Wing Commander

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AircPirateNinsei

's impressive

Hornet model

flies great, and now it looks even better. He's designed a handful of slick decals based on the original WC1 cutscenes to give the fighter even more flair. A local print shop was able to turn these into adhesive foil labels for about $20. There's even a nifty QR code that can be applied so other people can easily scan the craft and find directions on how to build their own. You can find the instructions online

here

and follow the ongoing development at the

Flite Test Forums

.

I've reworked the decals again and especially included the KILLER BEES Logo, which can be seen in the game, when the canopy closes. The decal sheet has a size of 800 x 550 mm (31.5 x 21.65 in). I have also added Airc Pirates logos if anyone wants to use them. And I created a QR code with the URL to the download page. I will stick it on my new Hornet and interested people on the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Adm_Maverick

is back with a new publication of his

tabletop WC game

's handbook. It includes new details on the 'activation phase' as well as new rules for communications abilities. There are also special effects for certain weapons as well as standard cannon engagement range tweaks. Everything works in conjunction with the

3d prints

he's developing to complete the experience. You can grab the update and check it out for yourself

here

.

Okay this took a bit longer then I had intended it to take, but got the player handbook updated.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The latest 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's Nav Points include:

• More Privateer grind! Privateer grind forever!
• Dundradal takes on the Gauntlet
• Fleet Action Book Club, Chapters 8 & 9
• Privateer 2 ship of the week: the Jendevi

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.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Ryanek

has a YouTube channel dedicated to a novel concept: opening a pack of cards/collectibles each day and filming the results. Wing Commander was recently up, so we got a chance to see what treasure's in store. I really love this. I've heard this type of video is really popular with young kids, but now I can start to understand the appeal! In fact, I'd really enjoy a stream of someone opening up a whole box of

WC CCG

boosters and carefully recounting what they find.

Today I opened a 14 card pack of Wing Commander CCG, pulling a Luck: Shift in Battle Rare! Fun little game I played long ago. I will list the pack contents on ebay under ryanek-- thanks for watching!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's hard to believe, but we're already well into June and the (northern) summer is practically here. That means that it's once again time for us to start getting ready for the CIC Birthday Party! Just like we have for the last few years, we'll be shifting the observed date slightly to accommodate various conflicts. We hope you can join us on Saturday, August 17, at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). This year we'll be celebrating the CIC's 21st, which is hard to believe!

The party will take place in #Wingnut on our Discord server. As always, you're welcome to drop by the chat room any time beforehand to join in the fun. We're still working out the specifics, but for the first time, there's a chance we might also have an accompanying simultaneous live stream to take the excitement to a whole new dimension! Stay tuned for more details as the event approaches.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

DefianceIndustries

has another beautiful

WC4 capship

to share, and this time it's the Caernaven class frigate. We don't see too many frigates in the Wing Commander universe, so it's good to see them out in full force in The Price of Freedom. They're a slightly less beefy build than most designs, but Defiance has nicely modeled their side missile pods to give them a potent punch. He has quite a talent for giving these ships some real personality!

My WC4 era kick continues. We did a destroyer, now we get a frigate. Hooray for the Caernaven class frigate. Apparently these guys are the Talons of capships - just about everybody has one. We have Confed (which in WC4 livery is really plain. boo for post-war color schemes!). We have the Union, and my personal favorite the Pirate version.

I took the most liberties with the pirate version. The original one was just solid orange. This version seems more

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

took a break from his

day job

to show off an interesting new illustrating technique. The result is a remarkable pixel art reproduction of the Hornet cockpit. We've seen later WC designs imported to the earlier engines as well as plenty of upgrades that take the original designs to the next level, but this is something in between. It would be interesting to imagine a retro pixel space sim that looks more like the original Wing Commanders at a higher resolution. It could be something like this!

