Wing Commander

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The art sets from Mike Winterbauer's latest Kickstarter have started to go out in the mail. If you backed this project, the items you were expecting should have recently arrived or will be on their way shortly. The new top tier item was a metal print that included his Super Nintendo box cover painting as it was used on a variety of different media. It's a nice complement to his original piece, and I've mounted mine side-by-side for a nice effect in the kiddos' reading nook. They're fun to look at!

Here's a couple of older wider shots when the first item went up.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Anatoly Shashkin has posted another awesome bit of WC history. He's shared several pages of preliminary programming for Wingleader, which was the intermediate name for Wing Commander before release. The depiction includes some of the methodology behind how the Kilrathi approach a target, maneuver / evade and retreat for home. It's pretty cool to see what eventually turned into the pilot behavior that we all know and love! You can find more great throwbacks on the DOSNostalgia Twitter feed.

Some AI code from Wingleader, a game that eventually became Wing Commander

LOAF added this bit:

Anyone can have a look at this! The BRAINS.C file shown here was included with the Wing Commander I rolling demo and will open right up in a text editor. (And anyone interested in the WC1 AI should check out the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide which reprints exactly how each enemy and ace 'thinks'.)

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Destro has a new update on what to expect in the future for the Wing Loader program. He added preliminary support for WC4, Prophecy and Secret Ops towards the end of last year, but there's still plenty to do for the earlier games in the series. Now that in-game speech is working in WC1, I might be most excited about what is happening with WC3. He's made some major breakthroughs regarding the ability to add ODVS' enhanced video footage. There's even the potential to add back in scenes like news clips and the Hobbes explanation that are only included in the console ports. It's all exciting stuff! You can download the latest version here.

I've got a few things planned for a new release. Currently I'm working on some memory fixes, better camera code to fix some jumpy issues I've seen online:

• A few changes to the scripting to make reading it easier.
• Added in Imgui support and making preferences so users

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Destro has returned with a spectacular announcement for the future of Wing Loader, which is a program he built to add audio speech to the Kilrathi Saga's WC1. The next evolution seeks to add high resolution video to KS WC3. The videos already exist. ODVS massively upscaled and enhanced the footage from WC3, WC4 and Prophecy a few years back, but at the time, it was only possibly to integrate these cutscenes into the latter two game. Destro's patch will finally close the loop and make it possible to enjoy the improved video in the game. There are many challenges to overcome still, but his success with WC1 shows that he has what it takes to make this happen! You can download the latest working version of Wing Loader here.

Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a great summer so far! This is my busy time of year but I'm keeping my head up and messing around with the next big feature of Wing

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we've got an exciting update to Wing Loader to share! Destro is back with a major overhaul to the project. As you may recall, Wing Loader is a mod to The Kilrathi Saga to fully add original (Sega CD) speech to the PC version of WC1. As the years have gone by, the scope has expanded to add things like the new Secret Missions from SWC and the bonus SM1 intro from the SNES. A huge upcoming development will be the addition of enhanced WC3 video to a future release. In order to facilitate that update, Destro has significantly streamlined and improved the functional code of the existing material. You can download the latest update here (350 meg zip) and follow the latest at the CIC Forums. You can also find detailed installation instructions here.

Version 0.90 - (Engine Re-Write) Released!

Wing Loader aims to create the most definitive version of Wing Commander possible by supporting the most

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

has developed another really cool effect for the

Wing Leader

project. The big video below shows off some fancy LCD distortion for use when your VDU takes a hit. Howard says he's working on further improvements to make it look even better in the future. There are also some enhanced backgrounds that now dot the spacescape, and the game's nifty chase cam helps show them off here as well!

Wednesday Wing Leader progress! Wrote a LCD distortion shader for the cockpit last night! Looks pretty gruesome. Also added some background artwork to the scene and more star types-really helps to make the game more colorful.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In his latest round of updates,

Howard Day

has a whole lot of new polish to show off. His

Wing Leader

LCD/VDU filter has been tweaked to look even better, and the background objects have gotten a dazzling overhaul. While the videos and animations for the project already look amazing, Howard notes that he's building the engine for 60 FPS and most everything so far is only showing off the game in 30 FPS max. Prepare to be amazed when you see the real thing!

