right VDU. The displays and readouts in the upper structure are also different than the final layout, which is pictured second. Joe also found a fun sample of the fight pictured on the SWC box. It comes unobscured by the cockpit structure superimposed in the final art. Pretty neat!

Homeworld Remastered Mod Is Out Of Refit With New Features Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

L.I.F. has been hard at work on the Homeworld Remastered Mod the last few months and has a special present for Wingnuts this year. He's added the single player demo mission back into the mod as well as a brand new feature: an anti-missile stance. When units are set into this stance, they will attack missiles above all other targets (save bombers). It works much like the guard order which means that ships set in the anti-missile stance will continue as escorts for any fleets or convoys you may have. To compensate for the improved defenses from the stance, turret fire's hit chance on torpedoes and missiles was reduced to 10%.

Wingnuts can download it on MODDB and Steam.

Wing Blender 2.0 Released Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Kevin Caccamo's Prophecy/Secret Ops importer/exporter marvel, Wing Blender, has achieved full 2.0 release! This update further streamlines the process to manipulate ships destined for the Vision Engine. The feature list is below, and users can find documentation for the program here. Grab the app itself here (31 k zip). Happy modding!
  • Export child objects along with parent objects.
  • Customize LOD ranges.
  • Customize CNTR/RADI chunks of each mesh.
  • More validation.
  • Improved support for varying forward/up axes.
  • More flexible LOD object naming schemes.
  • Support for flat colour materials.
  • Collision spheres and hardpoints in the scene root are ignored.
  • Better handling of numeric and non-numeric texture filenames.

Announcing: The Wing Commander Saga Plus Pack! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Hot the heels of the WC Saga Deutsch Mod release and refinement, Luke and team have announced their project to port over all their numerous upgrades to the core WC Saga experience. The screenshots below show off some of the new features, from left: the new pilot welcome, extras menu, barracks, medals case, ship database, subtitle support, ready room, fiction viewer, text legibility improvements, and damage debris. These are just a sampling of the enhancements. Stay tuned for more info and development progresses!
What exactly is the Plus Pack? It contains all new features, improvements and bugfixes from our first project "Wing Commander Saga Deutsch" (short: WCSD) and will upgrade the international (english) version of WCS to WCSD level. [Above] you can see a few of these new features/changes.

Development and organisation will executed at our domain wcsaga.org. There we have a secure webspace, message board and some internal dev tools. FirstI I want to introduce the current WCSPP team members (in alphabetical order). In the next weeks/months we want to add more members for the departments like Beta test.

Death Angel - implementation, graphic design
Luke - implementation, programming
MajorSpawn - mission design, programming
RaudiXO - translation, implementation

Wing Commander IV Gets Holovids Treatment Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

In honor of Wing Commander 4's 20th birthday earlier this year, we have taken all of the cinematics from the DVD version of the game and put them in to our Holovids section! AD has converted all of the videos to the latest streaming formats, and these have been combined with the game's script as transcribed by Wedge for the best viewing experience possible. You can find all of the WC4 videos here. Don't forget that if watching the videos gives you a craving for actually playing, the full DVD version of the game is available on GOG!

A Peek Behind The Flat Universe Curtain Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Maslas Brothers have provided this look at the work space where the magic happens. They've got a great collection of Wing Commander games to consult as reference and a couch to crash on after late night coding sessions. There's also a projector on the end when it's time to kick back and play. The shots below show off some of the classic scenes from WC1 and their counterpart areas from the Flat Universe game.
Photos from our little studio with some of our Wing Commander stuff and afterwards some photos of a Wing 1 play session on projector

Document Archive Revamp Continues Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Over the years, we've posted a lot of fascinating items that are in some way related to the development of a Wing Commander product. These might be never before seen draft scripts that are wildly different from the final story, early sketches of ships and characters, candid photos from the film set, or high resolution source files of things you've already seen in some form or shape. We tend to post this material around specific events, such as a CIC birthday or to celebrate a classic game being released on GOG, and it's not so easy to keep track of it after the news is gone from the front page.

Our goal for the CIC's Document Archive was to make it easier for visitors to research the development aspects of Wing Commander games. In this section, we've sorted through hundreds of historic updates and categorized them under headings like "artwork", "design history" and "advertising." To celebrate our 18th birthday, we've added in a lot of interesting material from recent years that you may have missed, or have forgotten about. The list below provides just a smattering of the fascinating material that has been added for this update. As you browse the archive, you'll notice that the section is looking a little dated. An upgrade of the visuals and navigation of CIC Gray is on our todo list!

