New Homeworld AI Upgrade Featured In WC Mod Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

While a vexing problem continues to flag advanced ordnance mechanics, the new AI features of the Homeworld Remastered Mod have been released in the game's latest update on Steam. L.I.F. expects that these updates will provide a nice boost to the single player based portions of the game. He continues to troubleshoot some elusive crashes concerning missile launch behavior. The screenshot below shows a test shot where 150 Arrow fighters simultaneously launched over a thousand missiles and decoys. The game managed to handle that large volume, so the scope of the project doesn't seem to be the issue. Work continues to get to the bottom of things!
I went into slideshow battle mode, with all these squadrons fighting and dropping decoys at once, and it crashed way later than I expected, after dropping literally nine times more decoys and missiles than in all previous crashes, with the shipID for these missiles and decoys reaching 17,500. This means the shipID hypothesis must be scratched entirely, as there is no relation whatsoever between the number of weapons/decoys deployed, the identification number of these and the crash.

I need more coffee.

Space Game Junkie Takes On Privateer Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The super cool blog/community hub Space Game Junkie covers all things space sims, but has not actually livestreamed a Wing Commander game before. Admin Brian Rubin set out to fix this oversight by making Privateer his game of week, and he's been exploring the Gemini Sector just about every day since. In each of his nightly 40-minute episodes, you can follow along as his upgrades his ship, takes down pirates, joins the Mercenaries Guild and ventures beyond the Troy System. All in all, it's proving to be a challenging experience! Although it can be time consuming (but fun!), making sure to carefully level up those engines, shields and guns will pay huge dividends in the end. Here's the first couple episodes to get started:
Welcome to Wing Commander: Privateer my friends! This amazing game from 1993 is one of my all-time favorites, and still one of the best open space trading and combat games ever made. In this first entry, I take on a couple of missions, the first I fail, the second I succeed. I also kill some militia guys, accidentally of course, which as of yet don't seem to have any consequences. Onward!

Details All Set For Wing Commander Jazz Recording Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

George Oldziey is moving forward at full speed towards his live recording of Wing Commander jazz music. He's written up several familiar tunes from WC3 and may even have a surprise or two in the final mix. Copies of the scores are included below to tide over anxious fans. Once this complete, it'll be a major step towards getting his second Wing Commander album released!
Greetings all! In anticipation of the WC bar music recording on Feb. 10, I wanted to share with you the music that the the musicians will be performing. These are basically transcriptions of what I improvised way back then! I'd like to share these with you all and thank you for your wonderful support!

As soon as these recordings are finished I'll get back to you about the beginning of phase 2 in which we raise the funds for the orchestra. In that regard, ALL the scores and parts are ready for performance! It will indeed be a wonderful thing!

In the mean time, please enjoy these tokens of my appreciation!

Musically yours,

George

Enlightening the (LEGO) Darket Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Last week, we reported on an extremely well-done MOC Darket design found on Instagram. Further research has found that the source for the design seems to be a group called LEGO Building on Russian social media hub VK, which has more images and information… including how you can find the pieces to build your own!

The detailed Darket is, in fact... a B-Wing! Specifically, it's an alternate model using the pieces from 75050 B-Wing, a 2014 Star Wars kit. The B-Wing is out of print today, but sets are available on the secondary market if you want to recreate the ship. The official name is the Darket II, said to be a fighter bomber manufactured by the Ki'ra Clan.

And here's the Darket in 'real life'! Pretty great:

A gallery showing an earlier attempt is also available:

The group also created a new Kilrathi fighter: the Drakrhi V stealth interceptor, said to be a medium fighter manufactured by the Ki'ra Clan. This one uses the pieces from official set 70003 Eris' Eagle Interceptor plus "about 5 additional pieces."

