Flying Hornet Gets Its Stinger Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

AircPiratesNinsei's flying Hornet model is ready for combat! He's mocked up some prototype laser cannons, and the results are pretty sweet. They're a real cherry on top of the overall design. The results are visible below, and soon they'll be available to download for prospective builders out there!
The laser cannons are installed! The AUW is 593 g (20.92 oz). Here are some pictures of the parts. The finished laser cannons resemble the tournament lance of a medieval knight! The plan for the laser cannons follows!

A Face Only Lev Arris Could Love Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Here's how a Privateer 2 ship - the Shaman - changed during development, from concept model to alpha build to marketing render to final game asset! Look how the monster face evolved away...
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All Wings Considered - Episode 6 - LIVE! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The sixth episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're going to look at some of the ships cut from Wing Commander II, see Wing Commander in the media, play Wing Commander for the Sega CD and MORE! Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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Happy Birthday Wing Commander 3! (Kind Of...) Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

There's a lot of buzz today on social media wishing Wing Commander 3 a happy birthday. However, most longtime Wingnuts will recall Wing Commander 3 as the hot Christmas present of 1994. What were we doing in the spring of 1994 instead? Playing the newly released Righteous Fire or Super Wing Commander (depending on whether you were a PC or Mac owner).


So how did the internet get March 27, 1994 burned into its brain? The main culprit seems to be the release date on EA's Origin page for Wing Commander 3, and that date is itself a mixup of two dates. March 27, 1996 was the release of WC3 for the Playstation, but the game shipped for PC first on December 8, 1994. In between those milestones, it also debuted on the 3DO June 23, 1995 and on the Mac September 27, 1995. So when this comes up in your circle of friends, now you know the whole story!

All Wings Considered Episode 6 Trailer Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Episode 6 of All Wings Considered is nearly upon us! LOAF and Dundradal have plenty of exciting things lined up, including some of the material cut from Wing Commander 2 as well as the Sega CD edition of Wing Commander 1 with full speech. Tune in this Thursday, March 28, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific) on YouTube and Discord to join the fun!
Join us Thursday, March 28 on or about 7 PM Eastern for another thrilling episode of All Wings Considered! We'll be talking cut ships, playing Wing Commander for the Sega CD and heck, maybe a few more tries at Ghorah Khar 2 D for good measure.

Third Canceled WC3 Port Discovered Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

One for the Wing Commanders that weren't file: EA made a deal with Atari to port WC3 to the Jaguar in late '95. That makes three known cancelled conversions along with versions for the Saturn and M2. Consoles were dying faster than games could be ported back then!
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Flying Hornet Plans Released, Prototype Gets Confed Colors Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

AircPiratesNinsei has made excellent progress on his flying Hornet model. For starters, he's released baseline plans on his website for other aspiring builders to put their own version together. There's a couple sizes available, and plans for his improved double-layer stabilizer are also already online. Now that the structural design seems pretty solid, he's also started to color the design with adhesive foil. This has resulted in some excellent accent pieces that make the fighter really pop. And that's not all - the Hornet's iconic laser cannons are in work for a future update!
Many thanks to all of you! I was positively surprised by the flight characteristics. It's a wing aircraft with a background - did Chris Roberts think it would really fly? The game segments just had to become part of the video. Fortunately DosBox has a recording function. :)

I have now also created the build plan. It is now available for download at airc-pirates.com! The Hornet is made from 3 pieces of foam board. To build the Hornet, follow the order of the part numbers and the instructions in the plan!

Also the trading card is finished and available for download!

GOG Spring Sale Knocks $35.94 Off WC Series Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

GOG's annual spring sale is now in full swing, and Wing Commander discounts are back! Individual games in the series are now 75% off at $1.49 each or $11.92 for the whole series until Thursday. A new feature has also recently been added: cloud saves! The front page is advertising WC1&2, WC3, Academy, Armada, Privateer and Privateer 2 support this feature if you have the GOG Galaxy client installed. No word on WC4 or Prophecy yet, but they say many more games will be added in the future. I've recently really come to rely on cloud saves for other things. It makes it so much easier to sit down and get going automatically when you log in to different systems. It also makes backing up and upgrading a snap. Also, check out these swanky new GOG buttons for some of the other Origin games that Kris made!

