Silhouettes and Generic WC Counters

Howdy all.

Over the past few weeks I've been busy creating a set of silhouettes of the various craft in the WC universe, ala the ships in the WC2 guide. My intent in doing so was to use these silhouettes to create sets of "generic" wargame counters that could be used in any p-n-p Wing Commander project (such as TacOps or the Wing Commander Role-Playing Game I'm currently developing). I'm just about finished with the creation of the silhouettes at this point (I'm missing the fighters from WC Arena; to my knowledge that's all) and would like to go ahead and share the silhouettes with the community.

I did have one nice, big .zip file ready to go, but it turns out the file's too big, so I'll release the silhouettes over a series of posts to this thread. That way y'all will get a chance to preview them for yourselves. The silhouettes are of varying quality as well, with the final quality largely dependent upon the original source material. Some of them (such as the WC1 craft) turned out very well, IMHO. Others didn't fare so well (the Kor'larh is particularly gawd-awful) but should still be useable when the silhouettes are shrunken down to their final counter sizes.

I am still working on the counters themselves; I'm still in the process of doing a "trial run" for a different counter set which is nearing completion. I'll post the counter sets up here as they become available. If anyone has suggestions for a set they'd like to see/use, let me know. Meantime, I'll start putting up the silhouettes.

First set. Arrow's my favorite out of this lot, though the Bengal comes in a close second. Really disappointed in the Behemoth but am still glad to have it; finding a top-down image of the thing was a cast-iron <female dog />.

I should probably mention these silhouette files are transparent PNGs. That might make a difference and explain why they aren't showing up so well.

Anyway, second batch: can't really say much here. Bloodfang could've turned out better. Centurion's probably my favorite of this lot. Can't tell if the super-base is correct; thing looks like a gigantic letter H from the front, so I'm pretty sure that's what it's supposed to look like from the top.

Third batch. Definitely my favorite here is the Dorkir; getting the lattice work to come out was pretty awesome. Diligent could've came out better, but all I had to go on was the old ship database image from CIC there and I think it turned out well enough given the circumstances. You wouldn't believe the problems I had with the Crossbow...and I'm still disappointed with how it turned out.

Fourth batch, and yes I do know it's supposed to be called the "Lance" and not the "Dragon", but I've been calling it that long before I knew there was a difference, so that's what the file's called. Lots of good ones in here...probably I'm most proud of how the Drayman (original version) turned out. Durango looks a little sloppy and the Ekapshi's small, but those are really the only two I have a beef with here.

Fifth batch. Absolutely love the original Fralthi; rough one here's the Gladius...just had problems with those Armada ships in general...

Sixth batch. The Hornet's my favorite of this lot by far, though I'm also proud of the Hvar'kann (still wondering how I'm gonna fit the damn thing on a half-inch counter). Disappointed with how the Hhriss turned out; once again, only thing I had available was the old ship's database. Hades also involved a lot of effort for not a great result.

Seventh batch and the half-way point (almost; I've got 142 silhouettes total and I can only post ten at a time, so the fifteeenth batch will be short). Was absolutely thrilled to get the Indomitable model and it's probably the best one here, though the Jalthi's pretty awesome too (if a little rough). Very disappointed in the Jrathek; like the Crossbow, though, I ultimately had to go with the ship's database as the source. The WC Academy images all had drop shadows and they really messed the designs up when I tried to convert them.

Eighth batch. Kiranka's in this one, and though I really like how it turned out I think I still have to go with the Krant. Kor'larh's in this one too...and woe to the cat who tries to use those crooked-ass cannons to shoot at something. I still haven't figured out how that happened...

Ninth batch. No real favorites here; most of these are rough. I'm glad the Lumbari came out as well as it did and I did get some pretty good images off the Prophecy VDUs at least. Disappointed in the Morningstar, as I've already said...it has pretty much the same sob story as the Crossbow.

Tenth batch. Good batch of craft here; my favorite's the Ralari followed closely by the F-44A Rapier. Paradigm's a little ragged.

Eleventh batch. Another good batch of craft. Though it's a little ragged, my favorite's the Scimitar. Raptor's not as clean as it could be; don't know why. Razor's probably the weakest of this bunch.

Twelfth batch. Big toss-up between the Sivar and the Snakeir for my favorite in this lot (both took a lot of work). Shiraak's definitely the weakest of this lot.

Thirteenth batch. Not a lot of good ones here...probably the Southampton's the best of the bunch with Tallahassee in second. The old-style Strakha's my least favorite; one of the few I tried to keep from the Academy documentation.

Fourteenth batch; coming up on the end. Bunch of small ones here. The Venture turned out really well, but I think my favorite of this lot is the Vaktoth. Tiamat's probably my least favorite, but then again it came from a VDU image so I can't really complain.

Fifteenth batch. Two images, the Wraith and the Yorktown. Yorktown turned out well; the Wraith is pretty ragged.

I'll begin posting counter sets as they become available, and I hope to get the Arena fighters some time in the near future. Meantime, if any of y'all know of any that's missing from this set, lemme know.

Nice! And very thorough, too.

Since these are transparent images, they might work great in the Vision engine and maybe the Flight Commander engine. So I do have to wonder if they are free (with appropriate credit) to use in other fan projects. This wasn't clearly indicated in your original post.

Thanks!

Sorry about that; I wasn't very clear on my intent in sharing the images. Yes, they're free to use in other fan projects - whoever would like to use them is welcome to do so. Just don't sell them, since they are derivatives of works from the WC universe (such as Claw Marks, the WC2 documentation, etc.) that are definitely copyrighted and the original designers might get persnickety if you do.

Alright...first set of counters is ready for y'all's perusal. This is what I like to call a "traditional basic" WC1 set; Confees are in Blue and the Cats are in Red. Eight copies of each Terran fighter, seven of each Kilrathi fighter, four of each brand of capital ship (exception there is the Dorkir, which has five) and two each of the Kilrathi Starbase and Kilrathi Star Post. Miscellaneous (white) counters include four of the basic four missile types, half a dozen of what are supposed to be flak clouds (couldn't really find a good image there so I borrowed the debris field from my Starflight counter set), thirteen asteroids and thirteen mines (for fields of the particular types). Should be enough there to cover a pnp campaign version of Wing Commander, Secret Missions and Secret Missions 2, and to make homebrew missions from the same era.

Even at full size, the image doesn't really show up to well here in the forums. Just FYI.

Traditional basic WC2 counter set is planned and I hope to have the trad basic WC3 set planned later today (which between the two should be sufficient to play most games of TacOps). Probably won't get to building them until tomorrow, though. I have plans for some "non-traditional" WC1 sets; these will mainly involve the use of more/different colors. Should also result in more copies of each ship.

Once again, these counter sets are assuming the use of the method discussed at http://privatewars.kyth.org/making_your_own_counters.htm . These particular counters are designed as 0.5" squared with a 0.25" guttering. Guide lines for the initial cuts are missing, which can be chalked up to my relative inexperience with MS Publisher. I do have a PostScript version of the counters that I would've gladly posted here; even zipped, the file size comes out to 1345 kB (which apparently is too large for the forum to accept).

Anyways, share and enjoy...

make more of these.. the wargamer in me just nerded all over the place.