News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2019.023 (January 23, 2019)

Watch a Genre Launch in WC Throwback Vid

The Eternall Newbie has made a quirky retrospective video about Wing Commander 1. The author goes through the game's setting and physical box contents and highlights what made it so great at the time. Aside from some wonky input controls issues, he says it still holds up pretty well!Join me as I look back at the granddaddy of all space combat sims, the game that launched a genre, Wing Commander 1.

2018.023 (January 23, 2018)

Papercraft Hornet Deep In Design Phase

Adm_Maverick is still working on his crafty physical models, and his latest project is a precise Hornet design. He's done a variety of measurements to get the proportions right, but a few areas are tricky to correctly spec out around curvy shapes. His methods have been detailed out further at the CIC Forums for anyone who has comments or critiques. It's cool to see all the thought that's gone into things before paper's even printed!

2017.023 (January 23, 2017)

WC Modeling Tool Gets Bug Fixes & New Features

Today's post won't be much help if you're trying to blend wings, but the new update to Wing Blender will assist your Vision Engine modding! New version 2.1.1 fixes issues when trying to import models from multiple directories, addresses a bug where face textures don't appear and now recognizes light flag settings.

2016.023 (January 23, 2016)

Homeworld Mod Experiments With Turret Upgrades

Here are some neat screenshots of another cool concept L.I.F. is working on for his Homeworld Remastered mod, Flag Commander.

2015.023 (January 23, 2015)

Chris Roberts Presents at BAFTA Screening

Chris Roberts recently gave a presentation at the first British Academy of Film and Television Arts - Los Angeles masterclass on games. He runs through his history in the industry and why he transitioned from games to movies and back. He also covers his time at Origin and makes reference many times to his efforts making the Wing Commander movie. Astute listeners will take note that he talks about meeting with EA to discuss his comeback to games as Star Citizen was originally conceived as a next-gen Wing Commander.

2014.023 (January 23, 2014)

More Chinese Localizations Emerge

GunASKA posted some interesting pictures of WC4, Privateer 2 and Prophecy from China. He believes that these were the first WC titles formally released there. We posted some WC1 and WC2 boxes in Chinese language a few years back, and Gun reckons that these were probably from Taiwan. He's got a nice story about originally receiving these - no matter what country they're from, everyone has great memories of getting their first Wing Commander games!

2013.023 (January 23, 2013)

Strike Carriers Dominate the Front Lines

As I've said recently before, the Bengal class strike carrier is one popular ship! It also comes in many forms, and as Wing Commander has evolved over the years, fans have been incorporating more elements into their interpretations of the design. Lars started building a Tiger's Claw model in 2006 that merged Claws from the WC1 game, Movie and Academy. Now he's back with a new iteration, and this one even includes some Star Citizen touches!

2012.023 (January 23, 2012)

Congratulations Award Winners!

The votes have been tallied, and we now have the winners of our 2011 Fan Project & Web Site of the Year awards! Many great nominees received a ton of votes, which speaks to how many great undertakings were pursued over the past year. Although only a few can win, we're still amazed at all the constant fan activity. Without further delay, here's the winners:The 2011 Fan Project of the Year is the OpenGL Patch for Prophecy & Secret Ops!

Spacetime Studios Takes Time to Celebrate

The good news continues for mobile developer Spacetime Studios. CEO Gary Gattis has posted a rollup that summarizes the company's accomplishments in 2011 and aspirations for the new year. Spacetime was founded in 2005 in Austin, Texas by a handful of game industry veterans, including several Wing Commander pros from Origin. The company had some rough times a couple years after getting going with the cancellation of their space combat MMO, BlackStar.

2011.023 (January 23, 2011)

Remembering The Heart of the Tiger in Forgotten Battles

TopGun has been playing around with fighter skins for IL-2 Sturmovik and came up with this neat livery. The basic gray hull is accented with green checkerboard, a Confed star and some familiar text markings. It's a cool nod to the Hellcat paint scheme from Wing Commander 3.

The Origin of Cobalt 60's Musical Connection

David Phillips' MySpace Blog has posted an interesting 1997 interview with Cobalt 60 co-founder Jean-Luc De Meyer. A couple questions relate to how Cobalt 60 got involved with the game and what preparation took place before recording. You can find the complete interview here.Q: Another group you are working with, Cobalt60, is doing the soundtrack for the CD-ROM game Wing Commander V.

2010.023 (January 23, 2010)

Collateral Damage Developer Interviewed

There have been a lot of updates here about Wing Commander Collateral Damage, but most of them feature new ships. JasonRocZ has recently answered a number of questions about progress in other areas of the mod.Q: Right now it still seems like the project has mainly produced a collection of models, but you've mentioned getting all the basic ships done before New Years. Are you pretty much there?

