Scimitar’s Secret Chin Turret Packs a Punch
The little chin turret that appears on a Scimitar in ONE episode of Academy is my R2-D2-firing-his-thrusters and you just have to embrace those moments.
Added some Fresnel falloff to the windows on the Wing Leader Dorkir, and some flashing nav lights. I really like them. I also added some specular highlights, since it just doesn't feel like WC1 without them. First pass on some turrets, too! pic.twitter.com/NJbAfeH1NV
— Howie Day (@howieeday) August 29, 2024
Added some Fresnel falloff to the windows on the Wing Leader Dorkir, and some flashing nav lights. I really like them. I also added some specular highlights, since it just doesn't feel like WC1 without them. First pass on some turrets, too!Here's the test vid that mimics the rotational style of classic sprites:
As an aside, I also did a test with locked rendering rotations of the ship - the code is a massive hack, but it does seem to get the idea across. This is at 5 degrees of rotation lock. pic.twitter.com/pV85O0yxkk
— Howie Day (@howieeday) August 29, 2024
As an aside, I also did a test with locked rendering rotations of the ship - the code is a massive hack, but it does seem to get the idea across. This is at 5 degrees of rotation lock.
I would do unspeakable things to see the ancient Pilgrim map props or Paladin's diary up close. Horrible, unimaginable things.
Hey everyone! It's been a minute! :P I figured I'd give a brief update on what's new and what I've been up too.Now that Wing Loader is out there and WC3 HD videos are patched into the game, I want to take a step back from Wing Loader for a bit as I realize I've been working on this one app for about 4 years now! :P Don't worry, I'll still support it, add features and be active in the community but I want to get back to what Wing Loader actually was built to be... a space sim engine, using Wing Commander as it's inspiration. I'll admit it's wasn't ever a really great one as I'm a self taught programmer and don't know all the best practices, but never the less, I've learned a lot over the years and going to take another crack at it.
I'm still a long way off, working on development tools, updating the code to have more dynamic and interesting features such as collisions and spawn rendering for projectiles and enemies, physics etc. I'll put out an update later once I have something fun stuff to show off.
In the meantime. I made a Brief History to show off several stages of the engine. From it's beginnings as a Wing Commander 1: Remake engine, very early c++ and opengl tests to a version of a more moderen space sim before Wing Loader started. I had some more polished versions, but they were lost, however it still gives a taste of what it was capable of such as Live Chroma Keying (Darth Vader), projectiles, flyby camera, instancing asteroids, planet orbiting, subtitles (hope you like sublime lol)
Enjoy and hopefully I'll have something fun to show off in 2025!
FAKE CROWD! ADMIRAL TOLWYN SHOULD DROP OUT!
I know I play old games, but maybe they could be a little bit older? An alpha build of Privateer, from about 6 weeks before the initial release, has been discovered. A big shout out to Ben Lesnick is warranted here for spending $500 on this, so the rest of us can download it for free.Also thanks to DMJC for the New Constantinople comparison!It looks like the programmers really worked their arses off fixing bugs in the last 6 weeks. And, regrettably, removing a few gamer words from the in-game dialog.
Okay, I got it! Wing Leader Grikath's turret now fires and aims (within limits), and inherits the main ship's skill settings. I'm pretty happy with this! Also, here's some finished images of the Grikath and its turret. :D Enjoy!
While not messing with mechs or fighter jets, I am still working on the Wing Commander Sabre video. So here's a bunch of proof regarding that.Or check out this action clip (different than his "lore videos") that features a whole bunch of Klavs' models blowing things up!
Greetings Wing Commander music fans! I’m currently basking in the glow after a long day hearing my music performed and recorded by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. They sounded extraordinary, and the crew, including a brilliant conductor and super efficient recording engineer, performed beyond my expectations! Kudos to this wonderful team.The next step doesn’t happen until early October when we record the choir parts in Salt Lake City. Then I will begin the arduous task of mixing all the elements together for the final versions to be sent out as vinyl, CDs and digital downloads.
Again, I can’t thank all of you enough for this amazing opportunity! I think you will all be very pleased with the results!
Musically yours,
George
Twenty six years ago our team launched the Wing Commander Combat Information Center and somehow after all those years… we're still here! Whether you've been with us all that time or you're just discovering the Wing Commander universe, welcome to the party!
