WC:T Byrd Scoutship wip

[Maj.Striker]

Doh! The same mistake I've gotten on to other people for so many times!!!! Major brain lapse.

Cannon = BOOM
Canon = Word I meant to use...

 

[Chevieblazer]

certainly a Major(s) brainlapse
(sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[Quarto]

but yes, that is part of the dilemma with the movie. even if it won't fit at all(like bossman) or only with a very long and somewhat fragile line of argument, its canon because chris roberts wrote it.
he could basically have blair die in the movie(and thereby making miraculously resurrected in wc1) and it'd still be canon

Look at it this way - if every single WC product was designed to fit perfectly with everything else... what would we have to argue about? IMO, while obviously some extreme events (Blair dying ) would ruin things in many ways, it is good that there's some lesser stuff that doesn't fit in perfectly. It gives us room for creativity, since explaining away some of this stuff requires highly creative thinking...

 

[Bandit LOAF]

well privateer pretty much used wc2 ships, so there's nothing really to complain about.
and super wc, well i don't know it, so there's nothing i can say about that

Doesn't look much like a Drayman to me. Or a Dralthi... or a Salthi. The Broadsword and the Kamekh are significantly redesigned as well. The only ship that's the same is the Gothri.

No one has a problem with SWC because we know why the ships are like they are. The original 3d models for WC1 were out-sourced to a different company. To the best of my knowledge no copies of these models survived. Therefore, the Origin guys had to pretty much make a bunch of new ship models from scratch. Not surprisingly, these models got used elsewhere. The result? We don't view the SWC designs as "canon". At least the majority doesn't seem to - and that includes WCNEWS. The Ships section doesn't even mention the designs. No problem.

Well, that's not really true... for one thing, that story is entirely made up. I have an Amiga(?) hard disk back home with all the original Wing Commander artwork. They were certainly done in-house, designed by people like Glen Johnson and Dennis Loubet.

We certainly do have the Super Wing Commander ships at the CIC -- we even have a special section with the high res renderings of them all (which we haven't even done for WC2 yet). If I had easy access to a Macintosh, /ships2/ would certainly include the sprite artwork. (And our regular ships2 section includes various continuity references to the slightly altered specifications of Super Wing Commander).

The whole pluging your ears thing - Loaf, buddy, there's no reason that they couldn't upped the designs from the original games to Feature-film quality. Hell - I've done just that on both the Dralthi and Hornet, and they look DAMN nice. Easily better than the contrived rapier design in the film...Don't get me wrong - I like the idea of a big-ass gun as much as the next guy - but those designs are rather odd.

Okay, here's your argument back at you except with an accurate story: we "know" why they designed the Rapiers that way -- they had to base them on existing Electric Lightning fuselages.

Last Starfighter? StarFox? Hmmm. Maybe. Probably not. You can do this with any ship in the WC shipyard. Lemme give you an example. Do you have a staple remover? Yes? Then you have the design of both the Longbow anf the Arrow sitting on your desk. Push the two prongs together and hold it so the flat wings are parallel to the ground. A Longbow!
Release the prongs and place back on your desk. Behold! A landed Arrow! Wow!
The human eye is very, very good at spotting patterns and similarities. That's what makes looking at clouds so much fun. You can see lots of similarities and shapes that just aren't really there. The only similarity between the Raptor and the Last Starfighter is the curved wing surface. And it wasn't a wing in the last starfighter, but an actual piece of hull. Engine/weapon/cockpit/wing layouts are all different. Same for the Starfox fighter. The only similarity to the Hornet is a vauge delta wing shape. Engines, Cockpit and weapons are all in different places. These are just very loose similarities.

Firefox is very much a Rapier II.

but yes, that is part of the dilemma with the movie. even if it won't fit at all(like bossman) or only with a very long and somewhat fragile line of argument, its canon because chris roberts wrote it.

