Take a Look Inside the Hellcat

Klavs has posted an interesting cutaway image that shows how he designs his 3D models to be ultra cost efficient when 3D printed at Terran Fleet Supply. He makes no money off all of the fabulous ships he's produced, but he constantly works to optimize his fleet so that more fans can affordably share in the fun. His faithfully recreated Hellcat is just one of about twenty Wing Commander-inspired fighters that he's added to his collection. And that's just counting the modern designs that have come online since detailed color textures became feasible last year! It'll be very interesting to see how this technology continues to mature in the near future.
Well the models are pretty hollow as is. Obzoiv! The wings are also a bit hollow, but there still has to be some structure in there to keep the thing from being wimpy.

And the goal is, eventually, to get ALL the ships out there Klavsified and ready for printing. It's just gonna take me a while. Stay tuned!

Privateer Board Game Preview Released

jlav has released a public test version of his Privateer-themed board game: The Kilrathi Menace. His prototype setup runs on the free Vassal Engine, which allows for online multiplayer. As the digital version continues to be refined, a printable edition should also come together over the next few months. Interested Wingnuts can try it out here. The link includes preliminary rules, the fan game modules and directions on how to integrate everything with the Vassal program. Also be sure to check out the project's FAQs and nifty video tutorials.
The Module is now up, along with rules, a link to the vassal engine and a couple of tutorial videos. I will be working on some more tutorials on DUP movement and combat in the near future. I wanted to give WCnews the first look at it.

This is to get more players' hands on the game, open us up to produce an illustrated manual and connect people to the ability to produce the physical game.

There's still a lot we could use help on:
* I need pilots from the wing commander games
* 3D obj files would be helpful of ships from the wing commander universe
* Mission ideas to clean up the mission deck - I want to run a contest on this point, details to come

How Warm's Your Cockpit Seat?

The new poll asks how long it's been since you've played a Wing Commander game. With the easy availability of the GOG releases these days, we expect the results to be better than the last time we asked this question back in 2006. Hopefully you've been keeping your pilot skills sharp!
The last poll inquired about your favorite box art from the series. Wing Commander 3 took a commanding lead followed by The Kilrathi Saga. WC1 and WC4 also scored well. Poor Academy has perfectly serviceable cover art with some pretty slick Dralthi on it, but it came up last.

Less Than Two Months Until the Big Birthday Bash

We're now just eight weeks away from the CIC's 15th Birthday! Mark your calendars now for Saturday, August 10, 2013 to attend the party. Festivities will be held in our IRC chatroom #Wingnut. Newcomers can easily join through the web interface or via a dedicated IRC client by connecting to #Wingnut on our irc.wcnews.com server. Stop by now if you're excited too or just want to say hello. As usual, we'll be holding a trivia contest, giving our prizes and posting special features at wcnews.com. Is there anything in particular you'd like to see? Because this year's event straddles a Saturday evening and Sunday morning around the globe, we're anxious to see a high turnout. Don't miss it!

Amazon Blu-ray Price Reduced!

Amazon has dropped their price on the Wing Commander Blu-ray down to $12.99! This reverses the recent increase to $17.99, so order quick before it goes back up! If there is any futher reduction between now and August 6, Amazon guarantees preorders will be charged at the lowest price between order and shipment. For collectors out there, the rerelease on standard DVD has been dropped from $9.99 to $6.99 too. AD also dug up some even higher res box art. Here it is for both discs and at an angle.

Sequelcast Profiles Wing Commander

Mat Bradley-Tschirgi tipped us off about about a huge Wing Commander retrospective posted at Sequelcast. The WC series is the star of Episode 5 of their video game podcast. Both show hosts have plenty of great anecdotes, and they go over an extensive history of the series. There's clearly been a lot of research done, and this enables the commentators to talk intelligently about even the products they're not intimately familiar with. The total runtime over an hour long! Download the entire thing as an mp3 here.
Mat and Thrasher discuss the Wing Commander games for the PC in this episode of the Video Game Sequelcast podcast: Wing Commander 1-4, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Wing Commander: Privateer, and much more! They also touch on the animated TV series Wing Commander: Academy and the live-action feature film Wing Commander.
Overall, their info is pretty accurate, although we can help clarify a few random tidbits.
  • WC3 & WC4's composer was George Oldziey, and he actually did the orchestral music for Prophecy as well. The techno music was part of Prophecy's simulator, and it wasn't until Secret Ops that the tracks made it into the regular game.
  • WC Arena does actually have a first person mode. It's one of four view modes: top down, a top-down with a more forward looking view, a rearward view and a directly forward-looking perspective.
  • Finally, it's a common misconception that something about Prophecy lead to the discontinuation of games. At first glance it makes sense - if WCP sold well, why wouldn't they make more? The game actually did perform well - so well that they created the 56-mission Secret Ops sequel and gave it away for free to tide fans over! The reason that WCSO ended up being the last PC Wing Commander has to do with Origin's shift to online games. Titles like Privateer 3 and Strike Team were in development but shelved to move resources to Wing Commander and Privateer Online. MMO saturation and Westwood's Earth & Beyond ended up getting the WC online games canceled, and the rest is history... Once again though, kudos to Mat and Thrasher for doing all their research and compiling it into this lengthy presentation!

Super Sized Arrow Model Now in Color

Klavs' giant Arrow model continues to impress! He's supposedly disappointed with the paint job depicted here, but we still think it looks amazing. The 1/72 scale puts this beauty at almost a foot long, and although it's pretty spiffy already, Klavs has quite a bit of fine detail work to go before it's finished. The final product will include decals and even engine/cockpit lights!
Well, I'm sorry to say it's not looking great right now, the 3d printed plastic material is extremely prone to paint peeling, and now that I've photographed it in daylight I'm seeing a lot more surface imperfections. So the paint is unfortunately going to be stripped off again until I figure something else out. Really frustrated with this right now! Grr.

Parsec Makes a Comeback

There hasn't been a whole lot of space sim news coming out of E3 this week, but after a ten-year hiatus, the LAN party favorite OpenParsec is under active development again. The game is sometimes described as "Quake in space," where deathmatch gameplay takes place within a single solar system. This new public release, the first since 2003, is playable on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can grab v0.20 here. Thanks to CrazySpence for pointing this out. Spence also put together the gameplay video embedded below.

Parsec is going to introduce you to a whole new universe. The core of Parsec will be a network of gameservers each responsible for a single galaxy comprised of several solar systems. All gameservers will be registered at the central Parsec masterserver from where you can select a specific gameserver for playing.

The basic unit of game play is a single solar system but you can jump from system to system as you like. There are no game sessions that have to be started explicitly. You can seamlessly join and unjoin a gameserver at any time. But beware! While you are peacefully exploring the universe everyone else will try to shoot you down to advance their position in the roster of all-time Parsec legends. If you want to become a legend yourself, you will have to eliminate a lot of other spacecraft and still prevail to collect the honor.

nedstat extremetracker

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