News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2025.031 (January 31, 2025)

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) which was shot in the same factory as Wing Commander, used the same production company and took advantage of the same tax dodge! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here.

After Action Report: Star Wars

After Action Report: Star Wars Greetings WingNuts, It shouldn't be a surprise that we had a blast with Star Wars! The movie holds up exactly as well as we hoped it would… the worst anyone could say was that the first act was a little slower than we remembered, and that's nothing now that we've seen The Dam Busters! Our overall review was that the original Star Wars deserves its reputation for both inspiring later movies and… video games. It would be impossible to catalog every single thing in the Wing Commander canon that was influenced by Star Wars; the series itself is at its heart an attempt to create an interactive Star Wars experience!

2024.031 (January 31, 2024)

Hefty Update to Originator Released

You asked for more options to hack into Prophecy, Secret Ops and Privateer 2 - and AllTinker has delivered! The latest update to Originator add support for extraction of the more complex models in the later Wing Commander games. There's also better support for alternate disc formats such as the 3DO, recognition of P2's xmidi music format and much more. You can grab the latest version of the tool here!

2023.031 (January 31, 2023)

Righteous Fire Takes Out the Big Guns

I’m working on a Righteous Fire walkthrough and while playing the last missions I noticed the Elite Salthi were firing fusion guns. But my increasingly old man memory was sure the big reveal was that they fired copies of the Steltek Gun. Was I misremembering because there’s dialogue about the gun being copied? I watched a dozen YouTube videos and they were all fusion guns.

2022.031 (January 31, 2022)

New Map Interpretation Lights up the Universe

Klavs has posted a very unique take on the glorious universe map from the Wing Commander Movie. He's started with the super high res capture of the actual physical map prop. Then he removed the border and played with the settings to create a visually enhanced image. Items like Scylla, the Charybdis Quasar and arms of the Milky Way really pop.

2021.031 (January 31, 2021)

Procession of Pancakes: A Dralthi Digest

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! The great big Dralthi parade is about to begin! Be sure to cheer for all your favorites!

2020.031 (January 31, 2020)

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Dralthi Diversion

Dralthi fans just seem to see them everywhere.

2019.031 (January 31, 2019)

Last Chance To Rock The Vote!

We're already a month into the new year, so it's just about time for our annual fan project contest to wrap up. If you haven't voted yet, there's still time! Lots of fans are out there making a difference in the WC community, so we know it can be hard to just pick one. Here are the nominees again.

2018.031 (January 31, 2018)

New Homeworld AI Upgrade Featured In WC Mod

While a vexing problem continues to flag advanced ordnance mechanics, the new AI features of the Homeworld Remastered Mod have been released in the game's latest update on Steam. L.I.F.

2017.031 (January 31, 2017)

Secret Ops Upgrades Upgraded Even Further

Today we have a mixed bag with a variety of nifty improvements to the Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack. These are largely refinements where DefianceIndustries went back to apply newer graphical techniques to some of his earlier models as well as tightening up the Panther's geometry a bit to make it more true to the original. Additionally, there are also some test textures to try out some methods of coloring in the Nephilim ships with something exotic. Things keep looking better and better!

2016.031 (January 31, 2016)

Annual Community Vote Begins!

We've left 2015 in the past, but there's one more thing to do as we move further into 2016. You've sent nominations in over the past month, and now we're kicking off our annual awards to recognize the fan projects and websites that had some of the most impact over the past year. We had an even larger number of worthy projects this year than normal, and we definitely wanted to get this out before the end of January, so excuse the brief listings of each choice. Although we'll end up with just a few winners, we appreciate what everyone here - plus all of the others keeping things going daily basis - have done for the community.

2015.031 (January 31, 2015)

Another Dralthi Expands the Lego Fleet

Voidshaper has put together a pretty good looking Dralthi with digital Lego tools. Wing Commander fans have a long history of building some slick Lego spacecraft, which is impressive given the limitations of the building blocks available. Dralthi fighters are one of the most popular creations. Renders like these make you wish there was a Lego Wing Commander game!

2014.031 (January 31, 2014)

Watch Klavs Paint a Shuttle

One of Klavs' most recent creations is a Confederation shuttle design. It's clearly inspired by the iconic Wing Commander IV shuttle, but more curvy and with a cockpit that is more integrated into the fuselage. You can see an early version of the model in this update from one year ago. As a bonus feature, Klavs has also posted a high-speed video (102MB) of him working on the shuttle's textures.

2013.031 (January 31, 2013)

Rapier Spinoff Covers the Carrier

ScoobyDoo is back with a new model concept. This one's a lighter - but still nicely hull-plated - variant of the Rapier. It looks like a fast, fun and sporty version. He's artfully composed a scene with it running picket in front of an out-of-focus background warship.