Didn't we already address Bossman? Or did you have some reply you forgot to post?

 

[Howard Day]

Well, that's not really true... for one thing, that story is entirely made up. I have an Amiga(?) hard disk back home with all the original Wing Commander artwork. They were certainly done in-house, designed by people like Glen Johnson and Dennis Loubet.

In a e-mail from Daniel Bourbonnais, an ex Origin Artist...I tracked him down while I was doing research for my high-res models.

Re: Did you work on Wing Commander?

Yes, I worked on Wing Commander 1 & 2 during my time at Origin Systems.
Chris Roberts subcontracted all of the the 3D modeling. It was done on an Amiga and I don't even remember the software. We were not doing any 3D in house at that time. Most of those files were in formats that don't even exist anymore ( .lbm & .anm ) The art was produced using Deluxe Paint by Electronic Arts. Most of that stuff was saved onto 5.25"
floppies. (very unstable media). The original title was "Wing Leader"
and I illustrated a logo for the cover, but there was a legal conflict and the name changed just before the boxes went to the printer. I do have some of the original packaging and "Tiger's Claw booklet, but no 3D files.
Sorry, but it was fun to hear from you. Blast from the Past!


Sincerely,
Daniel Bourbonnais
MSKTD Computer Graphic Specialist
260.432.9337
www.msktd.com

(The bolding is my doing) They may have been designed internally, but they were most certainly not built at Origin. And they were not available to the makers of SWC.

We certainly do have the Super Wing Commander ships at the CIC -- we even have a special section with the high res renderings of them all (which we haven't even done for WC2 yet). If I had easy access to a Macintosh, /ships2/ would certainly include the sprite artwork. (And our regular ships2 section includes various continuity references to the slightly altered specifications of Super Wing Commander).

Of course you do. But the designs are not mentioned anywhere, nor the pictures shown. (on the ships reference page) I also knew about your alternate Ships page - It's where I wen't to reference some VDU images for Pioneer.
I knew the stats were listed, but the designs most certainly are not shown anywhere as being anything other than a re-design.

Okay, here's your argument back at you except with an accurate story: we "know" why they designed the Rapiers that way -- they had to base them on existing Electric Lightning fuselages.

They didn't HAVE to base them on anything. I bet that it would have been a lot cheaper just to make wooden sets than to purchase several ex-RAF airplanes and then majorly alter them into the Rapiers we know and love. But I don't know for sure, I'm just assuming that a bunch of plywood and 2x4s would be cheaper than a jet.

Firefox is very much a Rapier II.

My mistake. I thought you said SpaceFox. Imagine my disbelief. And you are quite right - that does bear more than a passing resemblence to a WC1 Rapier. I'm going to admit my ignorance and say that I've never even heard of Firefox - at least not as anything other than a excellent web-browser. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Chevieblazer]

firefox was an 80 movie with clint eastwood, dealing with an american horror-vision of the mig31: supra-sound speed, thought controlled weapons sytems, missile interceptors and the like. the real mig 31 didn't even stand up to the 29, as i recall

as for the movie models, well star wars had a lot less money than wc had, and they built at least one x wing and a complete snow speeder. if sw could do it, there's certainly no reason why wc with more than twice the budget couldn't. though i must admit that for a long time, the intentional ww2 retro look went totally past me and i did indeed see it as way bad way of saving money

 

[Bandit LOAF]

(The bolding is my doing) They may have been designed internally, but they were most certainly not built at Origin. And they were not available to the makers of SWC.

I have no idea how the actual 3D models are made - but the ships were certainly designed by artists at Origin... and since I got the backups from someone who did artwork for SWC, they were almost certainly available at the time.

Of course you do. But the designs are not mentioned anywhere, nor the pictures shown. (on the ships reference page) I also knew about your alternate Ships page - It's where I wen't to reference some VDU images for Pioneer.
I knew the stats were listed, but the designs most certainly are not shown anywhere as being anything other than a re-design.