The 'real world' Drakhri V uses Imperial insignias from a Star Wars set:

And what are the Kilrathi? Lion and tiger figures from the recent LEGO Chima series!

author avatar
LOAF

Stick it in Kilrathi Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Fallout Hobbies is a company which produces custom stencils, decals and other items to support miniature wargaming hobbyists. Their line of water slide decals includes liveries for use with a variety of different factions and alien species... which now include the Kilrathi! The sheet called "Kilrathi Glyphs Transfers" (Product 038) is 5.5" x 8.5" and it includes a variety of the Kilrathi symbols in different sizes. It includes the text seen in the Wing Commander film and a set of Imperial emblems seen in later Wing Commander games (note that some of the movie characters are non-canon, originating from this downloadable font.) Water slide decals are the type which usually come with plastic model kits which must be cut out and then wetted to bond to a surface, allowing them to be as thin as possible. The Kilrathi decal sheets are available here in black or white for $12 USD. We'd love to see what wargamers are doing with these!

author avatar
LOAF

Suite Sound of Wing Commander Heard Around Europe Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Wing Commander Suite based on The Fatman's Wing Commander soundtrack has again been getting a lot of play in northern Europe of late. There have been a number of concerts in Norway and Finland as recently as November that have featured the suite. These concerts are part of the same series of performances we reported on over a year ago. New dates keep cropping up for both the "We come in peace" and "Score" performances.

The suite consists of the Wing Commander main theme, then moves on into the scramble music before shifting into two versions of the combat music and finally ends with the medal ceremony theme. The "We come in peace" series, which showcases themes from a number of different science fiction properties including Star Trek and Star Wars, was performed in the cities of Oulu, Finland on November 15-16, and in Bergen, Norway on November 8-10.

The suite has also recently been spotted in the lineup of Score again, most recently at showings in Trondheim, Norway on November 29-30. Score focuses specifically on video game music and features a variety of tracks from a wide range of games including Halo, The Witcher, and Final Fantasy. Past iterations had included the Wing Commander Suite but some more recent performances had dropped it from the lineup, so it's cool to see it return to the concert's slate.

If you were a Wing Commander fan lucky enough to attend in person, or if you know of any upcoming concerts that will be featuring the Wing Commander suite, let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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AD

One Man's Shirt Is Another's Treasure Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's not every day we see a new promotional Wing Commander shirt, but LOAF was lucky enough to run across this one recently. It's a simple black and white number, but very cool!

Scored a cool addition to the Wing Commander collection this week! I found this EA promo shirt for WC3 at an Etsy vintage clothing shop.

Homeworld Mod Gets Even Smarter Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

L.I.F. has been making great progress with AI recently, and this helps put the next release of the Homeworld Remastered Mod on track. In particular, they're getting good at firing the game's new missiles appropriately, and ships now operate in formations better. He's also got a funny story about how minor tweaks can produce unintended consequences. He accidentally gave freighters a slightly higher value than anticipated, and the result was that the AI thought it appropriate to launch waves of medical transporters at opposing strike fleets. See the ensuing melee below!
Ha! Let me show you how important it is to properly set the AI values. The Scout Transports got a combat value set a bit high, so we got a redux of the Battle of Earth, with a bot launching an offensive with... a convoy of medical transports.

The other bot simply decloaked a Prowler special ops corvette and started having fun with the hapless doctors (and it built a destroyer which is coming in hot too). Note how the AI now use formations with its ships. That code from the other team is really good.

Long story short, the new version is advancing pretty well and as soon as I can guarantee a working system for single player, I will integrate it to the Secret Missions factions then release the whole thing. Just, I might lose some time from tomorrow onwards, because World of Warships will have the public Beta of French Battleships, and I've been waiting for years to cruise with Richelieu. :)

Papercraft Hornet Deep In Design Phase Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Adm_Maverick is still working on his crafty physical models, and his latest project is a precise Hornet design. He's done a variety of measurements to get the proportions right, but a few areas are tricky to correctly spec out around curvy shapes. His methods have been detailed out further at the CIC Forums for anyone who has comments or critiques. It's cool to see all the thought that's gone into things before paper's even printed!
Now, here is the part where I'm not totally sure I did this part right, so I'll walk through how I approached it and see if anyone spots any mistakes in my approach. So I need to figure out the length of the side panel of the main hull, the one highlighted in green

But it's a 3 dimensional construct, so there is a difference between the height of the lower end of the upper end. So I couldn't just meassure it. I needed to compute it. I've been studying programming the last two semesters and one thing I've noticed I've gotten much better at doing because of that is taking a complex problem and breaking it down into smaller components. That is why I used the approach I did to address this challenge. By studying the design I saw that what I'm actually looking for is the hypotenuse of a right triangle. A triangle I only have one meassurement for. Which meant I need to get the second meassurement for the triangle so I could compute the length of the third leg.

