News categories list

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we're sharing a fairly rare budget release of Wing Commander. LOAF picked this one up a while back and we're finally getting around to sharing it with you! Most of the WC series was repackaged into numerous rereleases, compilations and bundles, but it's not that often that we come across new and unknown variants - especially in English-speaking regions. This one appears to be from a small 1993 run in the US cross-published by GT Interactive. It comes in a smaller box with a different form factor than most. While it's outwardly quite similar to the original WC1 design, the back features several differences such as more round corners on the screenshots and the removal of several lower images. Speaking as someone who owns at least 15 or so variations of WC1, you can never have too many!

Here’s a eBay mystery! This copy of Wing Commander I came in a smaller, single piece box... a budget edition

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The CIC was founded on the principle of "All Things Wing Commander," and we continue to try to live up to that every day! As such, LOAF has found a very obscure mention of Super Wing Commander in a 1995 documentary called Synthetic Pleasures. It features the "suit up" portion of the SWC launch sequence. And you don't have to hunt down the VHS like LOAF did - see it for yourself in the embed below!

Alexa: “Your order of SYNTHETIC PLEASURES has been delivered.”

The Super Wing Commander bit is just after the 44 minute mark (following footage of a robot labeled Robot Redford). It's the extremely-90s-cyber-stuff 'suit up' sequence from the takeoff cutscene.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here are the amazing takeoff and landing sprites from the original Wing Commander. Along with the cockpits these were absolutely essential in establishing the player's ship in their head (and showing-not-telling damage after a mission!).

Here are the Wing Commander II versions:

This is an interesting comparison to the WC2 landing art, the similar (but decidedly different) side views used for the eject cutscenes. They didn't do these for the new ships in the mission disks!

And here's the kind of detail that makes a Chris Roberts game special: when the cockpit slides open you can see just a little strip of the tan cockpit... which matches the side view you have in flight!

You can download a reference pack with dozens of cockpit images from WC1, WC2, WC3, Academy, Armada and Privateer here!

Quote from Star Trek Online News

The Star Trek Online Team is pleased to bring back the Breach special event. For the special event version of the Breach, Captains will be flying a streamlined route into and out of the Voth Fortress. From March 8th 8:00AM PST to March 29th at 10:00AM PST, Captains between levels 50-60 can queue up for our 5-captain “Breach Event” to defeat the Voth City Ship and earn one Voth Operative Transmission every 20 hours. After collecting 14 Voth Operative Transmissions, players can complete a new Event Reputation project to be rewarded with 50,000 Dilithium Ore, 500 Fleet Marks, 250 Marks of their choice, and a brand new Universal Console, Voth Phase Decoy. Completing this project on any character will unlock this new Universal Console for all characters across your account, and additionally the other characters can still complete the project to receive the Marks and Dilithium Ore. Activating the Voth

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

The Star Trek Online Team is pleased to bring back the Breach Special Event. For the special event version of the Breach, Captains will be flying a streamlined route into and out of the Voth Fortress. From September 6th 8:00AM PST to September 27th at 10:00AM PST, Captains between levels 50-65 can queue up for our 5-captain “Breach Event” to defeat the Voth City Ship and earn one Voth Operative Transmission every 20 hours. After collecting 14 Voth Operative Transmissions, players can complete a new Event Reputation project to be rewarded with 50,000 Dilithium Ore, 500 Fleet Marks, 250 Marks of their choice, and a Bio-Engineered Furiadon Combat pet. Completing this project on any character will unlock this new Combat Pet for all characters across your account. Your other characters can also complete the project to receive the Marks and Dilithium Ore. The Bio-Engineered Furiadon Combat Pet can

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It’s been nearly a week since the demo for WC4 Remastered was released, and the game has been a big hit so far! Hundreds of fans have fired it up and the feedback is very positive. Players have been posting their recorded sessions online and word has spread to other news sites such as DSO and PC Gamer. If you haven’t yet tried it out, the WC4 Fan Remake team has posted helpful instructions on how to get things running. There’s even a tutorial on loading to a Steam Deck! Grab the main installer for yourself right here (900 Meg exe).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Centaurianmudpig has made some neat progress on his WC-inspired space sim, Absolute Territory. To show off the flexibility of his new mission editor, he's mocked up the famous Enyo System missions. The game isn't a copycat of Wing Commander, but there are lots of clear similarities. It's come a long way in the couple years that mudpig has been working on it and looks pretty fun! You can learn more about it and how to eventually give it a try on Steam.

