Quote from Star Citizen News

Hello Citizens!

This Sunday, in the spirit of holiday fun, we invite you to take part in an old fashioned (but also thoroughly futuristic, in this case) Scavenger Hunt. Starting at 12am PDT on Sunday April 1st we’ll be tweeting out obscured images of a locations within the ‘Verse.

You, the players, must then track down the location, capture an image of your character standing in front of the hinted location, and reply to the twitter thread with your screenshot for that specific hinted image. The first person to successfully post an image of their character at the correct location wins that round.

We will tweet 8 images throughout the day, with the first at midnight (as we mentioned) and a new one going out every three hours, culminating in the final tweet at 9pm (all times PDT.)

That means 8 chances to win your very own Aegis Vulcan with LTI. Huzzah!

Make sure to carefully review the contest rules

Quote from Wing Commander News

Seven, seventeen, same thing...

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

One of the standout parts of The Game Awards 2020 was undeniably the release of the first trailer for the next Mass Effect game, which BioWare has been teasing on and off for quite some time now. While the new trailer seems to confirm the return of a fan-favorite character from the original trilogy, the recent departure of both Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah have fans understandably concerned about the future of both Mass Effect and Dragon Age. While it’s saddening to picture a Mass Effect team that doesn’t include either of those two BioWare vets, it’s recently been announced that some of the developers from the original Mass Effect Trilogy will be returning to work on the new game.

Project Director Mike Gamble recently took to Twitter to name drop some of the folks that will be working on the upcoming Mass Effect game. Gamble revealed that narrative designer Dusty Everman (ME – 3, Andromeda) and Parrish

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

Introducing the new engine that will future-proof Aftermath's economy.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a neat touch that I only just noticed in Privateer. The 'look' of your radar changes slightly depending on the software manufacturer: Iris, Hunter and B and S.

Quote from Star Citizen News-Bot

Jump Point Now Available!

http://

Attention development subscribers: the February 2019 issue of Jump Point is now available in your subscription area. You’ll take a visit to Hurston, learn about the making of the Argo SRV and celebrate Stella Fortuna in an all-new Galactapedia. Plus an all-new lore feature covering the history of the Rust Society!

Interested in becoming a development subscriber? You can learn more here.

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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Clinical trials for new nanomedicines developed by Vitadyne Labs have delivered outstanding results.

Observers from the Interstellar Health Organisation summarised:

"Our teams carefully monitored the use of Vitadyne nanomeds on patients for whom conventional treatments were unsuitable. In all cases, the nanomedicines eliminated malignant cells, boosted immune systems and repaired damaged tissue."

"There is no doubt that this product represents a breakthrough in nanomedicine, with enormous healthcare potential."

Professor Katrien Rook, owner of Vitadyne Labs, told the media:

"It's highly gratifying to have our work validated in this way. I'm grateful to the IHO for its diligence, and I look forward to introducing our nanomedicines to the galaxy."

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Quote from Wing Commander News

This is a good one

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Pirate warlord Archon Delaine has unexpectedly appeared at the diplomatic conference and demanded to participate as a political delegate.
Delaine is the leader of the Kumo Crew, a notorious crime syndicate that controls dozens of systems. Their arrival at Patterson Enterprise station initially caused many delegations' security teams to begin evacuations.
However, representatives of the Sirius Corporation called for calm and delivered this message:
"We have vouchsafed Archon Delaine's presence and extended full diplomatic immunity to his retinue. As with all attendees, they are expected to abide by our rules and etiquettes."
This reassurance did not prevent several ambassadors from walking out in protest. Some accused Sirius Corporation of striking a deal with Delaine to prevent even more pirate vessels from swarming through the Sirius system.
Mainstream newsfeeds also covered the impact of

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're a little bit late to the party here, but

Jim Leonard

, one of the co-founders of MobyGames, recently posted a neat look back on twenty years of the useful game data website. As we've just recently celebrated our 21st, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy that simple old gaming sites like ours are still humming along after all this time. "Simple" is probably not a very fair label for such a vast and exhaustive resource, but they've managed to keep a lot of their classic charm intact to this date. I use it frequently to check up on classic developers and gaming credits, and thousands of other folks find it useful in other ways. Speaking of which, I should really go figure out how to get the voice actor credits separated off from

my profile

on the site. Yes, the Serious Sam special thanks is legit. Back on topic: the article is a really interesting history of how a classic gaming site came to be.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We're down to the final hours for Mike Winterbauer's Wing Commander art

portfolio

! The project has topped $3000 and dozens of dedicated contributors to the campaign will get an array of different art products based on the famous painting Mr. Winterbauer made for the SNES WC cover. The process he used to create the piece will also be catalogued in the associated art book. If you want to get in on the action, now's the final day to

pledge here

.

Thank you everybody for making this campaign an awesome success! 26 hours left and we are over 600% funded.

Wing Commander Fans are the best! Thank you!!

I look forward to getting all the awesome rewards out very soon!

