It's Only a Paper Ship

Stuff That Might Look Like Things - Part 1

Here's word from LeHah that we should be watching Men in Black this Saturday at 11...

I recently saw a commercial for the Men In Black cartoon. Apparently, Earth gets invaded...by the Kilrathi?! The fighters used in the episode look strangely like ones from the cover of WC1 (Forgot the class...brain fart!), all the way down to the lasers pointing out of the half circle wings! Anyone else notice this? MIB has done good spoofs of the genre several times (Predator, Alien, Fantastic 4 and the Marvel Universe) and I think this is another tip of the hat...

Music, Music Everywhere

Zone Back In

Atomic Batteries to Power!

Flying Colors

Enter Jacinta

Mysterious IRCer Zero has finally revealed himself... in a good way! He's working on creating a sprite-based Wing Commander engine -- with a list of features that seems to put similar projects to shame! Check it out...

• A cvar, bind and console system similar to that of Quake 3.
• Network game abilities, including:
  • Ability to fly missions as a group in different ships, either on the same team or against other players.
  • Ability to have a networked player control your ships' turret(s).
  • Ability to just simply watch a game in progress.
• Support for many types of music and sound formats, including MP3, MIDI, and WAVE.
• Animation and movie playback using Smacker, Bink, MPEG1, AVI and a custom per-frame/game engine animation engine.
• Multiple game resolutions supported, from 320*240~1024*768.
• Simple game data file formats for ease of creating new missions and campaigns.
• Decision based storylines.
• Use of sprites of up to a near unlimited size.
• Game physics which can be altered per game, or even per mission.
• Use the same pilot file for every game you play, keeping track of your total kills, assists, and defensive achievements.
• Customizable enemy/AI skill levels, including individual properties such as reaction time, agressiveness, intelligence, pilot skill, reliance and support of wingmen and more.
• Support for WinDirect, DirectDraw, Direct3D, OpenGL, MiniGL via the SciTech Software Meta Graphics Library (MGL).
• Eventual support for non-windows OSes such as MacOS and Linux.
• Multiple game modes for any storyline, for example, allowing you to have two modes of play for say WC1, with both the original and new graphics.

From: CIS Headquarters

To: ML Mercenaries
We have a transport full of Kindred prisoners, destined for the super space station Curium (NAV 150) where they will be questioned. She had an escort, but as she neared the system jump point she was ambushed and her escort destroyed. She managed to make the mump, but now is on her own. Meet the transport ship at Nav Point 55, and escort her to Curium (NAV 150). The Kindred are aware of her presence, and will stop at nothing to destroy her and all the prisoners.

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