Since the last update, I've been busy working on the Level Editor. The inspiration partly came from Wing Commander Academy, but I never got over how limited it was in creating missions. I wanted to make my own WC1 style missions, not just the drop some enemies and go skirmish.

To that end, I've reached another milestone. To show what the level editor is capable of, I loosely re-created the Enyo 1 and Enyo 2 missions. These where made with the in-game

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Just in time for Wing Commander's 31st birthday, Christian Klein has constructed a wonderfully detailed Lego Epee. It's got everything: each wing and control surface, engine intake/nozzle and particle cannon is there. The colors are also wonderfully done, which is an extra challenge when working within the limitations of Lego bricks. Green and red accents are in the right places and the cockpit canopy is tinted purplish. Even the interior cockpit is well outfitted! I could never pull something like this off, so I bow to his talent. Follow Christian on Twitter for more Wing Commander and retro goodies.

Wohoo! It's finally done! This is my very first (own created) Wing Commander LEGO spaceship [639 parts]. The F-54C Epee. The design has changed a bit. I hope you like it

Here's a few shots of the lovely Epee for comparison purposes:

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We show off a lot of Wing Commander-themed mail calls and loot hauls here at the CIC, but this one's extra special! After more than 21 years, LOAF's managed to track down an original 35 mm reel of the Wing Commander Movie. It seems to be in good shape and comes with the associated optical sound track. What a find!

HERE IT IS! I am now the very proud father of a 35mm theatrical print of the Wing Commander movie. I never dreamed I’d get a chance to own one! I’d love to play it at least once, maybe rent out a theater and hold a big Wing Commander party when the pandemic is over! I’m also interested in looking into having it scanned.

And now, back to preparations for the CIC Birthday Party. See you tomorrow!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Independent HIP 29241 Green Party has announced that its appeal to recover escape pods has been enthusiastically received by the galactic community. Hundreds of pilots supported the initiative by delivering pods to Felice Dock, and by protecting contributing ships in the Meene system.

Security Chief Harper Vargas of the Meene Defence Force gave the following statement:

"We have recovered a number of key figures within the mercenary group, and interrogations are underway. We will share more information when we have it."

Pilots who contributed to the initiative can now collect their rewards from Felice Dock in the Meene system.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a few more shots of the glorious Tarawa model that Mac has been experimenting with lately. It's good to see people still putting Klavs' design to good use! The main purpose seems to pretty much be setting up for some prime B-roll in future lore videos on YouTube, but it still makes for gorgeous still imagery in the mean time.

Oof, looks like I'm gonna have to get back to work on getting the Tarawa fully working!

Something that I didn't mention was that my work with the Tarawa, was actually based on the work of someone named littel_ludi on the Hard Light Production boards who imported Klav's models into Freespace/WCSaga and made it public on their forums here. At the moment all I've done is the retexturing, the glow points, and the bump maps, with the full intention of making the Tarawa into a fully working CapShip (It's missing a lot of functionality atm). Although I might end up abandoning

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I love these European CD-ROM Classics that came in thick jewel cases. How cool would it be to have a collection of them in all the different languages? Here's a recent photo posted by Stephan:

I really appreciated the CD-ROM Classics and bought them regularly. If I remember correctly, they had their own EA displays at the POS. Great selection of excellent titles. I have kept a few to this day.

I believe there were three Wing Commanders:

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT: For the attention of all Commanders*
Conflict between Keltim Empire League and Eurybia Blue Mafia in Eurybia has ended.
The Eurybia Blue Mafia has successfully fought off an attempt by the Empire to take the Engineer Liz Ryder into custody.
Spokesperson Ana Westergard made this announcement on behalf of the anarchist faction:
"This is a victory against the Empire's arrogance! There was never any evidence that Liz Ryder or our organisation are involved with terrorists, and this invasion was based entirely on supposition."
"We are extremely grateful to everyone who helped us defend Liz Ryder and maintain our independence. Rewards to all those brave Commanders are available at Awyra Flirble starport, modules will be placed in storage by the 10th of October 3306".
Captain Rocco Gandara of the Keltim Empire League announced:
"Despite the anarchists having the upper hand

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Evangeline's Elite Expeditionary Force has revealed plans to build a megaship in the Shana Bei system.

Archangel Evangeline, commander of the faction, made the following announcement:

"The successful construction of the megaship EFS Archangel will serve not only the Federation, but the entire galactic community. EFS Archangel will provide a hub for our military operations, allowing us to bring the fight to our enemies and defend imperilled systems. Together, we will make EFS Archangel a safe place to trade and share knowledge. Long live humanity!"

