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Speaking of pinball, today we have a peek at fantastic start to a custom Wing Commander pinball machine. The project was built by dotmos over at the FlipperMarkt Forums. It was designed with both Privateer and WC1/2 concept art influences in mind. There are traditional wood and electronics throughout, but he also fabricated 3D printed ramps and rocks to simulate navigating an asteroid field. Unfortunately he's been silent on the machine for a couple years, so we might not get to see the finished product, but this is so cool that we had to share what exists!

Ideas haunt my head from time to time to time, but I haven't really nailed it down yet. There are a few concrete ideas on some things... but this is not really recorded anywhere.I find it an interesting idea to choose the wingmen or anchor them in the game and have never really thought about it. Thank you for the mental impetus! So far, my ideas

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The WC Toolbox application has been expanded again and now supports digital analysis of Wing Commander Armada. UnnamedCharacter has added compatibility with a wide range of file types that make up the Armada data. He's also provided walkthroughs that illustrate how to extract things such as the game's cockpit art and complex font structure. On top of Armada, the program also works with WC1, WC2, Academy and Privateer. It's an invaluable resource for people who are interested in modding, extraction or just tinkering around in the classic games' data structure! Grab the new update at the CIC Forums here.

Work on the toolbox has continued. Took a little longer than I was hoping for, but this release begins support for Wing Commander Armada.

This update adds the ability to create or edit many of the Armada file types: IFF, PAK, PAL, SHP, TEP, and TRE. Most of the file types are common to Privateer

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The WC Toolbox is branching out to even further reaches of the Wing Commander universe. UnnamedCharacter's latest update adds the first features to help crack open console ports. WC3 is first up: on the 3DO, prospective hackers can extract .bun(dles) and .str(eam) data files. For WC3 on the Playstion, it's now possible to extract .lib(rary) and .tai (voice) files. Regular PC WC3 also gets .pak and .iff support as well. I wouldn't know the first thing to do with these exports, but the WC modding community is very excited to be able to get their hands on even more in-game assets from The Heart of the Tiger! You can grab the latest tool kit here or learn about how the new functionality work at the CIC Forums.

I was not planning on making a release just yet, but I have noticed some interest in the container formats for console versions of WC games. Since I have working code to handle some of these

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UnnammedCharacter

has released another big upgrade to the

WC Toolbox

. This update adds preliminary support for WC Privateer, which opens up a whole new sector of possibilities! Through a variety of screenshots and

tutorials

, UnnammedCharacter goes through how to access the core game assets, manipulate in-game text and pick apart the graphical elements. I can't wait to see what people do with this! You can grab the latest download package

here

.

Work on the toolbox has continued and this release begins support for Privateer 1.

This update adds the ability to create or edit many of the Privateer file types: IFF, PAK, PAL, PFC, SHP, TRE, VPF, VPK; it expands the number of image formats supported: BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIFF; and also provides the ability to create compressed files where appropriate. All of this new functionality is specific to the Privateer tools.

There are major changes introduced in

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We see a lot of reviews of Wing Commander games, the movie and even the TV show, but there is not a lot of discussion online about the books. What little there is focuses on the novels, but there's a whole universe of content packed into the various Wing Commander strategy guides. Sticks, Stories and Scotch recently took a look at one of them, the relatively unique Ultimate Strategy Guide to WC1&2. This one differs from most of the other WC guides because it's told in narrative form. It gives the protagonist a name, Carl LaFong, and follows the adventures of the the first few games in the series. You can read their review here. It's so good that it got the author hooked before they even actually played Wing Commander for the first time!

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Wojo dropped off a picture of a couple new Lego Wing Commander creations, and these are pretty sweet. There's a chronically under appreciated Scimitar on the left and a very structurally accurate Drakhri on the right! Everyone loves the Dralthi, but we've seen a million of those, so it's wonderful to see the Drakhri properly represented here. I don't even think everyone will realize its silver and yellow color scheme is totally on point. In fact, they're both pretty color accurate. Not bad at all!

Imma just leave this here then...

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Howard Day

has made incredible progress this past week on his Unity

WC Remake

project. He's implemented AI piloting and made great strides on the interaction of weapons, damage and explosions. The animations below show off the impressive progression of the engine. Definitely don't take the static thumbnail at face value - you have to see everything in motion to appreciate to appreciate it all! To that end, there's also a nifty

web demo

which is super cool as well.

I've got a WebGL build up and running that plays itself via the new AI. It's quite fun to just watch. I've implemented laser collision, damage tracking and death/respawns! Watch 'em blow up! Most of the fighting basics are in there - Now I need to add the UI - Radar, shield and fuel displays, targeting, etc. I'm pretty happy with this.