The Riddle Solved: Dave Govett Assisting Flat Universe Soundtrack! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The riddle included with this week's Flat Universe music teaser has been decoded! Fans who plugged the text into a base 64 decoder were treated to a surprise announcement that one of the original authors of the WC1 soundtrack, Dave Govett of Team Fat, will be assisting with Cory Fujimori's masterful reproductions. Here's the official translation of the coded TOBI message:
"This is a preview of the new soundtrack for Wing Commander: Flat Universe. Featuring themes from the original Wing Commander game newly arranged by original composer, Dave Govett, as well as additional work by composer Cory Fujimori.

How many people here know about the Maniac?"

Cory contacted Govett and he is on-board the project! He will rearrange several pieces for us and make a new version of the main theme so stay tuned! Happy Birthday CIC!

Cake! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's a CIC Birthday, so here's a CIC Birthday Cake!

Poll: Still With Us? Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's time for our annual birthday poll that asks how long you've been visiting the CIC. We're celebrating our 18th party tonight, but some of you have been with us for a whopping 20 years already! Where has al the time gone? But whether you've been following us since 1996 or 2016, we're glad you're here with us now!

The old poll asked about your super weapon preferences, and it was an incredibly close match. The Behemoth and Flash Pak traded first place back and forth practically every other day and ended within one vote of each other. Clearly, two vastly different philosophies were playing out here. In contention for third place, both the Excalibur-carried Temblor Bomb and Dreadnought-mounted Phase Transit Cannon battled it out, playing out a very similar battle as the fight for the top spot. The Nuke'em came in last place. I suspect this is because people generally have less exposure to weapons from the Tri-System. Otherwise, who wouldn't love a bomb so powerful it has to propel you forward in time to escape the blast?!
This horrible device emits a blastwave from the vicinity of your ship powerful enough to annihilate everything in close proximity but the most resilient dreadnoughts. The damage is worse near the epicentre, dissipating outward. The device carries a small synchronic temporal warp generator which at the point of detonation throws you marginally forward in time after the blast, giving you escape from the carnage. However, it does not extend this benefit to any cargo ships or wingmen you may have in tow, who will encounter a particularly terminal, and bad, day. The Campaign for Real Time considered this weapon to be a breach of most time laws and lobbied against its legality, until one day, quite by accident, a rogue Nuke 'em landed on their offices during an annual general meeting.

Thank You! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

And that's our show, folks! We hope you enjoyed this year's birthday slate! Scrolling back through it all, we think it's a super fun lineup that provides a good cross section cutout look at what the community is up to. The birthday wouldn't be what it is without all your contributions and participation, so thanks for making it super memorable. We somehow manage to get 2,000 visits per day, which is absolutely amazing. The bump we sustained last year with Wing Commander's arrival on Netflix has been fairly permanent, which is awesome.

If you're reading this in real time as the update went live, there's still a bunch of party left to go in #Wingnut. Otherwise, we'll see you back here on Monday for the continuation of daily news posts. As we look forward to next year, we'll be holding out 19th Birthday in 2017. Amazingly, that'll actually be our twentieth annual party counting the grand opening in 1998. See you there!
author avatar
CIC

You Are Cordially Invited... Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 18th birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT) in #WingNut!

Featuring...

  • Wingnuts from around the globe who are all still teenagers at heart!
  • New gameplay experiences brought to you by incredibly talented fans!
  • Never-before-seen sights from the depths of Wing Commander history!
  • Fantastic music that'll bring memories flooding back!
  • Hours of videos to feast your eyeballs on!
  • Trivia - from Arnold Blair to Zarya!
  • Prizes that will actually be mailed out to winners!
  • Cake... and more!
So point your IRC client to irc.wcnews.com, channel #WingNut! If you need help with IRC check our #Wingnut section, or just use the web interface (even works on mobile devices!).

A Teaser & A Riddle... Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Ladies and Gentlemen. On keyboards...
Mister Cory Fujimori.

Did you get Cory's message?