Well, I can assure you that /ships2 will not be complete until it includes the Super Wing Commander artwork -- as is, it doesn't even have Wing Commander 3 artwork.

It's entirely an ability issue - I did the WC1/2/Privateer artwork because I could extract the pictures from the games easily... I haven't done any of the 3D ships yet and I'm even farther from the console-specific ships. When the project is finished it'll have the Super Wing Commander ships, the 3DO WC3 exclusive ships, the ships from novel covers, pictures of the ships as they appear on WCA and in the movie and so forth.

They didn't HAVE to base them on anything. I bet that it would have been a lot cheaper just to make wooden sets than to purchase several ex-RAF airplanes and then majorly alter them into the Rapiers we know and love. But I don't know for sure, I'm just assuming that a bunch of plywood and 2x4s would be cheaper than a jet.

The Lightnings were very, very cheap - they were being sold for scrap in Germany, very near the sets in Luxembourg. This was one of the first things they determined when scouting for a location -- the ability to purchase them was one of the 'selling points' they listed while looking for funding for the movie.

(I'd like to believe, but have no actual proof, that it's probably a quality issue as well. 3D artists can make amazing CGI spacecraft... so much so that the plywood sets always end up looking sort of tacky in comparison. The Hammerheads in SAaB or the Vipers on the new Battlestar Galactica all look great in space, but they look very fake in the 'real shots'. Even Star Trek hasn't managed to have a good external shuttle set...)

My mistake. I thought you said SpaceFox. Imagine my disbelief. And you are quite right - that does bear more than a passing resemblence to a WC1 Rapier. I'm going to admit my ignorance and say that I've never even heard of Firefox - at least not as anything other than a excellent web-browser. Sorry for the confusion.

That's okay, I don't know what Spacefox is.

Firefox was an eighties movie about Clint Eastwood stealing a secret Russian airplane.

as for the movie models, well star wars had a lot less money than wc had, and they built at least one x wing and a complete snow speeder. if sw could do it, there's certainly no reason why wc with more than twice the budget couldn't. though i must admit that for a long time, the intentional ww2 retro look went totally past me and i did indeed see it as way bad way of saving money

Adjusting for inflation, the original Star Wars' budget is slightly higher than Wing Commander's ($34m to $27m).

(Also, how the heck is 'if one of the greatest movies of all time could do it, of course Wing Commander could' a reasonable piece of logic?)

 

[Chevieblazer]

i believe the lightnings were cheap, though i really don't know why they'd get them in germnay, there's no reason whatsoever why we'd have lightnings here.

as for the rapier arguments, i don't really buy them. ok if getting their hands on ww2 derelicts was a set precondition, ok, but the sw arguments, no. the bsg vipers were looking perfectly fine, and that was just a show with certailny a lot less money than wc had.
and sw turned out to be one of the greatest movies ever, yes, but during production, even the stodio prodicing it was sure it would be a miserable failure, so that's not really an argument.

quite the contrary, the fact they wanted ww2 ships actually adds to my point that it was a deliberate decision to change visuals to a retro style

 

[Bandit LOAF]

i believe the lightnings were cheap, though i really don't know why they'd get them in germnay, there's no reason whatsoever why we'd have lightnings here.

I was telling, not asking. The RAF maintained Lightning squadrons in West Germany during the Cold War; the Lightning was their premiere supersonic interceptor for a time, so units were forward deployed to be able to shoot down Russian bombers as soon as World War III started.

quite the contrary, the fact they wanted ww2 ships actually adds to my point that it was a deliberate decision to change visuals to a retro style

You realize the original game is also World War 2 in space, right?

