WC4 Polaroids: Com. Specialist

This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.

We're stepping away from flight suits for today's Wing Commander IV Polaroid post. What we have here is something intriguing: a young woman in a non-standard uniform with a nametag that reads "LOATS". The picture is labeled only "Com. Specialist" and features no visible insignia patches, making this one an interesting challenge... or not, because despite two typos the start to our seach is right in the manual connected right to the text under the photo: "Circle V Comm. Specialist - Saxon Trainer". The 'Circle V' must actually be 'Circe V', an embattled planet you (optionally) visit midway through the game and a short Google search revealed that "Saxon Trainer" is really Saxon TRAINOR.

Who, then, is LOATS? If you tend to side with Panther over Hawk then you may just remember her: at the end of the Circe series she contacts the Intrepid to thank you for your help. She actually has some pretty extensive dialogue, quoted below... along with possibly one of the single worst phrases ever put to script in which she describes a transmission she is sending to you as "a hefty data-squirt". She's credited as "Circean Communications Specialist" in the script and the scene is all about rewarding Blair and company with a package of spy data that Circe's deep space network has collected. The scene is likely forgotten because this never really pays off in terms of the implied gameplay reward... but you can tell it was intended to be something of a hook/reward for players who suffered through the tougher do-gooder Circe missions rather than collecting toys at Speradon! But nothing was ever implemented, so it doesn't change the ending of the game or add access to any special equipment.

C.I.C. - SOSA -K3
Blair sees sosa at her console...

SOSA
Sir, I think you're going to find this very interesting...

as he moves closer, Blair sees a CIRCEAN COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST on Sosa's terminal screen.

CIRCEAN (COMM SCREEN)
Colonel, I just want to tell you how much your efforts have meant to all of us here in Circe.

BLAIR
Just doing our duty. I'll pass your thanks on to the crew.

CIRCEAN (COMM SCREEN)
We have something else we'd like to offer you... During the Kilrathi war we built a pretty extensive eavesdropping web around the outer edges of this system. This civil war has narrowed our focus greatly, so there's been little time to process what the web's picked up -- it's mostly been archived. Parsing this encrypted stuff isn't a priority for us, but maybe you'll find some use for it.
(to Sosa)
It's a hefty data-squirt, Lieutenant. Hope you have the bandwidth.

SOSA
Hell, yes. Open the floodgates.

she hits some buttons and we see an "upload thermometer" engage.

BLAIR
Keep me posted on this.

The Google search which located the correct spelling of the actress' name also turned up some excellent news: unlike several of the other featured players we've showcased in this series, Ms. Trainor is still working in Hollywood today! She has wracked up dozens of familiar credits over the years and even runs a company called The Studio that offers acting classes and coaching! Genre fans will be happy to hear that she has appeared in episodes of just about every series you fondly remember, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sliders to The X-Files!

In the end, this one little preserved Polaroid has taught us quite a bit of Wing Commander IV lore, from what a specialist uniform looks like to the fact that the character was named Loats! Just the connection that she was calling from Circe V or the fact that people from the system are called Circean are on their own interesting. If only more of this kind of material had survived!

Armada: The Lost Manual

Wing Commander Armada comes with one of the greatest game manuals in history, an all-the-more impressive achievement given Origin prided themselves on producing wonderful lore material. That manual is Voices of War, a fascinating and evocative look at both sides of the Terran-Kilrathi conflict. For a game with very little internal narrative it's impressive that Armada's lore manual has been so massively influential on the rest of the Wing Commander universe. But Armada had TWO similarly sized manuals! Voices of War is dedicated only to world building while a second Play Guide offered all the details on how to actually interface with the game. It was only ever available digitally in an ancient 'VEBE' format which does not open with any kind of modern viewer. For whatever reason, GOG did not bother to include a copy with their release. Not having access to a copy hasn't been a huge problem for Wing Commander fans since we know how to play Wing Commander's most unique spinoff... but what about new players just discovering the series today who might not even know what a modem is? We've created a quick-and-dirty scan of the booklet in case anyone needs to learn how to play some of Armada's unusual game modes! So whether you're looking to connect with a wingmate to take on the Gauntlet or you're ready for eleven sectors of Campaign action, the Armada Play Guide is ready for action! You can access a copy here (62 MB PDF).

Bonus: eagle-eyed readers will notice that it includes yet another reprinting of the Wing Commander I radar charts that we chronicled recently.

WC4 Polaroids: Miner

This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.

