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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we've got a scan helpfully uncovered by the Out of Print Archive. It's a review of the 3DO edition of Super Wing Commander from June 1994. We've seen an uptick in SWC sharing lately, which is nice to see. We always love it when under appreciated parts of the WC universe get their chance to shine. This official remake of WC1 is certainly an oddity, but it's also fascinating in so many ways!

On the subject of SWC, I noticed this tweet was "doing numbers," as the kids say. You've got to be able to laugh at yourself sometimes, and this is a funny exchange. A lot of the comments seem to reference Chris Roberts, and we would like to point out that he wasn't involved in this one.

Every time I think Super Wing Commander's voice acting couldn't possibly get any worse, it pulls out a scene like this: pic.twitter.com/osWAc8Cd4T

— Kimimi (@_Kimimi) August 4, 2022

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 24th birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT) in #Wingnut on Discord!

Featuring...

• Explosive antics!
• A long-awaited experience!
• Songs you've longed to hear!
• Your dream come true!
• Strategies and tactics!
• Clarity
• Refreshment(s)
• Cake?! ...and more!

So join us in Discord, channel #WingNut! You can stop by any time to join the fun!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Welcome and happy birthday! Today's not just about our celebration - we're also celebrating the community's many years of dedication to Wing Commander fandom. As we talked about just a few days ago: "The point of a fandom is not to build a cathedral to a brand but to provide a shared starting point from which you connect with others, expand your thinking and grow to become better people." Like everyone else, we're not out of the woods yet, and there are still many challenges everyone is facing every day. Nevertheless, we wouldn't have made it this far without each other. WC fans have come up with some great things this year that we're excited to share. To set the mood and kick things off, FekLeyrTarg put together this adorable and amazing little short - I love it!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is a big one, folks! After years of hard work, the WC4 Fan Remake team is super excited to finally unveil the first playable demo for Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom Remastered. Today's release is a fancy update to the original WC4 Demo released on October 19, 1995. As we've seen through their many technical articles released over the years, it takes a lot of foundation building (design, art, sound, coding, user interface and much more) to reach a milestone like this. Detailed instructions have been published to help people get things going. There's even a snazzy demo trailer below! You can grab the installer package here (900 meg exe). Keep in mind that this is still a beta level artifact and the team very much appreciates your feedback. Give it a try and have fun!

We are supremely proud to announce that the first playable demo of Wing Commander IV - The Price of Freedom:

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Everyone's got Wedge's website bookmarked for quick access to scripts from the various Wing Commander games... and while that's served us well for decades, we're ready to unveil your first look at something better! LOAF has spent the last year painstakingly extracting the exact text scripts from a wide variety of Wing Commander games. And we don't just mean titles like "WC1" and "WC2." As it turns out, there's differences between disk versus CD editions, console port versus original and so on. There's also more to the game than cutscenes. LOAF's also pulling in comm chatter and other peripheral text. There's still a lot to add, but the magnitude of what's already been gathered is incredible. You can find the live working file here! Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

FekLeyrTarg is back with some new music for Wing Commander 2. He's identified a couple of missing tracks from the conversion between DOS WC2 and the Kilrathi Saga. In order to restore the pieces, he's researched how George Oldziey reorchestrated the music and done his best attempt to duplicate (with some tips from DMJC). The results sound fantastic to me! The clips have been set up in video form below, but they are also available to download. He doesn't currently have a method to integrate them into the game, but that could be a future project! Fans have done much more impressive things via KS patches so far, but they haven't had these files to work with until now.

• OriginFX Theme (16 meg zip)
• Special Operations 1: Thrakhath's New Plans (25 meg zip)

One thing missing from the Kilrathi Saga Windows Ports of "Wing Commander" and "Wing Commander II - Vengeance of the Kilrathi" is the legendary OriginFX

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

FekLeyrTarg was just on a roll this year, so we let him run with yet another cool tech demonstration! He's combined a green screen, the Privateer 3D models archive and some AI-generated scans of his head to create a nifty clip of him flying a Centurion. Not a bad effort at all! There's lots of potential here!