Miniatures Tabletop Game Crunches the Numbers Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Adm_Maverick has made more progress with his Wing Commander tabletop game. He's pretty close to being able to playtest the game with fellow fans thanks to finalization of some stat tables. There's also an attractive new 3x6" card layout for characters and ships. Last, but not least, he's also testing out different logo designs. The one below is my favorite!
So I've had a bit of a semi-quasi-productive day today. I'm getting closer to a point where I feel like I'll be ready to start doing pre-alpha play testing and as a part of that I'm working on fleshing out stats. This is a point where using something like Excel has been a huge time saver as I can simply enter the bits of data and allow Excel to do whatever calculations I've set up. In this case I set up a spreadsheet to take the burn value, turn value, shields, hull points, how many flares and/or decoys the fighter has, how many missiles in total it will have, how many torpedoes it will have, how many and what type of canons it will have and let Excel calculate the total points for me.

All Wings Considered - Episode 5 - LIVE! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The fifth episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're heading to the most difficult mission in Wing Commander history, Ghorah Khar 2D... and likely failing miserably! If you're watching live, you can join the End Run book club discussion (chapters 9-12) through the voice chat channel of our Discord server here. Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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Cockpit Renders Tease WC4 Remaster Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Among many other Wing Commander endeavors, Pedro is still grinding away in the background on his WC4 Fan Remake project. He reports that there might be some exciting breakthroughs regarding cockpits soon, and DefianceIndustries has stepped up to share some of the prototype views. There's still work to go, but these examples are pretty sweet! Who'd like to take this ship out for a spin?
That said Defiance Industries just made me an amazing new cockpit for the Hellcat which I am eager to try out so by spooky coincidence I just started getting back to this project last week (specifically re-adding VR support which the switch to Vulkan broke). I hope to have some nice screenshots of both a VR view and a WC3 style static cockpit (for those who missed the cockpit in WCIV) in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

Maybe Defiance would like to post an image to tide you over? :)

-------------------------------

Ask and you shall receive. This is still in progress, I have a bunch of detail work to do on it, but it should give you an idea on what the final product would look like.

Prepare for Intense Space Combat... Also Book Club Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Episode 5 of All Wings Considered is less than two days away! This will be the team's most challenging episode to date as they take on the Special Operations 1 Finale. NINE Gothris escorting a Fralthra! LOAF is the ace pilot that beat Kurasawa 2 live on the air in his first try, so if anyone can do it, he can!
Join us Thursday, March 21 on or about 7 PM Eastern for another thrilling episode of All Wings Considered! We're taking on the end of Special Operations 1... and be sure to bring your copy of End Run to finish off our Book Club!

Squad Goals: Collect 'Em All Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We spotted a classy Italian WC3 last month, and this time here's an original Italian Wing Commander courtesy of Dennis Mull. This is one of the European Hit Squad rereleases, and in this case it was published by Jackson Libri. It came with a similarly stylized version of the manual/Claw Marks as well. We salute everyone going around collecting all these uncommon variants - there are tons of them out there and it can be hard to hunt them down!
Mail Day: Wing Commander from Chris Roberts by Origin Systems in 1990. The Jackson Libri company published the 'Hit Squad' version of Wing Commander in Italy.

Drunk Review is Surprisingly Coherent Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's been a good week for console ports! SNES Drunk has posted their review of Wing Commander for the Super Nintendo. There's a lot to like here, and the author enjoys the art style, background setting, branching missions and most aspects of the gameplay. They especially credit the contribution of the wingmen to the story as well as the impact of their permadeath. The complex controls come off as a low point, but the game has a hard task of condensing all the commands from the PC version into the small SNES dog bone. Overall this is a fair introduction to the game for retro connoisseurs - it's got over 24,000 views in less than a week, so hopefully a few of them are inspired to check the game out!
You must be DRUNK. I'm Shotglass. Welcome aboard the Claw.

