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Nerds that Geek has posted a quick flashback on the majesty of Wing Commander 3. The article's not long, but it captures the essence of what made The Heart of the Tiger great. The author credits the game for kickstarting FMV and next-level storytelling in games without compromising on the gameplay. He leaves off by encouraging people to pick up a cheap digital copy and relive the adventure. That's advice we can certainly stand behind! Check the full piece
here.
May
Just kidding. Today actually marks fifteen years of continuous daily WC news updates. The last day we missed was May 25, 2003, short of the occasional technical issue that may have slightly delayed the daily news a bit. Back in the spring of 2003, we were all eagerly awaiting the imminent release of Wing Commander Prophecy for the Gameboy Advance.
Not every day features major breaking stories or unearths startling revelations, but there's always something happening in the Wing Commander community. That's thanks to how engaged and dedicated you all are every day. Where will we be in another five, ten or fifteen years? Probably looking back and wondering what the heck the headline on this post meant.
May
…BritizenConis an annual event for fans of Star Citizen in the UK. In conjunction with
JR Design & Fabrication, the main panelists at the event were able to sit behind a really cool desk inspired by a setting in the game. On top of that, the WC fans there also built a really cool arcade style kiosk with built-in Wing Commander games! They designed a cabinet around a 27" monitor and loaded up Wing Commander 2, Armada and more on the systems. Everything was topped off by a keyboard and joystick built into the frame so that fans could simply walk up and jump into the games. You can read up further on how everything came together
here.
Second on the list was to recreate some of the trading consoles and re-purpose them as Wing Commander arcade machines. As soon as we had this idea it had to be done!!Painted and in place at the event they certainly went down well with the crowd and the people we spoke
May
Today is Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' birthday! He's looking pretty good for fifty - video game development seems to suit him well. Still, hopefully he's able to take a break and enjoy the weekend!
May
…Wing Blenderhas gotten its first update in more than a year. The program is a
Blenderimporter/exporter for ship models that allows for easier manipulation of the items in Wing Commander Prophecy or Secret Ops. It's been a useful app for fan project modders, and the new version 2.2.1 can easily cut import time in half! You can grab the program
hereand get tips on its use at the
CIC Forums.
Anyway, if you've tried to use the importer, you'll know that it is sluggish as hell. I've been trying to work on that. I made a few optimizations to the importer recently, which mostly involve using flat typed arrays instead of lists of lists, and it turned out to be MUCH faster than what I had. With my most recent optimizations, I was able to cut the import time in half! Well, at least for the more detailed meshes. AST_S_01.IFF hasn't shown much improvement in terms of import time, but that's because the other
Jun
…Former Origin veteran
Raph Kosterhas just published a new book titled
Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One. Mr. Koster was lead designer for Ultima Online and went on to develop
Privateer Onlinebefore its unfortunate cancelation. He then was hired by Sony as Chief Creative Office for Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest and many others. His new book goes back to look at the "postmortems" of the many projects throughout his career - after-action reports, lessons learned and critical analyses about what games did right, did wrong or could be improved on in the next iteration. It promises to provide some fascinating insight behind the scenes of game development. And in the run up to its impending publication, Raph has released a handful of snippets that tease various sections. Today's example provides a glimpse at his reflection of Privateer Online! The full book is available at
Amazon.
My new book
Jun
Vintage PC Adshas unearthed a really cool Privateer advertisement that we may not have seen before, but it has some striking similarities to a couple of other contemporary ads that were launched about the same time. The text starts off "In 2670..." which is a
common issuedating back to some point before they cemented the game in 2669. Confed and the Kilrathi are "still at war" here, whereas "the war rages on" in
otherpublications. We've seen "death, slavery or dishonor" elsewhere, but this text changes "a chance to make a quick buck" to "chance to make a fat living." Fascinating!
Jun
More copies of the Wing Commander movie came today: first, a German budget DVD (with Titan AE) and a US VHS with Spanish subtitles! The Spanish subbed version of the movie’s box changes the description to be about how Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard are friends in real life. WEIRD!