Protip: Never afterburn your already damaged Hornet light fighter into the oncoming fire of 3 Dralthis.

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Lieutenant Lance Casey may have defeated a Nephilim invasion fleet, but now he's facing his biggest challenge yet: the novel coronavirus. The actor behind Wing Commander Prophecy's main character founded Steven Petrarca Events after transitioning out of acting about fifteen years ago. He's built the company up into a high end event planning business with some major customers in West Hollywood, California. Like many other industries, however, COVID-19 has severely impacted their ability to operate. Until the threat subsides, SP.E has published a line of at home tips and today advertised that they're gearing up to provide safe service when restrictions start to lift. I don't envy anyone trying to plan a wedding right now, but it's good to see that they're starting to adapt!

We're ready when the timing's right. Our service team will be following all necessary protocols to make sure you and your

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It continues to be a good season for Wing Commander autographs. Despite the ongoing pandemic, there are quite a few conventions still planned for this year. Here's some highlights that will feature familiar faces:

The Texas Frightmare Weekend will provide a double opportunity in Dallas from April 29 to May 1 with both Ginger Lynn Allen and Matthew Lillard appearing. Lillard also has a solo appearance lined up at the HorrorHound Weekend in Cincinnati March 25-27 as well as a mail-in event via CPA Authentics in April. Francois Chau, who played Vagabond in WC3/4, also has a busy year with appearances at the Lexington Comic & Toy Con March 24-27, Huntsville Comic & Pop Culture Expo April 22-24 and Rangerstop & Pop Comic Con June 10-12. There is another neat mail-in option via Galaxy Con in March as well. Robert Rusler, who played Seether in WC4, will be at the Mad Monster Party Carolina February

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Last year I tweeted a

long thread

about the Lightning jets used to build the Rapiers for the Wing Commander movie. I spent last night researching the BOMBER used in the film! Like the Rapiers played by English Electric Lightning interceptors, the Broadsword bomber in the Wing Commander movie was also a real aircraft. The cockpit is from a scrapped RAF English Electric Canberra B 2 bomber! Now join me for a space bomber history adventure...

Broadswords are flown by Paladin and Knight for the battle in act two. The real cockpit is visible in their close-ups but is usually cropped close since it doesn't match the CG scenes as closely as the fighters.

The plane: the Canberra was a jet-powered medium bomber originally intended to replace the famed de Havilland Mosquito. Development began in 1944, the first prototype flew in 1949 and the first production models entered service in 1951. The Canberra quickly

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The space sim Absolute Territory was released today on Steam! It's a classic '90s style shooter by longtime Wingnut centaurianmudpig. The cockpit UI is simplified a bit and borrows some of the streamlined slider bars from Wing Commander 4 or Arena, but all the familiar elements are there. Everything can be controlled by either keyboard, mouse or joystick, and the setup makes it very easy to switch between or combine control methods. Wing Commander fans should be able to jump right in, but there's also a helpful simulator and tutorial missions to get everyone up to speed on the basics quickly. The engine has some speed to it, so pilots need to be accurate with their shots, but that's all part of the learning curve. Absolute Territory is its own game, but there are also a handful of Wing Commander easter eggs thrown in for fun. You can try out the demo or grab the game for yourself here on Steam.

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Is there anything more thrilling than the Wing Commander I box art? Despite the claim that “what you see is what you play,” it’s not a screenshot but a digital piece carefully composed by the incomparable Denis Loubet.

Back in the '80s, games would commission stunning traditional artwork for their boxes. The biggest purpose was to attract eyes in stores but they also served as a kind of ‘primer’ in an era of simple graphics. That green-and-black smudge you battle is actually a cool dragon!

Of course consumers are fickle and tastes change. By the end of the '80s games were more complex and their art had a much more distinctive style. Origin needed a new way to stand out. And their first answer was… male models.

Luckily, that experiment ended before Wing Commander! It looked so impressive that they felt showing the game itself was the way to go. So Mr. Loubet had to use the graphics that were ready to get

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How about some vintage French mag scans? Guybrush_SF has you covered! I've also added English translations to make the reviews easier to read. I love the part where they gush about the game's rare beautiful and branching gameplay, but the text is only part of the appeal. It's also always such a fascinating time capsule to look at how an article like this would have been presented more than thirty years ago. We also have previews from each mag in our archive. Find the Gen 4 preview here and Tilt here (though for the Amiga version, so not a direct relationship).

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Plywood Fiend has created a nifty cutscene to share this weekend. The setting with an iconic Dralthi wing broken off is a cool piece of art on its own, but he also made a corresponding animation with music and captions to turn it into a WC1 style cutscene. This kind of 30-year-throwback creativity makes it so fun to be part of the Wing Commander community!

