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We've leveraged our new News Collections feature to organize all of the memorials we've put together over the years. It's surprising how many there've been actually, but that's what the decades will do. But far from being a depressing subject, we wanted to highlight this as a celebration of all the great folks who've come and gone and had a positive influence on the CIC. There are some pretty interesting linkages that connect these influential people to us, each other and the Wing Commander series. Check them out in five categories below:

• Developers and Artists
• Authors and Publishers
• Cast Members
• Studios and Websites
• General Science and Sci-Fi

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The CIC Forums have also recently crossed another threshold. We're happy to report that fans have just hit 400,000 posts! Fun fact: our original message board was actually one of the few victims of the Y2K bug, and we started over with new software in January 2000. This has been carried forward through a few different iterations to today. (From WWWBoard to Ultimate BulletinBoard to vBulletin to Xenforo) It's a reasonable number when spread across 18.5 years, but it's still hard to fathom that you all have posted so many times!

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When your website is made up of nearly 15,000 news articles, over 2,000 static pages, hundreds more dynamic pages, all of them interlinked, some upkeep is required. Rarely-viewed content that looked fine in Internet Explorer 4.0 may not render as elegantly in modern, standards-abiding browsers. Reorganizing that one section may have broken some of the crosslinks from another section. This is a super-condensed overview of some of the fixes and improvements that we've made since last year's anniversary. Much of this was behind-the-scenes work that won't be immediately noticeable to visitors, but will hopefully result in a better overall experience.

• Visual improvements:
  • Improved styling of the Games and Universe flyout menus.
  • Dozens of articles and other pages converted to the new layout.
  • Multitude of minor tweaks to navigational elements and page templates.
  • Additional metadata to improve

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Here's a new news feature! Kind of. Thanks to some back end enhancements of our content management system, we can now more easily assemble

News Collections

to package up thematic series of news posts. This will allow us to assemble these stories into an automated type of article for easy consumption or research later. Here are a few examples!

• On This Day in WC News
• CIC Anniversaries
• April Fools!
• Lost Ships

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The

Document Archive

is where we try to collect and categorize all the neat finds related to the development history of the various Wing Commander products so you can more easily research your favorite titles. These might include storyboards, early product shots, art sources, and draft scripts that we've featured in one of our daily updates, but otherwise risk falling by the wayside. With Secret Ops turning twenty this year, the time was right to expand the archive's coverage of that game. The project was more limited in scope than Wing Commander: Prophecy, but we've still uncovered a few interesting items over the years:

• Secret Ops Scripts: 30 items added, including the lost web fiction.
• Secret Ops Artwork: Six art pieces added, including the backstory of the Plunkett design.
• Secret Ops Ads: A contemporary print article providing some fascinating insights on the impact of a burgeoning internet.

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The rolling demos for WC1 and WC2 have been around for as long as the games themselves, and have always been a part of the CIC's

downloads

section. But when was the last time you watched them? Thanks to modern technology, it's now possible to run the demos within DOSBox right here within your web browser! It is quite a power-hungry process so unless you have a very fast machine you are likely to experience a bit of stuttering sound, but there is no easier way to revisit the demos that got us so excited all those years ago.

Give it a try

!

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Think you own a copy of pretty much every Wing Commander book out there? The truth may shock you! LOAF is on a mission to acquire a copy of every book in existence, including all those crazy, unofficial German guides. More than eighty books have been added to the

Background

section, covering both novels and game guides (official and unofficial) and their translations into

Czech

,

German

and

Russian

. We've even included some unrealized projects (did you know that author Andrew Keith had planned to pitch a pair of follow-up novels to

False Colors

?) and some interesting odds and ends, like the

Polish Honor Harrington

novel that reuses the cover art from End Run. Please get in touch if you own something we've overlooked, or if you have a copy of that elusive

Italian guide

and would be able to provide us with a scan or additional information.

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The master of the VHS strikes back!

Jim Leonard

has restored a copy of the Wing Commander III ESRB submission tape to give us some of the clearest Wing Commander III footage ever preserved. Mr. Leonard has

previously restored

the Wing Commander III 'Behind the Screens' documentary from a copy of the commercially released VHS. This time around, Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum was kind enough to provide him with an original copy of the ESRB submission tape that Origin produced for Wing Commander III.

The ESRB tape includes roughly one hour of Wing Commander III's FMV footage which was cut together so that the game could be content rated. The footage covers most of the game but does not include every branching path or optional decision. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a voluntary video game content rating organization widely recognized by consumers in the United States. The ESRB was

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Music_Guru

has packaged up a treat to share with fans today. He's built a collection of the music made for the Sega CD edition of Wing Commander 1. This version is known for having full speech, but it also has unique audio tracks for the rest of the game as well. While different than the originals, they do a great job of carrying on the the Wing Commander atmosphere. Definitely check them out! Grab the

MP3 pack

(53 meg zip) for easy listening or the

VGM files

(1.5 meg zip) for a more authentic feel. Music_Guru recommends

VGMPlay

, but there are winamp plugins and other resources out there as well. For a quick sample, watch the YouTube link below, but then go back to add the mp3s to your collection!

Hello Wing Commander CIC and congratulations on the 20th anniversary!

I have put together a release of VGM and MP3 music from the Sega CD version of Wing Commander. The music in this version is much

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The latest version of the Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

is here! As previously mentioned, this update includes the TCS Midway, Comm Relay base, initial glow emit maps and more. Download it from the link at the

CIC Forums

.