I've been a part of a lot of communities–I even built a pretty notable Wing Commander-adjacent one!--but there's nowhere I'm ever happier to come back than our group. Will we ever get a new Wing Commander game or book or cartoon or movie? I don't know… but I do know that I'm happier talking about anything with my Wing Commander friends on Discord and the forums. It's so exciting to see new people come along and discover the series and it's equally thrilling to see people find out that beyond an old space sim we're a pretty chill group of folks to spend time with. I'd like to thank everyone who makes that possible every day; whether you're making new fan games or geeking out about Origin history or posting to the forums to chat about the briefest references in the novel… you're part of something pretty neat and I'm happy to know you. I also need to thank Chris Reid, Aaron Dunbar and Kris Vanhecke specifically for their stewardship of the CIC itself. You wouldn't see updates without the work Chris and AD do… and the site just plain wouldn't work without Kris.
This year, we're taking a slightly different approach to the birthday offerings… by taking a page from the original Wing Commander and giving you something new to play! Read on to learn all about how we've uncovered an alpha build of Privateer, a beta copy of Privateer II and even some never-before-played Wing Commander Academy missions straight from Origin Systems! We'll never stop dreaming about a new game… but we're hoping some folks will have some fun with a couple of slightly different ones for now!
Here's to a great year that for me was full of thinking about Wing Commander in as many new ways as I possibly could… and here's to many more to come with more worlds to create and history to explore.
As our birthday present to the community, we took a risk on something pretty exciting and a little different from usual: below you will find a never before seen alpha copy of Wing Commander Privateer that you can load in DOSBox and play today! This is Alpha 1.15, compiled on August 9, 1993 (about six weeks before the final build. We've done some preliminary studying and it already looks pretty interesting: many of the game's resource files are larger, structured and structured differently. Just starting the game you'll get a sense that things are a little different (and of course it's even more crash prone than the released version which was not too stable). We've also discovered at least one extra cutscene in the files, labeled 'Discovery' it seems like it will play when you first find the Steltek derelict. A silver florin to the first Privateer who gets that far (saves from the final game do not seem to work correctly)! You'll also get a pretty funny surprise when you quit a memory dump and "THANK YOU FOR FLYING TRADE COMMANDER". Trade Commander was Privateer's original name. Note that if you own the disk version of the speech accessory pack you can use it with this version; due to their nature, Origin's speech packs went gold much earlier than the games they serviced. At one point, this resulted in Pacific Strike speech packs showing up in stores months before the game was actually released!
Where did this early copy of Privateer come from? eBay! Several weeks ago, I noticed an unusually expensive auction listing for a set of Privateer disks. My eyes almost skipped right over it but something seemed wrong in the thumbnail. A closer look revealed that these weren't replacement disks… they were hand-written disks on Origin labels! What's more, there weren't SIX Prvateer disks like the final version… there were seven! It seemed like SOMETHING must be going on, but was it worth $500? Would the disks even read today? We decided to take the chance. Luckily, no one else bid and after mainlining anxiety for a few days the disks arrived in the mail… still perfectly usable 31 years later! But at the end of the day, I have no brain for technical things so it seems like the best thing to do is to provide this alpha to the world and let smarter folks help uncover its secrets. And who wouldn't enjoy a little return to the Gemini Sector!?
You can download the archive here here (.ZIP, 9,679kb) or the seven disk images here (.ZIP, 9,765kb).
As a companion piece to Privateer Alpha we are also excited to make available a beta version of Privateer 2: The Darkening! This is version 4.2 which was compiled on October 14, 1996; roughly a month before the final version that shipped in Europe (November 12, 1996). As with the Privateer release, we've confirmed that it does indeed run and there are some early signs that there are a few differences… for instance, this version is intended for four CDs instead of three, seemingly planned with a 'post game' CD that you would use to play non-plot missions. It does NOT include any of the cutscenes although we believe they could mostly be added back in using the files from the release version (see the history below for details about why this is).
The story behind these files is a little bit sketchier. In the mid-1990s, it was not at all uncommon for copies of new games to appear on pirate BBSes (and later the Usenet) before the games were even released! Sometimes these were finished copies that leaked out a few days early… but sometimes they were beta versions provided to the press weeks or months early so that reviews would be ready to publish at launch. This was a persistent issue with Origin's Ultima games in particular and it was something that developers were hoping would be eliminated as games began to fill entire CD-ROMs, effectively too large to be downloaded with a modem. But software pirates ALWAYS find a way! They quickly developed methods to remove multimedia content from new games and then ways to distribute them in as small of a format as possible… often, as here, divided into many small 1.4 mb zip files that can be split across many 3.5" diskettes.
