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I think I might have found a neat reference. Ultima fans, follow me for a moment. Here are screenshots of (some of) bartenders from Privateer. The heads are animated in front of a background that was rendered in 3D Studio.

A larger version of each background is actually stored in the game which gives you a better view. They're for a cut feature so don't ever actually display. But if you look closely there are four different labels for the liquor applied to a variety of different bottle shapes.

But we can get even more detail because the original 3D models and their textures have survived all these years in dev material we've recovered at the CIC!

So Ultima fans: is that last bottle not a map of Britannia?!

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AI chatbots, AI generated art and AI everything else are super hot this year, and the CIC is always working hard to keep up with the latest trends. So we've put our best engineers and computer scientists (Kris) on developing our own Wing Commander generative art engine (beta). Type a Wing Commander topic in the box, hit the button, and see what you get! Keep in mind, there may be a few quirks...

 

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It's autumn now where GOG is based, but they've already run their lengthy autumn sale. That's not a problem though, because they've just launched a big sale to celebrate their 15th anniversary! The Wing Commander series is discounted once again, and this is a "proper" across-the-board markdown. Each title is its customary 75% off, which means less than $12 for the whole series! Now's a great time to digitize your collection. Thank you to Drachenhannes for the tip!

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Found a Wing Commander III bug! In the first scramble mission (B1 or C1) you are automatically assigned three wingmen: Weasel (a scripted death) and then Maniac and Mitchell. If one is shot down, they're replaced by a rotation: Vagabond, Bacon Boy, Hobbes, Flint, Cobra, Vaquero, Maniac, Vagabond. But it doesn't check for duplicates, so you can end up with two Maniacs or two Vagabonds! It's unlikely to ever happen during regular gameplay because there isn't really anything in the mission that will kill six of your wingmen.

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We are off and running well into the 2024 now, so it's time to conclude our annual new year's poll. We've swapped in a new one about stealth fighters in Wing Commander. The question this time asks which craft you think sowed the most chaos, did the most damage and wreaked the most havoc over the years. This is by no means an exhaustive list of cloaking fighters. In order to make the list of options more concise, we've narrowed the field to generally "enemy" presenting ships. So you won't see Blair's Excalibur that destroyed Kilrah, Earth's defensive screen of cloaking Arrows, the Recon Excaliburs that first scouted the Nephilim or the 28th Century Arrow Eclipse. But there's still some fun picks to choose from below!

We've had a great run of impressive fan projects this past year, and we expect that to continue well into the future! The results show that most fans are eagerly anticipating what's

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Huh, a tweet from dancingcrab just made me realize how similar the Ultima VIII CD-ROM and Kilrathi Saga boxes are.

... and we simply rotate Bioforge for the alien hand trifecta??

The Kilrathi Saga hand was made by photographing a prop Kilrathi paw. Not clear whether or not Origin also had a severed Guardian arm and glowing Bioforge guy segment laying around.

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Nightball06 has been on a load road to go from 2D sketches to 3D model. After a couple years refining the design, the digital representation is nearly complete. He's spent a lot of time working to get the shape close to the original, but one area that he has taken some artistic liberties on were the engines. They look pretty cool! Now that he's got a file that can be manipulated, he's exploring where to take it next - either through 3D animation or maybe a physical print!

Some final updates. Haven’t gone far on the animation part yet & I am still looking for someone who could turn the Blender file into a 3D-printable file.

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Scout recently found this spicy post on the Game Collecting Reddit. A user named charitysmyth1 had just acquired a copy of Wing Commander 2. Much to their surprise, it contained a collection of vintage early '90s adult media. These look like rather tame items all-in-all, but they might have been considered pretty racy before the internet age. Although not pictured, it sounds like the box did include the WC2 disks at least!

Scored some big box PC games over the weekend. What I found in Wing Commander II completely caught me off guard.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Distant Worlds II expedition has gathered resources for a megaship and installation to be constructed in the Galactic Centre.

