Stealth Arrow Pierces the Night

The Stealth Arrow (or Cloaking Arrow if you prefer). I tried a few different purple paint schemes but honestly, it looks better without it (certainly better than the weird tribal tattoo angel wings it originally sported). I may keep tinkering but for now I think this looks good enough for the Black Lance. Paulson didn't seem to big on exotic paint schemes anyway - though Seether, I hear, was partial to Pollock.

Freelancer Mod Expands with Impressive Capship Implementation

The work keeps going on porting ships in-game, and here is another sneak peek, the Liberty Dreadnought replaced by a Confederation Jutland from Wing Commander Saga, which makes for a pretty cool sight overall. The Clarkson has replaced the ubiquitous transports, albeit at a relatively smaller size than in the games (though according to the absolutely foolproof CIC's wiki, it is 160 metres long for the Hellcat's 27 metres, and I'm keeping these proportions). I'm taking a look now at collision meshes and internal rooms. No guarantees, but I guess I can check whether it could be possible to use the highly-detailed models I have to get scenes for the internal hangars to use for shops/bars. The collision boxes are done now, so it's possible to take off and land without issue.

Dunno about you, people, but that definitely renews my own interest in the game and this little project of mine is advancing.

To explain a bit about the process, the initial set of screenshots were more of a tech demo, but now I'm working on getting the ships consistent with each other in terms of size, as well as getting as many if not all of the game's features converted properly, so I've started again from scratch using the lessons learned in that first run. I've got all of Liberty's units replaced properly now (Arrow and Hellcat for their fighters, the standard Confed shuttle as the freighter, the Southampton and the Jutland for the capital ships) as well as the Rhineland units the player sees in the early game (Evansville Black Lance destroyer for the cruiser, Prowler corvette for their corvette and Excalibur for the heavy fighter) and both transports plus early pirate fighters.

I've got a much smoother workflow now which allows for implementation of ships and stations with the right armaments and collision boxes. A total ship conversion should be likely before the end of the year and the remaining work will be to modify the in-game text and pictures.

Through the Moongate Part 2 Expands Stretch Goal Lineup

Let me just say...wow! 100% funded in only one day and six minutes and our first stretch goal not long after! This is way ahead of where we were this time last year. This is incredible! Thank you so much.

Marathon Session Ends in Rout

All Wings Considered - Episode 26 - LIVE!

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander 3 - Locanda System - Flint Madness!
• Righteous Fire - Starting at Oxford
• SYSTEM SHOCK - What's hiding in the Citadel?
• And maybe an Armada battle for good measure...

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

GOG Goes Interstellar for Freespace Anniversary

Happy V-K Day!

PEACE! On this day in 2669, the Empire of Kilrah offered unconditional surrender to the Terran Confederation following the devastating temblor bombing of their home world. Happy V-K Day!

On September 24, 2669, Colonel Christopher Blair launched his successful Temblor Bomb strike on Kilrah. Its resulting blast wave took out the Emperor and Prince Thrakhath's enormous invasion fleet massing in orbit. The crown prince himself was also bested in combat just prior to Blair's descent to the planet's surface. Faced with this unfathomable loss, Thrakhath's chee'dyachee Melek immediately surrendered. VK Day was patterned after VE and VJ Day celebrated on Earth after World War 2. False Colors was the first to give us a name for the event in the WC universe. Also of note, Star*Soldier mentions VN Day, which strongly suggests that some significant victory over the Nephilim was also achieved by the year 2701. You can read about other major holidays in the Wing Commander universe here. Also don't miss Dundradal's historical comparison between VJ and VK Days here!

...Colonel, later Commodore Christopher Blair dropped the Temblor Bomb on Kilrah, destroying the planet. Soon after the Terran Confederation and Empire of Kilrah signed the Treaty of Torgo, know to the Kilrathi as the Treaty of Ko-bar Yagar, on the deck of the TCS Victory in the Torgo system. The Kilrathi had actually captured the system from the Confederation following the loss of the TCS Behemoth.

