Wing Commander

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Nephilim invasion of Confed space continues. This isn't the biggest bug ship out there, but the Leviathan is still plenty massive, and it's coming soon to a Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

near you. If you manage to ever get up close, check out that effervescent hull texture!

Look! Up in the stars! It's a Zucchini! It's a battlestar! It's an Osprey... wait... it's a Leviathan! Coming soon to a MUP release near you! We're adding another of Dark Sentinel's buggy masterpieces! Fear the enormity of the Nephilim carrier - packed to the gills with 14 maser and 14 IMREC turrets as well as enough bug fighters to keep you busy for about a year.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Eagle-eyed ship spotter Doug Lee has found a squadron of familiar Wing Commander designs in an unlikely place: a mobile game called Stellar Patrol: Galactic Conflict! The top-down space game features a host of familiar Wing Commander designs... and even uses a Rapier as its app icon! This is likely not a case of licensing the IP from Electronic Arts as Stellar Patrol also includes a number of other familiar science fiction ships like Battlestar Galactica's Viper, Star Wars' A-Wing and Firefly's... Firefly. It's a fun little phone shooter reminiscent of Subspace. If you'd like to check it out, you can download Stellar Patrol for free on Android or iOS. Better hurry and get to it before the lawyers!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AD, the CIC's resident finder of things and doer of stuff, came across this video to help you start your Wing Commander week. It's a nifty animation by Kyle Bumpus that recreates the initial intro to Wing Commander 1. I'm actually surprised there aren't a lot more takes on this iconic scene. Check it out below!

Modeling/Animation by Kyle Bumpus
"Wing Commander 1 Intro Theme Orchestra" by Blake Robinson (Synthetic Orchestra)

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The

Homeworld Remastered Mod

has gotten another update to more fully implement the fuel & ammunition mechanics that

L.I.F.

has been working on for some time. There have been some intricate coding hurdles that had to be scaled, but the results seem to add a nice dynamic to the fighter/bomber versus capship style of play. The game still looks great as well! You can grab the update via Steam Workshop

here

.

The Steam version of the main mod has been updated to the 2.5 version of Flag Commander, which is defined by complete rework of the ammunition and fuel management system.

As you can see in the screenshot above, there is a new feature appearing in the unit screen on bottom-left. In the vanilla game, you can see three stats items, the speed (green arrow), average damage per second (red target) and HP (blue shield). From now on, however, there are two more items for fighters and bombers, the remaining

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Forums member

pahandav

noticed a minor glitch with the

DVD port

of Wing Commander IV. The game provides transition scenes of Blair navigating the ship's passageways en route to hotspots like the lounge or flight control. Seasoned players usually skip these scenes to save time, so you may not have noticed that, on the DVD version, a few of these clips are lacking audio:

I was getting ready to do a stream of Wing Commander 4 and noticed that the walking videos on the Lexington had no sound. So, I extracted the audio from those videos from the CD version, and reencoded them to AC3.

To use these, you'll need to load SC_5150A.VOB through SC_5150G.VOB in AviDemux, go to Select Track under the audio menu, click on the box that says Track 0 from audio, and then click add audio track. Select the .ac3 file for the VOB file. Then make sure that the output format on the main window is set to MPEG-PS Muxer, and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's an interesting video by ShivanSPS. It features the mod Wing Commander Saga running on a Raspberry Pi 4. I don't really know much about Raspberry Pies (Pis?), aside from how they're tiny little $35 microcomputers. Freespace 2 and WC Saga aren't new or especially demanding pieces of software by today's standards, but it still seems impressive that they run so well on such a cheap tiny machine. It sounds like these were made to run via FS2_Open and WXlauncher in a 64 bit Ubuntu environment, and instructions on how to get those things going on the Pi can be found here! Let us know if you get it to working on yours.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Pix

and

Dennis Mull

have both recently found an interesting compilation by Empire Interactive. The set bundles together Wing Commander, Civilization, War in the Gulf and Frontier: Elite II all in one pack. Two of them are space sims, plus there's a tank sim and a classic turn-based 4X - not unlike hundreds of various '90s packs. However, this one is titled "Strategy 4 in one." In fact, the back of the box claims you can

"build an empire on earth or fly across the galaxy, you can do it all with this pack - 4 of the greatest strategy games of all time."

Now you know!