All Feedback Considered Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Our weekly All Wings Considered show is off to a great start! LOAF and Dundradal have been coming up with tons of content to share each week, but they're also actively reaching out to viewers for what else they'd like to see. Feedback on what's been done so far is much appreciated, and they're also especially looking for questions to fit in the Ghorah Khar Talk segment. So if there's any burning topics that you've been waiting for a panel of WC experts to answer, hit the comment link and let us know!
We hope everyone is enjoying All Wings Considered as much as we've enjoyed making it. We're starting this thread to ask what the community would like to see on the show as well as any questions or feedback you have. Please feel free to include any questions, suggestions, and ideas you may have.

If you have a question you want to see answered during Ghorah Khar Talk, please let us know!

Happy Wing Commandering!

32 Bits Never Looked So Good Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

8/16/32bit has put together a review of Wing Commander 3 for the 3DO. As you may have heard here a number of times before, the 3DO edition was more than a simple port. A number of aspects were streamlined & improved for consoles, including new missions, color comm VDUs and exotic weapons - as well as the inclusion of FMV missing from the PC release. Many of us are pretty used to seeing the DOS/Windows versions, so it's always kind of a treat to see the 3DO WC3 in action. Even just the HUD fonts, different loading clips, revised menu screens and revamped end credits are pretty cool. The review gives a lot of credit to the production values of the FMV. The quality of the in-game graphics and responsiveness of the controls also get nods. Check it out and see what you've (probably) been missing!
A quick review of Wing Commander 3 for the 3DO.

New Prophecy Unlimited Patch Points Futureward Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

gr1mre4per has released another update to his exciting Prophecy Unlimited tech kit. The project helps form part of the high tech backbone behind well known projects like the Prophecy & Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack. This iteration provides a variety of fixes, tests out some potential future features and builds in compatibility for further improvements by other modders. DefianceIndustries is planning to incorporate it into the next MUP, but you can get ahead of the pack and drop the new .dll right into your MPP install with the package here.
Ok new version which is being reworked a little inside. I'm releasing it now mainly to solve crashes people are seeing but also for development of MUP.

Changes:

  • Fixed some incorrect offsets in Secret Ops CD, causing crashes when staring spaceflight
  • Replaced wcpunl.cfg with wcpunl.ini
  • Removed ultraNightmare
  • Added TurretRefireFromBulletIff default to 0
  • Added first test of 'Dead Caphips' modification for Secret Ops CD variant only
  • Added ability to load other developers' custom DLL's
Just replace the wcpunl.dll in your Secret Ops or Prophecy directory and you're set. Works on installs with MUP already installed. Will not work on vanilla installs.

All Wings Considered - Episode 4 - LIVE! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The fourth episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Wing Commander movie with a group watch commentary! If you're watching live, you can join the discussion through the voice chat channel of our Discord server here. Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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Cruiser Fast Tracked to the Front Lines Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Klavs has released his majestic Waterloo cruiser model, which has been in development for quite some time. It's not done up in a super fancy livery, but there are still many uses for such a high quality design. In fact, even though Klavs just released the model last night, L.I.F. has already imported it into Flag Commander, the Homeworld Remastered mod. It doesn't yet have stylistic consistency with the rest of the game, but the ship still looks cool! Grab the model here (63 meg zip).
Hi everyone, not sure when I'll ever get around to finishing the Waterloo Class Cruiser, so I thought I'd provide it as is. Symmetrical texure is baked and most of the topside details are there. Hope you like her, can't wait to see what the community does with her!
OK, so I had to split its hull parts into two, but there we go, a very nice heavy cruiser leaving its shipyard!

It doesn't have its turrets yet, but the joints for the missile batteries, torpedo tubes and heavy turrets are set as well as the engines and the hangar paths. In short, a "naked" cruiser. Now, as you can see, it's still a bit bright and I'll work a bit on darkening the textures (like a Privateer bah-dum, tss) and see whether it can be given a Confed green appearance. Though, TBH, I'm still pretty new at texturing, I'll most likely have to wait until someone more experienced can give it a shot.

All Wings Considered Episode 4 Trailer Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's almost time for another episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED! For our fourth episode we'll be celebrating twenty years of the Wing Commander movie with a group watch. Join us this Thursday, March 14th, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific) on YouTube and Discord; be sure to bring a copy of the movie to watch along with us!

