New Vega Strike Release Update ID

One thing that some people thought was missing from WCP was ground missions.. but they won't be missing from Vega Strike. It is just a test release so don't be surprised if some things appear odd. Here's the new stuff:
  • I have compiled a nice windows version of the terrain for people to enjoy.
  • Download it now!
  • To run it, run vsDONOTEDIT.exe :-)
  • Remember this is just a test release that has a slab of terrain for you to fly through.
  • Expect a nice polished version on December 6th! Terrain will be able to be round, fog might spill over the terrain, etc, etc!
  • This test requires 256 megabytes of ram. If you do not have that much, you can try editing terrain.xml and changing down both detail levels at the top.

Best Looking Games Update ID

Jezzerr spotted a new Tenspot over at Gamespot which features the 10 best looking games of all time. Of course Wing Commander features among the ten and the write-up is a good reminder if it was ever needed what makes WC so great. You can read the WC page here and you can vote for what you think is the best looking game in the reader's ballot. I leave you now with a great quote from the page.
Wing Commander, which was released near the beginning of the new decade, ushered in just the sort of exceptional surge of quality that helped change computer gaming from a pastime to a phenomenon.

Announcing.. Update ID

It's that time again!

THE ANNUAL CIC FAN PROJECT/FAN SITE OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2002

Now that I have your attention using the miracle of large bold fonts, here's the deal: You may nominate either your own site or project, or someone elses who you believe is deserving. The CIC is excluded from the contest. Nominations will run until December 4th. Check back here after then for details on the actual voting procedure when there will be a separate vote for fan sites and fan projects. Submit your nominations here!

Holding The Line Chapter 110 Update ID

The weekly Holding The Line chapter has arrived, and here's Raptor to tell you all about it.
Hey all, Raptor here. HTL continues with Part Two of the "Fate's Edge"series, which focuses on the Tanfen Corporation Merchant fleet that wascaught up in the war against the Nephilim. After being strong armed intohelping evacuate the civilian population of Tyr by the Border Worldsgovernment, the Tanfenners kept their part of the bargain and took thecivilians to relative safety in Masa, while the military drew the Nephilimfleet into first Nephele and then Loki. However, when a Nephilim raidinggroup threatened the refugees in Masa in Part One of "Fate's Edge", theTanfenner's young Lord Commander made the fateful decision to stay and helpdefend the civilians. This put him at odds with the Corp's credo of lookingof looking after their own first, and left him in a near impossible militarysituation. This chapter picks up from there. Please send any and allcomments to the writer, Kevin "Leeloo" Tan, at leeloo8@hotmail.com, not tome.

Best. Raptor

You can read chapter 110 here.

Unknown Enemy Update Update ID

The latest news is up on the Unknown Enemy site detailing the latest developments and three new screenshots
Wow, exactly a month since the last update. Still, though the amount of progress in the last month has been much smaller than before, we're not completely dead :).
So what has been done? Mainly, a bit of administrative work, like trying to sort out (with partial success) the source code from all our programmers into one coherent package. And of course, the same thing for our ships (with 100% success). Now if only I could sort out the mess that are our voiceovers, maybe we'll finally get somewhere. Oh, and you can see below a screenshot of the latest addition to our collection - a capship version of the Intrepid. The gray surface that you can see under the Intrepid isn't a part of UE though - just an experiment I was testing for KillerWave.
Meanwhile, Thomas reappeared yesterday after two months of silence - he won't have time to help much more with the missions (fortunately, there isn't much to be done on that front), but at least he's there to help us with WCPPas problems.
Also, thanks to HCl, we've finally been able to convert our splash screens into WCP without reducing them to 256 colours. That's the second screenshot below.
And lastly, those of you who check HCl's page regularly will know that it is now possible to play fan-made movies in WCP - a fact we're taking advantage of :). Since we are obviously limited by space (don't want the package to be too big) and time (we don't want the movies to be still in the works when everything else is finally finished), we'll only have a very modest 3-4 minutes of movies in the game. But hey, better than nothing :). Take a look at the third shot below, from a movie currently being made by Hadrian.