"Your profile is clear to sector's edge..." Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

As if on cue, DefianceIndustries is back with another very cool ship to share. This one isn't directly related to the Secret Ops MUP, but it's a beauty nonetheless. It's a Broadsword in Privateer colors, which is an interesting route to go. The bomber is so often associated with its WC2 green - even the Arena variants are all green hued - but it's nice to see a changeup once in a while. And it's the prettiest Broadsword I've seen in nearly ten years!

And The Winner Is... Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

...the Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack! Wingnuts from around the world have weighed in, and they've chosen DefianceIndustries' beautiful upgrade to WCSO as the Fan Project of the Year for 2017. The project released multiple playable tests this year on top of regular updates to show off the graphical enhancements in development. Even more is in store for 2018!



The MUP is definitely a team effort, from Dark Sentinel's amazing Nephilim models to Gr1m's Unlimited wizardry (I swear he's actually some kind of coding alchemist) and Popsicle Pete's tireless work building the MUP into the installer and needling us right brain types to keep up a release schedule. Not to mention all you wing nuts who test our work and report back the bugs!

Well deserved kudos to all the projects listed this year. Cheers to all of you! Here's to a great 2018!

We had two runners up that were neck and neck in the race this year, and our first is the Homeworld Remastered Mod! L.I.F. has been on top of a steady stream of updates to the game, both large and small, all year long. The other runner up is Wing Commander Flat Universe, which released their highly anticipated multiplayer update in 2017!



Congrats to all! And onwards now to another great year of fans doing great things with Wing Commander!

Last Chance To Rock The Vote! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The annual community voting ends tomorrow, so now is the last chance for Wingnuts like you to help choose the Wing Commander Fan Project of the Year for 2017! Here are the nominees one last time. It's hard to choose because there's so many great projects going on, but vote below and help pick the winner!
  • Dark Sentinel had a fantastic year with some of his most exquisite and creepy Nephilim designs ever. He added a variety of capships and fighters to his fleet, including some of the less common and more exotic variants. He capped the year off with one of the most detailed WC wallpaper images ever made.
  • Flat Universe had their long-awaited public multiplayer alpha launch this year. This was on top of a variety of other improvements to their base game, which is coming along very nicely.
  • The Homeworld Remastered Mod had another huge year. This year they added new gameplay mechanics, ships from WC1/2, a player guide and plenty of ships. All of this was incorporated into the playable game in frequent updates all year long.
  • Klavs' Fleet of Ships continued to see widespread usage with new inclusion in the Homeworld Mod as well as Crazycanuck's WC Saga spinoff. His famous Concordia is looking better than ever and he's got a new Waterloo in the works.
  • Ninja's Sketches are looking better than ever. This year he perfected layer mask techniques & gradient coloring and did new experimentation with painting 2D representations of 3D ship models.
  • Pix's Origin Adventures continued his streak of extremely cool WC projects. This year he delved into the Japanese FM Towns, the Japanese Mega CD and even got a Creative DXR Kit going for old school WC4 DVD.
  • The Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack had a tremendous year with more gorgeous models and playable releases. Kilrathi ships got more love in 2017, but their Confed and Nephilim counterparts weren't far behind. And it's not just about graphical upgrades, engine enhancements have reduced texture delay and capships have even gotten new features.
  • The Sins of a Solar Empire mod is a really cool fleet battle game that's recently gotten a new playable test. The Confed and Kilrathi have been fleshed out quite a bit this year, and both the Border Worlds and Nephilim are in work and planned for 2018 updates.
  • The Star Trek Armada 2 mod is a fun one to see back from hiatus. Work has picked right back up from where it left off a couple years ago and a playable Confed demo is already available.
  • WC Saga Plus / Deutsch Conversion got its first service pack to help simplify the installation of all the various patches and enhancements to the original game. There are new GUI enhancements, better tools for modders and help pages included now.
  • The WC Toolbox editor added preliminary support for WC2 and Academy this year. And it's just one piece of a suite of tools that includes things like the WC1 Live Viewer and French WC2 Conversion Patch. It's great to see all the tweaking still going on for the earliest games in the series!

