Wing Commander

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We've got another exciting update to share regarding the Originator universal extraction tool. AllTinker has been hard at work this month building out features and better support to get the most out of Privateer 2 assets. This is a huge boost to people like LOAF who are spending lots of time researching The Darkening lately. Today's update allows modders and curious fans greater ability to pull both images, audio text out of the code. Grab the update here!

I'm chipping away at some longer-term features (and Confederation), but here's a new version (0.3.04) which is mostly focussed on Privateer 2.

I've added support for "BASE" images, which allowed me to complete the remaining palette hook-up logic. The major text formats used by the game are also now supported. I've added support for the IFF-nested sample sets, which gives access to the majority of the remaining (non-movie) audio. IFF shapes are

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You made it to the weekend! Time to repair, rearm and refuel. To help ease you out of the workweek, here's a brief primer on the Refueler. No, not the Condor Refueling Shuttle, but that's a good guess! We're going all the way back to the Privateer Refueler truck that was cut from the final version of the game. It appears in a variety of prerelease screenshots and even several images on the back of the box. LOAF did a bunch of research on it last year, and here's the scoop:

Privateer was originally intended to include an animated refueler and loader at nearly every hangar which would interact with your landed spacecraft. The animations were cut from the game and the refueler removed entirely. The 3D model for the Refueler has been discovered marked inactive in PAD.3DS in the WC3D archive.

It does appear in a screenshot used in print advertising and then three times on the box of the game itself.

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Now let's take a look at some of the background vehicles that did make it into the game!

This is TRUCK, CART and CARGO which drive through Perry Naval Base. Truck and cart also appear on the mining base.

LOADER is a variant of truck that appears in the ship upgrade room. From the dev files (and the Oxford promo shot that started all this!) it looks like they intended for these guys to appear on the landing screens too.

This is the first of several CAR models. It drives through the New Constantinople concourse scene (in both directions.)

Perry's pad vista has this blink-and-you-miss him fellow: a tiny SHUTTLE that comes in from the left entrance. I can't believe they built so many tiny models (large at the time) for background animations that weren't more than a few pixels in the final game.

New Detroit's landing pad has two vehicles flying around: JACKO and AIRCAR.

New Detroit's street level has another CAR

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The WC4 Remastered team is back with a big new update on the significant progress that the team has made over the last couple months. Although they haven't formally published any updates, they've been very busy at work on several fronts. Some key menu / interface tasks and video integration have been completed. The team has made some excellent asteroid fixes and fleshed out the first few introductory missions. There's even a beautiful new Clarkson class transport model. Head over to WCRespace for the full article on what's new!

Over Christmas and the early part of this year progress has been excellent, not only have we added all the missing UI menus but two more missions are now fully playable. Unfortunately it’s now ODVS’ turn to be overwhelmed with work so we will hold off showing those menus until he can replace my programmer art with his usual high standard.

For this article we will take a look

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Knight26-77 has switched over to Nephilim models, and his first two are beauties! He's managed to source a "burnt titanium" material that prints with an apparent irridescent quality in order to give them their natural bug sheen. In keeping with the aquatic Manta and Moray theme, Knight's posed the designs in and around the pool to give them a fluidic space vibe. These are definitely some of the best physical Nephilim models that I've seen!

Casey we got bugs!!! Printed this in Burnt Titanium. I like the look it gives. She just looked so good in the sun and wet.

Can't forget the build video:

Another Defiance Industries Wing Commander Prophecy Upgrade model.

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Shout out to the wonderful fan ship illustrations in Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe! They're credited to Elizabeth Creegan. You can access a full collection of Ms. Creegan's ship sketches here.

Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe is the master pilot's guide to all eight Wing Commander games. Every ship and weapon is discussed; every mission is explained; every winning strategy and tactic is detailed; every undocumented feature is laid bare. You get years of Wing Commander experience - without giving up your day job. It's the Bible of the Wing Commander Universe!

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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

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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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Fresh off the boat from Australia! I love weird compilations so much.

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It's a good week to buy Wing Commander games thanks to GOG's Sci-Fi Sale! Each of the WC titles is marked down 75% to $1.49. Since the theme is science fiction, the discount doesn't extend to games like Strike Commander, but it does include Bioforge, Crusader, System Shock and others. The sale should last all week.

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Tonight’s little project: a spreadsheet of all the ship graphics that appear in Privateer 2’s booth and which palette they use! Find the full link here (second tab).

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Super cool news: Christian Klein discovered a piece of Wing Commander ship art previously unrecorded by history! Check out this cool silhouette art from the cover of the Hebrew translation of the Wing Commander II manual!

It's done in the same style as the "World War II" silhouettes in the original manual... but it isn't one of them!

There's a similar piece of mystery WC2 art in the FM Towns port packaging: line art of a Drakhri that's shown in part on the case, disc and back of the box. It has seven missiles instead of four! I need an art person to make a whole version of it.

