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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
The Empire is aiding Sirius Corporation by offering bounty hunting and trade opportunities to support the Galactic Summit.
The diplomatic conference is now entering its second week, with superpower and independent leaders gathered at Patterson Enterprise in the Sirius system.
Sirius Corporation's CEO Li Yong-Rui announced:
"Our thanks to the Federation for organising additional security against unexpected numbers of vessels this past week. Anarchic extremists, political enemies and opportunistic criminals all attempted to disrupt the conference to no avail. Pilots who helped maintain the peace can collect their rewards at the Spirit of Laelaps."
"For the coming week, we are working with the Empire to maintain the security operation by offering bounties on all wanted ships. The Empire will also pay generously for extra supplies of animal meat, coffee, fish, fruit and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A cool Wing Commander II preview in Spanish! Posted by La Abadía del Juego.

This is first news I'd seen about Wing Commander. Here they talked about part 2, and in Spain the first had not even come out. One of the sagas that has affected me the most in all my life.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Renowned comic and storyboard artist Tim Eldred has posted an awesome article about how he got involved with Wing Commander Academy and how it influenced the rest of his career. It's a combination of being in the right place at the right time as well as having the knack for visualizing the series' key concepts in engaging ways. He's got lots of fun concept art in the piece, including these two glorious shots. We've posted versions of them before without the color, but they really pop here fully illustrated like this.

When I sat down to watch Episode 3 (on a Saturday morning), it was a revelation to see my work on TV for the first time. In addition to what I mentioned earlier, this was also a case where some characters I designed were moving through scenes I created. It looked like I had somehow drawn every frame of this Saturday morning cartoon. I was also surprised to see that some of my shots were

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Leaders from the Alliance, Empire and Federation have agreed a series of minor treaties at the diplomatic gathering in the Sirius system.
Vox Galactica featured this report from political correspondent Conrad Sterling:
"Following days of heated arguments, temperatures in the conference chamber finally cooled enough for all three superpowers to formalise a raft of agreements. These were ratified in person by Chancellor Blaine, President Hudson and Prime Minister Mahon."
"The most significant of these treaties is the Cornelius-Lasky Convention, named after its two leading proponents. This requires the Alliance, Empire and Federation to share information on any large-scale threats to civilian populations, including environmental, medical and xenological crises."
"There has been slow progress on other topics, such as military limitation and border control. Many independent ambassadors are

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a fun Origin advertising pamphlet that you might not have seen if you weren't on Origin's mailing list (like Dan Gheesling was). This brochure went out to promote the holiday lineup on CD. Wing Commander 3 gets top billing, of course, with special mention of the Premiere Edition that was only available via direct sale from EA. A lot of collectors picked theirs up on eBay after the fact without realizing these weren't readily available in stores, although a similar boxed film reel edition was sold at Sam's Club. The reverse side is a System Shock sandwich flanked by Wings of Glory and Bioforge. This sheet represents a magical time in Origin history. The company was no longer held back by the limitations of floppy disks, and they were taking full advantage of the new disc format!

Origin's Holiday CD Line Up is a folded mailer which was sent to registered customers to promote the companys

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

ODVS has more big news on the video enhancement front. He's no longer pursuing 4K remasters of WC4 footage, but he reports that 1080p versions are looking better than ever. With the latest iterations of the AI/neural net tools at his disposal, he's reached new heights of quality in the footage. There's less artifacting and crisper lines, but best of all, even traces of uncanny valley in the augmented eyeballs have been virtually eliminated. The technology continues to evolve and there will likely be even further advances in the future, but the clips below are stunning examples of what's possible today.

After much, much experimenting, I've decided to abandon 4K FMV for the remake. My reasons are twofold:

1. The quality improvement over 1080p was neglible at best (it's just asking too much to upscale by 600%)
2. The file weight for all the game's FMV at 4K would have been excessive

When you combine those two

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Delegates at the diplomatic conference have clashed over long-standing political issues, with some threatening to abandon the event.
Journalists at Patterson Enterprise in the Sirius system reported their observations via mainstream newsfeeds.
The Imperial Herald: "Minister Whyte's claim that the Empire had fomented terrorism by repressing Marlinism was somewhat predictable. But nobody expected Princess Duval's icy retort, which caused shocked gasps across the chamber."
Sol Today: "President Hudson easily dealt with Patreus's whine about the Federation's so-called 'war-mongering', putting the bombastic Imp in his place."
Eye on Achenar: "The dull-witted thug of a president was no match for Senator Patreus, who received cheers for his condemnation of typical 'Fedneck' arrogance."
The Alliance Tribune: "The conference's hosts were visibly embarrassed by Councillor Kaine's claims that Coalsack

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Marty2Life is a Wingnut from Germany with a dream to play the original DOS Wing Commander in German. He's been asking questions at the CIC Forums and may have finally overcome the technical hurdles to make it happen. Check out some impressive results from the first mission!