WING COMMANDER puts you in the middle of the most intense starship action you've ever experienced outside of a movie theatre. But in WING COMMANDER you're the star! "WING COMMANDER changed the way that other developers thought about designing games. This is more than ever an essential addition to any self-respecting PC gamer's

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AD recently found a music-related podcast that's profiled Wing Commander 1. They listen to the Sound Blaster basic music and then compare it to the deluxe Roland MT32. The hosts seem to be more versed in music history rather than video game history, which provides for kind of an interesting analysis. They also profile the movie

Creed

's score in this episode, and they jump back and forth between that and Wing Commander repeatedly, which is certainly an unusual format choice. The whole bit is more than an hour and forty minutes long, but it's always neat to hear some great WC tunes and some fresh admiration thereof as well. Give it a listen

here

. Afterwards, if this gave you a hankering for Team Fat's masterpiece work, you can buy their Wing One album at

Amazon

($7.99) or

iTunes

($9.99).

This is episode 18 which is basically our glorious comeback (again) into a more constant rhythm. Let's see how

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Forums member

pahandav

noticed a minor glitch with the

DVD port

of Wing Commander IV. The game provides transition scenes of Blair navigating the ship's passageways en route to hotspots like the lounge or flight control. Seasoned players usually skip these scenes to save time, so you may not have noticed that, on the DVD version, a few of these clips are lacking audio:

I was getting ready to do a stream of Wing Commander 4 and noticed that the walking videos on the Lexington had no sound. So, I extracted the audio from those videos from the CD version, and reencoded them to AC3.

To use these, you'll need to load SC_5150A.VOB through SC_5150G.VOB in AviDemux, go to Select Track under the audio menu, click on the box that says Track 0 from audio, and then click add audio track. Select the .ac3 file for the VOB file. Then make sure that the output format on the main window is set to MPEG-PS Muxer, and

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Iceblade

has provided a neat update on his

Discord

-based Wing Commander RPG. He's come up with a novel way for damage to happen that's more elaborate than simple dice rolls and hit points. All of this fancy logic is now being rolled up into a 'CombatBot' that handles the battle math. It sounds pretty cool! You can follow the game's development and see how to get involved yourself at the

CIC Forums

.

Combat Code is coming along great and is definitely ready for Roleplaying combats. Here is a sample screenshot of combat status page and a round of combat.

There is a fair amount of tactics involved in the system. Damage to various components now affects a ship's ability to fight including reduced ship agility and missiles failing to fire. Shields get weaker the more times they get hit, and armor must be worn down to damage components. There are also 5 methods to neutralizing a target including cockpit

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Following up on his recent release of the

jazz and bar music

digital recordings, veteran video game composer

George Oldziey

has sent out three more updates to his backers. George has exported the sheet music for several tracks from volume 2 of the orchestral project to video format. You can follow the score as the music notation is played back through the Sibelious sound fonts. The second update shows a preview of the artwork for the physical copy of the jazz album. It was made by community member

SabreAce

, who you may remember from his work on those awesome

squadron patches

a few years ago. And finally there was a response to a frequently asked question regarding the recommended listening order. If you backed this project, be sure to keep an eye on your e-mail or the

Kickstarter page

for the latest updates. Kickstarter e-mail updates always end up in my spam folder for some reason. The Victory bar music

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about the enhanced footage that ODVS has made for Wing Commander 3, 4 and Prophecy, but we've also heard from some folks who haven't downloaded the large (but not too large) file packs with the remastered clips. For all those folks, he's released this dazzling sample: the WC4 cinematic trailer. It's just gorgeous - even with YouTube's compression factored in! Owen made an entirely new set of clips for the CIC's recent birthday, and all the download links are available below.

• Wing Commander 3: version 2.0 (3.7 gig zip)

• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 1 (3.3 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 2 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 2 (3.1 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, French, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, French, Pack 2

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's good news on George Oldziey's live Wing Commander

jazz album

. The production copies have finally come back, so George is ready to ship discs out to project backers. Very cool

album art

was created by SabreAce, which you can see below. If you pledged for a physical copy during the original campaign and didn't receive an email with shipping confirmation instructions, log into the Kickstarter's

updates page

for instructions on how to get your album. These have been a long time coming, so it's great to see they're finally here!

