Tiger's Claw Comes Out On Top

This past month we asked which Wing Commander era capital ship you would most like to serve on. The Tiger's Claw, a Bengal class Strike Carrier, won by a landslide with more than 50% of the votes. The Exeter and Sivar came in with about 15% each. The new Wing Commander II poll should be a much closer call, with the TCS Tarawa type Escort Carrier and TCS Concordia (a Confederation class Dreadnought) going head to head. Thanks to Kenta Petersen for the poll suggestion. Previous polls can be found here.

Wing Commander Raiders Wallpaper Available

It's going to be the background. The cool thing is, it's never going to change. Since space is so vast anyway, the background will be static. I added the planets because I realized there was a lack of visual reference points in the environment, so the viewers had no way of orienting their vision. Movement directions would quickly become confusing. Except for my editing and cinematography, there would be no way of distinguishing who was going in what direction and who were the good/bad guys. I'm going to refine the rings (probably make the outer one a bit more harsh ending) and I have to make some graphics for the opposite side of the environment. Probably going to be a galactic rift looking thing like the great ice barrier in Freelancer.

In Today's News...

Kris has implemented yet another function in the Timeline database. Now when you visit the Encyclopedia today's events are dynamically generated for you. On this day in 666 years (2669.267) Kilrah was destroyed.

Christopher Blair drops the Temblor Bomb on Kilrah, destroying the planet. Much of the Grand Fleet, still in orbit, is destroyed along with it.

Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour Ships

EA's Zero Hour, the expansion to Command & Conquer Generals, should be arriving in stores around the world this week. While I loved Generals, EA's closure of Westwood Studios and movement of the C&C franchise to EA Pacific in LA produced some notable changes. Westwood was one of the few non-Origin studios to really attempt an honest run at live actor video cutscenes, and Generals completely stripped that. All you got to introduce the missions was a disembodied voice and picture of the globe. I'm happy to say that Zero Hour has improved on Generals tremendously. There are dozens of new units, upgrades, buildings and features to play with. These have been combined with nine actual character generals with strengths and weaknesses. The single player campaign is roughly the same size, and although basic, actual live actor video progresses the story between each mission. Graphics and AI have been improved throughout. It's practically a full game and not an expansion at all (though the original Generals is required). We play a lot out of #Wingnut, so stop on by if you pick up the game.