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Mac has a special gift for Wingnuts this week. It's a new preview of his upcoming End Run lore video. The clip is chock full of new cuts and scenes that will be used to highlight the epic battles from the Vukar Tag campaign. There's some absolutely majestic fleet action depicted and very explosive combat in store. Check it out below!
The past month has been an utter journey of making 3d scenes for the upcoming End Run video, and learning new skills for use in said video along the way.
Jan
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We are cruising right through January, which means our annual Fan Project of the Year contest is moving quickly towards its conclusion. If you missed voting initially, you can still get your ballot in before the winners are called! Here are the nominees once again. Scroll down below to vote!
- Challenge Coins - ZOmegaZ’s successful 2021 crowdfunding campaign resulted in these beautiful trinkets in 2022! He took fan feedback to balance the sizes of the ships in the design and the results turned out great.
- elend’s Physical Models - elend is a master craftsman and his recently completed Dralthi model is high professional grade art. It belongs in a museum!
- Emulation Technology - Whether getting DOS games to run on Linux, Mac WC games running on PC or Xbox games going on PCs, this has been another great year of technological advancement in emulation.
- Gemini Sector RPG - One of the longest running and
Jan
…Princess Aisling Duval has publicly asked Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval to reconsider pledging Imperial resources to a cross-superpower anti-xeno initiative.
Her message was shared on all Imperial newsfeeds:
"The Empire's capability to defend itself is not in question. But neither is there any doubt that we are facing a protracted war. The ferocity and scale of the Thargoid onslaught on human space is unprecedented. Of course the Empire will survive, as it has for over a millennium… but at what cost? How many systems must fall? How many citizens will grieve for lost loved ones?"
"Emperor Arissa, I implore you: work with the Alliance and Federation to reform Aegis. Our combined resources are needed to develop new technologies to overcome the alien armadas. Corporate interests must not dictate this path. Let Imperial ingenuity and courage light the way to victory over a common enemy."
A handful
Feb
LOAF and the team are busy working on Privateer-themed projects over on the CIC Discord server, and that inspired me to share a quick comparison that some players might have overlooked. Everyone loves the Privateer intro. It's memorable, action-packed and showcases the cutting edge of 1993 multimedia prowess. "Who are you that flies so good!? Are you insane?!" And you can probably imagine Brownhair's quips as he cruises around the asteroid belt in his Tarsus, but did you know there are two different voiceover tracks? The original 3.5" disks had an intro with spoken dialogue recorded by local talent. When the game's speech was fully recorded for the CD edition, a new voice actor was brought in to read everything, including the intro. You can compare the two side-by-side below! The disk version is first and CD second:
Mar
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Aegis and Universal Cartographics have announced that the project to survey ammonia worlds has ended satisfactorily.
Special mention goes to Commander aRadish, Commander Lone WolfPack and Commander T'Verez for their efforts.
The exploration initiative was praised by Congressman Tom Gillespie, who oversees Federal contributions to Aegis:
"An impressive number of terrestrial planets with ammonia-based atmospheres were scanned and catalogued over the last two weeks. Universal Cartographics certainly considers the project to be a great success, and I know our xenological scientists do too."
"This is the kind of task for which independent Commanders are absolutely unmatched in dedication and expertise, and they remain our indispensable allies."
Vice Admiral Skylar Anderson, the Imperial military liaison to Aegis, added:
"This information is of considerable strategic
Apr
…A scientific delegation from Aegis has visited Utopia to compare its Sim-Archive with Salvation's Nemesis Failsafe designs.
A summary from Dr Maximo Fonseca was shared with newsfeeds:
"Simguru Antal agreed to meet with us as a sign of good faith, and to refute claims of collaboration with Salvation. He personally introduced us to the neurosmiths of Utopia, who can digitally encode electrochemical activity within the brain. I took part in a demonstration, uploading some of my own long-term memories into the Sim-Archive. Afterwards, my colleague Dr Cooper enjoyed a remarkably accurate simulation of my university graduation thirty years ago, who claimed she found it hard to believe the memory was not her own."
"Analysis of the Nemesis Failsafe designs that we provided was swift, but the differences were stark. From what we understood of the summary by Utopian researchers, the Nemesis process
Apr
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The Empire and the Federation have resolved the conflict in Pichch after the accidental loss of anti-xeno supply ships.