I've always wanted to make one of these. Alas my pixel art talents aren't quite up to the original game's standards, but perhaps this'll make for a nifty, nostalgic thing for some.

Bit of a headcanon scene here. It takes place during the winning path with the Tiger's Claw finishing the Kilrathi off in Venice and other Confederation ships vanquishing the feline menace in other systems.

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The Wing Loader project to add full speech to the original (Kilrathi Saga) version of Wing Commander 1 has been out for a couple weeks now. In that time, Destro and a number of fans have been able to put the mod through its paces and play through the Vega Campaign. The time has been put to good use to fix a handful of minor bugs and also add some new features. The user interface now supports the pilot transfer program, has menu elements for launching WC3 now includes in-flight speech comms for The Secret Missions. You can grab the update here (345 meg zip)!

I've just completed a run of Wing Commander using Wing Loader and fixed any issues I encountered.

New in Version 0.82
- Fix multiple issues with lines not triggering, including the final winning cutscene.
- Added Wing Commander 3 to the list of games.
- Added in-flight coms to all the Secret Missions. (Testing Phase)
- Added Wing Commanders Pilot

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UnnamedCharacter

has pulled off a very neat trick! He's experimented with higher quality ship sprites in Wing Commander 1 and managed to get them to appear as a sharper looking vessel in the game. It's an exciting development, but there's a couple of caveats here: a higher resolution Tiger's Claw happens to exists for cutscene use, but it's not carved up in various sprite angles and it's only one ship. And this only seems producible in the Kilrathi Saga rather than DOS, so don't expect a full HD conversion of WC1 to be immediately forthcoming, but this shows there's certainly some very interesting potential for future digital exploration!

Ships are represented as a series of individual sprites which are scaled as needed. This becomes obvious as you get closer to a ship since they become very pixelated.

This first row of images is the standard ship sprites.

This second row uses ship sprites which

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UnnamedCharacter has another new tool to add to his arsenal of powerful WC1 editing and informational programs. The new 'WC1 Inspector' app provides insight into what all is loaded into memory as a player goes through the game. This can help for modding, diagnosing issues or fulfilling simple curiosity. You can grab the file at the CIC Forums and just play around too. Here's more information:

I do not have an update for the Toolbox, but instead a utility program for viewing a snapshot of in-memory game data. It is an outgrowth of the WC1LiveViewer program, except not live anymore and with much more data. It is a bit slow, but it works for my needs.

The Data tab provides a fairly extensive hierarchical view of the game data set and can be filtered using keywords. The InFlight and Mission tabs provide a specialized view of a subset of the data.

As an example, let us enter an asteroid field. Using the

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UnnamedCharacter

has achieved another very cool technological milestone in the digital exploration of Wing Commander 1. Kilrathi Saga introduced invisible cockpits to the original games, but they were not particularly smooth implementations. Unnamed's advancements allow for properly overlays so that indicator labels are retained and the radar isn't transparent to the background. Compare the KS versions up top to the enhanced versions below! Along the way, he encountered some targeting issues due to where the game wanted to put the reticle, but those have already been

resolved

as well.

The Kilrathi Saga version of the game provides the option to remove the cockpit. This is done by simply not displaying the cockpit image, but it does have some negative side effects: all labels are missing, the radar is transparent, and there is no location highlighting on the radar sections when taking a hit.

We can

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Destro has an update on his impressive project to add speech into the original Wing Commander. He's carefully extracting the voice narration from the Sega CD edition of the game, but some unexpected challenges have arisen. Fortunately a workaround has been developed, although it's more time consuming than originally planned. The good news is that progress is back on track as he continues to march through the Vega Sector.

Quick update for you: I'm still here and working on it. I had some issues with the SegaCD and HCI's extraction tool. For one reason or another the debriefing audio for Gateway Mission 2 just isn't in the debriefing file. It plays in the game but couldn't find any reference in the Deb.dat file.

Also missing some other dialog like inflight comms and story narration. The files are there but just don't extract using the tool. So after some deep digging I ended up finding a program

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Destro has an update on the project to add Sega CD speech to Wing Commander 1. He's recently managed to make some significant improvements to memory utilization and thereby enhance performance. As far as matching up the audio between game versions, he's nearly complete with the basic shipboard audio and will soon be moving to inflight communications. Real life plans have slowed things somewhat, which is something that everyone involved with fan projects should be very familiar with. Nevertheless, fans like Destro continue to persevere and make gradual progress towards amazing things!

I have been picking at it on my free time, which unfortunately has been not much lately. I have fixed many issues including memory leaks and lowered the memory usage from over 5gb to a under a few hundred mb which is more in line with what it should be. I managed this in a few ways but most notably instead of loading