2009.023 (January 23, 2009)

New Border Worlds Design For Collateral Damage

JasonRocZ is working on a Border Worlds ship for Wing Commander Collateral Damage. "The Butterfly" is tentatively classed as a multi-purpose fighter capable of atmospheric flight. You can discuss it here.

Examining Deserving Games

Back when the CIC first opened, it seemed like there was a new "greatest games of all time" list being published every week, and Wing Commander was always to be found somewhere on the list. You don't see as many of those anymore, but there does appear to be an endlist supply of blogs and gaming sites telling everyone which games need to be remaded or sequelized. Manboy found another one. Not surprisingly, WC games show up here as well, and they're often alongside other prominent Origin titles.

2008.023 (January 23, 2008)

Wing Commander Arena Tournament This Saturday

To celebrate the six month anniversary of Wing Commander Arena, the CIC is throwing a big tournament this Saturday! The event kicks off at 3:00 pm Eastern time (12:00 pm noon Pacific and 8:00 pm GMT) via XBox Live and #Wingnut. Participants will be playing in ranked free-for-all matches on the Space Station and/or Boneyard maps. Each session will have a CIC staff member to observe and tally the final scores.

Point of Origin: Vol. IV, No. 57

The Point of Origin has an all-new look -- it's more professional, more fashionable and less home-spun. Is this the first sign of things to come? Let's see what's inside... (Actually, the honest reaction to Pacific Strike seems fairly interesting to me.

2007.023 (January 23, 2007)

Bengal Model Gets An Escort

Kiyara's Tiger's Claw now has a small fleet to interact with. A Light Carrier, Drayman, Clydesdale, Shiraak and Exeter are visible in the flotilla below. The large ships are about 15 centimeters in length, and the smallest is currently the Drayman at 4 cm. Each design began as a 3D model before a casting machine turned the CAD file into a physical ship.

Standoff Episode 4 Fights Development Hurdles

We continue to get questions about Standoff's next episode, so here's a brief status update from Quarto.It's definitely too early to tell when it'll be released, but things are looking up. I don't want to promise anything, but I am hoping that in a month or two, the progress chart for episode 4 will be mainly green, with isolated bits of yellow and no red at all.This depends on a lot of external factors - for one thing, as far as the voiceovers are concerned it's now all up to the actors, who have to record them and send them in.

2006.023 (January 23, 2006)

Publicizing A Plethora Of Privateer 3 Pictures

Last month we posted the 240 page Privateer 3 Script to the Document Archive. The draft's story and background information detailed a new privateer's interactions with Kilrathi, Nephilim, Black Lance and other familiar elements in the 2680s. It's a must-read for fans curious about what might have been. The project was eventually canceled in favor of the online Wing Commander games, but we've now sorted out the various concept art shots from the proposal.

Serve In The Battle For Enigma

RPG week continues today with the Battle for Enigma RPG. The game is one of the more established RPGs having first started in December 2001. The story is based around the 380th Fighter Squadron, also known as the Black Eagles, and takes place between 2667 and 2669. Their role playing forum attracts near daily posts, and they meet up every Sunday at 9:00 pm EST in an AIM-based chat room for live action simulation.

2005.023 (January 23, 2005)

Rod Nakamoto Interview Recovered

While digging through some of his old magazines, Duriel managed to find an interview with Prophecy's Executive Producer, Rod Nakamoto, inside issue #17 (October 1997) of PC Powerplay magazine. The interview goes in depth in to Prophecy's different uses of FMV and other aspects of Prophecy's development. The multiplayer features which were sadly axed soon afterwards also get a brief mention.One of the things that is probably quite evident, especially in Wing Commander III and IV, is the way they designed it.

Birthday Wishes

It's January 23, so Happy Birthday Trelane! Yesterday was Hadrian's, and he asked me if his birthday wish for Tre arrived yet (three feet of snow across the entire Northeast), but I'm not sure.

New Super Soakers Released

To coincide with the great weather this weekend (in Seattle, that is), today is a perfect day to show off my latest Super Soaker. The new 2005 models should be showing up all over in the coming weeks, if they're not already available. Target was the first place I saw them this year.You can find my review at Crius.

2004.023 (January 23, 2004)

Saga's Tallahassee Slips By

WC Saga's Tallahassee Class Cruiser slipped through the cracks late last year. It's quite a pretty ship, so we thought you'd all like to take a look.The Tallahassee-class fleet cruiser is one of the new naval designs the Terran Confederation started to produce before the False Treaty was signed. It is a simple and efficient design that has been refined for mass production.