Well, I bet DanFessler never thought I'd try his Index Painting technique in #3DSMax... to my complete delight it works wonderfully! Here it is working well on an upgraded 2x scale WC Hornet cockpit. Near perfect pixel art, no tweaking!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's E3 week, so that means the news has been full of gaming announcements. There's lots of new AAA games and cutting edge hardware that grab the most headlines, but a minor note in the Microsoft lineup caught our attention. The

latest batch

of Xbox/Xbox 360

backwards compatibility

updates for Xbox One will be the last. This means that Wing Commander

Arena

won't be making the jump to the current generation of consoles. It was always a long shot, but with more than 600 games ported over in the past several years, there were some really awesome

obscure

titles included that gave us some hope. There would have been some nice advantages such as enhanced team/party chat, built-in screenshot/video capture and just an overall commitment to sustained longevity on the platform. As it is, it's already quite impressive that the game is still fully supported on Xbox Live after nearly

twelve years

. In fact, it

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Re.Enthused

has posted a video of getting Wing Commander going on the FM Towns

Marty

. The Marty was a console variant of the Japanese PC variant

FM Towns

. The two shared limited cross-compatibility, so it's really interesting to see that it runs! It requires the optional keyboard just to get past the initial screen where players input their name and callsign, but everything seems to load. Speed and smoothness definitely take a big hit and most sound seems broken, but it's still pretty neat. If you're not as familiar with this version, it's also fascinating to see the minor differences. Overall graphics are pretty similar, but the load screen displays "Start Secret Missions 2" alongside the normal prompts for Vega Campaign, Continue and Secret Mission 1. On PC, SM2 has its own separate executable. Overall, I'd say this is a successful experiment!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The latest 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's Nav Points include:

• Privateer and conversation! Chat live while we earn an Orion.
• Did Colonel Blair really take a vacation to the same beach he found the Concordia at?
• Zathras, yes. Zathras.
• Your first look at the 3D printed Pewter Planet!
• Privateer 2 ship of the week: the Icarus

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.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have a new poll today that asks which of the famous major faction logos is your favorite. We threw in the

Church of Man

's eyeball sigil for good measure too. There are a few more obscure ones out there, but we think one of these five will be the winner.

DefianceIndustries

also made these pretty graphics for us a while back, so it's a great opportunity to get some more use out of them!

The old poll asked about your favorite feature in our streaming web show

All Wings Considered

. The portions where LOAF streams gameplay came out on top, which is good, because there's been lots of exciting cockpit action in the mix lately! The Cargo Bay where we show off newly acquired collectibles of the week has a lot of fans, and people also like the Afterburner Slideshow where the team shows off a variety of neat pictures to address Q&A topics or share other significant subjects of interest. You can check out

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

's

cockpit test

last week quickly turned into something much more. He's maintained the retro visual style plus added extra Hornets and Dralthi to contend with. The result looks like a really awesome Wing Commander shooter! The fun ship designs may look familiar as they are inspired by

Arne from Android Arts

. Click into each of the thumbnails below for an animated gif of the engine in action!

Hey, folks. Playing with some ideas in Unity. if I can get it working well, I'll release it to the community to make your own campaigns and games.

I'd much rather make a system that's simple to read and create with, lightweight, and easily used to make new stuff. You should be able to 1-1 remake the original, but some things... I would recommend against? Faster projectiles, multiplayer options, etc. Anyhow, I dunno. I'm definitely just screwing around at this point, we're a long way away from even my

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Pix

has expanded his Wing Commander archive with a scan of the relatively rare

Wing Commander III: The Ultimate Strategy Guide

. It's decidedly the fourth best guide book for WC3 after

Origin's Official Guide

,

The Authorized Combat Guide to WC3

and the

Japanese Guide to WC3 on Playstation

. But while the other two English books are included freebies with the game on

GOG

, the Ultimate Strategy Guide is lesser known and harder to find. It's certainly a very interesting artifact in its own way. Hopefully more fans can

check it out now

!

I recently realised I'd missed it out so if the other 3 guides weren't enough for you, there is now a scan of the Wing Commander 3 Ultimate Strategy Guide in the disorganised list that I call a downloads page.

