You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In NowSign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountOct
Here's a scene cut from Privateer 2! It's from the main plot (between your visit to the hospital and Taffin Reclamation) and has Lev flying a mission for the police to find the Canera's registration number.
Interestingly, there's a space for this in the game's internal file structure. I wonder if they shot it! I also initially read the 'menace to navigation' line as a Babylon 5 nod... but this predated the B5 finale by several years!
The scene was boarded, too!
Oct
Due to popular demand, Mac has rendered out his recent preview animation as a glorious 4K wallpaper. This is the one absolutely chock-full of destroyers, cruisers, carriers, transporters and more. Klavs' iconic Concordia also forms the core of this mega fleet. It must be a challenge to figure out which ship you're supposed to land your fighter on!
Oct
…As the Federation readies itself for a new president, the Empire is preparing for potential changes to its relationship with its historical rival.
Last year Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval severed all official collaboration with the other superpowers, except for limited contributions to Aegis. But this does not mean the Empire is ignoring the potential impact of either Jerome Archer or Felicia Winters becoming the next Federal president.
Senator Denton Patreus remarked on the election during a military parade through the city of Port Isabelle:
"The Federation's leaders always reinforce their popularity by framing the Empire as the 'great enemy'. I expect Archer will have those same aggressive tendencies. In truth, I'd prefer to deal with that predictable approach, since Winters is clearly the more cunning and deceitful candidate."
Princess Aisling Duval was asked her opinion while visiting a
Oct
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The Federation has begun voting to decide its next president, as a week of festivities in the Sol system are concluded.
Congress confirmed that any pilots who supplied rare goods for the celebratory events can collect payment from Li Qing Jao starport. All temporary system permits for Sol remain suspended for Pilots' Federation members for a further week.
The 3309 presidential election has now officially begun. More than one trillion Federal citizens are expected to submit their votes, which will be recorded and collated over the next four days via secure digital systems.
Vice President Jerome Archer is the Republican Party candidate, who is widely perceived as the political heir to President Zachary Hudson. His running mate is Congressman Niko Shirakawa, who has strong connections within the military.
Shadow President Felicia Winters, leader of the Liberal Party,
Oct
…The Alliance is observing the Federal president election, but expects little will change in relationships between the two superpowers.
Prime Minister Edmund Mahon delivered a formal address on the topic before the Assembly:
"The Alliance continues to enjoy stable relations with the Federation. Our recent anti-xeno coalitions, including the reformation of Aegis, show how we can benefit from maintaining such cooperation. I am confident that the new president, whoever it may be, will respect the status quo."
Councillor Nakato Kaine gave a more direct statement to the press:
"I cannot ignore how the Federation has become more authoritarian under Zachary Hudson's Republican government. It has also coped poorly with internal pressures: the Starship One conspiracy, Jupiter Division's attempted coup, the secession crisis triggered by the Proactive Detection Bureau's operation… the list goes on. And
Oct
…Today we've got some very cool large horizontal "wrap-around" cockpits that AllTinker has built for the Confederation project. These aren't merely a copy/paste of the various existing art pieces - Tinker has drawn in a bit of connective material to seamlessly bridge the transition from front to side to back. It's so good that you probably can't tell where it starts! The exact usage is still up in the air, although there are numerous ways these could be applied to accommodate widescreen setups or even a hypothetical 3D environment. There's a lot of work yet to do before anything like that will be implemented, but you can enjoy the 360 degree art right now!
Someone with the skills could obviously render up new 2D widescreen views with the proper perspective. I can experiment with some fake perspective on the far edges just to break up the flatness of it a bit, but I'm not sure how good it'll look.
Oct
Happened across a pretty interesting Chris Roberts interview; from the June 1995 magazine of Hyper, an Australian magazine. A lot of discussion of the Hobbes decision. Mention of the Privateer TV show, too!
This January 1991 review of Wing Commander from Rave magazine is pretty interesting, too. Talk of the abandoned internal Amiga port... and the screenshots are all from the rolling demo!
