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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's another nifty release of the WC Toolbox for all of the tinkerers and modders out there. Today UnnamedCharacter took the wraps off some new extraction abilities. The package now lets you extract raw video footage from Wing Commander 3's game files. There's also enhanced support for the WC4 subfiles embedded in that game's archives as well. This adds on to the long list of incremental features that have been steadily added to a number of WC games. You can grab the latest update here and learn more at the CIC Forums.

More extraction support for WC3, this time adding the ability to extract movies. The result is in the AVI format using uncompressed frames; therefore the file sizes can be quite large, especially for the opening movie: about 1.5 GB.

This release also includes all the reversed hashes for WC4 tree file names. Thankfully, the hashing algorithm used for WC4 was improved, and therefore

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This year is a year unlike any other, obviously, and everyone is making do with what they can. We might not have any Wing Commander-themed eggs to share this time, but here's a colorful next best thing. Hope you all are staying safe and healthy out there!

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Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Star Trek Online is teaming up with Groupees to raise money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, to help win the fight against Breast Cancer. You can head to the Groupees site right now and purchase an exclusive Star Trek Online Bundle on PC - with 100% of proceeds* going to the Foundation. These bundles will include a brand new item, the Genetically-Altered Safe Tribble, which grants you additional Health Regeneration and Maximum Health! And finally, we will be giving away 8 large Genetically-Altered Safe Tribbles from our partners at Tribble Toys! Check out the promotion for further details on how to win! Here’s how the bundles break down: Bundle 1: Rewards: Pink Genetically-Altered Safe Tribble Pink Risian Lunarian Caracal Pink Vanity Shield Pink Ribbon Badge Bundle

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is chock full of Wing Commander easter eggs from the "now entering automatic landing zone" comm message near planets to the... entire awesome premise of the game, but Fek'Leyr Targ found a fun one I hadn't seen before. In the attached screenshot, you can make out a "G. Burrows wuz here" scratched into the dust of the local space bar. Grayson Burrows was the conceptual name of the main Brownhair character in Privateer (later confirmed but the Star*Soldier magazine). Good catch!

Last week we posted a few ships from RGO that fans had faithfully recolored in classic WC textures, and st3lt3k just shared a few more! The first is an RGO Coyote made by Jughead1981 and there's also a Sandhawk by MasterRevan2013. Those grays and greens look really nice.

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

We are getting closer and closer to Destination Star Trek Birmingham, and the Star Trek Online Away Team is performing our final preparations for the convention! The shuttle is getting loaded with all that is needed to see you in Birmingham from October 24th to October 27th. Our Away Team is bringing plenty of swag for those of you that come say hi, including holographic Landry and Lorca Bridge Officers. And this is your chance to win a 3-day-ticket for Destination Star Trek and to meet the team from Star Trek Online! We can’t wait to meet you at Destination Star Trek Birmingham, Captains. We’ll see you there! Star Trek Online [EN] | Destination Star Trek Giveaway .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:

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's another nifty teaser for the

WC4 Remaster

fan project. We saw DefianceIndustries' immersive

Hellcat cockpit

a couple months back, and now

Pedro

has integrated it into game for the first time. It demonstrates a neat effect with the game's familiar HUD being projected in front of the cockpit glass. There appear to be some nice lighting effects as well. The team cautions that there's still a lot of work to go, but things already look promising!

First in-game shot of the cockpit. Still early days

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month veteran Wingnut and game developer Howard Day open sourced his Wing Leader project to recreate a modern game in the style of WC1. He put it out there for fellow fans to take the lead and make progress, but he's also reentered the fray himself. His first new addition is the Scimitar medium fighter. It adds some gorgeous new flair to the game, and you can already see it in action in the online rolling demo here!

