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ODVS has a nice treat for German Wing Commander fans (of which there are many!). With the help of Bernd Vollbrecht and Dr. Gerd Naumann, he's redone the audio for the WC4 Remastered trailer. It's a wonderful video, and now more people can listen to it in their native language! You can download the playable demo for the WC4 Fan Remake yourself here (900 meg exe).
Here's a little something for German-speaking Wingnuts, courtesy of MrCoffeeee:
Oct
…We've got good news to report today for Wing Commander Arena fans! Back in August, people started to notice that the Xbox achievement records for certain games were no longer showing properly. This was distressing to us, since Arena was one of the games that appeared to be suffering from this predicament. Players' total point score seemed unaffected, and the achievements still appeared to show up at third party websites that had access to the source data, so we were hoping that this was just some kind of technical glitch. Additionally, other classic Xbox Live Aracade games like EA's Boom Boom Rocket were still appearing normally. Fortunately, we noticed this week that the game was one again showing up properly in Xbox gamertag profiles. You can now see all 12 Wing Commander achievements on your console, the web or mobile app. Check out how your score stacks up here (may need to log in to an
Oct
Here's a fun little teaser of the next's Mac's Lore video. It features a vast Confed fleet inspired by the massive task force assembled at Vukar Tag in End Run. Everything is anchored around Klavs' massive Confederation class dreadnought model, but there are plenty of gorgeous ships flanking it as well. We can't wait to see the finished product!
"We have spent half a year planning this campaign, making sure every piece was in place. Here...we have assembled the largest task force in over a decade. Four major carriers, and over seventy other ships."
— Mac's Lore (@MacsLore) September 11, 2022
- Admiral Wayne Banbridge#wingcommander pic.twitter.com/wl73rMEiK4
Oct
…The Popontia conflict and the mass arrest of Far God cultists have received civil and political criticism across the Federation.
Shadow President Felicia Winters delivered a statement to The Federal Times:
"It is logical that any organisation supporting the Thargoids should come under scrutiny. But this does not justify the harsh and oppressive treatment of our own citizens for their religious beliefs. The Federal Accord safeguards their right to worship, as long as no laws are transgressed."
"The Federal Navy Intelligence Office has accused the cult of disseminating classified material and damaging anti-xeno operations. I demand that their evidence be shared with the High Court, so that a legal ruling can be made."
"I also call upon Congress to reject the secretary of state's proposal to outlaw the Order of the Far God. This is nothing more than a blatant effort to prop up President Hudson's
Oct
…Seo Jin-ae, the Project Seraph survivor, has refused to have any further contact with Azimuth Biotech following its offer of help.
She is currently in the care of Professor Alba Tesreau, who stated:
"It will come as no surprise that Ms Seo vehemently rejects Mr Rademaker's proposal. She has relayed horrific details to me about her abduction years ago, and the invasive experimentation at Oaken Point. The fear that Azimuth operatives were hunting her never passed, resulting in total isolation from her former life to protect friends and loved ones. As things stand, she has no reason to trust the organisation responsible for her suffering."
"Ms Seo's health has improved, but I'm informed that a significant neural implant grafted into her cerebral cortex – designed to interface with a Thargoid vessel – can never be removed. With her permission, we are working to better understand the manner of
Oct
Today marks a full ten years since Star Citizen and Squadron 42 were first unveiled at GDC Austin in 2012. It's been quite an epoch for Chris Roberts and team. In comparison, the span of time from the launch of WC1, all of the subsequent DOS/Windows WC games and finally release of the WC Movie covered about nine years. Nevertheless, vast numbers of fans were enthralled by the virtual CitizenCon held on Saturday. As is tradition, Cloud Imperium continues to sprinkle Wing Commander easter eggs in from time to time. "Christopher Blair" makes a brief appearance in the introduction of the new MOBIGLAS interface. It's always nice to see them remembering their roots! You can see that reveal below starting at about the 1:20 minute mark. Thanks to Whistler and Dennis Mull for the tip!
Look at these babies!