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My Favorite Movie Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

In 1999, they made a movie of my favorite video game. Like much of the fandom at the time, I was a senior in high school and it was that point in our lives when the world seemed most huge and infinite, the future seemed wonderful and terrifying and we all seemed like we could do no wrong. We had begged and pleaded with the God of intellectual property management for years for just this moment and its timing seemed almost divine: our favorite series elevated to the next level of respectability just as we too prepared to take off to start running the world. But this isn't a great success story about the best movie. I can't tell you that Wing Commander is a great movie. I can't even tell you it's a very good movie. What I can tell you is that Wing Commander is my favorite movie.

Growing old is straight out of a Twilight Zone script. You want badly to impart your hard-fought wisdom to the next generation. You want to save them from the pains and the troubles and the fears and the wasted efforts you went through. You want to tell them to forget battling one another and to focus on loving themselves because you wasted so much time on hating, most of all yourself. You want to tell them how much potential energy they have inside themselves because you had that same energy and you squandered it the same way they now will. You want to tell them that it's okay to be scared and that there are so many possibilities they can't understand right now because you remember what it was like to be so frightened and confused by the world. But of course you can't. It's one-way glass. The next generation can no sooner bow to your wisdom than you could that of your father.

The internet was new then and it wasn't quite so horrible. When they first hinted that a Wing Commander movie was on the way, my friends and I leaped into action in only the way a bunch of teenagers given full access to and no understanding of the terrible behemoth that was lurching on its hind legs preparing to radically change society. But to us, then, the internet was not a vehicle for destroying the world or a starry hope for saving it... it was a simple new tool that did the most amazing thing we could imagine at the time: it put us in touch with friends around the world who had the exact same excitement about a Wing Commander movie. We had the time of our lives tracking and recording and hunting for information about the production. It seems so silly in retrospect, but it felt so very adult to be translating newspaper stories from Luxembourg and having top secret instant message conversations with extras eager to talk about what they'd seen on set that day.

When the movie came out, I took my first ever cross country trip without my parents to attend the premiere in Austin, Texas. My best friend Chris Reid, also a rising high school student, flew in from the other side of the country. Before that week in March we'd been only IRC messages to one another and now we were flesh and blood humans. The whole experience had this sense of a jump to adulthood and to the next iteration our lives. And we did not care that the movie had changed the look of the space fighters or recast the heroes or even that last minute editing had made the plot incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't read the screenplay and the novelization beforehand. (Of course when you're eighteen you know that everyone has your same experiences so it stands to reason that everyone had read the screenplay and the novelization beforehand!)

In the years that followed, the Wing Commander movie became this common glue that kept us together. The series never came back, we never had another big cinematic Wing Commander game… but we all made the choice to stay Wing Commander fans and to keep that connection an important part of our lives. For a time, in our twenties, we used to battle about it: we cool kids who liked the movie and got something out of it versus the world. That's how it is when you're in your twenties you know: you and yours versus the world. It's a stupid way to live and it hurts everyone and you wish you could go back and change it the minute you grow past that way of thinking. But you can't! We matured and we learned to treat one another well and to focus our efforts on thought and creativity. And we grew up, more or less! Can you believe the nerdy kids in ill-fitting suits at the Paramount Theater on Congress on March 11, 1999 would be in each others weddings a decade and some change later. Who would have thought a couple of beautiful ladies would ever find us? As I say, I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me, Through it all, Wing Commander was still our centerpiece, the thing we kept thinking about and talking about and enjoying just to have something familiar to enjoy. And most beautifully we learned to start asking questions instead of saying so to everyone. We applied that to our favorite movie: why did Chris Roberts make this choice? Where did this prop or this idea or this change from that script come from? How did they make this shot work? There's so much that comes from making sure you keep thinking.