I built myself a Scimitar-class medium fighter for Wing Leader! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so far! I'm building it into the game demo now - pretty much just have to get the numbers right to make it really feel like the Centaurian Mud-Pig. It's been updated in the running demo!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

After any dismal event, it's hard to shake off, pick yourself up again and continue. It doesn't feel right to just go on about your lives. The silver lining has been that it's nice to hear your thoughts about Klavs though, so please keep that coming. We're also always on Discord for anyone that would like to talk. Without trying to lean too hard into an obvious cliche, I also know that you all would want us to continue reporting Wing Commander news even if you weren't here to read it, so that's what we'll do.

I thought a simple and engaging news post today would be this terrific graphic that LOAF recently extracted. It's the targeting VDU images for Wing Commander. But there's a few mixed in that you may not have seen before!

The Wing Commander III target images! Do you know which three don't appear in the final game?

If you think you know which three don't appear in-game, hit the Comments link to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're now just a bit more than three days away from the conclusion of George Oldziey's campaign to create a new Wing Commander album with a live orchestra. Just since this past weekend, the project has added another $1,000 to approach $19,500. With only a few more days left to go, is $22,000 possible? The project has already crossed the minimum $16K threshold, but we'd love to see it hit the $22K stretch target to add a live choir as well. Wing Commander fans have shown up in force many times before, so it's certainly possible!

Here's some samples of George's wonderful 2019 jazz album full of Wing Commandar bar music. A handful of reprinted copies are up for grabs as part of the new album campaign:

George Oldziey · Wing Commander Bar Music!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we've got a little snippet unearthed by Sash's RetroBytes. It's a segment from the British TV show Bad Influence! that peeks behind the scenes of Wing Commander 3. Most of the footage looks like material we'd have seen on other longer WC3 BTS features, but it's always nice to see times when Wing Commander was showcased on television!

The Heart of the Tiger! Hollywood comes to video games in a big way - as we see in this clip of Bad Influence series 3 episode 4 where they went behind the scenes of the production of Wing Commander III. #Retrogaming #dosgaming #wingcommander #technology #90s#GameTVNibbles pic.twitter.com/kU9j4qkdol

— Sasha's RetroBytes (@SharkaBytes) October 9, 2023

The Heart of the Tiger! Hollywood comes to video games in a big way - as we see in this clip of Bad Influence series 3 episode 4 where they went behind the scenes of the production of Wing Commander III.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We were originally planning to mix up the news a bit to start the week off, but George Oldziey’s campaign is off to such a roaring start that it’s become newsworthy again! In barely over a day since going live, the campaign to create a new live album of Wing Commander music has hit the 50% funding mark! This means more than $8000 of the $16,000 target has been achieved. When combined with Matt Hiltner’s previously mentioned large donation, we are very much well on the way to making this a reality! Things are going so well that George is already starting to firm up plans for some of the hypothetical stretch goals that have been on his mind. No one expected to be talking about that so soon, but it’s a wonderful situation to be in. All of this is made possible by the ongoing support from so many dedicated Wing Commander fans. This is just the beginning; so we’re very anxious to see where

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Oh, did your version of Wing Commander III not have a mission where you escort two minelayers?

Lord Thrakhath sacrificed an entire Bhantkara carrier group in a feint at Torgo as part of his strategy to trap the Behemoth. Here: Thunderbolt 300 escorts a pair of dedicated minesweepers as part of the effort to cover the weapon’s approaches.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Shout out to the wonderful fan ship illustrations in Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe! They're credited to Elizabeth Creegan. You can access a full collection of Ms. Creegan's ship sketches here.

Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe is the master pilot's guide to all eight Wing Commander games. Every ship and weapon is discussed; every mission is explained; every winning strategy and tactic is detailed; every undocumented feature is laid bare. You get years of Wing Commander experience - without giving up your day job. It's the Bible of the Wing Commander Universe!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A favorite Wing Commander legend is currently making the rounds again: the claim that a programmer hex edited a memory manager's crash message with 'Thank you for playing Wing Commander!' so it wouldn't be visible when quitting the game to DOS. The story is not completely true -- the hack happened during development but the bug was fixed before the game shipped -- and we have previously published an in-depth look. But why do people remember 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' so clearly when the game didn't actually say that?

