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Klavs has wrapped up the exquisite Sabre and Ferret models that he showed off last month. There are two styles of Ferret - one P-64C in In-Sys colors and a Super Ferret in active Confed gray. The Sabre is also on display with plenty of heavy ordnance. Both have also been posted in high quality on SketchFab for potential fan project use. Klavs has also talked about the texturing process in greater detail. Here's a snippet:

I've started using Substance Painter for the textures, it's really intuitive after you get the hang of it. I'll typically draw panel lines, vents, fasteners, thermal protection materials, and other details. I'm really just trying to think about how the ground crews would access stuff, how the complex shapes would be manufactured, and assembled how the pilots get in and out (hand holds, ladders, etc). I'll then add placards and other details. The grunge is largely determined by

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What a nice way to start the weekend! Klavs has wrapped up the texturing on his updated Ferret model. There are two variants. One is a familiar paint scheme based on what you might find in WC2/In-System Security. There's also a more muted gray set in End Run/the TCS Tarawa. They make a potent pair!

Calling this done for now.

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Initiatives to supply Imperial senator Simone Leatrix's festivities have reached a conclusion.

Mass deliveries of food and jewels took place in the Cemiess system.

As the campaigns drew to a close, Senator Leatrix made this statement:

"My gratitude goes to those who helped make this celebration possible. I hope the sight of my glittering mountaintop retreat serves as an inspiration in these times of civil disquiet."

Traders who supported the initiative can now collect their rewards from Mackenzie Relay in the Cemiess system.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A celebration of literature at H.G. Wells Terminal in the Olgrea system is the focus of the fourth week of the Alliance Festival of Culture.

Leyton Farris reported on the event for The Alliance Tribune:

"Devotees of both modern and classic fiction have gathered to celebrate a shared love of literature and meet their favourite authors. The event is also an opportunity for writers to promote their work and attract new readers."

"One highlight has been local author Hanna Darrold releasing a novel titled 'Chronicles of Olgrea'. The book concerns a local author releasing a novel during a literature festival, and has become an instant bestseller in the metafiction category."

Fans of the wildly popular Corsair King series expressed hope for an appearance by Olav Redcourt, but he remains in seclusion working on his science fiction novel. A spokesperson for Bonespire Publishing suggested "Redcourt is

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Last year we mentioned Plywood Fiend's alternative take on a Wing Commander playthrough. Rather than just add typical commentary to the stream, he spices up the episodes with his own animations, supplemental dialogue and unique captions. After winning the Vega Campaign, he's moved on and is now well into the Secret Missions. You can find a few samples below or check out his full Wing Commander playlist on YouTube here.

Woe, calamity and me, for I have returned with more stuff. Specifically I've gone back to do a play through of Secret Missions 1 in my own peculiar fashion; the playlist can be found here (scroll down for the new material, I'm currently up to the Gwenhyvar mission.) Below are a few samples of the added extras I've twisted in, most notably is a pixel art animation I made showing a fateful distress call from the TCS Johann which, suffice it to say, was not the luckiest of vessels, as

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It's only been a few days since Klavs released his new Rapier collection, but Mac has already eaten it up and built four dazzling 4K wallpapers around the ships. Each of the variants gets their own atmospheric scene that plays with light, shadow, angle and perspective. The high resolution allows you to really soak in all the glorious detail, and any one of these would make a fabulous wallpaper image.

Klavs finished his revamp of the Rapier line from Wing Commander. So I, being me, dropped what I was doing to play with the new models and get some nice looking "Glory shots" using them.

I present for your consideration, The Angels-44 series.

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Here's another round updates to

Howard Day

's

WC1-inspired engine

. There's some very interesting work happening with the fighter pilot AI. The

current builds

have been using the simplest version of his four-tier AI setup, and there's already been some fascinating scenarios that have dynamically emerged. Future updates will include randomized personality factors that will continue to make dogfights feel unique. Additionally, graphics for the startup sequences have also been put together that help set the tone very nicely! He's got a launcher screen that resembles the original game's menus, and there's even a parody of the Origin logo ready to go.

