Wing Leader Adds Lumbari & Exquisite Cockpit Lighting Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We've got a couple different types of items to share from Wing Leader this weekend. First up, Howard Day has finished the Lumbari transport, which is an awesome derivative of his recent Dorkir model. He's also in the process of implementing advanced lighting effects within the various fighter cockpits. This is a really nice finishing touch!
Okay, got the Wing Leader Hornet cockpit lit properly with all the damage and broken bits properly responding to the light angle.
Got the Wing Leader Dralthi cockpit lit and normal mapped! It's way more complex than the Hornet was, with the exterior stuff. I also set up the controls to work with the lighting as well, since they were previously ignored. Enjoy!
2 more Wing Leader cockpits set up for lighting! The Salthi Light fighter and the Strakha Stealth fighter! I had to modify the shader slightly to support the cloaking effect for the stealth fighter, dang, this is really coming together!
Okay, lighting on the Wing Leader Firekkan Valtar cockpit guns added! Subtle, but worth it, I think. :D

Box Flap Appreciation Post Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Today in #Wingnut we were admiring the box designs of the blue stripe era.
LETS. OPEN. THE. FLAPS!!!!!!!
Impress your loved one with this Fun Fact Flap(tm): the Prophecy Gold box incorrectly identifies the alien cruiser as MARLIN-class. There was a renaming pass on most of the Nephilim ships late in development and Marlin became HYDRA in the final game.
The artwork for this callout is repurposed (and mirrored) from this Wing Commander Prophecy print ad!

The renaming; the original names are still used internally-

Skate cluster - Tri-Ray
Lamprey shield killer - Siren
Barracuda corvette - Skate
Triton transport - Leatherback
Hydra cruiser - Marlin
Leviathan carrier - Osprey
Kraken ship killer - Narwhal
Tiamat dreadnought - Tsunami
When I did Star*Soldier for Wing Commander Arena I snuck in a little joke about this on the World War I-style spotters guide poster. See how there are two cruisers but one is upside down! This is the kind of joke only I find funny and no one else ever notices. Next to this is the original poster we were trying to reference; I wanted it to be this but with a Wing Commander Prophecy in-game text feel.
Three blue strip boxes for Ultima Online!
ParadiseRegaind pointed out that the Ultima Collection had a marble box too.
And Sergorn Dragon points out that the regular Ultima Ascension doesn't have the stripe but it does have a pretty elaborate multi-page flap! I never realized this, I'd only ever owned the Dragon Edition.
author avatar
LOAF

Originator Adds Extraction Features for Arena, WC4, Secret Ops and More Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Today we've got another exciting update to AllTinker's Originator tool! It includes a number of welcome additions from around the franchise. The program will now be able to peer into the code of the magazine-distributed version of Wing Commander Arena, adds new abilities for reading files from Wing Commander 4 on PC/Playstation, plus gets enhanced image support for Secret Ops - to name a few items. Grab it at the CIC Forums here!
First release in quite a while; version 0.3.06 is mainly a bugfix release, but does add a couple of new things:
  • Support for the "demo" version of Wing Commander Arena, which can be extracted from the Official Xbox Magazine Game Disc 76 (the content seems identical; the demo differences are all in how the executable is set up to run on the 360 without a full game license present).
  • Support for Playstation's VAG audio format, used by Wing Commander 4 PSX.
  • Fixed terrain heightmap export for Wing Commander 4.
  • Some improvements to Shape parsing, fixing at least one regression with Wing Commander 3.
  • Hooked up texture / image / image set loading for Wing Commander: Secret Ops.

Heavy Sabre Profiled in Impressive New Lore Video Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Mac has a very exciting new fighter history video to share! The Sabre is up on deck this time. As hinted about last month, the clip is full of exciting action shots and fancy animation. Give it a watch below!
Blender 4.2s EEVEE Next renderer is some powerful stuff, and this will be the first video to take advantage of it. The Downside? It's a much bigger performance hog then before.

With that being said, the next video: Wing Commander - F-57 Sabre, is now up.

Not your father's F-86 Sabre from the Korean War. This Sabre is much more of a beast.

Action Heating up Again in Gemini Sector RPG Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Iceblade flew in to announce that a brand new campaign in the Wing Commander Gemini Sector RPG is in the process of kicking off. If you've been in the mood for an interactive WC role playing experience, now's a perfect time to get involved. Most of the action takes place in real time on their Discord server. They've also got some nifty animated cutscenes to help set the stage. If this sounds like your jam, reach out now - events are scheduled for this weekend!
Wing Commander Gemini Sector is still kicking. If fact, we are at the start of a new campaign. WC GS is a Discord Server Multi User Simulation with a custom built combat engine for engaging in text-based combat. Similar to a Tabletop game designed for Wing Commander. —Iceblade

Star Trek Logo Reimagined with Wing Commander Vibes Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Starfleet Design recently posted this wonderful Star Trek logo on Twitter. He's done a fantastic job marrying the text with little Starfleet deltas as a tribute to the classic Wing Commander logo. It also makes me think of the way that Wing Commander Arena repurposes the afterburning craft again with its own Rapier fighters.
Many but not all recognised this as a homage to the Wing Commander (1990) logo. It's not a game I know much about, but I do appreciate the classic sci-fi typeface STOP, designed by Aldo Novarese in 1971.
If you're looking for more Wing Commander logos, check out the gorgeous collection that elend made a few year ago. They cover a huge swath of the franchise and are vectorized to scale up as big as you need!

Two Preview Sample Tracks Released to Kickstarter Album Backers Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Former Origin composer George Oldziey is back home after his work in Europe last month to record the new Wing Commander album. There's still a lot more work yet to do, including the choral recording next month, but he's put together two samples of WC3 and Prophecy tracks to give fans an idea what to look forward to. It's just an early preview, but the music is already sounding great! If you pledged for the album during the initial Kickstarter campaign, log in for download links to the samples.
Greetings all! I just recently received the session files from the recording in Budapest and thought I'd "tinker around" with a couple of them. I've done a lot of mixing over the years but this time around I might have someone who actually does that for a living do that for the project. Actually, I'm having discussions with the recording and mixing engineer for a very iconic film score composer (will reveal later if it happens) about doing the mix for me!

In the mean time, I thought I would share two VERY rough mixes that I did from what we recorded, the opening from Wing Commander Prophecy as well as a mission piece from WC3. Please bear in mind that both will have major choir parts added next month so all the elements aren't there, but I thought especially the mission piece should be intriguing because the playback on that back in 1994 was, well, what it was for the time. BTW, THIS was the very first piece I composed for the entire series that got approved by Chris Roberts early in the production of WC3, and ushered in, at least for me, the Wing Commander sound. After this piece I RARELY had to do a version 2 of any gameplay or cinematic music.

The Prophecy intro music , IMHO, was barely audible in the original mix, so much that super fan Matt Hiltner, who was there in Budapest, never knew that the Kilrathi theme was in the intro. I put it in the score because the narration was about a Kilrathi prophecy so it seemed logical.

Anyway, please understand that these are NOT finished mixes. Once the choir is added and everything is mixed together it will sound fantastic.

Love to all,

George

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