Much like the ceremonies on the USS Missouri and an unnamed frontier base, a simple table was the only furniture. Baron Melek, retainer to the deceased Prince Thrakhath, signed for the Empire of Kilrah. Crown Prince Thrakhath had been killed by Christopher Blair during the raid of Kilrah. Admiral Tolwyn signed for the Terran Confederation. Again the Terrans had a large delegation while the Kilrathi brought only a few. A flyby by four Hellcats took place at the end of the ceremony. The war was over.

Everybody Loves Excalibur 3D Prints

Got a successful print on my 3D printer today! This is the F-103 Excalibur, the final fighter from Wing Commander III. It’s a beautiful little machine.

My first print of this fighter was on an uncalibrated print bed, and I couldn't separate the supports from the print, so it's a little plastic mess. This one, I printed with the nose up and with the correct support settings, so it just snapped off cleanly. This is the first thing I've gotten to come out decent on my printer. I'm pretty happy with it. :)

Happy Birthday Armada!

WC1 Inspector on the Case

I do not have an update for the Toolbox, but instead a utility program for viewing a snapshot of in-memory game data. It is an outgrowth of the WC1LiveViewer program, except not live anymore and with much more data. It is a bit slow, but it works for my needs.

The Data tab provides a fairly extensive hierarchical view of the game data set and can be filtered using keywords. The InFlight and Mission tabs provide a specialized view of a subset of the data.

As an example, let us enter an asteroid field. Using the data tab and filtering on hazards, we can see the values for the asteroid field. The game has populated in-flight object slots 13 to 20 as asteroids and from the in-flight tab we can see related values grouped together. If the object has an image block associated with it, a preview will be shown.

Graphics Tablet Unleashes New Wing Commander Artist

I've just bought a graphics tablet. Can't draw, but now I have proof. :)

All Wings Considered - Episode 25 - LIVE!

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander 3 - Tamayo System - 3DO Version!
• Privateer - More Postgame
• Book Club - Heart of the Tiger, Chapters 5-8
• NEW FEATURE: Ali Cats!

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

GamePro Article Highlights PC Standouts

It Ain't Easy Being PC

What do you need to play PC CD games? If you don't already own a PC, the first thing you need is about $2000! (And you thought the 3DO was pricey.) Head down to the local computer store and start studying up on personal computers.

For the games listed here you need:

• Either an IBM-compatible PC with a 486 processor running at 50 megahertz or a Pentium PC.
• At least 8 megabytes of RAM
• At least 20 megabytes of hard disk space (the more, the better)
• Double-speed CD-ROM drive (or faster)
• MS-DOS 5.0 (Microsoft Windows is also required to run some games)

PROTIP: Before you buy a PC game, check the box for minimum system requirements. You can also call game companies to see if you system's up to the task.

New New Constantinople the Same as Old New Constaninople

Through the Moongate Part 2 Campaign Takes Off

Andrea Contato and team have launched the Kickstarter for the Through the Moongate sequel. Part 2 is titled "From Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium" and promises to capture the historic significance of Origin's Wing Commander development in the '90s and beyond. Some 40+ former Origin employees were interviewed for this work, so it looks to be a very well rounded effort.

As an extra bonus, fans who opt to pledge for a hard cover copy of the book will also receive a special Wing Commander bookmark with new art by Denis Loubet, the senior Origin artist who led art direction on the first few WC games. That tier costs €50 plus an additional €24 shipping to many places, so it's not cheap, but who can resist an exclusive Wing Commander bookmark?! I'm sure the in-depth Origin story will be a fun read as well! Digital and soft cover editions start at €15 and €25 (but do not include the bookmark!). The project has had an enormously successful first day with nearly $19,000 of the minimum $27,679 threshold already taken in. There are some high dollar levels with cloth Ultima art, Akalabeth port and Lord British autographed certificate that are going fast. You can find the campaign and pledge here.

If you’ve ever played a computer role-playing game (CRPG), chances are that Ultima played a part in its inspiration. Created by visionary Richard Garriott, and produced by his company Origin Systems, Inc., Ultima is one of the most important and influential CRPG series in the world. Through the Moongate illuminates the path of the Ultima games' history and the creative people behind this landmark series. It also covers some of Origin's other games, especially Wing Commander, and touches on several contemporary titles you may have missed. Many of these exciting tales have never before been told. If that intrigues you, then won’t you step with me... Through the Moongate?

