Wing Commander

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There's a couple of really cool updates for the

Homeworld Remastered Mod

. Up first, the demo WC3 era campaign has a new mission. It's a neat setup where players have 15 minutes to prepare for a Kilrathi invasion force. There are a number of ways to win and a number of things to do to get ready, and it'll be interesting to see how players take this challenge on. The other improvement is a visual trick that potentially allows

L.I.F.

to implement variable textures on his ships. This will allow the game to better differentiate between different members of the same class with proper naming or hull numbers. Grab the latest version of the mod

here

.

I'm mostly done on the third Victory single player mission: Following the successful destruction of the Kilrathi supply convoy, the Victory and her battlegroup are holding position next to the jump point. The InSys station that noticed the convoy in the

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Centaurianmudpig

has released some new samples from his WC-inspired space combat game,

Project Aries

. The first of the two animated gifs below show off the classic interior cockpit options that you can select during flight. Then there is a demonstration of WC1/2 style flak cannons in action. Finally, there's a clip of a Salthi and Dralthi lookalike escorting a transport. It's nice to see there's still progress being made!

It's been (almost) two years, while development has been on and off (mostly off), work continues.

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Dardael

has made a fun new Wing Commander overview video. For starters, it's all in Italian, and we love to see fans spread the word in different languages to reach as many people as possible. On top of that, he's gone through and added extensive subtitles so English speakers won't be left out. He's also upped the production values a notch here by dressing up as a WC1 pilot and inserting himself into various scenes via green screen! That's dedication! Let him know what you think at the

CIC Forums

.

Hi there! I just made a retrospective video about the first Wing Commander. Is in Italian, but I added English subtitles. I would appreciate your help about this, since my English is veeeery rusty :p

Enjoy!

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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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Here's a real cool find from LOAF's recent treasure hunting. This disc contains several Origin demos in one collection courtesy of EA in Australia. The star here is the

WC4 demo

. It's quite a prize for WC collectors who are into finding all the demo discs that come with magazines and the like!

Saturday morning treasure: a demo CD from Electronic Arts Australia! EA did several of these ‘CD Shortplay’ discs for different studios. Wing Commander IV and other great games! And also Cybermage.

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IHOP is running a

Christmas special

where they now offer a stack of Grinch-green pancakes. Although this is kind of weird, Wing Commander fans are

acutely aware

that sometimes you just gotta

turn things green

. To help kick off the holiday season,

Music_Guru

has recolored the famous flying pancake to be green to match. I kind of like it!

So... we have a green Salthi in the SNES version of wing commander... now we need a green Dralthi to match the pancakes! 8P

Lord help me but I love green palette swaps.

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Adm_Maverick

is back with a big update on his papercraft Wing Commander fighters. He

recently shared

some of his templates and techniques on how to make these awesome little fighters with a home printer and scrap cardboard. Now the ships have been put to good use as part of a new tabletop game that Maverick is putting together. He's spent quite a bit of time playtesting with a friend, and the shots below show off some of their space combat in action. Looks like fun! You can find an elaborate breakdown of the rules and help discuss future refinements at the CIC Forums

here

.

So been a little while since I posted on this project, but wow what an update I have for it.

First off, a friend and I got in basically a whole day of playtesting using some of the rules. And pretty much decided the rules needed to change.I'm just using little cardboard models I've assembled for game tokens at this point. Nothing

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In the run up to Wing Commander 4's release, Electronic Arts kicked off a massive marketing blitz that included

theatrical trailers

before movies and a full court press in printed material. Highlights included its record setting budget, gorgeous live sets in the background of FMV and advanced integration with the gameplay. WC4 was popping up everywhere - even in the air! LOAF recently found this in the December 1995 of

American Way

, American Airlines' in flight magazine.

"It's a movie. It's a space combat game. It's the most excitement you'll ever have on your PC."

And they were right!

A few weeks ago I read an old article about marketing Wing Commander IV that mentioned they ran an ad in American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines. It didn’t say what issue, so it took a bit of trial to find... December 1995! ... and if anyone wants a fat stack of old airline magazines from the eBay

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Eagle-eyed Wingnut

StarvingPilot

spotted a Wing Commander prop reappear in a television commercial. A simple, but unique, console appeared near the Midway's hangar in Prophecy. The same unit popped up again in a Coca-Cola ad the following year. Both are visible just briefly, so this is a crazy catch!

Here’s a background WC prop which can be found in another production. This futuristic console (although if you look closely, it looks like a solar panel attached to a battery box and lights) can be found on the hangar deck of the TCS Midway in WCP, as well as a later Coca Cola commercial from 1998. The commercial can be found at:

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PhilsComputerLab

has a new video on a program that slows down older machines. As early as 66 MHz started to come on the market, fans had to use programs like

moslo

to get the original Wing Commander smoothly playable. This presented an issue whereby a system powerful enough to run WC3/4 was too powerful to run WC1. In comes the 'setmul' app that specifically works with higher speed original Pentiums for some very granular adjustment. Wing Commander fans are able to do some amazing things today thanks to utilities like DOSBox that emulate DOS environments, but sometimes it's nice to get things going on the original '90s hardware. This could be useful for classic hardware collectors that don't have space for multiple machines tailored to each game. You can find also Phil's videos on tweaking GOG WC1-3 and Privateer

here

and

here

.