New Unboxing Series Kicks Off With Wing Commander Amiga Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Unboxing Hands has a massive collection of classic PC and other video games, and they're starting to go through and unbox them all. Wing Commander Amiga was lucky enough to be one of the first titles up. Most Wingnuts are pretty familiar with Claw Marks, the blueprints and so forth, but there are minor and major differences between editions that are really cool for collectors and diehard fans to see. The look of the diskettes will be one of the most obvious things that jumps out here, plus there is Amiga-specific text in the other documentation. Check it out below!
Wing Commander AMiGA UNBOXING a ORIGIN space combat simulator

TCS Wolfhound Gets Tag Teamed Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Deathsnake has a new video showing a Confed vs Kilrathi engagement in his Last Line of Defense project. It was announced last year that the endeavor was transitioning from a playable game to a more cinematic adventure using the mod's assets, and this video shows how that has progressed. It's certainly a pretty awesome battle captured here, and we're eager to see more!
A little test with cinema bars and camera movement. Not using the Saga Release Version anymore and instead the Knossus Download Portal. So I can put in many more ships and use all the features of the later Freespace Open Builds.

TCS Wolfhound take out a frigate and heavy cruiser.

Video Tutorial Shows Birth Of A WC Fan Project Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Longtime Wing Commander fan centaurianmudpig has posted something a little different. Lots of talented Wingnuts upload videos of the works in progress, but CMP recently livestreamed the entire creative process. He goes through bit-by-bit looking up tutorials, sampling graphics and writing Unity code. And in the end, he has a tiny mobile Hornet! He's got some work to do to reach his goal of developing a rudimentary top-down WC clone, but it's a very interesting look at how the sausage is made.
Making a (very basic) 2D (top down) demake of Wing Commander PC game from the 1990's. Made in Unity 3D, we import a sprite for our spaceship and add some basic controls and get our ship to move and turn.

Goals:
Fly a Hornet (Rotate, Translate/Move)
Shoot Lasers
Fire Dumbfire Missiles
Blow something up (An Asteroid!?)

Homeworld Mod Testing Fighter Visibility Updates Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

L.I.F. has posted a teaser for the next upgrade to the Wing Commander Homeworld Remastered Mod. Can you spot the change? It might look like a wing of Confed Arrows circling HQ, but there are some unique changes that fans of the project should notice. As a hint, the upgrade involves making fighter combat a bit engaging for fleet commanders out there. You can find all the details at the CIC Forums.
Try to guess what I am currently working on at the moment. Something in the following picture is different.

Vega Super Star Back In Action Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

DefianceIndustries is back from a well deserved holiday break with a slick new wallpaper image. It features a cool new Rapier model first teased last October. This is the variant featured in Super Wing Commander and Arena, so it's a bit more flat and round than DOS or GOG players might be familiar with. It's great to see some of the lesser known ships pop up now and then! Could the Straith or Danrik be next?!

Rapier Research Leads To New Sighting Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Lilja saw our post a while back about one of the Lightning fighters that became a Wing Commander Movie Rapier at Pinewood Studios and decided to do some digging of his own. Finding where they've all ended up over the years has been an interesting endeavor, and through some clever investigation, he managed to track down some new information on the afterlife of these exotics birds. Immediately after the film's debut in 1999, fans spotted one Rapier at a Planet Hollywood in Ohio, and then a couple showed up for auction/rental/sale in the early 2000s. More recently, one appeared at a paintball facility in the UK, and now there appears to have been another (or possibly the same one?) at a nearby outdoor laser tag venue. Lilja also did some research into the crafts' original registry numbers, and this suggests that the paintball place's Rapier may have moved to the Bruntingthorpe Aircraft Museum. Any fans nearby want to check it out and let us know?
Apparently there were five lightning cockpits that were rescued by Pinewood studios from Marine Salvage in Portsmouth.

The registrations ZF577, ZF585, ZF586, ZF589 and ZF590 have been mentioned, firstly here in the comments section and then tweeted here. Here are some links to the aircrafts, Wing Command pops up several times as does Pinewood: ZF577, ZF586 & ZF590

A website called demobbed lists all of the aircraft and some history. It is difficult to link to this information, however if you move your curser over the i on the right hand side you get an information box. But long story short all these five registrations state the Wing Commander movie. Looks like ZF590 was at the paintball place, and is now at Bruntingthorpe, with ZF585 in a museum in Hermeskeil, Germany. The others are unknown.