INIT TOBI v3.72 DOWNSTREAM
...
VGhpcyBpcyBhIHByZXZpZXcgb2YgdGhlIG5ldyBzb3Vu
ZHRyYWNrIGZvciBXaW5nIENvbW1hbmRlcjogRmxhdCB
Vbml2ZXJzZS4gRmVhdHVyaW5nIHRoZW1lcyBmcm9tI
HRoZSBvcmlnaW5hbCBXaW5nIENvbW1hbmRlciBnYW1
lIG5ld2x5IGFycmFuZ2VkIGJ5IG9yaWdpbmFsIGNvbXBv
c2VyLCBEYXZlIEdvdmV0dCwgYXMgd2VsbCBhcyBhZG
RpdGlvbmFsIHdvcmsgYnkgY29tcG9zZXIgQ29yeSBGd
WppbW9yaS4NCg0KSG93IG1hbnkgcGVvcGxlIGhlcmU
ga25vdyBhYm91dCB0aGUgTWFuaWFjPw==

Wing Commander Flat Universe

WC RPG Celebrates 5th Birthday With Steady Progress Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's a great week for birthdays, and in addition to our own, we'd like to wish capi's WC RPG project a wonderful fifth anniversary! He hit the milestone a couple weeks back and modestly hid the mention at the bottom of one of his extensive weekly updates. Few fan projects have been able to keep up such a consistent pace year over year. Work continues on scene narratives, encounter details and ultimate direction for the story in his Elegy of Sivar campaign. Next he'll be working on translating the prologue and designing the base for the Demon's Eye Pack of Kilrathi pirates. While the Kilrathi expansion is taking a while to all come together, there are several completed RPG products capi has already finished and posted online. Check them out below!
My Plan for this week is to begin the effort to translate the prologue in Chapter 2.2 and to start work on Chapter 2.3. After months of putting it off, I'm finally back to the point where I need to begin filling in the details of the Demon's Eye base, starting with the completion of the base's desired statistics and details regarding the base's layout. That information in turn will be used to fill in the specifics of the mission in Chapter 2.3, where the players will be tasked with taking over the base.

I also noted in my logs that the fifth anniversary of the founding of the WCRPG Wiki was on July 23rd. Here's to five years of the WCRPG project; I'm looking forward to the next five.

Happy Birthday CIC! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Today officially marks 18 years since we founded the CIC here at WCNews.com! We'll be fully observing the celebration this Saturday evening, but we're certainly taking a moment today to reflect on the time that's passed. Back in the summer of 1998, none of us working hard to launch the site were yet 18 years old ourselves, so we couldn't possibly have imagined everything continuing through to this day. There were new games, books and a movie all in development, so reporting the news of the day was easy. Over the years we've gone through different evolutions to focus on all of your amazing fan projects as well as digitally preserve as much intriguing archive material as possible. Now, as we've spent most of our lives dedicated to the Wing Commander community, we're extremely proud of what has come together here thanks to everyone's hard work. Thanks for sticking with us - we'll see you at the party Saturday night!


If you're working on something to be released in conjunction with the Birthday Party, please let us know! Saturday will get hectic, so the advance notice helps.

Musician Strikes Right Note In WC3 & Privateer Covers Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

JD Harding makes covers of video game music, and one of his latest sets takes on WC3 and Privateer. He's done a really good job of giving each of the Priv locations their own unique tone, just as they had in the game. The Agricultural Base is soft and wistful, the Pleasure Base is a snazzy afair and the Game's Intro is tense and exciting. His interpretation of WC3's Space Background Music is also full of George Oldziey's classic sounding fanfare. If you like what you hear, JD has also covered Stones, Mysterious Murders and the Fellowship Theme from Ultima VII.

Wing Blender 2.0 Beta 2 Released Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Kevin Caccamo has released the second beta preview of Wing Blender 2.0, the app that lets fans easily import and export Vision Engine models into Blender. He's tightened up the code operationally so that it matches the documentation, and issues with the hardpoint exporter have been fixed. The screenshots below demonstrate the troubleshooting process he had to go through to get an updated Vampire model working! Try it out here.
As a bonus, I made another attempt at converting the Vampire from Scooby Doo's (very) old FS2 model pack, and here's a few screenshots I took while trying to get the hardpoints working properly.

(2nd Screenshot): I thought I had it working correctly by now, until I added the hardpoint for the middle section. I then realized the EPODs were upside down.

(3rd Screenshot): That's much better!

Wing Commander Retires From Netflix & Amazon Prime Free Streaming Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It seems like just yesterday that the Wing Commander Movie arrived on Netflix and Amazon Prime's free video catalogs in the US and Canada, but the film has been removed from both services after its one year contract expired. The delisting comes as no shock, since many titles regularly come and go from streaming providers, and we've started to see Wing Commander disappear from some of the European providers that got it first.