Huh...I can't likely show the Origin logo when this thing starts up...I guess it's time for a dad joke with some mid-nineties logo and icon design!

State of the AI - right now friendly and enemies are using only one single level: Novice. I've been building

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Here's a quick graphic showing the known service dates for Confed fighters from the games (2654 and after); as you can see, it's largely not a case of designs replacing each other between WC1-3!

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ZenOasis has put together a groovy folder icon based on the Wing Commander Movie promo art. I didn't even realize this was a thing! Hit the thumbnail below for a full size icon with transparency that you can use for any directory where you might need to keep Wing Commander film material. Here's instructions on how to set this up in both Mac OS or Windows. Folder icons are definitely ZenOasis' jam - you can find thousands more here.

Wing Commander movie folder icon based on the early 90s game Wing Commander by Chris Roberts

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It's about to be the weekend, so I know what you need: a Wing Commander 2 folder icon! On top of the WC Movie icon we've previously reported on, ZenOasis has created an icon starring Prince Thrakhath. It's perfect for storing the shortcuts to your favorite classic WC games! The main graphic is below, and an even more retro interlaced version can be found on DeviantArt. You can now commence your weekend - it'll be even better now than it would have been before! You're welcome.

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At long last, the final rewards for most all of the Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium project have been delivered. It's hard to believe, but this effort kicked off way back in September 2019. Author Andrea Contato and team persevered through the pandemic to bring together this historical tome on Origin's heyday and develop some really cool bonus items to match. Denis Loubet's WC1-themed bookmarks are exquisite, and Manda's cloth art is top notch. If you missed the original campaign, a small number of leftover items are still available if you act fast!

Hello backers, we are nearing the end of this Kickstarter. All books have been shipped except a dozen that are on hold for various problems. The last big shipment of books for USA is being delivered. Most of you are going to get their reward this or next week, some of you already received the book yesterday.

If you

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It's the final stretch for Andrea Contato's second book on the history of Origin, Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium. The project is nearing its €40,000 stretch goal, which adds an appendix full of personal interviews and anecdotes. Jumping into the €50 (plus ~€25 for tracked shipping to North America) hardcover tier will also be the only way to get Denis Loubet's cool Wing Commander bookmark, so factor that into whether you would like to consider funding the book. It might be the most expensive piece of paper you buy this week, but that just makes it taste better.

1) We lowered shipping cost from Part 1 for many countries. Canada and the US benefited the most from this as we managed to lower the shipping cost by 25-45%. With the introduction of Love tier (i.e. untracked shipping), we have hit rock bottom for shipping prices without subsidizing shipping out of

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We're entering the last day of the Wing Commander album campaign. After yesterday's surge in contributions, the project is currently sitting at more than $22,500 in donations to make a new record of classic WC3-Prophecy music with both a live orchestra and choir. Thanks to all of the very generous fans, the stretch goal has already been met and all aspects of the project should be able to be accomplished. With any remaining proceeds from a last minute bump, Origin composer George Oldziey will attempt to squeeze out a bit more music to fill out the album even further. If you'd like to spend the final hours with fellow fans, Kevin Caccamo will be hosting a Prophecy-themed livestream from noon to 2pm Eastern US time. Then you can also join us in Discord #Wingnut as the minutes tick down to the campaign's conclusion at 5 pm Eastern US time. I'm very excited to see where things end up. Check back

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A further 13 systems have fallen under Thargoid control as the last of the Maelstroms materialise.
The three rogue signal sources – designated Thor, Raijin and Hadad – entered human-occupied space yesterday. As with the previous five anomalies, they manifested as colossal clouds of corrosive gas over 100 kilometres in diameter.
Pilots who attempt to investigate the Maelstroms have been warned that the highly caustic nature of the clouds can disable and destroy ships. Xenologists have speculated that the cloud is a defensive asset, maintained by the huge numbers of caustic generators clustered within.
All eight Maelstroms are now established at their destinations, positioned in a broad semi-circle along the fringe of the core systems. Each of these entities has become the centre of an expanding Thargoid sphere of influence. Populated systems in the surrounding