Discovering liminal art like this is one of my favorite things. A couple of other examples: the Czech cover of Fleet Action, Chinese disk labels for the original Wing Commander, the Korean 1999 movie poster and an early Privateer placeholder to fill out a '92 catalog!

Here's another example of this: the banner GOGcreated for their

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I added a WCpedia page for the Wing Commander II Demo with all kinds of neat history:

Wing Commander II Demo is a rolling demo of Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi. It features an early version of part of the game's introduction showing Prince Thrakhath's audience with the Emperor. It was the first Origin product to include recorded speech. The demo was created by Origin Systems to demonstrate the game at Winter CES 1991 (January 10 to 13 1991) and was released to the public via BBS afterwards. At the time it was published Wing Commander II was scheduled for a Summer 1991 releasee. It ultimately shipped in September, making the eight months between the demo and the final product the longest such stretch in Wing Commander history. The demo is not known to have received a physical commercial release.

Differences

• The 3space engine section uses a version closer to the original Wing Commander. It

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Mr. Hasgaha recently shared this nifty video that he built for a "10-second Cinematic" contest in Star Citizen. He was able to use elements of the existing game engine to recreate the briefing room run, launch and death of a pilot in the original Wing Commander. It's a short clip, but it's very cool to see this modern take on a classic!

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Thinking about the Privateer 2 pirate factions today. Do their VDU images match the lore? I think so!

• Chirichan - cyborgs
• Jincilla - hackers & small time criminals
• Kiowan - new age hippies
• Papogod - mutants

The official guide has two that aren’t in the final game, too: an evil Crow T. Robot for the Chirichans and a space owl for the Papogods. Seems like Priv 2 must’ve gotten a ‘is this too crazy?’ pass.

Maybe the same pass that robbed us of a space porpoise.

It’s an old trivia item that all four groups are named after North American indigenous groups too:

• Papogod - Tohono Oʼodham, formerly referred to as Papago
• Kiowan - Kiowa
• Chirichan - Chiricahua
• Jincilla - Jicarilla Apache

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Today we have an interview from the Hollywood Reporter with the cast of Office Space on its 25th Anniversary. Richard Riehle has a lot to say, and I thought it was fun to hear his perspective on various things even if there's no direct connection to Wing Commander. I was surprised to see that Mr. Riehle is 75 years old now, which would have put him in his early/mid 40s when portraying the role of Pliers in WC4. That sure makes me feel old! I've cut a few quotes below, but you can find the full Q&A here.

How does it feel to hit 25 years since Office Space?

Richard Riehle (engineer liaison Tom Smykowski): Hard to imagine it’s been that long. It seems like just yesterday, and people still talk about it. When I’m recognized, it’s one of the first things they ask about.

Riehle: Mike [Judge] always had things that he wanted to throw in — “Try this, try that.” He was the best host there in Austin, as

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LeHah spotted a new Wing Commander autograph opportunity. SWAU is offering Freddie Prinze Jr signatures via its website for the next month. There are a lot of photo choices associated with his role in Star Wars Rebels, but it's nice to see that they have five WC Movie options as well. The final press kit shot with Prinze in marine armor is less common to see, so that's a fun inclusion! You can place orders here. Prices are a bit steep at $95, but autographs are expensive these days!

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The Wing Commander Academy press kit says that there were twelve cadets transferred to the Tiger's Claw. Can you name them all?

Alright, let's see if we can find them! We're looking for the original twelve cadets transferred to the Tiger's Claw's command school. So Victoria/Viking here and the veteran replacements from the Trafalgar who are added after Chain of Command don't count.

First up, the three leads. Christopher "Maverick" Blair played by Mark Hamill and designed from his live action appearances in Wing Commander III and IV (minus 19 years). Bios are from the series' press kit:

Todd "Maniac" Marshall voiced by Tom Wilson and also designed from his WC3 and 4 appearances (though a little bit more The Real Ghostbustersy).

And new character Gwen "Archer" Bowman played by Dana Delany! She voiced Louis Lane on Superman that same season and it sure feels like both character designs were influenced by the

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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

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The somewhat amorphous length of a generation is, give or take, about twenty-five years. This means that as of today, the Wing Commander movie is a generation old… and, it follows, so are those of us that once eagerly anticipated its coming. I've written extensively about whether or not it was good (it was not) and what it means to me (I love it dearly) and I don't need to relitigate any of that today. In fact, the war movie cliches about old soldiers are more accurate than ever: the guns have stopped, we're the old men, all quiet on the western front and alike. The bickerings and debates and once-so-important battles of our youth have passed us by as gracefully as such things ever do. No one in 2024 could conceive, for instance, of caring about the Tiger Claw's missing possessive or what the Ralari /really/ looks like or even particularly to complain about Freddie Prinze Jr.'s casting.

If anything,