PhilsComputerLab had an interesting video today on how you can take a

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Wing Commander fans have dressed up as their favorite pilots and

paraded around

at a number of conventions over the years, but most have been associated with a CIC-sponsored activity. That makes st3lt3k's recent find a fun surprise. He spotted this image taken by

foxpaws

at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con. Even more unusual is the actual outfit depicted here: a flight suit from the Wing Commander Movie. You don't see too many fans wearing these in the wild - especially a dozen years after the film came out! I don't think I've worn mine in public since

2002

. It looks to be an actual prop from the production due to all the small details that seem spot on. High five, dude!

This was a fairly obscure costume. My initial guess was Kaneda from "Akira" until the person clarified.

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Artist Mike Winterbauer's has an update on his Wing Commander

Art Portfolio

project. Most of the rewards have started shipping. If you haven't received your items yet, you might want to check your Kickstarter message inbox for an update. The CIC Staff has received some of our items, and they're just gorgeous! We'll have more on the contents in the future. Here's a few more shots of the items preparing to ship:

Happy Holidays Cool Wing Commander Fans! Let us know how you like your rewards!

Thank you for bringing this awesome project to life! I am enjoying packing and shipping the beautiful rewards. Most rewards are shipped. I have some international books and metal prints left to ship and I plan on finishing shipping before Christmas.

Thank you again for your wonderful support.

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AD found an interesting VHS recording of a '90s Polish video game show, TV Enter. In this episode they review several games, including Dreams to Reality, Critical Depth, Rampage World Tour and Wing Commander: Prophecy. Whether or not you speak the language, this is a very interesting time capsule into the digital landscape of 20 years ago. Each of the profiled games is a unique peek at the graphical differences of the day, and even the garish P2-style computer backdrops between cuts bring back wavy neon memories. If the embed below doesn't work, jump to

7:25 in the video

for the Wing Commander part.

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The latest addition to the

Homeworld Remastered Mod

is both beautiful and deadly.

L.I.F.

has added the ability for the Wasp to shoot its devastating swarmer missile pod. In combination with the interceptor's speed, Confed really has the ability to reach out and touch someone now!

After some discussion with DefianceIndustries, Dark Sentinel and a few others, we decided it was time to make a game more faithful to the original Wing Commander manga rather than trying to fit the bad gaijin adaptation. Don't you remember fondly when Blair-kun was asking advice to Paladin-sensei on how to deal with baka-Tolwyn?

This is why I'm working on the proper implementation of a true Wingo Commanderu no Blair-san experience for the next update, with the proper Macross Missile Massacre.

More seriously, that's the Wasp's Swarmer missile burst being scripted for future integration of the MUP ships:

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Here's a neat Privateer 2 preview that

Pix

recently found. It's from the September 1995 edition of PC Home. This was just before the game officially became a Privateer title, but the article draws the connection that The Darkening's existence owes itself to Wing Commander 3 & 4's live video success. There's also an interesting Q&A with Clive Owen - plus some cool set pictures. Check out Owen & Jürgen Prochnow leaning against a tongue!

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We've got several new updates to share on the Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

today.

DefianceIndustries

is working hard to prep the next big update to the playable test package. In addition to a variety of incremental improvements and graphical refinements, it will also feature a cool lighting upgrade made in conjunction with Dark Sentinel. The Confed Superbase is also almost ready to go - check it out with both a Midway docked below! Stay tuned for more announcements as we approach the next MUP release.

So this thread has been quiet for a bit, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. We're hard at work getting a new package ready as a holiday gift for loyal MUPpets. This new package addresses a number of defects identified in alpha 4.0 as well as adding some improvements to improve stability and a bunch of new graphical options that we intend to implement over the next few releases. One of the

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There's

more

Wing Commander cosplayers out there than we thought! st3lt3k found a pair of Kilrathi warriors who were on the scene at the Stuttgart Comicon just last year. A casual observer might be excused for thinking these are space cats from another series, but upon closer inspection, there are Kilrathi symbols on their shoulder patches and Kilrathi text on the front of their costumes. That's dedication! Pictures from

lavi_bookman_j

,

Andreas Kinder

and

Facing My Life

.

I think the cosplayers (cosplayerinnen?) are 2 sisters. Totally on point! It looks like there are even paw pads on the paws! They're downright menacing!

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Here's a couple of German gems provided by Deathsnake. First up is the review of Wing Commander 1 from the December 1990 issue of Power Play. It apparently gets a double "Super" and 88% rating. We previously posted the magazine's reviews of

WC2

and

Power Play

, and they all make great use of the games' screenshots. There's also a crazy GameStar video that uses Sinner's Inn briefly as a backdrop. I wish I knew what was going on there!

...with Heinrich Lenhardt (Founder Powerplay, Founder PC Player, Co Founder Gamestar) with Privateer 2 Background - the Bar ;D

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Here's another interesting European artifact. This video is a Bulgarian television ad for a broadcast of the

Wing Commander Movie

. This dates back to about 2012 when it aired on

BTV

. It's pretty neat how far and wide the WCM continued to be promoted more than a dozen years after release!

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Here are some new shots of the Wasp featured in the

Homeworld Remastered Mod

. Last week we saw the ship's glorious

Swarmer Missiles

in action, and now here's the actual ship. It's pretty amazing how

L.I.F.

has managed to pack so much of the interceptor's original functionality into the ship, including its disposable booster rocket. It's a fighter I wish we'd have seen more of in the series, so it's great to see here!

The Wasp version that was tested in-game copies pretty well the workings of the Prophecy engine. It has a limited amount of Swarmer salvoes that will use different clusters from each shot - using the high-definition Swarmer missile made for the MUP - until it spends all of them and goes back to normal missiles or reloads at the carrier. In addition, it can use its one-time booster to get its top speed multiplied by 5 for a few seconds, giving it the famous capability to intercept