Oct
Here's a fun rendering by Cybot of various Privateer ship upgrades. You've got things like guns and missile launchers, radars, engines, shields and ECM countermeasures. If this piques your Privateer interest, why not head over to the CIC Wiki WCPedia? LOAF and team have exhaustedly detailed out everything you might want to know about the game's ships, missions, weapons, equipment, commodities and more!
Oct
…The Federation has voted to elect Felicia Winters as its next president, with a four per cent vote majority over her rival Jerome Archer.
The current shadow president of the Liberal Party will be officially inaugurated in the new year, entering an eight-year term of office. Congressman Isolde Rochester will also be sworn in as vice president in Winters's administration.
President Zachary Hudson will remain in power during the transition period, but will not be expected to implement any major policy changes. The Liberal Party will replace the Republican Party as the superpower's governing authority in 3310, with Jerome Archer assuming the role of shadow president.
President-elect Winters addressed her supporters during a celebratory rally in Olympus Village on Mars:
"The people of the Federation have spoken! I thank you all for turning my party's vision into a reality. My aim is to govern
Oct
…Today we have a neat "video review" for Wing Commander Privateer from Interactive Entertainment, a CD-ROM magazine. This is from the inaugural issue dated February 1994. The clip doesn't include rolling video, but it has a narrated overview presented on top of a large number of screenshots, which would have qualified as full fledged multimedia back in the day! In a similar vein, the author gushes about the vast universe, diverse planets and enormous freedom provided by the Gemini Sector. It's the same language you might hear in a modern review of Starfield today, which is interesting food for thought on how expectations evolve with the cutting edge of computer gaming over the decades. AD was able to piece together their proprietary image format and pair it with the appropriate audio to recreate this sequence, and now you can easily enjoy it on YouTube!
Interactive Entertainment (IE) was an
Oct
We're a sucker for a good physical Wing Commander model, and Conrad Teves recently made a slick one! He printed this Arrow light fighter a few weeks ago, which happened to be just in time for Wing Commander Armada's 29th birthday. A lot of people closely associate this ship with Wing Commander 3, but it appeared in Armada first. Arrows even take up a pretty big chunk of the box cover!
Made a 3d print of the Arrow. Here it is fresh off the printer.
Oct
Here's a really nifty collectible that Christian Klein has added to his collection. It's a copy of Privateer localized for South Korea. You might not be able to tell from the first frame, but the box is extremely tall! Check it out side-by-side with a more conventional package. The Wing Commander series got a fair amount of translation in South Korea. Here's a lengthy 14-page review of Privateer as well as a local magazine ad. This also isn't Christian's first SK WC game: he's also got a tall box WC4!
FINALLY added a Korean Wing Commander Privateer (SKC Soft Land) to my collection. Look at this huuuuge box. Thanks to Dominus of Exult
Oct
…President-elect Felicia Winters has discussed her election victory and other topics during an interview with The Federal Times.
On defeating Vice President Jerome Archer:
"One cannot dispute that Archer played his campaign straight, with none of the underhanded tricks utilised by some of his predecessors. But the election results prove that the citizens want a change from the Republican Party's bombastic approach."
On the priorities for her forthcoming administration:
"Our government will expand investment in the Federation's soft infrastructure, pulling the economy's focus away from military projects and corporate profits. Many systems are in dire need of improved healthcare, housing and work opportunities. Billions of people need temporary financial support as refugees from the Thargoid invasion. We are not the Empire – we serve our people rather than rule over them."
On the Proactive
Oct
…DO YOU think that these--seen in Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy--are supposed to be the same space station?
The answer is: maybe? It's a classic case of the individual game's developers probably intending them to be the same station but the endless march of lore deciding otherwise. Let's take a closer look...
The script refers to the WC3 base only as "Confed HQ" with no location specified. The novelization, however, decided that it was Epsilon Sector HQ, located at "the Confed HQ complex on Torgo III." (A reasonable choice since the Victory picks up Tolwyn at Torgo later.)
The folks doing the Kilrathi Saga manual don't seem to have been aware of that, though, as we have orders sending Blair to "Addington Station, Border World 8, Leyton Sector" for his new assignment. Must've been a stopover!