So I'll say that I think you can write a very smart gotcha essay about how good a movie Wing Commander really was. That the beautiful set design and cinematography and wonderful cast of European character artists make it something really special. You could point out that the CGI and the adult themes hold up in exactly the way those same choices on the following month's The Phantom Menace, the 800-pound gorilla that forced it out the door unprepared, don't. But that's not my point. Wing Commander is mine and I'm happy with it for its warts. Looking back I think more than anything that it may have been the perfect film for lost, nerdy teenagers in 1999. It was so like us: full of infinite potential and many beautiful pieces that didn't quite know how to fit together. It spent so much time in its own head but ultimately suffered so much for trying to fit into a world that didn't care about that effort. They should've made more Wing Commanders the same way they should've made more Ben Lesnicks and more Chris Reids. Ah well, water under the bridge!

I still watch the Wing Commander movie today a couple times a year. I know there are better movies and newer movies and bigger movies and movies with so much more thought behind them. I don't care, Wing Commander is my lodestar. It's something that keeps me thinking in different ways and that connects me with the world. I'm absolutely fascinated by it. I understand today why no one else is but I hope they at the same time understand it's not some pretense on my part. I love the film for what it is and I do not care for what it isn't or what people once told me it should've been. I love what it adds to the Wing Commander universe and I love just the challenge and the thought that goes into finding new ways to think about it. I am never so happy after a long day of work to find that AD or LeHah or any of the other WingNuts who still populate a Discord together have made some minor discovery in the background of a scene or dug up some new nugget of information about how the movie was made. It's something that simultaneously takes us back and moves us forward and in a world of uncertainty and fear that's something I'll elect to keep holding onto.

At twenty years out I will again tell you that I can't speak through the glass. I can't tell you to be good to one another and to build and love and share and to put people and happiness over things and ideologies and all the other advice I had to learn instead of be given. And this isn't a rental recommendation, I won't tell you you need the Wing Commander movie in your life. It's mine and not yours and I've well learned the dangers of imposing my views on others. But if I could transmit one small wish across time and space and culture and void to all of you then it would be my sincere hope that in twenty years you're able to look back and realize that you have a favorite movie, too.

Ben Lesnick

Rockville Maryland

2019

"Twenty years of service. Ironic isn't it? Twenty years, all to destroy the world that trains you." - Admiral William Wilson (cut)

"Hey, I'm tryin' to be Mr. Sensitive Guy. It's just--Ahh! I don't even know why I bother." - Maniac

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Tractor Tales Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Artist Alan Gutierrez has posted two more of the paintings that he created for the 1995 Wing Commander Collectible Trading Card Game. These two 'Luck' cards represent two of the fifteen paintings Mr. Gutierrez created for the game. You can learn more about his fantastic work on the card game here.

First up is Kilrathi Capture Pilot which was a Confederation Luck card that allowed the human player to take an enemy pilot from a destroyed fighter.

From the card game "Wing Commander", commissioned and published by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, 1995

This Kilrathi is none too happy at being captured, and is one of 4 "Luck" cards I did, showing 2 of each adversary.

Gouache on masonite.

The second painting is its counterpart, Kilrathi Recovery Pilot, which was a Kilrathi card that allowed the alien player to recover a pilot from a destroyed ship.

From the card game "Wing Commander" commissioned and published by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, 1995

One of 4 "Luck" cards of "recovery" and "capture" pilots of adversaries in the game.

Gouache on Masonite.
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Tabletop Game Exploring Full 3D Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Adm_Maverick's tabletop miniatures game has taken an interesting turn. Initial development so far has focused on paper ships and cards, but Maverick is now looking at some simple 3D printing options. He's considering tweaking the game to use small plastic ships as well as some clever pilot console scorekeeping devices to even potentially minimize the need for cards. Something like that could be useful in conjunction with the official WC CCG. It'll be cool to see how that pans out! You can follow the development and help provide feedback at the CIC Forums.
I've got a project file all setup to print 2 Bearcats and 2 Dralthi IV in different orientations so I can figure out which way it will work best to print ships.

But I've got other things that will be printed up. For one thing, I'm working on some rough ideas for the 'pilot console' design. The Pilot Console will be a tray of some form that will hold the pilot, ship and load out cards and permit the player to track different effects of their ships. How many shields they have, how many stress tokens the pilot has, how many hull points, etc.