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To celebrate twenty years at wcnews.com, we're taking a look back at some of the visual layouts used here at the CIC. Kris has carefully recreated each of them as best as possible in our

webmirrors

area. A lot has changed over the years, but lots has stayed the same. Do you remember some of the original designs?

• 1998a - This is the original layout we launched with on August 10, 1998 with a few elements added shortly thereafter. Similar to the menu design we employed previously at WCHS, we had a really cool javascript mouseover menu effect. Kris managed to recreate this in CSS today. In those early days, there was so much content to add and keep up with that we had an update ticker with a timestamp!
• 1998b - In these early days, the site sections that we had were rapidly evolving, and those little menu graphics weren't as easy to make as they would be today. So not long after we launched, we

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Legendary Origin composer

George Oldziey

also popped in to share a kind birthday message. We also appreciate all the work he's done to help bring Wing Commander music back in a big way! A lot of people are familiar with his major crowdfunding

campaigns

over the last few years to bring WC to a live orchestra, but George has actually been very supportive of the CIC since the very beginning. Way back in

September 1998

when we were just a few weeks old, Mr. Oldziey was actually the very first external interview we did in our old

Infoburst

show. Thanks for 20 years of support!

Happy 20th birthday, Wing Commander CIC!! Thank you SO much for all your devotion and enthusiasm over the past 20 years! I also want to personally thank you for all your support for me and my music. I’m sure I speak for all the other WC fans when I say you guys are the BEST!

George Oldziey

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We're going to kick things off with a bang thanks to Fek'Leyr Targ!

"For the CIC's 20th birthday, I felt that a simple 'happy birthday' was not enough for an occasion of this magnitude. So I decided to take the opportunity to improve my animation skills by creating this small gift for all of you to enjoy as a mean to show my appreciation for this awesome community as well as saying 'happy birthday' and 'thank you'."

Meshes, Textures and Sound Effects: Origin Systems (Privateer 3D Archive)
Music: Nenad Vugrinec
Production and voice: Fek'Leyr Targ

This Week at Bungie - 8/16/18

Aug 16 - dmg04

This week at Bungie, we’re heading to gamescom.

The away team is all packed up

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

It’s another edition of Priority One’s podcast-y goodness straight from Star Trek Las Vegas! This week, they have interviews with Environment Artist Nick Duguid, Contest Designer Ryon Levitt, and Lead EU Artist Tim Davies – and even more importantly, interviews with Mary Wiseman and Andrew Robinson! On top of all of that, this podcast contains interviews with other trek luminaries, and the entire audio of our Victory is Life retrospective panel, guest starring Andrew Robinson, Aron Eisenberg, Chase Masterson and Max Grodenchik. It’s not to be missed. .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

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To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 20th birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT) in #Wingnut - now on

Discord

!Featuring...

• A look back at twenty-plus years of fond memories!
• The awesome company of fellow fans via a high tech new interface!
• More tools to help you complete your Wing Commander collection!
• Gorgeous and fun fan projects!
• Trivia - from Aurora Finley to Zach Colson!
• Actual coasters? Updated Hot Items?
• Infinitely more prizes than given away at the 19th Birthday!
• Cake... and more!

So point your browser to

Discord

, channel

#WingNut

! It works easily on the web or via mobile app.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Here are this week's major stories.

Campaigner Jarl Toredo has disclosed that he and Princess Aisling Duval have been conducting a secret romantic relationship, despite her betrothal to Federal Ambassador Jordan Rochester. Toredo claims that the princess accepted Rochester's proposal only as a means to advance her political plans. Princess Duval has refuted Toredo's statement.

Dr Alfred Ulyanov, a leading exotheologian and an authority on the Far God cult, has been apprehended as a suspected Thargoid sympathiser. The Federal Intelligence Agency said that Dr Ulyanov's involvement with the Far God cult made him a valid person of interest.

Meanwhile, The Federal Times has highlighted two new personal computer designs currently in development – the Torc from Supratech, and the Duradrive from Herculean Machines. Both companies plan to reveal prototypes of their designs at a technology expo in

Quote from Star Citizen News-Bot

Join Lead Vehicle Artist Elwin Bachiller Jr as we explore the current progress of all five variants LIVE in engine and have your questions answered LIVE.

To watch Reverse the Verse LIVE each and every week, tune into Twitch.

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

It’s time to test your skills and build your best mission – it’s time to take part in a Foundry Challenge! The Foundry is Star Trek Online’s system for creating your own missions for other Captains to try, and we’re teaming up with the Foundry Roundtable for this edition of their monthly Foundry Challenge. Participate by making a mission of your own, and you could win a T6 Infinity Promo Choice Pack! That’s right, the winner will have their choice of one of the ships listed on this blog, including the new Hur'q Dreadnought and the Constitution class! The winning entry will also be featured on an upcoming Ten Forward Weekly. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a Foundry mission for a Jem’Hadar or Cardassian Captain. The plot may be anything you wish, as long as it is geared toward either or both of these playable races. You’ll have until September 21st to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Just in time to help ease some of the anticipation for his next release,

DefianceIndustries

has filmed this video walkthrough of the Prophecy & Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

. It shows off things like the new glowing emit maps and high quality Midway model as we fly through the first mission in WCP. If you haven't tried out the upgrade so far, this is a great opportunity to see how things come together in motion!

Part 1: I play the first mission of Wing Commander Prophecy and review some of the changes in the Model Upgrade Pack.