 

[Chevieblazer]

i do, though the kilrathi have even less in common with germans than the klingons(which are supposedly modelled after the germans)

there's one thing that has me wondering though...
the rapier i remeber was modelled from the carcass of a ww2 propeller driven fighter plane. you sure it was lightings? i mean, the wings, that's all wrong. they'd have to basically rebuild the plane all around the cockpit, wich would have made it cheaper to rebuild the entire thing

 

[Maj.Striker]

Kilrathi culture was modelled after the Japanese from WW2 not Germany.

The debate over whether wooden cockpit sets would be cheaper than redesigned Lightning Fighter cockpits into the Rapier in WCM is a few years too late...you should have been talking to Chris Roberts back in the day...as it is, there's nothing any of us can do about that. The only real discussion here is how the movie is interpreted currently.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

i do, though the kilrathi have even less in common with germans than the klingons(which are supposedly modelled after the germans)

Wing Commander I is the Pacific War in space -- there were very few epic carrier battles in Europe.

(I'm also not really sure how German the Klingons were supposed to be... in the original series they certainly play the part of the Soviets in various Cold War analogue stories, but even then they didn't have any distinct cultural mannerisms.)

there's one thing that has me wondering though...
the rapier i remeber was modelled from the carcass of a ww2 propeller driven fighter plane. you sure it was lightings? i mean, the wings, that's all wrong. they'd have to basically rebuild the plane all around the cockpit, wich would have made it cheaper to rebuild the entire thing

World War 2 fighters are extremely valuable in this day and age, they certainly didn't cut two of them up for the Wing Commander movie.

There was plenty of coverage of the Lightnings (there were two Rapier sets built) in 1998 -- how they shipped them in, how they stripped them down, how they put them together as Rapiers and so forth.

When I tell you things like that they were Lightnings or that they were in the original budget proposal, I'm telling you from experience and not from speculation.

 

[powell99]

rapier i remeber was modelled from the carcass of a ww2 propeller driven fighter plane. you sure it was lightings? i mean, the wings, that's all wrong. they'd have to basically rebuild the plane all around the cockpit, wich would have made it cheaper to rebuild the entire thing

Its a lighting trust me. I am almost done up loading the pictures from my trip to England. I tried to take a Pic that showed all we saw of a lightning cockpit in WCM. LOAFs right no one in their right mind would cut up a World War II fighter. First of all Even a static display is worth at least 1mil. Even then that would be low. Second of all I'd find the person who cut one up and destroy them Yeah I love my WW2 Planes. In all seriousness It was definatley a lightning. I'll post the pic tonight.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Here's the fuselage arriving at the set in Luxembourg:

 

[Speradon]

It's a minor point at this juncture in the discussion, but regarding the instance were it was mentioned that in the WC-Movie, Angel's referred to as a "Wing Commander," as someone already posted, that term's tossed around quite a bit. In WC-1, on your first mission, Bluehair's given command of the "wing" (two ships, not the entire fighter wing) when he flies with Spirit. I'm braindead at the moment and can't find the script to provide the exact wording.

There's also a scene in WC-II where you're flying off of the Concordia and Hobbes has command of the wing. He transfers command to Bluehair and specifcally calls him a "Wing Commander", even though the character's definately not in charge of the overall carrier wing.

 

[Dyret]

There's also a scene in WC-II where you're flying off of the Concordia and Hobbes has command of the wing. He transfers command to Bluehair and specifcally calls him a "Wing Commander", even though the character's definately not in charge of the overall carrier wing.

I believe it was in Prophecy the terms "wing" and "squadron" were mixed up...

 

[Chevieblazer]

ok, ok, i belive you, it was a lighting!
funny thing is that i deduced the entire idea of a ww2 retro look from the supposed ww2 fighter rapier, which, it turns out, wasn't even a ww2 fighter

as for the klingons, i agree that the relation between the federation and the klingons in tos and most movies is very cold-war like(just think of st6).
yet i have been told repeatedly by st experts that the klingons are based on germans. unfortunately, the english term doesn't give away wether they meant germans as in nazis or germans as in the babarians that destroyed rome