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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Aegis has confirmed that the first ships equipped with Thargoid pulse neutralisers have entered the inner regions of the Maelstroms.
The new module provides a temporary shield against the electromagnetic pulse that is generated when ships reach a certain point within the Maelstroms. Until now, this has prevented all attempts to identify what Thargoid constructs may exist within the caustic clouds.
Rear Admiral Daniel Parry, the Federal Navy's liaison to Aegis, reported:
"Armed ships crewed by military and xenology specialists have now been sent into each Maelstrom. These pathfinder missions will attempt to gather as much tactical and environmental data as possible."
"We have also received information from Commanders who returned intact from the Maelstroms' core areas. We are unable to authenticate these accounts at present, but they are being collated and analysed. The Allied, Federal and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Tonight's rabbit hole: I noticed that Privateer has two different internal sets of names for its commodities, one used in the exchange (and on your PPC) and one used on the in flight manifest. Some are the same but others are different. "Movies" becomes... "Moviechips"!

Games become Gamechips, Books become Bookchips. And PlayThing (tm) becomes...!

So I ended up extracting everything and making a Spreadsheet of different commodity names across six sources (three in-game, three from the Playtesters' Guide). It also shows what type of container displays for each:

Found some cut content, too: traces of the ability to eject passengers and a list of additional story-specific items that were cut when the plot was shortened: Alien Crystal, Alien Device, Ancient Gun, Alien Machinery and Alien Metal!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's been several years since our All Wings Considered live Wing Commander show has been in production, but LOAF is trying to get his space legs under him again. He's messing around on YouTube this evening in a totally unstructured stream about the WC Movie's Confederation Handbook. Check it out below!

In 1999, HarperEntertainment published the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook. Was it the greatest book ever written in the history of the world? Yes. Let's talk about it!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

GOG is holding a new "Make Classics Last Forever" sale, and Wing Commander is included. This one is slightly unusual. All of the main games plus both Privateer 1 and 2 are marked down as you might expect. Armada and Academy are oddly absent, however. Still, it's a wonderful chance to add the majority of the series to your collection, and it's a good bet that the missing pair of spinoffs will make their way into a different sale soon! Each discounted title is $1.49 for 75% off. Thanks to LividLiquid for the tip!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

TONIGHT! I’ll be streaming to talk all about Voices of War, one of the greatest game manuals ever written! 8 PM Eastern on YouTube. Here’s a PDF of the booklet if you want to study up!

Check back here closer to start time for the YouTube link!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Prompted by a handful of questions at the CIC Forums, AllTinker has provided some updates that detail his ideas and plans for the Confederation project. It's some nice insight into what's in store to expand the capabilities of the original WC1 engine. Here's what he had to say:

I've been working on it on-and-off since 2016 or thereabouts, but posting about it (or more the community response) has been a big motivation boost.

I plan to implement [enhancements] gradually in layers, but yes - ultimately some kind of dynamic/strategic campaign system is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to implement. The current plan is that the first layers of that will actually be released prior to the WC1 campaign being fully playable; i.e. simple preset or dynamic scenarios to test things out.

Having the WC1 campaign fully playable is the primary goal until it's achieved, but the way we'll get there will be a little

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Klavs is back with a gift to share with Wing Commander fans this week. He's officially releasing a handful of enhanced 3D models that were put together over the last couple years. The direct art assets were originally available in exchange for a donation towards his family's medical bills, but now they are available at SketchFab for free. Hit the links below for links to each. These designs have made their way into a variety of fan projects over time, and we're excited to see what else fans can do with them!

• Rapier II
• Movie Rapier
• Sabre
• Ferret
• Dralthi
• Hornet

Hi everyone, the Wing Commander redux models are now available for free on Sketchfab. MANY many thanks go out to those who purchased them, your support is so greatly appreciated, and if we ever meet in person I owe you a coffee!

They are a little rough in spots! As with the original models, I was using them as a way to learn substance a little better.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's a new year, but we're turning back the clock today with a new batch of retro reviews found by Maxi de Sokar. The first is a wonderful five page spread in PC Review for Wing Commander 3. It starts off with a couple pages of "behind the scenes" info before launching into the actual review. Then we have a quick take on Super Wing Commander for the 3DO by Micromania. Finally, there's a six page spread in OKPC about Wing Commander 4. I love how much space was dedicated to these new releases at the time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we have a very cool flythrough of a set of Space Engineers maps by Jason Musgrave. We've seen a handful of impressive designs over the year from Wing Commander 1 to Privateer to WC4, but WC3 was relatively untapped territory. Now we're getting three-in-one by way of a fantastic TCS Victory, plus a Confed cruiser and Kilrathi carrier. There are even fighters across the deck that you can get inside. Phenomenal effort on display here!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last week, we talked about Privateer 2's palette feature which allows any ship to appear in the livery of any of twelve factions. We didn't mention that this was being noted in the service of helping AllTinker add the correct default style for every ship in a future release of the incredible Originator. There were actually two additional options we didn't show in the last post: the Heretic's actual color yellow and blue scheme and this final seemingly unused one (note how this one also changes the color of the cockpit glass from green to blue).

In this process of studying this, we did manage to find somewhere in Privateer 2 that the system is actually used: for generating the 'booth database' images of ships! If you look closely at the different registration entries (and a few other places) you'll see different ships appear in all sorts of different colors! The system isn't actually used internally but

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

LeHah spotted a new Wing Commander autograph opportunity. SWAU is offering Freddie Prinze Jr signatures via its website for the next month. There are a lot of photo choices associated with his role in Star Wars Rebels, but it's nice to see that they have five WC Movie options as well. The final press kit shot with Prinze in marine armor is less common to see, so that's a fun inclusion! You can place orders here. Prices are a bit steep at $95, but autographs are expensive these days!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

If you kind of squint, it looks a little bit like a clover...