Last Thanksgiving, we wrote about a Polaroid of Moose and how the character represented three different people at once: the actor who played him in a cutscene, the member of the development team whose name and photograph were used for his wingman selection screen and finally the member of the Playstation team whose name replaced them in that port. Now, we've found a polaroid that represents FOUR different people! Meet Miner.

Unraveling the Polaroid meant once again dealing with a small problem: Miner is in full Confederation fighter pilot costume (next to the nose of the famous Confederation shuttle set!) and so his face isn't very visible. Luckily, the "Mike" and "Confed Pilot" scribbled at the bottom were enough to move the needle: the game's printed credits do indeed credit a Confed Pilot... MICHAEL Wachtel! From there, we learned that like most of the others we've learned about he was a young actor just starting out when Wing Commander IV was being shot. He worked a variety of extra jobs hoping for bigger roles. In the final game, he appears in three of the 'transition' scenes aboard the TCS Lexington; whatever flight deck shot he was dressed in gloves and a helmet for must have wound up on the cutting room floor!

Michael Wachtel ultimately had only one other credited featured role: as Marine #1 in an episode of Wing Commander's nearest cousin, Space Above and Beyond. The episode, "Dear Earth", aired just three weeks after Wing Commander IV shipped! Mr. Wachtel's career in front of the camera may have been short but he didn't leave the industry! He went on to found a company called Production Security Services which continues to provide... well, security services, to this day!

Who is Miner the character? Blink-and-you'll-miss-him but Miner appears in the very first mission of Wing Commander IV: he (along with wingman Quality) are providing CAP for Bluepoint station when you and Maniac arrive. Like a number of other Confederation pilots, he doesn't appear on the Lexington's killboard until the Tyr series. This was to prevent recording too many sets of mission-specific comms for the talk-heavy Hellespont series. But you still don't actually get to fly with him - he'll show as being in sickbay every time! He finally appears again during the defection mission where you'll either have to shoot down him or Vagabond. Like Moose, Miner uses the 'generic' wingman VDU that does not show his callsign. While the game's files include text that allows Miner to appear in various other missions (like the discovery of the flashpacked transport) there are no audio files and he can't actually be selected as a wingman.

Miner gave up on being a "people person" before he hit his teenage years. His home sector has a very dark sun, and he comes from the farthest planet out. The icy and inhospitible conditions didn't allow for very much people interaction. He's an audience - a people watcher. Most people feel he is cold and calculating, never realizing that he has a much clearer idea of events than nearly anyone else onboard.

Like the previously profiled Moose (and every other Wing Commander IV redshirt who appears in cutscenes), Miner is represented in the game by a face and name that do not match the actor playing him. When you select him as a wingman you see that he's "Chris Douglas". Now Chris Douglas is a name every Wing Commander fan should know: his contributions across most of the series were incredibly important, from his modeling and texturing ships in Wing Commander II to acting as one of the first modern game art directors on Wing Commander III and IV. From knife-like Kilrathi spaceships to a Confederation fleet that would've looked at home on a modern aircraft carrier, his influence on Wing Commander was enormous. He's even credited with originally breaking the Wing Commander IV story!

But wait, who's this? Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV has a completely different name and picture for Miner! Shown here is Rodney "Miner" Brunet, again an Origin Systems employee. At first we assumed this was a case of an unexpected change being made to the game late in development after the official guide had already signed off (a necessity in order for it to be printed and on store shelves). But then I started another run through Wing Commander IV and found... this time, Miner (in-game) had switched to Rodney Brunet! Same copy of the game, no differences at all in settings. We knew we could be pretty sure this was NOT a case of removing a fired employee; Mr. Brunet would go on to work for Chris Roberts at Digital Anvil, animating sequences for the Wing Commander movie. After several play through's of the game's first five missions we discovered it's the result of possibly an ancient Easter egg: if you choose to help the drunk in the intro then Miner is Chris Douglas and if you don't he's Rodney Brunet! Why? The reasoning may be lost to time, but enabling this meant including two separate sets of pilot names in three languages each in LANGUAGES.TRE! Mr. Brunet has been a prolific artist throughout the industry since Digital Anvil. In fact, his career seems to represent the exact dream behind that studio: countless game projects for Microsoft alongside film work for Robert Rodriguez on projects like Planet Terror and Machete. He maintains a website with lots of fascinating work from his career!

