The Good Ending

"Either you're an earthworm or an eagle."

Launch Deck, BWS Intrepid.

Paladin: So here you are, an instructor. Not a general, or a senator. And you could have had everything.
Maverick: “Everything” means I keep flying. So if you ask me, I’ve got everything.
Paladin: I envy you, laddie. At times I wish I’d made the same choice myself. So, how’s that farm?
Maverick: <laughs> I’m not a farmer.
Maniac: I’m talking about rolling a bomber, not a fighter.
Newbie: You’re kidding!
Maverick: You know, of all people…
Maniac: I’m not enrolled in training!
Maverick: …Maniac taught me one thing.
Maniac: Wha– hey, pal. Uh, Senator. I– What? What?
Maverick: Well you said, “either you’re an earthworm or an eagle”.
Maniac: I said that?
Panther: Hey, Colonel! We’ve got a fresh batch of newbies to shake down.
Maverick: They can wait a bit. I think I’ll log some flyin’ time.
Maniac: Er, Senator, about…
Paladin: Maniac… shut up.

Moongate Ebook Complete, Physical Rewards Prepping to Ship

Manda's artwork on cloth prototype is ready and the detail is very good. :) A lot of wing Commander and Ultima references in a single artwork.

New Animated Ferret Ready to Rock

Happy New Year Wingnuts! It's been a while since I've posted anything to this thread, mostly because I've been heads down on the remaster work mainly. But all Thunderbolts and no Ferrets makes Jack a dull boy. So I went back to the animated series and made a WCA Ferret. It was a self-set 2 hour modelling challenge (I made it), and then the textures were done later. You only see it in one or two episodes, but it kind of looks like a cross between an F-5 and an F-18. It's a strangely handsome spacecraft.

Enhanced Video Also Incorporating Missing Lines of Speech

A couple of new things to mention is this one. Firstly, as part of our efforts to improve on the base game in Wing Commander IV Remastered, I'll be fixing up any audio errors I come across - including missing dialogue. For reasons unknown, Catscratch's line "Oh my God, you're him!" (which was present in the CD-ROM release) was missing from the DVD edition of Wing Commander IV. I managed to extract it from the stereo audio of the CD-ROM release and seamlessly integrate it into the remastered version, maintaining the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound audio format. You'll have to take my word on that, given that I can only upload to YouTube in stereo - but you'll see come the final release. :)

So here's the remastered version, AI upscaled to 4K UHD, 60fps HFR. I also used a new method to increase the frame rate for this video: RIFE AI. I previously used DAIN AI (Depth-Aware video frame INterpolation), but RIFE (Real-time Intermediate Flow Estimation) is new, exciting, produces fewer artefacts and most importantly (from my perspective) takes 66% less time to process.

Fan Project Vote Under Way

• The AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Video Packs made a big splash this year by surprising fans with the quality of its upscaled movies. The new footage can even be easily dropped into WC4 and Prophecy.
• The Animated Academy-style Video Project is a relatively new endeavor by prolific modeler DefianceIndustries. He's managed to create some gorgeous cartoon style models that look wonderful in action.
• Flight Commander 2 was another newcomer this year. There's already a playable demo to interact with, and it even runs in a web browser!
• The Gemini Sector RPG has had an especially busy year. The team has been hard at work to keep evolving and spice up the game with cool artwork to accompany their Discord sessions.
• The Graphical Novel Project draws inspiration from WC4 and Action Stations as it seeks to develop a flexible interface for animated storytelling. Some very cool previews help set the stage for what to expect going forward.
• Klavs' Models made a return in 2020. On top of the being some of the most beautiful WC imagery around, they also serve as the backbone for a number of fan projects, such as LYP Studios' awesome Morningstar 3D print.
• The WC Toolbox expanded this year to support Armada and Wing Commander 3. Even the console ports of WC3 got in on the action. The tools helped lead to some new discoveries, including some never-before-seen background sets from Wing Commander 3!
• The WC4 Fan Remake kicked things into high gear this year with the ramp up of key programming, artwork and video enhancement. They even debuted a new website at wcrespace.com to keep tabs on it all and share the latest advancements!
• wcdx 2.2 is the latest and greatest patch for the Kilrathi Saga. It fixes compatibility on modern systems, but it also goes back and unbreaks things that the original conversion for Windows 95 didn't incorporate correctly from the DOS originals. It now supports everything from WC1 through both Special Operations.
• Wing Commander Loader is a project people have been asking for for decades, and Destro is finally making it happen as he steadily works to incorporate the voiceovers from the Sega CD port of WC1 back into the original DOS game.

Frank Savage Talks Strike Commander, Wing Commander 3 and More

Frank Savage: So at that time I was a hobbyist game developer. I taught myself C and C++. My education was in Electrical Engineering. So I knew the mathematics behind 3D stuff, but I had never applied it. I never tried to do anything with it except for a couple of courses in college. I was a huge fan of the Wing Commander series. I had Wing Commander license plates on my car in Illinois where I was living in Chicago at the time. I would go to GenCon every year. GenCon was a game convention used to be held in Lake Geneva and Wisconsin and then eventually moved to downtown. Milwaukee, and that was where I first saw Wing Commander at GenCon the year before. I went and played Wing Commander every day literally every day when it released. Went to Gen Con the next year and they had this demo for this game that that I had never seen before called Strike Commander and watch the demo and saw like unbelievable graphics for that time. There was another person watching it with me a GenCon and we were laughing. Think about how like how if you can do this on a personal computer imagine what the simulators that we terrain people must must look like.

And I talk to Warren Spector who is who is there recruiting for origin at the time told him the story of how I played Wing Commander every day how I knew some of the mathematics behind this and taught myself C and C++ and he said, "Wow, you sound like someone we should hire because Strike Commander needs people to come work on it." And I said, well, okay like "I would love to get in the game is like this would be a dream job of mine." So I wrote a letter accompanying Warren back to Origin that had like my my experiences and you know the stuff that I've been doing with games and Warren told me he's like look, we're in the throes of shipping Wing Commander 2 right now. It probably won't won't come out we won't talk to you for some amount of time because the game is still about a month away and we're not sure. So I said okay, that's fine. Like I've got you know, I have a regular job that time.

I was working the IT department at a home improvement chain so you can see like how steeped in gaming I was at that point. I was a huge gamer, but I hadn't really done a lot of stuff professionally. Origin actually reached out to me that week and they were going to fly me down to Austin, Texas. I've never been to Austin in my life. And the last second they said well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to actually have you be interviewed by by one of the people on the team and over the phone. And then if that goes well then we'll think about what the next steps will be and there's probably gonna be three people talking to you that Friday night and I said, "Alright, that sounds great."

Drakhri Encounters Furious Ferret

A Warning

Never let it be forgotten: