Welcome to the CIC's 25th Birthday Party! It's unbelievable that a quarter century has passed, but time flies when you're having fun! We've got a nice slate full of items to share today, but the best part of the event is being able to connect with so many friends and fellow fans. Today wouldn't be possible without the contributions of so many of you. And on that note, to kick things off, we've got an exciting clip by Scribbler to help set the stage for what's to come!
Congratulations to the Wing Commander Community on their 25th anniversary!
The party has been rocking in #Wingnut on Discord, but we're taking it to the next level with a co-stream on YouTube! Check it out here!
The WC4 Fan Remake team is back with a thoroughly exhaustive overview of their recent progress. If you have any questions at all about the latest and greatest happenings with the project, this new video below has the details! It's full of information and beautiful WIP content. You should check out the clip for the full experience, but there is also a new article at WCRespace too with a bit more info... including a target release date! You can also find the recently updated playable demo here!
Happy Birthday, Wing Commander CIC!
As we don't have a new demo to release for this year's celebration, we thought that instead we'd share an in-depth update on the current state of the project: where we are, where we're going and, crucially, when we plan to get there!
FekLeyrTarg has a beautiful remaster to share with fellow Wingnuts today. He's gone through the Wing Commander Academy game soundtrack and overhauled it with an SC-55 sound font. This is described as giving the game the "Kilrathi Saga treatment" based on the digital audio enhancements that those games received. He's matched up the new tracks with the appropriate in-game clips in a wonderful YouTube vid below. You can also separately download the new album in MP3 (18 meg zip) or WAV (131 meg zip).
Happy 25th Birthday Wing Commander CIC!
What if the PC game "Wing Commander Academy" (not to be confused with the animated TV-series) received a Windows port like the "Kilrathi Saga" version of "Wing Commander I" and "Wing Commander II - Vengeance of the Kilrathi" and George Oldziey re-orchestrated the music again? Find out in this video.
To render each music track with Patch93's Roland SC-55 soundfont in separate channels, I've used Synthfont 2.
Further mixing was done in Adobe Audition with special settings for the Full Reverb effect.
AllTinker has been hard at work making progress on his Confederation project to enhance the WC1 engine. He's put together this new status update with a handful of tantalizing new screenshots to share for the birthday. Enjoy!
Hi all, I was hoping to have a playable test ready for the CIC birthday, but a few too many things have gotten in the way sadly... I've made a lot of progress on my format-reading library; I have a fairly short list of things I want to wrap up before I put it (and the viewer) up on github - it may be after the first Confederation test release, I'm not sure.
Art-wise one silly thing I realised was that my old widescreen redraws hadn't taken into account the non-square pixels in WC1/2 (being 320x200), so I've also been redrawing those to be even wider, to match my original 21:9 widescreen goal - at the proper original aspect ratio this time. Here's a selection of those (works-in-progress), scaled to a proper 21:9 resolution:
Confederation itself has been going through a major rewrite - ripping out all of the format reading stuff into this library was a good chance to rid myself of a bunch of cruft which had built up over the years.
I've decided that the first releases will be explicitly a series of tech tests (which it would be anyway, but so intent/expectations are clear). To that end it will begin with a multiplayer/cooperative test to cover as much ground as possible. Since I've run out of time for the CIC birthday, I'll give it some more time in the oven; but hopefully it shouldn't be too far off. I'm now aiming for a few weeks from now, so we'll see how that goes.
Of course it may take multiple tests over a period of time to get things fully working... Hopefully enough people are interested in helping test it, with the understanding that there will almost certainly be many issues to sort out! It'll be for Windows, Linux most likely, and Mac is a possibility (it'll happen eventually if not from the beginning).
It's a birthday party, so we've got cake! First up, some excellent brownies by Alexis!
And since it's an extra special birthday, we've got double cakes! Number two is a three layer wonder by Lacey!
Our archivists have been hard at work! Earlier this year we acquired Wing Commander Prophecy producer Billy Caine's archive of production documents; this consisted of seven folders containing hundreds of pages of internal documentation covering Wing Commander Prophecy's development from March 1996 to November 1997.
These documents, divided into the seven topics below, include correspondence, internal documents and reference material that Billy felt it was important to preserve physically at the time. All aspects of the game's development are touched on, but one document that will be particularly exciting to fans finally explains the intent behind the Aligned People and how it would have played out in future games! There are several early pitches and a long term product plan that includes never-before-seen summaries of canceled projects like Wing Commander 6, 7, Maniac Missions and the first person shooter. In short, we've finally answered some very old questions!
We hope you enjoy exploring these documents; there's a lot to discover and we'd love to hear what you find on the forums. We also hope future Wing Commander scholars will be able to use these to help tell Wing Commander Prophecy's story. Finally, this update would not have been possible without the help of LeHah, who arranged the deal, and an anonymous Wing Commander fan who donated almost $1,000 to charity to make this presentation possible!
AD has been hard at work recovering and restoring some of the scenes cut from the final version of the Wing Commander movie. Enjoy this collection of work he's done so far!
Paladin Ejects - Paladin is forced to eject from his Broadsword after sinking a Kilrathi warship.
Blair Leaves the Diligent - Blair, originally the turret gunner, is lured aboard the Diligent in search of the NAVCOM AI.
Tattoo - Blair asks Paladin what his neck tattoo means.
Kilrathi Compilation - All the Kilrathi footage originally intended for the film.
Pilgrim Chat - Paladin reveals more details about the Pilgrims.
Alternate Intro - An alternate cut of the movie introduction featuring an opening narration from Blair. (As of publishing time this video is blocked because of an incorrect copyright claim; it should be available soon!)
FPS Experiment - An experimental sequence shot first person for the shipboard combat sequence.
FekLeyrTarg has a second clip that shows off his modern video editing acumen! He's been experimenting with a variety of tools to enhance his ability to merge Wing Commander settings and live action. This is just the beginning of what he's got planned, but it's already pretty neat!
Happy 25th birthday Wing Commander CIC!
Some work-in-progress test shots combining low-quality live-action footage with renders of Perry Naval Base as seen in "Wing Commander Privateer".
There's a joke in there about being old enough to need reading glasses these days, but these are the drinking kind! Back for our sixth birthday in 2004, we had a fun batch of clear tumblers with a Confed logo printed up as door prizes. They were a big hit, and we continue to get frequent questions about whether they are still available. Here's our second edition, which are now full pint size. And we'll be giving them out at the birthday party live on Discord! Our graphical skills are a bit rusty, so thanks to Defiance Industries for making sure our Confed star is on point.
We don't encourage anyone to buy these and we make no money whatsoever on them, but we are sharing the Zazzle link to anyone who might be interested in getting their own. It looks like they're about $15 normally, but there is a 20% off sale this weekend that brings the price down to about $12. If you do pick one up, send us a picture with your favorite drink in it!
You can even pair them with CIC Coasters! (also on Zazzle, so try to combine your order under the same coupon!)
A you may know, we recently purchased a collection of Wing Commander IV continuity photographs which we've been researching for front page updates. In honor of the birthday we thought we'd jump ahead and share the full collection of photos. Stay tuned for more articles covering the unsung histories of these actors and characters! You can find the current slate of feature articles here.
It's time for our annual poll where we gauge how long fans have been visiting the CIC. Although this is our 25th anniversary at wcnews.com, we also have an option for people who've been following the team's Wing Commander news exploits for even longer than that! How long have you been visiting?
The old poll asked about the best Kilrathi ship recreation in the Wing Commander Academy television show. The Dralthi was the hands down winner, which is no surprise, but there were plenty of very well done craft in the show!
This one's a repeat, but it's so glorious that we can't help but share it again (and will be doing so for many years to come!). Last year, Klavs commissioned this wonderful Cameo clip from Malcolm McDowell to celebrate our 24th anniversary. He fondly remembers both his role as Admiral Tolwyn and how his late friend, David Warner, also got to portray the character. If you missed this earlier, be sure to check it out now!
I must say, I did love Tolwyn. A really wonderful character in many ways. Strong. Very, really cool. ... I'm thrilled that you liked my interpretation of him, because I really went for it, enjoyed it.
And that's a wrap! We hope you've had a good time checking out what we've posted. And if you're reading this just as it went live, the party's still happening in #Wingnut on Discord. As always, this is a huge team effort. It takes all of the staff, all of the many talented Wingnuts who contribute to projects and submit news tips, and all of the many fans who visit each day to keep the community humming. We'll see you again Monday for the latest Wing Commander news!
Follow or Contact Us