Everyone Loves Lego Update ID

How about a WCP Panther in Lego? Or a Lego Piranha? Perhaps we should have a contest.. prize goes to the first person who can make a 1:1 scale model of the Behemoth in Lego. Thanks go to TC for the links. I'll let him buy the prize should anyone manage to win the contest.

Don't Forget! Update ID

Tonight is the night. The WC movie is being shown on Sci-Fi.
This action-packed, futuristic adventure, about members of an elite squadron of fighter pilots assigned to the front line in a 27th-century war for interstellar domination, stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. (I Know What You Did Last Summer), Saffron Burrows (Deep Blue Sea) and Matthew Lillard (13 Ghosts).

Airs Thursday, November 22, at 9PM ET/PT

Happy Thanksgiving Update ID

Even though I'm not American and have no idea what Thanksgiving is all about, I still feel strangely compelled to jump on the bandwagon and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. So happy Thanksgiving!

Make Your Own Missions Update ID

Thomas Bruckner's WC editing site is now back up at a new location and a copy of Thomas' WCP Pascal mission compiler is up with it. If you want to try your hand at making missions, you can find WCP Pascal and a whole load of other editing tools from Thomas' site.

For Those Who Missed It Update ID

The WC movie is being shown this week on the Sci Fi channel. The date and time to mark on your calendar is this Thursday 22 November at 9pm Eastern time. This showing is perfect for those who didn't see it in theaters, haven't got the DVD/video, or are offended by the word "balls". Thanks to WildWeasel for the heads up.

Miscellaneous Links Update ID

  • First a correction: the site with the WC Zone poll is sfss.org, not what was previously posted. Sorry about that.
  • Let us take you back to a greater time! A time when the Origin site didn't suck. This is a version of the site dating back to March 97 archived by the WayBack Machine so don't be surprised if some of the links are broken.

    • Holding The Line Chapter 109 Update ID

    You know the drill. Here's Raptor:
    Hey all, Raptor here.HTL continues with Part Three of the "Toeing The Line" series, which followson from "The Road to Hell", and runs parallel to "Scraps of Honour". Thischapter looks at the Confed reserve pilots who will be fighting alongsidethe Scrappers, both on duty as they prepare for the coming battles, and offduty as they try to unwind and forget about what's headed towards them.Please send any all comments to the writer, James Andrew "JAG" Greenhow, at Rambo.123uk@btinternet.com , not to me.Just a word of warning, the title of this story "Strange Bedfellows" gives apretty good idea of what the characters get up to in their spare time, sothe language and some of the scenes in this story might not be to everyone'staste. There's nothing X rated (or even M rated) there, but anyone who wasupset by the Rosie/Maniac scenes in the movie might want to take a pass.Best, Raptor
    You can find chapter 109 here.

    WC Zone News Update ID

    It has been a while since we had some news on WC Zone, the WC mod for Subspace. First off, the site has moved to a new location, so be sure to fix your bookmarks. Secondly, there's a poll over on sfss.org which asks "Which zone would make the best life partner?". Wing Commander is of course an option, so if you like WC Zone, go vote for it. Thanks to Filler for the news.

    WC Music Commercial Update ID

    It's not what you'd think.. I'll let Wizard tell you about it..
    I was watching TV waiting for commercials to end, whenI heard WC3 victory music. I couldn't really believe,and it was most inappropriate, but nevertheless... OnCroatian TV, WC3 victory music (pretty much theoriginal version) was used for some "Gavrilovic" meatproduct commercial. What an end for something likethat, huh? Oh well...
    How odd.

    New Poll Update ID

    Thanks for all the poll ideas! We should have enough to keep us going for a while. This latest poll comes from "Chris" (not ChrisReid) and asks which famous WC battle would you most like to play as a game. The results of the previous poll and all others before that can be found here.

    Holding The Line Chapter 108 Update ID

    It's time for the almost regularly scheduled Holding The Line chapter, and as usual Raptor is here to tell us all about it:
    Hey all, Raptor here.