Hello to all the pilots out there.

I'm new to the forum and have known Wing Commander since the beginning of 1990.I played the first part on the Amiga 1200 when I was a child. That was the OCS version.Then the other parts on the PC.

I'm working on my DOSbox fork, which is a mixture of Dosbox-X and Daum (Windows95 and 98 run in my Dosbox). Got all the parts in the Dosbox (yes also the Windows95 versions).Now to my question. Since I am a German user, I would like to translate the PC Wing Commander 1 Dos version and / or the Kilrathi version into German. I have the CD32 (combi with Dangerous Streets).

Before I die, I want to play Wing

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's an interesting video by ShivanSPS. It features the mod Wing Commander Saga running on a Raspberry Pi 4. I don't really know much about Raspberry Pies (Pis?), aside from how they're tiny little $35 microcomputers. Freespace 2 and WC Saga aren't new or especially demanding pieces of software by today's standards, but it still seems impressive that they run so well on such a cheap tiny machine. It sounds like these were made to run via FS2_Open and WXlauncher in a 64 bit Ubuntu environment, and instructions on how to get those things going on the Pi can be found here! Let us know if you get it to working on yours.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Andrea Contato has a great surprise for everyone today. He's allowed us to share the Wing Commander 2 bonus chapter from his new book Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium. It includes discussion about some of Chris Roberts' initial expectations for the game and draws heavily on extensive interviews with WC2 director Siobhan Beeman. The chapter provides some really helpful insight into how Origin and the game industry worked in the early '90s. You can grab it in PDF format and read for yourself here (350 k). And if you'd like to check out the rest of the book (or part 1 covering the pre-WC days), check out Andrea's shop here.

The Wing Commander II team was not satisfied, however, to simply improve on what they already had. Despite the limited timeline, there was also the intention to add features and expand the gameplay. Siobhan explains:

“We knew we wanted to

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Alliance, Empire and Federation leaders have held their first ever face-to-face discussions at the diplomatic conference in the Sirius system.
Political correspondent Conrad Sterling published this report for Vox Galactica:
"The Galactic Summit has already made history by bringing together many political figureheads within one conference chamber. Optimistic opening statements from Chancellor Anders Blaine and Prime Minister Edmund Mahon gained applause. President Zachary Hudson was more curt, reminding everyone that billions of people would be affected by their efforts."
"Agendas and debate topics for the next three weeks were formalised. Much of the work will be done behind the scenes by ambassadorial staff, making big decisions in small rooms."
"The general tone so far has been courteous, although that may not last. Predictably, interactions between the Imperial and Marlinist delegations

Quote from No Man

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone playing the Companions 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 have been combined into patch 3.22, which will be live on all platforms today.

Patch Notes

• Fixed a crash that could occur when loading creature or companion textures in multiplayer.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when renaming a companion on Xbox.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the wrong companion to be renamed when renaming a companion.
• Fixed an issue that prevented personal items such as ships/freighters/Multi-Tools and companions from being renamed on PlayStation 5.
• Other player’s companions will no longer collide with you in multiplayer.

• All companions now correctly defend their owner when attacked by a hostile creature.
• Fixed an issue

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Privateer 2 programmer Paul Hughes has posted an awesome little story about the development of the game's economic model. After balancing all the numbers, they learned that the video shoot had decided to change one little thing, which had big consequences!

Writing this Privateer 2 movie thing just reminded me of a classic FUBAR during development; whilst the shoot and edit were underway we were working away on the "Elite-esque" trading elements of the space game. Tony had the trading booth up and running...

