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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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Let's look at some chalkboards! The kill board in Wing Commander I is one of those great immsersive touches: instead of scoring points like an arcade, you stay in the game world and compete with the characters you recognize.

All the characters' kills increase as the game progresses but they start from the same numbers. It's nice environmental storytelling, too: you can tell right off that Maniac is the rookie, Iceman is the top gun, etc. There's a million untold stories in this picture!

That environmental storytelling started to become linear storytelling as the series went on: here's a bit added to the Super Wing Commander Claw Marks that tells the story of how Maniac became an ace (as had already been reflected on the original board):

Quick aside: the kill board is based on actual 'scoreboards' used aboard aircraft carriers, particularly in World War 2. Here's a neat article with some history and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This week EA reconfirmed that another title in the Mass Effect series is in the works. Andromeda wasn't particularly well received in 2017, so the company took a break from the franchise for several years. But now we're excited for all the Mass Effect fans that there's more new content to look forward to.

This one image stirred a lot of speculation online, and the ship in particular drove a lot of conversation. More than a few folks observed similarities to the Excalibur, and Mac took it one step further with this tantalizing photoshop. To say again: this is just a fan mockup, but it's so nice on the eyes that we're excited to share! It might even make a good wallpaper. A Wingnut can dream...

I'm looking at the ship and I keep thinking it looks like a more advanced Excalibur from Wing Commander

I mean, I'm not the only one seeing it. Right?

You can find more of Mac's work on YouTube.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Due to popular demand, Mac has rendered out his recent preview animation as a glorious 4K wallpaper. This is the one absolutely chock-full of destroyers, cruisers, carriers, transporters and more. Klavs' iconic Concordia also forms the core of this mega fleet. It must be a challenge to figure out which ship you're supposed to land your fighter on!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Evil Pixel has posted a new video to highlight the plight of Wing Commander 2 for the SNES. This is a cause near and dear to our heart as we have long campaigned to help this port see the light of day. The Super Nintendo variant of WC2 was built from the ground up to be an enhanced version of the game, and it was sadly canceled after it was completed due to the high cost of cartridge production at the time. Videos like this help publicize the hunt for a long lost copy, and we'll keep searching until it's found!

Wing Commander II was released in 1992, however a port of the game was briefly mentioned and shown in gaming magazines and never heard of again. It is said the game was finished and is in someones possession.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I have watched Wing Commander Academy hundreds of times but I somehow never noticed that the pilot helmets are color coded. They nominally match the Scimitars: blue for Maverick, red for Maniac, purple for Archer, etc.

It looks like they're forgotten or wrong a LOT... just like the ship colors. Hmm, maybe this is the kind of thing that needs a spreadsheet on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

Well I said I was going to do this and for some reason I did. I tracked every Scimitar that appears in the show (by sortie) and noted its pilot, color and fate. There are 150 and 25 are destroyed (or stolen by the Warrior King)!

Here are what seem to be the intended colors for the hero characters. Colors are repeated for extras (or are not visible).

There are a couple of exceptions: the trainers in episode one are all either red or blue, per the story... and The Last One Left gives Blair and Maniac black and a never repeated

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Knight26-77 has posted a very cool video of his 3D printer manufacturing a slick Excalibur fighter. We've seen a lot of gorgeous plastic craft in recent years, but I don't think we've seen a perspective quite like this before. Definitely check it out!

Timelapse 3D print of the Excalibur Fighter from Wing Commander 3.Original design by Origin Systems. Redesign by Klavs and 3D printable model by Chronocidal Guy

Here's a fleet shot of some of his other craft all together:

I did a rough rip and transfer to stl off of his old model release and printed it on my old printer along with several other models. The scales might be slightly off in some cases. All should be 1:72.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Adm_Maverick just got a new 3D printer, and one of the first things that they made were some stunning Wing Commander fighters! The Excalibur is perhaps one of the most printed ships out there, but for good reason! It's just a gorgeous design with angular lines that make it nicely reproducible. The same goes for the Thunderbolt, which also makes a slick appearance here. After finalizing some of the sizes and designs, these are slated to make their way into her tabletop game. You can read more about that here. We can't wait to see how everything looks when it's all together!

Got a resin printer. Still learning the specifics of it. I decided to upscale the size of the fighter tokens for my game. Should give a greater emphasis on the dog fight scale I’m aiming for with the game.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last week we posted a neat piece of Excalibur water color art. At the time, we noted how unusual and novel that was, but it was apparently not unique! carrier that he painted long ago. Sure, it's not a fully modeled and textured 3D asset ready for a 4K game engine, but it represents the desire to create WC content that has kept the WC community going for so many years! It also gives us a great excuse to show off the swanky WC4 Concordia render.

Good Lord; I think I was a teenager when I painted this, which was farther back now than I care to admit to.

Funnily enough, I had a bit of a cleanout a few days ago and stumbled across this, painted around the same time. I'm not sure what inspired me to do a watercolour of a piece of a carrier but there we are.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a recent discovery of mine regarding the unused hologram character Merlin in the Wing Commander movie. The film was shot to include all his scenes and his deletion had a knock-on effect for nearly all other elements of the film.