Freelance correspondent Karleen Troy reported on events for Vox Galactica:
"Pichch is a key location to redirect front-line resources to systems facing invasion around Maelstrom Leigong. In recent days, these vital deliveries have been severely delayed by the internecine conflict. But disaster struck when an entire convoy carrying anti-xeno weaponry was destroyed by Imperial-aligned ships, which mistakenly identified them as local Federal resupply vessels."
"Once news of the incident spread, leaders of Gauluujja Exchange and the Gliese 44 Citizens' Forum stated that they had received orders to broker an immediate ceasefire. The conflict was heading towards a Gliese 44 Citizens' Forum victory, so the sudden peace is likely a relief to Gauluujja
Jun
…Bandcamp is once again having Juneteenth fundraiser. This means that their share of the proceeds from each sale go towards advocacy for racial justice. They are the prime retailer for the MT-32 Archival Edition of Wing One, the album of original Wing Commander music, so this is one of the rare opportunities for your WC purchases to go towards a charitable cause. If you don't own a copy, this is a wonderful audio experience to fill out your WC collection with! Grab it here for $10 (and do it on Monday for the Juneteenth benefit!).
On Monday, June 19th, from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, we’ll hold our fourth annual Juneteenth fundraiser, where we donate 100% of our share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education.There is also a publisher-authorized free streaming
Nov
…THRILLING ART NEWS! It turns out that the amazing cover to Wing Commander: End Run was NOT painted by Paul Alexander (as credited)... but David Mattingly! And... HE SELLS PRINTS AT HIS WEBSITE! Cool kids will know David Mattingly for his Animorphs covers while extremely hip gentlemen will know him for his Honor Harrington ones.
End Run credits its cover art to Paul Anderson - the same as Freedom Flight, Fleet Action and Action Stations (which was commissioned for the WC3 novel). Those other three look like Paul Anderson paintings, though, and End Run kind of sticks out in its style. The painting was certainly sold years ago as a Paul Anderson original, but now that we have this super high res photography:
His wizard art is also worthy of song:
I don't know if there's a story behind the incorrect credit... but it's worth remembering that this is the same series that also credited a whole book to the
Dec
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Woah, it's December! That means the year will be over in a blink, and we've got some annual CIC traditions to get to! In order to prepare, we're accepting nominations now for any Wing Commander fan projects that you'd like to recognize for their contributions in 2023. Email news@wcnews.com and let us know! There are some very strong contenders this year. Below is a rundown of our past winners:
Feb
…Another week, another exciting update to the Originator extraction tool! A headline feature this time is support for Wing Commander Arena models. Look how sharp they are in this format! There's some huge untapped potential with these designs. AllTinker also improved on the Privateer 2 enhancements added earlier this month and also added support for viewing certain images and text out of Origin's game Bioforge. You can grab the new update here.
Here's version 0.3.05, which mainly adds a few more missing bits of Privateer 2 text, brings over some of my old work-in-progress Bioforge stuff, and adds support for Wing Commander Arena models. [For] Wing Commander Arena's models, which are binary Ogre3D models - I wrote a custom parser rather than use Ogre itself. Originator itself doesn't display the normalmaps currently, but it does export them; it'd be easy enough but I'll wait until I do a bit of a
Jul
…My brother recently sent me a pretty fascinating question: is there a Wing Commander TCTG card in Starship Troopers (1997). He included an image where you can see cards stick to the wall to the left of the viewscreen in the camp barracks.
It does, indeed, look very similar to a Wing Commander card! Compare it, for instance, to this Hellcat V. Did the art department maybe take one and replace the fighter with a Heinlein-era rocket?
That's not the craziest connection to make, either. Troopers' lead, Casper Van Dien, was in fact good friends with Wing Commander's Mark Hamill and his family. That's why he had a cameo in the Wing Commander IV intro! Confed Redshirt #3:
The timeline works out, too. The Wing Commander TCTG was developed by a company called Mag Force 7 and released in August 1995. It's based mostly on WC3. Meanwhile, Starship Troopers' principal shoot was over the summer in 1996.
But it's not a
Jul
…The Thargoids have emerged in the Witch Head Nebula, just hours after human expansion efforts in the region began. Numerous attacks in the area indicate that Thargoid craft are aggressively defending the region's barnacle sites.