Oct
Pekka Leppaluoto has put together a wonderful treat for Wing Commander Privateer fans. He's recorded the Priv soundtrack with his SCC-1 card and posted the results to YouTube in a convenient chaptered format. The SCC-1 is a variant of the Roland SC-55, which was one of the fanciest sound cards of the early '90s. The first few Wing Commander games sound just wonderful on the Roland hardware of the era. The YouTube clip below makes for easy convenient listening, but you can also download the tracks from our archives here.
Wing Commander: Privateer (the original floppy disk version) Complete Soundtrack on a Roland SCC-1 sound card. All files played back using AIL Sound System's XPLAY.EXE with static content extracted from the game. As I was preparing another Origin Systems game soundtrack, I discovered that the same extraction tools work with Privateer so I was able to easily produce this one.
Oct
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Allied forces have successfully defended the Andecavi system from Thargoid vessels.
The defence operation was centred around the megaship Kumiho Sky, which hosted the Alliance and Sirius Corporation's joint anti-xeno taskforce. A declaration of victory was made by Admiral Nikolas Glass:
"Operation Tyndareus is officially a triumph! Alliance Defence Force and Sirius Navy crews have fought side by side to protect the people of Andecavi from the Thargoids. The aliens withdrew from the system en masse, following several days of hard fighting."
"The taskforce was ably supported by many freelance pilots and AX squadrons, who can now claim their rewards from the Kumiho Sky. These include unique pre-engineered heatsink modules for qualifying xeno-hunters. In addition, the modules will shortly be commercially available via official Sirius Corporation technology brokers."
Oct
Here's an interesting four page preview of Wing Commander II from the November-December 1991 issue of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide (Vol. 4, No. 7), the magazine which eventually became PC Gamer. Much of the information about the game's early story elements and updates from Wing Commander I might seem commonplace today but in late 1991 it would've been mana from heaven!
Oct
…Dalton Chase, the Federal governor of Andavandul 1, is campaigning to become a member of Congress with support from the Thargoid Advocacy Project.
A profile of Governor Chase was published in The Federal Times by political journalist Sofia Trevino:
"Despite only being in his mid-thirties with a short political career, Dalton Chase has made a habit of beating the odds. He achieved a very strong following within his home system of Andavandul, eclipsing more experienced rivals to become a planetary governor."
"This is largely due to his willingness to reach beyond the mainstream. Many politicians claim the kind of exuberance and natural charisma that Chase possesses, but few would risk talking about the Thargoids using pointed phrases such as 'communication not extermination'. Younger voters are drawn to his boldness, as are the ICE-casters who routinely invite him onto their platforms."
Oct
Found an ancient bug in Armada! The source for the credits reads "Music & Digital FX" but the actual game doesn't display the ampersand. (But I think we can give the team that was QAing this and Wing Commander III at the same time a pass...)
Also never noticed this cool footer on the credits! JEMM was the DOS extender and RealSpace was the 3D engine, both first developed for Strike Commander.
Oct
…Hello everyone,
Thank you to everyone playing the Waypoint 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 4.04, which will be live on all platforms soon.
Bug fixes
- Players upgrading their save to Waypoint are now awarded additional free technology slots (this fix will also apply to players who have already upgraded their save to Waypoint).
- A new difficulty setting has been added which allows players to lock themselves out of any further difficulty settings changes. Once enabled, this action is permanent.
- The photon cannon can now be deleted from the ship inventory, providing at least one other weapon is installed.
- The strength of starship specialisation bonuses have been increased, so that higher-grade ships receive greater
Oct
…AD came across some interesting videos by RetroShell. They're digitized versions of the SNES WC1 and Secret Missions manuals that have been turned into YouTube videos. At first, the concept is puzzling. Why do these exist rather than PDF scans? The more I think about them though, the more I lean towards these actually being kind of genius. Yes, downloadable files are great for archiving, but in many cases there isn't a great way to find reliable sources for docs like these. Players usually end up at sketchy (virus red flag) websites. YouTube, on the other hand, is readily indexed by Google and is itself an ever growing resource for technical information. The interface also makes for really easy and convenient scrolling/scrubbing through the pages. In this case, RetroShell has even added a nice page-turning animation and overlaid music from the game - which is a fantastic touch! After you
Oct
…Wing Commander emulation continues to make good progress, but one area we haven't looked at in a while is getting the Macintosh version of Super Wing Commander running on modern systems. There's a fairly limited amount of info out there on getting SWC going, and most of it pertains to the 3DO edition. One particularly challenging aspect is that Mac SWC doesn't even run on modern Macs. The game really wants an OS 9 install to fire up.
