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Vampires That Don't Suck!
Today we have an interesting tidbit for you. Since we know you've always wanted high-res versions of official Wing Commander artwork to use as your computer's desktop background, we have a downloadable pack of Vampire wallpapers. Just download the set here and pick your resolution from the provided images. This is the same splash image used in-game while missions are loading in Wing Commander: Secret Ops.
Just because, I threw something together from one of the original PSD source artwork files from Prophecy, so here's a Vampire wallpaper pack in as many standard resolutions that I could think of. Only the widescreen versions are slightly squashed so that I wouldn't have to cut off any of the ships. I also included a full resolution uncropped jpg of the image too for the curious.
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Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 12
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the eighth Joan's page:
CONCEPT: These were the ships I really got to build, since they were actually 'maps' in the game without most specifications. I just had to stick to the right number of turrets on the cruisers and the established history on the Midway. Note that the screenshots seen here were taken by the game's Producer in-game, since the team didn't have time to render new ones before we went to print.
REFERENCES-
- "Midway" - A Midway-class ship makes up the single player gauntlet map in Arena. I was so jazzed when I saw this for the first time. "The front, that looks like a Midway..." "It is!" One of those great happy moments, in my mind.
- "differ only visually" - The Producer was very concerned with explaining why this Midway looked 'different' from the one in Wing Commander Prophecy. I honestly believe the whole thing is my fault and that they put out that cool 'wallpaper' image of the ship early on because of how genuinely excited they saw I was to find it in the game. I felt, I still feel, terrible that some fans were so obnoxious about it. It's a cool treat for you guys, not the end of the world (I know the artist felt awful too). Anyway, I did go through great lenghts (as requested) to explain the appearance - this reference was only the start, and was more geared towards explaining why the specifications could be the same.
- "Confederation flagship" - I thought our previous home deserved some glory!
- "Length," "Mass," "YPR," "Velocity," "Acceleration," "Shields," "Fighter Complement" - These numbers all come straight from Wing Commander Prophecy.
- "Armor" - 2,000 cms was the most common 'component' armor strength in Prophecy.
- "Weapons" - The laser turrets and the IR missile launchers are from the official specifications (and they're what you find in the game). The heavy ion cannons are mentioned in Rachael's article in Waypoint! and the CapShip Missiles are seen in-game when the Midway is fighting the first Tiamat.
- "TSY Arcology" - TSY Arcology was the site which repaired the Midway in Secret Ops, location of some sort of intrigue involving a bombing that... didn't go anywhere?
- "Indomitable" - I'm so lucky in that I got to name and write the backstory for the coolest part of the game! I wanted a strong age-of-sail style name for the human ship. It was actually "Indefatigable" for quite a while until it was decided no one would know how to pronounce that.
- "battlecruiser" - Sean Penney was very concerned that the large ships be given a unique backstory in the Wing Commander universe, to separate them (and their lack of shields) from the sleaker capital ships we had seen before. I came up with the 'battlecruiser' background, most of which is actually presented later in the manual (which is why these descriptions might seem sparse - although they appear early, they were written later with knowledge of what a battlecruiser was already in my head).
- "The only ship capable of... with coordinated fighter support." -A direct explanation of how the CapShip mode is played.
- Specifications - These numbers were all mine. As you can see, they're designed to be similar but 'varied' between the two ships (just like their appearances). I will admit here and never again that I included, very late in the game, the large fighter complements for anyone who wanted to imagine them fighting a Star Wars Star Destroyer and winning...
- "Shields: None" - This was a requirement from the development team, who didn't want to confuse anyone given that the point of the ships was to blow up their components with your guns. It's a little weird, I'll admit...
- "Mk. V Plasma Cannon" - You see massive batteries firing from cruiser to cruiser in the game, I made them the apparent successor to the plasma cannon found on the Cerberus in Secret Ops.
- "Trojan IV Naval Yard" - The yard where, according to Claw Marks, the famed TCS Tiger's Claw was built.
- "Kiranka" - I wanted something similarly regal for the Kilrathi name... and what's more regal than the former Imperial clan?
- "Hari Fleet" - The appearance of similarly giant "battleships" in Fleet Action has always bothered me. Hunter identifies them when he's scanning the hidden Kilrathi fleet... and then they never appear again. Were they not finished in time for the invasion? What happened to them? Now you know!
- "basically a pound for pound..." - A nice way of saying that they're exactly the same.
- "Nokhtak Clan" - The clan of Murragh from False Colors. I liked the suggestion that they were tying themselves to the Imperial legacy in this manner (and that they still existed at all).
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