To answer that question, we thought it would be beneficial to conduct a survey that would list out EVERY English-language quit message displayed by a Wing Commander game in MS-DOS. None of these are the result of memory errors, they are simply the executables telling DOS to print text upon exit. Before Privateer, games only displayed a message when they were quit through the UI

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Some cool bespoke menus from Wing Commander IV for the Macintosh.

I was surprised to realize tonight that the gauntlet demo for the Mac is actually different from the PC version... it's ALL Arrows!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A pulse wave xeno scanner upgrade that can detect human life signs on Thargoid Titans is now available.
Professor Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, announced the campaign's successful conclusion:
"The upgraded pulse wave xeno scanner will isolate human life signs aboard the Titan motherships. If Seo Jin-ae is correct that some of our missing populations are being stored by the Thargoids, this could be the most important technological breakthrough in the war. I'm deeply grateful to all those who helped make it a reality."
"Aegis is already trialling potential methods to rescue abductees, providing they can be located. I have also accepted Li Yong-Rui's invitation to discuss the recovery methods already explored by Sirius Corporation, following majority approval from our superpower delegates."
Former Federal admiral and current Aegis military strategist Aden Tanner

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It looks like a certain movie has people talking about a certain war-ending bomb. It just so happens that I took a wonderful senior seminar on the bomb decision and would be happy to walk everyone through the details of what really happened.

Step back in time with me to the '50s. Faced with a seemingly endless standoff, both sides began investing heavily in scientific 'wonder weapons' intended to rapidly upset the status quo of the war.

Black budgets would increasingly fund a rogues' gallery of amoral projects: Project Behemoth, the 'planet-killer' Hopper Drive, the biological warfare laboratory on Greenhouse, the Genetic Enhancement program and others.

In 2659, the task of developing a classified large-scale demolitions laboratory was assigned to Col. James Taggart, a rising star in Special Operations fresh off coordinating the Kilrathi-led rebellion on Ghorah Khar. The effort will cost billions of

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Benjamin over at BigBoxCollection has made one of his biggest updates yet! Thanks to a generous donation from Dominus of Exult, they were able to 3D scan in a whole bunch of new Wing Commander titles! The new additions even include a little peek at some of the internal contents, which is a great touch. Check them out here.

And here's a look at the shipment when it arrived:

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Exploration of the inner regions of the Maelstroms has revealed the existence of colossal Thargoid constructs.
Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, published a summary on behalf of the tri-superpower initiative:
"Our pathfinder missions have verified reports by the first manned ships that used the Thargoid pulse neutraliser. We know that the core environments of all eight Maelstroms are consistent in layout and extremely dangerous."
"Once past the energy wave, the initial hazard is an asteroid field that must be navigated. We cannot theorise an obvious reason why the asteroids have been gathered here. Thargoid vessels also patrol this region. Some reports indicate a previously unencountered class of Thargoid combat vessel accompanying interceptors and scouts."
"Beyond these, at the centre of each Maelstrom, is a gargantuan Thargoid structure. They dwarf any singular

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Deluxe vinyl pressing of the WING COMMANDER score has launched! As of this writing, the project has hit almost $3,000, 19% of the total goal. That's a great start, but we'd like to see it higher. Stay tuned for more background and plans for how you can join in on celebrating the campaign in the coming days. For now, we're happy to report that several additional pledge tiers have been added based on folks' responses on the first day: a $150 "Collector's Trio" that comes with all three versions of the album, a $200 "Collectors Trio Deluxe" that has all three versions with the bonus swag and an alite tier $2500 "Dead Wax Dedication" option that will allow one backer to choose what appears on the record's dead wax. If you aren't familiar with this record term, check out this article for details. Basically, it's a chance to insert a sort of Easter egg that will appear on every record manufactured!