Annual Awards Voting In Full Swing Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Our annual community voting is now in progress, and Wingnuts like you are helping choose the Wing Commander Fan Project of the Year for 2017! Here are the nominees one more time. It's hard to choose because there's so many great projects going on, but vote below and help pick the winner!
  • Dark Sentinel had a fantastic year with some of his most exquisite and creepy Nephilim designs ever. He added a variety of capships and fighters to his fleet, including some of the less common and more exotic variants. He capped the year off with one of the most detailed WC wallpaper images ever made.
  • Flat Universe had their long-awaited public multiplayer alpha launch this year. This was on top of a variety of other improvements to their base game, which is coming along very nicely.
  • The Homeworld Remastered Mod had another huge year. This year they added new gameplay mechanics, ships from WC1/2, a player guide and plenty of ships. All of this was incorporated into the playable game in frequent updates all year long.
  • Klavs' Fleet of Ships continued to see widespread usage with new inclusion in the Homeworld Mod as well as Crazycanuck's WC Saga spinoff. His famous Concordia is looking better than ever and he's got a new Waterloo in the works.
  • Ninja's Sketches are looking better than ever. This year he perfected layer mask techniques & gradient coloring and did new experimentation with painting 2D representations of 3D ship models.
  • Pix's Origin Adventures continued his streak of extremely cool WC projects. This year he delved into the Japanese FM Towns, the Japanese Mega CD and even got a Creative DXR Kit going for old school WC4 DVD.
  • The Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack had a tremendous year with more gorgeous models and playable releases. Kilrathi ships got more love in 2017, but their Confed and Nephilim counterparts weren't far behind. And it's not just about graphical upgrades, engine enhancements have reduced texture delay and capships have even gotten new features.
  • The Sins of a Solar Empire mod is a really cool fleet battle game that's recently gotten a new playable test. The Confed and Kilrathi have been fleshed out quite a bit this year, and both the Border Worlds and Nephilim are in work and planned for 2018 updates.
  • The Star Trek Armada 2 mod is a fun one to see back from hiatus. Work has picked right back up from where it left off a couple years ago and a playable Confed demo is already available.
  • WC Saga Plus / Deutsch Conversion got its first service pack to help simplify the installation of all the various patches and enhancements to the original game. There are new GUI enhancements, better tools for modders and help pages included now.
  • The WC Toolbox editor added preliminary support for WC2 and Academy this year. And it's just one piece of a suite of tools that includes things like the WC1 Live Viewer and French WC2 Conversion Patch. It's great to see all the tweaking still going on for the earliest games in the series!

Star Wars Excitement Spills Over Into Wing Commander Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Mark Hamill's return to the Star Wars series and starring role in The Last Jedi has also sparked a wave of interest in his work between epic film projects. The gaming press has largely already done this thanks to Mr. Hamill's role in Star Citizen, but now it's spreading to a more mainstream audience. A recent article at Pajiba highlights this. The hook is that the author has fond memories from playing WC4 in the '90s, but isn't the type of person to figure out that the game is easily playable on modern computers (with higher resolution DVD movies) at places like GOG.com. Instead, he's found someone who's uploaded all of the movies to YouTube and caught up that way. Despite playing to the stereotypes of early video game FMV, it's hard for the author not to also be swayed by some of the nostalgia that comes rushing back after all these years. Clearly he's not alone, and there's likely more than a few former pilots out there looking to relive some of the fun. If you know people in this boat, let them know that all the WC games are available at GOG! And you can find the full article referenced today here.
I’m not sure I can fully convey just how entertained I was watching this, but what struck me the most was that these cutscenes somehow simultaneously represent the pinnacle of what could be accomplished twenty years ago, while also providing a clear example of just how far we’ve come (both in terms of technological advancement, as well as developing narrative in video games) since then.