Finally, the name (but NOT the picture!) was changed in the PlayStation port of Wing Commander IV. Chris Douglas became Kevin Armstrong... but unlike other PlayStation name changes there's no Kevin Armstrong in the credits! We know that Kevin Armstrong was a QA tester for Origin Systems in 1993 when he worked on Ultima VII Part 2. He would go on to join Lion Entertainment, the Austin-based company responsible for several major Macintosh and PlayStation conversions. He's credited as a programmer on Lion's port of Quake but while the company did much of the work on Wing Commander IV he isn't listed when the credits roll. Of course we couldn't let the story end on a question mark so with some heavy digging through the Usenet we discovered a 1997 post from Mr. Armstrong that specifically says he's working on WCIV PSX (source!). It's not uncommon for developers not to be credited for their work so it's pretty neat that we can end this story with one more name on Wing Commander IV's roll of honor.

BREAKING NEWS: Wing Commander Vinyl Campaign Still Imminent

Back in February, we reported on a teaser post from Supercade announcing an upcoming crowd funding campaign to release an LP (vinyl record) of George Oldziey's Wing Commander Orchestral Recording Project. The good news today is that the campaign is still happening and it sounds like it's launching soon. Supercade founder Van Burnahm tweeted in response to a question that it was launching in just four days, on May 1st!

Obviously these sorts of things are never fully set in stone... and who knows more about slipping release dates than Wing Commander fans... but we're crossing our fingers and hoping to bring you more on Monday!

Privateer Player's Guide Cover Scene Revealed to be... Reused Asteroid Base Art!

Crazy discovery! Ever wonder what the scene on the cover of the Privateer manual is? It's not one of the regular landing pads. But look closely at the 'buildings' in the background... they're being reused from the asteroid base mesh to make it look like a cityscape!

August 1999 Pay Per View Advertisement Resurfaced

At the edge of the universe, all hell is about to break loose! The final battle for Earth begins on Pay Per View. Take a high flying thrill ride through time and space. For the first time on television, Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, Saffron Burrows: Wing Commander! Sci-fi excitement comes home on Pay Per View.

Appreciating the Extremely Talented Japanese WC Artists

Takashi Asada did the cover art for the FM Towns version of WCII. Yuji Kaida is credited for the cover of the SFC version.

Lego Pancake Cooked to Order

This was a fun one to build years ago in a simpler state, but with the new colors and brick types this guy is far more accurate - albeit with my little tweaks and touches. This is the second model that I needed technic parts to complete.

Pliers (would) say, "Dralthis are pretty pathetic, but don’t turn your back on them. Their particle cannons can fire continuously and will bring down anything from a carrier to an interceptor."

WC3 Mania Grips the Press

Cybot Builds Out the Steltek Fleet

STELTEK fleet ships: have fun with all models in Obj format.

Totes Adorbs!

Look what Ali made for me!

Happy Birthday Tim Curry.. and LOAF!

Tim Curry has been trending all day (birthday, not dead!) and it’s great that everyone has a completely different favorite role they’re remembering. Happy birthday Melek in Wing Commander III but not IV!

Privateer Game Files Reveal Even More of the Steltek Artifact

An Alien Artifact or Ancient Artifact is a Steltek relic discovered on Mars in 2668.

Thunderbolt Created with Heavy Lego Bricks

Finally got it done. After a few months of gathering pieces and accounting for slopes, angles and colors and proportions, Confed's "lead sled" is done. I didn’t use purple for its TCS Victory or Hurricane Squadron markings since purple parts are more rare, and I like the yellow and blue of its post war design more. I also changed the front where the gun batteries are to give the look a bit more pizazz.

Pliers (would) say, "The Thunderbolt is Confed's big ugly battering ram to knock down whatever is in its way, and with that blaster load out and a torpedo it can."

Matthew Lillard Hosting Gaming Livestream with Todd Stashwick

I will be cutting into a patient with the hopes of victory! Watch us do it from 4-6PST. Giving away some @BeadleAndGrimms stuff on @watchtabletop!

WC1 Full Speech Mod Gets Updated

I've just completed a run of Wing Commander using Wing Loader and fixed any issues I encountered.

New in Version 0.82
- Fix multiple issues with lines not triggering, including the final winning cutscene.
- Added Wing Commander 3 to the list of games.
- Added in-flight coms to all the Secret Missions. (Testing Phase)
- Added Wing Commanders Pilot Transfer Program.

The Origin of the Righteous Fire Intro

Here are the flick backgrounds for the Righteous Fire intro. The Origin FX system works just like an old cartoon with transparent cells animated over plates like these.