    HTL continues with the second part of Scraps of Honour 9. You'll recall thatin the last chapter, the Scrappers were refining their dogfighting skills inthe simulators, and finding out the hard way that tactics used againsthumans wouldn't work against the Nephilim. Meanwhile, a flight of Intrudersfrom the Necromancer Squadron had stumbled on a black ops fighter testingbase that no-one in the taskforce had known about. This chapter picks upfrom there. Please send any and comments to the writer, Nick "Chaeronea"Deane, at chaeronea@bigpond.com, not me.

    Best, Raptor

    You can read chapter 108 here.

    We Need Help! Update ID

    We also need poll ideas. After running 80 polls we've drawn a blank for a new one which is a shame because the current one is getting old. So if you'd like to see our poll changed more often than "when we get a burst of inspiration", email us with your poll suggestions.

    More EA Madness Update ID

    Staying true to form, EA have been waving their big axe around. As we know, they've previously cancelled Privateer Online followed shortly by Ultima Online 2 (I refuse to use it's later name) and probably other projects I've forgotten or we don't even know about along with job losses all around. Well now they're at it again. This time the axe falls on Multiplayer BattleTech 3025 and EA Platinum which includes Air warrior, Silent Death Online, Triple Play Baseball, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour Web Golf. So what is there left to cancel? As far as we know, Earth & Beyond (the game they cancelled Privateer Online for) is still going as is the original Ultima Online but has EA lost faith in games only playable online? Given EA's recent performance, they may be about to rethink their strategy.. and if so, let's hope that they still remember the success (and profit!) that Wing Commander brought them.

    Vegastrike Beta Released Update ID

    After a lot of hard work, the Vegastrike beta has been released. Here's Hellcat with the latest:
    The Vegastrike Beta has just been released to the public! Theimprovements over 0.0.9 are tremendous! I spent hours designing somefun missions to play with many of the all new starships included!

    Vegastrike Beta includes:
    -Joystick support for a full featured joystick
    -Sound effects that make starships roar as they pass and zap as they die
    -Bolt weapons with glowing lighting effects
    -Cloaking that renders a ship partially/fully invisible
    -All new starships
    -Customizable fully working HUD with targetting displays, etc
    -Customizable Alien Race logos that will change on all starships by editing TerranPriA.bmp and TechPriA.bmp
    -Varied weapons on different starships
    -Explosions that literally tear a starship into pieces
    -Shields That Glow upon hit (in the location hit)
    -Customizable missions
    I would really appreciate it if some of the Vegastrike fans can sendme their own missions. I have included descriptions of the new missionformat in the README file included-- it's a lot simpler than the oldone.
    Please mail missions to vegastrike-users@lists.sourceforge.net for allto share in the enjoyment of each other's work. Expect to see a nicecomplilation of user-designed missions in the future.Also revisions to any fighter stats to make them for fun to fly/fightwould be welcomed!
    Thanks and please send any comments/bugs you have to vegastrike-users@lists.sourceforge.net

    Wow. You can download the beta from the Vegastrike site.

    Holding The Line Chapter 7 Update ID

    Here's the latest from Raptor:
    Hey all, Raptor here.

    After that look at the set-up to the massive fleet battle in Loki, we're nowgoing to change pace, and focus once again on the reserves and Tanfeners asthey prepare to play their own part in the campaign. We start with the nextinstallment of the Scraps of Honour series, which focuses on the BorderWorlds reserves, and especially on a militia unit called the Scrappers. Thischapter is written by Nick "Chaeronea" Deane. Please send any and commentsto Nick at chaeronea@bigpond.com, not to me.

    This chapter features two fighters flown by the Border Worlders in 2681, theIntruder and the Marauder. For those who are not familiar with them, a quicksynopsis. The Intruder is very similar to the Tigershark in speed, agility,shielding and firepower. Like the Tigershark, it's a jack-of-all tradesmedium fighter. It's only major weakness is its armour, which is the samegrade as that on WC3/WC4 fighters. The Marauder is a cross between aThunderbolt and an Excalibur, with most of the strengths of both, and only afew of the weakness. Like the T-Bolt, it's got great guns and a powerfulanti-capship loadout of torpedoes. Like the Excal, it's fast, reasonableagile, and cloak capable. Again, though, its armour is only Kilrathi War grade.

    Best, Raptor

    You can read chapter 107 here.

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