Greetings all! I'm so TERRIBLY sorry that this has taken so long, but I FINALLY received the CDs that feature the WC Bar Music and recordings of the MIDI mockups and I'm ready to ship them to you!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The

Eternall Newbie

has made a quirky retrospective video about Wing Commander 1. The author goes through the game's setting and physical box contents and highlights what made it so great at the time. Aside from some wonky input controls issues, he says it still holds up pretty well!

Join me as I look back at the granddaddy of all space combat sims, the game that launched a genre, Wing Commander 1.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Former Origin veteran

Raph Koster

recently published a new book titled

Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One

. Available first in digital formats, you can now also get the hefty, 702 page paperback edition. Mr. Koster was lead designer for Ultima Online and went on to develop the ill-fated

Privateer Online

before moving on to Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest and many others. The postmortems book contains critical analyses and after-action reports on many of the games that he worked on throughout his long career. We've

previously highlighted

a few snippets on the proposed commerce system in Privateer Online meant to tease the various sections of the book. It promises to provide some fascinating insight behind the scenes of game development. The

B&N Nook

digital download is priced considerably cheaper than the Kindle version, while

Amazon

seems to have better pricing on the paperback version.

Few game

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Justin Flanery recently tipped us off about a new line of custom spaceship toys. PlayMonster's Snap Ships come in a variety of human and alien-styled designs, and the aesthetic could certainly be described as "Confed" or "Kilrathi. For example, the Scarab K.L.A.W. Interceptor gives off major Vaktoth/Darket vibes, and the Lance Scout partially resembles a Ferret. They even have a ship named the Sabre that would look quite a bit like a Wing Commander Sabre with just a few tweaks. These are customizable like Legos to an extent, so with so many space fighter-looking parts, there's some fun potential here. LOAF bought the Vaktoth and put it together below - it looks pretty snappy!

Justin: When trying to find some new toys for my son I found these awesome sets for sale on Amazon. They have an extremely “Wing Commander” sequence style to them and I think fans of Wing Commander could easily make some

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Cherno wanted to share a review of the 5150 Fighter Command ruleset as the backdrop for a tabletop Wing Commander game. The Javier at War article dates back a few years when there was a real boom in 3D printed miniatures, but the fun is just as current as ever. Check out the writeup on the experience here. If this gets you thinking about starting up your own games, and you're up to the challenge of painting your own awesome ships, stop by the Dream Foundry to pick some up! These just never get old.

I loved the PC game Wing Commander and I played all its sequels. I loved it so much that since then I wondered about the possibility of playing it with miniatures on a board. I wanted to play it solo as with the PC game, but I never could find an appropriate ruleset for this.But then 5150SA was released, and I bought it and played it, and I realised that its campaign system was so good and robust, that I

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Adm_Maverick

has made more progress with his Wing Commander

tabletop

game. He's pretty close to being able to playtest the game with fellow fans thanks to finalization of some stat tables. There's also an attractive new 3x6" card layout for characters and ships. Last, but not least, he's also testing out different logo designs. The one below is my favorite!

So I've had a bit of a semi-quasi-productive day today. I'm getting closer to a point where I feel like I'll be ready to start doing pre-alpha play testing and as a part of that I'm working on fleshing out stats. This is a point where using something like Excel has been a huge time saver as I can simply enter the bits of data and allow Excel to do whatever calculations I've set up. In this case I set up a spreadsheet to take the burn value, turn value, shields, hull points, how many flares and/or decoys the fighter has, how many missiles in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've seen Cobra's Explora and Seether's Dual Shadow… today, we conclude the trilogy with Hawk's knife. Lieutenant Colonel Jacob "Hawk" Manley seems to have picked up a new habit between Wing Commander IV and Wing Commander Prophecy. Like Cobra in Wing Commander III, he repeatedly brandishes a large survival knife in various cutscenes, alternatively sharpening it or using it to threaten Maniac. After his death, Spyder bequeaths the blade to the player. Wing Commander Prophecy's script expressly introduces the tool as a hunting knife: "FEATURE big hunting knife as Hawk enters and walks towards table" Later stage directions repeatedly ask Hawk to sharpen or otherwise focus on the knife.

Hawk is carrying a United Cutlery Bushmaster Survival Knife, the same general type of knife as Cobra in Wing Commander III (and from the same company as Seether's Double Shadow!) The Bushmaster Survival Knife is a 10"