Wednesday Wing Leader progress! I'm really close to pushing out an update to the Rolling demo. I just want to polish it a litttle bit more. The background art was *too* colorful, so I made it more natural, and subtle. No more purple stars and bright neon purple galaxies!Just thought I'd post some fun videos. Enjoy!

BONUS: Here's an awesome peek at Wing Leader running at 60 FPS!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A frequent question we get is to ask what's up with Wing Leader, Howard Day's impressive tech demo in the Unity engine. It's been in suspended animation for a bit, but Howard recently posted some shots of what it looks like with Mattias_G's CRT shader in place. It gets quite a retro vibe! He's also been playing around with some character models. His Hunter and Angel are below. I especially like the recreation of the flight suits. Howard was careful to point out that this wasn't a restart of the project, but it's always good to see him tooling around with Wing Commander stuff!

Here are some more direct side by side shots of the shader enabled.

My very early take on some talking heads for Wing Leader. Rendered in 3dsmax 2022, using Fessler's index painting technique!

This time with "Angel" Devereaux! The face model is by Damon Czanik. Straight renders outta 3dsmax.

#Wingleader Video with the CRT

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's been lots of gorgeous character and shipboard art for Wing Leader shown off over these past few months, but people are also interested in the project for its space combat. Howard Day has made some tweaks to the spaceflight engine and created some great examples of the latest build's gameplay. You can see everything from both the Kilrathi and Confed fighter perspectives below. The dogfighting is intense, fluid and explosive. Check it out below!

Doing some code refactoring about how the AIs control the ships. They're no longer able to turn faster than the player - and a bunch of hacks have been actually re-coded to work in a more straightforward, honest way. I've also been working on Reticles. As you can tell, these now shift around a bit as you maneuver. Makes the whole thing feel 1000% more dynamic.

Bonus video! This one's got the front/left/right/rear directional cockpit view enabled.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's only been a few days since our last update, but

Howard Day

already has a pile of exciting things to share in his

WC1-inspired engine

. For starters, he's dubbed the project

Wing Leader

after one of the initial concept names for the WC series. There's also a few new animations, and they show off the beautiful debris field that emerges from a destroyed ship. Finally, here's your first peek at the cute little Salthi! He's given it a single engine to better suit the Kilrathi light fighter's small

nimble

stature.

First look at the Wing Leader Salthi. Different from her canon version: she's only got one engine and has two photon cannons rather than lasers. I'm trying to make the various Kilrathi ships feel different, rather than the Salthi, Dralthi, Krant all feeling like fighting the same ship. I'm also looking at ways to only make them turn left.

New art for the photon cannon coming soon. Expecting

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

took some time out of his busy post-

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

launch schedule to release an update to the online

rolling demo

for Wing Leader! Much like the actual

WC1 demo

, this isn't a playable artifact, but it shows live assets interacting in the game engine. Even moreso than any trailer, this gives fans a first hand up-close look at what the game will actually be like live. The battle is pretty intense - all those Dralthis start to make me nervous, but fortunately they have both Firekkans and Confed opponents to contend with! Load up the rolling demo

here

.

The live demo's been updated! Includes the intro, menu (static for now) and initial fighting in a Dralthi! as soon as you die, tho, it switches back to Hornet.

Display More

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Yore Computer dug up an old August 1990 ACE Magazine preview of Wing Commander (then Wing Leader!). We tend to refer to '93-'94 era mag scans as quite vintage, but this is particularly ancient in WC terms. As this is such an early preview, it also's also an uncommon appearance of some of the game's early concept art. There's a very nice Hornet, Scimitar and Jalthi on the second page. Otherwise, it's always fun to read these time capsules that talk about groundbreaking 3D graphics and stellar cinematics. Newer players today might see the original WC games as nothing but retro, but they were truly impressive at the time!

LOAF has some additional sharing on this topic:

It's always a treasure to see Wing Commander I concept art that didn't wind up in Claw Marks! Unfortunately it's very rare. A couple more from the game's original press kit:

A couple more that surfaced in a CGW supplement promoting The

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've gotten some good

looks

at the static Dralthi cockpit in

Wing Leader

, but now

Howard Day

has given us our first look at the fighter in action. The alien VDUs and display readouts look especially fantastic. Battle damage and other finishing touches are also already incorporated. This is another 60fps video, so you can see again how smooth it looks below!

Dralthi updates! Enjoy!