To ensure completion of the project, the organisation has requested superconductors, computer components and insulating membranes from the galactic community. Pilots who contribute these resources to the Force at Chu City in Shana Bei will be rewarded at the conclusion of the project.

The campaign will take place between the 13th and 19th of June

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

An appeal for materials from Evangeline's Elite Expeditionary Force has concluded successfully.

Following coordinated efforts by the galactic community, a large number of deliveries were completed to Chu City in Shana Bei. The new megaship, EFS Archangel, has now been completed and is currently undergoing final quality checks from the technicians involved.

The group's commander, Archangel Evangeline, provided the following statement:

"Our command group is preparing the EFS Archangel for her shakedown cruise through the system. On behalf of Evangeline's Elite Expeditionary Force, we salute the galactic community for its support and generous efforts. Without their assistance, this would not have been possible."

Contributors to the campaign can now collect their rewards from Chu City in the Shana Bei system.

Quote from EVE Online News-Bot

As of 01:40 GMT (14th March) we released a new Launcher (Version 1.09) and a new repair tool to resolve some issues that players have been experiencing during the initial deployment of Crucible 1.5.

Those of you experiencing issues with the Launcher or updating the game, please follow these steps:

1. Reboot the computer.
2. Navigate to the EVE client install folder.
3. Run the Repair tool and wait until it is finished.
4. Run eve.exe from the same folder

We ask people to reboot their computer to make sure that there are no locked files or other processes running while running the repair tool. This would otherwise interfere with the repair tool and prevent the client from updating.

If you have problems due to corrupted downloaded data, please consult this forum thread for a workaround.

To report any outstanding issues with Crucible 1.5.1, please visit this thread.

Display More

Quote from EVERSPACE News-Bot

We're very excited to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for Everspace 2 just launched! The sequel to Everspace won't be a roguelike, but an open-world space shooter with deep exploration, tons of loot and classic RPG elements. Your invaluable feedback helped make Everspace the success it was, which is why we'd like to get you on board as soon as possible. With your support we will be able to stay in full creative and financial control and increase the overall quality of the game. So please have a look at our reward tiers and maybe help us unlock a few stretchgoals as well. We would also like to point out that anyone backing on a digital game copy of Everspace 2 will receive a playable Demo Version before the end of this year! Kickstarter: EVERSPACE 2 by ROCKFISH Games — Kickstarter

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Everyone's got Wedge's website bookmarked for quick access to scripts from the various Wing Commander games... and while that's served us well for decades, we're ready to unveil your first look at something better! LOAF has spent the last year painstakingly extracting the exact text scripts from a wide variety of Wing Commander games. And we don't just mean titles like "WC1" and "WC2." As it turns out, there's differences between disk versus CD editions, console port versus original and so on. There's also more to the game than cutscenes. LOAF's also pulling in comm chatter and other peripheral text. There's still a lot to add, but the magnitude of what's already been gathered is incredible. You can find the live working file here! Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Buddy Goodboy, Esq recently got a 3D printer and naturally set out to create a Wing Commander fighter as his first creation. After an experimental test print, this fine Excalibur was the result. It's a pretty nice example of what's possible today with fine panel lines etched right into the hull. We've recently commented on how the technology continues to improve with tremendous results. Here's more proof!

Got a successful print on my 3D printer today! This is the F-103 Excalibur, the final fighter from Wing Commander III. It’s a beautiful little machine.

My first print of this fighter was on an uncalibrated print bed, and I couldn't separate the supports from the print, so it's a little plastic mess. This one, I printed with the nose up and with the correct support settings, so it just snapped off cleanly.This is the first thing I've gotten to come out decent on my printer. I'm pretty happy with

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

ChrisReid: While looking up links associated with the Rapier for a couple of news posts this past week, I notice we'd never taken LOAF's massive research on the ship and turned it into a singular article. It's a huge amount of info, so buckle your seatbelts and hang on! Here's LOAF with everything you ever wanted to know about the Rapier:

LOAF: The Rapier fighters in the Wing Commander movie were constructed from the cockpits of eight F.53 English Electric Lightning jets. I decided to read up on their history and it turns out they're part of a group of 34 ordered by the Saudi Royal Air Force in 1965!

One of these Lightnings crashed during its test flight; to replace it, BAC produced an extra plane using end-of-line parts. It was the last Lightning ever constructed and it became the Rapier flown by Freddie Prinze Jr's Lieutenant Blair!

The Lightnings flew ground attack missions against Yemen in 1970. In