Wing Commander

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Red-Jackal

recently

posted

a neat 1993 Privateer advertisement from Computer magazine. We've shown it off

before

, or so I thought, so I almost passed it by. It is a little bit sharper than the one we have in the archive though, so I decided to take a second look. Upon closer inspection, tiny little differences started to emerge. This one is listed as "Circle Reader Service Number 248" instead of Circle Reader Service #94." The text indicating the game was "Available at a software retailer near you" and that it's "A stand alone game made in the USA" were conspicuously missing. One word of the actual ad text is also different: enemies "

also

want your cargo" rather than "want your cargo

too

." Last, but not least, the word

Privateer

is no longer italicized before the awesome quote,

"Where deals are made with a handshake and broken by the volley from a Meson cannon."

Pretty neat!

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AircPirateNinsei

's second flying

Hornet model

has taken off. This one's a lot more stable in flight and manages to cruise for about two minutes. It almost made a smooth landing, but I can imagine it's pretty hard to glide those in remotely. Plans are already in the work for a third version with structural reinforcements and familiar decals to spice things up a bit. We can't wait to see! You can follow the development at the

Flite Test Forums

.

The Hornet is our contribution to the 2019 Flite Test Forum & Flite Fest Community Fantasy Aircraft Design & Build Challenge! For more information about this model please visit our website: Airc Pirates – the sky is our ocean

The maiden flight of V0.2 was successful. The Hornet flies fantastic and I think it is perfect for a FT Power Pack B setup. Unfortunately there was a small pilot error which led to a crash.

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Retro Game Connect

has a new episode, and it's all about Wing Commander 3. RGC is a show that we can really identify with - just a couple of nerdy guys talking about the good old days of classic gaming. This is their 184th episode, and they're actually new to The Heart of the Tiger. In a series that was always ahead of its time, WC3 was perhaps more ahead than any other for the day, which combines with its intrinsic gritty charm to keep it very playable. The reviewers seem to enjoy the game, but they got stumped trying to land. Everyone's been there, especially in WC1 where you had to line up along the nose of the Claw. WC3 makes it much easier, but it still requires you to hit a couple buttons and/or slow down in the right spot. It's a good sign that they still liked it after ramming into the Victory!

Is this take on space dogfighting for cool cats or a messy hairball?

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I picked up this magazine for its promise of Wing Commander Armada strategies... and 80% of the article ended up being about how you connect to the other player! The

GOG release

makes multiplayer easy on a modern machine, I’ve played more Armada in the last two months than I did in the previous decade combined. Stay tuned for more Armada news in the near future!

Okay, so you've bought Wing Commander Armada and you're ready to take on the head-to-head challengers. If you read last month's review, you know that this game's best feature is its two-player support. But if you've followed any of the message traffic on the on-line networks you've probably seen many messages titled "Armada Modem Play: HELP!!"

Why all the confusion? Despite advancing technology in virtually every other sphere of computing, telecommunications is still an arcane art requiring a mastery of fragile components, obscure modem

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When Wing Commander Armada was released in September 1994 it was well ahead of the curve: the game featured multiple multiplayer modes that allowed players with modems or local area networks to go head-to-head or to fly together through the Gauntlet. The release of a free addon, Wing Commander Proving Grounds, expanded these significantly by adding six-player IPX play with more game modes and features like asteroids and pickups not available anywhere in single player. Unfortunately, this was a case of too much, too soon: without an internet for matchmaking, Armada's multiplayer never really took off.

There's some good news at the end of the tunnel, though: Armada and Proving Grounds are still just as much fun to play with human opponents today… and thanks to GOG they're easier than ever to get working! Gone are the days of dialing modems, configuring network drivers and praying. If you've never had

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The next episodes of

ALL WINGS CONSIDERED

is right around the corner! Join us this Thursday, February 28, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific). There's tons of fun stuff lined up, including an online multiplayer demonstration of Wing Commander Armada Proving Grounds. Follow the instructions in yesterday's news post and you can join in too! Whether you're ready to take on live space combat or not, join us for the stream on

YouTube

and in chat via the CIC's

Discord Server

.

Join us Thursday, February 28th on or about 7 PM Eastern for the second thrilling episode of All Wings Considered!

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The second episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're taking on a head to head match in Wing Commander Proving Grounds, playing through the third series of Special Operations 1 and talking about the origins of the Kilrathi! If you're watching live, you can join the End Run book discussion through the voice chat channel of our Discord server here. Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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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

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DefianceIndustries

has put together a new wallpaper that's super sweet. The star is a Yorktown class light carrier that's mocked up in WC1/2 style colors. To the fit the aesthetic, he's smoothed a few curves in key locations around the structure. The Victory may have been old in WC3, but she was still quite potent, and scenes like this make you wonder how cool it might have been to fly off one in the earlier stages of the war. Marc took a stab at this concept a long

while back

too, and it's interesting to see how similar they turned out.

This was kind of a "what if" spin off of a WC1 or 2-ized Yorktown. I got the idea looking at some of the renders from the old Tac Ops manual. The mesh has a few minor changes from the WC3 variety, the most obvious being the oval conning tower as opposed to the rectangular one, and the round-style turrets. Also the engine nacelles are rounded and beveled a bit.

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Here's a neat touch that I only just noticed in Privateer. The 'look' of your radar changes slightly depending on the software manufacturer: Iris, Hunter and B and S.

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Minor grail acquired: one of the post cards Origin sent to customers who had pre-ordered

The Secret Missions

in 1990. “Happy Wing Commandering!” This was hidden in a seemingly normal listing for a copy of Wing Commander I. Big box collectors, always look closely at what someone has kept with their old games...

