Arena 3D Extraction Booming

In just a couple short days, Wing Commander fans have accomplished some amazing things with the 3D files that AD extracted from Wing Commander Arena. For starters, Howie and Lars have found some great tools to view the included meshes. Try the Ogre Viewer and Show Mesh to get a closer look. Red Baron has gone even further and produced a badass Arrow Guardian file (400 kb zip) with the Arena mesh files. Pictured below are the Arrow Scout, Eclipse and Guardian. Talented Wingnuts are making progress every day. To see the latest, visit Crius.net.

Arena uses a custom method. In the mesh package you downloaded, there should be a folder called 'Materials' with a single file in it called 'MainLibrary'. It specifies what texture and shader each materials uses. It's like one giant material file instead of a bunch of separate ones. I guess they were trying to simplify lighting to keep arena's 50MB budget (I also included the shader scripts in the "shaders" folder). This info should be enough to recreate at least the basic material files for each ship. Someone more experienced with ogre may be able to do more than that.

Update Preps UO for the Future

The media outreach prior to this letter went to quite a number of people -- some who have played Ultima Online before, or know of the Ultima series … some who are only RPGers. The intent? To open the channel and experience of the longest running MMO to countless who have only heard of the game in passing.

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Just doing anything in UO is easy. But we don’t care to do just anything. We care to grow, evolve, and prosper. As a team we are not without ears or eyes. More importantly, we are not without understanding. Dazzle us with your candor and skills of persuasion. We’re watching … and we just love cake.