Sincerely,

Mike

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

While flipping through the October 1994 issue of British gaming magazine PC Zone, noted retro gamer

Pix

spotted a vintage

Armada review

. The reviewer praises the graphics (a low resolution preview of the still upcoming Wing Commander 3) and was especially impressed with the hybrid turn-based/split-screen multiplayer feature, in which two players can go head-to-head on a single computer. The user friendliness of the menu system for setting up modem or netBIOS sessions also received a nod of approval. The five page spread contains ample screenshots of

Armada

's different game modes, although some space is reserved for a large inset preview of Wing Commander 3. Shortly after the game's release, the free

Proving Grounds

expansion would add support for IPX networking and six player sessions. A decade later, a

fan patch

by

HCl

enabled internet play. Scans below courtesy of

Pix's Origin Adventures

!

Quote from Crossfire Features

Reconnaissance Fleet Commanders log: Day 1: All ships have completed the jump successfully, a way back, as expected, is not possible. The first scan shows a significantly greater effect of gravity than it is at the edges of the Milky Way. In the central sector of the first system a black hole was detected with three artificial objects symmetrically positioned around it. Two scout ships sent to survey returned severely damaged by the increasing gravity of a black hole...

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Pretty much

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

We’re making some changes to the character art in STO, which you might notice in our upcoming Mirror of Discovery update. We spoke with Robert Quinn, one of the FX Artists for STO, about the details of these changes. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for STO My name is Robert and I am one of the FX artists on STO. However, I do a bit of technical art and shader work on the side. What are the changes we’ve made to player characters for this update? Our graphics team made a new shader for soft alpha that does not use Multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA). MSAA is very computationally expensive and it does not work on low-end PCs or consoles. This made the Hair in STO look bad on low-end PCs or consoles. I updated all of the hair in STO to use the new soft alpha without MSAA. The result of this is that all the hair will now look the same on all platforms and will have better

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have an exciting new addition to the archives today: a script for the third episode of Wing Commander Academy, "The Most Delicate Instrument." Over the years we've preserved shooting scripts (and a number of drafts) for all of the Wing Commander games and the 1999 film... but tracking down Wing Commander Academy teleplays has proven much more difficult. Until today, only two of the thirteen episodes were represented in the archive. These documents are especially fascinating for hardcore Wing Commander fans as they include not only scenes cut for time but also names of characters, places and ships in stage directions which were never spoken in the aired episode. You can download the The Most Delicate Instrument script in PDF form here. Stay tuned, two more episode scripts and several treatments will be added in the coming days.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A range of new asteroid-mining equipment is expected to trigger an increase in the availability of ores and minerals.

A spokesperson for the Industrial Mining Guild discussed the new tools at an industry symposium:

"Using mining lasers to remove surface deposits from asteroids can be difficult. The new abrasion blaster fires projectiles that break them free more easily."

"For deeper deposits, sub-surface displacement missiles can penetrate the rock and then be detonated remotely, releasing larger chunks of material."

"Finally, there is now a way to access valuable resources deep within certain rare bodies. Seismic charges, when carefully positioned, can crack an asteroid open and free the minerals at its core."

"Combined with upgrades to existing tools, such as scanners and prospector limpets, we are confident that these new tools will result in a surge in private mining activity."

Quote from Star Trek Online News

April 5th is the anniversary of First Contact Day, when Humans and Vulcans first met on Earth! To celebrate the anniversary of First Contact Day, the Zefram Cochrane Memorial and Historical Museum is holding a special re-enactment event from April 5th at 8am PT to April 12th at 10am PT, on all three platforms!. Participants are invited to visit to Bozeman, Montana—the site of Cochrane’s launch of the first Human warp-capable ship, the Phoenix—and engage in the construction of their own replica Phoenix! Captains who participate will search the area for useful parts, just like Cochrane scavenged the pieces for the Phoenix. Using these parts in conjunction with a basic hull assembly, captains will make their own model of the Phoenix by combining engines, hull, and stabilizer parts found in various bits and pieces scattered about the re-creation of the historical settlement. Under the shadow of Zefram

Quote from Mass Effect

BioWare’s Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect series’ are two of the most beloved in all of gaming and a large part of this was due to the numerous contributions from writer Drew Karpyshyn. For the upcoming Anthem, Karpyshyn was revealed to have returned to the studio to work on the spacefaring project, confirming the news himself earlier last year. Inclusion of the Mass Effect 2 writer was reason to rejoice for many longtime fans, but it seems as though it wasn’t meant to last.

Announcing on his official website Karpyshyn revealed he is no longer working with BioWare and has begun pursuing other projects. Acknowledging his past leaving of the company, the heartfelt update reveals that his latest retirement is owed to wanting to more time to complete outside projects. These include new novels and games, one of which is an undisclosed game for studio FogBank Entertainment. The full post can be

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

fringeaggressor recently came across this neat triangular piece in a group dedicated to real life military patches. It's pretty is unlikely to have been worn by any modern air force as it prominently features an F-103 Excalibur with a Confed star on the left wing. The origin doesn't immediately jump out to me either, but it's pretty darn cool nonetheless!

The following showed up in a Facebook group recently related to the F-14 Tomcat, which fits given squadrons used a triangular patch style this particular item mimics. Never noticed it in WC3, figured it was perhaps a prop item.