A New Old Look Behind the Scenes of Privateer (May 3, 2023)

[Bandit LOAF]

We've come across a small treasure today: extracts from a 1994 textbook about game development called The Magic of Interactive Entertainment by Mike Morrison. The book includes a lot of introductory information about building games (some of which is still very accurate!) and an entire chapter focused on the development of Privateer! There's a lot of interesting information here, from sales figures for some of the different games to some never-before-noted details about how Privateer came together. First up is an overview of the Wing Commander series and the work that went into it:





Next is the Privateer chapter, which is truly fascinating:





And we end on a short section covering Wing Commander Academy:




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Original update published on May 3, 2023

 

[Wedge009]

Consumer Reaction: There were only a few negative reactions... Some have complained that the guns don't have automatic fire.

What? Really? That's an odd thing to gripe about.

 

[tarsus]

I suspect they meant that turrets don't auto-fire. Just a thought, especially considering the backlash against Rebel Galaxy Outlaw's purely optional "auto-follow" feature.

 

[jlav]

This is cool, thanks for sharing! Privateer is still my all-time favourite game, and always fascinated by Chris Robert's approach

 

[Bob McDob]

By the way, if you want to read the Privateer section in text format (and without pictures) you can do so here: https://www.wcnews.com/articles/art64.shtml