When a version of Privateer 2 leaked about a month before launch, we in the Wing Commander community took a very negative view and refused to even touch it. As a result, we've spent years trying to locate that original pirated version… which we finally did on a Russian Warez CD released in late 1996! Software piracy is bad, stealing Privateer 2 instead of buying it in 1996 would've hurt people we cared about… but it's also impossible not to acknowledge that pirate releases like this managed–even if not on purpose–to preserve otherwise inaccessible versions of software. As noted above, this version does not include any of Privateer 2's videos, replacing them with the 'INTL_S.TGV' intro using a script that copies/renames it to match whatever video file is desired. But we're confident that an intrepid software explorer could simply port back the original TGV files from their published version (with a few filename changes).
You can download the original 'warez' archive here (.ZIP, 65,094kb) or an extracted version here (.ZIP, 65,943kb).
We have one more interesting thing that you can 'play' today: a set of five custom Wing Commander Academy missions… created by the Wing Commander Academy team as a demo for how users can create and share missions. The missions are titled Rescuemission, Mission 2, Protectbase, Ferretmission, Badguymission and they do present a bit of a challenge! It's not as exciting as an entirely new game but there's something thrilling about getting five new missions that were designed by the people that made the game. The missions were created immediately after the game was finished on August 30 and 31, 1992 (that's right, someone was working on Sunday).
Where did these come from? They're a recently rediscovered echo of Origin Systems' BBS! Origin established their BBS in 1988 to support Omega, a tank-fighting game that included 'play by mail' components. Users could call an Austin, Texas number to access message boards and file downloads. In an era before the internet had been widely adopted, Origin would post patches, demos and other material to their BBS which users would download and then disseminate to other systems. In 1995, Electronic Arts' FTP site began to replace the BBS for this purpose although it did not mirror most earlier content. By 1997, Origin no longer advertised the BBS number and it, like most BBSes, faded from history. Sadly, there no archives of the BBS have ever been discovered, only individual files saved by users. The mission pack, WCAMISSN.ZIP, has actually been preserved for years in multiple BBS archives… but because of a typo no one came across it! The file description identifies the set as being from "WING ACADAMY" which of course doesn't show up if you're searching for Wing Commander or Academy.
You can download the missions here (.ZIP, 3,834 bytes); you can access them by adding the files to Wing Commander Academy's 'MISSIONS' folder (they will replace your first five saved missions; be sure to back them up first if wanted!).
Time for our annual birthday poll! How long have you been with us? The CIC might be 26 years old now, but some of us have been part of the online Wing Commander community for almost 30 years! That's hard to believe!
As this scene is missing from the DVD version, I decided to rebuild it in Photoshop, Blender and After Effects. In fact I started working on it back in 2017 when upscaling techniques were far from the capabilities they have now. And finally, with the experience I've gained over the years, I was able to finish it.----------------------
It comes in two versions, one as VOB (DVD) and the other as MP4 (HD).
- In your Explorer, go to the movie folder within the WCP root directory.
- If you use the DVD Movie Packs, simply copy the file 0002.VOB into the movie folder.
- IF you use the HD Video Pack, backup the file 0002.MP4 in the movie folder and replace it with the HD Rebuild.
A new VFX test demonstrating the capabilities of the upcoming Switchlight Studio, which is capable of extracting PBR-Material Maps from images and videos featuring people. These can be used to place any subject in any virtual environment (360° HDRI or even a 3D set) with the lighting properly interacting.In this case, after greenscreen chroma key I placed myself in Admiral Terrell's office from "Wing Commander: Privateer" in Blender. The original model was released with the Privateer 3D Archive. After rendering using Cycles, I went back to Switchlight Studio to further improve the render with better subsurface scattering etc. Final compositing, cut and audio mix was done in Premiere Pro.
Last, but not least, birthday cake! Thanks to LeHah for helping us celebrate in style!
About time for a progress update. I haven't been moving along with this as quickly as I would have liked. Apart from life in general getting in the way, there have been a few hurdles and setbacks.I wanted to fix the strange behaviour when making small movements, where the ship would turn in the opposite direction and or get stuck completely. These issues are exacerbated at higher frame rates which is a pity as the game looks much better at a higher frame rate. I spent a fair amount of time finding where controller movement is processed into ship movement. And eventually discovered the function where most of this takes place. Unfortunately I didn't get much further on this. Movement is multiplied by the turn-rate of the ship and then by the time since the last draw, which gets smaller the higher the frame rate. It's then scaled down to some really small values before being manipulated in ways I don't really understand. The end result being that small movements get lost or turned into garbage. Anyway I've left this for now as to get on with other things, but do intend to come back to it at some point.
I'm currently working on overhauling controller/joystick configuration. I have a couple of motives here. First is to make it easy to set up axis and button actions and the second is to set things up to add force feedback support which I hope to add at a later date.
There are several ways to add joystick input, WC3 uses Windows Multimedia input as is. I played about with directinput, rawinput and xinput and had a mixture of all three going at one point which got complicated. I eventually settled on Windows Gaming Input, It was a bit of a pain to get working but once I figured it out things have been progressing.
Here's a pic of the external configure program as it currently is at the moment. I still have a fair bit of work to do but it's coming along.
Saturday, August 17! Drop by the CIC Discord #Wingnut chat room on the 17th at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT).
About to Head off to Budapest!Greetings WC fans! I'm in the final preparations for travel to Budapest on Friday to record your Wing Commander music on Monday the 19th with the Budapest Orchestra. I wanted to give you all a thank you gift before I go. Below you will find a link to an app that you open in Chrome called "Listento". The remarkable thing about it is you will be able to hear the orchestra recording in real time in the same bandwidth that I will hear in the booth at the studio! I don't think you'll hear my voice, but you will hear the conductor giving instructions to the orchestra.
There are two 4 hour sessions booked for Monday; 10 AM to 2 PM Budapest time, and 3 PM to 7 PM Budapest time. That translates to 4 to 8 AM EDT and 9 AM to 1 PM EDT. You can join at any time and it won't disturb us!
I thought you might enjoy hearing these for the first time along with me!
Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. I can't wait to get it all mixed and sent out to everyone.
All the best,
George
Starr Long: There were some hamfisted decisions that happened along the way, but Electronic Arts poured a lot of money into Origin Systems. Unfortunately there was a good side and bad side to that that. Ultimately I think Origin overextended and overexpanded. It became too big too fast. But Electronic Arts tried really hard to make Origin work, and I think that we became victims of our own expansion and success. We weren't necessarily equipped to be that big. We would have been better at being small.Interviewer: Did you work on any Wing Commander games?
Starr Long: I only worked on those when I was in QA and I worked on Wing Commander Academy [Armada], which was the only multiplayer Wing Commander. I also worked on Privateer, which was awesome. I was a tester on both of those and they both were really unique titles in the Wing Commander Universe.
Most people know about Wing Commander one, two, three and four because those are the big - especially like Wing Commander 3 and 4 - because those are the big movie title where Mark Hamill is there. Those are the ones that most people are familiar with, but Academy [Armada] was pretty cool because it was multiplayer and you got to fly Kilrathi ships. So it's not a very well-known Wing Commander title, but it's really cool. Like one player can play Kilrathi ships while the other player is flying the human ships. Flying the human ships versus the Kilrathi is pretty killer. As far as I know, it's still the only Wing Commander title where you can do that.
Privateer definitely took its inspiration from Han Solo and the the whole idea of being The Smuggler. It's all about moving and building your own spaceship and being a commercial Smuggler Privateer fighter. So you build up a custom ship over time and you get to customize the ship, what the weapons are, the engine and the shields. While you're in combat you have to manipulate that stuff. It was really cool and also way ahead of it time.
One of the projects right before a bunch of us left Origin that what was going to be really cool was Privateer Online, which would have been amazing. It was in a conceptual phase but it never really got in active development.
Interviewer: Do you think there's room for a new game in the series?
Starr Long: Absolutely. I mean every few years we ping Electronic Arts about some of the intellectual property they own like Ultima and Wing Commander. They always claim that they're going to do something with them. We say, "Hey, you know, if you're not doing something with them, we'll gladly do something with them." But they always claim that there's something in the works, so we can't do anything. (I don't believe them.) We were happy to pay a license, but you know, oh well.