This copy had some other treasures, too, including an old packing slip I can’t share because it’s full of someone’s personal information. But peep this: one of the counter placards that would’ve sat next to a store computer showing off the WC rolling demo!

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Episode 3 of

ALL WINGS CONSIDERED

is coming in hot! Tune in this week for an in-depth discussion on the Hellcat medium fighter as well as another exciting roundtable for the End Run Book Club. And that's just scratching the surface! Join us this Thursday, February 28, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific) on

YouTube

and

Discord

.

Join us Thursday, March 7 on or about 7 PM Eastern for the second thrilling episode of All Wings Considered!

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In anticipation of all the Hellcat love planned for tomorrow's episode of

All Wings Considered

,

Klavs

has cooked up renders of both the

Grumman

and

Douglas Aerospace

versions. They're a couple of beauties! For all the other big fans of these craft, tune in Thursday for a full rundown on these trusty birds - and much more!

How timely, my very favourite airplane! And look what I happen to be working on!

Just please don't fall into the trap of saying that the F6F was developed in response to the Zero! The contract for the Hellcat was signed in June 1940, prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and when the US knew very little about Japanese capabilities! And the first F6F flew only a few days after the Akutan Zero was recovered! #hellcatpedant! I have many other interesting Hellcat facts that aren't in the wikipedia article if you're interested, or want more images! I have done a stupid amount of work on

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The third episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're continuing the story of Special Operations 1, opening a MYSTERY BOX debating (and flying) Hellcats and talking through chapters 5 through 8 of END RUN! If you're watching live, you can join the End Run book discussion through the voice chat channel of our Discord server here. Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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We've reported on several instances over the last few years of Wing Commander music being performed

live in concert

in and around Sweden. Super awesome, but also pretty unusual, so what's the story here? Orvar Safstrom, the CEO of

Underscore Productions

, dropped in to explain what's up! It's very cool that the musical arrangements are set up to mimic a typical Wing Commander mission profile. Here's to their continues success and hopefully many more WC performances!

Hi everyone! I had no idea this was a sort of WCN forum mystery going on. Here's the story:

I'm the CEO/producer of Underscore Productions, we create symphony orchestra concerts with game and film music. SCORE and JOYSTICK are strictly game music while WE COME IN PEACE (sci fi), SAGAS (fantasy), THE HORROR (duh) and WE CAN BE HEROES (heroic/adventure/superheroes) include music from film, TV and games in the genre.

We've been doing the

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AudioKinetic

has published a great keynote speech by George

The Fat Man

Sanger at an event they held last October. It's titled, "5 Things I Refused to Learn in 35 Years of Game Audio." Mr. Sanger is a very engaging speaker with lots of great stories from the early '80s video game development scene all the way to today. The talk is over an hour long, and I highly recommend the clip for anyone with a fascination in how gaming and game audio specifically evolved into what it is today!

Well this is it. I think this keynote is about the best non-musical hour I can offer you. May it bring you a smile!

--------------------------------------

Rules apply to game audio in much the same way as a string applies to a kite. To make wise business decisions, you need to know things: product category, benefits, competition, chief differentiating factors.

And

• solve a major, common problem in a growing market
• have an

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Artist Alan Gutierrez has posted two more of the paintings that he created for the 1995 Wing Commander Collectible Trading Card Game. These two 'Luck' cards represent two of the fifteen paintings Mr. Gutierrez created for the game. You can learn more about his fantastic work on the card game here.

First up is Kilrathi Capture Pilot which was a Confederation Luck card that allowed the human player to take an enemy pilot from a destroyed fighter.

From the card game "Wing Commander", commissioned and published by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, 1995

This Kilrathi is none too happy at being captured, and is one of 4 "Luck" cards I did, showing 2 of each adversary.

Gouache on masonite.

The second painting is its counterpart, Kilrathi Recovery Pilot, which was a Kilrathi card that allowed the alien player to recover a pilot from a destroyed ship.

From the card game "Wing Commander" commissioned and published

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Adm_Maverick

's tabletop miniatures game has taken an interesting turn. Initial development so far has focused on

paper ships and cards

, but Maverick is now looking at some simple 3D printing options. He's considering tweaking the game to use small plastic ships as well as some clever

pilot console

scorekeeping devices to even potentially minimize the need for cards. Something like that could be useful in conjunction with the official WC CCG. It'll be cool to see how that pans out! You can follow the development and help provide feedback at the

CIC Forums

.

I've got a project file all setup to print 2 Bearcats and 2 Dralthi IV in different orientations so I can figure out which way it will work best to print ships.

But I've got other things that will be printed up. For one thing, I'm working on some rough ideas for the 'pilot console' design. The Pilot Console will be a tray of some form that will

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It's almost time for another episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED! For our fourth episode we'll be celebrating twenty years of the Wing Commander movie with a group watch. Join us this Thursday, March 14th, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific) on YouTube and Discord; be sure to bring a copy of the movie to watch along with us!

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In 1999, they made a movie of my favorite video game. Like much of the fandom at the time, I was a senior in high school and it was that point in our lives when the world seemed most huge and infinite, the future seemed wonderful and terrifying and we all seemed like we could do no wrong. We had begged and pleaded with the God of intellectual property management for years for just this moment and its timing seemed almost divine: our favorite series elevated to the next level of respectability just as we too prepared to take off to start running the world. But this isn't a great success story about the best movie. I can't tell you that Wing Commander is a great movie. I can't even tell you it's a very good movie. What I can tell you is that Wing Commander is my favorite movie.

Growing old is straight out of a Twilight Zone script. You want badly to impart your hard-fought wisdom to the next generation.