Happy new year, with a website update!

[Eder]

I ended up writing too much for today's website update, but Standoff tradition means I have to quote everything here... so, behold, a whole lot of text!

Happy new year!
Happy New Year to all wingnuts out there! Yes... yet another year has come and gone, and we are still around and working on Standoff. I remember when me and Quarto used to come up with work schedules that would let us be free of Standoff before 2005! And then in 2006! And then in 2007! Indeed, all of those were reasonable schedules... there was a time when the though of working on Standoff during all of 2005 seemed like a worst-case scenario. And here we are now, January 1st, 2008. The good news is that today we can finally assure ourselves and all of the fans out there that this is the last year of Standoff development. The game will finally be completed sometime during the next 365 days, then you'll all be able to play through it as a finished game! And we'll be able to do something else with our spare time, like, get lives! To celebrate our progress, the sucess of Ep 4's release, and the start of the last year of Standoff development, I've rendered yet another of them pretty WC2 ships as a wallpaper. Go to the downloads section and check out our Rapier, available in literally a dozen different resolutions. I've tried to render this one in a different style than the Sabre from two years ago in hopes that we now have different enough a wallpaper selection to please most wingnuts. Huzzah!


What success?
The success of Ep 4's release, which I mentioned above, is not something I made up during my delusions of grandeur. No sir! It is evidenced by the fact that we've been voted best fan project of the year at the Wing Commander CIC's annual awards, once again! This year we tied with Wing Commander Saga, like in 2003! That's right, 2003 - this is also a sign that we've been taking too long to finish Standoff, but I'm rambling again already... here's our nifty award graphic:

Thanks to everyone who voted! I should point out that the award for this year means more than ever for us, because Standoff went through a period in which it almost died off in 2006... and also because the number of amazing WC fan projects has been steadily growing over the years! Everyone should definitely head over to the CIC right now and check out all of the other contestants... you really don't want to miss out on the new life fans have been breathing into WC!


In other news...
Now for an actual Ep 5 progress report - I know we haven't updated the website in a long time, but this was one of the good silent periods, not one of the bad ones. We have done a fair amount of work on Episode 5, with more than half of our voiceover lines already processed, about a third of our talking head scenes already rendered and ready to be musicized, and three new scoreboard-enabled sim missions (out of a total of 6 which still weren't score enabled in Ep 4) undergoing testing and balancing. So even though we still have a long way to go for our final episode - specially considering it is our final episode, and we will want to perfect the game as much as possible - progress has been steady and at a good pace!

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

Any updates on what Ep. 5 might include? I feel like this game has done an excellent job of tying in the games and books. I would like to see more of a Wing Commander 3 tie in during Ep. 5, especially since it's not long before the time of WC3. Are we going to see any of the ships from WC3 in-game? I don't know if it's easy to put Thunderbolts or Dralthi in since I think they're already in the secret ops engine, but that would be nice. It would also be great to see some Hellcats. The stats of all of those ships aren't very far off from those already in the game.

If not during engagements, it could at least be nice to have a reference thrown in (like the Concordia's patrol Ferrets your team had mentioned in one of the briefings). It could at least be nice to see some Arrows thrown in since they're already modeled. Especially if they could be changed to the combat varient specs.

PS. Awesome game, I've been very addicted to it since I downloaded it around Christmas!

 

[Dundradal]

Any updates on what Ep. 5 might include?

From the old Encyclopedia, this all actually happened last night in a few hundred years That's basically Ep5. Hope you don't think of this as a spoiler.

2668.365

The Hakaga fleet enters Sol
The Kilrathi Imperial fleet, commanded by Prince Thrakhath enters the Sol System.
[Fleet Action]


Battle of Earth
Concordia, Saratoga and Leyte Gulf are 30 million clicks from Mars. The Lexington and the Ark Royal are pushed out of the construction docks unfinished, to draw fire and disperse the enemy. Lexington, carrying only 57 fighters, moves ahead of the fleet as bait.
[Fleet Action]


Marines board Kilrathi ships
Marine boarding parties detonate thermonuclear mines deep inside Kilrathi ships. Three Hakaga carriers and many other ships are destroyed.