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Delivery campaigns in the Alcor and Colonia systems will complete the six starports along the Colonia Bridge.
Months of work on developing the transportation infrastructure between the core systems and the Colonia region are now coming to an end. Brewer Corporation's latest press release specified the requirements:
"For this final week, we are asking pilots to deliver auto-fabricators, micro controllers and resonating separators to Macdonald Settlement in the Alcor system and Jaques Station in the Colonia system. These will allow us to install outfitting, shipyard and tech broker services, as we bring the starports to full operational status. There is also another opportunity to install Pioneer Supplies at Promium Relay, the bridge starport nearest to Colonia."
"Brewer Corporation is grateful to independent pilots for their dedication to constructing the Colonia

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The campaign to make a new Wing Commander album had a very good week! It added more than $1500 in pledges from a couple dozen new fans. With that being said, its current $18,500 tally does make it a challenge to hit the $22,000 mark to add in a live choir. As great as it would be to hit the $22K stretch target, composer George Oldziey says that if we end up falling a little bit short, he may be able to generate a little bit more live orchestral material with the funds. Either way, the money will be used to enhance the final product! The final few days of any crowdfunding effort can be unpredictable, so we'll keep our fingers crossed! You can secure your copy and help the project here!

Note that George's comment below is from a few days ago. The Kickstarter officially closes this coming Saturday. Now's the time to jump in if you haven't yet!

Greetings all! As a result of your amazing support

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The final design for Origin veteran Denis Loubet's nifty Wing Commander bookmark has been revealed! Mr. Loubet explains how the Kilrathi is a blending of Thrakhath and the Emperor, which I think makes for a pretty provocative 'Young Emperor' look. The Confed pilot is similarly inspired by Bluehair. There were several different color combos cooked up, and the slightly sepia toned version is what was picked. If you missed the recently successful Kickstarter where this awesome goodie was offered, there's still another way to secure one for yourself. Although they're not making the bookmarks available later as a standalone (we asked!), it's still possible to pledge for the hard cover version of the book at a supplemental IndieGoGo page here.

The book is ostensibly about Richard Garriott, Origin, and Ultima, but if you're talking about Origin, you're talking about Wing Commander!

For this

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Goku spotted a video with the legendary Mark Hamill promoting some new games as a part of the Thunderful World event. He kicks off the "Hamill's House" segment with a "You may know me from..." bit, and Wing Commander is the obvious name drop. The new games being showcased here look decent enough, but it's always fun to see the Mr. Hamill hasn't forgotten his video game roots in the WC series! Hop to the 9:00 minute point if it doesn't start you in the right place.

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Today we've got an updated look at the shipboard rooms for Wing Leader. Since we last took a peek, Howard Day has put a lot of nice extra decoration around the barracks area. The overall lighting has been enhanced, including red illumination for the save berths. There are also a variety of extras around the room, including a computer terminal based on WC1&2 computer designs. Two more exciting rooms will be in the works soon!

Barracks update - a bunch of lighting and tweaks to the layout and scale. I tried to mash up the interface from WC2 and the computers from the science lab from WC1 to add a communication / shipviewer / lore computer. Thanks to LOAF for the idea! Also threw out a CRT filter just for nostalgia purposes. :p

Done with the Barracks for now, added the atmospheric lighting to the briefing ready room as well.Either the Officers Lounge or Debriefing area next!

Enjoy!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A manufacturing complex owned by computer company Supratech has been destroyed by fire.

All on-site personnel managed to escape the blaze without injury. Emergency crews were soon in attendance, but were unable to prevent the fire from swiftly consuming the facility.

Supratech CEO Scorpio DeVorrow made this statement:

"I regret to announce that the fire has ruined our main production complex. Dozens of prototype Torc units were also irreparably damaged. This is a severe setback in the development of our new design."

"Investigators have been unable to pinpoint the cause of the blaze, or to explain why the fire-suppression system in our state-of-the-art complex malfunctioned so completely. Along with the security cameras, internal alarms and thermal sensors."

Maddox Hurd, head of rival company Herculean Machines, commented:

"I'm glad to hear that everyone made it out okay. But I have to say, if