...and we'd simulated all sorts of galaxy runs to work out prices for bounties, goods and missions to spread the difficulty curve nicely through the main story arc. Then I encoded the sequences for the very first mission along with its different branches and...

discovered during the shoot they didn't think the bounty in the script for the first mission sounded big enough so changed the number and

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
A wide range of luxurious food and drink for the Galactic Summit has been delivered to the Sirius Corporation.
Orders were placed for Eden Apples Of Aerial, Ethgreze Tea Buds, Gerasian Gueuze Beer, Giant Irukama Snails, Goman Yaupon Coffee, Karsuki Locusts and Lavian Brandy. Large quantities of these rare items were shipped to Ashby City in the Luyten's Star system.
The consumables will be ferried to the nearby Sirius system, where the diplomatic conference will take place. This initiative was considered a priority, since some delegates only agreed to attend if their requests for these rarities were met.
CEO Li Yong-Rui has expressed his personal thanks to all pilots who delivered the rare goods, who can now collect their payment at Ashby City in the Luyten's Star system.
Sirius Corporation has been organising the Galactic Summit for the past month, which has involved

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
The Federation is working with Sirius Corporation to offer bounty hunting opportunities to protect the diplomatic conference.
The first Galactic Summit has officially opened at Patterson Enterprise station in the Sirius system. Temporary permits have been issued to all arriving delegates and Commanders for the three weeks of its term, although these do not apply to fleet carriers.
Sirius Corporation's CEO Li Yong-Rui announced:
"The data supplied to us in January revealed several unanticipated threats, putting additional strain on our navy and security forces. Working with the generous support of the Federation, we have placed bounties on all wanted ships to ensure delegates' safety. Pilots defending the Sirius system will be rewarded for handing in bounty vouchers at the Spirit of Laelaps."
The joint initiative will run for one week, after which Sirius Corporation

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

Henry Cavill and Mass Effect don’t typically land in the same sentence together, though that may be about to change thanks to one of The Witcher star’s recent social media posts. Cavill appears to be teasing his involvement in an as-yet unannounced Mass Effect project, though this tease amounts to a “handful of paper with random words on it.”

Henry Cavill recently took to his popular Instagram account to reveal a new photo of him prepping for a full day of filming for season 2 of Netflix’s The Witcher series. “Secret project? Or just a handful of paper with random words on it,” the image caption reads. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see. Happy hump day all. #HumpDay #Secrets”.

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A post shared by Henry Cavill (@henrycavill)

Said ‘paper with random words on it’ aren’t as random as one might think, though. The folks over at GamePressure utilized a program called Focus

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Time for the latest (October 1999) celebrity news straight out of Germany!

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

The gaming industry has several fan-favorite developers, with one of the most beloved being BioWare. The studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect has pleased fans with its RPGs, although not every title has been without missteps. The launch of its ongoing online game Anthem was considered to have fallen short of expectations, with critical and audience receptions being mixed. With the promise of a significant overhaul referred to as Anthem Next, some Anthem loyalists held hopes for its future. Sadly, it appears this will not be the case, as BioWare has announced that they will cease development on the upcoming project.

An update on Anthem from Christian Dailey: https://t.co/twmwxaxj3b

— BioWare (@bioware) February 24, 2021

As reported by Game Informer, BioWare’s Christian Dailey made the announcement regarding Anthem Next in a new blog post. Dailey described the past two years of development on Next

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The postponement of the election for a new prime minister has led to widespread public disorder across Alliance systems.
The Alliance Assembly vote was scheduled for Thursday the 25th of February. This date clashed with the start of the Galactic Summit, causing incumbent Prime Minister Edmund Mahon to propose that the election be delayed for three months.
On many Alliance worlds, large-scale protest marches have placed pressure on local police forces. Some civil leaders have condemned Mahon for using the diplomatic conference as an excuse to extend his term of office.
Mahon has referred to the unrest as being caused by a "vocal minority of agitators", and insisted that the delay is in the Alliance's best interests.
Councillor Nakato Kaine, Mahon's main rival, has given the protests her full support. She has become a figurehead for public dissent, with some political pundits suggesting that she

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Sidequest has posted a thorough retrospective of Wing Commander 3. It comes from an interesting perspective. The author has a lot of experience reviewing games, but was born after WC3's 1994 release. As such, one of the first things he calls out was the game's low resolution and high compression in cutscenes. While there's no doubt that this is an issue, if you lived through it at the time you would recall how the high end graphics (both in flight and for video) brought hardware of the time to its knees as it was. He also struggles a bit through the lack of tutorial help in-game, which was also typical of the era. But it's wonderful to see how people power through these difficulties and nevertheless have a blast with the game!

Thanks to Spacedock for spotting this one!