Catch Up On Everything Wing Commander Amiga Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Shot97 has put together an absolutely massive review of Wing Commander for Amiga systems. He covers every inch from top to bottom. Shot goes over what the game meant to him and then proceeds to cover the backstory, the impact of the characters, the depth of the manual, the significance of the Kilrathi, and that's just getting started. Everything is accompanied by relevant video/screenshots and commentary. He's typed up the core experience here, but you can watch the full story in an hourlong YouTube video below.
Wing Commander came out in 1992 for the Amiga, a couple years after the original DOS version, yet it blew me away just as much as it did anyone playing it in DOS. I adore this game, and I adore this version in particular.

Casper Van Dien On Wing Commander 4, Starship Troopers & Much More Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

GeekScape has posted a podcast episode with Starship Troopers star Casper Van Dien. The actor is well known for his sci-fi acting, but he's also a director with a diverse variety of projects under his belt. He also had a brief cameo in Wing Commander 4, which is mentioned in the show. Mr. Van Dien has highlighted the role via social media with the image to the right and caption, "The time I took a job just to get an autograph from @hamillhimself #wingcommander4 #usetheforceluke." That's not a bad reason to accept a gig!

After making his surprise appearance on Geekscape 400, Casper Van Dien is back… and this time it’s official! Casper talks about working on the Sci-Fi classic ‘Starship Troopers’ and working with directing geniuses like Tim Burton and Paul Verhoeven! We also talk a bit about his own directing work and how he approaches it as an actor! And of course I’ve got to mention Casper’s appearances in two of my favorites: ‘Beast Master III’ and ‘Wing Commander IV’! The man has a ton of awesome sci-fi stories so sit back and enjoy!

Privateer Model Exploration Continues Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

A lot of people have done some pretty nifty things with the Privateer 3D model archive over the years, but it can still be a slightly daunting task to dig into if you're an artistic novice. This is where fans come into play, and Wingnuts have continued to help their fellow Wingnuts learn how to navigate these waters. bai recently got some assistance unpacking some of the texture files and finding out how to convert and read them. The output speaks for itself and just shows how good the assets were to begin with. They also show what's possible when WC fans work together! Learn more at the CIC Forums.
Wow, the results are night and day... so much better than I expected! Got some more models converted, starting to do some more test renders. Turning out better than expected. Amazing how good these models are, for being 25 years old. More to come :D

WC1&2 Audio Sound Comparison Presented In Easy Playlist Form Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

pcuser1541 has put together a number of videos that showcase the wide variety of audio setups supported by the original Wing Commander games. SoundBlaster was the most common card of the day, but the Roland MT-32 was highly sought after early on and new variants continued to be released through numerous ports over nearly half a dozen years. There are examples from the Microsoft GS, FM Towns, Amiga, Macintosh, Super Nintendo and Sega CD. The 'Audio CD' portion comes from the Origin Audio Volumes rather than the wav music included with Kilrathi Saga. Different fans have posted similar comparisons over the years, but I'm not sure anyone has posted quite so many variants of a dozen different tracks all in one set of videos like this. You can find many of these audio samples in the CIC Music section, but check them out below for easy convenient listening. After clicking play on the segments embedded below, click the icon in the top left of each window for a playlist dropdown to allow you to jump to six different WC1 and six different WC2 sound files. If that doesn't work for some reason, find all of the clips here.

GPD Win Is Latest Handheld To Showcase Wing Commander Emulation Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Alien Gray has posted a nifty video of the GPD Win playing the 3DO version of Super Wing Commander. This device actually runs Windows 10, but it's using the Project Phoenix emulator to get the game running. This is just the latest in a fascinating string of modern handheld devices that have managed to get various WC games running. Back in the day, you needed a relatively powerful PC just to get DOSBox to run some of the original games, so we've come quite a ways to be able to play some of the more exotic WC variants on relatively cheap portable hardware. Other examples include games running on the nVidia Shield, LattePanda, Raspberry Pi, Open Pandora and Android phones.

IMDB Takes Video Games To The Movies Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Internet Movie Database has posted a photo gallery collage to highlight the history of video games crossing over to movies. There are 96 examples highlighted (a significant fraction of which are Resident Evil films), which is surprising in itself. Even more so, Wing Commander is chronologically listed in the first fifteen movies, so the genre has really exploded in recent years. The ones preceding WC do include quite a few turds, so it's no wonder that video game movies had such a strong stigma in the '90s. Although the article is titled "From Console to Big Screen," a number of the base games here weren't on consoles, and a number of the movies were direct-to-video releases. They also chose an odd photo for Wing Commander. It's a still of 'Marine Blair' from their landing party on the Kilrathi ConCom. Check out the full spread here.