The story behind the WC4 base is a bit messier. The script calls for the shuttle to appear near the rings of
Oct
People have been loving the recent glimpse of Mac's massive Concordia fleet, but the scene we've gotten has featured the ship and its many escorts majestically cruising through space. Now it's time for a peek at the action! He's posted this teaser that shows the dreadnought's powerful phase transit cannon warm up, take aim and blast a Fralthra to bits. The encounter is inspired by this famous scene!
This is what all y'all wanted from the Concordia video wasnt it.
— Mac's Lore (@MacsLore) October 19, 2023
So here's the first pass of the Phase Transit Cannon in action.#wingcommander pic.twitter.com/jJb2bDtorKWay back in 2010 I wondered if perhaps by 2020 it would be appropriate to post the full 250 kilobyte animated gif directly on the front page. Dear readers, I believe that day has come. Brace yourselves:
Oct
…CountvonSchnaps has a new sketch: a wonderful Tallahassee class cruiser like the TCS Coventry in WC3. I really like what he's done with colors, paneling and detail across the hull. It adds some rich character! He originally drew a Southampton destroyer, which we highlighted last year. I missed the cruiser addition until Dragon1 pointed it out this week, but I'm happy to be able to share both now!
A redesign (slightly) of a cruiser featured in Wing Commander 3 and 4: the Tallahassee Class cruiser. Sporting 11 turrets (2x dual barrel heavy antimatter turrets, 1 x dual barrel tachyon gun turret and 8 laser cannons) it also has a front mounted axial gauss cannon and a torpedo/missile launcher. Similar to the Southampton it has a hangar bay located at the back which can house a full wing of fighter; typically, 4 Arrow light fighters and a shuttle.It is fun to make ships like these, in a sketchy and
Oct
…We've reported in the past on the sale of the Origin Museum collection and today we're happy to report that the new owner is serious about preserving Origin's history! Dominus Dragon has begun digitizing Origin Museum material and he has been kind enough to share the Wing Commander-related discoveries with us... including an enormous Wing Commander Prophecy producer's bible! We're very grateful for the effort and the thought that went into sharing this for the Wing Commander community. Here's an index to 17 new documents added to our digital archive... plenty to explore and it sounds like there may be more to come!
Wing Commander I:
Wing Commander III:
Wing Commander IV:
Privateer 2:
Wing Commander Prophecy:
Oct
…Thousands of people rescued from captivity within the Thargoid motherships remain isolated under strict medical and security protocols.
Professor Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, spoke at a press conference:
"I'm relieved to see that the sub-surface extraction missiles are proving effective, especially considering how quickly they went into production. Many pilots are using them to excavate bio-storage capsules from beneath the hulls of the Thargoid Titans."
"Each resuscitated individual has undergone an exhaustive range of physical scans and psychological evaluations. Some are being treated for stress-related conditions and mental trauma, but otherwise they appear to be unharmed. With no clear evidence that these people have been infected or influenced by the Thargoids in some manner, Aegis has sent a number of proposals to superpower governments as they consider the next steps."
Despite this
Oct
The gang at Roberts Space Industries is holding their annual Star Citizen convention this weekend, and they're wrapping events up with a big announcement: the campaign-driven game announced in 2012, Squadron 42, is now "feature complete." This means the core items are in place, and they are entering a new phase of polishing. This is expected to still take a significant amount of time, so the team is not putting a release date out there yet. They have, however, published a very cool new video that highlights the latest in the game's cinematics and spaceflight. The clip even begins with familiar nods to things like their iteration of the Hornet fighter and the Vega System. Chris Roberts says, "We want to make sure that Squadron 42 delivers on the promise of being this generation's Wing Commander," and it does indeed seem like this generation may get to experience it!
Oct
Mac is on a roll with fabulous Wing Commander renders this month, and his latest is a spectacular Super Ferret as originally modeled by Klavs. His new scene is vertically oriented with a lot of hard angles and implied speed. There's also some great interplay between the engine flare, background nebula gases and other light sources. The new image is below, and you can see it assembled with two of his similar pieces as well!
Ferret model by Hangar B Productions. Which now completes the poster series I started way back. Now to see what they'll look like printed.
