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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Look at that little thing go! The Mars Perseverance team successfully flew the Ingenuity helicopter today. The first powered flight on another planet. Despite all the Earthly setbacks of the past year, it's just wonderful to see the progress still being made.

Witness the historic moment in full. The Mastcam-Z cameras on @NASAPersevere show us the takeoff, hovering and landing of the #MarsHelicopter. pic.twitter.com/ypdIWmC4D1

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 19, 2021

  

Have you heard? We flew a craft on another world for the first time ever with flying colors. Now, relive the scene in Mission Control as news of Ingenuity's nail-biting takeoff made it back to Earth.#MarsHelicopter pic.twitter.com/ER25G6uhdp

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 20, 2021

  

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Wing Commander mouse pads are relatively rare, but they do exist and they're crazy cool. Most people would be lucky to have one in their collection, but Dennis Mull now has three different ones just for Wing Commander 4! He is undoubtedly the coolest kid on his block!

New old mousepad arrived

Another Wing Commander IV Promo Mousepad

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Neo-Marlinist Order of Mudhrid has been granted sanctuary in the Marlinist Colonies in return for revealing the identities of the NMLA's leaders.
The faction's survivors arrived in the Hyades Sector RO-P b6-2 system after being defeated by Imperial forces. The Marlinism Reformation Party agreed to offer political asylum, despite all three superpowers demanding the refugees' arrest.
Imperial Senator Lorcan Scordato, who was visiting the Colonies on a fact-finding mission, announced:
"After meeting the Neo-Marlinists and the Marlinist Parliament, I have secured an agreement. The Landgrave of Mudhrid and his inner circle will cooperate fully with ACT to provide details on the senior leadership of the NMLA. In return, they will receive life imprisonment at a local detention facility."
"The Steel Majesty's population will undergo security vetting by the Marlinist Constabulary to identify

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
Commanders have reported receiving anonymous instructions regarding the 200 year old derelict megaship orbiting Chukchan 5 b.
A communications beacon stored onboard the Adamastor began receiving and rebroadcasting an encrypted signal on the 8th of April. Efforts by authorities to trace and decipher the signal proved unsuccessful.
However, a number of independent pilots claim to have been contacted by an anonymous source, who provided an access key to decode the Adamastor signal.
Commander Rex Trevelyan gave this statement to Vox Galactica:
"Not long after arriving in the Chukchan system, my ship received a message from someone calling himself 'Salvation'. He provided a decryption key, and when I downloaded the signal from the Adamastor it became readable. It seems to be an automatic SOS from its sister ship, the Hesperus."
"I've heard that some Commanders have made

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a nice preview of Wing Commander 3 from the October 1994 issue of the UK PC Games magazine. I don't see the connection between the "Resistance is Useless!" headline and anything else in the article, but everyone was still enamored with the Borg and all back then. The tone of the article is infectious and really gets readers pumped that WC3 is the start of something big. And for a time, it really was! The main scans are from Pix and AD found the cover. They sure picked a funny game to lead with that month - not a lot of people still talking about Inferno these days!

It has to be said that Wing 3 looks like it's the closest you're going to get to taking part in a sweeping space opera. Forget Battlestar Galactica, skip Star Wars - if Origin delivers everything it promises, Wing 3 looks set to be the start of the next generation of PC CD games.

If the 7th Guest was the excuse people needed to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a recorded copy of the George Oldziey live streaming event last year. We had posted about the interview in the run up, but never shared the final link. George talks with the Los Angeles College of Music where is is part of the Composing For Visual Media faculty. This was at the height of the summer coronavirus wave and they were finding creative ways for people to connect. It's an hourlong conversation, and most of the first twenty minutes or so are on his history with Wing Commander. They talk about how he got hired into Origin and into detail on how he orchestrated the games' music. There's even footage of the live WC orchestra recording that he crowdfunded several years back. It's a fun and informative watch!

Composing For Visual Media Faculty GEORGE OLDZIEY, gives us a behind-the-scenes look into his creative process for film scoring and orchestration! George is an award-winning

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Plywood Fiend has a new video inspired by Google Translate memes. When you translate a string of text from one language to another and then back again to the first language, the results can be bizarre. While there are a handful of hilarious results, it's also almost as interesting to see how much lines stay pretty close the original despite the double translation. See what happens when the first Enyo mission gets wrung through the wringer below:

Earlier I chanced upon some google translate parody videos and, ever a slave to my passing whimsies

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

We are just under one month away from the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the remastered collection of the massively popular RPG trilogy from BioWare. That said, we are still learning about new features that will be included in the upcoming collection, with it recently being confirmed that Photo Mode will be available for players to enjoy.