As a part of that, I'm thinking about how to track hull points and shield points. I want to keep this simple to keep the game fast... I'm also entertaining the idea of making the Pilot Console a storage tray as well. So you would be able to store the indicator pegs, the ship model, the base, and the cards all in the console.

The Fat Man Talks About a Life Full of Game Audio Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

AudioKinetic has published a great keynote speech by George The Fat Man Sanger at an event they held last October. It's titled, "5 Things I Refused to Learn in 35 Years of Game Audio." Mr. Sanger is a very engaging speaker with lots of great stories from the early '80s video game development scene all the way to today. The talk is over an hour long, and I highly recommend the clip for anyone with a fascination in how gaming and game audio specifically evolved into what it is today!
Well this is it. I think this keynote is about the best non-musical hour I can offer you. May it bring you a smile!

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Rules apply to game audio in much the same way as a string applies to a kite. To make wise business decisions, you need to know things: product category, benefits, competition, chief differentiating factors.

And

  • solve a major, common problem in a growing market
  • have an extensible brand
  • protect yourself against competition.
Let's look at that in terms of Game Audio. Then after wise head-nodding and uncomfortable laughter, let's look at the hilarious and messy things that actually comprised my life and career, and see if we can't identify which lessons we ought to avoid learning.

Targeted public: Game audio professionals and aspirants / Game professionals and aspirants / General audiences / No prerequisite knowledge is necessary. It is intended to be entertaining and to present helpful insight for anybody looking for a successful balance between "rules of thumb" and what delights the heart.

Takeaways: Life is not a cubicle or a list of rules or a Ted Talk. / Find the smart business angle that the Universe is showing you. / When you sit up in bed inspired, or laugh your coffee out of your nose, something important is afoot. Pay attention to that, for heavens' sake.

Scandinavian Wing Commander Concerts Explained! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We've reported on several instances over the last few years of Wing Commander music being performed live in concert in and around Sweden. Super awesome, but also pretty unusual, so what's the story here? Orvar Safstrom, the CEO of Underscore Productions, dropped in to explain what's up! It's very cool that the musical arrangements are set up to mimic a typical Wing Commander mission profile. Here's to their continues success and hopefully many more WC performances!
Hi everyone! I had no idea this was a sort of WCN forum mystery going on. Here's the story:

I'm the CEO/producer of Underscore Productions, we create symphony orchestra concerts with game and film music. SCORE and JOYSTICK are strictly game music while WE COME IN PEACE (sci fi), SAGAS (fantasy), THE HORROR (duh) and WE CAN BE HEROES (heroic/adventure/superheroes) include music from film, TV and games in the genre.

We've been doing the game concerts since 2006, with more or less all major orchestras in Scandinavia. So basically, we create full production packages with everything from programming and sheet music to artwork and having a producer there all week. We do music from both current and classic games.

As a very big WC fan I wanted to pay tribute to the game and the music and created a WC suite in 2014. It was put together by me and then orchestrated by Andreas Hedlund.

With the suite I tried to tell the story of the game and a typical mission:

  • Opening (Fanfare)
  • Briefing (Briefing intro/middle/end)
  • Alert/running to ships (Scramble to launch)
  • Space battle with increasing intensity (Regular combat/Intense combat)
  • Victory/Medal ceremony (Fanfare)
It has been performed many time over the past five years. The KTH ceremony performance was a little special. That orchestra is the orchestra of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. They did our WE COME IN PEACE as a regular concert, where Wing Commander was included. The music director then asked us if it would be OK to do Wing Commander for their graduation ceremony. If you look closely, that is actually the Stockholm city hall where the Nobel Prize dinner is every year.

All the best
/Orvar Safstrom - CEO Underscore Productions

Oh and yes, both SCORE and JOYSTICK are series with the program changing all the time. Some audience favorites tend to hang around, or come back. But they're not fixed programs.

All Wings Considered - Episode 3 - LIVE! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The third episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week we're continuing the story of Special Operations 1, opening a MYSTERY BOX debating (and flying) Hellcats and talking through chapters 5 through 8 of END RUN! If you're watching live, you can join the End Run book discussion through the voice chat channel of our Discord server here. Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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All Cats are Gray in Space Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

In anticipation of all the Hellcat love planned for tomorrow's episode of All Wings Considered, Klavs has cooked up renders of both the Grumman and Douglas Aerospace versions. They're a couple of beauties! For all the other big fans of these craft, tune in Thursday for a full rundown on these trusty birds - and much more!
How timely, my very favourite airplane! And look what I happen to be working on!