They solved the need for it by simply having the game not charge you a landing fee if there’s a chance it will take you below 0 credits. Space welfare! (Of course bankruptcy was already a rare case... compared to, like, just exploding.)

It’s a little crazy that Privateer, part of the interactive movie craze, has only three cutscenes: the intro, the ending and this.

Kick Back in the Concordia Lounge

Today we return to the lounge of the carrier ship TCS Concordia. A little more luxurious than a strap like the Tigers Claw. Enjoy the peace from the war among comrades, with a drink. Entertained by the piano sounds of "Jazz". Rest and chill. Who knows what else is to come at this time.

In this file we return to the Caernarvon space station. A remote outpost of the Confederacy. Ideal for making money without the dangers of war. Except for a few minor skirmishes on patrols. Now it's time for standard service in the communication room. ;)

Analyzing Cockpit Changes During WC Movie Production

Even in the final version, maybe to differentiate Knight's Broadsword from Paladin's, you can see they have different control yokes, but the earlier versions of the Broadsword just looks like maybe original Canberra instruments.

Lego Strakha Decloaks

Dug through more parts and put together the Wing Commander 3 version of the Strahka. It’s a little more aesthetically pleasing over my Darket even though similar colors were used. Maybe it’s the larger amount of gray pieces. When I get around to some more brown pieces I will replace them.

Pliers (would) say, "This new generation of Strahka is no scarier then the old ones short of some extra guns. These models don’t carry torpedos at least so that’s a load off your mind right kid?"

Deleted WC Movie Scene Adds Interesting Relationship Context

Happy CIC Easter!

Vintage Magazines Offer Spanish Perspective on Origin Development

New Videos Show Fan Project Development Tests

We thought about updating the demo to use a new video to when you launch from the Lexington. It never got beyond the concept stages however. Still It was kind of a fun experiment.

Development video - basic iridescence testing via open GL

Ambiance Video Helps ISS Pilots Chill

In this file we remain in the ambiance of the quarters on the Caernarvon space station. A remote outpost of the Confederacy. Ideal for making money without the dangers of war. Except for a few minor skirmishes on patrol. Another day comes to an end in space. Then come to your sleeping quarters and rest. Everyday life stays outside. Today we don't do anything anymore. ;)

Origin 3D Archive Collection Fully Indexed in WCPedia

The WC3D Collection is an archive of largely Wing Commander-related 3D models and textures copied from a hard drive at Origin Systems by John Guentzel in late 1998. The collection includes 585 models and scenes from Wing Commander II, Wing Commander Privateer, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander IV and Crusader: No Remorse. There are also several-one off models from other projects and several that have not been identified. There are a total of 3,832 files. The full archive with unaltered files and time stamps is available here (271M).

Lego Darkets Swarm the Brick Space

As an experiment I built my first Kilrathi model and went with the Darket. I wasn’t planning on doing Kilrathi fighters but I went for it, going for not accommodating mini figures to save time space and parts. I really like the results. I’ll get some more brownish colors in the future so that this and other models won’t have such a Heinz ketchup and mustard color scheme.

Pliers (would) say, "The Darket is like a bug. Small and annoying on its own but a bunch are lethal cause those stings add up."

Fan Mod Adds Full Speech to Wing Commander 1!

The mod is specifically designed to work with the WCDX enhanced version of WC1 in Windows, and detailed instructions on how to get all that set up are available at the CIC Forums. We've mirrored the version 0.81 main file (342 meg zip) to make sure a permanent archive is available. All other necessary files are linked from this post. The reviews from fans so far have been fantastic, and what I've seen has been very impressive! Cutscenes, Tiger's Claw conversations and in-flight comms have all been combined and upgraded with authentic spoken audio in a way that's never been possible before. Destro considers this to still be a beta that could use some playtesting, but it should generally have everything in place. Give it a try and let everyone know what you think!

The wait is finally over! Wing Loader is done and ready for release!!!! Now all the Sega CD audio files are usable in Wing Commander 1 (KS Edition), this includes all the in-flight comms as well! There are some general script tidying to do and testing, as I haven't gone through and just did a whole playthrough yet, so I know that I missed a few things along the way. It is still a Work In Progress or a Beta and I won't consider it complete until it's thoroughly tested, but I think it's stable and complete enough to play and enjoy. Fingers crossed. :p

Privateer Wiki Development Making Great Strides

Try the CIC's AI Art Generator!