Produced for the Wing Commander CIC's 24th birthday, this is a proof-of-concept of using an AI-generated depth map on a subject in a 3D-generated environment for extra depth and lighting information. Once again, the models used are from the Privateer 3D Archive.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back in 1999 a trailer for the Wing Commander movie leaked and broke the internet... or at least the website! This 3 minute trailer featured not just a sneak peak at the highly anticipated video game based movie, but ended up also hiding alternate takes and snippets from deleted scenes that ultimately didn't make it into the final film. That video has only been available in very low quality (and low framerate) DivX video (10 meg avi). First, here's a raw export of the VHS:

...until now. A recently recovered VHS contained an slightly earlier version of this same trailer!While the actual edit on this tape is the same, keen observers will note that this is a slightly earlier version of the trailer than was leaked online as it also features some less-finished CG effects in a few places. I spent some time and effort to remove color noise left over from the VHS capture (over which I had no control or

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Downloads section is where we index all of our downloadable items, from soundtracks and official patches to fan-created tools or enhancements. This time of year is when we usually comb through the news archives to bring our index (in excess of 240 gigabytes!) up to date. We've done a thorough refresh so every file, patch and program is at your fingertips and easy to grab.

Highlights include the French, German and Spanish translations of WC1 DOS, the latest version of WCDX, Prophecy controller profiles for Saitek joysticks, the soundtrack to SegaCD WC1 and ODVS's various HD video packs.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This year almost marks 25 years for Wing Commander Prophecy, so we wanted to add a little something in here to recognize that upcoming milestone. This is the "Hint Book" included with the Deluxe Edition of Prophecy. Fans that weren't around in the late '80s and early '90s might not be familiar with how the first strategy guides were literal booklets full hints on how to get through games. This is a small streamlined guide intended as a mini companion to the full scale Prima Official Guide. There was a specific focus on the game's simulator missions as well as general tips. You can download it in one PDF here (13 megs).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

And then there was cake! Yum-o. Thanks Lacey!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's our birthday, and that means it's time for our birthday poll! Sound off and let us know how long you've been visiting the CIC! Last year, we saw that 1 in 6 have been followers since our WC adventures that predated the CIC. Of course, we love our new visitors just as much!

The old poll asked about the different types of major story themes we see throughout the series. It seems like most people like to save the universe in large epics like WC3/4. We can certainly understand why!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

And that's a wrap! It may not have been one of our longest birthday news slates, but hopefully you agree there's been some fantastic stuff here to enjoy. I've talked about it here a number of times already, but many of the key pillars of our tough and tight-knit community are medically high risk - and they're still dealing with a hell of a lot due to the ongoing pandemic, taking care of our families, and the state of things in the world. People successfully forced their way through a lot to get here today, and they'll do it again tomorrow, next week, next month and next year to keep supporting each other.

With this week's milestone behind us, that also means we're entering our 25th year. A quarter century is pretty crazy to think about. We're extremely fortunate that we got to do 2019's birthday party live and in person with LOAF, Ali, ace, Blonde, Dundradal, Joe and myself all together and on

Quote from No Man

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone playing the Endurance 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 3.99, which will be live on all platforms soon.