Display More

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's something new and different in Howard Day's Wing Leader project. We've seen a lot of the pilots and their helmets lately, and Howard took this one step further to merge these characters with the exciting cockpit scenes shown off a while back. Check out Angel in the green VDU! To flip the camera around, the fighter seats have also been bulked up and fit a bit better with their flight suits. There's also a neat test of a pilot in the briefing room. You can see they're all the same person, but a lot of work goes into getting the scaling and light tones right. It's cool to see these difference pieces come together!

Bulked up the seats, fixed the padding stitching and wrinkles to blend/look better, added more helmet art, rank insignia on the respirators, and seatbelts!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day has added a new feature to Wing Leader: HUD brackets! These now function as a target lock for your designated enemy. The Hornet looks as you'd expect, and Howard's also jazzed up the Dralthi display a bit to give it a unique feel. The new feature looks great, but this is also a wonderful opportunity to check out the latest build of this superb looking fan game!

Some #WingLeader time last night got the code for the HUD brackets almost completely working, with some scaling to resolve. I've also re-rendered the sprites for the Hornet and Dralthi, as well - using the latest materials. Some new explosions, as well. Cleared out some of the debug art, got some clipping enacted on *when* the brackets can appear, and made the locked version steady, not flashing. I'm pretty darn happy with this.

How about some #ScreenshotSaturday #WingLeader Dralthi cockpit footage? There's new Kilrathi HUD

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's been a good month for fans of Wing Leader! Howard Day has another new ship and a handful of new prototype features to share. First up is the Strakha stealth fighter. It's inspired by Arne's Android Arts sketch of the ship with some additional WC3 elements brought in. Howie's also recorded several videos that show off new features such a cloaking effect to complement the new Strakha. There's also a preliminary communications systems that allow the pilots to talk with each other. On the graphical side, separate visual effects for project impacts against the hull rather than shields have been added, among other similar tweaks that make the gunplay pop.

So now that the Strakha is done, I needed to work on the Cloaking effect. Solution? Cloaking Devices for everyone! Wheee! Eventually, the drive flares will be hidden as well. I also re-figured out how to capture Wingleader properly in 60fps, so I

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day is branching into new territory with the introduction of a pirate fighter for his Wing Leader project. He's settled on the Talon, which makes a lot of sense. There's some wonderful variation in paint schemes and weapon loadouts to mimic some of the chaotic design seen by pirates elsewhere in Wing Commander. As much as I like the blues and greens, the purples and oranges really pop here! You can help provide feedback and see some earlier work-in-progress photos at the CIC Forums.

This weekend I spent some time making a set of Pirate fighters - based on the F-38 Talon, these are supposed to be Wingleader-styled versions.

The custom loadouts for these are:
Type A: Photon Blaster, Meson Cannon (scavenged Kilrathi weapons)
Type B: Laser, Meson Cannon
Type C: 2x Laser
Type D: Mass Driver
Type E: Meson Cannon, Neutron Cannon
Type F (Boss/Ace): 2x Laser, Mass Driver

I'd love any feedback on these.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month we reported on capi's slick Morningstar model made in Kerbal Space Program. He was also putting together a cute video to introduce the craft, and we're happy to share it now! It's presented in the style of a classic mission briefing starring the Kerbs. We also get to see some pretty acrobatic flying. The landing is a bit rough, but you know what they say about any landing you can walk away from!

Featuring the F-95 Morningstar, we fight like it's 1992.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Who knew IMDB made little video shorts? They've just posted a clip to celebrate the recent 25th birthday of the Super Mario Brothers movie. It talks a bit about why the film was the way it was and how it was critically panned. Wing Commander gets a funny cameo as the film that's actually ranked one better than Mario Brothers in the all time IMDB ranking of video game-based adaptations. Check it out here.

May 28, 2018, marks the 25th anniversary of 'Super Mario Bros.' The very first live-action adaptation of a video game, ever, was based on the hugely successful series that helped pull the gaming industry out of the 1983 crash. But when it came to its big screen potential, only one man had the vision, producer Roland Joffé.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

If you're up late Christmas Eve and still scrambling to complete your list - we've all been there, and the CIC is here to help! Give the gift of Wing Commander. The entire series is discounted to $12 as part of their winter sale. There are also great digital options that can virtually deliver the movie, music albums and ebooks. Whether you're done shopping or not, if the holiday stress has been too much to handle, head over to Discord #Wingnut and decompress with your fellow fans!