Contributors delivered huge amounts of materials to the Stuemeae FG-Y d7561 system. Deep Space Surveys also defended miners by placing a kill order on all wanted ships.

Commander Michael Darkmoor of the Rock Rats stated:

"The newly built astrophysics station will enable us to observe high-detail changes to the gravimetric field surrounding Sagittarius A*. We hope to better understand the deeper relationships between extreme gravity and multi-dimensional space."

The Distant Worlds II exploration fleet will continue its journey across the galaxy, towards Beagle Point.

Those who took part in the campaign can now collect their rewards from Explorer's Anchorage in the Stuemeae FG-Y d7561 system.

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Privateer! We explore the Ferris Quadrant and save up for a Centurion.
• There are HOW MANY Cobalt 60 albums?
• The EPIC CONCLUSION of Fleet Action Book Club
• Privateer 2 ship of the week: the Faldari

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

The Discovery Era Enterprise and D7 were thought lost - stricken from the record and unable to be obtained again. But temporal physics are a funny thing, and both ships will be returning, along with all of their R&D Promo brethren, for the next 24 hours! You'll be able to purchase these promotional Research and Development packs on PC for 30% off, one of our biggest discounts ever, and get a chance at any of the following ships: Discovery Era Constitution Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser [T6] Discovery Era D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser [T6] Krenim Annorax Science Dreadnought [T6] Elachi Sheshar Intel Dreadnought Cruiser [T6] Elachi Sheshar Command Dreadnought Cruiser [T6] Jem'Hadar Strike Ship [T6] Jem’Hadar Recon Ship [T6] Special Requisition Pack - 23rd Century Tier 6 Ship The Special Requisition Pack - 23rd Century Tier 6

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Here's a cool connection that we recently made on Discord and shared on the most recent All Wings Considered. It's a neat observation, so we wanted to share it with you here as well. This cool pre release shot of New Constantinople is actually a farther out crop of the final base that we see in the game. At a quick glance, it might just appear that the first screenshot below is a Constantinople-like base with a real cool skybridge, but compare them side by side and you can see that the in-game setting is a close crop from above the lower building area. It's pretty cool to think that this is all the same rendered environment from a slightly different angle! The wide shot appears in some of the print advertisements for the game as well as some of the concept art we've seen before. Like most of the locations in Privateer, it's just a beautiful place loaded with atmosphere!

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Artist Denis Loubet has put together a thoroughly badass video biography that covers the numerous highlights of his storied career. His latest venture is to help with a crowdfunded vampire film called Captive. The movie wouldn't have ordinarily caught my attention, but Denis' video is so great that I had to give it a look. And it looks pretty cool! If you'd like to check it out, there's a few days left on its Kickstarter campaign. No matter what, check out Mr. Loubet's clip below!

Denis Loubet is most prominently known for his work on the Ultima franchise, as well as Wing Commander, but he artist presence extends into the world of comics, table top rpgs, and more.

Denis was kind enough to lend his considerable talents to the crowdfunding efforts of Captive - an upcoming vampire film. In addition to designing the art of the campaign, he has also contributed two unique perks.

• A custom credit card

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Sarekh dropped us a line to share an awesome creation he's been building in Space Engineers. He's carefully constructed a life size replica of the BWS Intrepid from Wing Commander 4. There are a handful of liberties taken to fill in all of the unknowns, but the results look great so far. A few similar attempts have been made over the years, but this is one of the furthest along that I've seen. I wish more people would build things like this! You can follow the project in the Steam Workshop here!

Dear folks at wcnews.com!

I've worked for roughly a week on this and it's not completely done, but I created a 1:1 model of the Intrepid and some of her planes in "Space Engineers" - I don't know if this is noteworthy but I basically raided your website nonstop for reference material and I could not have done it without you, so thanks!