Gaijin has been exploring this topic and came across the Columbia emulator that simulates an OS 9 environment. He hasn't gotten it to work on his Apple silicon yet, but it does appear to work well on his Intel-based iMac, which is very promising!
I was running it on my PowerBook Pismo (which still works great) until the fantastic emulator from Columbia came out. I haven't gotten SWC to work on my M1 MacBook Air 2020 yet, but it runs like a charm on my Sierra iMac! Purrs
Oct
…Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval has expressed satisfaction with the Empire's military and scientific progress since the Battle of HIP 22460.
She delivered the public address following a recent tour of a Gutamaya shipyard:
"The Imperial Navy is entering a period of revitalisation, with advances being made in multiple areas. We have been freed from the burden of external mismanagement, which hindered our military potential and diluted our naval strength."
"The Senate has worked tirelessly to generate funding and opportunities for this renewed focus. New ships and crews have replaced recent losses, making our naval fleets more powerful than ever. And many loyal corporations have replaced inferior imports from foreign worlds with the high-quality workmanship of Imperial artisans."
"Alongside increased military and commercial might, the Imperial Science Academy leads the way on xenological research
Oct
Another kind gift from the @XwingGameSeries account: great scans of the CGSP article that announced Privateer 3 in spectacular fashion!… days before EA killed it. You’ll laugh and then you’ll cry forever. If you've followed our news in the past, you've probably seen these before - but maybe not at this level of quality!
That chart of guns, though! There ain’t no justice.
If you want to feel a LITTLE better, everyone would’ve hated the story (about the Kilrathi trying to resurrect Kilrah using a a Steltek time machine).
Oct
We've seen fans start to make some really cool stuff in Space Engineers lately, and here's another one! This time Psycho_Klops has built the Diligent from the Wing Commander Movie. This is a fairly unique design in the WC universe, and it's always great to see it get some love. The craft is the builder's favorite from the film, but I think the Concordia and a few others are close competitors as well. It's designed to be flown in Space Engineers' low gravity environments, and he's taken a bunch of appropriate planetscape pictures to match. It's pretty cool! You can download the model from the Steam Workshop here.
Thist is probably the only beautiful ship in the whole movieSurvival Ready, can only fly in low gravity.
All Tanks onboard are on stockpile, forget to change that before publishing it, just change it when you wanna fly the ship.
Oct
…President Hudson has approved a congressional bill to make the Order of the Far God illegal within all Federal systems.
Congress voted to accept the resolution by a narrow majority, as announced by Secretary of State Lana Berkovich:
"The Thargoids are categorised as an enemy of the state, and the Federal Accord forbids any citizen from providing aid to such enemies. The likelihood of radicalised Thargoid worshippers disrupting our anti-xeno operations in the name of their deity deserves a proactive response."
"Therefore, by Act of Congress, membership of this religious order is now a crime punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment. The organisation is barred from operating anywhere in Federal space. All detained Far God adherents are being interrogated for information related to espionage, with many already transported to stand trial in their home systems."
Congress has clarified that the
Oct
Today we've got a wonderful pair of hand-drawn maps that date back nearly thirty years! Both carefully capture the details of the Gemini Sector's jump lines in Wing Commander Privateer. The first was posted to Reddit by TurbulentDev and the second was made by Richard Da Geek. These are such a nostalgic sight to behold. I used some of my own pen-and-graph-paper maps back in the '80s, and I'm sure many of you out there did as well. They're such a product of their time - for my most recent open world game, I used a high resolution crowd-sourced wiki map on an iPad.
Just when I am about to start a space campaign look at what I find from many many many years ago. I do believe this is the homemade map I made for the Wing Commander game back in the day.
Oct
Forget a capital ship? No problem! Wing Commander Academy's light cruiser TCS Manassas is mentioned in the script but seen only at an extreme distance (the top left triangle in the fleet shot) or extreme closup to hide the fact that they didn't have a design!
But let's take some points away from the writer, too; surely it should be the TCS Bull Run.
