Fighter Tokens See Battle on the Table
Progress continues to be made on Wing Commander TacOps Online. Avacar has implemented numerous bug fixes in the last several weeks and has big plans about the next phase of the game's development. After an upcoming flurry of coding is complete, the idea is to launch another beta test game that involves capital ships and their escorts. Meanwhile, capi has mocked up the current game using his counter tokens. A few of the shots below are a bit hard to see, but it's cool to see them in play.
I intend to throw a full day or two's labour at this to finish off the End Phase Engine aspect of Flak Fire (a.k.a flak fire as a point defense). Once that is done, I'll launch Game 7, and possibly a Game 8. One of these games will be a medium-scale battle with 3 Capital-class ships and their fighter escorts. I'll launch another game at that same time if I feel we haven't sufficiently tested LOS or collisions yet. That second game would mostly likely be a true 'beta tester' game in that I'd only put 1-2 people in, and have them just run around smashing themselves into asteroids and trying to shoot past asteroids.
"And the last Kilrathi planet in the sector falls!" Tim Peel has put together another gorgeous scene with Howard Day's models. In this new image, he's beautifully recreated the Venice Assault from the end of the original Wing Commander. Flights of Hornets play escort as the Claw advances. You can grab this wallpaper in two resolutions: 1920x1080 and 2560x1440. Let Tim know what you think at the CIC Forums.
Howard Day was kind enough to share his fantastic Tiger's Claw model with me so I thought I'd take a crack at recreating a famous scene from Wing Commander. Hopefully, if I've done my job well enough, fans will be able to recognise it! I really can't stress how fantastic Howard's model is. I get an incredible nostalgia trip when working with it. :) This was one of my favourite ships from my childhood and I hope to do a few more images with her yet.
Mission Accomplished!
Origin founder Richard Garriott's mission to space has been well documented in the CIC news archives, but a whole lot more people are learning about the story thanks to the premiere of the Man on a Mission documentary about the trip. Rather than just a vanity film to commemorate his space tourism, the story has been highly-rated as an excellent adventure about a man realizing his dream to become the first second-generation astronaut. There are a handful of streaming options for fans who'd like to check it out, and theatrical premieres across the country are taking place now. The streaming rentals run about $7, and eventually it'll be sold in digital format for about $15. Richard will be attending another showing in person at the Austin Alamo Village theater on Thursday, February 2!
Austinites! Join me, the film crew, Portalarium staff, and my mother at Man in a Mission at the Alamo Village Premier Thursday night!
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Garriott’s father was the first astronaut to take a ham radio into space and talk with people on the ground below, including his sons. In a further closing of the cycle, the younger Garriott is shown talking to his father from orbit via ham radio. In another bit of torch-passing, Garriott used a newly developed software program that enabled him to take the same pictures of areas of Earth that his father did aboard Skylab, thus depicting any changes which had occurred in a generation.
While he might have missed out on becoming the first space tourist, Garriott can still take solace in the fact that he was the first second-generation American to follow a parent into space. In an odd coincidence, he shared his capsule for the return to earth with Sergei Volkov, the first second-generation space traveler. When the capsule made its bumpy landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan it was greeted by the recovery crew (a very casual, commonplace seeming event), and both the elder cosmonaut and astronaut were on hand to greet their space-faring progeny.
As for the movie, for those would-be astronauts lacking tens of millions of dollars to go through the process and make the flight themselves, experiencing it through Garriott’s eyes is the next best thing.
Garriott Wins Release of First Sci-Fi Movie Actually Made in Space
Man on a Mission wasn't the only movie recording during Garriott's time in space! In addition to gathering footage for the documentary, Richard also taped a short horror flick - the first science fiction film made in space! After years of lobbying NASA, Garriott has finally gotten approval to release Apogee of Fear, and distribution details should surface soon.
After his talk at the conference last year, Garriott gave a private screening of "Apogee of Fear." That is, he showed the eight-minute movie on his laptop to a half-dozen or so folks who had stuck around to ask him questions or introduce themselves.
"Apogee of Fear" is without question the best science fiction film ever made in space. It begins with NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff waving affably to Garriott through a window as the space tourist departs the orbiting lab and heads back home to Earth.
Then they turn to each other and express profound relief that he's finally gone.
"Man, am I glad we finally got rid of that guy," Chamitoff says.
Cut to several days later, and Fincke and Chamitoff are actually starting to miss Garriott. Without him around, Chamitoff is having trouble juggling, and the two astronauts are finding it difficult to settle their recurring arguments about who is upside-down and who is right-side-up.
But then an ominous declaration breaks the wistful chatter: Cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov announces that oxygen use aboard the station is higher than it should be.
"Let's just think of what might be the obvious reason," Chamitoff says. "Maybe it's aliens."
The spaceflyers conclude that an unwanted visitor has found its way aboard the station, and they begin a search to root him or her out. And what they find will shock and amaze you! Well, not really, though there is an interesting double twist.
From the Beginning, You Know the End...
It's time for the start of a new poll, and this one's all about endings. Which game had your favorite conclusion? Are you more into the traditional blast-a-starbase final missions from the early '90s? If that's not epic enough, the endings from the mid '90s were more focused on resolving entire wars than specific battles. Ominous conclusions are also an option for the later '90s games where the player stops the bugs for the time being, but an even larger invasion force looms on the horizon. Finally, if personal fortune and freedom are the most important things to you, the Privateer endgames wrapped up the story, but then allowed the player to continue living in the universe forever.
The annual New Year poll has concluded, and it shows how pumped Wingnuts are for the future! With the same number of votes and timeframe as last year's poll, the 2012 question's optimistic options each surged about 50% while the "poor" choice received about 25% fewer votes. All of the GoG releases in 2011 helped bring new fans into the fold, and it'll be exciting to see what comes next! Wing Commander Academy is coming in May... but there are always some surprises along the way!
Catching Up With Saga - GamePlay Complete! WC Saga hit an important milestone recently - it went gameplay complete, meaning that it's completely playable - but not yet perfected. The team is going back now to revamp their Prologue demo and continue bug hunting. Here's some new screenshots and their announcement:
We have reached an important milestone that has been a very long time in the making. All 50 of the missions in the main campaign are now finalized; The Darkest Dawn is now complete! We still have a bit of work ahead of us before Saga is ready to launch. We are currently working on significantly updating the missions of the prologue campaign (with updated game play, improved missions, refined dialogue, more characters in game, and a few other things to bring it up to par with the main campaign) which will be included as a small, introductory campaign in the full Saga package. We are going through our final rounds of beta tests, making sure everything is fully polished and as bug-free as possible for launch.
Keep your eyes open for a release date announcement soon!
This Clawk Marks is Super
One of the most fantastic websites on the entire Internet, Pix's Origin Adventures, has posted a nice high res scan of the game manual for the Super Famicom version of Wing Commander 1. This edition is more than simply Claw Marks translated into Japanese however, and the booklet gets tons of bonus art alongside reformatted text. Some drawings are brand new, and others are colorizations of art used in the English documentation. We've seen the front and back covers recently, but check out the whole thing here (27 meg PDF).
Pix's Origin Adventures, my favorite blog, now has the SFC WC1 manual for download. It's full of art you've never seen.