It started when one fan asked where Photo Mode was when the recent features trailer dropped. Director Mac Walters was kind enough to retweet the question with the answer everyone was looking for. “We were just calibrating, but Mass Effect Legendary Edition will have a photo mode,” Walters said. In addition to this, the official Mass Effect account later sent out a tweet with even more images from the Photo Mode.

“Let’s get a photo to remember this.”

ICYMI: #MassEffect Legendary Edition will have a Photo Mode! We can’t wait to see all your amazing screenshots.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Chronocidal Guy has returned with an update on his elaborate 3D printed Excalibur model. He's taken advantage of valuable stay-at-home time over the last year to refine the design into a number of purposeful modules that come together into a highly accurate representation, complete with exquisite panel lines. The guns, engines and other components have also been finely modeled to closely resemble the originals. His finished product looks superb, but there's always room for further tinkering and enhancement in the future!

Hey folks, I figured I'd drop an update on this project after all this time. The pandemic gave me a lot of time to work from home, so it was a big opportunity to let my printer operate in the background. I didn't want to necro any old print threads, or derail someone else's, but if any mods think it's appropriate, feel free to merge this one with another topic. I mostly didn't want

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Survivors from the Neo-Marlinist Order of Mudhrid have arrived in the Marlinist Colonies, requesting political asylum from the Empire.
The faction was recently defeated by Imperial forces in the Mudhrid system, after an ACT investigation confirmed that it provided logistical support for the NMLA attacks on starports.
Landgrave Delacroix and his loyalists fled aboard the Steel Majesty megaship to the Hyades Sector RO-P b6-2 system, which is controlled by the Marlinism Reformation Party. Minister Aaron Whyte, its elected leader, announced:
"Not every individual within the Neo-Marlinist Order of Mudhrid is an NMLA activist. We have the right to offer asylum to protect innocents from persecution, just as the Federation protected us when we were refugees."
The Empire has officially demanded that the Neo-Marlinists be apprehended, with Senator Patreus claiming "The Landgrave of Mudhrid is a traitor

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

GalaxyCon's Freddie Prinze Jr. signing event is happening soon! The cutoff is this weekend for fans who would like to get an autographed Wing Commander poster. It's not cheap, but there aren't very many opportunities to have Wing Commander stars sign things these days. A simple/personalized autograph is $92, and a short quote adds an additional $30. It comes on a cool 11x14" sheet, which is itself nice to have and suitable for framing. Get your order in here by Sunday!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
The Kumo Crew syndicate has launched an initiative to construct up to five starports to stimulate galactic trade.
Kavanagh Spaceframes Ltd, an independent construction company, has been privately contracted by the Kumo Council to build fully operational Orbis stations. These will be located in uninhabited systems close to key trading regions and areas of commercial interest.
The Pegasi Sentinel newsfeed featured this statement from Archon Delaine:
"As sovereign ruler of the Kumo nation, it's my responsibility to increase prosperity for the systems under my protection. My new starports will extend our reach and boost trading of all kinds… legitimate and otherwise."
"I have also placed bounties on the heads of anyone who dares to interfere with my plans. The one thing we never trade in is mercy."
The Razor Whips, one of Delaine's loyal factions, is organising the

Quote from No Man

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone playing the Expeditions Update, especially those taking the time to report any issues they encounter via Zendesk or console crash reporting.

We are listening closely to your feedback, and have identified and resolved a number of issues. These fixes are included in patch 3.37, which will be live on all platforms soon.

Patch Notes

• Fixed an issue that could result in too many derelict freighters spawning in busy systems, leading to crashes and/or poor performance.
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to be teleported to an incorrect derelict freighter, if several freighters were present in the same system.
• Optimised several requests made to the Discovery Servers to reduce server load.
• Fixed a progression blocker that could occur when recharging the transmitter to speak with Artemis.
• Expedition save games that had previously been ended prematurely have now been restored and are able to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

KRANT! It’s time to answer one of the great universal questions: do they have, y’know... two?

Short answer: yes? There are two cockpits on the VDU and if you look closely at the sprites you can see two distinct cockpits on the 3D model.

And here’s what the Claw Marks art looks like mirrored so you just see the top. Head canon: they’re bubble canopies and the Kilrathi pilot and weapons officer (maybe?) can give each other thumbs ups.