As I traced the paths of the Ultima games and those who worked for Origin Systems, I began to realize the multitude of games that would not be possible without the influence of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems, and the Ultima series. To ensure their place in history, I've also included special coverage of the Wing Commander and Ultima Underworld series, plus other significant video games of the era. CRPGs, action, adventure, and strategy games such as Space Rogue, Wolfenstein 3D, Deathlord, 7th guest, Jane's Combat series, OMEGA, MUD1, Meridian 59, Lineage, and Tabula Rasa. I’ve also included a special look at cancelled titles such as Times of Lore 2 and Fire Horse.

New Freelancer Project Imports Beautiful WC Fighters

So, after a Discord discussion that involved talking about Privateer, I kinda got the modding itch once again for Freelancer, but this time, I managed to get in touch with FL modders, who were nice enough to share with me their wonderful, wonderful tools (the kind of which I'm jealous as a HW modder). Long story short, I got told that the models designed by DI, Klavs and others are way too detailed for the game engine, which is probably a wise conclusion, but since I'm very unwise, I tinkered a bit and managed to achieve a pretty nice proof of concept with DI's F-107 Dragon/Lance:

The tech demo is available upon request on Discord (keep in mind it's really limited, just a replacement of one of the game's fighters with the F-107, without a dedicated collision box, for example). Don't hesitate to ask for specific fighters that you'd like to see receiving this treatment if you wanna go for a run of this great old game with a specific craft. :)

And on the matter of progress, it's going pretty quickly. Importing the Hellcat now, and once the Razor and Excalibur are in, the first part of the game will be properly turned in Privateer-lite. Long story short, it's just as I dreamed it could be, if not even better. Freelancer is one hell of a game.

GOG Weekend Sale Knocks $35.94 Off WC Series

Moment of Praise for the Amiga Wing Commander Install Icon

The Amiga Love Twitter account recently shared this shot of the Amiga Wing Commander Installer icon. While some might look at this as incredibly trivial, we see it as an important piece of history imbued with memories of excitement and promise. Installers are something of a lost art and personal curiosity of mine. The first couple WC games were fairly simple, but by WC3 you had memorable moments such as the spinning Victory or Privateer 2's Tri-System backstory. The Command & Conquer series also did some fantastic installers around the same time.

It was wonderful when developers took the time to lovingly craft something that otherwise could be so mundane. In theory, gamers would only ever see these things once briefly before jumping into the actual play space, so it showed a high level of craftsmanship when they took the time to put some effort into the installer. And because players did only see these briefly, sometimes people forget some of the cool nods included therein. This Amiga installer icon would have been one of the earliest embellishments on a bare bones install program. It's pretty cool how they included the one-pixel wide main logo above the arrow and desktop unit. It's something that may not have been fully appreciated at the time, and very much probably wouldn't exist today, so we'll acknowledge it here. All of the tiny little finishing touches where developers went the extra mile and put in extra effort to top of some element of Wing Commander is why we're all here today.

You don’t see this every day. Origin /Wing Commander showing the glorious A2000 some love! I would have made it a tiny bit more accurate, but I’ll take it. :)

All Wings Considered - Episode 24 - LIVE!

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander 3 - Tamayo System
• Privateer - The Postgame
• MAGNUM LAUNCH!
• The secrets of Old New Constantinople

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

Phonetic Script Dialogue Discovered in The Secret Missions!

The original Wing Commander has an embedded phonetic lip-sync track to match up the mouths of the Tiger's Claw crew to the game's dialogue script. While that is an absolutely amazing level of detail, it was only implemented on the first game. The Secret Missions and Wing Commander 2 just use repetitive filler text like "Buy more games like Wing Commander 2." At least, this is what we thought until today!