2012.031 (January 31, 2012)

From the Beginning, You Know the End...

It's time for the start of a new poll, and this one's all about endings. Which game had your favorite conclusion? Are you more into the traditional blast-a-starbase final missions from the early '90s? If that's not epic enough, the endings from the mid '90s were more focused on resolving entire wars than specific battles.

2011.031 (January 31, 2011)

Fighter Armor Upgraded to Platolum

Astro Commander is working on a new source for his miniature models, and that might mean more advanced designs for cheaper. The ships are made out of a pewter material and have sharp pins to form the weapon detail. They're also scaled down to about an inch long to accommodate tabletop gaming. Thought some of you may want to know, a trial run of the studio bergstrom ships have just been completed and should be available for order soon.

2010.031 (January 31, 2010)

Requesting Clearance to Land

The new front page poll asks about your favorite type of landing. A lot of people have fond memories of the first time they figured out how to land in the front of the Tiger's Claw. Everyone also had fun the first time they zoomed through the first fly-through bay on the Victory. And with Gothri pounding their rear armor and electronics popping across your cockpit, who can forget the relief of getting pulled into an automatic landing zone?

Command & Conquer 4 Open Beta Begins

Electronic Arts has opened up the beta for Command & Conquer 4 to the public. This multiplayer test allows gamers to participate in full 5 versus 5 online battles. The game itself is due for release on March 16, 2010 for Windows PCs. It will conclude the 'Tiberium' story arc surrounding the GDI versus Nod and include the series' signature live actor full motion video with Joe Kucan returning as Kane.

2009.031 (January 31, 2009)

WC Saga Development Focus Shifts To CGI

What's going on with Wing Commander Saga? According to a recent website update, mission programming is in the final stages and more effort will be allocated to cutscene creation. Today they're giving us a first look at the early CGI for a planet from the Vega System. Look here for our previous coverage of the FreeSpace 2 mod.

WC Scholars Take The Day Off

If you haven't been following the news on Crius, there is no WCPedia meeting in #Wingnut this Sunday. A lot of people will be out watching the Superbowl/Office special in the US, and everyone is welcome to drop by IRC for that however. Otherwise, team members are invited to keep working on the project and there should be another meeting next weekend. I'm proposing the next meeting to be our biggest yet.

2008.031 (January 31, 2008)

Saga is the 'Pits

Tolwyn has posted three preliminary images of a 3D cockpits (created by limdaelp) which will be used in the Wing Commander Saga FreeSpace 2 mod. Pictured belowis the cockpit for the F/A-76 Longbow bomber. As you can see, it's a close match for the version which appears in Wing Commander III!

Point of Origin: Vol. IV, No. 61

This issue of The Point of Origin represents a time most of us remember fondly - the release of Wing Commander III! The rare Origin product that shipped on time, Wing Commander III completely changed the face of gaming -- with effects which last to this day. But how was the launch felt at Origin? A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!

2007.031 (January 31, 2007)

Play Whole Kilrathi Saga From One Disc

Are you fed up with having to change CDs in order to install and play the Kilrathi Saga? Forums member Mash has just the solution for you: copy everything on to one DVD. You can even have it automatically install the WC1/2 expansions. There is a touch of tweaking to do in order to get this working, but it's nothing that the average user can't handle.

Clive Owen Shoots 'Em Up

Rick Salemi reports that Privateer 2 star Clive Owen is starring in a movie called "Shoot 'Em Up" which is due for release later this year. While it has what is possibly one of the most terrible titles ever, the movie's plot is described as "A man named Mr. Smith (Owen) delivers a woman's baby during a shootout, and is then called upon to protect the newborn from the army of gunmen." We'll keep an eye on this one and see how well it performs.

2006.031 (January 31, 2006)

Composite Bengal Gets Some Teeth

Lars has continued to refine his unified Bengal design. After having incorporated Wing Commander Academy's side hangar bays, he has begun to detail the 40 missile and torpedo tubes shown in the Wing Commander movie. Inset defense turrets, various maintenance access hatches and stabilization thrusters are now also visible. More work on the turrets is coming soon.

WC4 DVD Resouce Expands To New Home

The home of the WC4 DVD Dxmci Patch has moved. Since the DVD version of Wing Commander 4 was built around the Creative Labs encore kit, fans with the game, but not the special decoder board, must use this patch to play the game. It can get a little bit tricky since there are two builds of the product and each user's system can affect how things run. The latest version of the patch includes various compatibility modes to work around different computers' particular settings.

2005.031 (January 31, 2005)

Origin Closure Gets The Year-End Nod

Game Informer has done a feature about the most notable news stories of 2004. EA's closure of Origin gets an acknowledgement. They talk a little bit about Westwood's similar demise and Richard Garriott's new work with NCsoft.