But nothing twin-cockpit can stay: when the Krant was redesigned for Super Wing Commander it lost its most distinct feature. Designer Sean Murphy, who would go on to create the TCS Midway, said he was asked not to refer to the original.

Even the Nintendo Power comic parodying Wing Commander I has only a central cockpit:

The Krant shows up in the Wing Commander movie script but I don’t think any serious concept art was developed. It was dropped early to save the overworked FX

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

While Mass Effect games looked to have been left in the dark over the last few years, it looks like BioWare was actually working to reenergize the sci-fi RPG series in a huge way. Not only is a new Liara-inclusive sequel game currently on the horizon, but the original trilogy is getting the remastered treatment with the upcoming Mass Effect Legendary Edition, collecting all three games and DLC, and giving them a stunning modern visual and gameplay overhaul.

BioWare recently offered quite a few details about the many present changes in the remaster, but the developer has now let pictures do the talking with the debut on an all-new comparison trailer. As seen below, the trilogy’s sprawling alien worlds now sport an impressive level of added detail, with updated lighting and particle effects for environments, as well as more realistic skin rendering and crispier 3D models for in-game characters.

In addition

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Thanks in no small part to UnnamedCharacter's WC Toolbox, we've seen lots of fans undertake some pretty amazing WC1 hacks from inserting new ships to whole language conversions. YPersonified has another slick project, which is a straight clean-up of the original game's text and dialogue. WC1 has a handful of typos, misspellings, mixed up grammar and odd formatting. You might not have even ever noticed it, but there's room for improvement, and (after more than 30 years) YPersonified is doing the improving! Some examples are included below. You can try out what he's fixed so far by unzipping the contents of this file (211 k zip) into your gamedat folder. Help share feedback or point out additional items here.

Wing Commander - Improved GAMEDAT Files

The project of fan-edited GAMEDAT files from Wing Commander for better gameplay experience. The work is mostly focused on slightly demanding but basic

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

There have been mixed responses to the Proactive Detection Bureau, which monitors private communications in the Federation for terrorist activity.
Mainstream newsfeeds reported on the situation:
The Federal Times: "Civil rights groups are united in protest against the PDB. The controversy was also seized upon by the corporatist movement that was formed by Jupiter Division supporters. Their spokesperson stated: 'The government has overstepped its authority and must be replaced by direct corporate rule.'"
Sol Today: "Has everyone already forgotten Li Qing Jao station burning in the night skies above Earth? Whatever it takes to keep us safe must be done. Only people with something to hide demand secrecy."
Vox Galactica: "Professor Irene Ralston of Olympus Village University told us that her political history students received visits by FIA agents for researching Marlinism, despite it being on the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Inspired by UnnammedCharacter's WC Toolbox and Marty2Life's recent German translation, L@Zar0 has put together a brand new Spanish translation! He's been steadily making progress for the past month, so releases are available for both Wing Commander 1&2, plus both Secret Missions and Special Operations. This is a wonderful surprise for fans trying to play the classics in their native language, and there's even hope that he might tackle Privateer in the future. You can download the WC1/SM package here (4 meg zip) and the WC2/SO package here (5 meg zip). Readmes are included with more instructions or you can learn more at these pages at his site. This should work for either the original DOS or GOG versions. Even if you're not up for playing through the game in another language, check out these juicy images of it in action!

I want to give the thanks to UnnamedCharacter (and the members) that have

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Erik Gunnarson of the Wallglass Investigations Agency discusses the nomadic tribes that wander the galaxy in converted dredger megaships.
"It's well known that there are many travelling communities – groups of people who prefer to live on the move rather than settle anywhere. Proudly independent, they survive on the fringes of civilisation and tend to avoid interacting with the authorities. Those commonly known as the Dredger Clans are among the most successful."
"Dredger-class bulk cruisers convert both natural and man-made minerals into raw resources, to sustain themselves on deep-space voyages. Improved hyperdrives and fuel-scooping systems made this design redundant long ago, but some were taken over by nomads and kept operational."
"These dredgers are now a type of generation ship. Each hosts tens of thousands of people, whose cultures have evolved – or devolved – over decades or

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're rewinding the clock back a few more years today with a classic article from the December 1991 issue of PC Games. The First and Final Frontier talks about the surge space-themed games hitting the market in the early 1990s, including Wing Commanders 1 & 2. There are a few other promising games of the day mentioned, but there are big throwbacks and comparisons to the WC series. It's also got some really funky early '90s art, which was also typical of the day.