EA MultiGame Pack On Sale

Circuit City currently has a deal on an EA package including four games, including the massively multiplayer space sim Earth & Beyond. Need For Speed, Freedom Fighters and C&C Renegade round out the bunch. You can pick this one up here. The pack goes for $9.

2003.023 (January 23, 2003)

Upgrade Options For Prophecy Advance

If you've been considering a lighting mod for your GBA, you still have time. It looks like Prophecy is going to slip into at least February here, and the Afterburner internal lighting kits have gone on sale for $25. LOAF, Hades, myself and others have these wonderful things, and they really are worth the effort. I can't got back to an unlit GBA.

Happy Birthday People

Lots of Birthdays this week on our front. Hadrian and Trelane turn 21 and 22 this week. Did you know you can check up on Chat Zone birthdays too? Starkey, Catkiller and PsiKid have birthdays this midweek as well.

WCPolaroids: Extras (3/16)

One guy is really happy to be in Prophecy. The other guy couldn't care less. Guess which is which!

2002.023 (January 23, 2002)

They Sure Love Excaliburs

Kenneth Armstrong forwarded us something interesting... a picture of the artwork for the Japanese release of Wing Commander 3 PSX. Interestingly, there seem to be a bunch of WC games that were never released on Japanese consoles... has anyone ever seen a SM1 Super Famicom or a WC4 PSX?

Midway Fixed

The Wing Commander Invasion (ST: Armada mod) team has released a minor patch, allowing the Midway construction shipyard to be properly buildable. Grab it at the top of this thread.

Happy Birthday, Tre!

It's like yesterday, only for Trelane! Except I remembered to make a graphic! And here it is!

2001.023 (January 23, 2001)

Stratics Pushing Today's Jumpgate News

For starters, JG Stratics has a poll going on that asks whether people would prefer the current realistic physics flight model in Jumpgate or a more Wing Commanderific mode of flight. It seems most hardcore JG players, as well as the developers, don't foresee a change in the future, but pushing Wing Commander to the top of polls is nothing we've ever looked away from. You can find this one here.For those who missed last week's Jumpgate chat, we're going to let Stratics post the log for you.

We All Stayed

PopsiclePete found a funny Wing Commaner mention in an article about people camping out for the Lord of the Rings trailer. You may be aware that it came out with Thirteen Days not long ago. The whole situation is compared to the Star Wars Episode I trailer being showed before Wing Commander. You can find the article here.

Happy Birthday - Part Two

I wasn't kidding yesterday. Today the marvelous Trelane turns another year older. Happy Birthday again!

2000.023 (January 23, 2000)

Gamespot Makes a Comeback

Gamespot has released another Readers' Choice feature. This time it's on top game endings. Wing Commander was the only series to grab two slots in the top ten. Wing Commander 3's award can be found here and Wing Commander 4's here.

The Further Adventures at Earth-Netone

Dave "Midgard" Monson has just completed another design for Peter Telep at his official website. He will also be doing a Flash 4 piece soon. If you haven't been to www.earth-netone.

Our Daily Crid

I've got a few things here I've decided to condense into one single update.It probably comes as no surprise that I get into conversations about Wing Commander with random people on the street all the time. So when I'm stuck in a dentist's chair for an hour, I can rather go off. And this time it made a difference.

Shock Docs Cock Up!

Medical disaster correspondent Hypp O'Crates reports. There's trouble at the Millground Alternative Therapies unit on Hades, where controversial Electro-conformity treatment has been taking place. The treatment, given to repeat criminal offenders, involves passing huge voltages of electricity through the patient's synapses. The tests have had mixed results; very few of the out-patients have re-offended, but given that the mortality rate has been around 40%, this is perhaps not overly surprising.

1999.023 (January 23, 1999)

Where Have All the Rapiers Gone?

In proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, alert reader Arvin "Trencher" Bautista (of Trencher-Alb's Movie & PC Gaming Universe) found a picture of a Rapier in a collection of 'secret' Phantom Menace pictures at Marks Place. Apparently the Rapiers are in a hangar somewhere in England... and they're easily confused for something from Star Wars.

Whence Comes the Jr. Adaptation?

The status of the Wing Commander Movie Jr. Adaptation over at Barnes & Noble has been upgraded from 3-5 weeks to 1-2 weeks! The countdown continues...

One of Those Weeks

Not just here at the CIC, but all over things have been a bit slow this week. Slow online, but very busy for some with finals. Take a break and play Trivia if you haven't gotten a chance to do so yet. Week Nine answers are due by tomorrow (Sunday).