Display More

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

PeliKenraali

has put together a neat little video that chronicles the graphical progression from the Wing Commander 1 to 3. Most Wingnuts today would be quite familiar with these cuts, so there's nothing really new to see here, but there's a certain charm to seeing them presented side by side so you can appreciate how much the gaming world changed in just four years. The clip looks at characters, dogfighting, cutscenes and even the title sequence. Check it out below:

In this video, I will show how Origin's Wing Commander PC series (Kilrathi trilogy) graphics improved from Wing Commander 1 to Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Trelane

, the hard-working producer of

All Wings Considered

, has put together a neat video explaining how the credits system works in Wing Commander Privateer. He recently developed a good working understanding of the code behind Privateer's currency system while putting together the on-stream counter that displays while the team plays Privateer. I thought I knew a thing or two about binary numbers, but I learned a bunch while watching this! Have you ever wondered if you can get fewer than zero credits? What's the maximum number that you can accrue in your account? Watch the video to find out!

Just how many credits can you get in Privateer? Just how few credits can you have in Privateer? Yes! Both!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The latest 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's Nav Points include:

• Privateer and conversation! The plot continues as we run drugs for Tayla.
• Where is the Gemini Sector, anyway?
• Fleet Action Book Club, Chapters 10 & 11
• Privateer 2 ship of the week: the Duress

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.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

was recently showing off all the amazing new space debris, explosions, cockpit and so on in his new

WC remake project

, and he caught the attention of WC1/2 designer/director

Siobhan Beeman

. On the subject of junk in space, she had an amazing

revelation

: that the developers considered an in-universe explanation for the density of everything that we encounter! In a nutshell, the same phenomenon that leads to jump points also attracts everything else, so you'll naturally see more stuff in the strategic areas that we fight over.

Heh... there's a canon explanation for that, actually. Fights take place at and around jump points, and jump points lie at the intersections of isolines of graviton flux. Debris collects to and flows along these like plastic in the ocean.

So every battle takes place in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, essentially. It's the same reason our asteroid fields are so

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

As a precursor to the impending launch of

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

, the original Rebel Galaxy is now available for

free from the Epic Games Store

. This is one we overlooked when it first came out in 2015, but there's a lot to like here. The focus is on capship combat with a good mix of Privateer-style elements throughout. One of its two main developers, Travis Baldree, has been a

longtime

Wingnut

, so there's some positive influence there that results in a very solid space sim. The upcoming

Outlaw

prequel improves on a number of aspects, including traditional action-packed 3D fighter combat, but this is a great opportunity to get a taste of what to expect! The IGN review below gives a nice recap:

Rebel Galaxy is a game of action-packed combat, exploration, discovery, trade, and “negotiation” with the outlandish denizens at the edge of the known universe.

You’ll battle pirates, explore anomalies,

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day

has made incredible progress this past week on his Unity

WC Remake

project. He's implemented AI piloting and made great strides on the interaction of weapons, damage and explosions. The animations below show off the impressive progression of the engine. Definitely don't take the static thumbnail at face value - you have to see everything in motion to appreciate to appreciate it all! To that end, there's also a nifty

web demo

which is super cool as well.

I've got a WebGL build up and running that plays itself via the new AI. It's quite fun to just watch. I've implemented laser collision, damage tracking and death/respawns! Watch 'em blow up! Most of the fighting basics are in there - Now I need to add the UI - Radar, shield and fuel displays, targeting, etc. I'm pretty happy with this.

Protip: Never afterburn your already damaged Hornet light fighter into the oncoming fire of 3 Dralthis.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

DefianceIndustries

has switched over from his recent streak of big flashy stations and capships to put together something from the other end of the spectrum. This is his take on the stealth Hellcats that we see pop up in the Wing Commander 4 novel. He's managed to pull off a neat hull effect that blends the standard gray durasteel with some kind of low profile coating. The result is pretty neat and helps make the case for the Hellcat remaining in service with the Black Lance into the 2670s.

After the war, the boys over in R&D and Special Projects started slapping a cloaking device on anything with wings. They were obsessed with trying to close the gap between us and the fur balls; even after their disarmament at Torgo they still had a big lead on us in cloaking technology. So when we heard Douglas was shipping us a new model of Hellcat to test out we were a bit...skeptical is probably the best word