Reference: Sprite Sheet Collection (July 6, 2025)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Like most people, I constantly find myself needing to refer to the ship sprites from the original Wing Commander games. Four (or five, depending on how you count Super Wing Commander) different Wing Commander games used an engine called 3Space which stored ships not as 3D objects but as collections of sprites that were resized and rotated to simulate 3D. This allowed the earliest games to have ships that appeared to have textures or details beyond what was possible on home computers when they were released.





Over the years, we've collected plenty of orthographics and sprite sheets to show off this material extracted from the games... but it just occured to me: why not just upload all the source images in galleries? So that's what we've done! All 3,362 in game sprites are now accessible via the WCPedia links below! Whether you're studying up on Kilrathi insignia or just need a side view of a Gratha for a project they're all here.


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Original update published on July 6, 2025
 
It is interesting that in Privateer before you get the color coded radar that you could understand the faction a Talon belongs to by the sound of its guns.
 
That's a really interesting thought, I never noticed! I would use the video VDU (v) and determine based on their markings. It took a bit to learn the difference between pirates and militia!
 
If you listen closely, the weapons of the pirate Talons and the Retro Talons make very distinct sounds. This is useful in the early Privateer stages. Personally I have been using this to avoid non-mission Retros in Troy as they are more persistent than pirates and also they are more likely to fire missiles.
 
That makes sense, you're hearing the differing gun types fire: mass drivers for the pirates and lasers for the retros (I guess you could watch for this, too!).
 
Still I wonder why Retros had lasers .. I mean they could afford arming their patrols better. Unless they are considered expendable, which makes sense given who they are. On the other hard, pirates are independent operators (as Eisen would have put it), so they have every incentive to arm themselves better so they can live another day. Also this may be an indirect indicator that piracy is booming in Gemini (ok just thinking loudly here).
 
The boring answer is that it's balance, the Retros (in the base game anyway) are supposed to be the easiest opponents. (Remember they're supposed to be a joke until their new leader unifies them in Righteous Fire.)

In universe, I guess you could come up with any number of stories! Maybe they prefer lasers because they're lower tech... or maybe the Talons that they were sold in the 50s are older and can't support bigger guns.
 
Yes, I thought that balance would be factor. This reminds me of a Roman arena where no gladiator had in overall a distinct advantage as some would have good armor, but only weak weapons and vice versa.

I like these in-universe chunks of lore. Still as mass drivers just throw big blocks of .. well ... mass, aren't they quite low tech? 🤔🤔
 
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