By popular (one, implied) demand, it's a post about Wing Commander Prophecy's TB-80 Devastator torpedo bomber (class a)!
Sad news to report today: Harry Wiessenhaan, the special effects supervisor for the 1999 Wing Commander movie, has passed away at age 75 on Monday, August 5. You can read his obituary here.
Mr. Wiessenhaan was the man who brought special effects to the Netherlands, forming a company called Special Effects Verstraete & Wiessenhaan in the 1970s. He and his team would go on to work on hundreds of films, both local productions in the Netherlands and major international projects shot in Europe. His work was often a family affair as evidenced from Wing Commander's credits, which include his brother Edward (special effects coordinator) his son Rick (stunts coordinator) and others. Wiessenhaan's team were experts at a variety of types of SFX work including pyrotechnics, weapons, bullet hits and wire work, all of which were put to good use in Wing Commander!
It isn't often remembered that when making Wing Commander Chris Roberts prioritized locking down top talent for behind the scenes duties which is how the project ended up with talent like Peter Lamont, Ron Cobb… and Mr. Wiessenhaan's special effects team! While his son notes that he preferred to avoid the press in favor of focusing on his work, he did seem to be particularly proud of the wire work done for Wing Commander's explosive decompression scene. The sequence required that Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. 'fly' as they are bing sucked out of the Tiger Claw's hangar into space. His now defunct website once boasted several behind the scenes images of the complicated stunt being shot:
He also showed off his work on setting up the Tiger's Claw bridge set to move in precisely the way Star Trek's Enterprise did not. He posted the below picture noting it was a "40 ton set being shaken and stirred".
An April 1999 Cinefex article ("Space Ace Engagement") notes his involvement with the creature team, rigging the Kilrathi bodies to take bullet hits during the gunfights at Pegasus and aboard the ConCom.
Foam latex was selected over silicone for the manufacture of Kilrathi skin appliances. "With all the stunts and explosions going on:' said Williams, "it was going to be too easy to tear silicone, which can be rather difficult to repair. With all the bullet hits involved, there was a lot of on-the-spot rigging. Fortunately, we took all the molds along with us so the chest pieces could be remade after special effects supervisor Harry Wiessenhaan's crew blew holes in them. We would pack blood bags and guts inside, then cover the bullet hits with a thin layer of plaster painted to match the armor.
We would like to send our condolences to Mr. Wiessenhaan's family and friends; the Wing Commander community will always be grateful for the effort and professionalism he put into making the effects of our movie better than they had any right to be!
We believe that these shots of a camera on a rig line posted to his former company website are probably from Wing Commander and are archiving them here for posterity.
LOAF: Happy birthday to us! The CIC launched 26 years ago today and we are still kicking. I’m proud that the Wing Commander community remains passionate and welcoming.
In Wingleader updates, I got the first pass on the Strakha cloaking cockpit interior effect working - taking some inspo from the One Ring. :p Also, I did make and implement the gradual LED fill on the gun/fuel lights. Custom SFX for the cloak, too- Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/DVjHBuWTss
— Howie Day (@howieeday) August 9, 2024
In Wingleader updates, I got the first pass on the Strakha cloaking cockpit interior effect working - taking some inspo from the One Ring. :p Also, I did make and implement the gradual LED fill on the gun/fuel lights. Custom SFX for the cloak, too- Enjoy!
Sabres of the 2640s, '50s and '60s!
Lt. Bhutto accuses via transatlantic cable: "How do we know the animated ships are Sabres? Their name isn't ever mentioned on screen! Are you just a big liar?"It's true that fans pegged them as Sabres when the show aired based only on look. But today we have a script for WALKING WOUNDED and storyboards for act three of WORD OF HONOR which confirm they're both intended to be Sabres!
But what about Karnes' 'old' one from THE LAST ONE LEFT? We don't have any BTS material from the episode! That's true, but take a look at the WORD OF HONOR storyboards: the model sheet the artist references for Sabre in the script is Karnes' ship!
Re: Wing Commander disk counts, I started making a spreadsheet:
DID YOU KNOW the Kilrathi word for assassination is... assassination?! Before encountering humanity the cats had a complex system of statuses and fealties with formal challenges that ordered their power structures. They did not murder their kind by surprise for political purposes.
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