While it's disappointing to see it come to an end now, it was certainly a very productive run. The movie made the "popular on Netflix" trending circuit for some time, got lots of positive press on social media and spawned numerous fun viewing parties. Fans continue to have access to the film on a wide variety of platforms with digital prices around $6.99 and the Blu-ray hovering at $12 or less. Amazon is also offering a new promotion where WC is included in a subscription to STARZ.

And on the bright side, this marks the end of Fox's distribution rights. As scheduled, Chris Roberts has regained the rights in English speaking territories after 17 years. Although he's still super engrossed in Star Citizen for now, Chris has mentioned before that he'd love to return and recut the film for a modern audience!

Shroud Of The Avatar Nears Release; Star Citizen Making Progress Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We haven't covered Shroud of the Avatar very much over the years, but Richard Garriott's spiritual successor to Ultima appears to be coalescing nicely as it drives towards a full fledged release. Last week the team conducted its last "wipe" of the pre-release servers, and the world that players are now exploring is the game's final persistent universe. Crowdfunding pledges will also sunset in a couple weeks as the various preorder bonuses expire. A new Star Citizen cross-promotion also caught our eye that offers up some nifty steampunk gear with the SC logo.


Speaking of Star Citizen, most exciting to us is that LOAF's recovery is going well and he's back on the job at Cloud Imperium LA. Their office move and subsequent futuristic remodel has been complete, and it's looking really cool. They've finished the shoot for the Squadron 42 story and audio elements, which is an important milestone for the campaign aspect of Star Citizen. The team is now focused on preparing a big status update at Gamescom in Germany later this month. There are still a variety of cool ships being turned out as well as some neat merchandise that have pushed them past an amazing $115 million.

Tom Wilson Performing In Irvine Sunday Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Meeting up with your favorite Wing Commander actors isn't always easy. A few make occasional convention appearances, but you might only end up talking to them for a minute or so in an autograph hall. One notable exception is Tom Wilson, who continues to regularly make the rounds in the comedy club circuit. The CIC Staff did happen to first meet Tom at his Dragon*Con autograph table in 2003, but other fans have more choices to seek him out around the US today. Wingnuts near Irvine, California have a chance to catch the Maniac this Sunday evening at the Irvine Improve Comedy Club. A limited number of free tickets are available with the promo code '2TOMS'. His shows come highly rated, and fans often report that he appreciates people who are familiar with his non-Back to the Future history in things like Wing Commander. If you get a picture with him signing your copy of WC4, send it in to us!

Homeworld Mod Beta Opened Up To Wider Audience Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Homeworld Remastered Mod continues to improve based on the feedback of beta testers and the constant refinement that L.I.F. has applied. There have been many bug fixes, formation improvements and updates to fuel and ammunition scripts. He's also made the test release more widely available at MODDB for players who've purchased the game at places like GOG. Steam owners can grab it here. All of your feedback and bug reports for the new version help make the game better for a big release planned later this month, so get to playing!
This is the new version of the mod, revamped and reworked to be compatible with the versions 2.0 and 2.1 of HWRM. It currently has only the Confederation and the Kilrathi working, further updates will be coming to restore full functionality. Right now, I'm fixing the bugs in the current release as the testers report them. The goal is to have something cool for the birthday.

Retro Korean Privateer Review Scan Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

AD found one more classic Korean Wing Commander article on the Old Game Scan blog. This Privateer review appeared in the January 1994 issue of 마이컴 (MyCom). At a length of 14 pages it's pretty substantial, and it appears to cover all aspects of the game. There also seem to be some spoilers! Unlike the Korean reviews of Prophecy and Armada we reported on earlier, this article does conclude with a rating: sound gets four stars, graphics five, and "difficulty" four.

Flat Universe Provides Glimpse Behind The Scenes Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

For this week's peek inside the continued development of Wing Commander Flat Universe, the Maslas Brothers have pulled the curtain back to reveal what it looks like as the game is being made. The screenshots reveal some of the coding that goes into potential mission/cinematic design and how these sequences can be observed. It looks like a lot of work to me, but the final product is sure to be impressive!
This snapshot was taken during the benchmarking/debugging phase of the navigation and formation AI of Flat Universe. As a matter of fact, this is what my displays are showing for the past few days.

Enjoy!

Fan Covers WC2 & U6 In Familiar Mix Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Jason Walton has been doing some experimentation in Garage Band - with impressive results! He's remixed the Wing Commander 2 intro as well as music from Ultima VI. The way the original was combined with the Vengeance of the Kilrathi cinematics and especially speech really helped cement it in my mind. It's one of my favorite in the whole series!
Playing with Garageband...

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