YPersonified has been using UnnamedCharacter's WC Toolbox to dig into how this works. He's made the exciting discovery that the first mission of SM1 in the Goddard System actually has a full phonetic script! Even more amazing is that it differs from the game's final dialogue! He's put together a few examples below as well as a full video to show off what the lip sync version of events is. Since it's his best interpretation so far, there's probably a few inaccuracies to smooth out yet, but this is still great work. You can help provide feedback to the translation at the CIC Forums here.

With the help from WCToolbox, I was able to look into GAMEDAT files from Wing Commander and managed to get a glimpse at how this game works.

These are generic phonetics, but Goddard 1 isn't:

- Bimorgameslikwincamandertoo
- thisisalinofgenericfonetics
- uwilluvthesekretmissensframjahnandstev
- onleasuperpilotlikmarccanwinthismissinhaha

These are probably well known lines which characters mostly say with mouths in The Secret Missions instead of thorough phonetics seen in Vega Campaign. However, anyone with keen eyes may find out that it works differently in Goddard 1. Apparently, it's the only mission with non-generic phonetics in the series. Still, it turns out that they do not match with the written script we see in-game after all, so I decided to interpret the bar, briefing and debriefing conversations by editing BRIEFING.001 with WCToolbox and make a video to show how it turned out. Many thanks to Shades2585's WCPhonetics for reference.

Since this is only my interpretation, it may not be 100% accurate. If you're interested, check out below and guess what Bossman's saying. Also, you can easily notice that these lip sync works are incomplete, as some of them are completely out of context - like Bluehair's self-compliment on bagging Lumbari, or the usual WC2 ads.

Shotglass' Proposed Last Name Revealed

Another fascinating discovery for WC fans: Shotglass' last name!

#ManiacxSpaceViking

You're just saying what we're all thinking, red HOOK UP stamp.

Catch Up On Wing Commander Music Albums

Russian Translation Sparks Interest in Early WC Modding

Has anyone seen this? By the way, this is not new, it's possibly quite old. I have seen an online reference to the Russian version of the game dating back to 2004, and the translated data files are timestamped as 1992.

Using the above font file as an example of the work involved in doing this: they unpacked the data file, decompressed the individual packets, decoded the font, added Russian glyphs, re-encoded the font, re-compressed the packets, and re-packed the file. And according the file stamps, they did this in 1992. Wow. Whoever did this was years, decades ahead.

Dig Into the History of EA & Origin's Merger

Origin had good reason to play it safe now in this respect and others. When the one-year anniversary of the acquisition arrived, the accountants had to reveal to EA that their new subsidiary had done no more than break even so far. By most standards, it hadn’t been a terrible year at all: Ultima Underworld II, Serpent Isle, Wing Commander: Academy, and Wing Commander: Privateer had all more or less made money, and even Strike Commander wasn’t yet so badly underwater that all hope was lost on that front. But on the other hand, none of these games had turned into a breakout hit in the fashion of the first two Wing Commander games, even as the new facilities, new employees, and new titles going into development had cost plenty. EA was already beginning to voice some skepticism about some of Origin’s recent decisions. The crew in Austin really, really needed a home run rather than more base hits if they hoped to maintain their status in the industry and get back into their overlord’s good graces. Clearly 1994, which would feature a new mainline entry in both of Origin’s core properties for the first time since Ultima VI had dropped and Wing Commander mania had begun back in 1990, would be a pivotal year. Origin’s future was riding now on Ultima VIII and Wing Commander III.

Can't Get Japanese WC Off My Mind

The Late Night Session Stays Up With Wing Commander

When playing it’s amazing seeing how much the developers got right in Wing Commander that would clearly inspire the many games that followed. Navigation points, wingman communications, even mission briefings… these admittedly were often a staple for military sims but seeing them executed in a space sim was a rarity. If you’ve played any Star Wars space sim that followed you’d recognise many of these features too. Having your pilot’s hands on the flight stick responding to your movements in the game does not get old.

Through the Moongate Sequel to Explore Wing Commander Development

Through the Moongate part 2 is coming soon.

Historic WC3 Review Resurfaces

I was rummaging though some of my very old HDDs when I found some very old(er) magazine scans. Enjoy!

Go Hiking With Maniac