I tried to create a complete interior, that is (obviously) not nearly

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Goku has put together a new automation that enhances the experience of getting Wing Commander Prophecy to run. The game can occasionally have some compatibility quirks on modern Windows, which could put off some folks who might be trying for a Linux install. It's possible to get a nice smooth setup running though, and this script does so by properly configuring Prophecy and Secret Ops. Then it adds in the enhancement pack, OpenGL patch, FPS tool and even high quality movies. We don't have a test rig here to try it, so we're anxious to hear from more folks with first hand experience. If this helped you or there are additional questions, hit the discuss link and let Keen Bean know! You can find the program here - click "Show unpublished installers" to expand the relevant section.

If anyone's on Linux and would like to test out my Lutris script for Prophecy, please head here. You will have to click

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today marks twenty-three years since the Wing Commander Movie was released! It's hard to believe it's been so much time since we - and many of you - lined up at theaters. A lot has changed since then. Sure, there are still plenty of snarky podcasts that do their thing with it, but I've also noticed a big shift in the last few years. Lately, a lot of people have given it a second chance and can appreciate it for what it is. While the film remains hard to find on physical disc, it's also nice to see that it's once again easy to rent or buy on various streaming services. If you're checking it out again, let us know. We're always down for a rewatch or discussion!

Also if you missed it from a few weeks back, I wanted to point out Klavs' clean-up of the movie's universe map. It's pretty slick!

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Nightball06 has a new set of Hellcat renders to share, and they've certainly come a very long way since his original 2D sketches. He tried commissioning another artist to take his designs to the next dimension, but now he's learned techniques to work with the model himself. There are a few liberties taken with specific elements, but the overarching space frame is pretty sharp. The textures are slick too. Now that this exist in virtual form, Nightball has plans to try his hand at animation next.

Thanks to the help from Mac, who gave me step-by-step instructions, I was finally able to render my "legacy"-images.

Looks pretty nice I think...So thanks again to all who helped me ... Next stop: Animation

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Preliminary motions on the forthcoming Hudson Contravention vote have begun in Federal Congress.
The proposal, named after President Zachary Hudson's call to suspend the 77th amendment to the Federal Accord, is a point of significant contention. If approved, Hudson would be eligible to run for another term in this year's presidential elections, breaking with centuries of constitutional law.
Supporters of the proposal, led by Hudson's cabinet, point to the ongoing conflict with the Thargoids as a primary reason to vote in favour. With the significant escalation in Thargoid aggression and the loss of hundreds of systems, it has been argued that a change of leadership could weaken the Federation's ability to defend itself.
Opponents have called the move a 'dictatorial' tactic which uses the fear of alien attack to influence public opinion. Felicia Winters, the Liberal candidate and current

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We're going to start this week off with a new Kilrathi Lego creation by John Nelson. You can see from the sweep of the wings that this is clearly the Dralthi IV variant, which puts it right in line with the Darket and Strakha he put together earlier. He's started to incorporate a larger mix of brown panels in an attempt to better mimic the WC3 color scheme. It makes me want a Lego Excalibur to start tearing them up!

This was a fun one to build years ago in a simpler state, but with the new colors and brick types this guy is far more accurate - albeit with my little tweaks and touches. This is the second model that I needed technic parts to complete.

Pliers (would) say, "Dralthis are pretty pathetic, but don’t turn your back on them. Their particle cannons can fire continuously and will bring down anything from a carrier to an interceptor."

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A warning about entering the Maelstroms has been offered by Seo Jin-ae, whose unique cortical implant offers glimpses into the Thargoid hive mind.
Aden Tanner, who is currently working with Aegis, released a personal statement:
"Seo Jin-ae approached me in a state of distress shortly after the first tests of the Thargoid pulse neutraliser. She claimed that, as the probes passed through Taranis's energy wave, she perceived a change among the Thargoid voices. 'Like being woken up by insect bites,' was how she described the sensation."
"'The Thargoids aren't as oblivious to our tests as it sometimes seems,' she told me. I pressed her for more details, but there was only one thing she was convinced about: 'They understand we've found a way to push deeper into the Maelstrom. They know we're coming.'"
"Now, this might mean nothing at all, and it's not verifiable data. But it prompted Professor