Merlin was Blair's PPC (Personal Portable Computer), a futuristic version of a Siri-ChatGTP crossbred with a holographic avatar. He would banter with Blair, make observations, and be a bit of comic relief. Here are a few early concepts of what he might have looked like:

Blair also would discuss things with Merlin while in the cockpit of his Rapier. When the decision was made to remove the character, they changed some of Merlin's in-flight dialogue to be from the Rapier Computer. We often speculated about what Blair's PPC unit (holo emitter base) looked like. Surely we must be able to see Merlin's base somewhere in the final movie. At the time, the obvious conclusion

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last week, we decided to spend some time looking into the details of how some of Privateer's gameflow systems work. One of these was the Repair and Upgrade bay screen, which displays a unique render of your ship that can change based on your purchases. Four types of upgrades can make visible changes to your ship: sensors, engines, weapons and guns. The game stores these in a sort of 'paper doll' which pastes the appropriate graphic over the base image of an empty ship. Other upgrades, like turrets or repair droids or shield generators, do not alter the appearance of the ship. Righteous Fire does not add any new graphics to this system: the higher engine upgrades repeat their previous highest settings and the fusion cannons reuse the plasma gun art.

As we extracted all of the game's component graphics, we made a fascinating discovery: the Centurion had not the available two but four upgrade graphics for

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

After learning about how Denis Loubet came up with Wing Commander's enduring radar display I've been looking into how the design developed over the series. I found a note in the WC2 manual I never picked up on: "In VGA graphics mode, the shade of the dot indicates its range."

I ran some tests and sure enough, it's true! Each dot has THREE shades reserved in the 256-color palette. Close is within 5,000 meters, medium is 5,000-25,000 and far is over 30,000! NEVER noticed in gameplay. So I made a chart:

Strange case I just remembered: Special Operations 1 has the Gettysburg escorted by Epees that show up as GREEN on your radar... for about a second and a half between cutscenes! What an odd addition that never shows up again.

I went on a little tangent experimenting with this. Trying to fly to the Gettysburg remotely to see them hits a bug, no ships spawn until you get to the exact nav point and suddenly

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Tomorrow's a big day for sci-fi fans! The second season of Star Trek Prodigy is dropping on Netflix July 1 with a huge 20-episode slate. This unprecedented release means we'll be marathoning the show on the CIC Discord all day Monday! If you were put off by the initial marketing that labeled it as a "kids show," we highly recommend you give it a second look! A better description of the show is a modern animated sequel to Star Trek Voyager. The starships and characters are gorgeous, and the storylines run the whole range from endearing to humorous to tragic and riveting. Stop on by to join the fun!

Star Trek: Prodigy follows a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search of a better future.

Quote from Mass Effect News-Bot

From the phenomenal team that brought statues and figures for Urdnot Wrex, Fallout 4’s T-45, and other iconic figures from Just Cause, Dragon Age, and others is another fine-looking collectible. Gaming Heads reveals female Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect trilogy in all her badass glory. At 1:4 scale, there is a standard and exclusive version available for purchase with that latter offering an additional weapon, the M-98 Widow Anti-Material Rifle. Both editions come with the M8 Avenger assault rifle, so swapping between weapons won’t be a problem.

What better way to immortalize the intrepid commander than in polystone resin? The careful handiwork and hand-painted details make this gorgeous statue another one for the personal collection. Standing at 20 inches tall, this commander makes a formidable foe against those who threaten Earth. Check out a spotlight video that shows off the galactic hero

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The CIC staff is frantically making preparations for tomorrow night's big birthday party, and now we've got a perfect set of ASMR music to help us focus! Scribbler has just released a pair of ambiance videos that skip ahead to Wing Commander 3. You can hear the hum, beeps and chirps of the TCS Victory's flight ops or gunnery control centers. Or find a complete list of his WC tracks here!

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

Admiral Kensington glanced across the room full of flag officers, to Vice Admiral Katrina Cornwell. The Vice Admiral was sitting opposite from Kensington, and after a moment, Kensington caught her attention. Both women nodded to one another, not saying a word but speaking volumes. The last four hours had consisted of presentations by the collective admiralty involving increasingly more complex and impossible defense strategies, whose intended purpose was to slow or stop the Klingon offensive against the Federation. None of them could be assembled in time to stave off invasion, but the two women, days before the meeting, had settled upon a simple, bold, and effective plan. Cornwell cleared her throat at a precisely optimal time, between sentiments from her colleagues, and leaned in to the table, resting her elbows on the edge in a classic dominant behavioral display. She steeped her hands and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

DefianceIndustries

has finished his Exeter, and it's another beauty! The main gun and ball turrets are eye-catching, but there are lots of great details. I especially like the frontal nose shot, which really shows the weaponry off well. The aft hangar bay is also a nice touch, although it could be a bit dicey coming in for a landing while the ship is at full speed! It's

not

the

only

ship

with a bay positioned like that though.

Ah, the Exeter, my favorite destroyer in all of Wing Commander, really in all of Sci-fi destroyers. I probably spent way too long on the hull panels, but I do like how it turned out.

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