ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
January is quickly getting away from us, so it's time to pull together the nominees for our 2023 Fan Project of the Year awards! As always, we've got some fabulous options, so let's jump to it!
- First up, in alphabetical order, are the series of Ambiance videos by Scribbler. This isn't the flashiest project, and that's by design! He's taken it upon himself to craft a variety of scenes inspired by the first three Wing Commander games, set them to calming music and add the hum of daily life aboard a Terran Confederation carrier. I really appreciate when fans do something different like this!
- The Confederation project is an all new mod that hit the scene in 2023. AllTinker is working to reverse engineer aspects of the original Wing Commander and build in numerous enhancements, such as making them support modern widescreen displays. He isn't just smashing or upscaling though, he's also hand-drawing new pixel art in the style of the original to fill out the space!
- It was yet another big year for Custom Models. This one is a big tricky to categorize. Lots of people made very cool 3D prints, but I especially wanted to focus on ships like John Nelson's Lego creations, LYP's Centurion and Cpt. Streets' Tarsus. These projects take an enormous amount of time, talent and care to come to life. It's also kind of hard to compare most single designs to some of the other items on this list, so they've been combined here into one!
- The first chapter of the Freedom Flight comic was completed this past year. EmuMusicFan has been doing Kilrathi sketches for a variety of projects for years, but all of that hard work really came together in 2023 to pull together a tight visual look into the exciting events of the first WC novel!
- Klavs' Art & Models spanned a wide spectrum of creative endeavors this past year. From his vintage universe map early in 2023 to the more recent open release of his next gen models, Klavs is a perennial contributor to the fan project community!
- Mac also had a huge year with his stylized art and informative lore videos. He made extensive productions for the Broadsword and Concordia and took on the gargantuan task of chronicling End Run. Along the way, he dropped plenty of fancy renders to keep Wingnuts happy!
- Originator is a brand new tool developed this past year and AllTinker's second entry on the list. Although still in early beta form, the program allows modders and curious fans to hack into the assets of various Origin games and extra different format files for examination and personal use. It's very cool and we're anxious to see where it goes next!
- The Wing Commander 4 Remastered team released the second major iteration of their playable demo this past year. It added numerous fixes and updates, better joystick support and new in-flight comms. This year the team focused on gameflow, menus and user interface in order to firm up the structure that will be filled in during future updates.
- Wing Loader had a tremendous year. In the early part of 2023, Destro released the "complete" version of the project that adds official speech from the CD-based Sega version of Wing Commander 1 and hooks it into the PC edition. Along with a number of improvement updates, the project also grew to add support for the later games in the series. Among many other planned features, Destro hopes to add the ability to play enhanced and upscaled video in Wing Commander 3 at some point!
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Original update published on January 14, 2024