Duke Grecko is killed boarding the Kilrathi flagship.
[Fleet Action]


Earth's industrial centers destroyed
Kilrathi antimatter warheads hit Chicago, Pittsburg, Boston, Miami, Quebec, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Constantinople, Paris, Omaha, Rio, Tripoli and Kiev.
[Fleet Action]


Tarawa returns
Tarawa approaches Earth running with scoops fully closed, after jumping through jump point 12Y. Kruger had his fleet do the last jump at full speed. Several ships missed the jump and have to turn around for a new run. Two of his frigates are destroyed when they only achieve partial jump.

The reinforcements destroy the Kilrathi cruisers orbiting Earth before they have a chance to fire their thermonuclear warheads.
[Fleet Action]


Jukaga nar Ki'ra dies
Baron Jukaga is killed when the cruiser he is on is destroyed over Earth.
[Fleet Action]


A hard-won victory
With only two of the five Hakaga carriers surviving, both damaged, Prince Thrakhath orders the retreat.
[Fleet Action]


Lexington destroyed
Lexington succumbs to internal explosions.
[Fleet Action]

 

[Unregistered]

Earth's industrial centers destroyed
Kilrathi antimatter warheads hit Chicago, Pittsburg, Boston, Miami, Quebec, Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Constantinople, Paris, Omaha, Rio, Tripoli and Kiev.
[Fleet Action]

Constantinople? so does Istanbul (or another city) get renamed sometime in the next 600 years or is this a new city?

 

[Eder]

Any updates on what Ep. 5 might include?

Well, it will include any ships which we've already modeled - so no Thunderbolts or Hellcats... the reason for this is also technical, as we already have more different ship types in the object viewer than the limit of different types which can be invoked from within actual mission code (which is a *new* limit that we've found after already having increased the original WCP/SO ship type limit, so I'd say this time it's a real non-breakable limit ). Whatever ships haven't been used in previous episodes should also show up in Ep 5, though there may be some ships that don't get used in the campaign at all (the only Bengal that will show up will be a deactivated carrier, for example).

There will be a winning and a losing version, which should let us fit most of what FA described about the battles, which should be an incentive to try both paths at least once. There will be multiple endings attainable from both paths, and more cutscenes and voiceovers than in previous episodes, as well as the occasional cameo from canon characters. And then there will be the final pieces of all the little Firekka crew sub-plots. In other words, the episode follows the same old tried-and-true formula.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Omaha what in Omaha? Perhaps Steaks

 

[Dundradal]

Omaha what in Omaha? Perhaps Steaks

IIRC it was one of the space defense centers.

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

Well, it will include any ships which we've already modeled - so no Thunderbolts or Hellcats... the reason for this is also technical, as we already have more different ship types in the object viewer than the limit of different types which can be invoked from within actual mission code (which is a *new* limit that we've found after already having increased the original WCP/SO ship type limit, so I'd say this time it's a real non-breakable limit ). Whatever ships haven't been used in previous episodes should also show up in Ep 5, though there may be some ships that don't get used in the campaign at all (the only Bengal that will show up will be a deactivated carrier, for example).

That's cool. Perhaps it could be mentioned in a 'communications' email? For example: for the people complaining about Gladii, they could mention that the Thunderbolt is an excellent fighter, but we'll take the extra torp any day since it means we can kill more cats. Or mention that if there's anyone complaining that we didn't get any Morningstar's/Ferret's/Epee's/or whatever complaints you guys are hearing from us fans, the email could say to appreciate what we've got since there are squadrons flying Hellcat V's that would kill to trade for the Rapiers we're flying... just some ideas.

Of course a wire frame of those fighters in a mission briefing or running into an arrow patrol could be a nice reference, but I'm sure an email or a verbal reference in a briefing would be a lot less time consuming and still be a nice nod to WC3. It just seems right to tie it in more because it's only about a year before WC3 takes place.

There will be a winning and a losing version, which should let us fit most of what FA described about the battles, which should be an incentive to try both paths at least once. There will be multiple endings attainable from both paths, and more cutscenes and voiceovers than in previous episodes, as well as the occasional cameo from canon characters. And then there will be the final pieces of all the little Firekka crew sub-plots. In other words, the episode follows the same old tried-and-true formula.

That sounds great! It would be nice to see a character or two from the games (as long as it's not unrealistic and over the top). I love how you guys put enemy aces in the game, that was pretty exciting the first time one showed up.