It's been a long and crazy ride for all of us, but we've made it to another major milestone. We'd really like to thank you all for your support. As we mentioned last year around this time, wcnews.com is preserved for the rest of the decade so we're not going anywhere anytime soon. Though we've seen some good times and bad times, the future of Wing Commander is once again looking up. WCP GBA is on the way and we hope to have some new information in the coming weeks ahead. We're also still very optimistic about the Chris Roberts Wing Commander television show expected next year. The fan projects and fan fiction under development look better than ever and have been paying off with fun and exciting products for a long time now. We're going strong and anxious for our second WC community Dragon*Con convention meeting later this month. Hopefully you've made it to our birthday party on irc, but if not, we've tried to put together a list of various site improvements to set off the next year.
When we have these events we don't just think of today as another birthday for us. August 10/11 is a birthday for the thousands of you who visit our site on a regular basis. It's another year that you've demonstrated your commitment to our community and the Wing Commander universe that has been established for us. I truly believe that the best is yet to come. Happy Birthday!
Howdy, all. LOAF here... my contribution fo the 4th anniversary is a nifty new Wing Commander Universe map which fits in everything I can find from the novels, games, movie and other sources! It can be found at the new Universe Map page where it's available in navigatable, full and printable forms. There's also some other useless goop, like an archive of old Wing Commander maps! It's made up of over 100 new pages and more than 300 new images! Enjoy!
Hades, Kris & TC have been hard at work overhauling all the various nooks and crannies of the CIC that have gathered some dust over the past year. The ships database/CIC Green has been completely updated to the new style CIC layout. CIC Teal is now complete with its WC2 section. SolSector.net has been polished a bit and a list of hosted sites has been added to the menu of both wcnews.com and solsector.net. Every link in the links section has been checked over and dead links removed. If any sites were removed in error or if you have a site that's not part of the list, please submit it! Every link in where to buy has been verified and dead links removed. Last but not least, the SETI section has been updated to reflect the latest statistics. Minor information corrections were made on more than a dozen other pages. Hopefully this summer refresh helps!
It's been eighteen months, but today we get a major Fan Directory update. I was only able to add people who submitted their profiles within the last six months. And I very much want your pictures if you haven't sent them in yet. You can check out the newest fanatical Wing Commander enthusiasts here.
Our news archive has been made a lot more accessible. You can now jump directly to a specific day or update. Jumping to April 1, 1999 is as simple as pointing your browser to 1999/04/01. You can also get there by using its unique news ID. You can find both these links in the date header. Every update also has a unique ID, located at the bottom next to the author. You can bookmark WildWeasel's attempts to get Wing Commander games to run on XP or the announcement of Prophecy GBA. The news search has been expanded: you can better define your search and the results page is no longer limited to x updates.
We're starting off a new year of CIC operation with not one, but two new Mail Bags! The first is a standard look at the crazy and kooky email we get on a regular basis and our impressions on it. Clever people might have guessed the url while we were working on it. You can find the August 10, 2002 edition here. The second is much more mysterious. A long time ago we compiled a number of old emails from early on in the CIC's history and pre-history. And we've sat on these for a couple years until today. Now you can get a glimpse behind the scenes of the CIC's creation here. Bet nobody expected that one!
HellcatV sends us this present:
Hello All,
In celebration of the CIC birthday I have decided to release Vega Strike 0.2.9.3.
This version of vega strike marks the first time that Vega Strike can literally do everything that Privateer 1 could do--of course in realtime 3d graphics through OpenGL. Now this doesn't say that indeed it DOES the whole privateer.... I only got about halfway finishing up the steltek drone but... but you can go ahead and fly to rygannon using the CIC's wing commander map and then go to delta, and eventually to delta prime and grab the "gun"... watch out for that narsty drone who won't stop following you after that... he's a baddie ;-)
Or you can stay in the homely Enigma sector and duel Commies in Defiance, Pirate militia...and even... who knows what in Axis... Axis is a dangerous place folks... the news makes that much clear...
Anyhow trust your instincts, read the news, and enjoy the new version of Vega Strike that has fixed all (reported) user complaints... many people didnt' speak up though...but those who did got their fixes in... stuff like a cross for radar -- autopilot being more generous around planetary rings...
oh did I mention planetary rings... be on the lookout for one of those beauties:
aringscreen.png
aringscreen2.png
Anyhow the new release has all sorts of art for each and every base you land on... I recommend trying to find... let us say the dark side of any base :-) And with that... *poof* I run for the plane... off to a Vacation... drop me any complaints at hellcatv@hotmail.com
Vega Strike is an open source project. Their website is located here.
Well.. not quite, but we're working on it. One of our most frequently asked questions revolves around the control schemes for various games. And now we've gone and condensed all this information into one easy to use page. You can find a list of control schemes for your favorite (and manual-less) WC game here.
As a gift to CIC and everyone to celebrate our 4th birthday Black Joker from Wing Commander in Russia has kindly put online the Wing Commander section of an Origin special included with PC Format magazine back in good old 1994. Among other things it contains some great behind-the-scenes info from Wing Commander 3. You can find this magazine section here.
Our long-time visitors will know that every year we update our bi-weekly poll. This time we're asking the obvious. You can view previous polls here.
We'd like to to thank the Academy... and, of course, these people:
MNelson: for providing a bunch of cool prizes to help us promote this event... and, most importantly, for going above and beyond to support the CIC with file hosting at BlackLance.org. The Wing Commander community as a whole owes her a great debt.
Joe and Paula Garrity: For donating the radical Wing Commander IV patches that we're handing out tonight -- and for working to promote the continued existence of Wing Commander fandom through collecting. Surely a noble goal.
Adam Foshko: For providing the nifty Wing Commander IV patches to Joe that we're giving away tonight (and for producing Prophecy and stuff).
Hard Working Fans Everywhere: Groups like the Wing Commander Aces and the Unknown Enemy team are doing a wonderful job of keeping the Wing Commander fanbase alive! We salute you all!
Raylight Productions: They're the reason we'll all be playing a new Wing Commander game next year!
Captain Johnny: Because we can.
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