New Bugs Encountered This Week

The run through T'lan Meth continues this week in the Community Replay of Wing Commander Prophecy. Dave has captured more videos of the missions to date and posted this recent mission report.

T’lan Meth 1: There’s nobody in the Rec room to talk to, so I enter the briefing room to find out about our first mission in this system. Limited intelligence in the system has determined that the Kilrathi planet E’loy is being blockaded by the bugs. There is an unknown jamming source preventing us from getting a full scope of the situation. Other wings are to help in the defense of E’loy, while our wing looks for that jamming device. We’ll have to make individual close scanner sweeps to identify the jammer. Once the jammer is found, an SAR team will retrieve and dismantle it. Hawk catches Maniac sleeping during the briefing and wakes him up. The CAG tells him that he’s in command of the Black Widow squadron. Maniac is surprised by this since it has been many years separating his command of this squadron versus his last one. Maniac will now have to deal with all the responsibilities and the blame if his squadron fails on missions.

Stiletto and I launch in Panthers, and proceed on our mission. At the first nav point are Morays, Mantas, and a group of fighters that merge into a ship that can rapidly shoot plasma bolts. I go after the Mantas first since they are the closest targets. The guns of the Panther are more effective than the ones in the Tigershark, and it takes only a few hits to the rear to dispose of the first Manta. A second Manta soon follows the first in extermination. I then go after the Stingray cluster with a head on approach. I have to weave around to make sure I don’t present an easy target for those plasma shots. The Stingray cluster breaks apart, and I destroy two of the cluster segments. Stiletto uses a missile that tags a Moray, and I help her out to finish it off. Together, we combine to make short work of another Moray. There is one last Stingray segment left, but it’s no match for the combined firepower of two Panthers.

Making the Games: 61 Cygni System

The past several documents have focused on the otherwise mysterious "Multi-Commander" project; whatever it was (and you can guess, from the name) it seems clearly to have been built around a series of missions set in three different systems: 61 Cygni, Alpha Tauri and Mollerhaug. Next up we'll actually visit these locations, thanks to a series of diagrams Captain Johnny made way-back-when.

These were originally old-style Visio chart files, so we've tried to convert them into static images (click on the thumbnail for a JPEG). The original files are also provided for anyone who is more adept at old layout software than we are. First up: 61 Cygni.

Thanks to Captain Johnny for both archiving and providing this material! The series is winding down, though, so if you're a former Wing Commander developer with a story to tell or a document to share, we'd love to hear from you.

Multi-Commander System Diagram: 61 Cygni Download (44 kb) Date: Unknown Project: Multi-Commander Donated By: John Guentzel Pages: 1