Wing Commander

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We're still in recovery mode here, so the team is taking it easy today with another ASMR style ambiance video from Scribbler. This one's a little more laid back than his other recent WC3 additions. You can hear the familiar hum of the Victory's engines and the elevator opening in the background, but this time there's also music playing. It's not quite the swankiest of Oldziey tunes, but it's a nice background track!

Mission successful, report submitted, off to the bar and finally peace and quiet. Let's grab some snacks and good cocktails. A little card games or charming conversations? Or just chill. We're not doing anything tonight.

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I would give so much to be able to read the text on these monitors from Wing Commander III. Look, there's a designation for the Hellcat V right there! F-86 maybe? F-46C?

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Today we've got a really beautiful little Tarsus by Cpt. Streets. What really stands out here is the intricate and highly detailed paint scheme. It's got lots of very fine accents that are very pleasing on the eyes. The engine nozzles are painted with a blend of yellow and orange fluorescent acrylic paint that even seems to glow under a black light. We're looking forward to seeing how his Hornet turns out next!

These are some pictures of my 3D-printed Tarsus Freighter from Privateer. It is my first ship model from the Wing Commander universe so far.

I did not made the 3D mesh itself. I only painted it and modified it a bit as well. It is about ~16cm (6,3") long.

Currently I´m working on a Hornet Fighter in approximately the same scale as the Tarsus. I will do ships from WC1, WC2 and WC Privateer. But more about this at another time...

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Check out this awesome Seahawk model that LOAF recently got 3D printed. The CIC staff love things like this, but none of us have the hardware or technical knowledge to make these ourselves. Fortunately, that's where the cottage industry of make-to-order prints comes in! Some sources can seem kind of sketchy, but LOAF found this one on Etsy (3Dwitha4Kface) and the results are solid. They also make a Dralthi, Scimitar, Kamrani Corvette, Centurion and Tiger's Claw in sizes from 1 inch to 12 inches. If you pick one up, keep in mind that some gluing and assembly may be required!

I got a huge Seahawk from Etsy’s Black Friday sale.

The SR-51 Seahawk Airborne Early Warning/Airborne Warning and Control Ship aka the SWACS.

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New year, new Originator! AllTinker is kicking off 2024 with another release to his impressive Wing Commander modding and hacking tool. New features include a better reader for hex editing, support for more WC3 elements like cockpits, improved decompression of Privateer 2 contents and more. You can download the updated package here!

Version 0.2.03 (2024-01-01)

• Improved the hex viewer; added hover highlighting between hex/character views, also fixed an issue with larger font sizes.
• Added support for packed WC3 shapes (e.g. for cockpits), and more IFF-embedded shapes in general.
• Added automatic decompression for IFF chunks (QFS/Deflate), which is especially relevant to Privateer 2. As usual there are many palettes still requiring hook-up logic, so colours will be wrong in many cases for several games (including P2).
• Added "Experiments" (under "Tools") which I will be adding to over time. Currently the

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Fan art from 1994! Found while digging through Amiga history for that demo writeup. Looks like it was done in a package called "Real 3D".

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LOAF recently ran across this nifty issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus. It's positioned as a preview of Privateer just prior to its imminent launch, but the "article" is provided by Origin itself. I wonder when it was written, because it's pretty aspirational for being published just a few weeks before the game shipped. It's interesting to spot the differences between this and the final game!

Did we ever figure out ethics in game journalism? Here's a case where the magazine just let one of Privateer's designers straight up write the preview... and it's totally reasonable and promises only what they end up delivering.

Here's a nice visual comparison of when CGSP also had covers of Privateer 2 and Privateer 3!

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Goge stopped by to share a very cool space sim tech demo that he's been working on lately. It's called Squadron: Mercenaries and he's got some very lofty goals in mind! The core portion starts as a traditional Wing Commander style sim, but there are larger secondary element planned as well. One really cool thing that jumped out at me is that it just runs in a browser window. You can visit the website here and be playing in a few seconds without installation. More info is on the page to get oriented. We hope to see some of his ambitious plans come together!

Squadron: Mercenaries

Squadron Mercenaries is a thrilling spacefaring epic that blends the adrenaline-pumping space flight combat simulation of Wing Commander with the intricate personnel and material management aspects of 'Mechwarrior Mercenaries.' In this immersive game, players will not only engage in intense dogfights and grand-scale space

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Scout recently found this spicy post on the Game Collecting Reddit. A user named charitysmyth1 had just acquired a copy of Wing Commander 2. Much to their surprise, it contained a collection of vintage early '90s adult media. These look like rather tame items all-in-all, but they might have been considered pretty racy before the internet age. Although not pictured, it sounds like the box did include the WC2 disks at least!

Scored some big box PC games over the weekend. What I found in Wing Commander II completely caught me off guard.

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Hey, who wants some new Cybot ships and scenes? They might be a little weird, but they're always amusing and some are available now to help kickstart your project! New downloads include the Niven Base and Steltek Assortment. Be sure to let Cybot know if you find any of these designs useful!

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EmuMusicFan recently added a Japanese copy of Wing Commander 3 for the Playstation to his collection. This version has some absolutely gorgeous documentation that I don't think we've posted before, so here's the Combat Guide instruction manual in its entirety! It's in full color, which is really sweet. I always always like to see what bits of the game and interface remain in English after the rest is translated. It's very cool all around!

