Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
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...
Cannon = BOOM
Canon = Word I meant to use...
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...Chevieblazer said: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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bandit LOAF said: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.
Bandit LOAF said: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).
Bandit LOAF said: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.
Bandit LOAF said:Firefox is very much a Rapier II.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.Chevieblazer said: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
Speradon said: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.