And Betty, when you call me, you can call me PAL. It’s the UK VHS release of Wing Commander!
Jun
Display MoreThe
Maslas Brothershave revealed DefianceIndustries' awesome
Talonin the Wing Commander
Flat Universeengine. It looks great! Every angle reveals more beautiful detail. This is also a reminder and plug for the WCFU tournament coming up in two weeks.
Sign upnow to participate in the multiplayer extravaganza scheduled for June 23rd & 24th.
Are you a religious man? We've got you covered. The wait is OVER! The F-38R Talon is here with this... spread the word... of the Lord!You gonna fly this baby on the tournament June 23rd /24th of June.
Enlist NOW and Die by the very weapons you adore!
the MaslasBros
Jun
…Raph Kosterhas posted
additionalsnippets from his upcoming book on video game development,
Postmortems. This time he provides a glimpse into the incredibly ambitious economy that Privateer Online was supposed to include. This includes complex guild mechanics, a virtual stock market and an offline web-based interface for certain tasks. Pretty wild for the time! The 700 page paperback publication is still slated for June 26, but ebook editions are starting to trickle out. The
B&N Nookversion is already available at just $20.
Another feature of Privateer Online that arose out of its heavily commerce-oriented gameplay was its in-game stock market... which may not have worked the way you'd expect. Long before Farmville, MMOs were exploring asynchronous play. There were player vendors in UO, of course, but in Privateer Online we planned to extend that to a fully player-driven economy. I mean, we were
Jun
Here's a couple of striking Wing Commander Movie concept images from around LOAF's previous Cloud Imperium office. They feature the Broadsword and one of its primary foes, the Fralthi. Look closely and there's some interesting notes about how the reinforced bow could be used for ramming. We don't often see this tactic employed by Wing Commander capships - short of a rare last ditch self destructing maneuver - but it would be an interesting dynamic to add in to capship battles. Star Trek Discovery had a pretty impressive
combat ramlast year, and it'd be neat to see more of that.
Good old Broadswords; not fast, but they got you home safe.
Jun
GOG.com has kicked off their summer sale and the Wing Commander series is on the list. The entire franchise is now 70-72% off, which ties the best deals we've seen in the past year. Each individual title is down to $1.79 and the whole package of all DOS & Windows games is just $13.42. Boxed games might be nice for the collection, but digital copies are really quick and easy to download and play. These also make great gifts!
Jun
…Fans getting ready for the upcoming
Flat Universe tournamenthave noticed that the core game download has been temporarily suspended. This is in preparation for major updates set to launch soon that will be highlighted in the impending competition. On top of some major bug fixes, there will also be a host of new features and additions. It sounds really cool - I'll let the
Maslas Brothersdescribe the specifics below. We'll be sure to share when the upgrade is available!
In a couple of days, we will release the final version of the launcher only which is going to be smaller in size and seriously debugged (No UAC problems, no compatibility bugs on Windows 10, no download loops etc). With the release of the new launcher you will, at first, be able to download the previous multiplayer version of Flat Universe, and during the weeks that will follow the launcher will upgrade you to the tournament
Jun
I’ve been looking at the multi-game guide books that were popular in the mid-90s. This one has chapters on Wing Commander III and IV... but the very simple walkthrough only covers seven missions of the latter. These seem kind of silly today, but before the internet books like these were a neat way to find out about the games available for your system. They’re as much wishbook as they are hint book!
Prima updated this huge book of PlayStation game guides annually for years. Here’s WC3 and 4 still included the 2000 version!
Jun
…DisplayE3 2018 is unfolding over the next week, and Electronic Arts held its
press eventtoday to highlight its new games coming in the year ahead.
