20
Aug
The latest version of the Secret Ops
Model Upgrade Packis 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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Register a new accountAug
The latest version of the Secret Ops
Model Upgrade Packis 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.
Aug
…Music_Guruhas 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
Aug
…The master of the VHS strikes back!
Jim Leonardhas 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 restoredthe 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
Aug
Display MoreThink 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
Backgroundsection, covering both novels and game guides (official and unofficial) and their translations into
Czech,
Germanand
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 Harringtonnovel 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 guideand would be able to provide us with a scan or additional information.
Aug
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
downloadssection. 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!
Aug
…The
Document Archiveis 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.
Aug
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 Collectionsto 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!
Aug
…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
Aug
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!
Aug
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
Aug
…With twenty years on the books, that's a lot of people coming and going over a huge span of time. It's always interesting to get a little perspective on when everyone showed up - and encouraging that there's fresh faces continuously arriving! Vote below to tell us when you got here!
The old poll asked about fans' guilty pleasures. It included several pastimes that were satisfying but ranged from goofing off (Blasting Asteroids) to human rights violations (Pilgrim Stars' Force Powers). Tractoring in Ejected Pilots won out - it's possible some people considered this to be wingman pickup in WC2, but the nefarious version included picking up wayward humans in Gemini. And then selling them into slavery at the commodity store! After that, intentionally losing missions to play through the losing path was popular, as was buzzing the flight deck. Sadly, not one person voted for Prophecy Multiplayer,
Aug
Aug
Aug
Aug
…And that's what we have for today! Thanks again to all of the people who contributed to making our 20th Birthday a success, and thanks to all of you who have stuck with us for all these years.
Several people have helped source quite a bit of news this year, which helps a lot. Pix & Christian Klein/Pixel Engineer have found tons of great archeological content. Unnamed Character's has done great work on modding WC1 and Stinger with Kilrathi Saga. Music_Guru, Adm_Maverick & Fek'LeyrTarg have both contributed quite a variety of different subjects. L.I.F., DefianceIndustries & the Maslas Brothers all have large scale projects that have been pretty exciting. And both George Oldziey & Raph Koster showed that Origin vets haven't forgotten their role in everything. And there's a whole lot of people working in the background here and there to keep things going, including but not limited to, the rest of
Aug
…Fallout: New Vegas is one of our favourite entries into the Wasteland franchise. Obsidian did such a wonderful job building a hardcore survival narrative in the Mojave desert. That being said, anybody that is familiar with Don’t Feed the Gamers knows that we have a mighty obsession with BioWare’s Mass Effect series – that means any time we can merge the two, we will. We’ve shared an amazing mod in the past adding the infamous biotic Jack into the RPG, but now even more characters are making their way in including a Kasumi-inspired retexture, Garrus Vakarian, Liara, and even our beloved Quarians!
The mod itself is appropriately called “Mass Effect Fallout” (simple) and though it doesn’t change the story it all, it does change how players can experience their own character in the game. With Asari retextures, Mass Effect-inspired armor sets, and tons more – the space romance simulator (kidding)
Aug
…Later this week, two brand new ships are coming to PC. The New Orleans class, updated in 25th century to the Lafayette Class, and the Klingon Empire's Ketha-class Recon Raptor, will soon be available for purchase in the C-store, both individually and as a bundle. In addition, the bundle will be 20% off for the first weekend it's on sale! You'll be able to find more about them in our stats blog tomorrow, but first, here's a look at the design and philosophy behind these new ships. Lafayette-Class Recon Destroyer Length: 382.6 meters Description In these trying times, constant conflict and ever-present hostility have made exploration and reconnaissance at the edges of the frontier an even more dangerous endeavor than normal. The Recon Destroyer has been designed in response to this galactic atmosphere, providing a distinct combat-focus to a ship that is otherwise dedicated to scientific study
Aug
Every week, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on SPECTRUM and voted on by YOU.
You can submit your questions for consideration in future episodes of Calling All Devs here.
And for info on becoming a subscriber, go to: Subscriptions - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42
Aug
…Hello everyone,
The Community Team is at Gamescom this week, representing Star Citizen in Cologne, Germany. We don’t have a booth this time around, but if some of you are making the trip to Cologne, you can join us at one of four Bar Citizen events in the evenings or at the meetup on Friday that’ll include a special town hall Q&A for those in attendance. Find all the details about where we’ll be here.
But apart from one of the biggest gaming expos, we’ve still got more exciting events this week.
Our latest concept ship, the RSI Apollo, is still available until August 22nd, so make sure to check out our guardian angel before it’s gone. Celebrating the reveal of our latest medical ship, we held a contest where we wanted to see quotes that you might hear on board an RSI Apollo. The contest is now over and you can find out who’s the new owner of a shiny RSI Apollo Triage or click
Aug
During Saturday night's exciting birthday festivities, renowned Nephilim artist
Dark Sentinelreleased this ominous picture. It features a large bug fleet crossing an eerie red backdrop. The image makes a fantastic wallpaper, but it also provides a striking glimpse of what's to come in the world of Prophecy & Secret Ops modding!