This is a repurposing of Music_Guru's green Dralthi, which is itself inspired by SNES Secret Missions' green Salthi/Jalthi.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've got a delicious update today on WC4 Remastered. Pedro reports that the team is digging deep into the ground missions of the game. As is usual on a project like this, once they started peeling back the layers of the original, things got complicated. This has necessitated some clever solutions, which have been detailed in a new WCRespace article. A few options include taking some artistic license and deviating from the original experience slightly, but this should produce a more engaging product overall.

The first issue was to add support for loading the terrain and we had to ensure that the models which we had full transforms for lined up exactly as they did in the original game.Classic buildings and terrain.

We have accomplished this and added support for terrain collisions. The ~1 million vertex original terrain can be rendered on modern hardware in a single draw call – but still that’s

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We post magazine scans of Wing Commander articles from time to time, but most of those date back to the '90s. It's not too common for those kinds of pieces to show up much past 2000, but AD spotted what appears to be an extensive WC3 article in the latest edition of German magazine PC Games. Their May 2024 issue has an extensive retrospective on the game. It looks like the writeup is also available online here, but it'd be a pretty cool pickup in person as well! Here's the English translation for those who need it.

You can get the new PC Games 05/24 from your newsagent from April 19th - either as a magazine edition for 6.50 euros or as a particularly lavish extended version with 16 extra pages, two full magazine DVDs and digital full version for 8.50 euros.

Wing Commander 3 was brilliant 30 years ago - and is still a masterpiece today

In 1994, Wing Commander 3 pushed PC systems to their limits and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're one week into Origin composer George Oldziey's mission to make a new live reorchestration of Wing Commander music, and the numbers are very impressive so far. The campaign is nearly to $15,000, which is very close to the $16,000 minimum threshold when combined with additional support from superfan Matt Hiltner. This gives us great optimism that an additional $6000 to add a live choir to the mix will be possible. Next up, however, is another anecdote about his experience creating the music at Origin in the beginning. It sounds stressful, but the results were well worth it! For additional context, George posted side-by-side photos of him then and now. You can also listen to that final WC3 patrol track below:

Your browser cannot play this file. Click here to download the track.

Hi everyone. First of all, BRAVO for getting us so close to the target so quickly! I'm already hearing that

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In an exciting reversal of longstanding platform rules, Apple now allows emulation programs on iPhones and iPads. This means a large number of new devices now have access to emulators capable of playing Super Nintendo or Game Boy Advance games, for example. Delta is the first legit console emulator that has made its way to the app store. It's free, and it has some great features such as AirPlay to TV and support for Xbox and other controllers. Even the on-screen controls seem to work well. LOAF did some cartridge WC game tests, and the results were very impressive! Here's some tantalizing screenshots:

The Delta emulator they just released in the iOS App Store is the coolest f*cking thing I’ve ever seen.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

LeHah tipped us off about the news that legendary visual futurist Syd Mead will be receiving a highly prestigious William Cameron Menzies Art Director's Guild at the organization's upcoming annual event. Mr. Mead is mostly known for his work on the original Star Trek movie, Blade Runner, Tron and Aliens, but he's actually had his hand in a wide range of products. These include Wing Commander Prophecy where he was responsible for a couple of the new ship designs as well as the Nephilim themselves!

Most recently, it's been reported that he's enamored with the new Tesla Cybertruck, saying it's "stylistically breathtaking" and "has completely changed the vocabulary of the personal truck market design."

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

Attention! We’ve doubled our efforts to give Captains the necessary experience to deal with threats to the Galaxy. From Thursday, December 19th at 8AM PT, to Monday, December 23rd at 10AM PT, players will be able to enjoy twice the experience! During the event, content that provides skill points and expertise will reward a 100% (2x) Bonus above normal amounts – this bonus will be available for all content that rewards skill points and expertise. .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0; border: 1px solid transparent; -webkit-transition: opacity .3s; transition: opacity .3s; } .share-footer .TI { background-position: 0 20%; } .share-footer .YT { background-position: 0 40%; } .share-footer .YT {

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

From October 10th to October 31st, we are running a promotion that will provide an additional bonus when opening a Research and Development Pack. When you purchase a Research and Development Pack from the C-Store and open it, you will receive either 10 Lobi Crystals or a Special Requisition Choice Pack - Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack in addition to the Research and Development Pack. We are excited to announce a new addition to this Promotional Ship Pack: The Freedom-class Exploration Frigate [T6]! Everyone needs a hobby, and for many, that hobby is retrofitting and flying antique starships – the more classic, the better! A recent incident where one such hobbyist from the future took their prized starship back in time to attempt to view the exploits of a certain prominent Admiral led to a confiscated starship. The civilian-grade technology of the future is potent. The future tech the

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

Starting this Thursday, we’re launching a brand new weekend event, the Admiralty Bonus! From February 27th at 8am PT to March 3rd at 10am PT, your Admiralty missions will give out bonus rewards! During this special event, you’ll find that all of your assignments give out double Campaign XP, allowing for faster progression, no matter who’s missions you’re completing. Get in good with the Ferengi, serve the Federation or the Klingon Empire, or help rebuild the Romulan Republic. In addition, all Tour of Duty missions will award bonus Dilithium Ore during this event! As part of our ongoing efforts to balance the game’s economy, we’re also making some changes to how Admiralty rewards work. Specifically, we’re changing the rewards on two of the Tour of Duty campaigns. The Klingon Campaign will now offer 50,000 Fleet Voucher Dilithium as a reward, and the Ferengi Campaign will now offer