Bug fixes

• A glass version of the freighter stairs is now available to research and construct.
• Fixed a number of issues with freighter customisation that caused areas of paint to be too small or to be incorrectly labelled as primary/secondary/tertiary.
• Freighter surface details (such as numbers and decals) are now recoloured when changing paint options on the freighter customisation screen.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the orb of the freighter Trade Room to become detached and drift across the freighter.
• Players can now place internal walls freely around their freighter,

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Anecdotal reports suggest that a previously unknown non-human object has been discovered by independent pilots.
No details about where or how the object was obtained have been established at this time. What little information exists has been provided by individual members of the Pilots' Federation.
One of these sources is a public message posted by Commander Marcus Mercer via an Interstellar Common Experience (ICE) network:
"I recently met up with an old friend of mine. Let's call her Digger. Years ago we'd team up to excavate Guardian and Thargoid artefacts. Sold them and split the profits. She mentioned having an 'unusual find' in her ship's cargo hold, and invited me onboard to check it out."
"Standing there bathed in its light from the other side of the window, I knew this was something alien. But it wasn't just another dusty relic from millennia ago. This looked

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Prime Minister Edmund Mahon and Sirius Corporation CEO Li Yong-Rui have issued a joint statement regarding territorial defence against the Thargoids.
"The recent tragedy in HIP 22460 has underscored the crucial importance of the strategic defence pact. As the likelihood of increased Thargoid aggression rises, Allied systems can be assured that we are making rapid changes to withstand this potential threat."
"Admiral Nikolas Glass will now coordinate all anti-xeno military operations. His first priority is to update the existing infrastructure of the Alliance Defence Force, allowing member system fleets to form according to mission parameters. This will bring greater flexibility and allow the ADF to direct forces to anywhere Thargoid incursions occur."
"Allied worlds are calling out for greater defences, and the absence of a dedicated Alliance Navy has never been felt so keenly. But the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A breakaway sect of the Thargoid-worshipping fringe religion is apparently celebrating the massacre of human forces in the HIP 22460 system.
A message was broadcast from the Testament megaship by the anonymous woman known only as the First Apostle of the True Chapters:
"We rejoice in the Far God's triumph! Those who tried to desecrate the dark angels have paid the price. The Far God is calling to us from the higher dimensions, and Its manifestation is closer than ever before. It is coming."
There has been widespread outrage at Far God believers for their joyous reaction to the many thousands of deaths in HIP 22460. Some political and military leaders have even called for the 'alien-loving traitors' to be arrested as enemy agents. However, there is no evidence that they have any actual relationship with the Thargoid species other than idolisation.
Dr Jameelah Griffin of the Galactic Interfaith

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've gotten some questions lately about the classic Wing Commander 3 Warbirds poster, which is just gorgeous, so we wanted to take a moment to put it front and center for everyone to enjoy. The regular game came with a black and white version, but Premiere Edition owners were treated to this beautiful foldout in full color. You can also grab it in a concise PDF here (9 megs). You can find all kinds of other WC documentation here!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Professor Ishmael Palin, the foremost authority on the Thargoids, has authored a short article for the scientific journal The Empirical.
"Recent events have once again brought a focus on the alien species we call Thargoids. I have witnessed governments, militaries and public figures characterise them as a mindless destructive force, akin to a swarm of locusts. I feel it is important to underscore how much is absent from our understanding."
"Despite many decades of research, the Thargoid civilisation remains totally alien. We still have almost no true understanding of their language, society, culture or objectives. Non-violent interactions with their spacecraft in recent years have provided little insight, other than their commitment to patrolling and harvesting meta-alloy sources. Of course, their willingness to fight is one of the few traits we definitely share."
"As yet we have almost no

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we've got a new video of the awesome 2017 Mountbatten Festival of Music concert where the Bands of HM Royal Marines performed the Wing Commander Overture. A few clips have been posted over the years, but this is a nice capture posted by their official YouTube account relatively recently. It's been five years since this first hit the news, but it's no less thrilling today!

The dramatic, high impact piece Wing Commander, which proved to be the perfect opening fanfare for the Mountbatten Festival of Music at the iconic Royal Albert Hall London.

In 2018 the group performed the piece again at the Beating Retreat parade.

The TV theme Wing Commander composed by Kevin Kiner & David Arnold, arranged by WO1 Ivan Hutchinson RM and performed at Beating Retreat at Horse Guards Parade.