Professor Alba Tesreau of Aegis Research said in an update:
"Representative factions of the Alliance, Empire and Federation have entered the Witch Head Nebula to begin colonisation efforts. A number of megaships and Ocellus starports arrived in the area on schedule, only to be met with hostile Thargoid vessels soon afterwards."
This development, coupled with increased Thargoid activity in the Pleiades Nebula, suggests that the Thargoids are intent on driving humanity out of regions containing barnacle sites. Tesreau was quick to repeat that securing access to a source of meta-alloys is of great importance to humanity.
"All three superpowers are urgently requesting help
Aug
…From August 29th at 8am PT to September 2nd at 10am PT, we are having a 20% ship sale. Enjoy not just a discount on our ships, but fleet modules, dry dock slots and ship upgrade tokens as well! Have you been eyeing a new ship or ship bundle in the C-store? Now is the time to grab the ship you've always dreamt of commanding, including the new ships of the Temporal Warship Bundle! All ships and dry dock slots in the C-Store are 20% off. This includes bundles which are comprised only of ships. This does not include bundles that have items other than ships in them. The ship upgrade token, ship upgrade token bundle, and the fleet module are all 20% off as well. .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0;
Sep
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:
- Wing Commander 3 - Tamayo System - 3DO Version!
- Privateer - More Postgame
- Book Club - Heart of the Tiger, Chapters 5-8
- NEW FEATURE: Ali Cats!
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.
Oct
This 1990 Video Games & Computer Entertainment cover seems to be a variation of the Wing Commander I box art! Maybe there’s been a Hornet hiding under that cockpit frame all these years?
For comparison, here’s a slightly earlier version of the cover image which was provided to the press before release. It’s a famous example of a "bullshot" that was composed externally using game elements instead of a straight screen capture.
Oct
…Pedro reports that work steadily continues on the WC4 Fan Remake project. Although he claims that all of the various technical hurdles they're facing aren't news, I would argue that this provides important context to just how complex managing a modern fan project can be. A great many projects hit a wall and fail to progress beyond this point when the excitement of a flashy launch fades and the technical foundation work grinds on, so it's wonderful to see that the team is facing these challenges head on. What they've already accomplished is pretty neat too! Check out the trailer below for a sample.
Wing IV is fighting a lot of unexciting battles on multiple fronts - loading gameplay scripts to in order to load FMVs you've already seen, which requires loading subtitles, and branching options - which you've already seen but need to be implemented anyway. And then there are tasks like updating the
Dec
…We’re pleased to announce the return of the Research and Development Weekend! This event will run from Thursday, December 5th at 8AM PT to Monday, December 9th at 10AM PST, and features several bonuses throughout STO that will give Captains of all levels a leg up advancing their rank in the Research and Development school(s) of their choice. For those Captains looking specifically for extra help with their projects, all R&D packs throughout the game will give out an extra 25% of the items they currently disperse for the duration of this event. Queue R&D Material Reward Packages (Normal, Advanced and Elite) will reward 25% more R&D Materials and have a chance to reward a Catalyst. Alternatively, Captains wanting to advance through Research and Development schools as fast as possible should seek out Harvest Nodes, located in mission maps throughout STO, which will not only disperse 2 extra R&D
Jan
…The main companion art piece for Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium has its major drawing elements and is mostly colored in now. There are a lot of awesome Origin memories commemorated in one place here, and I love the Kilrathi and Dralthi bearing down on them all. Artist Manda has also added a thoughtful aside on how the lack of color potentially changes the image, which is an interesting concept. If you'd like to own a copy yourself, original project backers who supported the book have an option to add a cloth version of this painting for €30 by contacting author Andrea Contato.
The dragon’s breath and the clouds by the unicorn’s hoof are both a reference to a space vehicle launch. I want to remind those who have seen it, to recall what it sounds like. The Kilrathi’s snarl, the Guardian’s monologue game, and the star giving off a vast arching outburst of
Feb
OliverInk has put together another gorgeous wallpaper image, and this one features the distinguished Banshee light fighter. It's titled "Cry of the Banshee," and you can almost imagine it screaming over the surface of a cold icy world in this setting. Of particular note is the highly detailed source model for the ship. It's not a creation I'm immediately familiar with, and may be a new fan design - perhaps by an artist named Black Chilla? It's very cool, nonetheless. Either image would make a fantastic wallpaper!