Childhood Adventures Explored On YouTube Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Claude Blair has put together an interesting video that reviews a large pile of Wing Commander documentation. After some initial introduction, he spends more than a half hour lovingly detailing the material on every page of Claw Marks. Obviously most of you are quite familiar with what's in the WC1 manual, but it's always fun to hear the perspective of someone who's so excited about it. The later third of the video is all about less well known items, and this may be where some people see a few things that are new to them. He covers some of the supplemental WC1-related documents as well as a 1995 draft of the Wing Commander Bible (45 MB zip). You can find copies of these files and more for yourself in the CIC Development Archive.
Wing Commander 1 .. uhh the memories!

Happy New Year From George Oldziey Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

George Oldziey is back with a New Year's message and Wing Commander album status update. He's anxiously preparing for the Wing Commander bar music recording happening next month as well as planning out the next steps for the orchestral portions of the album. He's also dug up a vintage interview that was published in the January 1999 edition of Film Score Monthly. CIC visitors that were following us 19 years ago might remember this one, but it's still a great look at how George become wrapped up in such an iconic series!
Happy New Year! And a blast from the past!

Greetings to you, the best music fans in the world! I truly hope that you and yours had a wonderful and blessed holiday season.

I'm very much looking forward to recording the Wing Commander bar music next month, as well as planning phase 2 to make Volume 2 of orchestral music possible. I'll keep you updated as we progress.

I've been going through old files to do some New Year's "house cleaning" and came upon this "interview" that was done approximately 20 years ago. I don't recall for whom I wrote this, but I was asked to submit, in my own words, my experiences upon being hired at Origin/EA as well as the subsequent composition of all that WC music. It's a bit long, but if you grab a cup of coffee or hot toddy just put your feet up and have a good read! (apologies that copying and pasting eliminated all the paragraph formatting).

All the best to all of you in 2018!

This is just a tiny snippet, check the full interview out at Kickstarter or the archive here.
I was living the quiet life of an Austin, Texas freelance musician during the Spring of 1994 when a friend told be about a job opening for a composer at Origin Systems, a leading producer of interactive entertainment software. Since I've always been one to seek new musical challenges I quickly sketched a piece in the best tradition of action films (and slightly reminiscent of that "galaxy far, far away"), sequenced it with a borrowed computer and synthesizer module (with a lot of help from a friend more computer savvy than I) and recorded the piece to a cassette tape which I delivered a few days later. Two days after I submitted the tape I was hired. Unbeknownst to me I would be composing the music for the cutting-edge CD ROM title: Wing Commander 3. The next 6 months turned out to be one of the most exciting and rewarding periods of my life.

Kick Off 2018 With Some Slick Sketches Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Arne from Android Arts is currently putting together some awesome Wing Commander sketches. He started with an Exeter and has drawn a contemporary flotilla around it. There's also a gun mockup and fighter concept art, plus a really cute 'Dralthi Commander' diskette. All of the little fine details are really endearing. These are still works in progress, and you can find the latest on Twitter.

#WingCommander 1 ship redesigns. I used to really enjoy this on the Amiga, but it was also frustrating to replay missions after an enemy ace slipped away (or asteroid field collisions) (or failed escort duty).

Happy New Year! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The confetti is starting to settle, and those of us who had time off for the holidays are getting ready to go back to work now. We're all inspired by the last two days' worth of 2017 recaps. When it's all summed up like that, it's really astounding, and these are just the condensed highlights. This also means it's time for our traditional New Year's poll that asks what you all think of the year ahead. The CIC turns 20 this year, and we can't wait to see all the exciting WC news that 2018 has in store!

We've also concluded the previous poll, which asked about everyone's favorite galactic sectors. The Gemini Sector beat out Vega by just one vote! Both took about a third of the total and highlight the popularity of both Privateer and Wing Commander 1 (WC3&4 both largely take place in Vega, although the sector isn't as prominently called out there). WC2's Enigma Sector came in third. I was surprised that very few voted for Vukar Tag. When the End Run novel was new, it was a hopping place!

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