Just please don't fall into the trap of saying that the F6F was developed in response to the Zero! The contract for the Hellcat was signed in June 1940, prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and when the US knew very little about Japanese capabilities! And the first F6F flew only a few days after the Akutan Zero was recovered! #hellcatpedant! I have many other interesting Hellcat facts that aren't in the wikipedia article if you're interested, or want more images! I have done a stupid amount of work on this airplane! :)

And yes the scale is accurate!

More Wings Considered Thursday! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Episode 3 of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is coming in hot! Tune in this week for an in-depth discussion on the Hellcat medium fighter as well as another exciting roundtable for the End Run Book Club. And that's just scratching the surface! Join us this Thursday, February 28, at 7 PM Eastern US Time (4 PM Pacific) on YouTube and Discord.
Join us Thursday, March 7 on or about 7 PM Eastern for the second thrilling episode of All Wings Considered!

Happy Wing Commandering! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Minor grail acquired: one of the post cards Origin sent to customers who had pre-ordered The Secret Missions in 1990. “Happy Wing Commandering!” This was hidden in a seemingly normal listing for a copy of Wing Commander I. Big box collectors, always look closely at what someone has kept with their old games... This copy had some other treasures, too, including an old packing slip I can’t share because it’s full of someone’s personal information. But peep this: one of the counter placards that would’ve sat next to a store computer showing off the WC rolling demo!
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Pristine Early War Carrier Comes to Town Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

DefianceIndustries has put together a new wallpaper that's super sweet. The star is a Yorktown class light carrier that's mocked up in WC1/2 style colors. To the fit the aesthetic, he's smoothed a few curves in key locations around the structure. The Victory may have been old in WC3, but she was still quite potent, and scenes like this make you wonder how cool it might have been to fly off one in the earlier stages of the war. Marc took a stab at this concept a long while back too, and it's interesting to see how similar they turned out.
This was kind of a "what if" spin off of a WC1 or 2-ized Yorktown. I got the idea looking at some of the renders from the old Tac Ops manual. The mesh has a few minor changes from the WC3 variety, the most obvious being the oval conning tower as opposed to the rectangular one, and the round-style turrets. Also the engine nacelles are rounded and beveled a bit. Anyway here is the end result. Enjoy...

Gemini Sector RPG Works Out Space Combat Rules Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Iceblade has provided a neat update on his Discord-based Wing Commander RPG. He's come up with a novel way for damage to happen that's more elaborate than simple dice rolls and hit points. All of this fancy logic is now being rolled up into a 'CombatBot' that handles the battle math. It sounds pretty cool! You can follow the game's development and see how to get involved yourself at the CIC Forums.
Combat Code is coming along great and is definitely ready for Roleplaying combats. Here is a sample screenshot of combat status page and a round of combat.

There is a fair amount of tactics involved in the system. Damage to various components now affects a ship's ability to fight including reduced ship agility and missiles failing to fire. Shields get weaker the more times they get hit, and armor must be worn down to damage components. There are also 5 methods to neutralizing a target including cockpit kills, crippling damage, and various ways a ship can blow up. You can call your shots to focus on a damaged side, and stances allow you to define how aggressive or evasive you fly each round. Missiles have distinct abilities such as FF missiles ignoring your combat stance and HS missiles doing more damage but are more easily spoofed. In addition, DFs ignore the target's ECM skill and rely on your gunnery and piloting skills to hit.

Additionally, the code easily handles many enemies at once with commands that allow the combat's GM to do team targeting for the NPCs with weapons and targeting being randomized semi-intelligently. This code will be improved over time to implement basic AI that changes stances based on the situation, target damaged quarters of targets, and possibly even use teamwork to focus on wounded ships.

Capships are the next on my task list to allow for more involved combat scenarios involving turret batteries, suppressing flak, torpedo runs, and escort missions.

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