Register Your Secret Ops Officially

Since the Secret Ops site was taken offline, the only way that people have been able to get their downloaded copies of the game running is with a tool such as HCl's key generator. But it seems that it's still possible to get a registration code from the official site! Josh Bava noticed that the registration section is still available. It's neat that an official Wing Commander thing still exists on the internet.

2004.031 (January 31, 2004)

Holding The Line Chapter 175

This week we wish HTL a happy birthday as the project celebrates its fifth birthday. Wow, time sure flies. Now here's Raptor with the latest chapter: Hey all, Raptor here. HTL continues with "Finest Hour", the fifth story in a series about the big Finale battle which is written by yours truly.

We Want To Measure You

Among the various promotional items we've proposed lately, it looks like our polo shirts will pan out first. If you intend to pick up one of these shirts and are a registered Crius.net member, drop on by and vote in Jibbo's size poll. This will help us determine how to balance our order.

2002.031 (January 31, 2002)

More Tech Support, More Tech Support

A few days back we lamented the loss of Origin's wonderful old tech support site -- to which their new, flash-free, website bid adieu. Well, thanks to the wonders of technology and a lot of hand editing I've recreated the original site... and you can find it here. It's got information on solving many, many technical issues for Origin's older games.

Two.Two.Twice as Good

Visitors to the Chat Zone may have noticed a difference -- it's got weird new icons and a thing that tells you who else is online. That's because Kris and Hades have worked hard to bring you... vBulletin 2.2.

2001.031 (January 31, 2001)

Tweaking The Classics

Boeman has made a marvelous short Wing Commander clip that you can now view in your web browser. It's a two meg download, and you progress through the scenes with the space bar. But unlike most fan movies, this one is done Wing Commander 1 style. It's really cool, but that's not the end of it.

Tonight's The Night

Don't forget that if you're in the UK and get the channel Sky Movie Max, the WC Movie will be showing tonight at 11:00 pm. Have fun.

Majestically Taking Over Your Life

Like us, you may have been wondering where former Origin general manager Neil Young has been these past couple years. He ran a bunch of stuff at OSI in the early days of Ultima Online and Wing Commander Prophecy and also got co-executive producer billing for the Movie. He was also the guy that got us into the premiere. Well now he's leading the new EA game Majestic.

2000.031 (January 31, 2000)

Clarification on GameStar Rumor

This is just a little note about GameStar's note on a 2001 release date for Privateer Online. Actually that part is probably fine.. but the note about it being under Andy Hollis may be inaccurate. This is primarily because of the September 1999 GamePen article where Hollis stated he is not amongst those working on "Wing Commander Online.

The History of Computer Games at GameSpy

GameSpy has an article up about "The History of Computer Games." There's a big paragraph about Wing Commander in it here. Trelane said it was amusing. You'll have to read it yourself to find out if he was being sarcastic or not.

Server Switch Almost Complete

As of this writing the CIC is on its new machine and things appear to be working normally. Many thanks to Origin, BlackLance.org and WC Space Command. We'll still be working out some funny stuff over the next day or two, but most things should be operational.

Latest Multi-Dev Chat Logs Up

If you missed the latest multi-developer chat at ATFW on Saturday, the logs are now up. You can find the basic text file here and the pretty color-coded html version is here. There were a whole bunch of Wing Commander mentions throughout the chat.[14:23] ([CIC]Cpl Hades) Thanks Beth :) Hey Warthog guys.

UE Gone South for the Winter

Pedro sent us some information about Unknown Enemy. There was some discussion on the project at our Chat Zone here. With no one available to create missions for the dated Secret Ops we are moving to another engine. Right now we need someone to refine and complete the story and someone who is capable of creating CG sequences.

A New Home for Hom

Our religious affairs correspondent Mark Gibbon reports from Bex. Construction of a new Chapel and Brewery complex for the Avuncular Order of Hom commenced yesterday. The project is being undertaken partially as a result of an increase in followers, and partially because of the huge popularity of Bex Beer, the main product of the dipsomaniacal devotees. Huge amounts of Titan Alloys and Lumber are required.....

1999.031 (January 31, 1999)

Closure

Well, tomorrow is going to be one kick ass Monday, I've just received word that Barnes & Noble has shipped my copy of the Confederation Handbook - the last WC book to be released. On the same tangent Amazon.com now lists the handbook (but only the handbook) as being available.

First Starlog I See Tonight

The Dude has struck again, this time bringing us pictures and an article from the March issue of Starlog magazine -- which features a Wing Commander cover! Check it out, new pictures are at the bottom. Thanks, Dude, you rule!    Is it science fiction?