Battlefield Vand
Anthemhave stirred some of the most interest and look fairly neat. No new Wing Commander games seem to be on the horizon for 2018, but EA did announce another mobile Command & Conquer game,
Rivals, in the "Clash Royale" style. It's streamlined significantly compared to classic RTS games, but the fast-paced style will probably prove to be pretty popular. It looks fairly sharp graphically, and there seems to be a bit of depth in the form of different commanders and a complementary suite of tactics necessary to win. We shared the news about
Red Alert Onlineearlier this spring and spent a lot of time talking about how this franchise seems to keep bouncing back. It doesn't surprise me anymore, C&C has more lives than a Kilrathi!
Jun
…The updated
Flat Universelauncher is now available! This is the first step in the release of a special edition of the game that will facilitate the upcoming WCFU tournament. There are some additional bug fixes and compatibility assurances available as a part of this, and the recently hinted-at new features should be coming soon. Grab the update for yourself and start practicing at
Daedalus Station here.
Maslas Brothers
Here's the flatulence straight from the
:
Uninstall the previous version and install the current. Upon launch, it will ask you to download two updates. After that, you are ready to play the old multiplayer version of Flat Universe. For the time being of course.;)Let me point some of the basic bug fixes that have been made:
- It is tested to install and work correctly on Windows 10 with UAC raised.
- The Launch button activates only when all the patches are fuly installed.
- The news slider
Jun
…DefianceIndustrieshas shared some exciting news about another amazing graphical upgrade developed by the community.
Pedroand
PopsiclePetehave helped implement emit maps that will allow for proper glow effects in Prophecy and Secret Ops. This is a huge win for a game that's highlighted by dark spaceships adorned with eerie lights. There's also some great benefits for regular spaceships too. Coming soon to a Secret Ops
Model Upgrade Packnear you!
So...it isn't often we jaded MUP-pers get really excited over something, but this is one of those times. The dynamic graphical duo of Pedro and PopsiclePete have been hard at work performing dark magics and alchemy on the Open/GL patch and have given us a gift long sought after: Emit maps!Up to this point we've had to be creative in how we do things like glowing windows and engines in the MUP. Kevin Caccamo 's awesome Wing Blender tools for Blender allow
Jun
This is turning into a series!
Christian Kleinhas found yet another DROSoft localization for Spain. This time it's Wing Commander 2. This one has a long of box text to translate, and the small instruction pamphlet has a very cool design with watermark silhouettes of all the ships on it. Relatively speaking, there's quite a few copies of Wing Commander 2 out there, but not this version of it! Really cool find!
Thanks Spain! I recently found another neat Wing Commander 2 version to add to my small collection.
Jun
FekLeyrTarghas a neat new audio treat for fellow fans. He's recorded a classic Star*Solder article to test out his new audio gear. If the story doesn't ring a bell, it's the one that details some of the exploits and fate of the final surviving Midway class megacarrier that fought in the Nephilim war. It's a very creative reading with music and sound effects layered in! You can find the original text on page 23 of the manual
here.
In order to test my new semi-professional microphone and practice my skills in Adobe Audition, I produced an Audio Narration of "Last of the Megacarriers" from "Star*Solder", the manual of "Wing Commander Arena". This is the tale of the TCS Port Broughton, a Terran Confederation Megacarrier and sistership to the TCS Midway from "Wing Commander: Prophecy".
Jun
…The
Games on Filmpodcast has recorded an episode that's all about Wing Commander. They spend more than 80 minutes talking about the franchise's background and the environment that existed in 1999. Then the commentators spend quite a bit of time talking through the highs and lows of the film itself. One thing that sets this review/discussion apart from the cliche comments you frequently see is that they thought the space action was on the boring side but were actually intrigued by the Pilgrim angle. Since their focus is all about video games that have crossed over into theaters, they make a good point that FMV-centric series seem to have an inherently difficult time gaining acceptance since it's so easy to break with cinematic styles that their fans are used to. You can check out the full episode
here.
Harry and Rory journey into the deep reaches of space - and the even deeper reaches of the DVD