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Here's a nifty demo disc from LOAF's vast collection. It's similar to the Origin CD Shortplays sampler that includes Wing Commander 4 and Crusader: No Remorse plus Cybermage and BioForge. The latter two are missing here, but Wing Commander takes up an even bigger proportion of the disc art. The Wing Commander 4 demo was absolutely enormous for the time, so miscellaneous preview discs like this were one of the main vectors for people to try it out. A lot of Wingnuts obviously own the main game and didn't feel the need to hunt down the demo, but there is a really cool unique mission included. It even lets you pick up a stormfire gun in space! Fortunately you don't need to hunt down your own copy - download links to each of the three different variants are included below.

Several versions of the Wing Commander IV Demo exist. The first included a cinematic trailer and was released on magazine cover

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Development on the WC4 Fan Remake has been generally slow of late, but Pedro has a few neat updates to report. He's done some testing with ODVS' fantastic enhanced video with great results. It'll be a perfectly complement to the gameplay updates that have been at the forefront so far. There has also been some discussion on new features like modern gamepad controller support as well as improving some of the development tools as well. There's still quite a bit of work to go, but it's good to hear the team is still on it!

To be honest development paused for a while, but I came back to it last night, did a few fixes; tested it with ODVS' AI upscale. It looks good, don't worry we'll be incorporating the best possible video when the time comes. I did make some progress on a particle editor, but Rear Admiral Tarsus is offering to help out with tools (which I am super grateful for). We have a potential

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Many of the actors from the Wing Commander series have retired from acting or are otherwise engaged in different types of projects these days, but one person who's continued to see a fair bit of movie success is Josh Lucas. He's had a varied mix of action, drama, romance and now thriller type roles over the past 10-15 years, so he's enjoyed a pretty typecast-free career. He's also the main star of The Forever Purge, the fifth movie in the Purge series, which was just released in theaters this month. It looks like the new movie came in third place with about $12 million last weekend, but that's not so bad considering fairly stiff competition posed by F9 and the new Boss Baby sequel - not to mention the shadow that the pandemic still casts over the industry. As part of the press tour, there are a handful of interviews catching up with Mr. Lucas, such as the GMA piece below. Wow, he's fifty now!

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We see so few clips of modern YouTubers and streamers trying their hand at Prophecy for the Game Boy Advance, so I'm always eager to share the ones that I run across. Here's a mission from fastrun14. It doesn't really sound like they enjoyed the experience - the game controls take some practice to get used to - but it's wonderful to appreciate the technical aspects here. Check out the 3D autopilot effect and the paint scheme on those Piranhas! And wow to the "mission accomplished" spoken audio at the end. It's hard to avoid comparisons to the 3D accelerated PC version, but the game is running on something less than a tenth as powerful as the minimum PC specs here. What Raylight achieved never ceases to amaze!

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ObscureArtifacts on Instagram has posted a phenomenal photograph of the animatronic Melek costume from Wing Commander 4. It was taken by one of the prop masters behind the creation of the suit and other artifacts used in the game. WC4 Melek doesn't get a whole lot of love, but in recent years I've come to appreciate the look much more. In retrospect, I find the design less bug-eyed than my teenage memories recall. It's starting to feel like a more natural evolution of the look in Wing Commander 3. He's also highly variable. Under harsh lighting, some of the more artificial elements become pronounced, but the warmly lit Melek depicted below looks pretty smooth!

Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom (1995)- My studio was hired to create the external design for the games solo Kilrathi character, Melek (Chris Bergschneider) by the animatronics superivsor Bud McGrew. It was a great responsibility and

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Klavs has put together a beautiful new wallpaper of his Rapier cruising through the sky. I really like how rich the color here is with red warning tape, colorful insignia and even orange wing patchwork just like we see on the Bearcat. Everyone is welcome to enjoy the gorgeous imagery, but modders and modelers can also buy the design at Sketchfab. As we've previously mentioned, the proceeds go to help Klavs' family with ongoing medical bills. His Dralthi and Hornet are also available!

Hi everybody, work is continuing slowly on the Rapiers!

I've made the YF-44 available on Sketchfab for a super modest fee. As always, profits will go towards our daughter's continuing medical care. As I release the other variants I'll be continuously updating the other models, so you'll always be able to go back and re-download the version you've purchased once landing gear, weapons, missiles, and cockpit become

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Today marks twenty-three years since the Wing Commander Movie was released! It's hard to believe it's been so much time since we - and many of you - lined up at theaters. A lot has changed since then. Sure, there are still plenty of snarky podcasts that do their thing with it, but I've also noticed a big shift in the last few years. Lately, a lot of people have given it a second chance and can appreciate it for what it is. While the film remains hard to find on physical disc, it's also nice to see that it's once again easy to rent or buy on various streaming services. If you're checking it out again, let us know. We're always down for a rewatch or discussion!

Also if you missed it from a few weeks back, I wanted to point out Klavs' clean-up of the movie's universe map. It's pretty slick!

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The Wing Commander Confederation Handbook is a book that's presented as a fake web browser... and since it's from 1999 it's full of absolutely garish banner ads. And here they are, collected from the book's layout files! I could sure go for a warsop egg.

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The phenomenal expansion of the CIC Holovid video archive continues! Having recently vastly expanded what was available for Privateer 2, LOAF and AD have moved on to Wing Commander Prophecy. Their complete catalog of the game's cutscenes includes every clip in high quality, complete with transcripts, storyboards, alternate languages, variations and branching choices depicted. The game's ICIS mission briefings have also been digitized and transcribed, and THOUSANDS of in-flight audio communication clips have been added. This even applies to the 3Dfx Test and playable demo. Plus, a fun variety of behind-the-scenes and bonus videos are available as well. You don't want to miss it!

Here's LOAF with more detail:

• A page for every cutscene in Wing Commander Prophecy! Each page embeds the cutscene in question and collects all sorts of bonus materials:
  • The alternate, higher quality DVD footage
    • The German dub