Still adding details. Here's a progress shot of how far I've gotten now. I'm still looking for a better base texture and an effect that barely shows up on one base texture looks exaggerated on another base texture. That's the reason for why the black lines are surrounded by very obvious white borders. They won't be nearly as obvious when I'm done.

I will be adding lots more detail before I'll call it done. I'm getting closer to how I want the surface to look, though most of the ship is still without any details.

I'm not sure how dirty I want the ship to end up being, firstly because you aren't going to run into much dirt as such in space, so scorch marks are more likely, and secondly because it's going into HW2, where the ships are built on demand, so I'm probably going to go for a "fresh off the assembly line" look for it.

I'm glad I have a copy of the old WC3 playguide for reference, so I can see where they put the panel lines on the original high poly model. Unfortunately, most of the shots in there are greyscale, so there's not much in the way of color reference. At least the front cover is in color.

Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction. Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves) is a target of opportunity.

Research deadly new weapons, new engines, shields, and more with a research web whose contents are shuffled with every game. Explore vast interstellar phenomenae such as black holes and asteroid belts and exploit them for yourself or destroy them to deny your foes. Match your wits with up to 10 online or LAN-linked opponents, save the game when dawn breaks, and boot it back up at dusk. It isn't over until you say it is!

Mod the game to suit your playstyle! Your weapons, your ships, your rules. Almost the entire game can be modified entirely through an editor as simple as notepad. Easily add new models and particle effects to the game with a robust set of out-of-the-box developer tools. Features

I have been playing with my old Sega Megadrive a bit as well, so I ended up making a small detour and looking at the Wing Commander Sega CD files. Long story short, things went better than expected, so was able to quickly make an extractor for Sega CD speech! You can find my little SegaRIP utility here. Open your cmd window and type something like: segarip RIG.DAT

Please keep in mind that there may be a few voices in the game that are not extracted properly. I'm still looking into that. However, I decided to release a first version of this extractor since it does seem to work well for the large majority of speech in the game, so it could still be useful as is.

Cool stuff! This little adventure made me appreciate the Sega CD port of WC1 a bit more.

I used the methods described in the Arena Extraction Topic to produce a paper model, and the results are excellent...

I used Ogre Mesh Viewer in combination with 3D Ripper to convert the mesh, and then imported to 3D studio, adjusted the mesh to real shape and put in the textures. All pieces for all variants of Rapier exist in a single model, but are separate objects and need adjustment in texture map to display correctly. I prepared the 3D object in 3D Exploration, and converted to COB format to reading in Metasequoia LE.

For building the paper model of Arena meshes, this is perfect, because the models are not high poly. The base model of Rapier has 700 faces in total. I made adjusts in meshe to build and unfold in Pepakura Designer 3. The scale is 1/100. I think this model will be avaliabe to download in Paper Commander next week.

No, sadly it doesn't look that quite that good, but the hull color should be the same (and I think I got the bridge lights in place all proper-like!) I don't have any proper images of it save for the poster at the bottom, so that'll have to do for now.

This is more of a skeleton model, rather than a polished finished work - it's actually closer to a mock-up, but it should be possible for an enterprising artist to build it up into something impressive.

* This is a max 7 file. You'll need 3ds max 7, a subsequent version of the program or one that can handle .max 7 files to be able to open it. I'd planned to export it to a more reasonable format, like .obj (the one foolproof max export format), but a spectacular cascade of equipment failures culminating with being IP-banned from the CIC server for three days made me decide to get it out now. I'd thought it lost, weeks before, so I'm glad that I have it to offer at all. Hopefully I'll have an .obj (and screenshots) by Wing Commander's twentieth birthday on the 26th, assuming nobody else manages to get any.

* This is set up a little differently from other max scenes you might have worked with - the main file contains only the Tiger's Claw base hull. The bridge tower and the forward wing turrets are linked to TCS Tiger's Claw.max through a process I can't remember. There was also, apparently, another turret design - "Turret02.max". Can't find it now. Sorry. Don't worry about "can't find Red Sun.max" or "BackgroundEmptySpace.bmp" errors, or the big hollow sphere in the background for that matter - all of those were used to create the image at the end of the file; they're not relevant to the actual model.

F-54 Rapier II Blade - The Rapier II replaced the aging CF-117 in 2654 and immediately made an impact: Dragon, Bandit, Maverick, Maniac, Prankster... a disproportionate number of the war’s top twenty aces served with Rapier II squadrons. The Blade is the modern version of that famed ship, updated by fire through its service against the Nephilim.

F-44 Rapier II Vanguard - Named for their exceptional service against the Nephilim. It was a Vanguard squadron which led the first strike through the gate against G#38KMSx-Red. All sixteen Rapiers were shot down, but they went out fighting: an analysis of their flight recorders showed a 129 to 1 kill ratio. Carrying Porcupines and a deployable turret, Vanguards are often used as minelayers.

F-44 Rapier II Cavalier - When it comes to fighters, the Cavalier is the crown jewel of the Epsilon Sector’s arsenal. A true artist’s ship, the Cavalier’s weapons are focused around ranged engagements. An experienced Cavalier pilot will make use of his lasers and ionic pulse cannons to allow him to avoid missile barrages from enemy bombers.